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Box 102: Culture, Politics, Environment, Economics
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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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S. Hays,
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revised
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and
T. Hobbes, Leviathan, ed. M. Oakeshott, Oxford, 1746,
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K.S. Inglis, 'Religious behaviour'*, in A.F. Davies and S.
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(eds.),
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at the Science Research in Australia:
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Benefits?
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behaviour under r i v a 1 par a d i gm s',
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in
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and 'J. Routley, 'Human chauvinism and environmental ethics' in Hannison;
referred to as EE.
U. and R. Routley, 'Social
problems', in Hannison.
theor i es,
self
management
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Research
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and
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I. Relevant modellings and
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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.
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T.
Veblen, An inquiry into the Nature of Peace, Viking, New fork, 1945.
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'Crime'*, in Davies et.al.
E. Matt, [Latest environmental book!
D.R.
H i1d
R.
Heiner,
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historical
origins
Envi ronmen t a 1 Revi ew 6 ( 1982) 42-61.
of
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P. Edwards), Macmillan, London, 1967, vol. 2, pp.273-362.
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Symposium of the Academy of the Social Sciences in
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A
Hacroeconomic
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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.
�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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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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Box 103, Item 1: Correspondence and drafts of Culture and the roots of political divergence: a South Pacific perspective with emphasis on the Australian/American contrast
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Printout of various drafts with handwritten emendations, and handwritten notes, undated. Includes correspondence from Alan? (Department of Philosophy, University of Alberta) to Richard Sylvan, 9 June 1988 (typescript, 4 pages) re feedback on paper; Richard Sylvan to Alan, 13 July 1988 (handwritten, 2 pages) re: feedback on paper; Alastair (University of Waikato) to Richard Sylvan, 17 April 1985 (handwritten, 4 pages (2 leaves)) re feedback on paper; Tom (Philosophy Department, Massey University) to Richard Sylvan, 10 Jul 1985 (handwritten, 3 pages (2 leaves)) re feedback on paper.
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Box 103: Culture, Politics, Environment, Economics
-
https://www.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
R TREATISE ON POLITICAL THEORY
OTHER HQJOR TOPICS (UNOROERED):-
1.
PturatisM and pturatisMS: the otd (and Marxist) fallacy
of one form.
2.
Power,
hierarchies,
Constitutions, corporations, states and
transnationats
Authoritarian
rotations;
organisations.
3.
Undertying Metaphysics.
(not independent things).
Stytes of denocracy, and inproving denocracy.
6.
A Major source of power: property.
Land rights.
��INTRODUCTION
Present poLet Leet arrangements are hardig satisfactorg, angMhere. Theg
not
de Livering
adequate
shoutd at Least assist Ln
environment,
Meifare,
of mang of* the things that such arrangements
Levels^
productLon
the
are
or
education^
LiveLihood,
of,
attainment
...
e.g.
securLtg,
. Thus if better Mags to do
these things can be found, theg shouLd be sought, and tried.
Perhaps surprisingLg, there has been remarkabLg Lit tie effort expended upon
surveuing the range of poLLticaL
atternatives
(as
compared,
e.g.,
Mith
the
effort put into defending the status quo), or to Mork out, so far as can or need
be
done,
areas,
detaiLs
Mhere
of the more promising options.
entrenched
positions
Indeed, as Mith so mang other
dominate^ there
been
has
cons iderabLe
discouraoement of such important investigation.
R s ign if ican t r ange of a L te ma t i ves, sea roe Lg g i ven a triaL in
modern
historg, are these arrangements Mhich reduce domination and the exercise
of poMer and increase freedom. The present studg concentrates on these sorts
arrangements,
not
in
totaLitarian
of
or fascist or imperiaiist structures Mhich
have more than sufficient exempiification in recent times, despite their Lack of
justification and base in raM poMer and brute force.
10.
POLITICS WITHOUT DONINRTION:
Rnakgr ie means
varietg
of
RNRKYRIE RND RNRRCHISM
Mi thout domination.
domination.
For
domination
That
incLudes
comes
in
the
Mhoie
range
mang forms: of citizens bg
states, civiLians bg miLitarg, poor bg rich, bLacks bg Mhites, thirdMoriders
-1-
and
bg
�HMerLeans
)
Russ Lans. MOMen bu nan. young by otder, anLMaLs by huMans, nature
'.
\
. RnaRyrLsM consLsts Ln socLaL arrangeMents desLgned to avoLd aLL
e<.c*i v.*? , ^etA/'o
, py<-.
'fiohcoAc^
forMs of doMLnatLon-^ [There Ls nothLng Ln the account so far g^v^n whLch
bu Men?
such
orr
...
<3/*
LMpLLes that Lt Must taRe a gLven shape, that Lt Ls unLquety deterMLned.]
RnarchLsM
dLrectLy
Ls
MLth
concerned
onLy one part of Mhat anahyrLe Ls
about: doMLnatLon by peopte by states (Mhether theLr OMn or that of others), and
rewovaL of thLs doMLnatLon by aboLLtLon of the state. But there are
forMs
other
not essenttaLLy bound up MLth thLs forM, and aboLLtcon of
doMLnatLon
of
Many
the state Ls but oney rather drasttcyMay of reMovtng state doMLnatLon.
RnarchLsM has been extended, for Lnstance to eco-anarchLsM (as feMLnLsM has
been broadened to eco-feMLnLsM), Ln an effort to overcoMe a conspLcuous part of
c/
n/ttj
19th
C
anarchLsM tended to accept the saMe doMLnatLon of
the probteM,
that
nature by
Lndeed
and
huMans,
the
saMe
sort
of
scLentLfLo
reductLonLstLc
MaterLaL',SM, as Lts doMLnant rLvats, capLtaLLsM and (MarxLst) socLaLLsM. But the
broadenLng
caLLs
for
atso
further
expLanatLon,
to
LncLude
other types of
doMLnatLony^id strLctLy,such a recr^antatLon as to LnvoLve a change Ln MeanLng,
A
Ln Mhat Mas Meant by
anarchLsM .
In these cLrcuMstances, Lt Ls
More
forMard and Less MLsLeadLng sLMpLy to Lntroduce neM terMLnoLogy. Rtw
straLghtthere
are
, good reasons for seeRLng neM terMLnoLogy.
In
More
than
a century of use
anarchy
and Lts derLvatLves have becoMe
thoroughLy oenve-p-tied- MLth undesLrabte and LnapproprLate assoc LatLons, to such an
extent that soMe of these, such as chaos and dLsorder, are no&'saLd to gLve part
/
of the MeanLng of
anarchy'.
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AUTHOR
(BLOCK
LETTERS)
-------------------------------------------------------
DATE DUE
<V
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NAME
&
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I?U(/ tLE;^
/ KQ-Cc
DEPT.
(BLOCK
LETTERS)
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��138
139
genuine solution' since it combines both autonomy and authority; the difficulty i* 3
that it is empirically unrealistic? I shall return to WolfFs reasons for hesitating to 3
accept his own philosophical anarchist conclusions in a moment. Godwin, in his
F/M/mry Concerning Po/Mcu/ Justice, was not so timid. Godwin's theory is extremely
interesting for any discussion of political obligation because, like Hobbes' theory, it 3
shows the full implications of one form of adherence to radical, abstract
individualism.
B
Godwin's theory is a mirror image of Hobbes'. He ends where Hobbes begins^
with a collection of individuals who each view the world through their own,
subjective viewpoint. For Hobbes, the absolute freedom of individual private
judgement leads to complete insecurity and arbitrariness; for Godwin, the
unspeakably beautiful' practice of absolutely free exercise of individual private
judgement is the only way to peace (p. 208).*" Hobbes creates an artificial social
union held together by the Sword and reduces obligation' to enforced submission
and obedience. Godwin relies on reified Reason that speaks identically to
individual and he completely eliminates obligation' along with all other social
relationships. Social institutions and social relationships, Godwin argues, merely
stand in the way of individual judgement by preventing individuals seeing things as
they really are." Unhindered by governments, and other social institutions such as
promising, each individual will be able to decide for herself what ought to be done
and individuals' judgements will coincide. Reason will speak to all in a single voice
because, in the absence of social institutions, reality will stand revealed in all its
transparency.
Godwin's objections to the practice of promising are similar to his objections to
political institutions. Promising is absolutely considered, an evil' (p. 218). It may
occasionally be necessary to make a promise in order not to mislead other people
about one's intentions, but a defence of necessity in specific cases does not detract
from the essential evil of the practice itself. The evils of promising are twofold: first,
promising binds future conduct and thus rules out further individual judgement as
information and circumstances change. Secondly, promising encourages individuals
to act from 'a precarious and temporary motive' (p. 219). It distracts attention front
the consequences of particular actions, and hence obscures their intrinsic merits. If
the individual judges that an action ought to be performed (and Godwin saw this
judgement as a utilitarian calculation) then a promise adds nothing; it merely clouds
the moral worth, or otherwise, of the judgement itself. Political institutions function
in the same way to prevent individuals seeing things as they really are. For example;
they give an appearance of permanence to opinions that prevail at their inception and
thus cause the stagnation of judgement. Laws, like obligations, bind future conduct
and, being general in form, can take no account of the fact that each case is unique
and should be judged, according to Reason, on its own merits. Moreover, political
assemblies impose a factitious unanimity' on their members. Decisions have to bn
reached in which all the members must acquiesce, thus pretending that they am
something more than a collection of individuals, each with their own opinions;
Deliberation has to be cut short ly a vote and everyone, if their efforts are not to be
for nothing, has to see themselves as obliged' to carry out the decision: 'Nothing can
'3
?
3:
?
3;
'
y
more directly contribute to the depravation of the human understanding and
character' (p. 547).
Properly, according to Godwin, there are no obligations, only actions that ought
to be performed, or refrained from; nor is there any political authority, only a
coincidence of individual judgements that certain things ought to be done. Godwin's
individuals, unlike those who enter a social contract, are bound to nothing'. If an
individual joins in a 'common deliberation', he is, 'when the deliberation is over,...
as much disengaged as ever' (p. 234). This is not to say that he will never act with his
fellows; they may independently have arrived at the same judgement as to the right
course of action. Godwin also allows that individuals may sometimes defer to the
judgements of an authority on a particular matter; this he calls authority' that
depends upon the conhdence of him with whom it prevails' (p. 242). This deference
should, however, be rarely given, or it may tip over into a misplaced 'conhdence' in
alleged superiors who make judgements for others, and so inculcate those slavish
feelings that shrink up the soul' (p. 232). This form of obedience is a greater source
of degradation and depravity' than if the individual bows to political authority out
of fear of the sanctions for disobedience. Here Godwin anticipates Wolffs denial' of
the authority of the state. Wolff recognizes that there are many reasons for
compliance, but these are irrelevant providing that the claims of the state are
subjectively denied a binding moral force'." Similarly, Godwin argued almost two
hundred years ago that the individual who obeys solely to avoid punishment, may
reserve, in its most essential sense, his independence. He may be informed in
judgement,... and suffer his understanding neither to be seduced nor confounded'
(p. 141).
Godwin was confident that the philosophical anarchist denial' of authority and
obligation could be put into practice. Through discussion and education, and the
example of sincerity and frankness, individuals will become enlightened and develop
an appreciation of the evils of social institutions and social cooperation. Godwin
ruled out a sudden revolutionary change as this would not be based on the necessary
development of individual understanding. As a transitional measure he advocated a
system of 'juries', within small political communities or parishes', the juries dating
with individual offenders and disputes over property. He expected that disputes
between parishes would be rare and that the obvious principles of convenience'
would soon suggest a settlement (p. 546). A national assembly' might occasionally
be necessary to adjudicate in such matters, but it would not be a permanent body. At
first, all these institutions would exercise political 'authority' but, in time, Godwin
expected that they would merely issue invitations' to ^individuals to cooperate in
executing their verdicts, and, eventually, ail political institutions and cooperation
would wither away.
Abstract individualism rests on heroic assumptions. In Godwin 's case he assumes
that individual moral judgement can be exercised in complete absence of intersubjective theoretical categories and communal relationships. The argument of the
&!<7uiry implies that that which can be thought can be put into practice. Because it is
Possible to imagine an individual abstracted from social life, yet endowed with
Reason and a capacity for moral judgement, Godwin also assumes that, given a
�140
sufficient period of education and social and political change, those individuals could
actually exist, with their social past 'stored', as it were, within the consciousness of
each one. They would exist largely in isolation and yet, on occasions, emerge, inspect
reality and make an individual judgement that would coincide with judgements and
Reason of others.
Godwin's theory has some extremely charming aspects, but they cannot hide the
philosophically and sociologically bizarre consequences of radical individualism
taken to one of its extremes. Everything, except their own judgements, and actions
that flow immediately and unhindered from them, is foreign to one of Godwin's
individuals. Even the individual's own physical needs or freely created relationships
appear as impediments. A solitary individual, Godwin writes, is prevented from
executing his judgements 'in compliance with his necessities, or his frailties' (p. 758).
The evils of social cooperation are much worse, but technological progress will
enable individuals to do many things for themselves in the future that now require
the help of others. Godwin expects that concerts and plays will cease to be
performed; what enlightened individual would want to mouth the words or play the
compositions of another ? Eventually, the individual will come to see society as 'not a
necessary of life, but a luxury, innocent and enviable, in which he joyfully indulges'
(p. 761). At this point, however, there is no 'society' for them to indulge in. Godwin
relies on a reified Reason to link his individuals together but this cannot take the
place of the social relationships he has wished away.
Once again, the impossibility of distinguishing between institutions in various
dimensions of social life from within an abstractly individualist perspective is
demonstrated. Godwin treats promising as just as much a constraint and
impediment, and just as mystifying, as the laws of the state. It is worth emphasizing
that Godwin ends by depriving his individuals of the means of transcending their
own subjectivity. They have no social means of acting on their judgements and thus
must remain totally immersed in their own assessments of what 'ought' to be done.
The creative moral and social capacities of individuals are meaningless treated in the
abstract; they presuppose, and, in practice, can only be exercised and developed as a
part of social relationships including relationships of obligation.
A tacit realization of the peculiar conclusion of philosophical anarchism seems to
underlie Wolfs equivocations about the 'just state'. In the last part of /n Defence of
,4norchism, Wolff offers some 'deeper philosophical reasons' why he is unwilling to
accept the 'negative results' of his argument; the social world, unlike the natural
world, is not 'irreducibly other'. Wolff is thus implicitly arguing against Godwin
when he says that the state is 'no more than the totality of the beliefs, expectations,
habits, and interacting roles of its members and subjects.... The state,... cannot be
ineradicably other'." In other words, instead of arguing that all authority is
illegitimate, Wolff is now moving to the opposite theoretical extreme and putting
forward a version of the conceptual argument; the state is no more than the
association of its members and so necessary to them, so there is no problem about its
authority. Wolff also suggests that there might be a practical solution to the problem
of authority; political institutions must be decentralized and based on 'voluntary
compliance' (although he may be arguing that a system based on 'voluntary
141
compliance' does not involve authority at all). Curiously, Wolff does not appear to
see anything odd in an 'anarchism' that proclaims the necessity of the state. The
-central argument of anarchism is precisely that the state, including the liberal
democratic state, is inherently 'other', and so its claim to authority can never be
justified.
Anarchists, philosophical or otherwise, it will be objected at this point, make a
much larger claim than this. Like Wolff, they argue that all political authority, not
just that of the state, is illegitimate. It is true that anarchist writings are full of
statements to this effect. Kropotkin, for example, writes that 'anarchism... works to
destroy authority in all its aspects'." Such statements are usually taken at face value.
Flathman, for instance, criticizing Pitkin's comments on 'authority', argues that the
state of nature in Hobbes' and Locke's theories provides an example of individuals
living together without authority, and he asks what else have anarchists been
putting forward as an ideal?'." But, as I have shown, any social relationships
existing in Hobbes' radically individualist natural condition are likely to be based on
force and power, not authority, and Locke's state of nature, with its father-rulers
and capitalist economy, would certainly not And favour with anarchists. Nor is it
self-evident that the anarchist ideal does involve an absence of authority; not, that is,
if anarchism is seen as a political theory and not merely as a variety of philosophical
scepticism.
The political theory of anarchism is not a theory of the chaos with which
'anarchy' is popularly equated, but a theory of a specihc form of socio-political
organization that is, as it must be, ordered and rule-governed. Anarchists have
usually been political activists and popular pamphleteers and not concerned with
precise conceptual distinctions. They have tended to treat authority' as a synonym
for 'authoritarian', and so have identified authority' with hierarchical power
structures, especially those of the state. Nevertheless, their practical proposals and
some of their theoretical discussions present a different picture. Kropotkin calls
anarchism the 'no-govemment system of socialism'," but on one occasion he also
distinguishes 'government' and the 'state'. He writes that 'it seems to me that in State
and government we have two concepts of a different order'." Unfortunately,
Kropotkin does not pursue this distinction, but it suggests that one anarchist, at least,
did not totally reject political authority. This conclusion is also suggested by the
social and political changes advocated by Kropotkin. He argued that abolition of the
political institutions of the state would allow 'mutual aid' to become the ordering
principle of socio-political life. His discussion of this principle presents similar
dif&culties to the recent philosophically sophisticated discussions of cooperation,
reciprocity and obligation. In part, Kropotkin 's claim can be seen as a version of the
conceptual argument: 'the practice of mutual aid... [has] created the very conditions
of society ...'.** He also used mutual aid to refer to actual historical examples of
cooperative institutions based on the voluntary agreement of the members, and it is
the principle of free agreement that will govern an anarchist socio-political order.
However, as I have argued, in political life self-assumed obligation and authority
presuppose such 'free agreement'. Kropotkin's sketch of the internal organization of
the communes that will replace the state is significant here. Kropotkin envisages
���ct^—
C ^u^n.
^41
7
?
<*W
��THE SERRCH FOR RNRRCHISil - RND FOR RN RPPROPRIRTE NE!*f TITLE FOR IT.
IB.
term
The
anarchism
has acquired such an encrustation of unfortunate and
undesirabLe associations that it is time for a ciear neM term to rep Lace Lt. But
that is not so easg, one reason being that it is not at aLL easg to sag Mhat the
[neM] position the term is to ref Leet is Like, even in
rough
outLine,
or
hoM
that position (that nonstate state) might come about. [RepLace B approach Mith R
approach.]
It
easier
is
to be negative than positive, to sag (as
LtseLf
anarchism
does) Mhat anarchism, or the repLacement $-ism (sag) is not, rather than Mhat it
is.
LJhat the position is not is, firstig^a state of chaos. R state
not
one
of
disorder;
on
contrarg^ ^-istic
the
arrangements
definiteLg be sociai and poLiticaL arrangements - MiLL be
coroLLarg
-
since
(thermodgnamicaLLg)
energg for its production
extremeLg
untikeLg
and
-
$-g
is
there MiLL
organLsed.
R
organised sgstem or state requires
an
maintenance
highLg
of
-
is
that
a
t^-istic
sgstem
is
to arise spontaneousig. Directed urganisationaL energg must
be put into the attainment of a ^-istic endstate. Sought
d)-istic
sgstems
MiLL
' )
simpig
not
emerge spontaneousLg,
even Mhen energg LeveLs have been raised and
states excited, as in vigorous demonstrations or in revoLutionarg activities.
Furthermore, t^-ism does not inciude^ ang more than anarchism need
invoLve
vioLet=tee: Nur need a ^-istic sgstem emerge in a vioient Mag. Even if it arises
in
a
revoiutionarg Mag, there is no need for the route to incLude substantiaL,
or even perhaps ang vioience. The notion of a nonvioient
contradictorg
revoLution
is
not
a
one. Nor are rapid nonvioLentig induced changes begond the bounds
of reaL posstbeietg Ln severaL parts of the Morid.
-3-
.
�Rn additionat
anarchLsM
set
froM
derives
EngeLs-LenLn
anarchLsM,
Mounted
as
negative
of
the
assoc tat Lons
pretty
a
pubLLeatLon
the
for
reasons
scurrLLous,
against
and
Rnarcho-
reveaLs. R Main reason for the Marxist reject Lon of
synd Lea L Lsw
term
caMpaign
RnarchLSM
LenLn.
EngeLs
Marx
the
grafted on to Lt by Marxists. Marx-
and
reguLar,
MLth
dispensing
anarch LSM
Mas
that Lt Mas assuMed to LnvoLve LMMed Late transact Lon to state Less socLety.
Uhat aLL anarchist trends have Ln coMMon Ls a utop Lan vLsLon of
settLng up a socLety ML thout state and expLotttng cLasses through a
spontaneous rebeLLLon by the Masses and instant abotition of state
poMer and aLL Lts LnstLtut Lons, instead of through potiticat struggLe
bu the working cLass, socLaLLst revoLutLon, and estabtishMent of a
proietarian dictatorship (p.9).
ThLs Last LnvoLves a faLse dLchotoMy. SiMitarLy there Ls heavy crLtLcLsM of
anarehLst dogwas
about
revoLutLon (p.I7). The
transition
aboiishing
opposLng
the
as
state"
the
idea Mas that of the
fLrst
as
state
step
Ln
affording
the
a
period". But reaLLy there Ls no opposLtLon: both are coMpatLbLe with
anarchLsM: there Ls /yio^d than one May of deaiing MLth a scoundreL.
The qeneraL shape of poLLtLcaL transfurMation, both Ln
cLassicat
MarxisM
and Ln anarchLsM, Ls a MuLti-stage transforMation MLth
1)
transLtLon states, Mhere the state Ls retaLned,
2)
an end state, Mhere the state Ls reMoved.
But
the
suggestion,
especiaLLy
LenLn,
Ln
that even Ln the end state of
Ls
cuMHUH LSM, the s ta te M L L L surv eve:
criticai
Marx Lsts
anarchist
of
proposeLs
for
the
destruction of authority of every k end, and the introduction of totaL decentrat
er L tic LsM
ts
decentraLisation^; but it
difference
(which
ref Leet
unfairLg
never the Less
deeper
with
Loaded,
r*.
MBf^S
out
differences
Ln
every kind and totaL
Lts
tMO
areas
MorLd
of
substantLaL
vieM). For exaMpLe,
Leadership need not be excLuded, Mhere roLe to direct is freeLy granted and does
-4-
�not devoive into 3 fixed or imposed power relationship?
and
influence
mag
be
exercised from federai to Locai LeveL as we Li as from LocaL to federai.
There
are
batch
a
sort of theorg to
anarchism.
Like
of iesser associations aiso removed bg distancing the
be
outiined
from
its
dominant
rivaL, accepted too much Eniightenment doctrine,
anarchism.
For
(e.g. the essentiai goodness of man, the unaiieged
instance,
benigness
centurg
19th
science,
of
and
worthwhiLeness of dominant economic goats. Not ontg was it too much a product of
thinking:
Eniightenment
it
shared with Marxist unecoLogicaL assumptions about
the eiimination of scarcitg, and with capitalism
assumption
an
reduction (at Least in most of its
individuai
of
being an exception).
If we trg to reach behind the contrasts, of 19th centurg poLiticaL thought.
both orthodox and
at ternatives"'.
do
we
reduct ion ism, . science
individuai
especiaLLg
what
find?
and
Not
reduct ion ism,
ontg
worship,
techno Logg
and
maximisation, but mang other doctrines from its mgre orthodox, powerfut and
yei/cvc-Z
successfui rivais, incLuding domination, ^forms of domination. It is the removai
of a wide varietg of forms of domination, of
a ims
at
(Martin's
power
getting rid of)^
the
structures,
that
negative side of anakgrie.
rTn-srchg, w t th the remove L of state, ts ontg part of that: tt aLsc
remova L
anakgrie
concerns
the
of domination of nature (bg humans), countrgside (bg cities), women (bg
men), b Lacks (bg whites), etc.
Rs the removai of weeds makes wag for new growth, so the removaL
of
domination
makes
wag
respects
too
reiations
anakgrie
forms
for new relations. The primitive side of anakgrie is
concerned, among other things with such retations, especiaiig
seLf-reguLating
of
of
reaches
this
far
with
stabie
sort, and wags of achieving them.
begond
what
anarch ism.
5-
and
In these
was normaLLg encompassed bg
j
�was selected
RnakgrLe
tupographLc
to
resembLance
resembLance,
and
e^c4mf"Cttics4T.3
get
It
-
Ln
tern
the
was
It
of*
because
Lts
and
phonetcc
cLose enough to benefit bg the
Ls
hopefuLLg,
to
shed
the
bed
/A <%<2
the fLrst term arrLved at, bg eng weans, get Lt
not
removed,
means rough Lu the same as the fLrst.
resuLt
however
anarkLe .
enough
farMas
part
SRNOOillNISfl,
In the
search
terms
new
for
f'crst
the
L.e. sandomLn (wtthout waster or authorLtg)
But atthough domLnatLon cs one of the ma tn thcngs to be removed tn
served for
aLternatLve
arrangements,
especLaLLg)
Ls
onLg
Ln
domLnatLon
part
range
pLcture.
the
of
a
of
forms
(envLronmentaL
DLth domLnatLon Ls assumed to go
subject Lon and expLoLtatLon of what Ls domLnated. LIL th domLnatLon a Lso tends
go
Yet
expans ton.
there
are
other
thtngs. [Expand, when Look at domLnatLon
Later.J Finother word Looked at that has some currencg
state Less
roughLg
LLteraLLg Lt means
to
acephaLous
Ls
wLthout a head
head Less .
meaning
It Ls not a
part Lou LarLg good term for present purposes.
state
The
operates
wLth,ratLfLes,
SLnce both AnakgrLe
domLnatLon.
the same road for a Long part of
ensure,
and
reLg
upon,
and
LegLtLmLzes
forms
of
and anarchg aLm to eLLmLnate these, theg traveL
thejourneg. Find
forms
of domLnatLon -
Lf
the
rLde
together;
and
state
Ls
as mang crLtLcs,
anarchLsts, have argued - then anakgrLe LncLudes anarchg.
of the LnLtLaL argument, theg
mang
some
In ang case
bound
to
not reaLLg
for
sssLmLLatLon^ Ln
much
the
interests of brevLtgwLLL not be too mLsLeadLng.
S
great
Ls proper - Ls
advantage of anakgrLe, however - and one reason whg the LncLusLon
thLsj- The
rewovaL
of
domLnatLon
gLves
actLvLsts
something
LmmedLate to work for, and Ln an ef'fectLve wag — 3gaLn bg contrast wLth anarchg,
whLch
mau
be
a Long-term project, or aLmost a do-nothLng one Ln some advanced
capLtaLLst states.
-6-
�FOOTNOTES
The probiem is frequentiy not one of suppiy, but rather of
1.
distribution
stiii -3 matter of poiitico-economic arrangements.
2.
Negativety remains a prob Lem. It is considered beioM.
3.
foLLoM
Preface
iJhat
are
from the
by N.Y. KeLpinsky, to thLs work.
couLd
be argued is that the idea of immediate
modern states is rather naive.
)
A
<3'
/ZuA
<5^
/7^
c
y*&"-
-7-
7
�21/3/84 - I.
ANARCHISM :
%ea</oc/
s
The multiple
aims of
Often
theory.
political
an aim,^ is
takq^ to
(model) of the good society, or even more strongly (and less likely) of
a
or perfect, society.
But, to put it in an old-fashioned way, there is no
"X
such
thing as the good society, any more than there is such a thing as the good life.
In
at
principle
least,
are
there
variety
a
of
good
and
societies,
even
pluralistically there are different mixes (or pluralities) of good societies.
ft
-Ritter's
Rosseau,
(p.135)
problem
A
with
of
'
Marx,
equality, vs.
with
models
material
of
the
good
de^dgnce^ vs
society
(e-g-
Prato,
with
The^ can be combined in a pluralistic framework of
intellectual virtues)^ vanishes,
many good societies.
competing
Likewise the problem of conflicting values is
much reduced,
4
and indeed given sufficient tolerance of other arrangements largely vanishes.
Ritter,
Equality.
'The real
p.137:
/?*
diversity that matlcs anarchist society is
supposed to be accompanied by equality of staffs'.
But this is not required.
even is equality of power, but rather removal of social power.
Nor
This leads Ritter
on to the alleged conflict of community, which is 'repressive', and individuality.
But
some conflict
Ae.
^following
is alright^
as Ritter admits later (pp.138-9), where he gives
conflict:
pairs? generating
diversity/equality,
r?J
censure/^o^^^
individuality/community.
Consistency requirements.
required
to
demonstrate
Ritter^ at^mp^yes these everywhere; e.g.
the
of
public
censure.
, from partial models,
argues
of
a
state-less
issue
f
____ of.consistency of freedom with use
But see also(p.l, p.9^
Ritter
harmoniousness)
*i ^3-
/
condition, p.138.
(also
consistency
anarchists are
to
consistency,
and
permissibility
of
some
limited communities and arrangements of anarchistic
(primarily those given by Krop^t^ut)^
�1.
Criticisms^
'Individualism
gone
wild'
destructive
'socially
(Hyndman),
This confuses pluralistic/socialistic anarchism with right-
selfishness (Rp.140).
And as R's model one has 'communal individuality'.
leaning^
2.
Social
oppressiveness
gang'
'adolescent
picture^
Thus
But,
e.g.
on
suffocating
contrary
group
peer
considerable
very
permit^
pressures;
individualism and choice.
Insufficient 'provision for privacy, for external self-expression and for
3.
meeting
claims
in
problems
of
distributive
some anarchist
justice'
communities,
While
(Rp.140).
things
these
'Godwin's conversational
e.g.
may
be
anarchy',
they are not problems in pluralistic arrangements.
Ritter argues however that
in the anarchistic society
the needs
for privacy
vanishes - both as refuge from considerable intrusions and as a place of seclusion
A
for inner growth or restoration.
But these things depend on much^improved other
people.
3.2
Of course nothing excludes solitude.
4
The issue of
older
character
of
such
behaviour
by
reasoned
ties up with the
the expression of emotions
anarchism,
argument.
the
settling
ig&aanarchisms
of
reject
disputes
rationalistic
and
reliance
the
controlling
on
reason,
because reason has too often been used for evil ends, etc., and because emotional
attributes are considered
to
be more central
MiilLLiinally-oriented anarchism,
to
Ritter draws on
the
In rejecting more
person.
the
reason/formation
*
dichotomy.
*
t i
'
vp-v
{y
But emotion does not exclude or block out reason indefinitely.
emotion does not interfere with freedom:
So too
it is false that 'the extensive freedom
/!
of classical anarchy is simply unattainable without the limits on emotional self
expression that non-rational anarchists reject'
(Rp.143).
�3.3
special
failure
The
of
bestow
to
on
benefits
from a one-track view,
This again comes
talents.
society
anarchistic
those
with
from pure communistic
anarchism alone.
Ritter argues
[or
understanding',
people will not
receive
is better
It
'desire
, efficient production
incentives'
(p.143).
He argues
to develop
... native
talents',
'satisfaction
'polytechnical education'
that people not of
to argue
'just de^ejfft'^
re&SM^@d]
A
usual
varied work',
voluntary,
etc.
these
without
'mutual
...
some
in terms of what they put in, still '
v'tewetf
occurs
though
that
(of English
from
in
character!),
this sort will choose different
life-styles, in different communities.
The
4.
political
'unanimous
'repudiation of
(Rp.144).
direct
democracy'.
individuality
between
This
theory'
citizenship is
and
which
active citizenship'
to
has
argued
Rosseau
(see
citizenship
correlative to a state,
do
with
'is a
anarchistic
there
that
recurrent theme
Rp.145):
was
a
criticism
of
contradiction
itself.
dubious
in
But
.
.
.
,
,
so^not too surprising that it is damaged.
Anarchism gives much greater scope for the do-nothing or do—it-when-you-feel-like-
it life.
No filling-in blw form; at this
cn.
times, voting^ those Ejeg^ixicLal days, etc.
demoded,
time,
registrations at those
,
That is, it offers a range of freedoms the
citizen does not get.
Presumably also then the Kantian idea of man as a self-governing citizen also
gets ditched.
public
But the alleged accompanying virtues - such as being self-directred,
spirited,
controlling
die t ing
-
are
not
lost,
but
enhanced.
For
communities replace the state as the place where they are manifested.
5.
1 Argument
making.
roblem
from the strange character of anarchist
arises
because
it
(p.148), provided Wational procedural
permits
bad
freedom and decision-
decision-making,
rules are met.
so
R
claims
This is very curious.
But
�4
cjoc4
the problem of
appeals to
rationality-justified
freely-chosen
exploitation ^arise^ here.
constraints - which from a consistency viewpoint limits freedom.
R
The
constraints are internalisation, positional authority, censorial rebuke.
Anarchist arrangements
are better
superior to feasible alternatives,
than where we are.
Since they are also
that is enough for movement in that direction.
No requirement of best need be met.
5.
dm rd al
Anarchism is a dangerous ideal, because it helps undermine the established
4
social order.
But it is pernicious because that ideal is unattainable.
)
6.
no
place
Objection to anarchist methods.
in
them.
example' (p.152).
According
to R
But aversion and fraud are said to have
the main
methods are
'fr#ecof argument and
But this ^gnves out a range of i-ndi-catrrves and strategies.
��s
THE^ARCUhEETS HJR THE STATE.
There are a variety of arguments^*which will be ass^^bled at first
a
jumbled
order.
Other arguments are:
in
from organisational demands, from
law and order, from provision of public goods generally, from
maximization
(ana prisoners' dilemma, etc.)
(e.g.A A.
surprising Argument for the State is given by economists
Atkinson
and
Lectures
Stieglit^,
in
Economics).
Public
required to regulate market(s) and ensure that
theorems
of
The state is
welfare
even
ground that it
apply, Is that .case? .the market is invariably recommended
------- /)
is self-regulating, and can dispense with government.
Argument for^ state
appalling^from
ideal).
that
overcoming
CrSiK
angle^
angle
deficiencies
really
of ^market
For it means that the market is assumed (as
All.argument shows ^is that market isn't means of regulation^
that
should adopts^ In a way it is a reductio of ^market.
It may be claimed that
it
is
analytically
that
true
any
society
involves a state. This is false. Social arrangements without state powers
A)ct
5M!
L' /
J -- CT
are perfectly possible. ^&onstruct small social moael^,,
The argument that no society &ommon4ry-1 s
anthropologists
iI^
defence
of
the
claim
that
71c
internal
by
some
primitive society is
anarchic - depends on an A-conversion. ^rgument^^j QJ
(a) every society has exhibits (some)
used
stateless
order
,
fJ"—
(otherwise
it
would not be a society)
(b) the basic proper^function of
order, i .e.
(c)
the
fA/e
is
to
ensure
internal
state^(ought to% impl^) order.
there is internal order.there must be some sort of state.
��7
^77777^77- /71
<?/=
^7757777;
- /<F^ /
�3?
ARGUMENTS AGAINST STATES AND THEIR POKERS
Nation-state arrangements, which
based
on
assumptions
of
are
fairly
recent
phenomena,
are
a cert^jn amount of independence and isolation.
The rise of technology, including communication, have put these assumptions
in doubt, as has.war.
1
'The presumption of the nation-state system, that sovereignty
implied
an ability to protect a nation's territory and population, is precisely the
presumption denied by the nuclear, capacities
313).
This
was
already
put
in
doubt
by
of
both
other
superpowers'
things:
(PL,
now also by
Consider again also
Argument A.
1) Kars are the rights of states only.3
'x may [wagej war upon y only if x is a sovereign state;
has
legal
means
(Barnes, p.776).
declaration
of
by
which
it
may
3.
not
of
authority,
requires 'just authority' to do so, thus:
authority of a prince, at whose command the war is to
does
otherwise
x
and must settle the claim against y'
Thus Aquinas explains the condition
war
for
be
that
'first the
waged;
for
it
belong to a private person to start a war since he can prosecute
Naturally one has to worry about private armies and so forth, as well.
But undoubtedly the overwhelming problem in the case of 4cyp*=. LN wars
with the superstate.
his rights in the court of a superior' (Aquinas, quoted in Barnes,
In tact however an alternative factual premiss will serve as well:
(a) only (super)states are capable of waging
LN wars.
p.776).
�PATHS TO ANARCHISTIC END-STATE
Pasture of stages ( o ) and transitions (o ** o)
finish
start
Golden
future
age
Present
Past
Intermediate states
'?
Pluralist
anarchism
Communist
anarchism
Kingdom of
God
Corporate
capitalism
State socialism
Democratic
socialism
Totalitarianism
A useful model for the process is that of punctuated equilibrium, drawn from
recently
reformulated
evolutionary
theory.
Another
useful
model
is
Kuhn's
picture of the growth of science, which is also one of punctuated equilibrium,
the
equilibrium
dominates,
There
is
states
or
stages
being
those
where
a
scientific
paradigm
the transitions between stages being rapid and even revolutionary.
presumably
a
general
model
of
this
type within
the
framework
of
systems theory, which brings models of this type together [verify *1].
The classical anarchist assumption is that no intermediate stages need be
involved, we can transit directly (in a single revolutionary upheaval) into an
anarchistic end-state - a pretty unplanned and unprepared for end-state.
the
fast
increasing
size of
the world's
With
human population and complexity of
modern organisation - both further locking things into statist frames - that
assumption looks
increasingly untenable.
reasons for supposing
necessary.
There
are
also,
and always were,
that intermediate preparation and planning stages are
For what have to be altered,
in particular, are human attitudes,
�2
expectations, etc. - malleable parts of human "nature" that can be altered by
reeducation, reflection and immersion in alternative conditions.
What has to be changed?
Much.
The modern encouragement of greed - in
such forms as maximum consumption, maximum production, etc.
of
gross
inequality.
economic
bottom up,
The
is
reversal
to be achieved in affluent
and by redirecting military and industrial
What still has some appeal is
reorganising.
The entrenchment
the idea,
spending into
social
suggested by Marx's
work, of initial transition into a state governed from the bottom (certainly
no longer workers) instead of from the top:
this pending
of
states' structure
could
but the intended good effects of
be
rather
quickly
lost
(like
the
Aid
effects of shallowly^/cultural revolutions).
A
critical
question
is
what
produces
the direction and
so on are desirable.
decidedly undesirable, e.g. nuclear war.
But
one
state
to
some causes of^ transition are
There are other ways as the models
natural cataclysm, economic instability
The anarchistic
which -
from
For if we can find out perhaps we can hasten the process - assuming
another?
reveal,
transition
route
is a branch on the
1
accumulation o^f anomalies.
2
tree of future political options,
blown over and assuming a single starting point (that of Australia
say) - schematically looks like this?
^E.g.
the present
loans and deficit situation,
especially
in
third world
countries.
2
Including undermining of state economies by al ternative economies (examples
from places like Peru).
�3
Anarchistic
branches
It is crucial to avoid many of the alternative futures possible from where we
are, e.g. transitions to the increasing state-corporate control of life.
The Kingdom of God can^ be comjhpared with the marxist findj state?
The
Kingdom of God is pacifist (state).
Peace is fully realised, and
justice i^foundation of it (yet there are tensions between them
sometimes?)
J/
�/ _---- .--------------
seek 3 newer world.
'Its
%
<7^t/
1
?V^^/ 4^7
1
state has destroyed so Much of coMMunity arrangeMents that
road
anarchism wiii have to Make use of the state. 11 Ls L ike 3 weed such as
lantana,
It has suppressed growth of the new forest, But simply sorting it
out will
expose the ground to forces fertile to the new forest aiso (moisture
stress,
erosion, etc.), bo the state Must be pruned awasy, substituted
for, and
Jttirpated bit by bit.
&. There is now so Much governMent - the governMent
effectively
in
Many
so
areas
of
IsoMMunal structures - that simply/
social
life, Ibreaking down and displacing
dispensing
with
governMent,
an
immediate
to coMMunal arrangeMents, could not be accomplished without Massive dislocation. Short of a Massive disaster, disabling governmental s^^ructure,
return
instant
anarchisM
is
not
feasible.
Since such a disaster is not improbable,
instant anarchism should not however be excluded, but,
-^pnte.s
states,
allowed
and
planned
for.
Otherwise,
the
like
route
more
evolutionary
is by replacement,
ching us or substituting for the displaced coMMunity structures
broken
down
state ac t iv i ty.
Removal of government - not from where controls are required ac^trarl
rep lacements^e.g. transitional penetration, big business,(are developed^ - from
exploitative areas, e.g. gambling, drugs, prostitution, etc. 5et up instead nets
to gatch people/victijhs of these things.
�voluntarg arrangement freelg unLirtt/ted to, then contributions
to state coffer^ should also be votuntarg, likewise involving free assent, not
If ^the state
compulsorg as theg are.
But
then
free-rider
problems,
etc. No, onlg showing there wasn t consent, bg
mang exodus from fragments. If there were onlg a few free-riders^ these people
who didn't have a state constribution and would get state carried, such as
police - as simple as RR
You bug state protection, whatever, just Ibke
state insurance.
/
. E Is ter Sour Gr apes p. 37_bqttow
(a Iso
surrounding
section))
....... ...... —' ------------- ------------------------
ueMucracg
anc^-
o the r po1i t ica1 :sustems advanted bu various authors for their side effects
Z! o
which obtainable better in other wags. Lare for anarchism here. Patemen good
A
____ J*
j
�On Tr.3nsn.3t Lona Ls
The sources of
-3re power of one sort or another. SocLaL
arrangements wLthout ^%?-W^-b^-h'A^^>wLLL be designed so far as possLbLe to LLmLt
such power and prevent Lts accumutatLon.
Prevent,^ gLobaL corp^arrangements/ LnternatLonaLLsm^ aLready over hLLL. Rnd good
twenty years our of date.
//GLobaL (^each p.368.. Rehun^ the prob Lem — passed by the gLobaL corporatLon ...
---------------------/)
ms
Ls excessLve power, and the seLf-Lmpatred LLmLtatLon on power cs not characterr Jsttc of human LnstLtutLons',^ rearranged?.
Remedies.
1.
at
InformatLon and end to secrecy, as a
way
to
socLaL
responses.^
books as pubLLc documents etc., p.369.
2.
TndLspensLbLe data for natLonaL program of natLonaL and Lnternat-
LonaL reguLatLon, 370. Sc<%/<)<2
,
Standsrd Last Lon of accountLng -r-------- and practLces.
p.3*^/ Breakdown of pubLLc/prLvate dLstLnctLon and dLsappearance of free market?
'L--------- .
GLobaL co rpo rat Lons buLLt on socLaL cap^taL consp ucuous L^*
p.376
RLternatLon of t3X Laws to remove credLts and
Tax bLas Ln favour of transnatLonaLs.
counterrLdLng power / be^^re strateggt^ ,
pubLLc dLrectors , better uaadetermLnatLon , pre^Ldents runnLng for
c?r
companys at Least eLectLonjfor candLdates of reguLati)$y comm css conf
GeneraLLyatter tax Laws, remove subsLdLes whLch 4ncouraaa the accumutatLon of
.
,7
prLvate weaLth, and power, us Lng pubLLc/socLat and bLoLogLcaL capLtaL. ^7^
/j /y
CCyTY
^g
-y
power.
fAc
State underpinning of multinationals.
Multinationals would not have
arisen to their present position of eminence without state assistance - and
infrastructure, education, security, etc.
N^d detailed evidence of this.
Then can argue that problem of multinationals can be resolved, more or
-3
p
less automatically, with problem of state.
�/^*
/?
-e^—
�7
0
,%?.
rofit system^never satisfactory,^now extremely dama^gmg. Compare^ damag
fetnoTie.
,
/ i
be
profits - and look at the way these
^to worlds
by destruction for
profits are spent.
Profit system compare with (ccyM?) sovereignty systems.
�an anarchist.theory.
LAW
.
jLaw is incompatible with anarchist utopianism.
Anarchism can retain a framework of rules.
are backed up, and enforced.
where this involves violence.
pre^$e, etc.
consider,
This is false.
The key issue is how these rules
What anarchism excludes is coercive backing
Opposition usually involves sliding on coergion,
So it looks as if there are several different theses to
depending on how enforcement, rules, etc. are expanded.
Kam argued that anarchism could not handle law on basis of
A
i.
A
level of detail of law.
ii. amount of procedural detail.
But there are no barrier at all.
be refuted by a countermodel.
Complexity is no bar.
The claims can
One such is the model Chom^siey appeals to,
that of rules of language, which are complex and intricate enough, and nvj
backed by force (Passmore wanted to suggest they were!
But it is obvious
that they need not be, whatever lapses occurred in the 16th century.)
As a matter of history, several anarchist thinkers were not opposed to
operation of law, but included it in their framework.
Proudhon.
Others?
One example is
�/^ <2
��MY ENGAGEMENT WITH SOCIAL AND POLITICAL THEORY
Over the past decadeI have found myself increasingly concerned with
social and political problems and more and more immersed in the theoretical
issues raised thereby.
In large part this has arisen from environmental
involvement, especially on forestry and nuclear matters, and the realisation
that the basic problems mostly lay with social and political arrangements.
It
thus became important to try to determine what those really were, and how they
might be changed, what the alternatives weie.
But in part also my legitimate intellectual movement from logic and meta
physics^ to a wider perspective which includes social and political philosophy
as major area of concern has come about as a result of reflection on the
unsatisfactory and fragmented state of philosophy and its surrounds.
It became
increasingly hard (in particular for someone trained in analytic philosophy with
a heavy Oxbridge orientation) to avoid noting, especially when confronted with
wider philosophical and social issues, that one's philosophical education and
ifn 1972 I presented and circulated a paper, 'Is there a need for a new, and
environmental ethic?' which played an influential part in the rapid growth of
environmental philosophy in New Zealand and Australia (on the latter see D.
Mannison and M. McRobbie in Environmental Philosophy). Such an excursion into
ethics was not without precedent. My research work in fact began in ethical
theory, with a thesis on moral scepticism, and I thought about and wrote on
deontic problems in the sixties.
^The point is explained in detail in work cited in the accompanying curriculum
vitae (where all otherwise unreferenced work is listed).
In the case of
forestry see for example 'Destructive forestry in Australia and Melanesia' and
'World rainforest destruction - the social factors'; as to nuclear see
'Nuclear power - some ethical and social dimensions' and 'The ethics of nuclear
war, and political fall-out'; and for the general argument see 'Social theories,
self management and environmental problems'.
^This does not mean that I have entirely abandoned these areas. Logic is, I
believe (with Anderson, and so with the mainstream of Australia's most
significant philosophical movement), the central part of philosophy, and many
conceptual problems in applied philosophy will continue to require return to
logical ground in order to find satsifactory solutions. A sound training in
logical theory is essential for deeper solutions for some of these problems.
I should add that I never have been a very pure logician. I moved into logic
in order to try to solve severe conceptual problems first in the philosophy of
science and then in metaphysics. Now that these problems are largely solved
(to my satisfaction at any rate) I can presumably move on to other things.
�2.
practice offered only a somewhat limited set of tools and techniques for
tackling wider philosophical concerns and, worse, but few instruction as to how
to apply these analytic techniques more widely.
Nor had the inadequacy of
such an education and the sort of philosophy to which it led gone
unremarked.
It was charged that philosophy had abdicated several of its proper respons
ibilities - for example, to organise knowledge into some more coherent whole
or world-view, to elaborate a social theory and influence social criticism,
even to afford intellectual leadership - and had become excessively analytic
and specialised, and therewith narrow and sterile (concerned, e.g., merely with
linguistic niceties, conservative commonsense and/or scholastic logic-chopping).
It was charged that academic philosophy not only had become excessively timid and
accordingly lost intellectual excitement and appeal, but also had lost relevance
to and touch with the important intellectual issues of the times and had failed
in the business of addressing a larger audience with philosophical interests.
These charges, which have a solid foundation, did not come from within academic
philosophy but were most evocatively made by people outside philosophy (though
with some knowledge of it) or by those in the margins of academic, professional
ised^ philosophy.
Thus Durrant, an outsider, has powerfully expressed a part of
the charges:
... philosophy itself, which had once summoned all sciences to its
aid in making a coherent image of the world and an alluring picture
of the good, found its task of inordination too stupendous for its
usage, ran away from ... .'LtheJ battlefronts of truth, and hid itself
in recondite and narrow lanes, timidly secure from the issues and
responsibilities of life.*
Philosophy began to change in the Seventies, some philosophers naturally
changing with it.
We aimed to address a wider range of socially relevant
topics - and also sometimes a .wider audience - for example, to get beyond the
^W. Durrant, The Story of Philosophy, Second edition, Simon and Schuster, New
York, 1926, p.v. Durrant though (or perhaps because) a leading populariser
of philosophy in North America, is not usually at all well regarded by
academic philosophers.
�3.
sterile examples of previous texts on moral philosophy to live issues, from
minor cases of promising and truth-telling to abortion and euthanasia, genetic
engineering and the treatment of animals, violence and nuclear war.
But the
analytical methods used for the most part did not change, the widening of
horizons in applied philosophy proceeded from a narrow and inadequate logical
(argumentive) and metaphysical base.
stagnation:
The applied expansion went with theoretical
mainstream theoretical philosophy sat in the doldrums.
Nor has the applied transformation gone far enough.
Significant issues
have been left to theologians and journalists.And there has been insufficient
effort by philosophers (even those addressing relevant issues) to integrate
their work with that of other (social) sciences that shed light on the issues,
to overcome discipline fragmentation by synthesis.
For it was not merely that
philosophy itself was fragmented and often irrelevant, it had also become
largley isolated
from other disciplines and had ceased to be properly informed
by them - or to inform them.
This unsplendid isolation is particularly conspicuous in the case of
political philosophy, which often proceeds in much the way it did in the
17th century, with little of the import it should be receiving from recent
advances in social psychology and
well-founded) sociobiology.
ethology and (to the extent that it is
More generally, the way in which areas have been
isolated from one another, and ceased communicating, to the disadvantage to
all, is a matter for serious concern.
It is not merely that philosophy, for
example, can be enriched by taking due account of the social sciences.
The
^This description derives from Passmore.
^Philosophers and other academics should not be led in these areas, but do
the leading. One of the roles of the academic community - a role in which
philosophy in Australia (much, degenerated by too long an incestuous history)
mostly fails - is to address a wider public than part of itself. Philosophers
may justly complain that there is little competent public discussion of these
issues where applied philosophy matters and no reputable intellectua
ea er
ship in Australia at present, but they have by and large done little to
rectify the matter.
�4.
social sciences also can be improved, and much rubbish removed, by taking account
of philosophical criticism.Each impacts on the others, in ways that should
be taken into account.
Moreover the interplay of different parts is fruitful.2
There is a richness to be generated if the interaction works well.
And such
interaction is required to pull much material into a more coherent whole.
Such sentiments on integrating areas and rendering work more informed and
holistic have been expressed before.
another putting them into effect.
It is one thing expressing them, and
The tasks involved are difficult.
And
putting them into effect is not of course a task for just one person, but for
several.
A start can however be made with interdisciplinary people who
willingly cross discipline boundaries, because they need to, and see the need
to;
by people who are able to adopt the often special methods and procedures
of other disciplines and combine them with those of their own.
But a start can
not in general be satisfactorily initiated just by administrative fiat.
A
good deal of evidence has now accumulated to show that an administrator cannot
simply pull together a successful interdisciplinary research group by hiring
people skilled in the different disciplines concerned and putting them in a
common setting.
Such, groups can evolve however by individuals with wide-ranging
concerns interesting other researchers or like-inclined people from other
disciplines in overlapping or joint problems.
And in setting up the conditions
for such collaborative research to evolve, administrative inputs are important.
It is, for example, an astute move to have a position linking several different
departments 3 attached to none of them but to a section that sits so-to-speak
above them;
for in this way the researcher has access to all the departments
concerned but is confined to none.
*New philosophies of nature call for much more than this, indeed for major theor
etical reorientation of some social sciences. The point is elaborated in the
concluding part of 'Human chauvinism and environmental ethics'.
2Nor will unified or coherent social sciences be arrived at without substantial
philosophical imports.
3 As the present post does.
influenced the move.
No doubt other political considerations have also
�5.
I think I can justifiably account myself an interdisciplinary person.
Firstly, I have considerable experience in collaborative work, an advantage
that philosophers, in contrast to experimental scientists, seldom enjoy.
claim
is supported by my publication record.
The
While that indicates the extent of
my joint activity in research, it does not fully record cooperative activity
in organising conferences and workshops, both in logic and in environmental
philosophy, in helping found or reestablish organisations (the Australasian
Association of Logic is the main example, but the local AAP is another), in
establishing publications (e.g. the Environmental Philosophy Discussion Papers
serve both Philosophy Departments) and so on.
More significantly, I can also fairly claim substantial experience in
interdisciplinary work, as well as in other fields of philosophy.
For example,
I have worked not only in philosophy departments but in mathematics and in
environmental studies programs.i
Furthermore, my work in forestry, which is
continuing, brought me into close touch with people from a broad spectrum of
fields, not only forestry, but also economics, geography, demography, botany
and zoology.
The work, which is well-known locally and referred to in inter
national textbooks, has for the most part been well received by people in
those area, except forestry, and has been taken seriously .by those who disagree
with the often controversial positions developed.
My more recent work on
environmental problems has led me to communicate and interchange material with
sociologists and political Scientists in North American and England, and also
with people in a variety of fields in Australian Colleges of Advanced Education.
Naturally then, much of the resulting work reaches people in a range of fields.
My work on environmental problems has also resulted in invitations to participate
in conferences in a wide range of areas, on forestry (in several Australian
^1 declined invitations to work in interdisciplinary research groups in Washington
and The Hague primarily because they would have kept me away from Australia too
long and obliged me to endure northern winters.
�6.
states), on energy, on the environment (in New Guinea and USA).
I have twice been
invited to present papers at Australian Sociology conferences, but been unable to
do so because of commitments abroad.
The basic forestry book The Fight for the Forests, and subsequent forestry
and environmental papers, already included much that bears upon and is informed
by social and political theory.
A new book, tentatively entitled Forestry in
Australia, now in preparation by a team of people drawn from a wide range of
disciplines - which is intended to replace The Fight for the Forests, long out
of print - will be even more closely involved with social and political theory.
It includes much fuller analysis of social classes and power structures (and
models of these) as well as, like earlier work, examination of elites, and types
of inequality.
This should also begin to reveal how my work on apparently diverse areas is
interrelated, and not a result of compartmentalisation.
Most obviously, my
work on forestry, which directly involves a range of environmental problems, in
a very practical way, leads directly into areas of social and political theory.
It is less obvious, but nonetheless a fact, that work on environmental problems,
value theory and logic, is not disconnected, but joined by several connecting
ways.
For example, relevant deontic logic has shown how the key moral matter of
moral dilemmas and conflicts of value can be treated.
The logic of obligation
is important in rejecting arguments that there is a significant separate
"morality" for nation states or for public representatives of these which
exonerates them from normal responsibility.
Differently, logic provides the
basis of decision theory, which is important in structuring environmental
problems.
And so on, to look at some of the more straightforward connections.
There are larger connections.
Social and political theory necessarily presupposes
^Explanations of these connections are much expanded in "The logical basis of the
social sciences'.
�7.
a metaphysics, and this in turn a logical theory X
Philosophers of very
different persuasions, for instance Hegel and Mill, have agreed about this.
Of course work in logic, such as that in probability theory and on
statistical inference, sometimes speaks directly to other areas in the social
sciences.
My own work on universal semantics is of interest to linguists, and
'Universal semantics?' was abstracted in Sociological Abstracts, as have been
several of my philosophical papers, on for example metaphysics, limits to
Work on the recent history of logic and
knowledge and animal intentionality.
of philosophy of science in Australasia has led me into some sociological as
well as historical investigations.
political science and economics.
Logical pursuits have also lead me into
Because of my interest in applied logic I came
to take over supervision of B. Embury's doctoral dissertation on voting theory,
a thesis in the Department of Political Science.
in work with a post-doctoral
social choice theory.
My interests also involved me
fellow on preference and decision theory and
Regretably no joint work issued from this enterprise, but
I did publish some papers in the area, and emerged with further ideas for research
jotted down:
these ideas, mainly for further impossibility and limitative
results in social theory, have yet to be followed through.
My present research in social and political theory has (like a conic
section) double foci.
One focus (Fl) is a book tentatively entitled The
Philosophic Reach of Environmental Problems and intended to supersede
Environmental Philosophy in main respects, on the ethical, social and political
dimensions of environmental problems.2
familiar list:
The central problems yield a now rather
for instance, those of human and animal populations, disappearing
species, vanishing rainforests and other habitats and ecosystems, treatment
(and rights) of indigenous peoples, of animals and of plants, cities and
substantial start in explaining these deeper connections is made in 'Social
theories, self management and environment problems' and in Exploring Meinong's
Jungle and Beyond, chapter 9, ^12.
^Here environmental is used in the wide sense, of which the ecological is only a
quite proper part.
�8.
neighbourhoods, landscape transformation or destruction, mining, pollution,
nuclear and energy issues, and so on.
The underlying problems have significant
features in common and common social and political sources.
Before the integrative
task is tackled in detail however, an analytical approximative approach is being
followed.
Discussion papers on several of the topics listed are being researched
or written, and discussion papers on others will follow, before the whole thing
is pulled together.
The other focus (F2) is a book on what might be called New Age Social
Organisation, investigating alternatives to prevailing social, economical and
political arrangements.
Major alternatives considered in detail include left
leaning and right-leaning anarchisms, which will involve a careful examination
of the extent to which social arrangements and political organisations can
be self-managed and self-regulating.
While it is ambitiously hoped that the investigation will not only result
(ideally) in a more philosophically-adequate left-leaning anarchist theory
than has so far been produced, that is only part of its purpose.
Another very
important part of the enterprise is to give some better understanding of the
range of alternatives to present (monopolistic capitalist and state socialist)
arrangements that there are and that could be tried.
A further part is, by
considering alternatives, to shed light on the prevailing systems (their
structures, institutions, etc.), in particular to bring out more clearly their
underlying assumptions,the extent of their necessity, to give a better idea
^In several respects the term 'anarchism' is unsatisfactory and will have event
ually to be replaced, perhaps by a neologism, since no available term delineates
the types of socio-political arrangements envisaged.
It should perhaps be remarked, in case it is thought that I have no academic
background in political theory, that my university education did include courses
and seminars in the area. Furthermore I have more recently acquired a good
working knowledge of the anarchist literature, and am well advanced in the
process of obtaining a grasp of organisation theory and the necessary parts
of social psychology.
Some of these assumptions are rejected or varied in an assessment of alternatives.
Thus, as a much better idea of euclidean geometry was obtained with the elaboration
of hyperbolic and Riemannian geometry, and similarly of arithmetic with the
formulation of nonstandard arithmetics, so also a much better appreciation of
mainstream social theory should be achieved by investigating nonstandard social
theories and assumptions. This method of variation of assumptions is a fruitful
one as regards many scientific,theories.
�of the values they write in, of their desirability or undesirability, and so on.
Although my enagement has two main foci, naturally there are also other and
smaller endeavours under way:
of these - but only some.
the attached curriculum vitae gives some indication
For example, the trilogy of papers on the meaning of
life, nihilism, and the ultimate existence question is to be arranged into a book
which will probably also address such related issues as the quality of life.
Richard Routlev
�zi___ A_
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Ay 3
��ANAKYRIE.
In Chapter 1
The multiple and inconsistent axioms of political theory : pluralism,
morality, ...
The differences in theory begin at the beginning, in what political arrangements
are for, what they are about, whom they are for, how they apply.
There are
important differences in the extent to which peoples' and other creatures'
activities and lives can be controlled and regulated.
More authoritarian
or paternalistic political arrangements impose much more in the way of
regulations than more liberal arrangements which in theJlimit reduce regulation
or setting for pursuit of satisfactory lives.
to some minimum, to some
So far as political relations are concerned, the world (Terr& is a closed
system.
Political influence is not exercised from outside that system,
nor f!'o political influences of significance so far flow from Terra elsewhere.
(All that may of course change, in which case the problem is reset in terms
of some larger system, the Universe providing an upper limit - unless some
extraspb tial gods are invoked.)
With the advance of industrialisation,
communications and spill-over technology, few communities smaller than the
world system are any longer effectively closed.
The general political problem is unsolvable. The argument for this
theme is that the problem is only solvable for small relatively uniform
But we no longer have such, given modern interference
com-unities (Taylor).
effects.
The basic picture is of a network of goal-directed
Defining the^problem:
creatures and systems.
The aim (political goal) is to ensure that these
creatures are able to pursue goals so far as these are satisfactory.
A major value judgment is inserted here : what of wiping out lives, of
war, etc., those that interfere seriously with others?
A liberal setting such
as Redman sketched is operating in the background here.
Present political arrangements anachronistic : they were introduced at a
time when much less interference was technically possible.
longer appropriate.
The
They are no
of empires now affects everyone s lives,
so on democratic grounds all should have say (or vote).
But they don t :
democracy stops at national borders (even in those borders where it kmd-of
operates).
�2
Present political arrangements, by increasing population,
etc. for what sort of consumption high can be obtained by present people
are making things much worse.
For the benefit of present power-holders,
their maintenance of power and privilege,
short-term drr
the inadequacies of
%^ts - of present economics within political frameworks.
On the End State:
According to Kamenka a central deficiency of a M^up-ist account is its pre
industrial character, also its romantic character, and its view of creative
labour.
These are a result in part of looking for utopia in the past, the
sources of which according to Kumenka are:
(i)
a mistaken view of the happy (noble) savage;
(ii)
the abundance of industry;
(iii) the rationality of industry (presumably its increasingly automatic and
self-regularity character?).
This is confused.
Sources
(ii) and (iii) are the basis of the past industrial
character of the end state (where the machines are really whirring along).
The main source of the search in the past is quite different, namely the search
for historical models, however partial, of the good or better life.
The
reason is that
(iv)
there is something drastically wrong with present arrangements which not
rectified by minor adjustments.
The end state, so far as it is described, is certainly a curious mixture of
A'
pre- and past-industrial elements.
The end state is not a static state, but a stable, climax state.
analogy is again useful here.
The ecological
Capitalism is like a pioneering stage.
Stable
states may have been achieved in the past, to be disturbed in one way or another.
That is one reason why it is important to look in the past - for fc^r^r
of past stable states.
Political theory (note A *)
As a result of the way 'political system' is commonly defined, anarchy is not a
political system.
The reason is that 'most authors consider the modern
political system to be that system which controls the use of power or force in
society'
(Kaplan, p.22).
therewith that system.
Anarchy aims to remove use of power and force, and
The exclusion could of course be taken to be a (further)
inadequacy in the definition, a mere technicality almost, got around by
expanding 'controls' disjunctively to 'controls or removes'.
�3
For whether or not anarchy is a political system, it is certainly an
organisational system or structure.
POLITICAL THEORY AND MORALITY
1.
On the one hand, it is claimed that 'any acceptable form of social
order...must rest on moral foundations, which are in principle ascertainable
at any period, and permanently valid'.'*'
(Donegan, p.xiv)
On the other, and more common view, politics simply tramples over morality
when it suits it.
However that is a matter of one morality, e.g. of a
Christian established form, being overwhelmed by another Mafia-style morality
not the absence of a value position.
theory.
2.
Any political theory rests on a value
That is the point.
There is the problem of evil, powerful people, often unintentionally
evil people such as Reagan, Thatcher, ... Hitler flourished most of his life;
he led an active (etc.) life ...
3.
Anarchism does not require especially good people.
But political life
would run much more easily without a certain range of people.
(Of course,
states think this, and totalitarian states try to realise theit aim).
4.
On Political Obligation
obligation.
There is no good ground as basis of political
All arguments designed to establish obligation to a state -
of people living in it ('its territory') especially - are wanting.
(Argument for this there).
Scepticism about political obligation does
not imply scepticism about obligation.
So moral scepticism is not implied.
And on the contrary, most requirements are of the first importance in
outlining alternatives to the state.
Hobbes problem was that of political obligation - 'reasonswhy we ought to
change the state'
(R p.61).
Hobbes finds three causes of disorder (competition - reflecting self
interest drives;
distrust;
argued for on ground that
enjoyment of power ('glory') [Self-interest is
motive is self-preservation.]
To these he opposes inter - from desire for security.
1.
This involves a very dubious objectivity.
�4
On Marx-Engels way
Although Marx and Engels say comparatively little about their projected
end state, they say a great deal about the route through the new state -
to that end, and about the means to be used along that route.
By contrast with means, they are far too restrictive about routes, ruling
out many plausible roads to change (including peasant revolutions, etc.)
Engels' proposed route is through 'a new social order' where production and
industry run on behalf of society, according to a social plan.
The main
features are addition of private property (vol.l, p.88) and of private
means of communication (p.92).
Note that it is unclear whether this social
order is an immediate or end state, but those features are common to both.
There is massive industrial and agricultural production (though not over
production) by (rationalised) planned economy without (
) private
property (I,p.92).
Hence, division into antagonistic clauses becomes superfluous.
There are
new all-round people (p.93), a disappearance of division of labour, for
flexible labour.
There is association instead of competition.
Fusion of
town and country (p.94).
According to Marx-Engels (I,p.l83) the route is through the central state.
'The workers must not only strive [against democrats]
for a single and
indivisible...republic, but also within this republic for the most
determined centralisation of power in the hands of the state authority.
They must not allow themselves to be misguided by the democratic talk of
freedom for the communities, of self-government, etc.'
No communal property
'Concentrate productive
to remain :
etc... in
means of
of state'.
This account is
extremely top-down.
As to means, it looks as if Marx and Engels are prepared to adopt any means,
likely or not.
For Marx, the main means are by violent revolution (last
page Poverty of Philosophy).
of classes.
Revolution is the outcome of the contradiction
By contrast, Engels prefers peaceful means (in 1847 i.e.
vol 1, p.89);
but he won't at all rule out revolution.
But together Marx and Engels emphasise violent means, and encourage excuses
on occasions (
p.180).
�5
Under the pretext that the petty bourgeous democrats will betray the
workers, the subversion (destabilization) of their government is planned
(Vol 1. address of CC to League, pp.180-1) Unlike Bak
Marx and Engels.advocate fostering massacres etc.
stuff mean?), and a regime of terror.
(for what else can this
Bak
thinks that in a
revolutionary situation such things may occur but should be immunized
(I can easily check the reference in Bak
if necessary (p.180).
For the most part, Engels was much more inclined to peaceful and established
means to change, even to change by way of ballot box and universal suffrage;
the Democratic route to state transformation (1, p.195, also 1, p.202).
Note Engels' introduction to Class Struggles in France written in 1895 (p.195),
e.
i.
later than the more bellicose texts Lenin is relying on - and as the
fruit of a riper experience of politics.
He says that by party action
universal suffrage
'transforme de mayer de dupere qu'il a ete jusqui'
en instrument
d'emarcqation'and this as footnote shows is a quote from Marx.
This suggests that it can be used to gain control of and subsequently transform
state app
In 1895 (pp.199-200) Engels suggests a revision of
.
Now show
means, propaganda etc., to win over the mass of people [different from
technological determination!]
No doubt because of technological determination,
there is no need to be too specific about means;
for it is not as if activity
is shaping the course of things, only speeding up the (in
) process.
Reasons for the lack of detailed description of the end state in Marx-Engels:
1.
This would be to try to set the future, which is reactionary (Why?
Because
of historical determination?), and unnecessary, because future people will be
wiser than us.
2.
Standard explanation, suggested by Marx:
'scientific socialism cannot
describe in any detail the society that will replace capitalism.
Utopians
speculate about the socialist future : Marxists analyse the capitalist present'
(Moore, p.76).
Moore argues the standard explanation is implausible.
�6
Principles of Individualism [ ?]
1.
Government based on individually-given consent of citizens - 'its
authority or legitimacy deriving from that consent'
(Lubes, p.ll)
Consent-answering back requirement
2.
Political representation as representing individual interests, not
classes, estates, etc.
3.
That's all.
interests.
Government confined to enabling satisfaction of individual
Hence towards laissez-faire, against paternalism, influencing
or interpreting individual wants.
(79).
�
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R TREATISE ON POLITICAL THEORY
OTHER HQJOR TOPICS (UNOROERED):-
1.
PturatisM and pturatisMS: the otd (and Marxist) fallacy
of one form.
2.
Power,
hierarchies,
Constitutions, corporations, states and
transnationats
Authoritarian
rotations;
organisations.
3.
Undertying Metaphysics.
(not independent things).
Stytes of denocracy, and inproving denocracy.
6.
A Major source of power: property.
Land rights.
INTRODUCTION
Present poLet Leet arrangements are hardig satisfactorg, angMhere. Theg
not
de Livering
adequate
shoutd at Least assist Ln
environment,
Meifare,
of mang of* the things that such arrangements
Levels^
productLon
the
are
or
education^
LiveLihood,
of,
attainment
...
e.g.
securLtg,
. Thus if better Mags to do
these things can be found, theg shouLd be sought, and tried.
Perhaps surprisingLg, there has been remarkabLg Lit tie effort expended upon
surveuing the range of poLLticaL
atternatives
(as
compared,
e.g.,
Mith
the
effort put into defending the status quo), or to Mork out, so far as can or need
be
done,
areas,
detaiLs
Mhere
of the more promising options.
entrenched
positions
Indeed, as Mith so mang other
dominate^ there
been
has
cons iderabLe
discouraoement of such important investigation.
R s ign if ican t r ange of a L te ma t i ves, sea roe Lg g i ven a triaL in
modern
historg, are these arrangements Mhich reduce domination and the exercise
of poMer and increase freedom. The present studg concentrates on these sorts
arrangements,
not
in
totaLitarian
of
or fascist or imperiaiist structures Mhich
have more than sufficient exempiification in recent times, despite their Lack of
justification and base in raM poMer and brute force.
10.
POLITICS WITHOUT DONINRTION:
Rnakgr ie means
varietg
of
RNRKYRIE RND RNRRCHISM
Mi thout domination.
domination.
For
domination
That
incLudes
comes
in
the
Mhoie
range
mang forms: of citizens bg
states, civiLians bg miLitarg, poor bg rich, bLacks bg Mhites, thirdMoriders
-1-
and
bg
HMerLeans
)
Russ Lans. MOMen bu nan. young by otder, anLMaLs by huMans, nature
'.
\
. RnaRyrLsM consLsts Ln socLaL arrangeMents desLgned to avoLd aLL
e<.c*i v.*? , ^etA/'o
, py<-.
'fiohcoAc^
forMs of doMLnatLon-^ [There Ls nothLng Ln the account so far g^v^n whLch
bu Men?
such
orr
...
<3/*
LMpLLes that Lt Must taRe a gLven shape, that Lt Ls unLquety deterMLned.]
RnarchLsM
dLrectLy
Ls
MLth
concerned
onLy one part of Mhat anahyrLe Ls
about: doMLnatLon by peopte by states (Mhether theLr OMn or that of others), and
rewovaL of thLs doMLnatLon by aboLLtLon of the state. But there are
forMs
other
not essenttaLLy bound up MLth thLs forM, and aboLLtcon of
doMLnatLon
of
Many
the state Ls but oney rather drasttcyMay of reMovtng state doMLnatLon.
RnarchLsM has been extended, for Lnstance to eco-anarchLsM (as feMLnLsM has
been broadened to eco-feMLnLsM), Ln an effort to overcoMe a conspLcuous part of
c/
n/ttj
19th
C
anarchLsM tended to accept the saMe doMLnatLon of
the probteM,
that
nature by
Lndeed
and
huMans,
the
saMe
sort
of
scLentLfLo
reductLonLstLc
MaterLaL',SM, as Lts doMLnant rLvats, capLtaLLsM and (MarxLst) socLaLLsM. But the
broadenLng
caLLs
for
atso
further
expLanatLon,
to
LncLude
other types of
doMLnatLony^id strLctLy,such a recr^antatLon as to LnvoLve a change Ln MeanLng,
A
Ln Mhat Mas Meant by
anarchLsM .
In these cLrcuMstances, Lt Ls
More
forMard and Less MLsLeadLng sLMpLy to Lntroduce neM terMLnoLogy. Rtw
straLghtthere
are
, good reasons for seeRLng neM terMLnoLogy.
In
More
than
a century of use
anarchy
and Lts derLvatLves have becoMe
thoroughLy oenve-p-tied- MLth undesLrabte and LnapproprLate assoc LatLons, to such an
extent that soMe of these, such as chaos and dLsorder, are no&'saLd to gLve part
/
of the MeanLng of
anarchy'.
3.
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AUTHOR
(BLOCK
LETTERS)
-------------------------------------------------------
DATE DUE
<V
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NAME
&
cheer?
I?U(/ tLE;^
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DEPT.
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138
139
genuine solution' since it combines both autonomy and authority; the difficulty i* 3
that it is empirically unrealistic? I shall return to WolfFs reasons for hesitating to 3
accept his own philosophical anarchist conclusions in a moment. Godwin, in his
F/M/mry Concerning Po/Mcu/ Justice, was not so timid. Godwin's theory is extremely
interesting for any discussion of political obligation because, like Hobbes' theory, it 3
shows the full implications of one form of adherence to radical, abstract
individualism.
B
Godwin's theory is a mirror image of Hobbes'. He ends where Hobbes begins^
with a collection of individuals who each view the world through their own,
subjective viewpoint. For Hobbes, the absolute freedom of individual private
judgement leads to complete insecurity and arbitrariness; for Godwin, the
unspeakably beautiful' practice of absolutely free exercise of individual private
judgement is the only way to peace (p. 208).*" Hobbes creates an artificial social
union held together by the Sword and reduces obligation' to enforced submission
and obedience. Godwin relies on reified Reason that speaks identically to
individual and he completely eliminates obligation' along with all other social
relationships. Social institutions and social relationships, Godwin argues, merely
stand in the way of individual judgement by preventing individuals seeing things as
they really are." Unhindered by governments, and other social institutions such as
promising, each individual will be able to decide for herself what ought to be done
and individuals' judgements will coincide. Reason will speak to all in a single voice
because, in the absence of social institutions, reality will stand revealed in all its
transparency.
Godwin's objections to the practice of promising are similar to his objections to
political institutions. Promising is absolutely considered, an evil' (p. 218). It may
occasionally be necessary to make a promise in order not to mislead other people
about one's intentions, but a defence of necessity in specific cases does not detract
from the essential evil of the practice itself. The evils of promising are twofold: first,
promising binds future conduct and thus rules out further individual judgement as
information and circumstances change. Secondly, promising encourages individuals
to act from 'a precarious and temporary motive' (p. 219). It distracts attention front
the consequences of particular actions, and hence obscures their intrinsic merits. If
the individual judges that an action ought to be performed (and Godwin saw this
judgement as a utilitarian calculation) then a promise adds nothing; it merely clouds
the moral worth, or otherwise, of the judgement itself. Political institutions function
in the same way to prevent individuals seeing things as they really are. For example;
they give an appearance of permanence to opinions that prevail at their inception and
thus cause the stagnation of judgement. Laws, like obligations, bind future conduct
and, being general in form, can take no account of the fact that each case is unique
and should be judged, according to Reason, on its own merits. Moreover, political
assemblies impose a factitious unanimity' on their members. Decisions have to bn
reached in which all the members must acquiesce, thus pretending that they am
something more than a collection of individuals, each with their own opinions;
Deliberation has to be cut short ly a vote and everyone, if their efforts are not to be
for nothing, has to see themselves as obliged' to carry out the decision: 'Nothing can
'3
?
3:
?
3;
'
y
more directly contribute to the depravation of the human understanding and
character' (p. 547).
Properly, according to Godwin, there are no obligations, only actions that ought
to be performed, or refrained from; nor is there any political authority, only a
coincidence of individual judgements that certain things ought to be done. Godwin's
individuals, unlike those who enter a social contract, are bound to nothing'. If an
individual joins in a 'common deliberation', he is, 'when the deliberation is over,...
as much disengaged as ever' (p. 234). This is not to say that he will never act with his
fellows; they may independently have arrived at the same judgement as to the right
course of action. Godwin also allows that individuals may sometimes defer to the
judgements of an authority on a particular matter; this he calls authority' that
depends upon the conhdence of him with whom it prevails' (p. 242). This deference
should, however, be rarely given, or it may tip over into a misplaced 'conhdence' in
alleged superiors who make judgements for others, and so inculcate those slavish
feelings that shrink up the soul' (p. 232). This form of obedience is a greater source
of degradation and depravity' than if the individual bows to political authority out
of fear of the sanctions for disobedience. Here Godwin anticipates Wolffs denial' of
the authority of the state. Wolff recognizes that there are many reasons for
compliance, but these are irrelevant providing that the claims of the state are
subjectively denied a binding moral force'." Similarly, Godwin argued almost two
hundred years ago that the individual who obeys solely to avoid punishment, may
reserve, in its most essential sense, his independence. He may be informed in
judgement,... and suffer his understanding neither to be seduced nor confounded'
(p. 141).
Godwin was confident that the philosophical anarchist denial' of authority and
obligation could be put into practice. Through discussion and education, and the
example of sincerity and frankness, individuals will become enlightened and develop
an appreciation of the evils of social institutions and social cooperation. Godwin
ruled out a sudden revolutionary change as this would not be based on the necessary
development of individual understanding. As a transitional measure he advocated a
system of 'juries', within small political communities or parishes', the juries dating
with individual offenders and disputes over property. He expected that disputes
between parishes would be rare and that the obvious principles of convenience'
would soon suggest a settlement (p. 546). A national assembly' might occasionally
be necessary to adjudicate in such matters, but it would not be a permanent body. At
first, all these institutions would exercise political 'authority' but, in time, Godwin
expected that they would merely issue invitations' to ^individuals to cooperate in
executing their verdicts, and, eventually, ail political institutions and cooperation
would wither away.
Abstract individualism rests on heroic assumptions. In Godwin 's case he assumes
that individual moral judgement can be exercised in complete absence of intersubjective theoretical categories and communal relationships. The argument of the
&!<7uiry implies that that which can be thought can be put into practice. Because it is
Possible to imagine an individual abstracted from social life, yet endowed with
Reason and a capacity for moral judgement, Godwin also assumes that, given a
140
sufficient period of education and social and political change, those individuals could
actually exist, with their social past 'stored', as it were, within the consciousness of
each one. They would exist largely in isolation and yet, on occasions, emerge, inspect
reality and make an individual judgement that would coincide with judgements and
Reason of others.
Godwin's theory has some extremely charming aspects, but they cannot hide the
philosophically and sociologically bizarre consequences of radical individualism
taken to one of its extremes. Everything, except their own judgements, and actions
that flow immediately and unhindered from them, is foreign to one of Godwin's
individuals. Even the individual's own physical needs or freely created relationships
appear as impediments. A solitary individual, Godwin writes, is prevented from
executing his judgements 'in compliance with his necessities, or his frailties' (p. 758).
The evils of social cooperation are much worse, but technological progress will
enable individuals to do many things for themselves in the future that now require
the help of others. Godwin expects that concerts and plays will cease to be
performed; what enlightened individual would want to mouth the words or play the
compositions of another ? Eventually, the individual will come to see society as 'not a
necessary of life, but a luxury, innocent and enviable, in which he joyfully indulges'
(p. 761). At this point, however, there is no 'society' for them to indulge in. Godwin
relies on a reified Reason to link his individuals together but this cannot take the
place of the social relationships he has wished away.
Once again, the impossibility of distinguishing between institutions in various
dimensions of social life from within an abstractly individualist perspective is
demonstrated. Godwin treats promising as just as much a constraint and
impediment, and just as mystifying, as the laws of the state. It is worth emphasizing
that Godwin ends by depriving his individuals of the means of transcending their
own subjectivity. They have no social means of acting on their judgements and thus
must remain totally immersed in their own assessments of what 'ought' to be done.
The creative moral and social capacities of individuals are meaningless treated in the
abstract; they presuppose, and, in practice, can only be exercised and developed as a
part of social relationships including relationships of obligation.
A tacit realization of the peculiar conclusion of philosophical anarchism seems to
underlie Wolfs equivocations about the 'just state'. In the last part of /n Defence of
,4norchism, Wolff offers some 'deeper philosophical reasons' why he is unwilling to
accept the 'negative results' of his argument; the social world, unlike the natural
world, is not 'irreducibly other'. Wolff is thus implicitly arguing against Godwin
when he says that the state is 'no more than the totality of the beliefs, expectations,
habits, and interacting roles of its members and subjects.... The state,... cannot be
ineradicably other'." In other words, instead of arguing that all authority is
illegitimate, Wolff is now moving to the opposite theoretical extreme and putting
forward a version of the conceptual argument; the state is no more than the
association of its members and so necessary to them, so there is no problem about its
authority. Wolff also suggests that there might be a practical solution to the problem
of authority; political institutions must be decentralized and based on 'voluntary
compliance' (although he may be arguing that a system based on 'voluntary
141
compliance' does not involve authority at all). Curiously, Wolff does not appear to
see anything odd in an 'anarchism' that proclaims the necessity of the state. The
-central argument of anarchism is precisely that the state, including the liberal
democratic state, is inherently 'other', and so its claim to authority can never be
justified.
Anarchists, philosophical or otherwise, it will be objected at this point, make a
much larger claim than this. Like Wolff, they argue that all political authority, not
just that of the state, is illegitimate. It is true that anarchist writings are full of
statements to this effect. Kropotkin, for example, writes that 'anarchism... works to
destroy authority in all its aspects'." Such statements are usually taken at face value.
Flathman, for instance, criticizing Pitkin's comments on 'authority', argues that the
state of nature in Hobbes' and Locke's theories provides an example of individuals
living together without authority, and he asks what else have anarchists been
putting forward as an ideal?'." But, as I have shown, any social relationships
existing in Hobbes' radically individualist natural condition are likely to be based on
force and power, not authority, and Locke's state of nature, with its father-rulers
and capitalist economy, would certainly not And favour with anarchists. Nor is it
self-evident that the anarchist ideal does involve an absence of authority; not, that is,
if anarchism is seen as a political theory and not merely as a variety of philosophical
scepticism.
The political theory of anarchism is not a theory of the chaos with which
'anarchy' is popularly equated, but a theory of a specihc form of socio-political
organization that is, as it must be, ordered and rule-governed. Anarchists have
usually been political activists and popular pamphleteers and not concerned with
precise conceptual distinctions. They have tended to treat authority' as a synonym
for 'authoritarian', and so have identified authority' with hierarchical power
structures, especially those of the state. Nevertheless, their practical proposals and
some of their theoretical discussions present a different picture. Kropotkin calls
anarchism the 'no-govemment system of socialism'," but on one occasion he also
distinguishes 'government' and the 'state'. He writes that 'it seems to me that in State
and government we have two concepts of a different order'." Unfortunately,
Kropotkin does not pursue this distinction, but it suggests that one anarchist, at least,
did not totally reject political authority. This conclusion is also suggested by the
social and political changes advocated by Kropotkin. He argued that abolition of the
political institutions of the state would allow 'mutual aid' to become the ordering
principle of socio-political life. His discussion of this principle presents similar
dif&culties to the recent philosophically sophisticated discussions of cooperation,
reciprocity and obligation. In part, Kropotkin 's claim can be seen as a version of the
conceptual argument: 'the practice of mutual aid... [has] created the very conditions
of society ...'.** He also used mutual aid to refer to actual historical examples of
cooperative institutions based on the voluntary agreement of the members, and it is
the principle of free agreement that will govern an anarchist socio-political order.
However, as I have argued, in political life self-assumed obligation and authority
presuppose such 'free agreement'. Kropotkin's sketch of the internal organization of
the communes that will replace the state is significant here. Kropotkin envisages
ct^—
C ^u^n.
^41
7
?
<*W
THE SERRCH FOR RNRRCHISil - RND FOR RN RPPROPRIRTE NE!*f TITLE FOR IT.
IB.
term
The
anarchism
has acquired such an encrustation of unfortunate and
undesirabLe associations that it is time for a ciear neM term to rep Lace Lt. But
that is not so easg, one reason being that it is not at aLL easg to sag Mhat the
[neM] position the term is to ref Leet is Like, even in
rough
outLine,
or
hoM
that position (that nonstate state) might come about. [RepLace B approach Mith R
approach.]
It
easier
is
to be negative than positive, to sag (as
LtseLf
anarchism
does) Mhat anarchism, or the repLacement $-ism (sag) is not, rather than Mhat it
is.
LJhat the position is not is, firstig^a state of chaos. R state
not
one
of
disorder;
on
contrarg^ ^-istic
the
arrangements
definiteLg be sociai and poLiticaL arrangements - MiLL be
coroLLarg
-
since
(thermodgnamicaLLg)
energg for its production
extremeLg
untikeLg
and
-
$-g
is
there MiLL
organLsed.
R
organised sgstem or state requires
an
maintenance
highLg
of
-
is
that
a
t^-istic
sgstem
is
to arise spontaneousig. Directed urganisationaL energg must
be put into the attainment of a ^-istic endstate. Sought
d)-istic
sgstems
MiLL
' )
simpig
not
emerge spontaneousLg,
even Mhen energg LeveLs have been raised and
states excited, as in vigorous demonstrations or in revoLutionarg activities.
Furthermore, t^-ism does not inciude^ ang more than anarchism need
invoLve
vioLet=tee: Nur need a ^-istic sgstem emerge in a vioient Mag. Even if it arises
in
a
revoiutionarg Mag, there is no need for the route to incLude substantiaL,
or even perhaps ang vioience. The notion of a nonvioient
contradictorg
revoLution
is
not
a
one. Nor are rapid nonvioLentig induced changes begond the bounds
of reaL posstbeietg Ln severaL parts of the Morid.
-3-
.
Rn additionat
anarchLsM
set
froM
derives
EngeLs-LenLn
anarchLsM,
Mounted
as
negative
of
the
assoc tat Lons
pretty
a
pubLLeatLon
the
for
reasons
scurrLLous,
against
and
Rnarcho-
reveaLs. R Main reason for the Marxist reject Lon of
synd Lea L Lsw
term
caMpaign
RnarchLSM
LenLn.
EngeLs
Marx
the
grafted on to Lt by Marxists. Marx-
and
reguLar,
MLth
dispensing
anarch LSM
Mas
that Lt Mas assuMed to LnvoLve LMMed Late transact Lon to state Less socLety.
Uhat aLL anarchist trends have Ln coMMon Ls a utop Lan vLsLon of
settLng up a socLety ML thout state and expLotttng cLasses through a
spontaneous rebeLLLon by the Masses and instant abotition of state
poMer and aLL Lts LnstLtut Lons, instead of through potiticat struggLe
bu the working cLass, socLaLLst revoLutLon, and estabtishMent of a
proietarian dictatorship (p.9).
ThLs Last LnvoLves a faLse dLchotoMy. SiMitarLy there Ls heavy crLtLcLsM of
anarehLst dogwas
about
revoLutLon (p.I7). The
transition
aboiishing
opposLng
the
as
state"
the
idea Mas that of the
fLrst
as
state
step
Ln
affording
the
a
period". But reaLLy there Ls no opposLtLon: both are coMpatLbLe with
anarchLsM: there Ls /yio^d than one May of deaiing MLth a scoundreL.
The qeneraL shape of poLLtLcaL transfurMation, both Ln
cLassicat
MarxisM
and Ln anarchLsM, Ls a MuLti-stage transforMation MLth
1)
transLtLon states, Mhere the state Ls retaLned,
2)
an end state, Mhere the state Ls reMoved.
But
the
suggestion,
especiaLLy
LenLn,
Ln
that even Ln the end state of
Ls
cuMHUH LSM, the s ta te M L L L surv eve:
criticai
Marx Lsts
anarchist
of
proposeLs
for
the
destruction of authority of every k end, and the introduction of totaL decentrat
er L tic LsM
ts
decentraLisation^; but it
difference
(which
ref Leet
unfairLg
never the Less
deeper
with
Loaded,
r*.
MBf^S
out
differences
Ln
every kind and totaL
Lts
tMO
areas
MorLd
of
substantLaL
vieM). For exaMpLe,
Leadership need not be excLuded, Mhere roLe to direct is freeLy granted and does
-4-
not devoive into 3 fixed or imposed power relationship?
and
influence
mag
be
exercised from federai to Locai LeveL as we Li as from LocaL to federai.
There
are
batch
a
sort of theorg to
anarchism.
Like
of iesser associations aiso removed bg distancing the
be
outiined
from
its
dominant
rivaL, accepted too much Eniightenment doctrine,
anarchism.
For
(e.g. the essentiai goodness of man, the unaiieged
instance,
benigness
centurg
19th
science,
of
and
worthwhiLeness of dominant economic goats. Not ontg was it too much a product of
thinking:
Eniightenment
it
shared with Marxist unecoLogicaL assumptions about
the eiimination of scarcitg, and with capitalism
assumption
an
reduction (at Least in most of its
individuai
of
being an exception).
If we trg to reach behind the contrasts, of 19th centurg poLiticaL thought.
both orthodox and
at ternatives"'.
do
we
reduct ion ism, . science
individuai
especiaLLg
what
find?
and
Not
reduct ion ism,
ontg
worship,
techno Logg
and
maximisation, but mang other doctrines from its mgre orthodox, powerfut and
yei/cvc-Z
successfui rivais, incLuding domination, ^forms of domination. It is the removai
of a wide varietg of forms of domination, of
a ims
at
(Martin's
power
getting rid of)^
the
structures,
that
negative side of anakgrie.
rTn-srchg, w t th the remove L of state, ts ontg part of that: tt aLsc
remova L
anakgrie
concerns
the
of domination of nature (bg humans), countrgside (bg cities), women (bg
men), b Lacks (bg whites), etc.
Rs the removai of weeds makes wag for new growth, so the removaL
of
domination
makes
wag
respects
too
reiations
anakgrie
forms
for new relations. The primitive side of anakgrie is
concerned, among other things with such retations, especiaiig
seLf-reguLating
of
of
reaches
this
far
with
stabie
sort, and wags of achieving them.
begond
what
anarch ism.
5-
and
In these
was normaLLg encompassed bg
j
was selected
RnakgrLe
tupographLc
to
resembLance
resembLance,
and
e^c4mf"Cttics4T.3
get
It
-
Ln
tern
the
was
It
of*
because
Lts
and
phonetcc
cLose enough to benefit bg the
Ls
hopefuLLg,
to
shed
the
bed
/A <%<2
the fLrst term arrLved at, bg eng weans, get Lt
not
removed,
means rough Lu the same as the fLrst.
resuLt
however
anarkLe .
enough
farMas
part
SRNOOillNISfl,
In the
search
terms
new
for
f'crst
the
L.e. sandomLn (wtthout waster or authorLtg)
But atthough domLnatLon cs one of the ma tn thcngs to be removed tn
served for
aLternatLve
arrangements,
especLaLLg)
Ls
onLg
Ln
domLnatLon
part
range
pLcture.
the
of
a
of
forms
(envLronmentaL
DLth domLnatLon Ls assumed to go
subject Lon and expLoLtatLon of what Ls domLnated. LIL th domLnatLon a Lso tends
go
Yet
expans ton.
there
are
other
thtngs. [Expand, when Look at domLnatLon
Later.J Finother word Looked at that has some currencg
state Less
roughLg
LLteraLLg Lt means
to
acephaLous
Ls
wLthout a head
head Less .
meaning
It Ls not a
part Lou LarLg good term for present purposes.
state
The
operates
wLth,ratLfLes,
SLnce both AnakgrLe
domLnatLon.
the same road for a Long part of
ensure,
and
reLg
upon,
and
LegLtLmLzes
forms
of
and anarchg aLm to eLLmLnate these, theg traveL
thejourneg. Find
forms
of domLnatLon -
Lf
the
rLde
together;
and
state
Ls
as mang crLtLcs,
anarchLsts, have argued - then anakgrLe LncLudes anarchg.
of the LnLtLaL argument, theg
mang
some
In ang case
bound
to
not reaLLg
for
sssLmLLatLon^ Ln
much
the
interests of brevLtgwLLL not be too mLsLeadLng.
S
great
Ls proper - Ls
advantage of anakgrLe, however - and one reason whg the LncLusLon
thLsj- The
rewovaL
of
domLnatLon
gLves
actLvLsts
something
LmmedLate to work for, and Ln an ef'fectLve wag — 3gaLn bg contrast wLth anarchg,
whLch
mau
be
a Long-term project, or aLmost a do-nothLng one Ln some advanced
capLtaLLst states.
-6-
FOOTNOTES
The probiem is frequentiy not one of suppiy, but rather of
1.
distribution
stiii -3 matter of poiitico-economic arrangements.
2.
Negativety remains a prob Lem. It is considered beioM.
3.
foLLoM
Preface
iJhat
are
from the
by N.Y. KeLpinsky, to thLs work.
couLd
be argued is that the idea of immediate
modern states is rather naive.
)
A
<3'
/ZuA
<5^
/7^
c
y*&"-
-7-
7
21/3/84 - I.
ANARCHISM :
%ea</oc/
s
The multiple
aims of
Often
theory.
political
an aim,^ is
takq^ to
(model) of the good society, or even more strongly (and less likely) of
a
or perfect, society.
But, to put it in an old-fashioned way, there is no
"X
such
thing as the good society, any more than there is such a thing as the good life.
In
at
principle
least,
are
there
variety
a
of
good
and
societies,
even
pluralistically there are different mixes (or pluralities) of good societies.
ft
-Ritter's
Rosseau,
(p.135)
problem
A
with
of
'
Marx,
equality, vs.
with
models
material
of
the
good
de^dgnce^ vs
society
(e-g-
Prato,
with
The^ can be combined in a pluralistic framework of
intellectual virtues)^ vanishes,
many good societies.
competing
Likewise the problem of conflicting values is
much reduced,
4
and indeed given sufficient tolerance of other arrangements largely vanishes.
Ritter,
Equality.
'The real
p.137:
/?*
diversity that matlcs anarchist society is
supposed to be accompanied by equality of staffs'.
But this is not required.
even is equality of power, but rather removal of social power.
Nor
This leads Ritter
on to the alleged conflict of community, which is 'repressive', and individuality.
But
some conflict
Ae.
^following
is alright^
as Ritter admits later (pp.138-9), where he gives
conflict:
pairs? generating
diversity/equality,
r?J
censure/^o^^^
individuality/community.
Consistency requirements.
required
to
demonstrate
Ritter^ at^mp^yes these everywhere; e.g.
the
of
public
censure.
, from partial models,
argues
of
a
state-less
issue
f
____ of.consistency of freedom with use
But see also(p.l, p.9^
Ritter
harmoniousness)
*i ^3-
/
condition, p.138.
(also
consistency
anarchists are
to
consistency,
and
permissibility
of
some
limited communities and arrangements of anarchistic
(primarily those given by Krop^t^ut)^
1.
Criticisms^
'Individualism
gone
wild'
destructive
'socially
(Hyndman),
This confuses pluralistic/socialistic anarchism with right-
selfishness (Rp.140).
And as R's model one has 'communal individuality'.
leaning^
2.
Social
oppressiveness
gang'
'adolescent
picture^
Thus
But,
e.g.
on
suffocating
contrary
group
peer
considerable
very
permit^
pressures;
individualism and choice.
Insufficient 'provision for privacy, for external self-expression and for
3.
meeting
claims
in
problems
of
distributive
some anarchist
justice'
communities,
While
(Rp.140).
things
these
'Godwin's conversational
e.g.
may
be
anarchy',
they are not problems in pluralistic arrangements.
Ritter argues however that
in the anarchistic society
the needs
for privacy
vanishes - both as refuge from considerable intrusions and as a place of seclusion
A
for inner growth or restoration.
But these things depend on much^improved other
people.
3.2
Of course nothing excludes solitude.
4
The issue of
older
character
of
such
behaviour
by
reasoned
ties up with the
the expression of emotions
anarchism,
argument.
the
settling
ig&aanarchisms
of
reject
disputes
rationalistic
and
reliance
the
controlling
on
reason,
because reason has too often been used for evil ends, etc., and because emotional
attributes are considered
to
be more central
MiilLLiinally-oriented anarchism,
to
Ritter draws on
the
In rejecting more
person.
the
reason/formation
*
dichotomy.
*
t i
'
vp-v
{y
But emotion does not exclude or block out reason indefinitely.
emotion does not interfere with freedom:
So too
it is false that 'the extensive freedom
/!
of classical anarchy is simply unattainable without the limits on emotional self
expression that non-rational anarchists reject'
(Rp.143).
3.3
special
failure
The
of
bestow
to
on
benefits
from a one-track view,
This again comes
talents.
society
anarchistic
those
with
from pure communistic
anarchism alone.
Ritter argues
[or
understanding',
people will not
receive
is better
It
'desire
, efficient production
incentives'
(p.143).
He argues
to develop
... native
talents',
'satisfaction
'polytechnical education'
that people not of
to argue
'just de^ejfft'^
re&SM^@d]
A
usual
varied work',
voluntary,
etc.
these
without
'mutual
...
some
in terms of what they put in, still '
v'tewetf
occurs
though
that
(of English
from
in
character!),
this sort will choose different
life-styles, in different communities.
The
4.
political
'unanimous
'repudiation of
(Rp.144).
direct
democracy'.
individuality
between
This
theory'
citizenship is
and
which
active citizenship'
to
has
argued
Rosseau
(see
citizenship
correlative to a state,
do
with
'is a
anarchistic
there
that
recurrent theme
Rp.145):
was
a
criticism
of
contradiction
itself.
dubious
in
But
.
.
.
,
,
so^not too surprising that it is damaged.
Anarchism gives much greater scope for the do-nothing or do—it-when-you-feel-like-
it life.
No filling-in blw form; at this
cn.
times, voting^ those Ejeg^ixicLal days, etc.
demoded,
time,
registrations at those
,
That is, it offers a range of freedoms the
citizen does not get.
Presumably also then the Kantian idea of man as a self-governing citizen also
gets ditched.
public
But the alleged accompanying virtues - such as being self-directred,
spirited,
controlling
die t ing
-
are
not
lost,
but
enhanced.
For
communities replace the state as the place where they are manifested.
5.
1 Argument
making.
roblem
from the strange character of anarchist
arises
because
it
(p.148), provided Wational procedural
permits
bad
freedom and decision-
decision-making,
rules are met.
so
R
claims
This is very curious.
But
4
cjoc4
the problem of
appeals to
rationality-justified
freely-chosen
exploitation ^arise^ here.
constraints - which from a consistency viewpoint limits freedom.
R
The
constraints are internalisation, positional authority, censorial rebuke.
Anarchist arrangements
are better
superior to feasible alternatives,
than where we are.
Since they are also
that is enough for movement in that direction.
No requirement of best need be met.
5.
dm rd al
Anarchism is a dangerous ideal, because it helps undermine the established
4
social order.
But it is pernicious because that ideal is unattainable.
)
6.
no
place
Objection to anarchist methods.
in
them.
example' (p.152).
According
to R
But aversion and fraud are said to have
the main
methods are
'fr#ecof argument and
But this ^gnves out a range of i-ndi-catrrves and strategies.
s
THE^ARCUhEETS HJR THE STATE.
There are a variety of arguments^*which will be ass^^bled at first
a
jumbled
order.
Other arguments are:
in
from organisational demands, from
law and order, from provision of public goods generally, from
maximization
(ana prisoners' dilemma, etc.)
(e.g.A A.
surprising Argument for the State is given by economists
Atkinson
and
Lectures
Stieglit^,
in
Economics).
Public
required to regulate market(s) and ensure that
theorems
of
The state is
welfare
even
ground that it
apply, Is that .case? .the market is invariably recommended
------- /)
is self-regulating, and can dispense with government.
Argument for^ state
appalling^from
ideal).
that
overcoming
CrSiK
angle^
angle
deficiencies
really
of ^market
For it means that the market is assumed (as
All.argument shows ^is that market isn't means of regulation^
that
should adopts^ In a way it is a reductio of ^market.
It may be claimed that
it
is
analytically
that
true
any
society
involves a state. This is false. Social arrangements without state powers
A)ct
5M!
L' /
J -- CT
are perfectly possible. ^&onstruct small social moael^,,
The argument that no society &ommon4ry-1 s
anthropologists
iI^
defence
of
the
claim
that
71c
internal
by
some
primitive society is
anarchic - depends on an A-conversion. ^rgument^^j QJ
(a) every society has exhibits (some)
used
stateless
order
,
fJ"—
(otherwise
it
would not be a society)
(b) the basic proper^function of
order, i .e.
(c)
the
fA/e
is
to
ensure
internal
state^(ought to% impl^) order.
there is internal order.there must be some sort of state.
7
^77777^77- /71
<?/=
^7757777;
- /<F^ /
3?
ARGUMENTS AGAINST STATES AND THEIR POKERS
Nation-state arrangements, which
based
on
assumptions
of
are
fairly
recent
phenomena,
are
a cert^jn amount of independence and isolation.
The rise of technology, including communication, have put these assumptions
in doubt, as has.war.
1
'The presumption of the nation-state system, that sovereignty
implied
an ability to protect a nation's territory and population, is precisely the
presumption denied by the nuclear, capacities
313).
This
was
already
put
in
doubt
by
of
both
other
superpowers'
things:
(PL,
now also by
Consider again also
Argument A.
1) Kars are the rights of states only.3
'x may [wagej war upon y only if x is a sovereign state;
has
legal
means
(Barnes, p.776).
declaration
of
by
which
it
may
3.
not
of
authority,
requires 'just authority' to do so, thus:
authority of a prince, at whose command the war is to
does
otherwise
x
and must settle the claim against y'
Thus Aquinas explains the condition
war
for
be
that
'first the
waged;
for
it
belong to a private person to start a war since he can prosecute
Naturally one has to worry about private armies and so forth, as well.
But undoubtedly the overwhelming problem in the case of 4cyp*=. LN wars
with the superstate.
his rights in the court of a superior' (Aquinas, quoted in Barnes,
In tact however an alternative factual premiss will serve as well:
(a) only (super)states are capable of waging
LN wars.
p.776).
PATHS TO ANARCHISTIC END-STATE
Pasture of stages ( o ) and transitions (o ** o)
finish
start
Golden
future
age
Present
Past
Intermediate states
'?
Pluralist
anarchism
Communist
anarchism
Kingdom of
God
Corporate
capitalism
State socialism
Democratic
socialism
Totalitarianism
A useful model for the process is that of punctuated equilibrium, drawn from
recently
reformulated
evolutionary
theory.
Another
useful
model
is
Kuhn's
picture of the growth of science, which is also one of punctuated equilibrium,
the
equilibrium
dominates,
There
is
states
or
stages
being
those
where
a
scientific
paradigm
the transitions between stages being rapid and even revolutionary.
presumably
a
general
model
of
this
type within
the
framework
of
systems theory, which brings models of this type together [verify *1].
The classical anarchist assumption is that no intermediate stages need be
involved, we can transit directly (in a single revolutionary upheaval) into an
anarchistic end-state - a pretty unplanned and unprepared for end-state.
the
fast
increasing
size of
the world's
With
human population and complexity of
modern organisation - both further locking things into statist frames - that
assumption looks
increasingly untenable.
reasons for supposing
necessary.
There
are
also,
and always were,
that intermediate preparation and planning stages are
For what have to be altered,
in particular, are human attitudes,
2
expectations, etc. - malleable parts of human "nature" that can be altered by
reeducation, reflection and immersion in alternative conditions.
What has to be changed?
Much.
The modern encouragement of greed - in
such forms as maximum consumption, maximum production, etc.
of
gross
inequality.
economic
bottom up,
The
is
reversal
to be achieved in affluent
and by redirecting military and industrial
What still has some appeal is
reorganising.
The entrenchment
the idea,
spending into
social
suggested by Marx's
work, of initial transition into a state governed from the bottom (certainly
no longer workers) instead of from the top:
this pending
of
states' structure
could
but the intended good effects of
be
rather
quickly
lost
(like
the
Aid
effects of shallowly^/cultural revolutions).
A
critical
question
is
what
produces
the direction and
so on are desirable.
decidedly undesirable, e.g. nuclear war.
But
one
state
to
some causes of^ transition are
There are other ways as the models
natural cataclysm, economic instability
The anarchistic
which -
from
For if we can find out perhaps we can hasten the process - assuming
another?
reveal,
transition
route
is a branch on the
1
accumulation o^f anomalies.
2
tree of future political options,
blown over and assuming a single starting point (that of Australia
say) - schematically looks like this?
^E.g.
the present
loans and deficit situation,
especially
in
third world
countries.
2
Including undermining of state economies by al ternative economies (examples
from places like Peru).
3
Anarchistic
branches
It is crucial to avoid many of the alternative futures possible from where we
are, e.g. transitions to the increasing state-corporate control of life.
The Kingdom of God can^ be comjhpared with the marxist findj state?
The
Kingdom of God is pacifist (state).
Peace is fully realised, and
justice i^foundation of it (yet there are tensions between them
sometimes?)
J/
/ _---- .--------------
seek 3 newer world.
'Its
%
<7^t/
1
?V^^/ 4^7
1
state has destroyed so Much of coMMunity arrangeMents that
road
anarchism wiii have to Make use of the state. 11 Ls L ike 3 weed such as
lantana,
It has suppressed growth of the new forest, But simply sorting it
out will
expose the ground to forces fertile to the new forest aiso (moisture
stress,
erosion, etc.), bo the state Must be pruned awasy, substituted
for, and
Jttirpated bit by bit.
&. There is now so Much governMent - the governMent
effectively
in
Many
so
areas
of
IsoMMunal structures - that simply/
social
life, Ibreaking down and displacing
dispensing
with
governMent,
an
immediate
to coMMunal arrangeMents, could not be accomplished without Massive dislocation. Short of a Massive disaster, disabling governmental s^^ructure,
return
instant
anarchisM
is
not
feasible.
Since such a disaster is not improbable,
instant anarchism should not however be excluded, but,
-^pnte.s
states,
allowed
and
planned
for.
Otherwise,
the
like
route
more
evolutionary
is by replacement,
ching us or substituting for the displaced coMMunity structures
broken
down
state ac t iv i ty.
Removal of government - not from where controls are required ac^trarl
rep lacements^e.g. transitional penetration, big business,(are developed^ - from
exploitative areas, e.g. gambling, drugs, prostitution, etc. 5et up instead nets
to gatch people/victijhs of these things.
voluntarg arrangement freelg unLirtt/ted to, then contributions
to state coffer^ should also be votuntarg, likewise involving free assent, not
If ^the state
compulsorg as theg are.
But
then
free-rider
problems,
etc. No, onlg showing there wasn t consent, bg
mang exodus from fragments. If there were onlg a few free-riders^ these people
who didn't have a state constribution and would get state carried, such as
police - as simple as RR
You bug state protection, whatever, just Ibke
state insurance.
/
. E Is ter Sour Gr apes p. 37_bqttow
(a Iso
surrounding
section))
....... ...... —' ------------- ------------------------
ueMucracg
anc^-
o the r po1i t ica1 :sustems advanted bu various authors for their side effects
Z! o
which obtainable better in other wags. Lare for anarchism here. Patemen good
A
____ J*
j
On Tr.3nsn.3t Lona Ls
The sources of
-3re power of one sort or another. SocLaL
arrangements wLthout ^%?-W^-b^-h'A^^>wLLL be designed so far as possLbLe to LLmLt
such power and prevent Lts accumutatLon.
Prevent,^ gLobaL corp^arrangements/ LnternatLonaLLsm^ aLready over hLLL. Rnd good
twenty years our of date.
//GLobaL (^each p.368.. Rehun^ the prob Lem — passed by the gLobaL corporatLon ...
---------------------/)
ms
Ls excessLve power, and the seLf-Lmpatred LLmLtatLon on power cs not characterr Jsttc of human LnstLtutLons',^ rearranged?.
Remedies.
1.
at
InformatLon and end to secrecy, as a
way
to
socLaL
responses.^
books as pubLLc documents etc., p.369.
2.
TndLspensLbLe data for natLonaL program of natLonaL and Lnternat-
LonaL reguLatLon, 370. Sc<%/<)<2
,
Standsrd Last Lon of accountLng -r-------- and practLces.
p.3*^/ Breakdown of pubLLc/prLvate dLstLnctLon and dLsappearance of free market?
'L--------- .
GLobaL co rpo rat Lons buLLt on socLaL cap^taL consp ucuous L^*
p.376
RLternatLon of t3X Laws to remove credLts and
Tax bLas Ln favour of transnatLonaLs.
counterrLdLng power / be^^re strateggt^ ,
pubLLc dLrectors , better uaadetermLnatLon , pre^Ldents runnLng for
c?r
companys at Least eLectLonjfor candLdates of reguLati)$y comm css conf
GeneraLLyatter tax Laws, remove subsLdLes whLch 4ncouraaa the accumutatLon of
.
,7
prLvate weaLth, and power, us Lng pubLLc/socLat and bLoLogLcaL capLtaL. ^7^
/j /y
CCyTY
^g
-y
power.
fAc
State underpinning of multinationals.
Multinationals would not have
arisen to their present position of eminence without state assistance - and
infrastructure, education, security, etc.
N^d detailed evidence of this.
Then can argue that problem of multinationals can be resolved, more or
-3
p
less automatically, with problem of state.
/^*
/?
-e^—
7
0
,%?.
rofit system^never satisfactory,^now extremely dama^gmg. Compare^ damag
fetnoTie.
,
/ i
be
profits - and look at the way these
^to worlds
by destruction for
profits are spent.
Profit system compare with (ccyM?) sovereignty systems.
an anarchist.theory.
LAW
.
jLaw is incompatible with anarchist utopianism.
Anarchism can retain a framework of rules.
are backed up, and enforced.
where this involves violence.
pre^$e, etc.
consider,
This is false.
The key issue is how these rules
What anarchism excludes is coercive backing
Opposition usually involves sliding on coergion,
So it looks as if there are several different theses to
depending on how enforcement, rules, etc. are expanded.
Kam argued that anarchism could not handle law on basis of
A
i.
A
level of detail of law.
ii. amount of procedural detail.
But there are no barrier at all.
be refuted by a countermodel.
Complexity is no bar.
The claims can
One such is the model Chom^siey appeals to,
that of rules of language, which are complex and intricate enough, and nvj
backed by force (Passmore wanted to suggest they were!
But it is obvious
that they need not be, whatever lapses occurred in the 16th century.)
As a matter of history, several anarchist thinkers were not opposed to
operation of law, but included it in their framework.
Proudhon.
Others?
One example is
/^ <2
MY ENGAGEMENT WITH SOCIAL AND POLITICAL THEORY
Over the past decadeI have found myself increasingly concerned with
social and political problems and more and more immersed in the theoretical
issues raised thereby.
In large part this has arisen from environmental
involvement, especially on forestry and nuclear matters, and the realisation
that the basic problems mostly lay with social and political arrangements.
It
thus became important to try to determine what those really were, and how they
might be changed, what the alternatives weie.
But in part also my legitimate intellectual movement from logic and meta
physics^ to a wider perspective which includes social and political philosophy
as major area of concern has come about as a result of reflection on the
unsatisfactory and fragmented state of philosophy and its surrounds.
It became
increasingly hard (in particular for someone trained in analytic philosophy with
a heavy Oxbridge orientation) to avoid noting, especially when confronted with
wider philosophical and social issues, that one's philosophical education and
ifn 1972 I presented and circulated a paper, 'Is there a need for a new, and
environmental ethic?' which played an influential part in the rapid growth of
environmental philosophy in New Zealand and Australia (on the latter see D.
Mannison and M. McRobbie in Environmental Philosophy). Such an excursion into
ethics was not without precedent. My research work in fact began in ethical
theory, with a thesis on moral scepticism, and I thought about and wrote on
deontic problems in the sixties.
^The point is explained in detail in work cited in the accompanying curriculum
vitae (where all otherwise unreferenced work is listed).
In the case of
forestry see for example 'Destructive forestry in Australia and Melanesia' and
'World rainforest destruction - the social factors'; as to nuclear see
'Nuclear power - some ethical and social dimensions' and 'The ethics of nuclear
war, and political fall-out'; and for the general argument see 'Social theories,
self management and environmental problems'.
^This does not mean that I have entirely abandoned these areas. Logic is, I
believe (with Anderson, and so with the mainstream of Australia's most
significant philosophical movement), the central part of philosophy, and many
conceptual problems in applied philosophy will continue to require return to
logical ground in order to find satsifactory solutions. A sound training in
logical theory is essential for deeper solutions for some of these problems.
I should add that I never have been a very pure logician. I moved into logic
in order to try to solve severe conceptual problems first in the philosophy of
science and then in metaphysics. Now that these problems are largely solved
(to my satisfaction at any rate) I can presumably move on to other things.
2.
practice offered only a somewhat limited set of tools and techniques for
tackling wider philosophical concerns and, worse, but few instruction as to how
to apply these analytic techniques more widely.
Nor had the inadequacy of
such an education and the sort of philosophy to which it led gone
unremarked.
It was charged that philosophy had abdicated several of its proper respons
ibilities - for example, to organise knowledge into some more coherent whole
or world-view, to elaborate a social theory and influence social criticism,
even to afford intellectual leadership - and had become excessively analytic
and specialised, and therewith narrow and sterile (concerned, e.g., merely with
linguistic niceties, conservative commonsense and/or scholastic logic-chopping).
It was charged that academic philosophy not only had become excessively timid and
accordingly lost intellectual excitement and appeal, but also had lost relevance
to and touch with the important intellectual issues of the times and had failed
in the business of addressing a larger audience with philosophical interests.
These charges, which have a solid foundation, did not come from within academic
philosophy but were most evocatively made by people outside philosophy (though
with some knowledge of it) or by those in the margins of academic, professional
ised^ philosophy.
Thus Durrant, an outsider, has powerfully expressed a part of
the charges:
... philosophy itself, which had once summoned all sciences to its
aid in making a coherent image of the world and an alluring picture
of the good, found its task of inordination too stupendous for its
usage, ran away from ... .'LtheJ battlefronts of truth, and hid itself
in recondite and narrow lanes, timidly secure from the issues and
responsibilities of life.*
Philosophy began to change in the Seventies, some philosophers naturally
changing with it.
We aimed to address a wider range of socially relevant
topics - and also sometimes a .wider audience - for example, to get beyond the
^W. Durrant, The Story of Philosophy, Second edition, Simon and Schuster, New
York, 1926, p.v. Durrant though (or perhaps because) a leading populariser
of philosophy in North America, is not usually at all well regarded by
academic philosophers.
3.
sterile examples of previous texts on moral philosophy to live issues, from
minor cases of promising and truth-telling to abortion and euthanasia, genetic
engineering and the treatment of animals, violence and nuclear war.
But the
analytical methods used for the most part did not change, the widening of
horizons in applied philosophy proceeded from a narrow and inadequate logical
(argumentive) and metaphysical base.
stagnation:
The applied expansion went with theoretical
mainstream theoretical philosophy sat in the doldrums.
Nor has the applied transformation gone far enough.
Significant issues
have been left to theologians and journalists.And there has been insufficient
effort by philosophers (even those addressing relevant issues) to integrate
their work with that of other (social) sciences that shed light on the issues,
to overcome discipline fragmentation by synthesis.
For it was not merely that
philosophy itself was fragmented and often irrelevant, it had also become
largley isolated
from other disciplines and had ceased to be properly informed
by them - or to inform them.
This unsplendid isolation is particularly conspicuous in the case of
political philosophy, which often proceeds in much the way it did in the
17th century, with little of the import it should be receiving from recent
advances in social psychology and
well-founded) sociobiology.
ethology and (to the extent that it is
More generally, the way in which areas have been
isolated from one another, and ceased communicating, to the disadvantage to
all, is a matter for serious concern.
It is not merely that philosophy, for
example, can be enriched by taking due account of the social sciences.
The
^This description derives from Passmore.
^Philosophers and other academics should not be led in these areas, but do
the leading. One of the roles of the academic community - a role in which
philosophy in Australia (much, degenerated by too long an incestuous history)
mostly fails - is to address a wider public than part of itself. Philosophers
may justly complain that there is little competent public discussion of these
issues where applied philosophy matters and no reputable intellectua
ea er
ship in Australia at present, but they have by and large done little to
rectify the matter.
4.
social sciences also can be improved, and much rubbish removed, by taking account
of philosophical criticism.Each impacts on the others, in ways that should
be taken into account.
Moreover the interplay of different parts is fruitful.2
There is a richness to be generated if the interaction works well.
And such
interaction is required to pull much material into a more coherent whole.
Such sentiments on integrating areas and rendering work more informed and
holistic have been expressed before.
another putting them into effect.
It is one thing expressing them, and
The tasks involved are difficult.
And
putting them into effect is not of course a task for just one person, but for
several.
A start can however be made with interdisciplinary people who
willingly cross discipline boundaries, because they need to, and see the need
to;
by people who are able to adopt the often special methods and procedures
of other disciplines and combine them with those of their own.
But a start can
not in general be satisfactorily initiated just by administrative fiat.
A
good deal of evidence has now accumulated to show that an administrator cannot
simply pull together a successful interdisciplinary research group by hiring
people skilled in the different disciplines concerned and putting them in a
common setting.
Such, groups can evolve however by individuals with wide-ranging
concerns interesting other researchers or like-inclined people from other
disciplines in overlapping or joint problems.
And in setting up the conditions
for such collaborative research to evolve, administrative inputs are important.
It is, for example, an astute move to have a position linking several different
departments 3 attached to none of them but to a section that sits so-to-speak
above them;
for in this way the researcher has access to all the departments
concerned but is confined to none.
*New philosophies of nature call for much more than this, indeed for major theor
etical reorientation of some social sciences. The point is elaborated in the
concluding part of 'Human chauvinism and environmental ethics'.
2Nor will unified or coherent social sciences be arrived at without substantial
philosophical imports.
3 As the present post does.
influenced the move.
No doubt other political considerations have also
5.
I think I can justifiably account myself an interdisciplinary person.
Firstly, I have considerable experience in collaborative work, an advantage
that philosophers, in contrast to experimental scientists, seldom enjoy.
claim
is supported by my publication record.
The
While that indicates the extent of
my joint activity in research, it does not fully record cooperative activity
in organising conferences and workshops, both in logic and in environmental
philosophy, in helping found or reestablish organisations (the Australasian
Association of Logic is the main example, but the local AAP is another), in
establishing publications (e.g. the Environmental Philosophy Discussion Papers
serve both Philosophy Departments) and so on.
More significantly, I can also fairly claim substantial experience in
interdisciplinary work, as well as in other fields of philosophy.
For example,
I have worked not only in philosophy departments but in mathematics and in
environmental studies programs.i
Furthermore, my work in forestry, which is
continuing, brought me into close touch with people from a broad spectrum of
fields, not only forestry, but also economics, geography, demography, botany
and zoology.
The work, which is well-known locally and referred to in inter
national textbooks, has for the most part been well received by people in
those area, except forestry, and has been taken seriously .by those who disagree
with the often controversial positions developed.
My more recent work on
environmental problems has led me to communicate and interchange material with
sociologists and political Scientists in North American and England, and also
with people in a variety of fields in Australian Colleges of Advanced Education.
Naturally then, much of the resulting work reaches people in a range of fields.
My work on environmental problems has also resulted in invitations to participate
in conferences in a wide range of areas, on forestry (in several Australian
^1 declined invitations to work in interdisciplinary research groups in Washington
and The Hague primarily because they would have kept me away from Australia too
long and obliged me to endure northern winters.
6.
states), on energy, on the environment (in New Guinea and USA).
I have twice been
invited to present papers at Australian Sociology conferences, but been unable to
do so because of commitments abroad.
The basic forestry book The Fight for the Forests, and subsequent forestry
and environmental papers, already included much that bears upon and is informed
by social and political theory.
A new book, tentatively entitled Forestry in
Australia, now in preparation by a team of people drawn from a wide range of
disciplines - which is intended to replace The Fight for the Forests, long out
of print - will be even more closely involved with social and political theory.
It includes much fuller analysis of social classes and power structures (and
models of these) as well as, like earlier work, examination of elites, and types
of inequality.
This should also begin to reveal how my work on apparently diverse areas is
interrelated, and not a result of compartmentalisation.
Most obviously, my
work on forestry, which directly involves a range of environmental problems, in
a very practical way, leads directly into areas of social and political theory.
It is less obvious, but nonetheless a fact, that work on environmental problems,
value theory and logic, is not disconnected, but joined by several connecting
ways.
For example, relevant deontic logic has shown how the key moral matter of
moral dilemmas and conflicts of value can be treated.
The logic of obligation
is important in rejecting arguments that there is a significant separate
"morality" for nation states or for public representatives of these which
exonerates them from normal responsibility.
Differently, logic provides the
basis of decision theory, which is important in structuring environmental
problems.
And so on, to look at some of the more straightforward connections.
There are larger connections.
Social and political theory necessarily presupposes
^Explanations of these connections are much expanded in "The logical basis of the
social sciences'.
7.
a metaphysics, and this in turn a logical theory X
Philosophers of very
different persuasions, for instance Hegel and Mill, have agreed about this.
Of course work in logic, such as that in probability theory and on
statistical inference, sometimes speaks directly to other areas in the social
sciences.
My own work on universal semantics is of interest to linguists, and
'Universal semantics?' was abstracted in Sociological Abstracts, as have been
several of my philosophical papers, on for example metaphysics, limits to
Work on the recent history of logic and
knowledge and animal intentionality.
of philosophy of science in Australasia has led me into some sociological as
well as historical investigations.
political science and economics.
Logical pursuits have also lead me into
Because of my interest in applied logic I came
to take over supervision of B. Embury's doctoral dissertation on voting theory,
a thesis in the Department of Political Science.
in work with a post-doctoral
social choice theory.
My interests also involved me
fellow on preference and decision theory and
Regretably no joint work issued from this enterprise, but
I did publish some papers in the area, and emerged with further ideas for research
jotted down:
these ideas, mainly for further impossibility and limitative
results in social theory, have yet to be followed through.
My present research in social and political theory has (like a conic
section) double foci.
One focus (Fl) is a book tentatively entitled The
Philosophic Reach of Environmental Problems and intended to supersede
Environmental Philosophy in main respects, on the ethical, social and political
dimensions of environmental problems.2
familiar list:
The central problems yield a now rather
for instance, those of human and animal populations, disappearing
species, vanishing rainforests and other habitats and ecosystems, treatment
(and rights) of indigenous peoples, of animals and of plants, cities and
substantial start in explaining these deeper connections is made in 'Social
theories, self management and environment problems' and in Exploring Meinong's
Jungle and Beyond, chapter 9, ^12.
^Here environmental is used in the wide sense, of which the ecological is only a
quite proper part.
8.
neighbourhoods, landscape transformation or destruction, mining, pollution,
nuclear and energy issues, and so on.
The underlying problems have significant
features in common and common social and political sources.
Before the integrative
task is tackled in detail however, an analytical approximative approach is being
followed.
Discussion papers on several of the topics listed are being researched
or written, and discussion papers on others will follow, before the whole thing
is pulled together.
The other focus (F2) is a book on what might be called New Age Social
Organisation, investigating alternatives to prevailing social, economical and
political arrangements.
Major alternatives considered in detail include left
leaning and right-leaning anarchisms, which will involve a careful examination
of the extent to which social arrangements and political organisations can
be self-managed and self-regulating.
While it is ambitiously hoped that the investigation will not only result
(ideally) in a more philosophically-adequate left-leaning anarchist theory
than has so far been produced, that is only part of its purpose.
Another very
important part of the enterprise is to give some better understanding of the
range of alternatives to present (monopolistic capitalist and state socialist)
arrangements that there are and that could be tried.
A further part is, by
considering alternatives, to shed light on the prevailing systems (their
structures, institutions, etc.), in particular to bring out more clearly their
underlying assumptions,the extent of their necessity, to give a better idea
^In several respects the term 'anarchism' is unsatisfactory and will have event
ually to be replaced, perhaps by a neologism, since no available term delineates
the types of socio-political arrangements envisaged.
It should perhaps be remarked, in case it is thought that I have no academic
background in political theory, that my university education did include courses
and seminars in the area. Furthermore I have more recently acquired a good
working knowledge of the anarchist literature, and am well advanced in the
process of obtaining a grasp of organisation theory and the necessary parts
of social psychology.
Some of these assumptions are rejected or varied in an assessment of alternatives.
Thus, as a much better idea of euclidean geometry was obtained with the elaboration
of hyperbolic and Riemannian geometry, and similarly of arithmetic with the
formulation of nonstandard arithmetics, so also a much better appreciation of
mainstream social theory should be achieved by investigating nonstandard social
theories and assumptions. This method of variation of assumptions is a fruitful
one as regards many scientific,theories.
of the values they write in, of their desirability or undesirability, and so on.
Although my enagement has two main foci, naturally there are also other and
smaller endeavours under way:
of these - but only some.
the attached curriculum vitae gives some indication
For example, the trilogy of papers on the meaning of
life, nihilism, and the ultimate existence question is to be arranged into a book
which will probably also address such related issues as the quality of life.
Richard Routlev
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ANAKYRIE.
In Chapter 1
The multiple and inconsistent axioms of political theory : pluralism,
morality, ...
The differences in theory begin at the beginning, in what political arrangements
are for, what they are about, whom they are for, how they apply.
There are
important differences in the extent to which peoples' and other creatures'
activities and lives can be controlled and regulated.
More authoritarian
or paternalistic political arrangements impose much more in the way of
regulations than more liberal arrangements which in theJlimit reduce regulation
or setting for pursuit of satisfactory lives.
to some minimum, to some
So far as political relations are concerned, the world (Terr& is a closed
system.
Political influence is not exercised from outside that system,
nor f!'o political influences of significance so far flow from Terra elsewhere.
(All that may of course change, in which case the problem is reset in terms
of some larger system, the Universe providing an upper limit - unless some
extraspb tial gods are invoked.)
With the advance of industrialisation,
communications and spill-over technology, few communities smaller than the
world system are any longer effectively closed.
The general political problem is unsolvable. The argument for this
theme is that the problem is only solvable for small relatively uniform
But we no longer have such, given modern interference
com-unities (Taylor).
effects.
The basic picture is of a network of goal-directed
Defining the^problem:
creatures and systems.
The aim (political goal) is to ensure that these
creatures are able to pursue goals so far as these are satisfactory.
A major value judgment is inserted here : what of wiping out lives, of
war, etc., those that interfere seriously with others?
A liberal setting such
as Redman sketched is operating in the background here.
Present political arrangements anachronistic : they were introduced at a
time when much less interference was technically possible.
longer appropriate.
The
They are no
of empires now affects everyone s lives,
so on democratic grounds all should have say (or vote).
But they don t :
democracy stops at national borders (even in those borders where it kmd-of
operates).
2
Present political arrangements, by increasing population,
etc. for what sort of consumption high can be obtained by present people
are making things much worse.
For the benefit of present power-holders,
their maintenance of power and privilege,
short-term drr
the inadequacies of
%^ts - of present economics within political frameworks.
On the End State:
According to Kamenka a central deficiency of a M^up-ist account is its pre
industrial character, also its romantic character, and its view of creative
labour.
These are a result in part of looking for utopia in the past, the
sources of which according to Kumenka are:
(i)
a mistaken view of the happy (noble) savage;
(ii)
the abundance of industry;
(iii) the rationality of industry (presumably its increasingly automatic and
self-regularity character?).
This is confused.
Sources
(ii) and (iii) are the basis of the past industrial
character of the end state (where the machines are really whirring along).
The main source of the search in the past is quite different, namely the search
for historical models, however partial, of the good or better life.
The
reason is that
(iv)
there is something drastically wrong with present arrangements which not
rectified by minor adjustments.
The end state, so far as it is described, is certainly a curious mixture of
A'
pre- and past-industrial elements.
The end state is not a static state, but a stable, climax state.
analogy is again useful here.
The ecological
Capitalism is like a pioneering stage.
Stable
states may have been achieved in the past, to be disturbed in one way or another.
That is one reason why it is important to look in the past - for fc^r^r
of past stable states.
Political theory (note A *)
As a result of the way 'political system' is commonly defined, anarchy is not a
political system.
The reason is that 'most authors consider the modern
political system to be that system which controls the use of power or force in
society'
(Kaplan, p.22).
therewith that system.
Anarchy aims to remove use of power and force, and
The exclusion could of course be taken to be a (further)
inadequacy in the definition, a mere technicality almost, got around by
expanding 'controls' disjunctively to 'controls or removes'.
3
For whether or not anarchy is a political system, it is certainly an
organisational system or structure.
POLITICAL THEORY AND MORALITY
1.
On the one hand, it is claimed that 'any acceptable form of social
order...must rest on moral foundations, which are in principle ascertainable
at any period, and permanently valid'.'*'
(Donegan, p.xiv)
On the other, and more common view, politics simply tramples over morality
when it suits it.
However that is a matter of one morality, e.g. of a
Christian established form, being overwhelmed by another Mafia-style morality
not the absence of a value position.
theory.
2.
Any political theory rests on a value
That is the point.
There is the problem of evil, powerful people, often unintentionally
evil people such as Reagan, Thatcher, ... Hitler flourished most of his life;
he led an active (etc.) life ...
3.
Anarchism does not require especially good people.
But political life
would run much more easily without a certain range of people.
(Of course,
states think this, and totalitarian states try to realise theit aim).
4.
On Political Obligation
obligation.
There is no good ground as basis of political
All arguments designed to establish obligation to a state -
of people living in it ('its territory') especially - are wanting.
(Argument for this there).
Scepticism about political obligation does
not imply scepticism about obligation.
So moral scepticism is not implied.
And on the contrary, most requirements are of the first importance in
outlining alternatives to the state.
Hobbes problem was that of political obligation - 'reasonswhy we ought to
change the state'
(R p.61).
Hobbes finds three causes of disorder (competition - reflecting self
interest drives;
distrust;
argued for on ground that
enjoyment of power ('glory') [Self-interest is
motive is self-preservation.]
To these he opposes inter - from desire for security.
1.
This involves a very dubious objectivity.
4
On Marx-Engels way
Although Marx and Engels say comparatively little about their projected
end state, they say a great deal about the route through the new state -
to that end, and about the means to be used along that route.
By contrast with means, they are far too restrictive about routes, ruling
out many plausible roads to change (including peasant revolutions, etc.)
Engels' proposed route is through 'a new social order' where production and
industry run on behalf of society, according to a social plan.
The main
features are addition of private property (vol.l, p.88) and of private
means of communication (p.92).
Note that it is unclear whether this social
order is an immediate or end state, but those features are common to both.
There is massive industrial and agricultural production (though not over
production) by (rationalised) planned economy without (
) private
property (I,p.92).
Hence, division into antagonistic clauses becomes superfluous.
There are
new all-round people (p.93), a disappearance of division of labour, for
flexible labour.
There is association instead of competition.
Fusion of
town and country (p.94).
According to Marx-Engels (I,p.l83) the route is through the central state.
'The workers must not only strive [against democrats]
for a single and
indivisible...republic, but also within this republic for the most
determined centralisation of power in the hands of the state authority.
They must not allow themselves to be misguided by the democratic talk of
freedom for the communities, of self-government, etc.'
No communal property
'Concentrate productive
to remain :
etc... in
means of
of state'.
This account is
extremely top-down.
As to means, it looks as if Marx and Engels are prepared to adopt any means,
likely or not.
For Marx, the main means are by violent revolution (last
page Poverty of Philosophy).
of classes.
Revolution is the outcome of the contradiction
By contrast, Engels prefers peaceful means (in 1847 i.e.
vol 1, p.89);
but he won't at all rule out revolution.
But together Marx and Engels emphasise violent means, and encourage excuses
on occasions (
p.180).
5
Under the pretext that the petty bourgeous democrats will betray the
workers, the subversion (destabilization) of their government is planned
(Vol 1. address of CC to League, pp.180-1) Unlike Bak
Marx and Engels.advocate fostering massacres etc.
stuff mean?), and a regime of terror.
(for what else can this
Bak
thinks that in a
revolutionary situation such things may occur but should be immunized
(I can easily check the reference in Bak
if necessary (p.180).
For the most part, Engels was much more inclined to peaceful and established
means to change, even to change by way of ballot box and universal suffrage;
the Democratic route to state transformation (1, p.195, also 1, p.202).
Note Engels' introduction to Class Struggles in France written in 1895 (p.195),
e.
i.
later than the more bellicose texts Lenin is relying on - and as the
fruit of a riper experience of politics.
He says that by party action
universal suffrage
'transforme de mayer de dupere qu'il a ete jusqui'
en instrument
d'emarcqation'and this as footnote shows is a quote from Marx.
This suggests that it can be used to gain control of and subsequently transform
state app
In 1895 (pp.199-200) Engels suggests a revision of
.
Now show
means, propaganda etc., to win over the mass of people [different from
technological determination!]
No doubt because of technological determination,
there is no need to be too specific about means;
for it is not as if activity
is shaping the course of things, only speeding up the (in
) process.
Reasons for the lack of detailed description of the end state in Marx-Engels:
1.
This would be to try to set the future, which is reactionary (Why?
Because
of historical determination?), and unnecessary, because future people will be
wiser than us.
2.
Standard explanation, suggested by Marx:
'scientific socialism cannot
describe in any detail the society that will replace capitalism.
Utopians
speculate about the socialist future : Marxists analyse the capitalist present'
(Moore, p.76).
Moore argues the standard explanation is implausible.
6
Principles of Individualism [ ?]
1.
Government based on individually-given consent of citizens - 'its
authority or legitimacy deriving from that consent'
(Lubes, p.ll)
Consent-answering back requirement
2.
Political representation as representing individual interests, not
classes, estates, etc.
3.
That's all.
interests.
Government confined to enabling satisfaction of individual
Hence towards laissez-faire, against paternalism, influencing
or interpreting individual wants.
(79).
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Box 120: Philosophy Wisdom to Wowserism
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Como House > Green Table > Pile 5
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�The most notorious of these
(econstructions*are the social contract theories ^pf^ilg&bes, Rousseau,reccntly Rawls.
,
whereby individual members of a society fictitiously enter into an enforceable contract,
inescapable for themselves and all their descendants, setting up the state, primarily as a security
arrangement. In later versions4here is much negotiating and bargaining in contrived sifuations,
where humans lose many of their distinctive features and accoutrements (in a effort to ensure
some initial fairness).
A variant on contract theories, which justify some sort of state arrangements aj y they
arose in an ideal way, is retrojustification of the state as naturally arising, as a sort of super
insurance agency, from pre-state arrangements. For example, the minimal state evolves from a
competing set of state-like security agencies one of which somehow gains a monopoly, and is
retrojustified through insurance arguments (concerning risk and compensation).
Now modern states did not arise in any such "natural" or contractual way. Often they
we^^posed by conquest or through colonialisation, and with a few exceptions, using military
means^ra&*than Offering much sweetness and light and choic^Nor do the ideal constructions
(
or histories offer much justification for these resulting state power configurations. For the states
so delivered are very different from those most people presently toil under.
In any case, the arguments involved do not succeed. They are extraordinarily gappy by
contemporary logical standards, amd (hey depend upon some utterly implausible assumptions,
for example as to how vile conditions are in extra-state situations.
No doubt some of the gaps
Could be plugged by further, further contestable, assumptions, but such analytic work remains
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to be attempted and assessed. In fact it was ea^ realised that such arguments exhibit unlikely
and even paradoxical features. For example, in consenting to a state for security purposes,
'4
participants to the state contract proceed to establish an institution which is far more dangerous
to them than the power of others taken distribudvely. It would seem that those smart enough to
enter into a social contract for a state would be smart enough to foresee the problems of hiring a
monster, and to avoid the steer and stated along without it.
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'the state is necessary and that
' the state is superior to its absence, 1)ut w;, argument^as are presented depend upon a false
choice. For only two opdons are considered:
H, a horrible Hobbesian "state of nature" and
S, a well ordered(contructually-rea^e^Hobbesian state.
The argument, appealing to the vices of H and the virtues of S, has little trouble in concluding
* * S is better than H (or similarly, radial agents would select S over H, etc.)
The choice conveniently leaves out other options,
as anarchist ones.
Why should
anarchists want to line up with S? They can agree with proposition * *. They might also want
to assert that anarchistic arrangements Z are superior to S. Whereupon it is evident that neither
* nor * follows. For necessity all aggeRible alternatives have to be considered (by the
That has not been done. For superiority the superiority of S to Z and
semantics of
other altemadves has to be taken into account. That has not been done.
One alternative is Carter's -Society which produces 'the kind of individuals who have
strongly internalized values and can live cooperatively and freely without the threat of force ...'
(p-25).5
5
" Hobbe s
Bottom half: really a reranking.
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the arguments, ^even if somehow repaired, would not establish an institution with
anything approaching the power and complexity of the modem state. Arguments to the state
typically establish, only a rather minimal state, with certain protective and regulatory powers.
Such * minimal state, would not deliver many of the goods economists, still less socialists, have
come to expect of the state. The arguments certainly do not establish anything like the
oppressive paternal state with a panoply of powers that many citizens are forceably subject to,
powers states have accumulated by their own unjustified predatory activity. In this respect too,
arguments to the state resemble arguments to God. Deistic arguments characteristically establish
(insofar as they establish anything) only a quite minimal fAtzr w/hcA, a first cause, a most perfect
object, a universal designer, "clockmaker" or the like. They do nothing to establish many of the
powers or properties ascribed to God.
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�^RORLEM& IN PRESENT WORLD SOCIAL AND-POLITICAL
There are great many problems, many of them getting worse rapidly. Though anarchist
arrangements played little part in producing these problems, many of them developing and
&
. .
—. getting out of central under free-enterprise capitalist and state-socialist arrangements, it is
sometimes outragously with an array of these problems, and fail/ as s...^.. Because it is unable
to do so. Why on earth should anarchism be presumed to do this?----- -,
One critic endowed with this level of 'gall' (one A. Werthei'per)
contends that anarchism is unable to successfully deal with four presently
existing world social conditions. These are: 1) that "the population of the
earth is (perhaps) too large, but increasing at a rapid rate with no prospect
for a serious reduction"; 2) that "in much of the world, basic human needs
are not being satisfied"; 3) that "the world's natural and human resources
are not evenly distributed ac%ross the globe"; and finally 4) that "the
present level of subsistence is based on a high level of social and
economic interdependence among various regions of the world and within
the regions themselves". In addition/?^., anarchism is unable to cope
with conflicts between individual self-interest and social needs,
particularly as relates to... defense (Clark p.142).
The short response is So what? Firstly, insofar as these conditions constitute problems
("condition " 3) is more a fact than a "problem"^ no political theory is coping successfully, only
bn all-conquering ideology would pretend to be able to cope. Democratic capitalism has had
(important isolated pockets excepted) little impact in limiting India's gross population; Maorist
socialism has done only a little better in China. Part of the problem in almost all such
overpopulated regions lies in getting the problem recognised as a problem. ^.Secondly,
prospects of success for anarchism are primarily regional, But a region can hardly be expected
to handle, rather than make limited contributions towards, world problems. Suppose, for
instance, Niue became (or reverted to) an anarchist society, a successful one locally. It would
be no detraction from its local success that it made no impact upon demilitarizing the USA or
halting the world's resource drain to thereto, or that its success was scarcely known aboutthere.
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Dublin Core
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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.
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The most notorious of these
(econstructions*are the social contract theories ^pf^ilg&bes, Rousseau,reccntly Rawls.
,
whereby individual members of a society fictitiously enter into an enforceable contract,
inescapable for themselves and all their descendants, setting up the state, primarily as a security
arrangement. In later versions4here is much negotiating and bargaining in contrived sifuations,
where humans lose many of their distinctive features and accoutrements (in a effort to ensure
some initial fairness).
A variant on contract theories, which justify some sort of state arrangements aj y they
arose in an ideal way, is retrojustification of the state as naturally arising, as a sort of super
insurance agency, from pre-state arrangements. For example, the minimal state evolves from a
competing set of state-like security agencies one of which somehow gains a monopoly, and is
retrojustified through insurance arguments (concerning risk and compensation).
Now modern states did not arise in any such "natural" or contractual way. Often they
we^^posed by conquest or through colonialisation, and with a few exceptions, using military
means^ra&*than Offering much sweetness and light and choic^Nor do the ideal constructions
(
or histories offer much justification for these resulting state power configurations. For the states
so delivered are very different from those most people presently toil under.
In any case, the arguments involved do not succeed. They are extraordinarily gappy by
contemporary logical standards, amd (hey depend upon some utterly implausible assumptions,
for example as to how vile conditions are in extra-state situations.
No doubt some of the gaps
Could be plugged by further, further contestable, assumptions, but such analytic work remains
,^V- Au
to be attempted and assessed. In fact it was ea^ realised that such arguments exhibit unlikely
and even paradoxical features. For example, in consenting to a state for security purposes,
'4
participants to the state contract proceed to establish an institution which is far more dangerous
to them than the power of others taken distribudvely. It would seem that those smart enough to
enter into a social contract for a state would be smart enough to foresee the problems of hiring a
monster, and to avoid the steer and stated along without it.
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show
/
'the state is necessary and that
' the state is superior to its absence, 1)ut w;, argument^as are presented depend upon a false
choice. For only two opdons are considered:
H, a horrible Hobbesian "state of nature" and
S, a well ordered(contructually-rea^e^Hobbesian state.
The argument, appealing to the vices of H and the virtues of S, has little trouble in concluding
* * S is better than H (or similarly, radial agents would select S over H, etc.)
The choice conveniently leaves out other options,
as anarchist ones.
Why should
anarchists want to line up with S? They can agree with proposition * *. They might also want
to assert that anarchistic arrangements Z are superior to S. Whereupon it is evident that neither
* nor * follows. For necessity all aggeRible alternatives have to be considered (by the
That has not been done. For superiority the superiority of S to Z and
semantics of
other altemadves has to be taken into account. That has not been done.
One alternative is Carter's -Society which produces 'the kind of individuals who have
strongly internalized values and can live cooperatively and freely without the threat of force ...'
(p-25).5
5
" Hobbe s
Bottom half: really a reranking.
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the arguments, ^even if somehow repaired, would not establish an institution with
anything approaching the power and complexity of the modem state. Arguments to the state
typically establish, only a rather minimal state, with certain protective and regulatory powers.
Such * minimal state, would not deliver many of the goods economists, still less socialists, have
come to expect of the state. The arguments certainly do not establish anything like the
oppressive paternal state with a panoply of powers that many citizens are forceably subject to,
powers states have accumulated by their own unjustified predatory activity. In this respect too,
arguments to the state resemble arguments to God. Deistic arguments characteristically establish
(insofar as they establish anything) only a quite minimal fAtzr w/hcA, a first cause, a most perfect
object, a universal designer, "clockmaker" or the like. They do nothing to establish many of the
powers or properties ascribed to God.
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^RORLEM& IN PRESENT WORLD SOCIAL AND-POLITICAL
There are great many problems, many of them getting worse rapidly. Though anarchist
arrangements played little part in producing these problems, many of them developing and
&
. .
—. getting out of central under free-enterprise capitalist and state-socialist arrangements, it is
sometimes outragously with an array of these problems, and fail/ as s...^.. Because it is unable
to do so. Why on earth should anarchism be presumed to do this?----- -,
One critic endowed with this level of 'gall' (one A. Werthei'per)
contends that anarchism is unable to successfully deal with four presently
existing world social conditions. These are: 1) that "the population of the
earth is (perhaps) too large, but increasing at a rapid rate with no prospect
for a serious reduction"; 2) that "in much of the world, basic human needs
are not being satisfied"; 3) that "the world's natural and human resources
are not evenly distributed ac%ross the globe"; and finally 4) that "the
present level of subsistence is based on a high level of social and
economic interdependence among various regions of the world and within
the regions themselves". In addition/?^., anarchism is unable to cope
with conflicts between individual self-interest and social needs,
particularly as relates to... defense (Clark p.142).
The short response is So what? Firstly, insofar as these conditions constitute problems
("condition " 3) is more a fact than a "problem"^ no political theory is coping successfully, only
bn all-conquering ideology would pretend to be able to cope. Democratic capitalism has had
(important isolated pockets excepted) little impact in limiting India's gross population; Maorist
socialism has done only a little better in China. Part of the problem in almost all such
overpopulated regions lies in getting the problem recognised as a problem. ^.Secondly,
prospects of success for anarchism are primarily regional, But a region can hardly be expected
to handle, rather than make limited contributions towards, world problems. Suppose, for
instance, Niue became (or reverted to) an anarchist society, a successful one locally. It would
be no detraction from its local success that it made no impact upon demilitarizing the USA or
halting the world's resource drain to thereto, or that its success was scarcely known aboutthere.
,,6
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Lake George - Floor - Pile 6
Box 13: Green Projects in Progress
Lake George House
Lake George House > Floor > Pile 6
-
https://www.antipodean-antinuclearism.org/files/original/4495525491cdad380d51db6c4168e929.pdf
411c2a0db2f12cd20bea776c91ffe49d
PDF Text
Text
CASE DISSOLVED:
critique of argumentsto and for the State
Over the centuries that humans have been stuck with states, many different attempts to
justify them, as in some way necessary or desirable (as more than an unfortunate accident of
history), have been attempted. None pf these arguments succeed (as much would perhaps be
quite widely conceded^).
/
/
There are various wayjs of showing that the arguments fail. One powerful way deploys,
indicates or develops, counterexamples; for instance modelling social arrangements without
states. Another more pedestrian but essential way consists in direct examination of the
arguments, not merely some of them or various classes of them, but, for completeness, each and
every one of them. Ultimately that calls for, what is attempted first in a first attempt fashion,
an exhaustive classification of the arguments „
A preliminary classification of these arguments can take the following form:
1. //i-yfonc or <?Ma,s7-/H,s'f(9rzc. These arguments divide in tum into two principal subclasses:
1.1 Daycrzpnve.*
/b/Zacy o/TAo
quo.
A first group of arguments^justification of the state, try to take advantage of the
descriptive features that states are entrenched almost everywhere as the dominant feature of the
political landscape. Helpful as it may be having states in avoiding hypothetical in injecting a
heavy element of realism oLesdisn, nonetheless fact is not per se justification: what is often
X
ought not to be. Bank robbers and robber barons are justified by their mere existence There
are similar problems<dth the argument from tradition. If some principle, practice or theory
stood for a good while it had something going for it. Some such consideration lies at the basis
of precedence in law; the idea of tradition as encapsulating past wisdom - or past folly. Among
the problems are that with authoritarian institutions come their antitheses, with the state the
anti-state. Many practices like barbarism and racism have stood for a very long tirne,^ many
organisations like mafia have been airound for a long time, so they have something going for
them? Such troubles, the evident gap between descriptive and normative, are among those that
plague
In s^prt without utterly questionable connecting assumptions,
such as that what is is necessary (a modal fallacy) or that what is is right (a deontic fallacyi),
such arguments fail to afford justification.
There are some important JMbtypes of descriptive (or quasi-descriptive) arguments,
namely
*
1
arguments. The state is not only established, it works. Immediate difficulties
This fallacy, heavily utilized by Hegel, is critically examined in NNL.
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with such arguments are obvious. The Mafia too/is well-established. It too works, often in
opposition the the State (as a sort of negative opposite, like the Devil to God). What sort of
standards of
is working
intended to meet? All sorts of awful political
arrangements have "worked", at least in persisting for as long as statist arrangements:
despotisms, dictatorships, tyrannies, ... . Still as pragmatic arguments enjoy considerable
popularity, especially in North America, they will have to be considered in more detail (than
they deserve).
*
arguments. The state has evolved through a long sequence of political forms.
It is tried and tested, and now selected, selected as best available. Such arguments afford
scientific clothing for the appalling Hegelian "what is is right". For what has evolved is
selected thereby as best, and what is selected as best is no doubt right (by a familiar utilitarian
deontic reduction). Slather evidently such arguments prove too much. Any form that in fact
emerges, no matter how achieved, though what dusta^dly Machievellian deeds, no matter how
awful, is thereby justified: empires and dictatorships of the worst sort, fa^ist and totalitarian
states, one and all, are justified, provided only they are established.^
this only for climax states, where some sort of evolutionary plutoniums have been achieved
have been achieved (otherwise bad means to select evolutionary ends may temporarily prevail).
But where is the evidence that the State is not another transitional stage, like feudalism before
it? As an evolutionary form it is very recent, and fortunately not yet established in evolutionary
time.
1.2 AfoK-J&pcripf/ve. Difficulties with descriptive arguments, including prescriptive
fallacies (deriving presciptive or evaluative conclusions from purely descriptive premisses), are
evaded/idealisation arguments, which include
These are genetic in justificatory character, relating the
mythological "historical" development of the State from an imaginary pre-state situation.^
These arguments are not sharply^p^rated from
* fdea/ /n,yfory arguments.
* MMagmary
and ideal reconjfrMcrfoK arguments. For the transactions, such as an
originating social contract, may be presented in a quasi-historic form. This important class of
arguments is broader than contractual arrangements, including all the following sorts of
imaginary transactions: negotiating, bargaining, experimenting, etc., in given (idealised)
conditions, perhaps issuing in an arrangement, agreement, contract, etc. One preliminary
That contemporary exponents and practitioniers of state craft are inclined to accept these^orts of
considerations, and to recognise any region that has gained (short-term) control over a territory
and its administration, does nothing for the considerations^ What it reveals rather is the moral
sickness of contemporary real-politics.
They include
(as opposed to
relocation arguments, where a group ("voting
with its feet ) relocates and forms a state (except of course these gorups, when there was room
for them, tended to aim for new societies, not states).
These arguments form a bridge between descriptive and ntunative. While voluntary contract
arguments are descripively implausible, voluntary relocation has, or did have, a little descriptive
�3
classification of these arguments divides them into
natural
quasi-theological, legalistic
invisible hand
evolutionary
consensual or equivalent.
artificial,
The most notorious of these reconstructions, or political thought-experiments, are the
social contract theories whereby individual members of a society fictitiously enter into an
enforceable contract, inescapable for themselves and all their descendants, setting up the state,
primarily as a security arrangement. In later versions which may involve other legalistic forms
than contracts, such as pa^cts, trusts, etc., there is much negotiating and bargaining in contrived
situations, where humans lose many of their distinctive features and accoutrements (in a effort
to ensure some initial fairness).
A variant on contract theories, which justify some sort of state arrangements
Z/* they
arose in an ideal way, is retrojustification of the state as naturally arising, as a sort of super
insurance agency, from pre-state arrangements. For example, the minimal state evolves from a
competing set of state-like security agencies one of which somehow gains a monopoly, and is
retrojustified through insurance arguments (concerning risk and compensation).
Such arguments are sometimes presented as replacing overall contractual arrangements
(through minor arrangements undoubtedly enter) with invisible hand mechanisms. Whereas
contractual arguments take the general segmented shape:
INITIAL STATE: INPUT
INTERMEDIATE STATES
prestate
negotiation followed by
situation:
draft contrad, assessment
"state of nature"
FINAL STATE: OUTPUT
state established
situation
followed by contract adoption
^in invisible hand arguments the intermediate steps, on route to the state, consist in formation of
organisations and their progressive amalgatiation to provide finally a state. For example, in
Nozick these organisations are taken to comprise protective agencies (though that is only one
statist function), and to ensure legitimacy for the final object, it is contended that each
intermediate state derives from the proceeding in a morally permissible way, namely preserves
% selected rights. Such arguments fail for two main classes of reasons: inadequacy in the
derivations of late and final stages from earlier ones, and unsatisfactoriness over the initial state
(in particular, what is assumed in it, such as proprietorial rights, and what is excluded, i$ the
way of more satisfactory alternatives).
In these forms the State arises through voZimfary actions and transactions. Whereas
anarchists and many socialists see anarchism as a post-state state, these transaction arguments
often assume anarchism, in very motly forms, as pre-state states. People voluntarily elect to
escape those pre-state form, "rushing" into the jaws of the State. But there are, as well,
versions, where the State is established through legalistic or religious means,
natural religion or the like. For example, the details of State organisation, or a recipe or
�4
commandments therefore, are received by or given to some powerful religious personage, who
implements the organisation under religious authority. The legalistic equivalent came about
through implementation, not of religious dictates, but what may be very similar in practical
affect and detail, natural law. Normally this law will be "seen", for, by some powerful
personages, who are in a position to convey, and have put into effect, their illumination. With
the decline of religion these sorts of arguments have lost much of their general appeal (they
should never have enjoyed much credibility). But many relics of these shattered arguments
remain, to be removed. A critical point is that such arguments should not gain independent
standing. Most law is mfra-state, state manufactured and state serving. What is independent of
states has to answer to standards, moral standards especially, that are independently justified.
Similarly for religious commandments. As a result, these arguments collapse back to
arguments for the State.
Now modern states did not arise in any such "natural" or contractual way. Often they
were imposed by conquest or through colonialisation, and with a few exceptions, using
military means rather than offering much sweetness and light and choice. There are a notable
discrepancies between typical justifications of the state (in which much is sweetness and light,
though it is far from a pareto-optimal object) and common explanations of the role of the state
(in which much is obviousness and intrigue). Nor do the ideal constructions or histories offer
much justification for these resulting state power configurations. For the states so delivered
are very different from those most people presently toil under.
In any case, the arguments involved do not succeed. They are extraordinarily gappy by
contemporary logical standards. They depend upon some utterly implausible assumptions,
for example as to how vile conditions are^n extra^state situations. These changes are easily
illustrated, and will be.) small immediate)^eana&14 example.
Underlying several of the imaginary transaction arguments to the state, are various c/zofcg
arguments of a thought-experiment cast. Commonly such arguments ambitiously aim to show
that
* the state is necessary, and that
* the state is superior to its absence.
But such arguments.like those embedcTin
confracf arguments .are little better than con
jobs.as are presented depend upon a false choice. For only two options are considered:
H, a horrible Hobbesian "state of nature" and
S, a well-ordered (contructually-reached) Hobbesian state.
The argument, appealing to the vices of H and the virtues of S, has little trouble in concluding
* * S is better than H (or similarly, rational agents would select S over H, etc.)
other options, such as anarchist ones. Why should
anarchists want to line up with S? They can agree with proposition * *. They might also want
The choice conveniently leaves
to assert that anarchistic arrangements Z are superior to S. Whereupon it is evident that neither
* nor * follows. For necessity all accessible alternatives have to be considered (by the
�semantics of
That has not been done. For superiority, the superiority of S to Z and
other alternatives has to be taken into account. That has not been done. — ,
-----------------------
alternative i^\Carter^^(?c^ry^which produces The kind of individuals who have
strongly internalized values and can live cooperatively and freely without the threat of force ...\
i^)(p.25).4 6V1C-
No doubt some of the gaps in the arguments could be plugged by further, further
contestable, assumptions, but such analytic work remains to be attempted and assessed, after
two millennia of such arguments. In fact it was long ago realised that such arguments exhibit
unlikely and even paradoxical features. For example, in consenting to a state for security
purposes, participants to the state contract proceed to establish an institution which is far
more dangerous to them than the power of others taken distributively. It would seem that
those smart enough to enter into a social contract for a state would be smart enough to foresee
the problems of hiring a monster, and to avoid the state and steer along without it. In
establishing a state, inhabitants set up an institution that is far more powerful and dangerous
to them than the power of other inhabitants taken singly or in groups.
This is to think that Men are so fulish that they tak care to avoid
what Mischiefs may be done then by PoZe-caM, or
but are
contra^ f^ay think it Safety, to be devoured by AZo/asA
These arguments, like others to follow, even if somehow repaired, would not establish an
institution with anything approaching the power and complexity of the modern state.
Arguments to the state typically establish, at best, only a rather minimal state, with certain
protective and regulatory powers. Such minimal states would not deliver many of the goods
economists, still less socialists, have come to expect of the state. The arguments certainly do
not establish anything like the oppressive paternal state with a panoply of powers that many
citizens are forceably subject to, power states have accumulated by their own unjustified
predatory activity. In this respect too, arguments to the state resemble arguments to God.
Deistic arguments characteristically establish (insofar as they establish anything) only a quite
minimal rAar w/zZc/t, a first cause, some existent, a most perfect object, a universal designer,
clockmaker or the like. They do nothing to establish many of the powers or properties
asciibed to God.
There is yet another resemblance a surplus of attributes are regularly ascribed to Gock so
much power, knowledge, andj^^like^that paradoxes of omnipotence, omniscience, and
jimilar, are quickly engendereb^aradoxes that a lesser God that merely satisized on virtue (and
could tolerate some production of evil) could easily escape)^ So too a surplus of power is
conceded to the State. The state carries ^far more power than is required for collective
organisation, a large "political surphis" which should be relinquished.
/4
^ reversmg Hobbes' argument,pottom halfl really a cranking.
$
Locke p.372.
——^Lesser Gods encounter ^other difficulties: their plurality, the fact that they can be exceeded by
other greater Gods, and their upstaging by ontological arguments.
�6
2(-l*) S*y^7?zayic. These arguments divide again into two principal subclasses, namely
2.1 Ana/yac and
2.2 M?K#K(2/y%c.
Further both subclasses may be subdivided in tum into individualistic and holistic subclasses,
for instance 2.1 into
2.1.1 Indiviualistic and
2.1.2 Non-individualistic.
Most recent investigation has been concentrated within subdivision 2.1.^1, upon game-theoretic
justifications of the State. Indeed, given prevailing methodological individualism, which
almost invariably takes analytic form, all acceptable justification reuced to this subdivision?
Certainly other systematic ways of endeavouring to justify the state tent
z to have
fallen by the wayside or been abandoned. However it is worth listing two further forms, one of
which remains significant:
* Holistic/brz/t considerations. The State is presented as the form, or even spirit, of Society,
much as the mind is the form of the corresponding body. Insofar as there is an argument, it is
analogical, from an increasingly dubious basis. Contemporary up-dating of the torm'ideas
would no doubt have the State as - what is even less plausible - the program, or the software,
of a corresponding Society.
* Mora/ considerations.
But there is little good reason to embrace individualism, methodological or other, because many
sorts of wholes, beginning with ^bstra&i, do not come down to individuals; it is poor
methodology to try to proceed as if they do. More on individualism elsewhere. See aM JB
�3VHATEVER3
2. Arguments in a game theory setting: Prrhners' Diiemma games and supergames.
What is widely regarded
as the most persuasive justification of the state [is] "the argument
that, without the state, people would not voluntarily cooperate to
provide themselves with certain public goods... ". This argument,
which is quite popular with contemporary academics, suggests
that, without the state, people would not be able to "act so as to
realise their
interests."*
.
So far, hewexEr, we have not encountered^an argument, but simply a very large claim. The
argument itself^is remarkably circuitous, circuiting through a range of examples drawn from
game theory, and, so it will emerge, as yet quite indecisive. Obtaining a view, a clear view, of
the whole argument, or rather the spectrum of potential arguments, matters for anarchism. For
that will help considerably in dispelling the myth that here, partly hidden, is a powerful
P3p*x
argument against
A
The
argument takes the form of a modal syllogism:
* The state is necessary for the optimal, or adequate, provision of collective (i.e. public)
goody (zzm/or premiss),
of*
'
* Collective goods are necessary for a satisfactory social life, (J%7M% premiss) .
the state is necessary for a satisfactory social life./Moreover, given that the latter, a
satisfactory social life (in a given region), is a certain desiderata, the state is to that extent
necessary (a
necessity is (^bolutized).
While the big argument takes thatybrm, it is subject to variation. Furthermore, some
variation is essential, else it, and one of the chief forms incorporated, is invalid. For the
argument displayed has a different, and an ambiguous, middle term. For requisite uniformity,
and validity, the middle term has to be either a) adequate provision of colective goods, or o)
optimal provision of collective goods. While little supporting argument get lavished on the
minor premiss, it being assumed obvious, that obviousness
selected. For a satisfactory social life may result when
when term o) is
than optimal provisioning of
collective goods occurs. Adequate lives only require adequate goods, perhaps even a modest
supply of goods for less consumptive societies, not optimal or maximal levels.
There is/a significant skating about, of justificatory relevance, in the "most persuasive
justification of the state", as normally slackly presented^between
(as in o), nomally explicated in terms of maximization;
erms of satisization);
of provisioning: opPma/
(as in a), have construed int
(unspecified, as in the quote above, or perhaps
specified as in Hobbes, e.g. defence and security of property).
Unfortunately for the argument, all that the game-theoretic arguments for the major
1
2
Grofman 80, p.108, quoting Taylor. For another similar statement, qualified to members of a
large public, see Taylor 82, p.53.
Thus, basic collective goods for a basic social life, as for instance in subsistence lifestyles.
��'
'
'
' /
premiss typically establish at best is failure of optima^ or certain large prov^pning, without the
state. They do not show failure to provision at all without the state, or failure to achieve
"basic" provision, or even adequate provisioning. Now anarchism can^granF that certain large
provisioning is improbable without the state; for example^ntercoiynental nuclear missiles, or
large output nuclear power plants. 3 But i^hardly matters! f&r such state-posessed goods are?
arguably antithetical to satisfactory social life. Nor need anarchism accede Rr optimality
requirements, thereby destroying usual game-theoretic arguments. For these arguments usually
show that more would be obtained under certain counter-individualistic cooperative strategies
than would otherwise be obtained, not that some or basic levels would not be achieved. To
put it bluntly, satisizing anarchists can throw out the challenge: what does it matter if a few
state prisoners defect (i.e. there are some not fully-paid-up rider^so long as enough goods are
still delivered? That challenge has not been met, even implicitly, as will appear. 5?
It is unreasonable, in any case, to demand optimal levels from non-statist societies,
because no extant stat^ measure up to such excessive requirements. Indeed most staites do
...
...........................................
,
. bd
not even meet utterly basic demands. Henceforth we shall be looking for
leads,
which %?.yo /hero cover basic demands.
The argument for the critical major premiss takes the following sort of route, involving
these components:
1. Assimilation of the problem of provision of collective goods (in the light of the minor
premiss it can be cast as a problem) to paradigmatic problems in game theory, initially the
Prisoners' Dilemma (PD for short). No doubt efforts at provision of public goods commonly
result in arrangements that can be represented formally as Prisoners' Dilemmas. But it is
sometimes claimed, what will be repudiated subsequently, that all such efforts result in PD
situations, that is that there is a universal linkage. Two connections are regularly assumed: a
universal representation of problems in game theory, and a more plausible less ambitious
connection with PD games. That is:
* all provisioning problems can be represented within game theory.
** these problems^requently)takePD form.
.
The first assumption, of game theory representation, is^severe. Each problem is transformed
into a game, with n independent players, normally individuals or individual units (such as an
"individual" family or firm in economics^)/ These players characteristically possess but limited
information, and almost invariably are allowed only extraordinarily narrow motivations and
objectives, am) as maximizing their own interests or pay-offs, in a rigid setting with fixed
predetermined moves.$
According to the more plausible, less ambitious collections,
3
4
5
So much is argued elsewhere (nuclear wo^k).
While in many politically relevant applications, such as the "tragedy of the common^' game,the
players may bedndividuals, in other applications the players may be communities, societies, or
even states, e.g\mtemational traaR and war games.
It is this sort of rigidity and limitation that/make^ parts of game-theory automatically tractable.
<?;
�3
* provisioning of public goods frequently yields prisoners' dilemma situations, Ahat is the
problem involved can be transformed into a typical PD game, comprising a perhaps interated
games among a public of n individuals.
2. Sometimes these games yield unfavourable results, that is not enough individuals cooperate
but instead defect, so the good in question will not be delivered.
3. On/y by intervention pf the state can cooperation be obtained, by coercion of individuals?
other devices, such a;
of the market, will notsucceed.
�4
3. THE CASE AGAINST REPLACEMENT FROM PRISONERS' DILEMMA SITUATIONS AND THE
buttress the State status quc^are based on variants of the prisoners' Dilemma, to the effect that
there are imporran? cases where individuals will not agree^ or co-operate to provide them
selves with (or to maintain) collective goods without coercion, such as on/y the State can
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. In short,'certain
individual choice cannot replace state-covered choice.
important cases, coo<
There are (as the bracketed clauses indicate) two main types of case, those where people
do not conrri&M&.to
themselves with, or with optimum quantities of, a "collective
good", and those where people do not
themselves to
or maintain optimum
quantities of, some already available "collective good". The first type of case is taken to
include such traditional and modern concerns of the state and its subsidiary institutions as
order, security, defence, and perhaps private property, as well as sewerage schemes, water
supplies, waste services, public health, social security, etc. The second case is supposed to
include, as well as village commons, newer enviromental concerns such as clean air, unpolluted
streams and beaches, parks, rainforests, wilderness, whales, etc. But there is no sharp division
between the cases (security or parks could be of either type depending on the status quo), and
The case broken-backed right here: because if we don't ^o this^not going to agree to social
contract — which allegedly implies these things — either. Similarly,
jocia/ contract theory
&ro&cn-&ac%cJ.
The Tragedy of the Commons is set up so as to assume no collective methods have been
developed or can be developed without coercion. (Roberts).
The point of coercion is to retain the privatised individual. For the factor of coercion makes it in
intrests of private individual. So coercion makes the effect of relations to be got without
exceeding provatised individual picture. Coercion substitutes for relations in the context of
privatised individuals.
Privatised individuals are, of course, products, in large part, of the operation (and enforcement
and entrenchment) of a particular social theory, or ra/Zzcr jar/ ofsocial theory.
Arguments of this type are sometimes said to represent 'the strongest case that can be made for
the desirability of the State* (M. Taylor, Anarc/ty anJ Coap^raZiaa, 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 nperson 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 the jawt^
Zagica/ /oral — those where people do not
to
themselves with, or with
'optimum' quantities of, a 'collective good' (e.g. security, order, sewage), and those where
people do not refrain themselves to wainfam, or maintain 'optimum' quantities of, some alrca<
available 'collective good' (e.g. commons, 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.cif. 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, FoaaJan'aaj o/Po/aica/ Aaa/y^, Columbia University press, New York, 1980.
Z
y
�5
as arguments for state institution both have the same logical form, that of a Prisoners' Dilemma
or some finite sequence of Prisoners' Dilemma games (what are called Prisoners' Dilemma
&%?^rgames).
The arguments are not mere exercises in game theory since it is through arguments of this
type that political theorists such as Hobbes and Hume have attempted to demonstrate the
necessity of the State, so it is sometimes claimed (e.g. by Taylor). Furthermore, it is with
arguments of the same^form, the "Tragedy of the Commons", that Hardin and others have tried
to show that extensive, indeed draconian, state powers are required to resolve environmental
problems; without such powers no exploiter or polluter will exercise restraint, ra
c
.
Consider the single Prisoners' Dilemma game where each player, or prisoner, is assumed,
as is usual in these things, to be egoistic (sometime equated with "being rational"), to seek just
maximisation of his own private payoff, in the special case where there are just two players.
(The special case illustrates all the main points except one, the
c/size in making a
case for the state.)
<
. A basic ingredient^a.considerable variety of argumentfof this type, including Hobbes'
andlTragedy of the Commons' argument, and recent economic arguments for State
intervention to secure collective goods, i^/tne single prisoners' Dilemma game with just two
players.s 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. 3t so happens that if both
prisoners remain silent the State has only enough evidence to impose a 1 year sentence. But if
both confess they would each receive 4 years. The 'game' can be summarised in the following
'payoff' matrix:
Prisoner 1
Strategies
S(ilence) C(onfess)
S
-1,-1
-8,0
C
0, -8
-4, -4
'—
Prisoner 2
The game is not intended to present a moral ^ilemma, 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
An important matter the two player game does not illustrate is the relevance of populations 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 Tayor,
p.5.
�6
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,
the%l goes free by confessing, while if 2 confesses, then 1 halves his or her sentence by
if both prisoners choose their dominant strategy they obtain an
outcome to that which would have resulted by what is tendentiously called 'co-operating', by
confessing.
their both remaining silent.
3.1 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 'co-operate' to obtain an
optimal outcome — should be set up by the State's own operative.^ The case looks like an
inside job; and it M, though neither the operative, nor for that matter the prisoners on their own,
continue to play an essential role. The prisoners, in any finite number, can be members of a
community and payoffs quantities of some collective good. The claim is, that without
intervention (by the State), the community will only chase a subotimal quantity of the good if
any. Some features of the prisoners' relations are assumed to transfer however. Of course the
State's presence in arranging (of accentuating)
such dilemmas is inessential, as is much
else from the example. But some features of the Prisoner's relations are isolated, and so have
no opportunity to communicate or r^aZZy co-operate. 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, io
A cursory aside is often added to the Prisoners' Dilemma to the effect that the segregation
of the priisoners makes no real difference. It is claimed that even if the prisoners could meet
and discuss and even agreed to co-operate, 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
no so — and in a more co-operative social setting than currently encouraged privatisation of
life, the extent of co-operation and trust would undoubtedly be much higher n The argument
has to depend crucially then on substantially mistaken assumptions about human propensities
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 rv (as on many theories) the result of
reflection of social cooperation.
This important point is much elaborated in V. and R. Routley, &?cmZ 77^or^.y, S^Zf
aztrZ Envirownf/tfaZ Pro&Zewty in Environmental Philosophy (edited D. Mannison
and others), RSSS, Australian national University, 1980.
As a result of G. Hardin's Tragedy
CoHWHonj, historical evidence has been assembled
which reveals how far Hardin's 'Commons' diverges from historic commons; see, inparticular,
A. Roberts, 77^ S^Zf-Managing
Allison & Busby, London, 1979, chapter 10, but
also Routley, op.cir., p.285 and ppp.329-332. Similar points apply as regards many other
Dilemma situations. Tn 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.ciz., p.308.
�7
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 Jia? 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 prisoners 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 %/iJ the extent of their
determination by the social context in which they occur is/MKJcwtcnhJ to the whole question of
social 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 is an mJcpcnJcnr parameter,
which depends neither on the preference rankings of other nor on the social context in which
that human operates. Wh8ile 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), vc/y many
Jo /io? cozi/briH, 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 co-operation the types of Prisoners'
Dilemma situations that appear to count in favour of the State.
3.2 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, important, and also
damaging if unresolved, and that they are resolvable by State intervention, and only so
(optimally) resolvable. 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, if 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, optimal, worse) and involve considerations about which resonable parties can differ.
The selection of Dilemmas itself provides an example of value dependence: after all there are
many such Dilemmas (e.g. as to environmental degradation, of over-exploitation, of family
violence or fueds) 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
12
Cf. the disucssion in Taylor, op.ci/., p.93.
�8
many of the arguments using Prisoners' Dilemma games, Hobbes' and Hume's arguments for
the State and Hardin's 'Tragedy of the Commons' for instance, turn out when
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
But in many such sequential Prisoners'
Dilemma games, rational 'co-operation' can occur, even assuming separated players with
purely egoistic interests. 13 For what sequential games permit that isolated games exclude, is
that 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 sueprgames then, no intervention is required.
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 co-operate.
Euqally important, and equally independent of the State, is the matter of breaking down the
adverary, or game, situation so the prisoners do not act as competitors but are prepared to co
operate.^ Informational input may also be important, e.g. news that each prisoner has a good
record of adhering to agreement, 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 is known (shuld they be required in recalcitrant cases), and is used
even by the State, e.g. gifts, deprivation, social pressure, etc. 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 co-operative 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 flase 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.^ But it is quite evident that there are
methods of allocation, both economic (e.g. exchange, through traditional markets, based on
supply costs) and social (e.g. by co-operatives, clubs).
Lastly, introduction of the State to resolve
13
14
15
Dilemma situations has very extensive
This important result is established in Taylor, op. ctf., for a number of critical cases, though not
generally; see, e.g. p.32 but especially chapter 5.
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'.
Both the false dichotomies cited are common-place, not to say rife, in modem 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
�9
effects, *6 many of them negative, so that the gains made, if any, in so resolving Dilemma
situations, appear to be substantially outweighted 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 morre
important, new Dilemmas may be initiated by State activity, as in the case of the prisoners, or
differently with the State as a further player (since the State may engage in whaling, have
access to a commons, etc.). These points lead also to further arguments against the State.
Suppose, to see the impact of the first reason for the failure of independence, the
prisoners are friends and their common interest is to be together. Then, if they are given the
opportunity to co-operate, and independence is not enforced by separation, they will, quite
rationally, choose a joint optimal strategy, and there is no dilemma.
Since the same
considerations will not apply where large numbers of strangers are involved, the question arises
as the extent and severity of Dilemma situations. The question is complicated by the second
double-edged reason for the failure of independence, namely that statist political arrangements
undoubtedly accentuate the extent and severity of Dilemma situations by discouraging
(providing negative incentives) for genuinely co-operative behaviour and mutual aid. This is
another respect in which statist arrangements (like some subclimax biological communities)
tend to be self-reinforcing and self-perpetuating.
Accordingly, what arguments for the State on such bases as Prisoners' Dilemma situations
have to show is not merely
1) that state coercion does suffice to resolve (sufficiently) many such (damaging) Dilemmas,
but also
2) that such coercion is the on/y way of doing so, and
3) that in doing so worse situations than those that are resolved are not thereby induced.
These things have never been shown: nor can they be shown definitively, since firstly there are
various nonstatist arrangements for resolving wehat are taken to be damaging Dilemmas, and
secondly the overall assessment of what Dilemmas are
and what costs are worf/t
incurring in resolving them are ultimately evaluative and go back to rival, and presumably
coherent, value systems. Hence, when all this is spelled out, the irrefutability of anarchism.
To get some feel for the complexity of the issue and for the extent to which evaluative
matters do enter, several points relevant to 1) - 3) should be introduced. Firstly, there are many
Dilemma situations into which the State puts little or no effort and many others which are, or
were, considered as beyond the sphere of influence of the State or as not worthy of State
attention, for instance, cases of environmental degradation, overexploitation of a "resource",
personal or family fueds, etc., several of them aggravated by State arrangments such as
To take one lesser example, State intrusion often induces 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 alientated hours to pay for this
apparent escapism and to cover the high costs of frequently inadequate State activity.
�10
excessive privatisation of resources (e.g. enclosure of the commons). (7/* such Dilemmas can be
downgraded in importance to suit the Statist case so can other Dilemmas apparently favouring
State intervention.)
Many of these cases would not be helped at all by the entry of the State or its
representatives with their authority duly showing (thugh they might be assisted by sensitive
mediation, which does not call for a State, only rudiments of a society). Secondly, introduction
of the State to resolve
Prisoners' Dilemma situations is not without wide-ranging effects,
many of them negative, so that the gains made, if any, in so resolving Dilemma situations have
to be weighed against costs involved in achieving these gains. Among the costs are new
Dilemmas, such as the very example considered in illustrating prisoner Dilemma games which
was initiated by State activity. Differently, new Dilemmas will result with the state as a further
player (since the State may have access to the commons, engage in whaling, etc.). Some of
these situations are interesting in theat they may lead to litigation and decision-making outside
of or largely independent of the State, the results of which the State is supposed to enforce
though it may be against its interests. But what ensures that if sticks to the findings. Nothing
does: it is simply assumed that the State will adhere to its role. But if that assumption is valid
with respect to the State (not known for its reliability) then it is good also for various other
parties. In short, agreement or decisions can be reached and adhered to without need for State
enforcement. So coercion is not always required.
Are there important Dilemmas where use the authority of the State is the (?H/y way?
Often behind the claim that is is, is a false (but very influential) dichotomy, that the only way
of allocating goods, apart from profit-directed markets which may deal abysmally with
collective goods, is through state control. But it is quite evident that there are other methods of
allocation, both economic (e.g. exchange, based on costs involved) and social (e.g. club, co
operatives). [And a mixture of these methods can be applied to resolve any Prisoners' Dilemma
that matters, i.e. here too replacement works. An important initial move is, as was seen, to put
the prisoners in touch, so that they could cooperate: equally important is breaking down the ...]
Such organisations would not have nearly so much to do as statists would like us to
believe, especially once co-operative ways of doing things and mutual aid had become
established ways in contrast to competitive and privatised ways. For the extent of simple
Prisoners' Dilemma situations calling for intervention (of some sort) has been exaggerated and
many, probably, very many, of those that have been thought to require intervention do not
because the players (are prepared to) "cooperate" anyway. There are importantly different
reasons why the latter can happen:- Firstly, enough players operate with motives which are not
purely privatised for a sufficiently optimal outcome to result. This does not imply that these
players have altruistic motives: their interests may depend on those of other players in a range
of nonaltruistic ways. Secondly, many cases presented as if they were simple Prisoner's
Dilemma games turn out when properly analysed, in particular when time is duly taken account
of, to be Prisoners' Dilemma super-games.
Such, for instance, is the positions with the
�11
arguments of Hobbes, Hume and Hardin. But in such supergames rational "cooperation" often
occurs even assuming the players have the worst of privatised motives. In short, where the
correct analysis of a Prisoner's Dilemma game is as a supergame, statists are often beaten at
their own game. [Detail Taylor's partial results, anJ their problems.]
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to be accomplices in a crime, have been
separately imprisoned. A State represen
tative makes the following offers
separately to each: if the prisoner con
fesses 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. But if both
confess they would each receive 4 years.
The 'game' can be summarised in the
following 'payoff' matrix:
Prisoner 1
Strategies S(ilence) C(onfess)
S
-1, -1
-8, 0
C
0, -8
-4, -4
Prisoner 2
3. T7/E C/1SE z1G.4/MSE
AEFL.4 CEA^E^T ERCW
ER/5CWERS' D/EEA7AE1
tS77X/?177CW5
E/7E E/AE.
I he 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 /wporftm/cases where individuals will not
agree^-or co-operate to provide them
selves with (or to maintain) collective
goods without coercion, such as cw/y the
State can furnish/ In such 'dilemma'
situations each individual will hope to
gain advantage, without contributing (or
exercising restraint), from others' contri
butions (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, in
cluding Hobbes' and Hume's arguments
for the State, the 'Tragedy of the Com
mons' argument, and recent economic
arguments for State intervention to
secure collective goods, is the single
Prisoners' Dilemma game with just two
players/ Two prisoners, 1 and 2, taken
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
docs: strategy C is, in the jargon, each
players' 'dominant' strategy (and also in
fact a minimax strategy). For if 2, for ex
ample, remains silent, then 1 goes free
by confessing, while if 2 confesses, then
1 halves his or her sentence by confess
ing.
if both prisoners choose their
dominant strategy they obtain an m/er/or
outcome to that which would have
resulted by what is tendentiously called
'co-operating', by their both remaining
silent.
?./
It is bizarre that a dilemma alleged to
show the necessity of the State — which
is supposed to intervene, forcibly if re
quired, to ensure that the prisoners 'co
operate' to obtain an optimal outcome
— should bg set up by the State's own
operative.^Of course the State's
presence in arranging (or accentuating)
such dilemmas is 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 rec/Zy co-operate.
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 dilem-
A
7
�ma to the human condition is accordingly
seriously limited/
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 co-operate, that would
make no difference, since neither could
trust (the sincerity) of the other
(Abrams, p.193), 'neither has an incen
tive to keep the agreement' (Taylor, p.5).
Experimental and historical evidence in
dicates that this is very often not so —
and in a more co-operative social setting
than the currently encouraged privatisa
tion of life, the extent of co-operation
and trust would undoubtedly be much
higher/ 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 scep
ticism about the reliability of other peo
ple (but if people were /Ar?/ unreliable
and devious, many State arrangements
involved in providing public goods
would not succeed either). That such
assumptionsareoperating can be seen by
elaborating the situation; e.g. to bring
out the first, suppose the prisoners have
a common bond, e.g. they are friends or
they are political prisoners with a shared
social commitment, or they are neigh
bours and face a future in the same com
munity; 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
the
extent of their determination by the
social context in which they occur is
/MnrArznrvna/ 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 prevail
ing (non-Marxist) economics and
associated political theory, is that the in
terests and preferences, as summed up in
a preference ranking or utility function,
of each human that is taken to count is
an mc/e/zenr/enf parameter, which
depends neither on the preference rank
ings 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 con
form (through advertising, education,
popular media),
wany
<7o
/?oz ccw/bfTn, and the extent of cultural
pressure towards privatisation itself
belies the naturalness of this indepen-
sequential games permit that isolated
games exclude, is that players' actions
may be dependent upon past perfor
mance of other players. This dependence
effectively removes one extremely
....a major functmn of the state is unrealistic self-containment assumption
to maintain and pohee inequitable from Dilemma situations, that in
dividuals act in totally isolated ways, not
distribution.
learning from past social interaction. In
such supergames then, no intervention is
required.
Undoubtedly some Dilemmas are
Z/gtZ-f resolved by 'intervention', e.g. by allow
dence. And having sufficiently many/ ing the prisoners to get in touch so that
interest-interdependent people in a smali they find they are neighbours or that
community (which is not thoroughly im they can really co-operate. Equally im
poverished) is normally enough, given portant, and equally independent of the
State, is the matter of breaking down the
their social influence, to avoid or resolve
adversary, or game, situation so the
by co-operation the types of Prisoners'
prisoners do not act as competitors but
Dilemma situations that appear to count are
prepared to co-operate/' Informa
in favour of the State/
tional input may also be important, e.g.
news that each prisoner has a good
ff /yy 77/E /VLEA7A/.1
record of adhering to agreement, or if
not is prepared to stake collateral, etc.
Nor is force or threat of force required
SC/CC777)
as an incentive to guarantee optimal
What the Dilemma-based case for the strategies: a range of other inducements
State has to show — what never has been and incentives is known (should they be
shown — is that there are outstanding required in recalcitrant cases), and is
Dilemma situations which are relevant, used even by the State, e.g. gifts,
important, and also damaging if deprivation, social pressure, etc. But at
unresolved, and that they are resolvable no stage is the State required to make
by State intervention, and only so (op these arrangements: much as some real
timally) resolvable. Finally it has to be Prisoners' Dilemmas are resolved by
shown that in the course of so resolving work of Amnesty International, so
these Dilemma situations, worse situa voluntary organisations can be formed
tions than those that are resolved are not to detect and deal with Prisoners' Dilem
thereby induced. These complex condi ma situations where they are not already
tions cannot be satisfied, if they can be catered for. And in fact communal and
satisfied at all, in a way that is not ques co-operative organisation did resolve
tion begging. For several of the condi Prisoners' Dilemma-type situations
tions are value dependent (e.g. what is historically, for example in the case of
important, damaging, optional, worse) the Commons.
In sum, here also replacement works.
and involve considerations about which
reasonable parties can differ. The selec There are no important Dilemma situa
tion of Dilemmas itself provides an ex tions, it seems, where the State is essen
ample of value dependence: after all tial. The State has been thought to be
there are many such Dilemmas (e.g. as to essential because of certain influential
environmental degradation, of over false dichotomies; for example, that all
exploitation, of family fcuds/or^violencQ) behaviour that is not egoistic is altruistic
which are considered beyond the sphere (but altruistic behaviour is uncommon,
of the State or not worthy of State atten and 'irrational'), that the only way of
allocating goods, apart from profittion.
There are now grounds for concluding directed markets — which tend to deal
that the conditions cannot be satisfied at abysmally with collective goods — is
all. For many of the arguments using through State control.'^ But it is quite
Prisoners' Dilemma games, Hobbes' evident that there are o/Aer methods of
and Hume's arguments for the State and allocation, both economic (e.g. ex
Hardin's 'Tragedy of the Commons' for change, through traditional markets,
instance, turn out when projver/y /or- based on supply costs) and social (e.g. by
to consist not just of a single co-operatives, clubs).
Lastly, introduction of the State to
game but of a sequence of such games,
to be more adequately represented by resolve so/ne Dilemma situations has
what is called a
But in many very extensive effects/ many of them
such sequential Prisoners' Dilemma negative, so that the gains made, if any,
games, rational 'co-operation' can oc in so resolving Dilemma situations, ap
cur, even assuming separated players pear to be substantially outweighed by
with purely egoistic interests.'" For what the costs involved. For there are the
SOCIAL ALTERNA ! tVES Vet. 2 No. 3. )982
25
�many evi! aspects of the typicai State to
put in the baiance. As regards Dilemma
situations, entry of the State with its
authority showing may not help but may
worsen some situations, and more im
portant, new Dilemmas may be initiated
by State activity, as in the case of the
prisoners, or differently with the State as
a further player (since the State may
engage in whaling, have access to a com
mons, etc.). These points lead also to
further arguments against the State.
available 'collective good' (e.g. commons, un
polluted streams, whales, wilderness). That
received arguments of ail these types involves
Prisoners' Dilemma situations (in the wide
sense) is argued, in effect, in Taylor, op.cit.
and etsewhere. 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 popula
tion 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 out
comes that the State alone is said to be able to
arrange, but not mere social cooperation,
when the State zs (as on many theories) the
result or reflection of social cooperation.
7.
This important point is much elaborated in V.
and R. Routley, Soc/af Theories, Se//
Management, and T'n wronwm'a/ ProAferru
in Environmental Philosophy (edited D
Mannison and others), RSSS, Australian
National University, 1980.
9.
10.
11.
12.
4.
Arguments of this type 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 cer
tain arguments such as those of Hume and of
Olson involve Prisoners' Diiernnta 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 /ogtcaZ/orm — those
where people do not rwr/A/wfe to sup/r/y
themselves with, or with 'optimum' quantities
of, a 'collective good' (e.g. security, order,
sewage), and those where people do not
re.s/ram themselves to mam/am, or maintain
'optimum" quantities of, some already
13.
As a result of G. Hardin's Tragerh' o/ rhe
Commons, historical evidence has been
assembled which reveals how far Hardin's
'Commons' diverges from historic commons;
see, in particular, A. Roberts, 7'he Se/fManagmg TTiwonmenr, 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 situa
tions. 'In the experimental studies of the
prisoner's dilemma game approxtmately half
of the participants choose a cooperative
strategy even when they know for certain that
the other player will cooperate'. Abrams.
op.cit., p.3O8.
'
Cf. the discussion in Taylor, op.cit.. p.93.
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.
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 'adver
saries'.
Both the false dichotomies cited are common
place, 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.25O ff.
To take one lesser example. State intrusion
often induces 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 inade
quate State activity.
�of course. ]
5^
The case if broken-backed right here:
to agree
because if we don't to this not goint/
to social contract - which allegedly implies these things - either.
Similarly, the social contract theory is broken-backed.
G5;
. Alternative longer
at this point in §3:-
In shof^* in certain
important cases, cooperative individual choice cannot replace state-covered choice.
There are (as the bracketed clauses indicate) two main types of case, those
where people do not contribute to supply themselves with, or with optimum quant
ities of, a "collective good", and those where people do not restrain themselves
to maintain, or maintain optimum quantities of, some already available "collective
good".
The first type of case is taken to include such traditional and
modern
concerns of the state and its subsidiary institutions as order, security, defence,
and perhaps private property, as well as sewerage schemes, water supplies^.waste
services, public health, social security, etc.
The second case is supposed to
include, as well as village commons, newer environmental concerns such as clean
air, unpolluted streams and beaches, parks, rainforests, wilderness, wha les, etc.
But there is no sharp division between the cases (security or parks could be of
either type depending on the status quo), and as arguments for state institution
both have the same logical form, that of a Prisoners' Dilemma or some finite
sequence of Pri soners' Dilemma games (what are called Prisoners' Dilemma
The arguments are not mere exercises in game theory since it is through
arguments of this type that political theorists such as Hobbes and Hume have
�5.
attempted to demonstrate the necessity of the Stato4^
Furthermore, it is with
arguments of the same form, the "Tragedy of the Commons", that Hardia and others
have tried to show that extensive, indeed draconian, state powers are required
to resolve environmental problems;
without such powers no exploiter or polluter
will exercise restraint.
Consider the gj^le Prisoners' Dilemma game where each player, or prisoner,
is assuined, as is usual in these things, to be egoistic (sometime equated with
"being rational"), to seek just&axijnisation of his own private payoff, in the
special case where there are just two players.
(The special case illustrates all
the main points except one, the importance of size in making a case for the state.)
[Joins text again at fn.5 point.]
/* 4.
In §3:-
The Trac^ec[y of the Commons is set up so as to assume no collective
methods had [Teen developed or can be developed without coercion.
(Roberts).
The point of coercian is to ret^n the privatised individual.
$
For the factor
of coercion makes it in interests of private individualize coercion makes the
effect of relations to be got without exceeding privatised individual picture.
Coercion substitutes for relations in the context of privatised individuals.
Privatised individuals are, of course, products, in large part, of the
operation (and enforcement and entrenchment) of a particular social theory, or
rather sort of social theory.
^5^
In §4:-
The case looks like an inside job;
and it is, though neither
the operative, nor for that matter the prisoners ^n their own,
essential role.
play an
The prisoners, in any finite number, can be members of a
community and payoffs quantities of some collective good .
The claim is, that
without intervention (by thecate), the community will only corpse a subeyy^mo/
quantity of the good if any.
Some features of the prisoners' relations are
assumed to transfer however.
Suppose, to see the impact of the first reason for the
failure of independence, the prisoners are friends and their common interest is to
�6.
be together.
Then, if they are given the opportunity to cooperate, and independ
ence is not enforced by separation, they will, quite rationally, choose a joint
optimal strategy,and there is no dilemma.
Since the same considerations will not
apply where large numbers of strangers are involved, the question arises as the
extent and severity of Dilemma situations.
The question is complicated by the
second double-edged reason for the failure of independence, namely that statist
political arrangements undoubtedly accentuate the extent and severity of Dilemma
situations by discouraging (providing negative incentives) for genuinely cooper
ative behaviour and nmttAcd
aid.
This is another respect in which statist
arrangments (like some subclimax biological communities) tend to be self-reinforcing
and self-perpetuating.
[Transfer some experimental material to here?]
Accordingly, what arguments for the State on such b ases as Prisoners' Dilemma
situations have to show is not merely
1)
that state coercion does suffice to resolve (sufficiently^ many such (damaging)
Dilemmas, but also
2)
that such coercion is the only way of doing so, and
3)
that in doing so worse situations than those that are resolved are not thereby
induced.
These things have never been shown:
nor can they be shown definitely, since firstly
4
there are various nonstatist arrangements for resolving what are taken to be
damaging Dilemmas, and secondly the overall assessment of what Dilemmas are damaging
and what costs are worth incurring in resolving them are ultimately evaluative and
go back to rival, and presumably coherent, value systems.
Hence, when all this is
spelled out, the irrefutability of anarchism.
To get some feel for the complexity of the
issue
and for the extent to
evolutive matters do enter, several points relevant to l)-3) should be introduced.
Firstly, there are many Dilemma situations into which the State puts little or no
effort and many others which are, or were, considered as beyond the sphere of
influence of the State or as not worthy of State attention, for instance, cases of
�7.
environmental degradation, overexploitation of a "resource", personal or family
feuds, etc., several of them aggravated by State arrangements such as excessive
privatisation of resources (e.g. enclosure of the commons).
(If such Dilemmas can
be downgraded in importance to suit the Statist case so can other Dilemmas appar
ently favouring State intervention.)
Many of these cases would not be helped at all by the entry of the State or
its representatives with their authority duly showing (though they might be
assisted by sensitive mediation, which does not call for a State, only rudiments
Secondly, introduction of the State tof&yolve some Prisoners'
of a society).
Dilemma situations is not without wide-ranging effects, many of them negative, so
that the gains made, if any, in so resolving Dilemma situations have to be
weighed against costs involved in achieving these gains.
Among the costs are
new Dilemmas, such as the very example considered in illustrating Prisoner Dilemma
games which was initiated by State activity.
Differently, new Dilemmas will
result with the state as a further player (since the State may have access to the
commons, engage in whaling, etc.).
Some of these situations are interesting in
that they may lead to litigation and decision-making outside of or
independ
ent of the State, the resultgof which the State is supposed to enforce though it
may be against its
d
Nothing does:
interests.
But what ensures that rt sticks to the findings.
it is simply assumed that the State will adhere to its role.
But
if that assumption is valid with respect to the State (not known for its reliability)
then it is good also for various other parties.
In short,agreement or decision!*
can be reached and adhered to without need for State enforcement.
So coercion is not
always required.
Are there important Dilemmas where use the authority of the State is the
only way?
Often behind the claim that is is, is a false (but very influential)
dichotomy, that the only way of allocating goods, apart from profit-directed
markets which may deal abysmally with collective goods, is through state control^'
�8.
But it is quite evident that there
are other methods of allocation, both
economic (e.g. exchange, based on costs involved) and social (e.g. clubs, cooper
[And a mixture of these methods can be applied to resolve any Prinsoners'
atives).
Dilemma that matters, i.e. here too replacement works.
An important initial move
is, as was seen, to put the prisoners in touch, so that they could cooperate:
equally important is breaking down the ...]
[Joins top of p.7]
Such organisations would not have nearly so much to do as statists would like
us to believe, especially once cooperative ways of doing things and mutual aid had
become established ways in contrast to competitive and privatised ways.
For the
extent of simple Prisoners' Dilemma situations calling for intervention (o^ some
sort) has been exaggerated and many, probably, very many, of those that have been
thought to require intervention do not because the players (are prepared to)
"cooperate" anyway.
happen:-
There are importantly different reasons why the latter can
Firstly, enough players operate with motives which are not purely priv
atised for a sufficiently optimal outcome to result.
these players have altruistic motives:
This does not imply that
their interests may depend on those of
other players in a range of nonaltruistic ways.
Secondly, many cases presented
as if they were simple Prisoner's Dilemma games turn out when properly analysed,
in particular when time is duly taken account of, to be Prisoners' Dilemma supergames.
Such, for instance, is the position with the arguments of Hobbes, Hume
and Hardin.
But in such supergames rational "cooperation" often occurs, even
assuming the players have the worst of privatised
correct analysis of a Prisoner's Dil&wima
often beaten at their own game.
problems.]
motives.
In short, where the
game is as a supergame, statists are
[Detail Taylor's partial results, and their
�Chapter 3
Con,v7i^c%y^ /)
CRITIQUE OF THE STATE
1. ARGUMENTS
The main argument for anarchism can be concentrated in a detailed critique of the state.
For therewith arguments against state-like institutions are also advanced. However further
ado is no doubt required to remove all other (unexplified) alternatives to anarchism.
A
Anarchist critiques of the state advance the following themes:
* States and state-like institutions are without satisfactory justification.
* Such institutions are not required for organisational purposes.
* Such institutions have most inharmonious consequences; they bring a whole series of
social and environmental bungles or evils in their train.
In brief, they are unnecessary unjustified evils. The anarchist critique does not end
there, but typically includes, such further themes as :
* States have excessive power,
linkages to state power.
* Societies are not inductably saddled with states. States can be displaced or even decay
(though they are unlikely to just wither away).
(9
�1
Chapter 3
: CRITIQUE OF THE STATE
1. ARGUMENTS
The main argument for anarchism can be concentrated in a detailed critique of the state.
For therewith arguments against state-like institutions are also advanced. However further
ado is no doubt required to remove all other (unexplified) alternatives to anarchism.
/
Anarchist critiques of the state advance the following themes:
*
States and state-like institutions are without satisfactory justification.
e
Such institutions are not required for organisational purposes.
Such institutions have most inharmonious consequences; they bring a whole series of
social and environmental bungles or evils in their train.
In brief, they are unnecessary unjustified evils. The anarchist critique does not end
there, but typically includes, such further themes as :
* States have excessive power.
* States are devices for channelling privilege and wealth to certain minorities with inside
linkages to state power.
* Societies are not ineluctably saddled with states. States can be displaced or even decay
(though they are unlikely to just wither away).
1. The state is an undesirable, or even downright evii, institution, for the following range
of reasons:-
* States entrench inequities, domination and exploitation. States are devices for the
protection of wealth, property and privilege, and usually for the redistribution upwards, and
often concentration, of wealth and privilege. A minor but popular illustration is offered by the
expensive conferences and other junkets that state employees or party officials organise for
themselves and manage to bill to state revenue, in turn sucked up from inequitable taxation.
Certainly a main historical outcome of the state has been domination of exploitation of certain
segments of society by others, and some see its main, and barely concealed, purpose as just
that: domination and exploitation.
* States are typically corrupt. For example, there are enquiries presently in train, or with
follow-through activities yet to be duly completed, in many states in Australia, enquires
which have revealed considerable corruption, and there are prima facie cases for similar
enquiries in most of the remainder. Nor is this a new phenomenon: these revelations often
resemble older or on-going scandals.
* States are enormously expensive, and constitute a heavy drain upon regional resources, and
accordingly on local environments. In poorer regions they are not merely a heavy burden, but
�2
a main cause of impoverishment. One reason for their voracious appetite is an excess of over
remunerated and often under-productive state employees. Another connected reason is that
many state operations are far from lean and efficient, but incorporate many duplications, drag
factors and dead weight. Under anarchisms, of all varieties, these heavy cost burdens,
weighing down subservient populaces, would be shed. Costs of organisation would be very
significantly reduced.
* The state is an incubus. States are major impositions on everyday life. They are intrusive
and demanding. Never has this been more forcefully expressed than in Proudhon's famous
denouncement of state government:
To be GOVERNED is to be at every operation, at every transaction,
noted, registered, enrolled, taxed, stamped, measured, numbered, assessed,
licensed, authorized, admonished, forbidden, reformed, corrected, punished.
It is, under pretext of public utility, and in the name of the general interest,
to be placed under contribution, trained, ransomed, exploited, monopolized,
extorted, squeezed, mystified, robbed; then, at the slightest resistance, the
first world of complaint, to be repressed, fined, despised, harassed, tracked,
abused, clubbed, disarmed, choked, imprisoned, judged, condemned, shot,
deported sacrificed, sold, betrayed; and, to crown all, mocked, ridiculed,
outraged, dishonoured. That is government; that is its justice; that is its
morality (quoted in M p.6).
As a result, there are constant demands for the reduction of the cancerous state, for removing
parts of it through deregulation, selling off state enterprises and so on. There are two troubles
with such demands from anarchist standpoints: they never go far enough, to the complete
reduction of the state to zero, but characteristically retain parts supportive of or favourable to
bigger business, and they proceed in the wrong way, stripping away social safety nets rather
than ripping off business support nets (such as limited liability, strike limitation legislation,
etc.).
* States, for all that they have been promoted as delivering public goods, are mostly dismal
news for environmental protection and health and for social justice. Furthermore they are
liable to impose substantial hazards or risks upon subservient populations not merely through
military and like activities but, more insidious, through support and promotion of dangerous
industries, such as nuclear and giant chemical industries.
* States usually exert a heavy pressure to uniformity, they tend to eliminate plurality and
cultural differences. These pressures are exercised by a state in the alleged interests of
national unity, and against its enemies, external and internal. Even the most liberal of states
tend to give minorities more difficult lives in times of stress, such as war. They are always
espousing national values, state interests, and commonly assimilation and adoption of state
values (thus for example Canada, formerly and briefly a state toying with multiculturalism,
now insistent upon "Canadian values"). Such exercises are conspicuous, not only in citizen
ceremonies and other state rituals, such as national sporting and religious events, but more
important are virtually ubiquitous in elementary education (down to deference to the flag, and
�3
similar).
* States are a major source of wars, and the major source of major wars, undoubted evils
(however supposedly inevitable). They are major sources and suppliers of military
technology and weapons, the means of war. Roughly, the more powerful and "advanced" a
state, the further it is engaged in weapon production and export. Without states it is doubtful
that there would be any nuclear weapons, and accordingly there would be no prospect of
nuclear wars as there would be no weapons with which to fight them.
* States are a serious drag on a more satisfactory international order. That there are not
more, and more satisfactory, international regulatory organisations "is mainly a matter of the
reluctance of nation states to surrender their powers and the dangers of their being dominated
by very powerful states. If only nation states would be dissolved into specialized
[departments] there is every reason to believe that most world problems could be handled by
appropriate specialized [organisations]' (Bumheimp.221).
* States have excessive power, and are even accumulating or trying to accumulate more, for
instance through more centralization, further controls, additional licences, etc., etc. The
excessive power of the state is exhibited not only in the treatment of its citizens and foreigners
within its territory; it is exemplified also in its practices
its territory, through such
features as military pressures, including invasion, trade pressures, including sanitions, and in
treatment of its citizens everywhere.!
Obvious responses to excessive power are
regionalization of powers, separation of powers, achieved by decoupling and some
fragmentation, limitation of powers, and so on.
* Present monolithic governments have assumed far too many roles, for many of which they
are not competent, from some of which they are disqualified by other roles (e.g. as impartial
referees by their business commitments). Because the centre tries to do and control foo much,
as a consequence it does very much unsatisfactorily. Improved arrangements would separate
these roles, deconcentrating and decentralizing power.
States thus appear far from a good bargain on a preliminary consideration of costs, and
very far from maximal or optimal. Especially bad states, the run of states, which engage in
politically-motivated inclination or torture of their citizens, and so on. Where are the
The issue tends to be avoided; it is contended that, contrary to
appearances, we cannot get along without state cossetting: states are necessary. But, given
that we can get along without them, would we really be significantly worse off without them?
cfr .
<r
,,^ven m thd better cases (not allowing for alternative nonstatist arrangements which states
have precluded or systems they have usurped)? But arguments for states are not usually so
directly utilitarian in character. Such arguments would make it look as if we might well opt
out of state organisation, and often be better off doing so.
1
A recent shocking example concerns the attempt of Eire to prevent an Irish women having an
abortion in England.
�4
These considerations divide into two groups: features that are
on normal,
normally bad, operations of states, and features that are normic on institution and operation of
states. The first group of criticisms are eliminated under good to ideal operation of states,
what officiandos of states characteristically unwarr^ntedly make. For the evidence seems to
be that in practice states will tend away from the ideal. There are arguments from low
efficiencies of complex mechanical structures that can be adopted to lend support to what
evidence reveals. Features that are normic, and perhaps inevitable upon institution of states
do however yield arguments against states that do not depend on ym*e contingencies of most
states, their
and so on.
/
2. Ways of demonstrating that the State is not Required: as for God and the Church, so
for the State.
There is a theological component in the presumption and theory of the State; that
theological component and therewith of the argMmenfa/ foundations for the State should be
fully exposed. By contrast, anarchism, ^ approached from an argument perspective, enjoys
nn
considerable strength requiring no leaps of faith.
The State is like God: the anarchist is like the atheist in disbelief and nonrecognition of
what is commonly assumed, mostly as a matter of faith, to be needed. The
awn by
Bakunin, has as well as considerable strength certain weaknesses. While the atheist believes
that God does not exist, the anarchist does not believe that there are no states: on the contrary,
there are all too many, though none are legitimate.^The important parallel is as to argM/n^n^.
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 fence-sitting position. Soundly based atheism
goes further than agnosticism, not only faulting the argumentybr, but taking it for granted that
there are arguments, or at least solid considerations, <2g(?in.yL So it is with soundly based
anarchism; it both faults arguments for the State, showing none are generally viable, and
de ps an incisive case against the State.
A more obvious comparison, appreciated from Reformation on and again emphasised
by Bakunin,2 is that of State and Church. 'Of course Knever should have eventuated; several
bad political turnings were taken in the modern period following the Renaissance, t In several
respects the comparison is better than that of the State and God, since both belong to the same
category, institutions. Thus too both have looked to some philosophers as human inventions
or artifices, both have looked to others (reductionists) as objects that could be reduced to
features of the individuals involved in their organisation (but it is hard to see why such
fictions or logical constructions shuld be assigned the power and deference they are
2
Bakunin on Anap^hy-(gdited S. Dolgolff), Allen & Unwin, London, 1973, especially p.139.
�5
accorded). 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 on organised violence, all other internal
security arrangements being eventually answerable to its police, and thence to its officers 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. It is easy now, in
retrospect, to see how from being a compulsory feature of social life in many places, the
Church has become a voluntary, and fragmented one; such a parallel desirable transformation
of the State would eliminate it.
Whether the State is inevitably evil or not, it is
so it will be argued, in a
way parallelling the famous Five Ways of Aquinas designed to prove that God exists. That is,
much as there are several ways of arguing to the existence of God, assembled by Aquinas into
the famous (but not exhaustive, and invariably invalid) Five Ways, as well as various less
famous but also important arguments against the existence of God, so in a parallel fashion
there are various arguments that the State is required, as well as, what comes later that is
especially relevant for anarchism, several ways of arguing against the necessity and
desirability of the State.
Since the State is unnecessary, as well as costly and typically at least evil in many of its
practices and
in other respects, it should be superseded. And it can be succeeded,
by alternative social arrangements. It can be superseded or replaced as the Churches to a
.9*1
large extent been supeyuated or replaced in many places. Just as the power of the ChurchAas
declined until it has lost its authority over parishioners, so authority of the State can be
undermined, and it can lose recognition and its claim to sovereignty over those in its territory,/A
But there is a crucial difference between State and Church: under those conditions the State
vanishes; for authority backed by coercive power is essential to the State but not (any longer)
to the Church. And where the State differs crucially from Society anarchistically organised is
as to the matter of coercion and of authority back^by force, such a Society relying basically on
voluntary cooperation where the State relies on authority backed by force. Furthermore, the
Church is justified through a religious theory, and is backed up ultimately by appeal to God's
authority. The modern secular State by contrast annexes itself authority (or has simply
inherited it) and, though it may claim to be justified by some political theory which confers
upon it legitimacy, makes no appeal back to a justifying or authorizing agent. So what
justifies it? Briefly, nothing does.
* The First Way of Showing that the State is not Required: t&e
Argument.
/
�6
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, for instance, sponsorship of pomp
and ceremony and of junkets by VIP's; and a great deal of typical State activity is positively
evil and not in the collective interest, for instance, graft, corruption, brutality, maintenance of
inequitable distribution of wealth, land and other resources, and encouragement; of protection^
of polluting or qvironmentally 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 forest-destructive 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, goesjike 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 collecdve 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 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 form considering
each function in turn.3 In each case the function is carried out through alternative
arrangements, such as voluntary co-operation by the people directly concerned, which replace
State arrangements. Consider, for example, the operation of mutual aid or self help medical
services, or community access communications (e.g. radio), most of which are presently
either starved of infrastucture or hindered by the State. Such beneficial services would in
general be reorganised so that all the relevant infrastructure became communally held, and
That is, proper elaboration of this argument takes each facet of generally beneficial state activity
- there is only a (relatively small) finite number to consider - and shows how it can be replaced
in one way or another. Replacement is not of course uniquely determined. Lines such
replacements can take are indicated in much anarchist (and self-management) literature, consider
especially, but no, uncritically, P. Kropootkin, MMfMai Aid, New York University Press 1972,
and also his Fi^/dy, Faci<?rie.y and WorLyAo/w, second edition, Nelson, London, 1913, and 77te
Con<?Me.yf o/Brgad. Chapman and Hall, London, 1913.
�7
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 no? in the collective interest,
coercion will normally be required for the performance of
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 orr/gr, 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, security, orderly operation of traffic, and so on,
have often been said to make for especial difficulties for anarchism, or even to refute it. They
do not. 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 the State's propping up of gross inequalitiesA A community
which seriously limits (or dispenses with) the institution of private property and removes
gross inequalities in 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 based on the fairer distribution of land, property and wealth
allegedly 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 and more recent objections, which are designed to show
that people cannot act in their collective interest without coercion.
On these points see, e.g.
7?6wZMZz'a/zary Pawp/z/^tj (edited S. Baldwin), Kover
Publications, New York, 1970, p.206ff.; also P.J. Proudhon, Cazz/e^jza/M' a/* a R^va/azza/zary. For
recent discussion of, and practical examples of, replacements for arbitration and law court
procedures (Zzaz for right-leaning anarchism), see C.D. Stone, Sawg
<?H arhZzrazZag oar
way ra anarcAy, Anarchism (reprint of Nomos XIX) New York University Press, 1978, pp.213-
s
�8
It is from the simulation argument, in particular, that the corollary of the
q/
will follow? For, to overstate the case, anything the State can do that does
reflect sought collective interests,, cooperation and other techniques can also achieve in the
longer run, and mostly better.
* 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 real problems introduction of the State was designed to solve,
including new Dilemmas. Suppose, for instance, the secular State really
introduced in
order to solve Prisoners' Dilemmas, then the array of States so resulting generates new
Prisoners' Dilemmas (with States as 'prisoners'), which there is no Super-State to resolve by
coercion. In fact, as opposed to State-justifying mythology, the modem secular State was not
introduced (just as the original states were not initiated) for any such apparently intellectually
reputable reasons, but was largely inherited from the religious State (and the Church) and
maintained to prop up privilege and foster objectives that are not in its communities' interests.
Or suppose, as the myth also has it, that the State really were introduced, or contracted, in the
interest of order and stability and to curb violence; then the array of States resulting more than
negates these advantages, with instability, disorder and violence (e.g. between States) on a
grander scale than before the emergence of modern secular States?
* The Third Way: The overshoot argument, from the inadequacy of institutional
controls on state power.
Having ceded a monopoly of power of 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 controller'? The only
promising way of avoiding this problem — other routes 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. This implies democratic methods of some kind. Others go further: 'democracy [is]
the only known means to achieve this control, the only known device by which we can try to
The title of a joint paper upon which several of these sections draw^.
The argument, to be found in Bakunin, is elaborated a little in Taylor, op cif, 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. Several historical examples of this phenomenon are alluded to in M. Harris,
and Ajngj, Collins, London. 1978, where it is also revealed how little the actual origin
and rise of the State had to do with Dilemma situations, e.g. escaping a Hobbesian state of
nature. Indeed, it was (j^th the advent and development of the State that life became for many
what it had not apparently been in pre-State neolithic times, 'nasty, brutish and short'.
The question is in effect Plato's question and the regress is reminiscent of his Third Man
argument.
�9
protect ourselves against the misuse of political power'.R In this event, control has mostly
failed. Democracy is extremely attentuated, even in those states that claim to practice it. The
exercise of power in modem 'democratic' states is often channelled through 'non-elected
authority' and 'is not democratic in the traditional meaning of the term'.9 Moreover, the
much increased power in the modern State, which reaches deep into people's lives, has
passed, with no increase in legitimacy, to certain managerial elites who present the power as
directed at the attainment of 'generally accepted' objectives such as economic growth (but
through, e.g., increased military expenditure) or material 'progress' (but through, e.g.,
increased military expenditure) or material 'progress' (but through, e.g. subsidization of
environmentally destructive enterprises of off-shore companies), though the acceptability of
such particular objectives is never democratically tested.
In any case, indirect democratic and other institutional checks are
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
iwth what those who control the coercive power are prepared to accept. (Toleration of such a
tamed democracy then brings benefits to those who hold power, especially the cover of
legitimation). But institutional checks which operate only insofar as a system 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
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.
* The Fourth Way: The argument from freedom and autonomy.
A person is responsible for actions deliberately undertaken. This premise 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 what to do on each
such occasion oneself; not acting
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
K.R. Popper, 77ie (?/?<?/i 5*<9c;'<?ry and
Vol. II. Fourth edition (revised), Routledge and
Kegan Paul, London, 1962, p.129 and p.127. The (overshoot) 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 teh State' 'upon which' Marxists never had 'any wellconsidered view' (p.129).
V. Lauber, Eco/ogy, po/ZzZcj and Zz&emZ ^efwocracy, Government and Opposition, 13 (1978),
199-217: seep.209 and p.211.
�10
not subject to the will of another. Even if it does what another directs, it is not
another so directs. In being free, nof 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 (XMf/ionry over those in its territory (under its de facto
jurisdiction), the right to rule and impose its will uon 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, if the argument is
sound, anarchism, io
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. On the contrary, such direct democratic methods are part of the very stuff of
anarchistic organisation.
* The Fifth Way: The argument from anarchistic 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
- 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 rworked.
Examples of such Stateless organisation suffice to show that crucial real world features have
not been omitted.
There are many examples of non-industrialised societies which were, or are, anarchistic,
there is the rich experience of the Spanish collectives,n and there is much localised
experience of self-management and small-scale anarchistic arrangements within the State
structure. 12
The argument, outlined by Bakunin, is much elaborated, but in a very individualistic and
Kantian fashion, in R.P. Wolff, 7%
of A/iarc/H-sw, Harper & Row, New York, 1970.
No argument is without assumptions, which are open to dispute. Wolffs argument, from
which the argument in the text is adapted, has its pitfalls, and is, for example, disputed by G.
Wall, P/uZo-yop/wcaZ
revi\yg<7, Anarchism, op.cit. p.273ff.
Documented in 77ze
1974.
Co/Zecfiv&y (edited S. Dolgoff), Free Life Editions New York
As B. Martin boldly asserts, 'The advantages of self-management and alternative lifestyles
�11
The state is far from necessary and iacks adequate justification. The state is not a
self-justifying object. But none of the justificatory arguments to the state are cogent. A
familiar theme, conceding that the state is a problematic object, is that the state is a necessary
evil. 13 But, to the contrary, states, though generally evil, are hardly necessary.
It needs stressing, furthermore, how weak any necessity claimed has to be. For it is
becoming increasingly easy, with the advances in logical modellings and computer
simulations of other worlds, virtual states and the like, to envisage accessible worlds
organised without modern states. As such worlds, inhabited by humans or human-like
creatures are possible, states are not necessary.
No doubt then, the necessity has to be of some more
andpr^m^Jc sort, a
"social human necessity" for example appealing to emergent features of humans, kinks of
human nature, obtruding in unfavourable situations of high concentrations and extensive
scarcity (situations that states themselves have, like many survival systems, helped contrive).
Further the necessity has to be relative to certain organisational objectives, such as a
particular state delivery of collective goods and services. Remarkably, none of the extant
arguments to the state make it plain that such a weak pragmatic relative "necessity" is
indicated, though they would hardly establish more, and though they Jo make strong
(implausible) assumptions about the brutal situation outside states, in states-of-nature and so
on, and about human motivation and practice, its utterly selfish, self-interested and
acquisitive, and frequently debased character (i.e. what appears encouraged under economic
rationalism, and pretty much what many have come to expect under conditions of advanced
capitalism).
Mostly no effort is made any longer, outside a few abstruse texts, to justify the state.
Within contemporary institutional arrangement it is simply taken for granted (like Big
Science), as axiomatic, as God was under medieval arrangements. But unlike God, who was
good personified and therefore had a large problem with the extent of evil in the world, the
state is acknowledged as problematic and far from unimplicated in the evil of the world (but
directly engaged therein when the councils of the many Machievellis are heeded). Such a
problematic object cannot stand up as merely postulated. Nor is there a corresponding
ontological argument for the state, as that organisational structure than which nothing more
are many and significant. And these alternatives are entirely feasible: there is plenty of
evidence and experience to support their superiority over the present way society operates.
The obstacles to self-management and alternative lifestyles are powerful vested interests and
institutional resistance to change', C/zanging f/x? C<%f, Friends of the Earth, Canberra, 1979.
p.6.
13
The theme, enunciated for instance by Popper, that * state power must always remain a
dangerous though necessary evil' (II, p.30) is a commonplace one.
�12
perfect can exist. Outside the flawed imagination of German idealists there is no such Super
State; all actual states are manifestly highly imperfect, all humanly realisable ones are likely
similar.
As a result of the institutionalisation of the state itself, as a received and indeed central
part of modern political arrangements, the onus of proof has become curiously inverted.
Efforts to justify the state have become fairly ideal and academic, no longer a serious issue,
and onus transferred to anarchists to demonstrate that human social life could proceed well
and smoothly (as it now does, of course) without states. While anarchists are not absolved
from offering some account of operations of good social lives without states (for, except in
fairy tales, it does not all just emerge, unplanned, in the new stateless setting), neither are
archists absolved from justification of de facto statist arrangements, beginning with the state
itself.
�4
a ARCrpM&^S-.
The main argument for anarchism can be concentrated in a detailed critique of the state,
therewithal state-like institutions a/t? %/ro
/j
/< 7
) c /A—Zb
n X! ct
A<$
Anarchist critiques of the state advance the following
themes:
* States and state-like institutions are without satisfactory justification.
* Such institutions are not required for organisational purposes.
* Such institutions have most inharmonious consequences; they bring a whole series of social
and environmental bungles or evils in their train.
In brief, they are unnecessary unjustified evils
The anarchist critique does not end
there, but typically includes.'further themes/ such as :
w States are devices for channelling privilege and wealth to certain minorities with inside
,
�The state is an undesirable, or even downright evii,
institution, for the following range of reasons:-
* States entrench inequities, domination and exploitation. States are devices for the protection
of wealth, property and privilege, and usually for the redistribution upwards, and often
concentration, of wealth and privilege. A minor but popular illustration is offered by the
expensive conferences and other junkets that state employees or party officials organise for
themselves and manage to bill to state revenue, in turn sucked up from inequitable taxation.
Certainly a main historical outcome of the state has been domination of exploitation of certain
segments of society by others, and some see its main, and barely concealed, purpose as just
that: domination and exploitation.
)
* States are typically corrupt. For example, there are enquiries presently in train, or with
follow-through activities yet to be duly completed, in many states in Australia, enquires which
have revealed considerable corruption, and there are prima facie cases for similar enquiries in
most of the remainder. Nor is this a new phenomenon: these revelations often resemble older or
on-going scandals.
* States are enormously expensive, and constitute a heavy drain upon regional resources, and
accordingly on local environments. In poorer regions they are not merely a heavy burden, but a
main cause of impoverishment. One reason for their voracious appetite is an excess of over
remunerated and often under-productive state employees. Another connected reason is that
many state operations are far from lean and efficient, but incorporate many duplications, drag
factors and dead weight. Under anarchisms, of all varieties, these heavy cost burdens,
weighing down subservient populaces, would be shed. Costs of organisation would be very
significantly reduced.
* States are major impositions on everyday life. They are intrusive and demanding^. As a
Never has this been more forcefully expressed than in Proudhon's famous denouncement of state
government:
^1/7^
To be GOVERNED is to be at every operation, at every transaction, noted, registered, enrolled,
taxed, stamped, measured, numbered, assessed, licensed, authorized, admonished, forbidden,
reformed, corrected, punished. It is, under pretext of public utility, and in the name of the
general interest, to be placed under contribution, trained, ransomed, exploited, monopolized,
extorted, squeezed, mystified, robbed; then, at the slightest resistance, the first world of
complaint, to be repressed, fined, despised, harassed, tracked, abused, clubbed, disarmed,
choked, imprisoned, judged, condemned, shot, deported sacrificed, sold, betrayed; and, to crown
all, mocked, ridiculed, outraged, dishonoured. That is government; that is its justice; that is
its morality (quoted in M p.6).
�result, there are constant demands for the reduction of the cancerous state, for removing parts of
it through deregulation, selling off state enterprises and so on. There are two troubles with such
demands from anarchist standpoints: they never go far enough, to the complete reduction of the
state to zero, but characteristically retain parts supportive of or favourable to bigger business,
and they proceed in the wrong way, stripping away social safety nets rather than ripping off
business support nets (such as limited liability, strike limitation legislation, etc.).
* States, for all that they have been promoted as delivering public goods, are mostly dismal
news for environmental protection and health and for social justice. Furthermore they are liable
to impose substantial hazards or risks upon subservient populations not merely through military
and like activities but, more insidious, through support and promotion of dangerous industries,
such as nuclear and giant chemical industries.
* Statetusually exert a heavy pressure to uniformity, they tend to eliminate plurality and cultural
differences. These pressures are exercised by a state in the alleged interests of national unity,
and against its enemies, external and internal. Even the most liberal of states tend to give
minorities more difficult lives in times of stress, such as war. They are always espousing
national values, state interests, and commonly assimilation and adoption of state values (thus for
example Canada, formerly and briefly a state toying with multiculturalism, now insistent upon
"Canadian values"). Such exercises are conspicuous, not only in citizen ceremonies and other
state rituals, such as national sporting and religious events, but more important are virtually
ubiquitous in elementary education (down to deference to the f la , and similar).
* States are a major source of wars, and the major source of major wars, undoubted evils
(however supposedly inevitable). They are major sources and suppliers of military technology
and weapons, the means of war. Roughly, the more powerful and "advanced" a state, the
further it is engaged in weapon production and export. Without states it is doubtful that there
would be any nuclear weapons, and accordingly there would be no prospect of nuclear wars as
there would be no weapons with which to fight them.
* States are a serious drag on a more satisfactory international order. That there are not more,
and more satisfactory, international regulatory organisations 'is mainly a matter of the reluctance
of nation states to surrender their powers and the dangers of their being dominated by very
powerful states. If only nation states would be dissolved into specialized [departments] there is
every reason to believe that most world problems could be handled by appropriate specialized
�[organisations]' (Burnheimp.221).
* States have excessive power, and are even accumulating or trying to accumulate more, for
(hT)
instance through more centralization, further controls, additional licences, etc., etc. Obvious
responses to excessive power are separation of powers, achieved by decoupling and some
fragmentation, limitation of powers, and so on.
States thus appear farTrom a good bargain on a preliminary consideration of costs,
Especially bad states, the run of states, which engage in politically-motivated incun-ation or
t.ifure of their citizens, and so on. Where are the compensating benefits?' yven that we can get
along without them, would we really be significantly worse off without them? Even in the
better cases (not allowing for alternative nonstatist arrangements which states have precluded or
systems they have usurped)? But arguments for states are not usually so directly utilitarian in
character. Such arguments would make it look as if we might well opt out of state organisation,
and often be better off doing so. Mat it is contended that, contrary to appearances, we cannot
get along without state cossetting: states are necessary.
,
*?:
-
Present monolithic governments have assumed far too many roles, for many of which
they are not competent, from some of which they are disqualified by other roles (e.g. as
impartial referees by their business commitments). Because the centre tries to do and control
top much, as a consequence it does very much unsatisfactorily. Improved arrangements would
separate these roles, deconcentrating and decentralizing power.
wcef-
�/%^2^
/\^^ 1 C
4
Z
Z^-^7
�W
GW, //?(? C/7//A /7,
jWr
f/7(? 3/(7/d
The State is like God: the anarchist is
like the atheist in disbelief and
nonrecognition of what is commonly
assumed, mostlv as a matter of faith, to
be needed. T)ie pafatlel,
BakummTtlibjat^weaknessessas well as Rs
strengt%^.''^Vhiie the atheist believes that
God does not exist, the anarchist does
not believe that there are no states: on
the contrary, there are all too many,
though none are legitimate. The impor
tant parallel is as to arguments. The
agnostic does not believe that the
arguments for the existence of God suc
ceed, 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 fence
sitting position. Soundly based atheism
goes further than agnosticism, not only
faulting the argumentsybr, but takingdt
for granted that there are arguments, or
at least solid considerations, rzgm/ry/. So
it is with soundly based anarchism;
<t
both fault) arguments for the
r" 3tatuce- a case against the
State.
A more obvious comparison, ap
preciated from Reformation on and
again emphasised bvBakunin,' 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 on organised
violence, all other internal security arrangernggt^)eing eventually answerable
to its pdhee 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 This does not upset the replacement
respects evil and inevitably corrupt, but argument for anarchism. The argument,
as a necessary evil.^)
implicit in the works of the classical
Whether the State is inevitably evil or anarchists, goes like this: The functions
not, it is M/mecas-wry, so it will be of the State can be divided into two
argued, in a wav parallelling the famous types, those that are in the collective in
jVquinas designed to prove terest and generally beneficial such as
that God exi^&^Since the State is un community welfare and organisational
necessary, as welt as costly and typically functions, and those that are not (but
at leas! evil in many of its practices and are, presumably, in the interests of some
undesirable in other respects, it should of the powerful groups the State tends to
be superseded. And it can be succeeded, serve).
by alternative social arrangements,
But as regards functions of the first
type, the generally beneficial functions
gg 77^ /7r.v/ IWj Q/ SbotWg which are in the collective interest, no
coercion is required. For why should
/r7t?/ //?C S/t//^ Ay ,76)/ 7?^T//7W.'
people have to be coerced into carrying
//!f /?e/)GcT/77^?7/ WRM/W7/.
out functions which are in their collec
tive interest? Such functions can be per
The core of the argument is simple formed, and performed better, without
and persuasive: everything in the collec- the coercion which is the hallmark of the
tive interest accomplished by the State State, and without the accompanying
can equally be accomplished by alterna tendency of the State to pervert such
tive arrangements such as voluntary co functions to the maintenance of privilege
operation, the remainder of State activi and inequality of power, and to remove
ty being dispensed with. The argument is power from those it 'serves'. The detail
not a straight substitution argument, for ed argument that such functions can be
it is not as if a rational person would performed takes a case by case form,
want to have everything accomplished considering each function in turn7 In
by the State replicated by alternative each case the function is carried out
arrangements. There is much the State through alternative arrangements, such
does or supports that is at best rather in
different, ^"'sponsorship of pomp and as voluntary co-operation by the people
directly concerned, which replace State
ceremony and of junkets by VIPs; and a arrangements. Consider, for example,
great deal of typical State activity is the operation of mutual aid or self help
positively evil and not in the collective medical services or building programs,
interest,'e^. gral^t, corruption, brutality, or self managed welfare, housing or en
maintenance of inequitable distribution vironment services, or community access
of wealth, land and other resources, and communications (e.g. radio), most of
encouragement of 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 forest
destructive 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.
�which are presently either starved of
infrastructure or hindered by the State.
Such beneficia! services would in genera!
be reorganised so that ah the relevant
infrastructure became communaHy heid,
and those wishing to arrange or use the
service wou!d manage the operation
themselves, taking the operation into
their own hands instead of being the
passive recipients of favours meted out
to them by professional and powerful
agencies. Coercion is unnecessary
because, in more communal types of
anarcnism, the basic infrastructure and
many resources (other than individual
labour) are already held by the com
munity, sdthereis no need to apply coer
cion to individuals to extract these
resources needed for community welfare
projects, as there is in the situation
where wealth and resources are privatis
ed and coercion is required to wrest
resources from unwilling private in
dividuals.
As for the second type of functions,
those which are /tor in the collective in
terest, coercion will normally be required
for the performance of //tew functions,
and is thus an essentia! part of the State's
operation. But those functions are better
dispensed with, since they are not in the
coHective interest. !n this way, while the
good part of the State's operation is re
tained and improved upon, the bad part
— especially the evils of brutality,
corruption and other abuses invariabty
associated with the coercive apparatus
— is detached.
State services that are concerned with
orjpr, in the genera! sense, may be
similarly removed or replaced. These
services, which include reduction of
violence to persons and redress for such
violence, quarantine services, security,
orderly operation of traffic, and so on,
have often been said to make for especial
difficulties for anarchism, or even to
refute it. They do not. Firstly, disputes
can be settled and offences dealt with
directly by communities themselves
without intervention by the State.
Secondly, a great many of these pro
blems 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 the State's propping up of
gross inequalities? A community which
seriously limits (or dispenses with) the in
stitution of private property and
removes gross inequalities in the
distribution of wealth thereby removes
the need for many 'welfare' services and
the basis for a great many offences in
volving violence: virtually ail those in
volving 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 based on the
fairer distribution of land, property and
wealth allegedly achieved by State en
forcement of redistribution. As all too
many people are aware, a major func
tion of the State is to maintain and
police inequitable distribution.
This then is the main classical argu
ment for anarchism. The argument has
however been challenged, both by
historical and more recent objections,
which are designed to show that people
cannot act in their collective interest
without coercion.
�7./
NOTES
14.
[5.
16.
oK
!.
Bakunin on Anarchy (edited S. Dolgofl),
Allen & LJnwin, London, (973, especially
p.139. Much else in this paper, eg. 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 (relatively small)
finite number to consider — and shows how it
can be replaced in one way or another.
Replacement is not of course uniquely deter
mined. Lines such replacements can take are
indicated in much anarchist (and self
management) literature, consider especially,
but no/ 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 Revolu
tionary Pamphlets (edited S. Baldwin), Dover
Publications, New York, 1970, p.206 ff.; also
P.J. Proudhon, Confessions of a Revolu
tionary. For recent discussion of, and practical
examples of, replacements for arbitration and
law court procedures (6td for right-leaning
anarchism), see C D. Stone, Some re/?ec//on.s
on o/Tn/rohng our way /o anarc/ty * Anarchism
(reprint of Nomos XIX) New York University
Press, 1978, pp.213^4.
The argument, to be found in Bakunin, is
elaborated a littic in Taylor, op.cit., chapter 7.
A related argument, also in Bakunin, is from
the way in which emergence of the State com
promises and even closes off nonstate solu
tions to problems of social organisation in ad
joining regions. Several historical examples of
this phenomenon are alluded to in M. Harris,
Cannibals and Kings, Collins, London. 1978.
where it is also revealed how little the actual
origin and rise of the State had to do with
Dilemma situations, e.g. escaping a Hobbesian
state of nature. Indeed, it was with the advent
and development of the State that life became
for many what it had not apparently been in
prc-State neolithic times, 'nasty, brutish and
short'.
The question is m effect Plato's question, and
the regress is reminiscent of his Third Man
argument.
K.R. Popper, The Open Society and Its
Enemies. Yol.iL Fourth edition (revised),
Routledge and Kegan Paul. London. 1962,
p.129 and p.127. The (overshoot) problem ts.
according to Popper 'the most fundamental
problem of all politics: the control of the con
troller. of the dangerous accumulation of
power represented in the State' 'upon which'
Marxists never had
view' (p. 129).
'any well-considered
17.
V. Lauber. /co/o^y, po/t/tes an<7 hbera/
r/emocracv. Government and Opposition. 13
(1978), 199-217: see p.2O9 and p.211.
18.
The argument, outlined by Bakunin, is much
elaborated, but tn a very individualistic and
Kantian fashion, tn R.P. Wolff, In Defense of
Anarchism, Harper & Row, New York. 1970.
No argument is without assumptions, which
are open to dispute. Wolff's argument, from
which the argument in the text is adapted, has
its pitfalls, and is, for example, disputed by
G. Wall. P/b/o.sop/hca/ awc/n.sw re row/,
Anarchism, op.cit. p.273ff.
19.
Documented in The Anarchist Cotiectives
(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 alter
natives are entirely feasible: there is plenty of
evidence and experience to support their
superiority over the present way society
operates. The obstacles to self-management
and alternative lifestyles are powerful vested
interests and institutional resistance to
change', ( hanging the Cogs, Friends of the
Earth, Canberra, 1979, p.6.
�ANARCHISM - ENLARGED j
____________ foundations*
There is a theological
component in the theory of the ^tate;.the weakness af^whieh should be brought out.
A
A
By contrast, anarchism ^.s approached from an argument pe^p^ctive, of considerable
streng
strength^
Since the &tate is an imposed structure that induces considerable costs,
the onus of proof is moreover on the State side.
(The State versus states:
r
instantiate the universal.)
2.
they
Circled numbers hereafter refer to insert places in elder working version.
In §1:-
(^
In several respects the comparison is better than that of the State and God,
since both belong to the same category, institutions.
/cc
Thus both have looked to
some philosophers as human inventions or artifices, both have looked to others
(reductionists) as objects that could be reduced to features of the individuals
involved in their organisation (but it is hard to see why such fictions or logical
constructions should be assigned the power and deference they are accorded).
0
It can be superseded, or replaced^ as the Church has to a large,
^in many places.
extent been
Just as the power of the Church has declined until it has lost
its authority over parishioners, so authority of the State can be undermined, and
it can lose recognition and its claim to jAu&h^rit^ over those in its territory.
But there is a crucial difference between State and Church:
under those condit
ions the State vanishes, for authority backs!by coercive power is essential to the
State but not (any longer) to the Church.
from
Society anarchistically organised
And where the State differs crucially
is as to the matter of coercion and of
authority backed by force, such a society relying basically on voluntary cooper
ation where the State relies on authority backed by force.
Furthermore, the
Church is justified through a religious theory, and is backed up ultimately by
appeal to God's authority.
The modern secular State by contrast annexes itself
J
�A
2.
itself authority (or has simply inherited it) and, though it may claim to be
justified by some political th(o^ry which confers upon it legitimacy, makes no
appeal back to a justifying or authorizing <3<^e.nt.
So what justifies it?
2^.^
These sorts of considerations prompt two connected complaints of the anarch-
ist, which have never been satisfactorily met, the agnostic's complaint that the
State has no adequate justification - the arguments for its imposition or certain
action fail - and the stronger complaint that the State is not necessary at all.
These complaints are backed by arguments and further arguments, namely an assess)
ment of arguments.
These arguments are important, not, or not merely, because
they will show, if unsuccessful, that anarchism j^s irrefutable, but because they
convey muqh information, e.g. as to the weak (to the point of vacuity) sense
in
which the State is "necessary", because they do much to determine the general
0^
logical shape of the anarchism that results, and because they indicate routes to
anarchism, not merely why but, to some extent, how the State can be superseded
by a Society anarchistically organised.
t
pfuch as there are several ways of arguing to the existence of God, assembled
by Aquinas into the famous (but not exhaustive, and invariably invalid) Five Ways,
and various less famous but also important arguments against the existence of God,
apcni&Igs
, (jAtb
so there are various arguments that the State is required, and^ especially
—-2
relevant for anarchism^, several ways of arguing against the necessity of the
State.
is from the simulation argument, in particular, that the irrefutibj.lity of
Ai)
anarchism will follow^ anything the State can do that does reflect the collective
interests
A/.
A74
cooperation.can also do in the long-run, and mostly better.
[Over-
i
��g T7/E SECOAD
X 777E
/1RGGA7EATFROM PROEEEM
RECGRREyVCE.
The solution by the State to problems
of social organisation repeats or
generates in more dangerous form the
very real problems introduction of the
State was designed to solve, inciuding
new Diiemmas. Suppose, for instance,
the secular State realty were introduced
in order to soive Prisoners' Dilemmas,
then the array of States so resulting
generates new Prisoners' Ditemmas
(with States as 'prisoners'), which there
is no Super-State to resotve by coercion.
In fact, as opposed to State-justifying
mythology, the modern secutar State
was not introduced (just as the originat
States were not initiated) for any such
apparentty intellectually reputable
reasons, but was targety inherited from
che religious State (and the Church) and
Jiaintained to prop up privitege and
foster objectives that are not in its com
munities' interests. Or suppose, as the
myth atso has it, that the State reaity
were introduced, or contracted, in the
interest of order and stability and to curb
violence; then the array of States
resuming more than negates these advan
tages, with instability, disorder and
viotence (e.g. between States) on a
grander scale than before the emergence
of modern secutar States."*
S 77/E 77//RD HA1 Y. RHE
(9 YERSEOGE /IRGt/MEAE
FROM EE/E /A/(/9E()G^CY
GE /AF77EG77GA74E
CGA7RGES GA A7MEE
PG^ER
Having ceded a monopoty of power
J) the State in order to resotve some
diiemmas, some of them arising from an
inequitable distribution of power, what
controts or batances the power of the
State? A Super-State. And its power?
There is a vicious infinite regress if the
repty to the question 'What controts the
controtter?' is 'a further controller'A
The onty promising way of avoiding this
problem — other routes tead (even
1
more) directty to totaiitarianism — is by
having the first of these controllers, the
State, answer back to those in whose in
terests it is aitegediy estabtished, those of
the society or group of communities it
controts. This implies democratic
methods of some kind. Others go fur
ther: 'democracy (is] the onty known
means to achieve this control, the onty
known device by which we can try to
protect oursetves against the misuse of
pohtica! power'.'* In this event, control
has mostty failed. Democracy is ex
tremely attenuated, even in those states
that claim to practice it. The exercise of
power in modern 'democratic' states is
often channelled through 'non-elected
authority' and 'is not democratic in the
traditional meaning of the term'E
Moreover, the much increased power in
the modern State, which reaches deep in
to people's lives, has passed, with no in
crease in legitimacy, to certain
managerial elites who present the power
as directed at the attainment of 'general
ly accepted' objectives such as economic
growth (but through, e.g.', increased
military expenditure) or materia! 'pro
gress' (but through, e.g. subsidization of
environmentally destructive enterprises
of off-shore companies), though the ac
ceptability of such particular objectives
is never democratically tested.
In any case, indirect democratic and
other institutional checks are /em/OMS in
as much as they depend uttimately on the
toleration of those who have direct con
trol of the forces of the State. Experience
seems to show that such toleration wit!
only be shown so long as democratic
procedures deliver results that are not
too disagreeable, that are broadly in ac
cord with what those who control the
coercive power are prepared to accept.
(Toleration of such a tamed democracy
then brings benefits to those who hold
power, especially the cover of legitima
tion). But institutional checks which
operate only insofar as a system accep
table to the powerholders is not seriously
challenged, and which depend ultimately
upon the toleration of those 'checked',
39 EE/E FGGR 777
Y. EE/E
ARGGMEA?^ FRGA7
EREEDGA7 ^lAD^l GEGAGAf Y.
A person is responsible for actions
deliberately undertaken. This premise
can be derived, if need be, from the
notion of a person as a moral agent.
Taking responsiblity for one's actions
implies, among other things, making the
final decision about what to do on each
such occasion oneself; not acting
on direction from outside, but determin
ing 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 re
quires, freedom. For the autonomous
being, endorsing its own decisions and
principles, is not subject to the will of
another. Even if it does what another
directs, it is not /yeemzse another so
directs. In being free, no/ of constraints
(both physical and self-determined), but
of the constraints and will of others, an
autonomous being is morally free.
A necesary feature of the State is
<7H//io,7/y 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 incom
patible with moral autonomy and with
freedom. An autonomous being, though
it may act in accordance with some im
peratives of the State, those it in
dependently endorses, is bound to reject
such (a claim to) authority, and
therewith the State. In sum, being a per
son, 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 per
sonhood implies, if the argument is
sound, anarchism.'*
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. On the contrary,
such direct democratic methods are part
of the very stuff of anarchistic
organisation.
W E/7E E7E777 HA1Y. 777E
are not really checks at ali.
^RGGMEAEFRGM
The problem of controlling the power
of the State and preventing the State M
A91 RCA75&EAVER7EACE.
once established from usurping further
The replacement argument enables
power and exceeding its mandate, is only
construction
of a model of a society
w/cyAc/orr/y solved by not ceding power
functioning without the State, of a prac
to the State in the first place. The best
tically possible Stateless world; which
way of avoiding the evils of accumulated
shows that the State is not necessary. But
power is the anarchist way, of blocking
it can always be c/c/wer/ — even if the
its accumulation.
claim can seldom or ever be made good
— that the modelling leaves out some
crucial feature of real world circum
stances, rendering it inapplicable. The
gap may be closed by appeal to the inde
pendently valuable argument from ex
perience, that at various times and places
anarchism has been tested and has work
ed. Examples of such Stateless organisa
tion suffice to show that crucial real
world features have not been omitted.
^Yiere are many examples of nontndustrialised socieities which were, or
are, anarchistic, there is the rich experi
ence of the Spanish collectives,'" and
there is much localised experience of
seif-management and small-scale anar
chistic arrangements within the State
structure?"
�z
e
The state tacks adequate justification. The state is not a self-justifying object. But
none of the justificatory arguments to the state are cogent. A familiar theme, conceding that the
Al
state is a problematic object, is that the state is a necessary evil. But, to the contrary, states,
though generally evil, are hardly necessary^ It needs stressing, furthermore, how weak
necessity claimed has to be. For it is becoming increasingly easy, with the advances in logical!^
modellings and computer simulations of other worlds, virtual states and the like, to envisage
accessible worlds organised without modern states.
No doubt then, the necessity has to be of some more pragmatic sort, a "social human
necessity" for example appealing to emergent features of humans, kinks of human nature,
obtruding in unfavourable situations of high concentrations and extensive scarcity (situations
that states themselves have, like many survival systems, helped contrive).Remarkably, none of
the extant arguments to the state make it plain that such a weak pragmatic "necessity" is
intricated, though they would hardly establish more, and though they
make strong
(implausible) assumptions about the brutal situation outside states, in states-of-nature and so on,
and about human motivation and practice, its utterly selfish, self-interested and acquisitive, and
frequently debased character (i.e. what appears encouraged under economic rationalism, and
pretty much what many have come to expect under conditions of advanced capitalism).
Mostly no effort is made any longer, outside a few abstruse texts, to justify the state.
Within contemporary institutional arrangement it is simply taken for granted (like Big Science),
as axiomatic, as God was under medieval arrangements. But unlike God, who was good
personified and therefore had a large problem with the extent of evil in the world, the state is
acknowledged as problematic and far from unimplicated in the evil of the world (but directly
engaged therein when the councils of the many Machievellis are heeded). Such a problematic
Popper^s view that 'state power must always remain a dangerous though necess
ary evil'
(II, p.30) is a commonplace one.
�object cannot stand up as merely postulated. Nor is there a corresponding ontological argument
for the state, as that organisational structure than which nothing more perfect can exist. Outside
the flawed imagination of German idealists there is no such Super State; all actual states are
manifestly highly imperfect, all humanly realisable ones are likely similar.
As a result of the institutionalisation of the state itself, as a received and indeed central part
of modem political arrangements, the onus of proof has become curiously inverted. Efforts to
justify the state have become fairly ideal and academic, no longer a serious issue, and onus
transferred to anarchists to demonstrate that human social life could proceed well and smoothly
(as it now does, of course) without states. While anarchists are not absolved from offering
some account of operations of good social lives without states (for, except in fairy tales, it does
not all just emerge, unplanned, in the new stateless setting), neither are statists absolved from
justification of de facto statist arrangements, beginning with the state itself.
�
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CASE DISSOLVED:
critique of argumentsto and for the State
Over the centuries that humans have been stuck with states, many different attempts to
justify them, as in some way necessary or desirable (as more than an unfortunate accident of
history), have been attempted. None pf these arguments succeed (as much would perhaps be
quite widely conceded^).
/
/
There are various wayjs of showing that the arguments fail. One powerful way deploys,
indicates or develops, counterexamples; for instance modelling social arrangements without
states. Another more pedestrian but essential way consists in direct examination of the
arguments, not merely some of them or various classes of them, but, for completeness, each and
every one of them. Ultimately that calls for, what is attempted first in a first attempt fashion,
an exhaustive classification of the arguments „
A preliminary classification of these arguments can take the following form:
1. //i-yfonc or <?Ma,s7-/H,s'f(9rzc. These arguments divide in tum into two principal subclasses:
1.1 Daycrzpnve.*
/b/Zacy o/TAo
quo.
A first group of arguments^justification of the state, try to take advantage of the
descriptive features that states are entrenched almost everywhere as the dominant feature of the
political landscape. Helpful as it may be having states in avoiding hypothetical in injecting a
heavy element of realism oLesdisn, nonetheless fact is not per se justification: what is often
X
ought not to be. Bank robbers and robber barons are justified by their mere existence There
are similar problems<dth the argument from tradition. If some principle, practice or theory
stood for a good while it had something going for it. Some such consideration lies at the basis
of precedence in law; the idea of tradition as encapsulating past wisdom - or past folly. Among
the problems are that with authoritarian institutions come their antitheses, with the state the
anti-state. Many practices like barbarism and racism have stood for a very long tirne,^ many
organisations like mafia have been airound for a long time, so they have something going for
them? Such troubles, the evident gap between descriptive and normative, are among those that
plague
In s^prt without utterly questionable connecting assumptions,
such as that what is is necessary (a modal fallacy) or that what is is right (a deontic fallacyi),
such arguments fail to afford justification.
There are some important JMbtypes of descriptive (or quasi-descriptive) arguments,
namely
*
1
arguments. The state is not only established, it works. Immediate difficulties
This fallacy, heavily utilized by Hegel, is critically examined in NNL.
X
0
V-v
L^
/]/ t
4^c AA-<s
A
^^7*.
JA^?
(^A t
ACA
C.^y1k
Av
2.2-
1
t..
z^ z^pr p^r-
*-y^2^—
2
with such arguments are obvious. The Mafia too/is well-established. It too works, often in
opposition the the State (as a sort of negative opposite, like the Devil to God). What sort of
standards of
is working
intended to meet? All sorts of awful political
arrangements have "worked", at least in persisting for as long as statist arrangements:
despotisms, dictatorships, tyrannies, ... . Still as pragmatic arguments enjoy considerable
popularity, especially in North America, they will have to be considered in more detail (than
they deserve).
*
arguments. The state has evolved through a long sequence of political forms.
It is tried and tested, and now selected, selected as best available. Such arguments afford
scientific clothing for the appalling Hegelian "what is is right". For what has evolved is
selected thereby as best, and what is selected as best is no doubt right (by a familiar utilitarian
deontic reduction). Slather evidently such arguments prove too much. Any form that in fact
emerges, no matter how achieved, though what dusta^dly Machievellian deeds, no matter how
awful, is thereby justified: empires and dictatorships of the worst sort, fa^ist and totalitarian
states, one and all, are justified, provided only they are established.^
this only for climax states, where some sort of evolutionary plutoniums have been achieved
have been achieved (otherwise bad means to select evolutionary ends may temporarily prevail).
But where is the evidence that the State is not another transitional stage, like feudalism before
it? As an evolutionary form it is very recent, and fortunately not yet established in evolutionary
time.
1.2 AfoK-J&pcripf/ve. Difficulties with descriptive arguments, including prescriptive
fallacies (deriving presciptive or evaluative conclusions from purely descriptive premisses), are
evaded/idealisation arguments, which include
These are genetic in justificatory character, relating the
mythological "historical" development of the State from an imaginary pre-state situation.^
These arguments are not sharply^p^rated from
* fdea/ /n,yfory arguments.
* MMagmary
and ideal reconjfrMcrfoK arguments. For the transactions, such as an
originating social contract, may be presented in a quasi-historic form. This important class of
arguments is broader than contractual arrangements, including all the following sorts of
imaginary transactions: negotiating, bargaining, experimenting, etc., in given (idealised)
conditions, perhaps issuing in an arrangement, agreement, contract, etc. One preliminary
That contemporary exponents and practitioniers of state craft are inclined to accept these^orts of
considerations, and to recognise any region that has gained (short-term) control over a territory
and its administration, does nothing for the considerations^ What it reveals rather is the moral
sickness of contemporary real-politics.
They include
(as opposed to
relocation arguments, where a group ("voting
with its feet ) relocates and forms a state (except of course these gorups, when there was room
for them, tended to aim for new societies, not states).
These arguments form a bridge between descriptive and ntunative. While voluntary contract
arguments are descripively implausible, voluntary relocation has, or did have, a little descriptive
3
classification of these arguments divides them into
natural
quasi-theological, legalistic
invisible hand
evolutionary
consensual or equivalent.
artificial,
The most notorious of these reconstructions, or political thought-experiments, are the
social contract theories whereby individual members of a society fictitiously enter into an
enforceable contract, inescapable for themselves and all their descendants, setting up the state,
primarily as a security arrangement. In later versions which may involve other legalistic forms
than contracts, such as pa^cts, trusts, etc., there is much negotiating and bargaining in contrived
situations, where humans lose many of their distinctive features and accoutrements (in a effort
to ensure some initial fairness).
A variant on contract theories, which justify some sort of state arrangements
Z/* they
arose in an ideal way, is retrojustification of the state as naturally arising, as a sort of super
insurance agency, from pre-state arrangements. For example, the minimal state evolves from a
competing set of state-like security agencies one of which somehow gains a monopoly, and is
retrojustified through insurance arguments (concerning risk and compensation).
Such arguments are sometimes presented as replacing overall contractual arrangements
(through minor arrangements undoubtedly enter) with invisible hand mechanisms. Whereas
contractual arguments take the general segmented shape:
INITIAL STATE: INPUT
INTERMEDIATE STATES
prestate
negotiation followed by
situation:
draft contrad, assessment
"state of nature"
FINAL STATE: OUTPUT
state established
situation
followed by contract adoption
^in invisible hand arguments the intermediate steps, on route to the state, consist in formation of
organisations and their progressive amalgatiation to provide finally a state. For example, in
Nozick these organisations are taken to comprise protective agencies (though that is only one
statist function), and to ensure legitimacy for the final object, it is contended that each
intermediate state derives from the proceeding in a morally permissible way, namely preserves
% selected rights. Such arguments fail for two main classes of reasons: inadequacy in the
derivations of late and final stages from earlier ones, and unsatisfactoriness over the initial state
(in particular, what is assumed in it, such as proprietorial rights, and what is excluded, i$ the
way of more satisfactory alternatives).
In these forms the State arises through voZimfary actions and transactions. Whereas
anarchists and many socialists see anarchism as a post-state state, these transaction arguments
often assume anarchism, in very motly forms, as pre-state states. People voluntarily elect to
escape those pre-state form, "rushing" into the jaws of the State. But there are, as well,
versions, where the State is established through legalistic or religious means,
natural religion or the like. For example, the details of State organisation, or a recipe or
4
commandments therefore, are received by or given to some powerful religious personage, who
implements the organisation under religious authority. The legalistic equivalent came about
through implementation, not of religious dictates, but what may be very similar in practical
affect and detail, natural law. Normally this law will be "seen", for, by some powerful
personages, who are in a position to convey, and have put into effect, their illumination. With
the decline of religion these sorts of arguments have lost much of their general appeal (they
should never have enjoyed much credibility). But many relics of these shattered arguments
remain, to be removed. A critical point is that such arguments should not gain independent
standing. Most law is mfra-state, state manufactured and state serving. What is independent of
states has to answer to standards, moral standards especially, that are independently justified.
Similarly for religious commandments. As a result, these arguments collapse back to
arguments for the State.
Now modern states did not arise in any such "natural" or contractual way. Often they
were imposed by conquest or through colonialisation, and with a few exceptions, using
military means rather than offering much sweetness and light and choice. There are a notable
discrepancies between typical justifications of the state (in which much is sweetness and light,
though it is far from a pareto-optimal object) and common explanations of the role of the state
(in which much is obviousness and intrigue). Nor do the ideal constructions or histories offer
much justification for these resulting state power configurations. For the states so delivered
are very different from those most people presently toil under.
In any case, the arguments involved do not succeed. They are extraordinarily gappy by
contemporary logical standards. They depend upon some utterly implausible assumptions,
for example as to how vile conditions are^n extra^state situations. These changes are easily
illustrated, and will be.) small immediate)^eana&14 example.
Underlying several of the imaginary transaction arguments to the state, are various c/zofcg
arguments of a thought-experiment cast. Commonly such arguments ambitiously aim to show
that
* the state is necessary, and that
* the state is superior to its absence.
But such arguments.like those embedcTin
confracf arguments .are little better than con
jobs.as are presented depend upon a false choice. For only two options are considered:
H, a horrible Hobbesian "state of nature" and
S, a well-ordered (contructually-reached) Hobbesian state.
The argument, appealing to the vices of H and the virtues of S, has little trouble in concluding
* * S is better than H (or similarly, rational agents would select S over H, etc.)
other options, such as anarchist ones. Why should
anarchists want to line up with S? They can agree with proposition * *. They might also want
The choice conveniently leaves
to assert that anarchistic arrangements Z are superior to S. Whereupon it is evident that neither
* nor * follows. For necessity all accessible alternatives have to be considered (by the
semantics of
That has not been done. For superiority, the superiority of S to Z and
other alternatives has to be taken into account. That has not been done. — ,
-----------------------
alternative i^\Carter^^(?c^ry^which produces The kind of individuals who have
strongly internalized values and can live cooperatively and freely without the threat of force ...\
i^)(p.25).4 6V1C-
No doubt some of the gaps in the arguments could be plugged by further, further
contestable, assumptions, but such analytic work remains to be attempted and assessed, after
two millennia of such arguments. In fact it was long ago realised that such arguments exhibit
unlikely and even paradoxical features. For example, in consenting to a state for security
purposes, participants to the state contract proceed to establish an institution which is far
more dangerous to them than the power of others taken distributively. It would seem that
those smart enough to enter into a social contract for a state would be smart enough to foresee
the problems of hiring a monster, and to avoid the state and steer along without it. In
establishing a state, inhabitants set up an institution that is far more powerful and dangerous
to them than the power of other inhabitants taken singly or in groups.
This is to think that Men are so fulish that they tak care to avoid
what Mischiefs may be done then by PoZe-caM, or
but are
contra^ f^ay think it Safety, to be devoured by AZo/asA
These arguments, like others to follow, even if somehow repaired, would not establish an
institution with anything approaching the power and complexity of the modern state.
Arguments to the state typically establish, at best, only a rather minimal state, with certain
protective and regulatory powers. Such minimal states would not deliver many of the goods
economists, still less socialists, have come to expect of the state. The arguments certainly do
not establish anything like the oppressive paternal state with a panoply of powers that many
citizens are forceably subject to, power states have accumulated by their own unjustified
predatory activity. In this respect too, arguments to the state resemble arguments to God.
Deistic arguments characteristically establish (insofar as they establish anything) only a quite
minimal rAar w/zZc/t, a first cause, some existent, a most perfect object, a universal designer,
clockmaker or the like. They do nothing to establish many of the powers or properties
asciibed to God.
There is yet another resemblance a surplus of attributes are regularly ascribed to Gock so
much power, knowledge, andj^^like^that paradoxes of omnipotence, omniscience, and
jimilar, are quickly engendereb^aradoxes that a lesser God that merely satisized on virtue (and
could tolerate some production of evil) could easily escape)^ So too a surplus of power is
conceded to the State. The state carries ^far more power than is required for collective
organisation, a large "political surphis" which should be relinquished.
/4
^ reversmg Hobbes' argument,pottom halfl really a cranking.
$
Locke p.372.
——^Lesser Gods encounter ^other difficulties: their plurality, the fact that they can be exceeded by
other greater Gods, and their upstaging by ontological arguments.
6
2(-l*) S*y^7?zayic. These arguments divide again into two principal subclasses, namely
2.1 Ana/yac and
2.2 M?K#K(2/y%c.
Further both subclasses may be subdivided in tum into individualistic and holistic subclasses,
for instance 2.1 into
2.1.1 Indiviualistic and
2.1.2 Non-individualistic.
Most recent investigation has been concentrated within subdivision 2.1.^1, upon game-theoretic
justifications of the State. Indeed, given prevailing methodological individualism, which
almost invariably takes analytic form, all acceptable justification reuced to this subdivision?
Certainly other systematic ways of endeavouring to justify the state tent
z to have
fallen by the wayside or been abandoned. However it is worth listing two further forms, one of
which remains significant:
* Holistic/brz/t considerations. The State is presented as the form, or even spirit, of Society,
much as the mind is the form of the corresponding body. Insofar as there is an argument, it is
analogical, from an increasingly dubious basis. Contemporary up-dating of the torm'ideas
would no doubt have the State as - what is even less plausible - the program, or the software,
of a corresponding Society.
* Mora/ considerations.
But there is little good reason to embrace individualism, methodological or other, because many
sorts of wholes, beginning with ^bstra&i, do not come down to individuals; it is poor
methodology to try to proceed as if they do. More on individualism elsewhere. See aM JB
3VHATEVER3
2. Arguments in a game theory setting: Prrhners' Diiemma games and supergames.
What is widely regarded
as the most persuasive justification of the state [is] "the argument
that, without the state, people would not voluntarily cooperate to
provide themselves with certain public goods... ". This argument,
which is quite popular with contemporary academics, suggests
that, without the state, people would not be able to "act so as to
realise their
interests."*
.
So far, hewexEr, we have not encountered^an argument, but simply a very large claim. The
argument itself^is remarkably circuitous, circuiting through a range of examples drawn from
game theory, and, so it will emerge, as yet quite indecisive. Obtaining a view, a clear view, of
the whole argument, or rather the spectrum of potential arguments, matters for anarchism. For
that will help considerably in dispelling the myth that here, partly hidden, is a powerful
P3p*x
argument against
A
The
argument takes the form of a modal syllogism:
* The state is necessary for the optimal, or adequate, provision of collective (i.e. public)
goody (zzm/or premiss),
of*
'
* Collective goods are necessary for a satisfactory social life, (J%7M% premiss) .
the state is necessary for a satisfactory social life./Moreover, given that the latter, a
satisfactory social life (in a given region), is a certain desiderata, the state is to that extent
necessary (a
necessity is (^bolutized).
While the big argument takes thatybrm, it is subject to variation. Furthermore, some
variation is essential, else it, and one of the chief forms incorporated, is invalid. For the
argument displayed has a different, and an ambiguous, middle term. For requisite uniformity,
and validity, the middle term has to be either a) adequate provision of colective goods, or o)
optimal provision of collective goods. While little supporting argument get lavished on the
minor premiss, it being assumed obvious, that obviousness
selected. For a satisfactory social life may result when
when term o) is
than optimal provisioning of
collective goods occurs. Adequate lives only require adequate goods, perhaps even a modest
supply of goods for less consumptive societies, not optimal or maximal levels.
There is/a significant skating about, of justificatory relevance, in the "most persuasive
justification of the state", as normally slackly presented^between
(as in o), nomally explicated in terms of maximization;
erms of satisization);
of provisioning: opPma/
(as in a), have construed int
(unspecified, as in the quote above, or perhaps
specified as in Hobbes, e.g. defence and security of property).
Unfortunately for the argument, all that the game-theoretic arguments for the major
1
2
Grofman 80, p.108, quoting Taylor. For another similar statement, qualified to members of a
large public, see Taylor 82, p.53.
Thus, basic collective goods for a basic social life, as for instance in subsistence lifestyles.
'
'
'
' /
premiss typically establish at best is failure of optima^ or certain large prov^pning, without the
state. They do not show failure to provision at all without the state, or failure to achieve
"basic" provision, or even adequate provisioning. Now anarchism can^granF that certain large
provisioning is improbable without the state; for example^ntercoiynental nuclear missiles, or
large output nuclear power plants. 3 But i^hardly matters! f&r such state-posessed goods are?
arguably antithetical to satisfactory social life. Nor need anarchism accede Rr optimality
requirements, thereby destroying usual game-theoretic arguments. For these arguments usually
show that more would be obtained under certain counter-individualistic cooperative strategies
than would otherwise be obtained, not that some or basic levels would not be achieved. To
put it bluntly, satisizing anarchists can throw out the challenge: what does it matter if a few
state prisoners defect (i.e. there are some not fully-paid-up rider^so long as enough goods are
still delivered? That challenge has not been met, even implicitly, as will appear. 5?
It is unreasonable, in any case, to demand optimal levels from non-statist societies,
because no extant stat^ measure up to such excessive requirements. Indeed most staites do
...
...........................................
,
. bd
not even meet utterly basic demands. Henceforth we shall be looking for
leads,
which %?.yo /hero cover basic demands.
The argument for the critical major premiss takes the following sort of route, involving
these components:
1. Assimilation of the problem of provision of collective goods (in the light of the minor
premiss it can be cast as a problem) to paradigmatic problems in game theory, initially the
Prisoners' Dilemma (PD for short). No doubt efforts at provision of public goods commonly
result in arrangements that can be represented formally as Prisoners' Dilemmas. But it is
sometimes claimed, what will be repudiated subsequently, that all such efforts result in PD
situations, that is that there is a universal linkage. Two connections are regularly assumed: a
universal representation of problems in game theory, and a more plausible less ambitious
connection with PD games. That is:
* all provisioning problems can be represented within game theory.
** these problems^requently)takePD form.
.
The first assumption, of game theory representation, is^severe. Each problem is transformed
into a game, with n independent players, normally individuals or individual units (such as an
"individual" family or firm in economics^)/ These players characteristically possess but limited
information, and almost invariably are allowed only extraordinarily narrow motivations and
objectives, am) as maximizing their own interests or pay-offs, in a rigid setting with fixed
predetermined moves.$
According to the more plausible, less ambitious collections,
3
4
5
So much is argued elsewhere (nuclear wo^k).
While in many politically relevant applications, such as the "tragedy of the common^' game,the
players may bedndividuals, in other applications the players may be communities, societies, or
even states, e.g\mtemational traaR and war games.
It is this sort of rigidity and limitation that/make^ parts of game-theory automatically tractable.
<?;
3
* provisioning of public goods frequently yields prisoners' dilemma situations, Ahat is the
problem involved can be transformed into a typical PD game, comprising a perhaps interated
games among a public of n individuals.
2. Sometimes these games yield unfavourable results, that is not enough individuals cooperate
but instead defect, so the good in question will not be delivered.
3. On/y by intervention pf the state can cooperation be obtained, by coercion of individuals?
other devices, such a;
of the market, will notsucceed.
4
3. THE CASE AGAINST REPLACEMENT FROM PRISONERS' DILEMMA SITUATIONS AND THE
buttress the State status quc^are based on variants of the prisoners' Dilemma, to the effect that
there are imporran? cases where individuals will not agree^ or co-operate to provide them
selves with (or to maintain) collective goods without coercion, such as on/y the State can
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. In short,'certain
individual choice cannot replace state-covered choice.
important cases, coo<
There are (as the bracketed clauses indicate) two main types of case, those where people
do not conrri&M&.to
themselves with, or with optimum quantities of, a "collective
good", and those where people do not
themselves to
or maintain optimum
quantities of, some already available "collective good". The first type of case is taken to
include such traditional and modern concerns of the state and its subsidiary institutions as
order, security, defence, and perhaps private property, as well as sewerage schemes, water
supplies, waste services, public health, social security, etc. The second case is supposed to
include, as well as village commons, newer enviromental concerns such as clean air, unpolluted
streams and beaches, parks, rainforests, wilderness, whales, etc. But there is no sharp division
between the cases (security or parks could be of either type depending on the status quo), and
The case broken-backed right here: because if we don't ^o this^not going to agree to social
contract — which allegedly implies these things — either. Similarly,
jocia/ contract theory
&ro&cn-&ac%cJ.
The Tragedy of the Commons is set up so as to assume no collective methods have been
developed or can be developed without coercion. (Roberts).
The point of coercion is to retain the privatised individual. For the factor of coercion makes it in
intrests of private individual. So coercion makes the effect of relations to be got without
exceeding provatised individual picture. Coercion substitutes for relations in the context of
privatised individuals.
Privatised individuals are, of course, products, in large part, of the operation (and enforcement
and entrenchment) of a particular social theory, or ra/Zzcr jar/ ofsocial theory.
Arguments of this type are sometimes said to represent 'the strongest case that can be made for
the desirability of the State* (M. Taylor, Anarc/ty anJ Coap^raZiaa, 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 nperson 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 the jawt^
Zagica/ /oral — those where people do not
to
themselves with, or with
'optimum' quantities of, a 'collective good' (e.g. security, order, sewage), and those where
people do not refrain themselves to wainfam, or maintain 'optimum' quantities of, some alrca<
available 'collective good' (e.g. commons, 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.cif. 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, FoaaJan'aaj o/Po/aica/ Aaa/y^, Columbia University press, New York, 1980.
Z
y
5
as arguments for state institution both have the same logical form, that of a Prisoners' Dilemma
or some finite sequence of Prisoners' Dilemma games (what are called Prisoners' Dilemma
&%?^rgames).
The arguments are not mere exercises in game theory since it is through arguments of this
type that political theorists such as Hobbes and Hume have attempted to demonstrate the
necessity of the State, so it is sometimes claimed (e.g. by Taylor). Furthermore, it is with
arguments of the same^form, the "Tragedy of the Commons", that Hardin and others have tried
to show that extensive, indeed draconian, state powers are required to resolve environmental
problems; without such powers no exploiter or polluter will exercise restraint, ra
c
.
Consider the single Prisoners' Dilemma game where each player, or prisoner, is assumed,
as is usual in these things, to be egoistic (sometime equated with "being rational"), to seek just
maximisation of his own private payoff, in the special case where there are just two players.
(The special case illustrates all the main points except one, the
c/size in making a
case for the state.)
<
. A basic ingredient^a.considerable variety of argumentfof this type, including Hobbes'
andlTragedy of the Commons' argument, and recent economic arguments for State
intervention to secure collective goods, i^/tne single prisoners' Dilemma game with just two
players.s 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. 3t so happens that if both
prisoners remain silent the State has only enough evidence to impose a 1 year sentence. But if
both confess they would each receive 4 years. The 'game' can be summarised in the following
'payoff' matrix:
Prisoner 1
Strategies
S(ilence) C(onfess)
S
-1,-1
-8,0
C
0, -8
-4, -4
'—
Prisoner 2
The game is not intended to present a moral ^ilemma, 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
An important matter the two player game does not illustrate is the relevance of populations 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 Tayor,
p.5.
6
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,
the%l goes free by confessing, while if 2 confesses, then 1 halves his or her sentence by
if both prisoners choose their dominant strategy they obtain an
outcome to that which would have resulted by what is tendentiously called 'co-operating', by
confessing.
their both remaining silent.
3.1 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 'co-operate' to obtain an
optimal outcome — should be set up by the State's own operative.^ The case looks like an
inside job; and it M, though neither the operative, nor for that matter the prisoners on their own,
continue to play an essential role. The prisoners, in any finite number, can be members of a
community and payoffs quantities of some collective good. The claim is, that without
intervention (by the State), the community will only chase a subotimal quantity of the good if
any. Some features of the prisoners' relations are assumed to transfer however. Of course the
State's presence in arranging (of accentuating)
such dilemmas is inessential, as is much
else from the example. But some features of the Prisoner's relations are isolated, and so have
no opportunity to communicate or r^aZZy co-operate. 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, io
A cursory aside is often added to the Prisoners' Dilemma to the effect that the segregation
of the priisoners makes no real difference. It is claimed that even if the prisoners could meet
and discuss and even agreed to co-operate, 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
no so — and in a more co-operative social setting than currently encouraged privatisation of
life, the extent of co-operation and trust would undoubtedly be much higher n The argument
has to depend crucially then on substantially mistaken assumptions about human propensities
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 rv (as on many theories) the result of
reflection of social cooperation.
This important point is much elaborated in V. and R. Routley, &?cmZ 77^or^.y, S^Zf
aztrZ Envirownf/tfaZ Pro&Zewty in Environmental Philosophy (edited D. Mannison
and others), RSSS, Australian national University, 1980.
As a result of G. Hardin's Tragedy
CoHWHonj, historical evidence has been assembled
which reveals how far Hardin's 'Commons' diverges from historic commons; see, inparticular,
A. Roberts, 77^ S^Zf-Managing
Allison & Busby, London, 1979, chapter 10, but
also Routley, op.cir., p.285 and ppp.329-332. Similar points apply as regards many other
Dilemma situations. Tn 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.ciz., p.308.
7
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 Jia? 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 prisoners 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 %/iJ the extent of their
determination by the social context in which they occur is/MKJcwtcnhJ to the whole question of
social 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 is an mJcpcnJcnr parameter,
which depends neither on the preference rankings of other nor on the social context in which
that human operates. Wh8ile 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), vc/y many
Jo /io? cozi/briH, 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 co-operation the types of Prisoners'
Dilemma situations that appear to count in favour of the State.
3.2 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, important, and also
damaging if unresolved, and that they are resolvable by State intervention, and only so
(optimally) resolvable. 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, if 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, optimal, worse) and involve considerations about which resonable parties can differ.
The selection of Dilemmas itself provides an example of value dependence: after all there are
many such Dilemmas (e.g. as to environmental degradation, of over-exploitation, of family
violence or fueds) 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
12
Cf. the disucssion in Taylor, op.ci/., p.93.
8
many of the arguments using Prisoners' Dilemma games, Hobbes' and Hume's arguments for
the State and Hardin's 'Tragedy of the Commons' for instance, turn out when
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
But in many such sequential Prisoners'
Dilemma games, rational 'co-operation' can occur, even assuming separated players with
purely egoistic interests. 13 For what sequential games permit that isolated games exclude, is
that 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 sueprgames then, no intervention is required.
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 co-operate.
Euqally important, and equally independent of the State, is the matter of breaking down the
adverary, or game, situation so the prisoners do not act as competitors but are prepared to co
operate.^ Informational input may also be important, e.g. news that each prisoner has a good
record of adhering to agreement, 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 is known (shuld they be required in recalcitrant cases), and is used
even by the State, e.g. gifts, deprivation, social pressure, etc. 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 co-operative 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 flase 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.^ But it is quite evident that there are
methods of allocation, both economic (e.g. exchange, through traditional markets, based on
supply costs) and social (e.g. by co-operatives, clubs).
Lastly, introduction of the State to resolve
13
14
15
Dilemma situations has very extensive
This important result is established in Taylor, op. ctf., for a number of critical cases, though not
generally; see, e.g. p.32 but especially chapter 5.
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'.
Both the false dichotomies cited are common-place, not to say rife, in modem 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
9
effects, *6 many of them negative, so that the gains made, if any, in so resolving Dilemma
situations, appear to be substantially outweighted 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 morre
important, new Dilemmas may be initiated by State activity, as in the case of the prisoners, or
differently with the State as a further player (since the State may engage in whaling, have
access to a commons, etc.). These points lead also to further arguments against the State.
Suppose, to see the impact of the first reason for the failure of independence, the
prisoners are friends and their common interest is to be together. Then, if they are given the
opportunity to co-operate, and independence is not enforced by separation, they will, quite
rationally, choose a joint optimal strategy, and there is no dilemma.
Since the same
considerations will not apply where large numbers of strangers are involved, the question arises
as the extent and severity of Dilemma situations. The question is complicated by the second
double-edged reason for the failure of independence, namely that statist political arrangements
undoubtedly accentuate the extent and severity of Dilemma situations by discouraging
(providing negative incentives) for genuinely co-operative behaviour and mutual aid. This is
another respect in which statist arrangements (like some subclimax biological communities)
tend to be self-reinforcing and self-perpetuating.
Accordingly, what arguments for the State on such bases as Prisoners' Dilemma situations
have to show is not merely
1) that state coercion does suffice to resolve (sufficiently) many such (damaging) Dilemmas,
but also
2) that such coercion is the on/y way of doing so, and
3) that in doing so worse situations than those that are resolved are not thereby induced.
These things have never been shown: nor can they be shown definitively, since firstly there are
various nonstatist arrangements for resolving wehat are taken to be damaging Dilemmas, and
secondly the overall assessment of what Dilemmas are
and what costs are worf/t
incurring in resolving them are ultimately evaluative and go back to rival, and presumably
coherent, value systems. Hence, when all this is spelled out, the irrefutability of anarchism.
To get some feel for the complexity of the issue and for the extent to which evaluative
matters do enter, several points relevant to 1) - 3) should be introduced. Firstly, there are many
Dilemma situations into which the State puts little or no effort and many others which are, or
were, considered as beyond the sphere of influence of the State or as not worthy of State
attention, for instance, cases of environmental degradation, overexploitation of a "resource",
personal or family fueds, etc., several of them aggravated by State arrangments such as
To take one lesser example, State intrusion often induces 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 alientated hours to pay for this
apparent escapism and to cover the high costs of frequently inadequate State activity.
10
excessive privatisation of resources (e.g. enclosure of the commons). (7/* such Dilemmas can be
downgraded in importance to suit the Statist case so can other Dilemmas apparently favouring
State intervention.)
Many of these cases would not be helped at all by the entry of the State or its
representatives with their authority duly showing (thugh they might be assisted by sensitive
mediation, which does not call for a State, only rudiments of a society). Secondly, introduction
of the State to resolve
Prisoners' Dilemma situations is not without wide-ranging effects,
many of them negative, so that the gains made, if any, in so resolving Dilemma situations have
to be weighed against costs involved in achieving these gains. Among the costs are new
Dilemmas, such as the very example considered in illustrating prisoner Dilemma games which
was initiated by State activity. Differently, new Dilemmas will result with the state as a further
player (since the State may have access to the commons, engage in whaling, etc.). Some of
these situations are interesting in theat they may lead to litigation and decision-making outside
of or largely independent of the State, the results of which the State is supposed to enforce
though it may be against its interests. But what ensures that if sticks to the findings. Nothing
does: it is simply assumed that the State will adhere to its role. But if that assumption is valid
with respect to the State (not known for its reliability) then it is good also for various other
parties. In short, agreement or decisions can be reached and adhered to without need for State
enforcement. So coercion is not always required.
Are there important Dilemmas where use the authority of the State is the (?H/y way?
Often behind the claim that is is, is a false (but very influential) dichotomy, that the only way
of allocating goods, apart from profit-directed markets which may deal abysmally with
collective goods, is through state control. But it is quite evident that there are other methods of
allocation, both economic (e.g. exchange, based on costs involved) and social (e.g. club, co
operatives). [And a mixture of these methods can be applied to resolve any Prisoners' Dilemma
that matters, i.e. here too replacement works. An important initial move is, as was seen, to put
the prisoners in touch, so that they could cooperate: equally important is breaking down the ...]
Such organisations would not have nearly so much to do as statists would like us to
believe, especially once co-operative ways of doing things and mutual aid had become
established ways in contrast to competitive and privatised ways. For the extent of simple
Prisoners' Dilemma situations calling for intervention (of some sort) has been exaggerated and
many, probably, very many, of those that have been thought to require intervention do not
because the players (are prepared to) "cooperate" anyway. There are importantly different
reasons why the latter can happen:- Firstly, enough players operate with motives which are not
purely privatised for a sufficiently optimal outcome to result. This does not imply that these
players have altruistic motives: their interests may depend on those of other players in a range
of nonaltruistic ways. Secondly, many cases presented as if they were simple Prisoner's
Dilemma games turn out when properly analysed, in particular when time is duly taken account
of, to be Prisoners' Dilemma super-games.
Such, for instance, is the positions with the
11
arguments of Hobbes, Hume and Hardin. But in such supergames rational "cooperation" often
occurs even assuming the players have the worst of privatised motives. In short, where the
correct analysis of a Prisoner's Dilemma game is as a supergame, statists are often beaten at
their own game. [Detail Taylor's partial results, anJ their problems.]
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to be accomplices in a crime, have been
separately imprisoned. A State represen
tative makes the following offers
separately to each: if the prisoner con
fesses 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. But if both
confess they would each receive 4 years.
The 'game' can be summarised in the
following 'payoff' matrix:
Prisoner 1
Strategies S(ilence) C(onfess)
S
-1, -1
-8, 0
C
0, -8
-4, -4
Prisoner 2
3. T7/E C/1SE z1G.4/MSE
AEFL.4 CEA^E^T ERCW
ER/5CWERS' D/EEA7AE1
tS77X/?177CW5
E/7E E/AE.
I he 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 /wporftm/cases where individuals will not
agree^-or co-operate to provide them
selves with (or to maintain) collective
goods without coercion, such as cw/y the
State can furnish/ In such 'dilemma'
situations each individual will hope to
gain advantage, without contributing (or
exercising restraint), from others' contri
butions (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, in
cluding Hobbes' and Hume's arguments
for the State, the 'Tragedy of the Com
mons' argument, and recent economic
arguments for State intervention to
secure collective goods, is the single
Prisoners' Dilemma game with just two
players/ Two prisoners, 1 and 2, taken
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
docs: strategy C is, in the jargon, each
players' 'dominant' strategy (and also in
fact a minimax strategy). For if 2, for ex
ample, remains silent, then 1 goes free
by confessing, while if 2 confesses, then
1 halves his or her sentence by confess
ing.
if both prisoners choose their
dominant strategy they obtain an m/er/or
outcome to that which would have
resulted by what is tendentiously called
'co-operating', by their both remaining
silent.
?./
It is bizarre that a dilemma alleged to
show the necessity of the State — which
is supposed to intervene, forcibly if re
quired, to ensure that the prisoners 'co
operate' to obtain an optimal outcome
— should bg set up by the State's own
operative.^Of course the State's
presence in arranging (or accentuating)
such dilemmas is 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 rec/Zy co-operate.
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 dilem-
A
7
ma to the human condition is accordingly
seriously limited/
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 co-operate, that would
make no difference, since neither could
trust (the sincerity) of the other
(Abrams, p.193), 'neither has an incen
tive to keep the agreement' (Taylor, p.5).
Experimental and historical evidence in
dicates that this is very often not so —
and in a more co-operative social setting
than the currently encouraged privatisa
tion of life, the extent of co-operation
and trust would undoubtedly be much
higher/ 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 scep
ticism about the reliability of other peo
ple (but if people were /Ar?/ unreliable
and devious, many State arrangements
involved in providing public goods
would not succeed either). That such
assumptionsareoperating can be seen by
elaborating the situation; e.g. to bring
out the first, suppose the prisoners have
a common bond, e.g. they are friends or
they are political prisoners with a shared
social commitment, or they are neigh
bours and face a future in the same com
munity; 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
the
extent of their determination by the
social context in which they occur is
/MnrArznrvna/ 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 prevail
ing (non-Marxist) economics and
associated political theory, is that the in
terests and preferences, as summed up in
a preference ranking or utility function,
of each human that is taken to count is
an mc/e/zenr/enf parameter, which
depends neither on the preference rank
ings 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 con
form (through advertising, education,
popular media),
wany
<7o
/?oz ccw/bfTn, and the extent of cultural
pressure towards privatisation itself
belies the naturalness of this indepen-
sequential games permit that isolated
games exclude, is that players' actions
may be dependent upon past perfor
mance of other players. This dependence
effectively removes one extremely
....a major functmn of the state is unrealistic self-containment assumption
to maintain and pohee inequitable from Dilemma situations, that in
dividuals act in totally isolated ways, not
distribution.
learning from past social interaction. In
such supergames then, no intervention is
required.
Undoubtedly some Dilemmas are
Z/gtZ-f resolved by 'intervention', e.g. by allow
dence. And having sufficiently many/ ing the prisoners to get in touch so that
interest-interdependent people in a smali they find they are neighbours or that
community (which is not thoroughly im they can really co-operate. Equally im
poverished) is normally enough, given portant, and equally independent of the
State, is the matter of breaking down the
their social influence, to avoid or resolve
adversary, or game, situation so the
by co-operation the types of Prisoners'
prisoners do not act as competitors but
Dilemma situations that appear to count are
prepared to co-operate/' Informa
in favour of the State/
tional input may also be important, e.g.
news that each prisoner has a good
ff /yy 77/E /VLEA7A/.1
record of adhering to agreement, or if
not is prepared to stake collateral, etc.
Nor is force or threat of force required
SC/CC777)
as an incentive to guarantee optimal
What the Dilemma-based case for the strategies: a range of other inducements
State has to show — what never has been and incentives is known (should they be
shown — is that there are outstanding required in recalcitrant cases), and is
Dilemma situations which are relevant, used even by the State, e.g. gifts,
important, and also damaging if deprivation, social pressure, etc. But at
unresolved, and that they are resolvable no stage is the State required to make
by State intervention, and only so (op these arrangements: much as some real
timally) resolvable. Finally it has to be Prisoners' Dilemmas are resolved by
shown that in the course of so resolving work of Amnesty International, so
these Dilemma situations, worse situa voluntary organisations can be formed
tions than those that are resolved are not to detect and deal with Prisoners' Dilem
thereby induced. These complex condi ma situations where they are not already
tions cannot be satisfied, if they can be catered for. And in fact communal and
satisfied at all, in a way that is not ques co-operative organisation did resolve
tion begging. For several of the condi Prisoners' Dilemma-type situations
tions are value dependent (e.g. what is historically, for example in the case of
important, damaging, optional, worse) the Commons.
In sum, here also replacement works.
and involve considerations about which
reasonable parties can differ. The selec There are no important Dilemma situa
tion of Dilemmas itself provides an ex tions, it seems, where the State is essen
ample of value dependence: after all tial. The State has been thought to be
there are many such Dilemmas (e.g. as to essential because of certain influential
environmental degradation, of over false dichotomies; for example, that all
exploitation, of family fcuds/or^violencQ) behaviour that is not egoistic is altruistic
which are considered beyond the sphere (but altruistic behaviour is uncommon,
of the State or not worthy of State atten and 'irrational'), that the only way of
allocating goods, apart from profittion.
There are now grounds for concluding directed markets — which tend to deal
that the conditions cannot be satisfied at abysmally with collective goods — is
all. For many of the arguments using through State control.'^ But it is quite
Prisoners' Dilemma games, Hobbes' evident that there are o/Aer methods of
and Hume's arguments for the State and allocation, both economic (e.g. ex
Hardin's 'Tragedy of the Commons' for change, through traditional markets,
instance, turn out when projver/y /or- based on supply costs) and social (e.g. by
to consist not just of a single co-operatives, clubs).
Lastly, introduction of the State to
game but of a sequence of such games,
to be more adequately represented by resolve so/ne Dilemma situations has
what is called a
But in many very extensive effects/ many of them
such sequential Prisoners' Dilemma negative, so that the gains made, if any,
games, rational 'co-operation' can oc in so resolving Dilemma situations, ap
cur, even assuming separated players pear to be substantially outweighed by
with purely egoistic interests.'" For what the costs involved. For there are the
SOCIAL ALTERNA ! tVES Vet. 2 No. 3. )982
25
many evi! aspects of the typicai State to
put in the baiance. As regards Dilemma
situations, entry of the State with its
authority showing may not help but may
worsen some situations, and more im
portant, new Dilemmas may be initiated
by State activity, as in the case of the
prisoners, or differently with the State as
a further player (since the State may
engage in whaling, have access to a com
mons, etc.). These points lead also to
further arguments against the State.
available 'collective good' (e.g. commons, un
polluted streams, whales, wilderness). That
received arguments of ail these types involves
Prisoners' Dilemma situations (in the wide
sense) is argued, in effect, in Taylor, op.cit.
and etsewhere. 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 popula
tion 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 out
comes that the State alone is said to be able to
arrange, but not mere social cooperation,
when the State zs (as on many theories) the
result or reflection of social cooperation.
7.
This important point is much elaborated in V.
and R. Routley, Soc/af Theories, Se//
Management, and T'n wronwm'a/ ProAferru
in Environmental Philosophy (edited D
Mannison and others), RSSS, Australian
National University, 1980.
9.
10.
11.
12.
4.
Arguments of this type 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 cer
tain arguments such as those of Hume and of
Olson involve Prisoners' Diiernnta 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 /ogtcaZ/orm — those
where people do not rwr/A/wfe to sup/r/y
themselves with, or with 'optimum' quantities
of, a 'collective good' (e.g. security, order,
sewage), and those where people do not
re.s/ram themselves to mam/am, or maintain
'optimum" quantities of, some already
13.
As a result of G. Hardin's Tragerh' o/ rhe
Commons, historical evidence has been
assembled which reveals how far Hardin's
'Commons' diverges from historic commons;
see, in particular, A. Roberts, 7'he Se/fManagmg TTiwonmenr, 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 situa
tions. 'In the experimental studies of the
prisoner's dilemma game approxtmately half
of the participants choose a cooperative
strategy even when they know for certain that
the other player will cooperate'. Abrams.
op.cit., p.3O8.
'
Cf. the discussion in Taylor, op.cit.. p.93.
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.
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 'adver
saries'.
Both the false dichotomies cited are common
place, 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.25O ff.
To take one lesser example. State intrusion
often induces 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 inade
quate State activity.
of course. ]
5^
The case if broken-backed right here:
to agree
because if we don't to this not goint/
to social contract - which allegedly implies these things - either.
Similarly, the social contract theory is broken-backed.
G5;
. Alternative longer
at this point in §3:-
In shof^* in certain
important cases, cooperative individual choice cannot replace state-covered choice.
There are (as the bracketed clauses indicate) two main types of case, those
where people do not contribute to supply themselves with, or with optimum quant
ities of, a "collective good", and those where people do not restrain themselves
to maintain, or maintain optimum quantities of, some already available "collective
good".
The first type of case is taken to include such traditional and
modern
concerns of the state and its subsidiary institutions as order, security, defence,
and perhaps private property, as well as sewerage schemes, water supplies^.waste
services, public health, social security, etc.
The second case is supposed to
include, as well as village commons, newer environmental concerns such as clean
air, unpolluted streams and beaches, parks, rainforests, wilderness, wha les, etc.
But there is no sharp division between the cases (security or parks could be of
either type depending on the status quo), and as arguments for state institution
both have the same logical form, that of a Prisoners' Dilemma or some finite
sequence of Pri soners' Dilemma games (what are called Prisoners' Dilemma
The arguments are not mere exercises in game theory since it is through
arguments of this type that political theorists such as Hobbes and Hume have
5.
attempted to demonstrate the necessity of the Stato4^
Furthermore, it is with
arguments of the same form, the "Tragedy of the Commons", that Hardia and others
have tried to show that extensive, indeed draconian, state powers are required
to resolve environmental problems;
without such powers no exploiter or polluter
will exercise restraint.
Consider the gj^le Prisoners' Dilemma game where each player, or prisoner,
is assuined, as is usual in these things, to be egoistic (sometime equated with
"being rational"), to seek just&axijnisation of his own private payoff, in the
special case where there are just two players.
(The special case illustrates all
the main points except one, the importance of size in making a case for the state.)
[Joins text again at fn.5 point.]
/* 4.
In §3:-
The Trac^ec[y of the Commons is set up so as to assume no collective
methods had [Teen developed or can be developed without coercion.
(Roberts).
The point of coercian is to ret^n the privatised individual.
$
For the factor
of coercion makes it in interests of private individualize coercion makes the
effect of relations to be got without exceeding privatised individual picture.
Coercion substitutes for relations in the context of privatised individuals.
Privatised individuals are, of course, products, in large part, of the
operation (and enforcement and entrenchment) of a particular social theory, or
rather sort of social theory.
^5^
In §4:-
The case looks like an inside job;
and it is, though neither
the operative, nor for that matter the prisoners ^n their own,
essential role.
play an
The prisoners, in any finite number, can be members of a
community and payoffs quantities of some collective good .
The claim is, that
without intervention (by thecate), the community will only corpse a subeyy^mo/
quantity of the good if any.
Some features of the prisoners' relations are
assumed to transfer however.
Suppose, to see the impact of the first reason for the
failure of independence, the prisoners are friends and their common interest is to
6.
be together.
Then, if they are given the opportunity to cooperate, and independ
ence is not enforced by separation, they will, quite rationally, choose a joint
optimal strategy,and there is no dilemma.
Since the same considerations will not
apply where large numbers of strangers are involved, the question arises as the
extent and severity of Dilemma situations.
The question is complicated by the
second double-edged reason for the failure of independence, namely that statist
political arrangements undoubtedly accentuate the extent and severity of Dilemma
situations by discouraging (providing negative incentives) for genuinely cooper
ative behaviour and nmttAcd
aid.
This is another respect in which statist
arrangments (like some subclimax biological communities) tend to be self-reinforcing
and self-perpetuating.
[Transfer some experimental material to here?]
Accordingly, what arguments for the State on such b ases as Prisoners' Dilemma
situations have to show is not merely
1)
that state coercion does suffice to resolve (sufficiently^ many such (damaging)
Dilemmas, but also
2)
that such coercion is the only way of doing so, and
3)
that in doing so worse situations than those that are resolved are not thereby
induced.
These things have never been shown:
nor can they be shown definitely, since firstly
4
there are various nonstatist arrangements for resolving what are taken to be
damaging Dilemmas, and secondly the overall assessment of what Dilemmas are damaging
and what costs are worth incurring in resolving them are ultimately evaluative and
go back to rival, and presumably coherent, value systems.
Hence, when all this is
spelled out, the irrefutability of anarchism.
To get some feel for the complexity of the
issue
and for the extent to
evolutive matters do enter, several points relevant to l)-3) should be introduced.
Firstly, there are many Dilemma situations into which the State puts little or no
effort and many others which are, or were, considered as beyond the sphere of
influence of the State or as not worthy of State attention, for instance, cases of
7.
environmental degradation, overexploitation of a "resource", personal or family
feuds, etc., several of them aggravated by State arrangements such as excessive
privatisation of resources (e.g. enclosure of the commons).
(If such Dilemmas can
be downgraded in importance to suit the Statist case so can other Dilemmas appar
ently favouring State intervention.)
Many of these cases would not be helped at all by the entry of the State or
its representatives with their authority duly showing (though they might be
assisted by sensitive mediation, which does not call for a State, only rudiments
Secondly, introduction of the State tof&yolve some Prisoners'
of a society).
Dilemma situations is not without wide-ranging effects, many of them negative, so
that the gains made, if any, in so resolving Dilemma situations have to be
weighed against costs involved in achieving these gains.
Among the costs are
new Dilemmas, such as the very example considered in illustrating Prisoner Dilemma
games which was initiated by State activity.
Differently, new Dilemmas will
result with the state as a further player (since the State may have access to the
commons, engage in whaling, etc.).
Some of these situations are interesting in
that they may lead to litigation and decision-making outside of or
independ
ent of the State, the resultgof which the State is supposed to enforce though it
may be against its
d
Nothing does:
interests.
But what ensures that rt sticks to the findings.
it is simply assumed that the State will adhere to its role.
But
if that assumption is valid with respect to the State (not known for its reliability)
then it is good also for various other parties.
In short,agreement or decision!*
can be reached and adhered to without need for State enforcement.
So coercion is not
always required.
Are there important Dilemmas where use the authority of the State is the
only way?
Often behind the claim that is is, is a false (but very influential)
dichotomy, that the only way of allocating goods, apart from profit-directed
markets which may deal abysmally with collective goods, is through state control^'
8.
But it is quite evident that there
are other methods of allocation, both
economic (e.g. exchange, based on costs involved) and social (e.g. clubs, cooper
[And a mixture of these methods can be applied to resolve any Prinsoners'
atives).
Dilemma that matters, i.e. here too replacement works.
An important initial move
is, as was seen, to put the prisoners in touch, so that they could cooperate:
equally important is breaking down the ...]
[Joins top of p.7]
Such organisations would not have nearly so much to do as statists would like
us to believe, especially once cooperative ways of doing things and mutual aid had
become established ways in contrast to competitive and privatised ways.
For the
extent of simple Prisoners' Dilemma situations calling for intervention (o^ some
sort) has been exaggerated and many, probably, very many, of those that have been
thought to require intervention do not because the players (are prepared to)
"cooperate" anyway.
happen:-
There are importantly different reasons why the latter can
Firstly, enough players operate with motives which are not purely priv
atised for a sufficiently optimal outcome to result.
these players have altruistic motives:
This does not imply that
their interests may depend on those of
other players in a range of nonaltruistic ways.
Secondly, many cases presented
as if they were simple Prisoner's Dilemma games turn out when properly analysed,
in particular when time is duly taken account of, to be Prisoners' Dilemma supergames.
Such, for instance, is the position with the arguments of Hobbes, Hume
and Hardin.
But in such supergames rational "cooperation" often occurs, even
assuming the players have the worst of privatised
correct analysis of a Prisoner's Dil&wima
often beaten at their own game.
problems.]
motives.
In short, where the
game is as a supergame, statists are
[Detail Taylor's partial results, and their
Chapter 3
Con,v7i^c%y^ /)
CRITIQUE OF THE STATE
1. ARGUMENTS
The main argument for anarchism can be concentrated in a detailed critique of the state.
For therewith arguments against state-like institutions are also advanced. However further
ado is no doubt required to remove all other (unexplified) alternatives to anarchism.
A
Anarchist critiques of the state advance the following themes:
* States and state-like institutions are without satisfactory justification.
* Such institutions are not required for organisational purposes.
* Such institutions have most inharmonious consequences; they bring a whole series of
social and environmental bungles or evils in their train.
In brief, they are unnecessary unjustified evils. The anarchist critique does not end
there, but typically includes, such further themes as :
* States have excessive power,
linkages to state power.
* Societies are not inductably saddled with states. States can be displaced or even decay
(though they are unlikely to just wither away).
(9
1
Chapter 3
: CRITIQUE OF THE STATE
1. ARGUMENTS
The main argument for anarchism can be concentrated in a detailed critique of the state.
For therewith arguments against state-like institutions are also advanced. However further
ado is no doubt required to remove all other (unexplified) alternatives to anarchism.
/
Anarchist critiques of the state advance the following themes:
*
States and state-like institutions are without satisfactory justification.
e
Such institutions are not required for organisational purposes.
Such institutions have most inharmonious consequences; they bring a whole series of
social and environmental bungles or evils in their train.
In brief, they are unnecessary unjustified evils. The anarchist critique does not end
there, but typically includes, such further themes as :
* States have excessive power.
* States are devices for channelling privilege and wealth to certain minorities with inside
linkages to state power.
* Societies are not ineluctably saddled with states. States can be displaced or even decay
(though they are unlikely to just wither away).
1. The state is an undesirable, or even downright evii, institution, for the following range
of reasons:-
* States entrench inequities, domination and exploitation. States are devices for the
protection of wealth, property and privilege, and usually for the redistribution upwards, and
often concentration, of wealth and privilege. A minor but popular illustration is offered by the
expensive conferences and other junkets that state employees or party officials organise for
themselves and manage to bill to state revenue, in turn sucked up from inequitable taxation.
Certainly a main historical outcome of the state has been domination of exploitation of certain
segments of society by others, and some see its main, and barely concealed, purpose as just
that: domination and exploitation.
* States are typically corrupt. For example, there are enquiries presently in train, or with
follow-through activities yet to be duly completed, in many states in Australia, enquires
which have revealed considerable corruption, and there are prima facie cases for similar
enquiries in most of the remainder. Nor is this a new phenomenon: these revelations often
resemble older or on-going scandals.
* States are enormously expensive, and constitute a heavy drain upon regional resources, and
accordingly on local environments. In poorer regions they are not merely a heavy burden, but
2
a main cause of impoverishment. One reason for their voracious appetite is an excess of over
remunerated and often under-productive state employees. Another connected reason is that
many state operations are far from lean and efficient, but incorporate many duplications, drag
factors and dead weight. Under anarchisms, of all varieties, these heavy cost burdens,
weighing down subservient populaces, would be shed. Costs of organisation would be very
significantly reduced.
* The state is an incubus. States are major impositions on everyday life. They are intrusive
and demanding. Never has this been more forcefully expressed than in Proudhon's famous
denouncement of state government:
To be GOVERNED is to be at every operation, at every transaction,
noted, registered, enrolled, taxed, stamped, measured, numbered, assessed,
licensed, authorized, admonished, forbidden, reformed, corrected, punished.
It is, under pretext of public utility, and in the name of the general interest,
to be placed under contribution, trained, ransomed, exploited, monopolized,
extorted, squeezed, mystified, robbed; then, at the slightest resistance, the
first world of complaint, to be repressed, fined, despised, harassed, tracked,
abused, clubbed, disarmed, choked, imprisoned, judged, condemned, shot,
deported sacrificed, sold, betrayed; and, to crown all, mocked, ridiculed,
outraged, dishonoured. That is government; that is its justice; that is its
morality (quoted in M p.6).
As a result, there are constant demands for the reduction of the cancerous state, for removing
parts of it through deregulation, selling off state enterprises and so on. There are two troubles
with such demands from anarchist standpoints: they never go far enough, to the complete
reduction of the state to zero, but characteristically retain parts supportive of or favourable to
bigger business, and they proceed in the wrong way, stripping away social safety nets rather
than ripping off business support nets (such as limited liability, strike limitation legislation,
etc.).
* States, for all that they have been promoted as delivering public goods, are mostly dismal
news for environmental protection and health and for social justice. Furthermore they are
liable to impose substantial hazards or risks upon subservient populations not merely through
military and like activities but, more insidious, through support and promotion of dangerous
industries, such as nuclear and giant chemical industries.
* States usually exert a heavy pressure to uniformity, they tend to eliminate plurality and
cultural differences. These pressures are exercised by a state in the alleged interests of
national unity, and against its enemies, external and internal. Even the most liberal of states
tend to give minorities more difficult lives in times of stress, such as war. They are always
espousing national values, state interests, and commonly assimilation and adoption of state
values (thus for example Canada, formerly and briefly a state toying with multiculturalism,
now insistent upon "Canadian values"). Such exercises are conspicuous, not only in citizen
ceremonies and other state rituals, such as national sporting and religious events, but more
important are virtually ubiquitous in elementary education (down to deference to the flag, and
3
similar).
* States are a major source of wars, and the major source of major wars, undoubted evils
(however supposedly inevitable). They are major sources and suppliers of military
technology and weapons, the means of war. Roughly, the more powerful and "advanced" a
state, the further it is engaged in weapon production and export. Without states it is doubtful
that there would be any nuclear weapons, and accordingly there would be no prospect of
nuclear wars as there would be no weapons with which to fight them.
* States are a serious drag on a more satisfactory international order. That there are not
more, and more satisfactory, international regulatory organisations "is mainly a matter of the
reluctance of nation states to surrender their powers and the dangers of their being dominated
by very powerful states. If only nation states would be dissolved into specialized
[departments] there is every reason to believe that most world problems could be handled by
appropriate specialized [organisations]' (Bumheimp.221).
* States have excessive power, and are even accumulating or trying to accumulate more, for
instance through more centralization, further controls, additional licences, etc., etc. The
excessive power of the state is exhibited not only in the treatment of its citizens and foreigners
within its territory; it is exemplified also in its practices
its territory, through such
features as military pressures, including invasion, trade pressures, including sanitions, and in
treatment of its citizens everywhere.!
Obvious responses to excessive power are
regionalization of powers, separation of powers, achieved by decoupling and some
fragmentation, limitation of powers, and so on.
* Present monolithic governments have assumed far too many roles, for many of which they
are not competent, from some of which they are disqualified by other roles (e.g. as impartial
referees by their business commitments). Because the centre tries to do and control foo much,
as a consequence it does very much unsatisfactorily. Improved arrangements would separate
these roles, deconcentrating and decentralizing power.
States thus appear far from a good bargain on a preliminary consideration of costs, and
very far from maximal or optimal. Especially bad states, the run of states, which engage in
politically-motivated inclination or torture of their citizens, and so on. Where are the
The issue tends to be avoided; it is contended that, contrary to
appearances, we cannot get along without state cossetting: states are necessary. But, given
that we can get along without them, would we really be significantly worse off without them?
cfr .
<r
,,^ven m thd better cases (not allowing for alternative nonstatist arrangements which states
have precluded or systems they have usurped)? But arguments for states are not usually so
directly utilitarian in character. Such arguments would make it look as if we might well opt
out of state organisation, and often be better off doing so.
1
A recent shocking example concerns the attempt of Eire to prevent an Irish women having an
abortion in England.
4
These considerations divide into two groups: features that are
on normal,
normally bad, operations of states, and features that are normic on institution and operation of
states. The first group of criticisms are eliminated under good to ideal operation of states,
what officiandos of states characteristically unwarr^ntedly make. For the evidence seems to
be that in practice states will tend away from the ideal. There are arguments from low
efficiencies of complex mechanical structures that can be adopted to lend support to what
evidence reveals. Features that are normic, and perhaps inevitable upon institution of states
do however yield arguments against states that do not depend on ym*e contingencies of most
states, their
and so on.
/
2. Ways of demonstrating that the State is not Required: as for God and the Church, so
for the State.
There is a theological component in the presumption and theory of the State; that
theological component and therewith of the argMmenfa/ foundations for the State should be
fully exposed. By contrast, anarchism, ^ approached from an argument perspective, enjoys
nn
considerable strength requiring no leaps of faith.
The State is like God: the anarchist is like the atheist in disbelief and nonrecognition of
what is commonly assumed, mostly as a matter of faith, to be needed. The
awn by
Bakunin, has as well as considerable strength certain weaknesses. While the atheist believes
that God does not exist, the anarchist does not believe that there are no states: on the contrary,
there are all too many, though none are legitimate.^The important parallel is as to argM/n^n^.
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 fence-sitting position. Soundly based atheism
goes further than agnosticism, not only faulting the argumentybr, but taking it for granted that
there are arguments, or at least solid considerations, <2g(?in.yL So it is with soundly based
anarchism; it both faults arguments for the State, showing none are generally viable, and
de ps an incisive case against the State.
A more obvious comparison, appreciated from Reformation on and again emphasised
by Bakunin,2 is that of State and Church. 'Of course Knever should have eventuated; several
bad political turnings were taken in the modern period following the Renaissance, t In several
respects the comparison is better than that of the State and God, since both belong to the same
category, institutions. Thus too both have looked to some philosophers as human inventions
or artifices, both have looked to others (reductionists) as objects that could be reduced to
features of the individuals involved in their organisation (but it is hard to see why such
fictions or logical constructions shuld be assigned the power and deference they are
2
Bakunin on Anap^hy-(gdited S. Dolgolff), Allen & Unwin, London, 1973, especially p.139.
5
accorded). 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 on organised violence, all other internal
security arrangements being eventually answerable to its police, and thence to its officers 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. It is easy now, in
retrospect, to see how from being a compulsory feature of social life in many places, the
Church has become a voluntary, and fragmented one; such a parallel desirable transformation
of the State would eliminate it.
Whether the State is inevitably evil or not, it is
so it will be argued, in a
way parallelling the famous Five Ways of Aquinas designed to prove that God exists. That is,
much as there are several ways of arguing to the existence of God, assembled by Aquinas into
the famous (but not exhaustive, and invariably invalid) Five Ways, as well as various less
famous but also important arguments against the existence of God, so in a parallel fashion
there are various arguments that the State is required, as well as, what comes later that is
especially relevant for anarchism, several ways of arguing against the necessity and
desirability of the State.
Since the State is unnecessary, as well as costly and typically at least evil in many of its
practices and
in other respects, it should be superseded. And it can be succeeded,
by alternative social arrangements. It can be superseded or replaced as the Churches to a
.9*1
large extent been supeyuated or replaced in many places. Just as the power of the ChurchAas
declined until it has lost its authority over parishioners, so authority of the State can be
undermined, and it can lose recognition and its claim to sovereignty over those in its territory,/A
But there is a crucial difference between State and Church: under those conditions the State
vanishes; for authority backed by coercive power is essential to the State but not (any longer)
to the Church. And where the State differs crucially from Society anarchistically organised is
as to the matter of coercion and of authority back^by force, such a Society relying basically on
voluntary cooperation where the State relies on authority backed by force. Furthermore, the
Church is justified through a religious theory, and is backed up ultimately by appeal to God's
authority. The modern secular State by contrast annexes itself authority (or has simply
inherited it) and, though it may claim to be justified by some political theory which confers
upon it legitimacy, makes no appeal back to a justifying or authorizing agent. So what
justifies it? Briefly, nothing does.
* The First Way of Showing that the State is not Required: t&e
Argument.
/
6
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, for instance, sponsorship of pomp
and ceremony and of junkets by VIP's; and a great deal of typical State activity is positively
evil and not in the collective interest, for instance, graft, corruption, brutality, maintenance of
inequitable distribution of wealth, land and other resources, and encouragement; of protection^
of polluting or qvironmentally 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 forest-destructive 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, goesjike 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 collecdve 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 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 form considering
each function in turn.3 In each case the function is carried out through alternative
arrangements, such as voluntary co-operation by the people directly concerned, which replace
State arrangements. Consider, for example, the operation of mutual aid or self help medical
services, or community access communications (e.g. radio), most of which are presently
either starved of infrastucture or hindered by the State. Such beneficial services would in
general be reorganised so that all the relevant infrastructure became communally held, and
That is, proper elaboration of this argument takes each facet of generally beneficial state activity
- there is only a (relatively small) finite number to consider - and shows how it can be replaced
in one way or another. Replacement is not of course uniquely determined. Lines such
replacements can take are indicated in much anarchist (and self-management) literature, consider
especially, but no, uncritically, P. Kropootkin, MMfMai Aid, New York University Press 1972,
and also his Fi^/dy, Faci<?rie.y and WorLyAo/w, second edition, Nelson, London, 1913, and 77te
Con<?Me.yf o/Brgad. Chapman and Hall, London, 1913.
7
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 no? in the collective interest,
coercion will normally be required for the performance of
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 orr/gr, 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, security, orderly operation of traffic, and so on,
have often been said to make for especial difficulties for anarchism, or even to refute it. They
do not. 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 the State's propping up of gross inequalitiesA A community
which seriously limits (or dispenses with) the institution of private property and removes
gross inequalities in 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 based on the fairer distribution of land, property and wealth
allegedly 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 and more recent objections, which are designed to show
that people cannot act in their collective interest without coercion.
On these points see, e.g.
7?6wZMZz'a/zary Pawp/z/^tj (edited S. Baldwin), Kover
Publications, New York, 1970, p.206ff.; also P.J. Proudhon, Cazz/e^jza/M' a/* a R^va/azza/zary. For
recent discussion of, and practical examples of, replacements for arbitration and law court
procedures (Zzaz for right-leaning anarchism), see C.D. Stone, Sawg
<?H arhZzrazZag oar
way ra anarcAy, Anarchism (reprint of Nomos XIX) New York University Press, 1978, pp.213-
s
8
It is from the simulation argument, in particular, that the corollary of the
q/
will follow? For, to overstate the case, anything the State can do that does
reflect sought collective interests,, cooperation and other techniques can also achieve in the
longer run, and mostly better.
* 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 real problems introduction of the State was designed to solve,
including new Dilemmas. Suppose, for instance, the secular State really
introduced in
order to solve Prisoners' Dilemmas, then the array of States so resulting generates new
Prisoners' Dilemmas (with States as 'prisoners'), which there is no Super-State to resolve by
coercion. In fact, as opposed to State-justifying mythology, the modem secular State was not
introduced (just as the original states were not initiated) for any such apparently intellectually
reputable reasons, but was largely inherited from the religious State (and the Church) and
maintained to prop up privilege and foster objectives that are not in its communities' interests.
Or suppose, as the myth also has it, that the State really were introduced, or contracted, in the
interest of order and stability and to curb violence; then the array of States resulting more than
negates these advantages, with instability, disorder and violence (e.g. between States) on a
grander scale than before the emergence of modern secular States?
* The Third Way: The overshoot argument, from the inadequacy of institutional
controls on state power.
Having ceded a monopoly of power of 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 controller'? The only
promising way of avoiding this problem — other routes 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. This implies democratic methods of some kind. Others go further: 'democracy [is]
the only known means to achieve this control, the only known device by which we can try to
The title of a joint paper upon which several of these sections draw^.
The argument, to be found in Bakunin, is elaborated a little in Taylor, op cif, 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. Several historical examples of this phenomenon are alluded to in M. Harris,
and Ajngj, Collins, London. 1978, where it is also revealed how little the actual origin
and rise of the State had to do with Dilemma situations, e.g. escaping a Hobbesian state of
nature. Indeed, it was (j^th the advent and development of the State that life became for many
what it had not apparently been in pre-State neolithic times, 'nasty, brutish and short'.
The question is in effect Plato's question and the regress is reminiscent of his Third Man
argument.
9
protect ourselves against the misuse of political power'.R In this event, control has mostly
failed. Democracy is extremely attentuated, even in those states that claim to practice it. The
exercise of power in modem 'democratic' states is often channelled through 'non-elected
authority' and 'is not democratic in the traditional meaning of the term'.9 Moreover, the
much increased power in the modern State, which reaches deep into people's lives, has
passed, with no increase in legitimacy, to certain managerial elites who present the power as
directed at the attainment of 'generally accepted' objectives such as economic growth (but
through, e.g., increased military expenditure) or material 'progress' (but through, e.g.,
increased military expenditure) or material 'progress' (but through, e.g. subsidization of
environmentally destructive enterprises of off-shore companies), though the acceptability of
such particular objectives is never democratically tested.
In any case, indirect democratic and other institutional checks are
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
iwth what those who control the coercive power are prepared to accept. (Toleration of such a
tamed democracy then brings benefits to those who hold power, especially the cover of
legitimation). But institutional checks which operate only insofar as a system 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
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.
* The Fourth Way: The argument from freedom and autonomy.
A person is responsible for actions deliberately undertaken. This premise 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 what to do on each
such occasion oneself; not acting
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
K.R. Popper, 77ie (?/?<?/i 5*<9c;'<?ry and
Vol. II. Fourth edition (revised), Routledge and
Kegan Paul, London, 1962, p.129 and p.127. The (overshoot) 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 teh State' 'upon which' Marxists never had 'any wellconsidered view' (p.129).
V. Lauber, Eco/ogy, po/ZzZcj and Zz&emZ ^efwocracy, Government and Opposition, 13 (1978),
199-217: seep.209 and p.211.
10
not subject to the will of another. Even if it does what another directs, it is not
another so directs. In being free, nof 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 (XMf/ionry over those in its territory (under its de facto
jurisdiction), the right to rule and impose its will uon 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, if the argument is
sound, anarchism, io
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. On the contrary, such direct democratic methods are part of the very stuff of
anarchistic organisation.
* The Fifth Way: The argument from anarchistic 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
- 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 rworked.
Examples of such Stateless organisation suffice to show that crucial real world features have
not been omitted.
There are many examples of non-industrialised societies which were, or are, anarchistic,
there is the rich experience of the Spanish collectives,n and there is much localised
experience of self-management and small-scale anarchistic arrangements within the State
structure. 12
The argument, outlined by Bakunin, is much elaborated, but in a very individualistic and
Kantian fashion, in R.P. Wolff, 7%
of A/iarc/H-sw, Harper & Row, New York, 1970.
No argument is without assumptions, which are open to dispute. Wolffs argument, from
which the argument in the text is adapted, has its pitfalls, and is, for example, disputed by G.
Wall, P/uZo-yop/wcaZ
revi\yg<7, Anarchism, op.cit. p.273ff.
Documented in 77ze
1974.
Co/Zecfiv&y (edited S. Dolgoff), Free Life Editions New York
As B. Martin boldly asserts, 'The advantages of self-management and alternative lifestyles
11
The state is far from necessary and iacks adequate justification. The state is not a
self-justifying object. But none of the justificatory arguments to the state are cogent. A
familiar theme, conceding that the state is a problematic object, is that the state is a necessary
evil. 13 But, to the contrary, states, though generally evil, are hardly necessary.
It needs stressing, furthermore, how weak any necessity claimed has to be. For it is
becoming increasingly easy, with the advances in logical modellings and computer
simulations of other worlds, virtual states and the like, to envisage accessible worlds
organised without modern states. As such worlds, inhabited by humans or human-like
creatures are possible, states are not necessary.
No doubt then, the necessity has to be of some more
andpr^m^Jc sort, a
"social human necessity" for example appealing to emergent features of humans, kinks of
human nature, obtruding in unfavourable situations of high concentrations and extensive
scarcity (situations that states themselves have, like many survival systems, helped contrive).
Further the necessity has to be relative to certain organisational objectives, such as a
particular state delivery of collective goods and services. Remarkably, none of the extant
arguments to the state make it plain that such a weak pragmatic relative "necessity" is
indicated, though they would hardly establish more, and though they Jo make strong
(implausible) assumptions about the brutal situation outside states, in states-of-nature and so
on, and about human motivation and practice, its utterly selfish, self-interested and
acquisitive, and frequently debased character (i.e. what appears encouraged under economic
rationalism, and pretty much what many have come to expect under conditions of advanced
capitalism).
Mostly no effort is made any longer, outside a few abstruse texts, to justify the state.
Within contemporary institutional arrangement it is simply taken for granted (like Big
Science), as axiomatic, as God was under medieval arrangements. But unlike God, who was
good personified and therefore had a large problem with the extent of evil in the world, the
state is acknowledged as problematic and far from unimplicated in the evil of the world (but
directly engaged therein when the councils of the many Machievellis are heeded). Such a
problematic object cannot stand up as merely postulated. Nor is there a corresponding
ontological argument for the state, as that organisational structure than which nothing more
are many and significant. And these alternatives are entirely feasible: there is plenty of
evidence and experience to support their superiority over the present way society operates.
The obstacles to self-management and alternative lifestyles are powerful vested interests and
institutional resistance to change', C/zanging f/x? C<%f, Friends of the Earth, Canberra, 1979.
p.6.
13
The theme, enunciated for instance by Popper, that * state power must always remain a
dangerous though necessary evil' (II, p.30) is a commonplace one.
12
perfect can exist. Outside the flawed imagination of German idealists there is no such Super
State; all actual states are manifestly highly imperfect, all humanly realisable ones are likely
similar.
As a result of the institutionalisation of the state itself, as a received and indeed central
part of modern political arrangements, the onus of proof has become curiously inverted.
Efforts to justify the state have become fairly ideal and academic, no longer a serious issue,
and onus transferred to anarchists to demonstrate that human social life could proceed well
and smoothly (as it now does, of course) without states. While anarchists are not absolved
from offering some account of operations of good social lives without states (for, except in
fairy tales, it does not all just emerge, unplanned, in the new stateless setting), neither are
archists absolved from justification of de facto statist arrangements, beginning with the state
itself.
4
a ARCrpM&^S-.
The main argument for anarchism can be concentrated in a detailed critique of the state,
therewithal state-like institutions a/t? %/ro
/j
/< 7
) c /A—Zb
n X! ct
A<$
Anarchist critiques of the state advance the following
themes:
* States and state-like institutions are without satisfactory justification.
* Such institutions are not required for organisational purposes.
* Such institutions have most inharmonious consequences; they bring a whole series of social
and environmental bungles or evils in their train.
In brief, they are unnecessary unjustified evils
The anarchist critique does not end
there, but typically includes.'further themes/ such as :
w States are devices for channelling privilege and wealth to certain minorities with inside
,
The state is an undesirable, or even downright evii,
institution, for the following range of reasons:-
* States entrench inequities, domination and exploitation. States are devices for the protection
of wealth, property and privilege, and usually for the redistribution upwards, and often
concentration, of wealth and privilege. A minor but popular illustration is offered by the
expensive conferences and other junkets that state employees or party officials organise for
themselves and manage to bill to state revenue, in turn sucked up from inequitable taxation.
Certainly a main historical outcome of the state has been domination of exploitation of certain
segments of society by others, and some see its main, and barely concealed, purpose as just
that: domination and exploitation.
)
* States are typically corrupt. For example, there are enquiries presently in train, or with
follow-through activities yet to be duly completed, in many states in Australia, enquires which
have revealed considerable corruption, and there are prima facie cases for similar enquiries in
most of the remainder. Nor is this a new phenomenon: these revelations often resemble older or
on-going scandals.
* States are enormously expensive, and constitute a heavy drain upon regional resources, and
accordingly on local environments. In poorer regions they are not merely a heavy burden, but a
main cause of impoverishment. One reason for their voracious appetite is an excess of over
remunerated and often under-productive state employees. Another connected reason is that
many state operations are far from lean and efficient, but incorporate many duplications, drag
factors and dead weight. Under anarchisms, of all varieties, these heavy cost burdens,
weighing down subservient populaces, would be shed. Costs of organisation would be very
significantly reduced.
* States are major impositions on everyday life. They are intrusive and demanding^. As a
Never has this been more forcefully expressed than in Proudhon's famous denouncement of state
government:
^1/7^
To be GOVERNED is to be at every operation, at every transaction, noted, registered, enrolled,
taxed, stamped, measured, numbered, assessed, licensed, authorized, admonished, forbidden,
reformed, corrected, punished. It is, under pretext of public utility, and in the name of the
general interest, to be placed under contribution, trained, ransomed, exploited, monopolized,
extorted, squeezed, mystified, robbed; then, at the slightest resistance, the first world of
complaint, to be repressed, fined, despised, harassed, tracked, abused, clubbed, disarmed,
choked, imprisoned, judged, condemned, shot, deported sacrificed, sold, betrayed; and, to crown
all, mocked, ridiculed, outraged, dishonoured. That is government; that is its justice; that is
its morality (quoted in M p.6).
result, there are constant demands for the reduction of the cancerous state, for removing parts of
it through deregulation, selling off state enterprises and so on. There are two troubles with such
demands from anarchist standpoints: they never go far enough, to the complete reduction of the
state to zero, but characteristically retain parts supportive of or favourable to bigger business,
and they proceed in the wrong way, stripping away social safety nets rather than ripping off
business support nets (such as limited liability, strike limitation legislation, etc.).
* States, for all that they have been promoted as delivering public goods, are mostly dismal
news for environmental protection and health and for social justice. Furthermore they are liable
to impose substantial hazards or risks upon subservient populations not merely through military
and like activities but, more insidious, through support and promotion of dangerous industries,
such as nuclear and giant chemical industries.
* Statetusually exert a heavy pressure to uniformity, they tend to eliminate plurality and cultural
differences. These pressures are exercised by a state in the alleged interests of national unity,
and against its enemies, external and internal. Even the most liberal of states tend to give
minorities more difficult lives in times of stress, such as war. They are always espousing
national values, state interests, and commonly assimilation and adoption of state values (thus for
example Canada, formerly and briefly a state toying with multiculturalism, now insistent upon
"Canadian values"). Such exercises are conspicuous, not only in citizen ceremonies and other
state rituals, such as national sporting and religious events, but more important are virtually
ubiquitous in elementary education (down to deference to the f la , and similar).
* States are a major source of wars, and the major source of major wars, undoubted evils
(however supposedly inevitable). They are major sources and suppliers of military technology
and weapons, the means of war. Roughly, the more powerful and "advanced" a state, the
further it is engaged in weapon production and export. Without states it is doubtful that there
would be any nuclear weapons, and accordingly there would be no prospect of nuclear wars as
there would be no weapons with which to fight them.
* States are a serious drag on a more satisfactory international order. That there are not more,
and more satisfactory, international regulatory organisations 'is mainly a matter of the reluctance
of nation states to surrender their powers and the dangers of their being dominated by very
powerful states. If only nation states would be dissolved into specialized [departments] there is
every reason to believe that most world problems could be handled by appropriate specialized
[organisations]' (Burnheimp.221).
* States have excessive power, and are even accumulating or trying to accumulate more, for
(hT)
instance through more centralization, further controls, additional licences, etc., etc. Obvious
responses to excessive power are separation of powers, achieved by decoupling and some
fragmentation, limitation of powers, and so on.
States thus appear farTrom a good bargain on a preliminary consideration of costs,
Especially bad states, the run of states, which engage in politically-motivated incun-ation or
t.ifure of their citizens, and so on. Where are the compensating benefits?' yven that we can get
along without them, would we really be significantly worse off without them? Even in the
better cases (not allowing for alternative nonstatist arrangements which states have precluded or
systems they have usurped)? But arguments for states are not usually so directly utilitarian in
character. Such arguments would make it look as if we might well opt out of state organisation,
and often be better off doing so. Mat it is contended that, contrary to appearances, we cannot
get along without state cossetting: states are necessary.
,
*?:
-
Present monolithic governments have assumed far too many roles, for many of which
they are not competent, from some of which they are disqualified by other roles (e.g. as
impartial referees by their business commitments). Because the centre tries to do and control
top much, as a consequence it does very much unsatisfactorily. Improved arrangements would
separate these roles, deconcentrating and decentralizing power.
wcef-
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The State is like God: the anarchist is
like the atheist in disbelief and
nonrecognition of what is commonly
assumed, mostlv as a matter of faith, to
be needed. T)ie pafatlel,
BakummTtlibjat^weaknessessas well as Rs
strengt%^.''^Vhiie the atheist believes that
God does not exist, the anarchist does
not believe that there are no states: on
the contrary, there are all too many,
though none are legitimate. The impor
tant parallel is as to arguments. The
agnostic does not believe that the
arguments for the existence of God suc
ceed, 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 fence
sitting position. Soundly based atheism
goes further than agnosticism, not only
faulting the argumentsybr, but takingdt
for granted that there are arguments, or
at least solid considerations, rzgm/ry/. So
it is with soundly based anarchism;
<t
both fault) arguments for the
r" 3tatuce- a case against the
State.
A more obvious comparison, ap
preciated from Reformation on and
again emphasised bvBakunin,' 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 on organised
violence, all other internal security arrangernggt^)eing eventually answerable
to its pdhee 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 This does not upset the replacement
respects evil and inevitably corrupt, but argument for anarchism. The argument,
as a necessary evil.^)
implicit in the works of the classical
Whether the State is inevitably evil or anarchists, goes like this: The functions
not, it is M/mecas-wry, so it will be of the State can be divided into two
argued, in a wav parallelling the famous types, those that are in the collective in
jVquinas designed to prove terest and generally beneficial such as
that God exi^&^Since the State is un community welfare and organisational
necessary, as welt as costly and typically functions, and those that are not (but
at leas! evil in many of its practices and are, presumably, in the interests of some
undesirable in other respects, it should of the powerful groups the State tends to
be superseded. And it can be succeeded, serve).
by alternative social arrangements,
But as regards functions of the first
type, the generally beneficial functions
gg 77^ /7r.v/ IWj Q/ SbotWg which are in the collective interest, no
coercion is required. For why should
/r7t?/ //?C S/t//^ Ay ,76)/ 7?^T//7W.'
people have to be coerced into carrying
//!f /?e/)GcT/77^?7/ WRM/W7/.
out functions which are in their collec
tive interest? Such functions can be per
The core of the argument is simple formed, and performed better, without
and persuasive: everything in the collec- the coercion which is the hallmark of the
tive interest accomplished by the State State, and without the accompanying
can equally be accomplished by alterna tendency of the State to pervert such
tive arrangements such as voluntary co functions to the maintenance of privilege
operation, the remainder of State activi and inequality of power, and to remove
ty being dispensed with. The argument is power from those it 'serves'. The detail
not a straight substitution argument, for ed argument that such functions can be
it is not as if a rational person would performed takes a case by case form,
want to have everything accomplished considering each function in turn7 In
by the State replicated by alternative each case the function is carried out
arrangements. There is much the State through alternative arrangements, such
does or supports that is at best rather in
different, ^"'sponsorship of pomp and as voluntary co-operation by the people
directly concerned, which replace State
ceremony and of junkets by VIPs; and a arrangements. Consider, for example,
great deal of typical State activity is the operation of mutual aid or self help
positively evil and not in the collective medical services or building programs,
interest,'e^. gral^t, corruption, brutality, or self managed welfare, housing or en
maintenance of inequitable distribution vironment services, or community access
of wealth, land and other resources, and communications (e.g. radio), most of
encouragement of 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 forest
destructive 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.
which are presently either starved of
infrastructure or hindered by the State.
Such beneficia! services would in genera!
be reorganised so that ah the relevant
infrastructure became communaHy heid,
and those wishing to arrange or use the
service wou!d manage the operation
themselves, taking the operation into
their own hands instead of being the
passive recipients of favours meted out
to them by professional and powerful
agencies. Coercion is unnecessary
because, in more communal types of
anarcnism, the basic infrastructure and
many resources (other than individual
labour) are already held by the com
munity, sdthereis no need to apply coer
cion to individuals to extract these
resources needed for community welfare
projects, as there is in the situation
where wealth and resources are privatis
ed and coercion is required to wrest
resources from unwilling private in
dividuals.
As for the second type of functions,
those which are /tor in the collective in
terest, coercion will normally be required
for the performance of //tew functions,
and is thus an essentia! part of the State's
operation. But those functions are better
dispensed with, since they are not in the
coHective interest. !n this way, while the
good part of the State's operation is re
tained and improved upon, the bad part
— especially the evils of brutality,
corruption and other abuses invariabty
associated with the coercive apparatus
— is detached.
State services that are concerned with
orjpr, in the genera! sense, may be
similarly removed or replaced. These
services, which include reduction of
violence to persons and redress for such
violence, quarantine services, security,
orderly operation of traffic, and so on,
have often been said to make for especial
difficulties for anarchism, or even to
refute it. They do not. Firstly, disputes
can be settled and offences dealt with
directly by communities themselves
without intervention by the State.
Secondly, a great many of these pro
blems 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 the State's propping up of
gross inequalities? A community which
seriously limits (or dispenses with) the in
stitution of private property and
removes gross inequalities in the
distribution of wealth thereby removes
the need for many 'welfare' services and
the basis for a great many offences in
volving violence: virtually ail those in
volving 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 based on the
fairer distribution of land, property and
wealth allegedly achieved by State en
forcement of redistribution. As all too
many people are aware, a major func
tion of the State is to maintain and
police inequitable distribution.
This then is the main classical argu
ment for anarchism. The argument has
however been challenged, both by
historical and more recent objections,
which are designed to show that people
cannot act in their collective interest
without coercion.
7./
NOTES
14.
[5.
16.
oK
!.
Bakunin on Anarchy (edited S. Dolgofl),
Allen & LJnwin, London, (973, especially
p.139. Much else in this paper, eg. 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 (relatively small)
finite number to consider — and shows how it
can be replaced in one way or another.
Replacement is not of course uniquely deter
mined. Lines such replacements can take are
indicated in much anarchist (and self
management) literature, consider especially,
but no/ 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 Revolu
tionary Pamphlets (edited S. Baldwin), Dover
Publications, New York, 1970, p.206 ff.; also
P.J. Proudhon, Confessions of a Revolu
tionary. For recent discussion of, and practical
examples of, replacements for arbitration and
law court procedures (6td for right-leaning
anarchism), see C D. Stone, Some re/?ec//on.s
on o/Tn/rohng our way /o anarc/ty * Anarchism
(reprint of Nomos XIX) New York University
Press, 1978, pp.213^4.
The argument, to be found in Bakunin, is
elaborated a littic in Taylor, op.cit., chapter 7.
A related argument, also in Bakunin, is from
the way in which emergence of the State com
promises and even closes off nonstate solu
tions to problems of social organisation in ad
joining regions. Several historical examples of
this phenomenon are alluded to in M. Harris,
Cannibals and Kings, Collins, London. 1978.
where it is also revealed how little the actual
origin and rise of the State had to do with
Dilemma situations, e.g. escaping a Hobbesian
state of nature. Indeed, it was with the advent
and development of the State that life became
for many what it had not apparently been in
prc-State neolithic times, 'nasty, brutish and
short'.
The question is m effect Plato's question, and
the regress is reminiscent of his Third Man
argument.
K.R. Popper, The Open Society and Its
Enemies. Yol.iL Fourth edition (revised),
Routledge and Kegan Paul. London. 1962,
p.129 and p.127. The (overshoot) problem ts.
according to Popper 'the most fundamental
problem of all politics: the control of the con
troller. of the dangerous accumulation of
power represented in the State' 'upon which'
Marxists never had
view' (p. 129).
'any well-considered
17.
V. Lauber. /co/o^y, po/t/tes an<7 hbera/
r/emocracv. Government and Opposition. 13
(1978), 199-217: see p.2O9 and p.211.
18.
The argument, outlined by Bakunin, is much
elaborated, but tn a very individualistic and
Kantian fashion, tn R.P. Wolff, In Defense of
Anarchism, Harper & Row, New York. 1970.
No argument is without assumptions, which
are open to dispute. Wolff's argument, from
which the argument in the text is adapted, has
its pitfalls, and is, for example, disputed by
G. Wall. P/b/o.sop/hca/ awc/n.sw re row/,
Anarchism, op.cit. p.273ff.
19.
Documented in The Anarchist Cotiectives
(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 alter
natives are entirely feasible: there is plenty of
evidence and experience to support their
superiority over the present way society
operates. The obstacles to self-management
and alternative lifestyles are powerful vested
interests and institutional resistance to
change', ( hanging the Cogs, Friends of the
Earth, Canberra, 1979, p.6.
ANARCHISM - ENLARGED j
____________ foundations*
There is a theological
component in the theory of the ^tate;.the weakness af^whieh should be brought out.
A
A
By contrast, anarchism ^.s approached from an argument pe^p^ctive, of considerable
streng
strength^
Since the &tate is an imposed structure that induces considerable costs,
the onus of proof is moreover on the State side.
(The State versus states:
r
instantiate the universal.)
2.
they
Circled numbers hereafter refer to insert places in elder working version.
In §1:-
(^
In several respects the comparison is better than that of the State and God,
since both belong to the same category, institutions.
/cc
Thus both have looked to
some philosophers as human inventions or artifices, both have looked to others
(reductionists) as objects that could be reduced to features of the individuals
involved in their organisation (but it is hard to see why such fictions or logical
constructions should be assigned the power and deference they are accorded).
0
It can be superseded, or replaced^ as the Church has to a large,
^in many places.
extent been
Just as the power of the Church has declined until it has lost
its authority over parishioners, so authority of the State can be undermined, and
it can lose recognition and its claim to jAu&h^rit^ over those in its territory.
But there is a crucial difference between State and Church:
under those condit
ions the State vanishes, for authority backs!by coercive power is essential to the
State but not (any longer) to the Church.
from
Society anarchistically organised
And where the State differs crucially
is as to the matter of coercion and of
authority backed by force, such a society relying basically on voluntary cooper
ation where the State relies on authority backed by force.
Furthermore, the
Church is justified through a religious theory, and is backed up ultimately by
appeal to God's authority.
The modern secular State by contrast annexes itself
J
A
2.
itself authority (or has simply inherited it) and, though it may claim to be
justified by some political th(o^ry which confers upon it legitimacy, makes no
appeal back to a justifying or authorizing <3<^e.nt.
So what justifies it?
2^.^
These sorts of considerations prompt two connected complaints of the anarch-
ist, which have never been satisfactorily met, the agnostic's complaint that the
State has no adequate justification - the arguments for its imposition or certain
action fail - and the stronger complaint that the State is not necessary at all.
These complaints are backed by arguments and further arguments, namely an assess)
ment of arguments.
These arguments are important, not, or not merely, because
they will show, if unsuccessful, that anarchism j^s irrefutable, but because they
convey muqh information, e.g. as to the weak (to the point of vacuity) sense
in
which the State is "necessary", because they do much to determine the general
0^
logical shape of the anarchism that results, and because they indicate routes to
anarchism, not merely why but, to some extent, how the State can be superseded
by a Society anarchistically organised.
t
pfuch as there are several ways of arguing to the existence of God, assembled
by Aquinas into the famous (but not exhaustive, and invariably invalid) Five Ways,
and various less famous but also important arguments against the existence of God,
apcni&Igs
, (jAtb
so there are various arguments that the State is required, and^ especially
—-2
relevant for anarchism^, several ways of arguing against the necessity of the
State.
is from the simulation argument, in particular, that the irrefutibj.lity of
Ai)
anarchism will follow^ anything the State can do that does reflect the collective
interests
A/.
A74
cooperation.can also do in the long-run, and mostly better.
[Over-
i
g T7/E SECOAD
X 777E
/1RGGA7EATFROM PROEEEM
RECGRREyVCE.
The solution by the State to problems
of social organisation repeats or
generates in more dangerous form the
very real problems introduction of the
State was designed to solve, inciuding
new Diiemmas. Suppose, for instance,
the secular State realty were introduced
in order to soive Prisoners' Dilemmas,
then the array of States so resulting
generates new Prisoners' Ditemmas
(with States as 'prisoners'), which there
is no Super-State to resotve by coercion.
In fact, as opposed to State-justifying
mythology, the modern secutar State
was not introduced (just as the originat
States were not initiated) for any such
apparentty intellectually reputable
reasons, but was targety inherited from
che religious State (and the Church) and
Jiaintained to prop up privitege and
foster objectives that are not in its com
munities' interests. Or suppose, as the
myth atso has it, that the State reaity
were introduced, or contracted, in the
interest of order and stability and to curb
violence; then the array of States
resuming more than negates these advan
tages, with instability, disorder and
viotence (e.g. between States) on a
grander scale than before the emergence
of modern secutar States."*
S 77/E 77//RD HA1 Y. RHE
(9 YERSEOGE /IRGt/MEAE
FROM EE/E /A/(/9E()G^CY
GE /AF77EG77GA74E
CGA7RGES GA A7MEE
PG^ER
Having ceded a monopoty of power
J) the State in order to resotve some
diiemmas, some of them arising from an
inequitable distribution of power, what
controts or batances the power of the
State? A Super-State. And its power?
There is a vicious infinite regress if the
repty to the question 'What controts the
controtter?' is 'a further controller'A
The onty promising way of avoiding this
problem — other routes tead (even
1
more) directty to totaiitarianism — is by
having the first of these controllers, the
State, answer back to those in whose in
terests it is aitegediy estabtished, those of
the society or group of communities it
controts. This implies democratic
methods of some kind. Others go fur
ther: 'democracy (is] the onty known
means to achieve this control, the onty
known device by which we can try to
protect oursetves against the misuse of
pohtica! power'.'* In this event, control
has mostty failed. Democracy is ex
tremely attenuated, even in those states
that claim to practice it. The exercise of
power in modern 'democratic' states is
often channelled through 'non-elected
authority' and 'is not democratic in the
traditional meaning of the term'E
Moreover, the much increased power in
the modern State, which reaches deep in
to people's lives, has passed, with no in
crease in legitimacy, to certain
managerial elites who present the power
as directed at the attainment of 'general
ly accepted' objectives such as economic
growth (but through, e.g.', increased
military expenditure) or materia! 'pro
gress' (but through, e.g. subsidization of
environmentally destructive enterprises
of off-shore companies), though the ac
ceptability of such particular objectives
is never democratically tested.
In any case, indirect democratic and
other institutional checks are /em/OMS in
as much as they depend uttimately on the
toleration of those who have direct con
trol of the forces of the State. Experience
seems to show that such toleration wit!
only be shown so long as democratic
procedures deliver results that are not
too disagreeable, that are broadly in ac
cord with what those who control the
coercive power are prepared to accept.
(Toleration of such a tamed democracy
then brings benefits to those who hold
power, especially the cover of legitima
tion). But institutional checks which
operate only insofar as a system accep
table to the powerholders is not seriously
challenged, and which depend ultimately
upon the toleration of those 'checked',
39 EE/E FGGR 777
Y. EE/E
ARGGMEA?^ FRGA7
EREEDGA7 ^lAD^l GEGAGAf Y.
A person is responsible for actions
deliberately undertaken. This premise
can be derived, if need be, from the
notion of a person as a moral agent.
Taking responsiblity for one's actions
implies, among other things, making the
final decision about what to do on each
such occasion oneself; not acting
on direction from outside, but determin
ing 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 re
quires, freedom. For the autonomous
being, endorsing its own decisions and
principles, is not subject to the will of
another. Even if it does what another
directs, it is not /yeemzse another so
directs. In being free, no/ of constraints
(both physical and self-determined), but
of the constraints and will of others, an
autonomous being is morally free.
A necesary feature of the State is
<7H//io,7/y 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 incom
patible with moral autonomy and with
freedom. An autonomous being, though
it may act in accordance with some im
peratives of the State, those it in
dependently endorses, is bound to reject
such (a claim to) authority, and
therewith the State. In sum, being a per
son, 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 per
sonhood implies, if the argument is
sound, anarchism.'*
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. On the contrary,
such direct democratic methods are part
of the very stuff of anarchistic
organisation.
W E/7E E7E777 HA1Y. 777E
are not really checks at ali.
^RGGMEAEFRGM
The problem of controlling the power
of the State and preventing the State M
A91 RCA75&EAVER7EACE.
once established from usurping further
The replacement argument enables
power and exceeding its mandate, is only
construction
of a model of a society
w/cyAc/orr/y solved by not ceding power
functioning without the State, of a prac
to the State in the first place. The best
tically possible Stateless world; which
way of avoiding the evils of accumulated
shows that the State is not necessary. But
power is the anarchist way, of blocking
it can always be c/c/wer/ — even if the
its accumulation.
claim can seldom or ever be made good
— that the modelling leaves out some
crucial feature of real world circum
stances, rendering it inapplicable. The
gap may be closed by appeal to the inde
pendently valuable argument from ex
perience, that at various times and places
anarchism has been tested and has work
ed. Examples of such Stateless organisa
tion suffice to show that crucial real
world features have not been omitted.
^Yiere are many examples of nontndustrialised socieities which were, or
are, anarchistic, there is the rich experi
ence of the Spanish collectives,'" and
there is much localised experience of
seif-management and small-scale anar
chistic arrangements within the State
structure?"
z
e
The state tacks adequate justification. The state is not a self-justifying object. But
none of the justificatory arguments to the state are cogent. A familiar theme, conceding that the
Al
state is a problematic object, is that the state is a necessary evil. But, to the contrary, states,
though generally evil, are hardly necessary^ It needs stressing, furthermore, how weak
necessity claimed has to be. For it is becoming increasingly easy, with the advances in logical!^
modellings and computer simulations of other worlds, virtual states and the like, to envisage
accessible worlds organised without modern states.
No doubt then, the necessity has to be of some more pragmatic sort, a "social human
necessity" for example appealing to emergent features of humans, kinks of human nature,
obtruding in unfavourable situations of high concentrations and extensive scarcity (situations
that states themselves have, like many survival systems, helped contrive).Remarkably, none of
the extant arguments to the state make it plain that such a weak pragmatic "necessity" is
intricated, though they would hardly establish more, and though they
make strong
(implausible) assumptions about the brutal situation outside states, in states-of-nature and so on,
and about human motivation and practice, its utterly selfish, self-interested and acquisitive, and
frequently debased character (i.e. what appears encouraged under economic rationalism, and
pretty much what many have come to expect under conditions of advanced capitalism).
Mostly no effort is made any longer, outside a few abstruse texts, to justify the state.
Within contemporary institutional arrangement it is simply taken for granted (like Big Science),
as axiomatic, as God was under medieval arrangements. But unlike God, who was good
personified and therefore had a large problem with the extent of evil in the world, the state is
acknowledged as problematic and far from unimplicated in the evil of the world (but directly
engaged therein when the councils of the many Machievellis are heeded). Such a problematic
Popper^s view that 'state power must always remain a dangerous though necess
ary evil'
(II, p.30) is a commonplace one.
object cannot stand up as merely postulated. Nor is there a corresponding ontological argument
for the state, as that organisational structure than which nothing more perfect can exist. Outside
the flawed imagination of German idealists there is no such Super State; all actual states are
manifestly highly imperfect, all humanly realisable ones are likely similar.
As a result of the institutionalisation of the state itself, as a received and indeed central part
of modem political arrangements, the onus of proof has become curiously inverted. Efforts to
justify the state have become fairly ideal and academic, no longer a serious issue, and onus
transferred to anarchists to demonstrate that human social life could proceed well and smoothly
(as it now does, of course) without states. While anarchists are not absolved from offering
some account of operations of good social lives without states (for, except in fairy tales, it does
not all just emerge, unplanned, in the new stateless setting), neither are statists absolved from
justification of de facto statist arrangements, beginning with the state itself.
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The strategy of the first section of the book is to see where we might
fnd up if we began with a state of nature as described by Locke and
ttuck within the constraints of the Lockean "laws of nature". We "focus
a nonstate situation in which peopie generally satisfy moral conuratnts and generally act as they ought. Such an assumption is not wildly
'Wmistic... Yet it is the best anarchic situation one could reasonably ! )
for... If one could show that the State would be superior event to
most favored situation of anarchy... it would justify the state." (5)
J
why should we do this? Presumably Locke and before him
painted their pictures of the state of nature as they did because
thought that's the way people really were. Nozick doesn't seem to
that, thought he also seems to think that Hobbes' characterization
^mptjusibte or unreliable. But if truth to fact isn't the motive, then what
there is. in short, the question of how we are to
the alternatives
. *hat ^nteria of superiority one is going to use. And here lies the rub.
^jrcty Locke and Hobbes were trying to paint a picture of the "state
^*!urc which wou!d not only provide a point of comparison but also
-2993>
�<M-C
avC-
��3.
In §2 introduce contrast between left-leaning and right-leaning anarchisms.
In the enlarged version will carry both of these through the arguments, comparing
The main initial, and striking, differences concern replace
and contrasting them.
ment.
The following, for example, is how mere right-leaning replacement will tend
to look:[A ?irst complication of the simulation argument:-
A properly democratic
state can be simulated, in that all it accomplishes that is considered
worthwhile can be duplicated.
The argument is as before for services for
which the means can be obtained.
_ ___ ___ __
.
Otherwise let S'
be a service for which
s^L-Lici. und.it cnjmpu_L so ry caxarion Or tLie
, -
But if it is in the collective interest then it will obtain the means, e.g. it
generates these by its own operation, as a telephone service does, or it raises
the equivalent of subscriptions as a community television station or magazine may.
Then however the network n may be replaced by a network n* of relations of operators
who choose to do the work without state directives and n' accomplishes a service
s^ which duplicates s.^
Given the means, which the collective interest assumed,
state authority is nowhere required for such a service, as is evident from examples
where community or private services grow up alongside state services where permitted
to do so.
Often anarchists have such services will be performed better than the
A
H
state services they replace.
Note that the left-leaning argument does not assume
that organisation is unnecessary or that people
in their 0^1 interest.
It assumes
will always and inevi/j&6 ly act
that people themselves,
and net some power
ful elite in charge, are best placed to determine what is in their
and to pMcfe it
though VcJunhiry
04M interest
organisation and cooperation.
However people will do things themselves in an organised way, instead of
being, as often now, passive recipients of welfare.
Beneficial services, such as community-access radio and television stations,
and also welfare arrangements, would in general be reorganised so that all the
necessary infrastructure became community owned, and those wishing to use the
service would
and^ to operate it, would carry out much of the operation
themselves - taking the operation into their own hands instead of being the
passive recipients of good things metered out to them by powerful agencies or
professionals who take it upon themselves to judge what is in their [best!]
interests.
�3.^
the means are not forthcoming.
Then the state would not be able to
supply means either unless it exceeded its democratic mandate.]
Let service s, e.g. a telephone or postal or transport service, be some state
activity which is in the collective interest, and let it be accomplished by network
n which will include a system of operators standing in various relations.
Picture
the network that makes up a state postal system or a local radio station.
Such a
system does not require the authority of the state of operate:
what it may require
is means to operate acquired by methods other than compulsory taxation or the like.
But if it is in the collective interest then it will obtain the means, e.g. it
generates these by its own operation, as a telephone service does, or it raises
the equivalent of subscriptions as a community television station or magazine may.
Then however the network n may be replaced by a network n of relations of operators
who choose to do the work without state directives and n' accomplishes a service
s^ which duplicates s.^
Given the means, which the collective interest assumed,
state authority is nowhere required for such a service, as is evident from examples
where community or private services grow up alongside state services where permitted
to do so.
/a?
Often anarchists have such services will be performed better than the
n
A
state services they replace.
Note that the left-leaning argument does not assume
that organisation is unnecessary or that people
in their 0^1 interest.
It assumes
will always and inevi/a.bly act
that people themselves,
and not some power
ful elite in charge, are best placed to determine what is in their
and to pn?$qe it
tliough V<7?un?ary
OMH interest
organisation and cooperation.
However people will do things themselves in an organised way, instead of
being, as often now, passive recipients of welfare.
Beneficial services, such as community—access radio and television stations,
and also welfare arrangements, would in general be reorganised so that all the
necessary infrastructure became community owned, and those wishing to use the
service would
and^to operate it, would carry out much of the operation
themselves - taking the operation into their own hands instead of being the
passive recipients of good things metered out to them by powerful agencies or
professionals who take it upon themselves to judge what is in their [best!]
interests.
�7^
Arguments from freedom, autonomy and personhood.
Re §8:
Observe that these
arguments do not require the rejection of society or of voluntary cooperation:
it is the (claim to supreme) authority of the State that is essential to the
Nor do the arguments depend on individualistic assumptions, such as
argument.
that persons stand in isolation and are not intensionally inter-related to one
another:
all that is supposed is that responsibility for actions can be (largely)
individually assigned.^
8.
Re §9:
It is likely to be objected that most of the experience is of pre
industrial societies.
experience.
First, this is not true:
there is now lots of local
Secondly, insofar as it is true regarding large-scale industrial
societies, it is not damaging.
For it is precisely the structures of these
societies that the aim is to change.
Etc.
Re §10.
The replacement (or substitution) argument when duly followed through
i)
that is elaborated in requisite detail for each component of State actually that
9.
is in the collective interest, shows that the State is not necessary.
There are finitely many components which can be readily enumerated.
In the
case of each component anarchist replacements or alternatives have already been
worked out, often in some detail;
Put alternatively,
see especially Kropotkin's work.
the replacements enable the construction of a model
which reveals a society functioning without the State, the design of,
what can be arrived at in other less constructive ways, a practically
possible stateless world;
(practically) necessary.
and this shows that the State is not
But it can always be claimed that the modelling
procedure has left out some critical feature of real world circumstances
especially as to human psychology, that makes the model inapplicable to
real world circumstances.
This is a further point where^ appeal to the argument fjc/pi experience,
that at various times and places anarchism has worked.
Examples of
Were the argument to depend on individualistic assumptions, it could be re-presented in an interesting reductio form, beginning: Suppose, as arguments for the
State do, that persons are individuals (of the following cast; purely selfinterested, competing, ...). Then ...
�10.
such organisation with.a State suffice to show that critical real-
world features have not been omitted.
Criticism of Undirected Happening, and Anarchism with^Organistion
In §10.
10.
In particular, the Roszak position of an undirected change just happening is
inadequate.
The conditions for change have to be determined in some detail at
least, and nurtured.
No more satisfactory than the Let's Leave Everything Open,
and so excessively to chance, is the Blueprint for the Future idea which tries to
set everything into place.
For example, how untried arrangements will work is
uncertain, and in future possibilities may arise which have not yet been clearly
envisaged.
A much
more flexible model is wanted:
model is intended to provide.
(See also 13).
Beware of arguments concering organisation based &n efficiency (as usually
11.
Need replacement for efficiency as for several other organis
defined E = 0/1).
ational values.
Similarly for economic terms
:
optimum quantity of as defined in economic terms.
quantities of nuclear power.
12.
this the forest succession
e.g.
(in §3) be
This may
i of
eid^e.g.^to optimum
Point same as with respect to efficiency.
Although the forest succession model (pp.11-13) is attractive, you do not
seem to have provided any gripping arguments for its superiority, which might run
along the lines of the moral value of anarchist means reflecting anarchist ends,
or more concretely in terms of a political analysis of contemporary society (e.g.
as done by Dennis Altman).
as a relevant one.
In short, the model needs to be justified in some way
More generally, the basic thrust of the paper is on the
superiority of anarchism as an end state.
The part on strategy opens up a vast
new area, including for example the tactics of anarchists in relation to elections,
to mass uprisings, to opportunities opened by social cataclysms (e.g. Germany
after WWI), to heavily authoritarian governments, etc. - which you don't treat
so far.
13.
Re
6:
The Tragedy of Commons issues arise again between States, e.g. over
fisheries, air pollution, etc., as well as war (cf. also Sinking Ark, p.105).
�11.
14.
In footnote 14.
Th^s Bakunin urged a revolution everywhere at once:
other
wise there remained a continual risk and worry of State colonisation of adjacent
areas, as of State imperialism.
In footnote 12:
There are steps towards locally managed legal arrangements,
on which see Stone in Nemos XIX.
15.
2)
On self-managed medicine, see Illych.
Footnotes not fully taken up (through some overlap):
A detailed argument to this conclusion is presented in Taylor, who also points
out how the "Tragedy of the Commons" is the same general type.
In fact Taylor
Contends that arguments of the type -represent 'the strongest ca$e which can be made
for the desirability of the State'
5)
The small f^rms of economic
(p.9), and that they are wanting.
theory and the natipn states of political theory
also, of course, satisfy the independence requirements.
An independence require
ment is retained in Hobbes' theory, though an individual's payoff is supposed to
depend as well on the individual's eminence.
[Marxists on social determinism?]
Such organisations could in any case be valuable, not only in improving the
Some.
e/*
eV"
lot of those $*tuck in dilemma situations, but in providing ^situations, a matter
8)
?)
about which there is increasing speculations and argument.
9)
We don't of course wish to suggest that working within the system is just a
waste of time, and we should watch it all go while we sit back and wait for the
revolution.
But in each urgent battle it's easy to lose sight of fact that each
hard won victory is only temporary, to lose sight of the urgent necessity to
begin constructing the sort of society in which they will not be so temporary.
This is not and cannot be a matter of imposing some sort of Boy Scout 'Conservation
Ethic' or minor changes in the direction of energy saving on a society which
produces environmental degradation as a matter of its fundamental structure.
12)
It also overlooks the extent to which the structure generates its own style
of politicians and its own self-supporting procedures and mechanisms.
16.
Opposition to the theoretical in Australian intellectual life runs right up
through the universities even to research institutes, e.g. the Research School of
Social Sciences at the Australian National University.
�12.
17.
None of the ways are original, all being found in at least rudimentary form
in 19th century anarchist writings.
original.
18.
But no more were the ways of Aquinas
[Ties with several footnotes.]
Re detailed replacement:
In the contemporary situations of privatisation
of wealth and resources (by State distribution and enforcement thereof) nonstatist
public and community organisations all struggle, even given a supply of voluntary
labour, for want of community infrastructure, which under alternative social
arrangements would be provided.
Because under (&. g.) left-leaning (communal)
forms of anarchism, wealth, resources, etc., are held or controlled by the
community, there is no need to apply coercion to wrest these from often unwilling
privatised individuals in order to /^rnisA infrastructure, etc.
The situation in right-leaning anarchism is very different.
19.
The extent to which States operate in the public good is vastly exaggerated.
The situation as regards wealth, large corporations, etc, are only some examples.
Cities are another:
they are not designed so that they operate in the interests
of people, of all those who dwell in them or visit them, but are dominated at
present by the interests of commerce.
Compare also modern metropolitan, where
cities dominate life of the countrysides.
20.
Serious defects in Wolff's arguments:
a) reasons on p.78 are quite inadequate,
b) false dichotomy between voluntary/constracts.
21.
Conclusion:
the State has
the myth of legitimacy.
no legitimacy.
Weber has material (essay?) on
This should be compared with Edelman's material on bogus
legitimacy obtained by symbolic means.
The transformation of the State is through the State;
the removal of the
State is by the State.
22.
Rewiode!:
(1)
In some of these things alternative groups work with the
State or its representatives (as rainforest patches grow within a eucalypt
forest).
This does not imply recognition of the State as legitimate, as a power
de jure;
but its de facto power is hard to avoid, and like the judo expert
alternative groups will try to take advantage of the power of the operation.
points OK:
reeXD/-e$$*. ]
[Seme
�13.
(2)
An appropriate natural evolution model exonerates us from the difficult -
and unnecessary - task of setting down a blueprint for change, or for trying to
predict how things should go.
false dichotomy.
23.
It shows that revolution/evolution presents a
In between is, e.g. Encouraged of speeded-up evolution
Further questions.
Re §1:
a) All current States are evil,
but is even
the best State attainable seriously flawed? While ideal states with ideal
citizens are not evil (as model worlds will show), the ideal is unattainable?
Otherwise, where is the necessity (of evil)?
one-world necessity, virtually:
Also "necessity" contracts to
in all worlds like the real one is having states,
there are states, so "necessarily" there are states,
b)
of upturns to individuals is over intensional features.
The reduction failure
The point deserves
expanding.
Re §10:
The extent to which the new organisations permit punishment, or
a)
constraints, or rely upon it, is a ticklish issue, especially given the
argument,
b)
Generally there are various ways of changing or regulating an
organisation, e.g. external/internal.
For instance, outside, state,regulation
is replaced by group regulation, e.g. worker-consumer, which is an intery)a^*eA&Mrn<t/
mix.
24.
How
useful is this distinction?
An important prerequisite for directed (i.e. unaimless) change is an alter
native view, such as the Alternative Paradigm affords, the rudiments of theory,
where some goals are indicated.
Once such a view is obtained, in rough outline,
efforts can be made to further it, e.g. to put into practice with, for example,
more people attempting to introduce changes into their own lives.
In the energy case, to take a major example, the goals are clear enough:
maih"T.y to lead less energy consumptive lives. Ways to do this are well enough
known, e.g. to wear sweaters instead of switching on radiators, to reduce motor
commuting by living nearer one's work and friends or going less frequently or
using alternative transport, e.g. public or bicycle.
But— though most Australians
�14.
(e.g.) are in favour of energy conservation, in principle - social arrangements
are so structured that some of the alternatives are impossibly difficult or are
arduous, e.g. a may may have little option but to commute long distances when
the factory at which he works moves to an outer industrial suburb, and all his
commitments lie in the areas to which he is mortgaged.
Similarly packaging is
increasingly difficult if not impossible to avoid, even in essential purchases
and those designed to lead the good life.
Thus an effective change is often
going to have to be part of a more far-reaching change.
For a working example - reforming and restructuring forest services - see
Anarchism letter, p.3 ff.
Further Arguments for the State, not already taken up explicitly:-
25.
The argument from efficiency, growth, etc:
(1)
isation !
really the argument from organ
Efficiency is little double edged as e.g. in efficiency ys employment:
There is a trade-off.
(Griffin
on 6?ff,C4C7tcyof smaM-scale argiculture).
itarian states more efficient, etc. (disputed).
Total
Maximization of efficiency is not
that the game is about - antifreedom, antidemocratic, anti-good-life, and what is
valuable.
Also reward for initiative in terms of grossly inequitable distrib
ution of wealth is not required.
Work is often undesirable.
No way in which the
the upper<$ worth the salaries they get.
The argument from political possiblity, "reality".
(2)
argument from the status quo, from^Old Paradigm.
invalidity.
realistic" or
The argument is really an
An historical comparison shows
Life without the Church would no doubt have been dismissed as "un
impossible" by many of those who lived in the Middle
Ages.
More generally different economies are extar)t and many more are possible.
Supply demand theory and theory of historic market will work without profit
maxim assumption, but instead e.g. certain satisfactions (satisfying).
is needed is an assu_jnption of rea SO/) able return.
All that
A range of other assumptions.
However, marginal (calculus) theory builds in assumption of profit op* return
�15.
Maximisation.
There are several Myths concerning the Market to dispose of here:
a) it s historic
b) it's efficient: depends how assess:
e.g. net
of new technology.
Paradigm differences, deep differences in what is considered valuable, begin
to emerge rather quickly in arguments for the State, once discussion of their
the Dominant Paradigm organisational goals of
In particular,
adequacy begins.
efficiency and growth (on which see Scott), instead of being taken for granted as
formerly, are up for debate and overturning.
Is it possible to obtain an exhaustive diversification of arguments for
26.
the State?
It is doubtful that theoretical classifications so far are of nh/cA
merit.
Classification Scheme 1:-
Empiricist (pragmatist)
*Non empiricist
( ?
Idealist
*Nonidealist
Classification 2:-
?
?
*Non-u^itarian
?
?
Empirical survey gives
Contract
U^.ity
economic
Idealist
Don't often
get State, but only
Society,as e.g. in Green.
And it is important to distinguish these: for anarchism admits Society.
27.
a)
Russell, History of \N. Phil, makes some useful points:
Glorification of the State begins, so far as modern times are concerned, with
the Reformation.
In the Roman Empire, The Emperor was defied, and the State
�/
16.
thereby acquired a sacred character;
but the philosophers of the Middle Ages,
with few exceptions, were ecclesiastical, and therefore put the Church before
the State.
Luther began the opposite practice ... Hobbes ... developed the
doctrine of the supremacy of the State, and Spinoza, on the whole, agreed with
him.
u.
Rosseau ... thought that the State should not tolerate other political
organisations.
Hegel ... goes to lengths which are astonishing (p.739).
that these are all protestants that are cited.)
(Note
On p.742 there is a goodish
page on Hegel's doctrine of State including:
' If shj} follow
from Hegel's principles that every interested which
is not Aatmftll ^the community and which can be promoted by cooperation,
have its appropriate organisation ... 'jjhere is also some good stuff in
Russell on holism (trad, logic) ett. on pp.744-5 and p.732 bettei^J
�Comment on collectivism
"Collectivism -the doctrine that the means of production
should be collectively owned - is,
like many other
features of radical dogma, the bastard child of
capitalist parents.
Collectivism is the doctrine of
people who imagine production as taking place in large
collectively operated units - it's a factory or production-line
picture.
Historically it arose after the industrial
revolution had driven people off the land and created
workers for the large-scale factory enterprises set up
by capitalists for their own profit.
The class which
supported it were the urban workers in such enterprises,
not the peasants, and others in self-directed employment,
such as craftspeople, carpenters and shoemakers - the
latter group were mostly mutualists, later anarchists.
This is why Marxism, which lays heavy stress on collectivism,
also emphasises the role of the urban proletariat at the
expense of other non-capitalist groups, and also stresses
the idiocy of rural life, the blessings of progress,
technology, and industrialism generally.
Collectivism essentially buys the large-scale, mass-producticn
technology-dependent character of capitalist economic
organisation.
It does not see that if one does not have
such a structure, collectivism amounts to an otiose,
damaging and unjustifiable restriction on possible forms
of non-capitalist social and economic organisation, ruling
out particularly the self-directed type of option for
production and various combination cooperative forms."- Richard
Routley and Vai Routley
�The following have been redacted from access file (PDF) due to copyright restrictions.
1. Cutting of Routley R and Routley V (1982) 'The irrefutability of anarchism', Social
Alternatives, 2(3):23-29. (9 leaves)
2. Annotated cutting (photocopy) of Grofman B (1980) 'Review, Taylor, Michael, Anarchy
and Cooperation, John Wiley and Sons, London, 1976', Theory and decision, 12(1):107114, https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00154661. (5 leaves)
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�. * The state is necessary ybr this or that, for the optimal provision of public goods (including,
but not merely, preservation of public order). Notice that this important type of argument need
/ot presume to establish necessity. It is obvious, from the operation of nastier states, that
' societies can function not only without optimal provision of public goods, but indeed with very
little
provision of any such goods. It would, moreover, be a rash archist who pretended
that modern states deliver anything remotely approaching optimal allocations of public goods.
Competition for anarchistic alternatives is accordingly not with opdmal allocations, but perhaps
only a matter of exceeding rather poor provision. More generally, it is enough that these
alternatives do well enough, satisize not maximize.
Most of the arguments from provision of public good depend not only upon maximization
assumptions, just rejected, but also upon, what flows from individualism, a false private/public
dichotomy, with the private delivered by individuals or individual firms, and the public by the
state. In between, however, lie many social groupings: clubs, communities, unions, societies,
clans, tribes, and so on. Such groups can deliver social goods.
As the modern state developed more or less at the time of the rise of individualism in its
extreme modem forms, it is hardly surprising that there is a heavy individualistic setting
presumed in most arguments to the state. An important group of the arguments alluded to
(variations upon Prisoners' Dilemma, Tragedy of the Commons,...) take the following broad
form:- individuals operating on their own, in a certain prearranged settings which involve
relations to other individuals also operating independently, will make seriously suboptimal
�18
decisions or follow suboptimal practices - unless brought into line by an outside authority,
swiftly presumed to be a surrogate of the state. It should be evident, even without proper details
of the arguments, that the state is neither sufficient nor necessary for resolution of the problems
that issue from independent individual operations and from individual competition. It is not
sufficient because commons' tragedies, such as the overexploitation of commons' resources by
individual competing firms, can proceed apace in the presence of the state and may even be
encouraged through state activity. It is not necessary because the dependence-relations of
individuals in dilemma or tragedy situations can be exposed, and restored, in a variety of ways
into which the state does not enter; for example, by establishing communication linkages, by
social activity or arbitration by engaged societies, special groups, and so on. (Commonly such
relations are, in any case, evident in analogous real-life situations before the state becomes
involved, or can be persuaded or pushed into being involved.) Also indicated thereby is how
anarchism can resolve such dilemmas as need to be resolved in the absence of the state, namely
by having alternative arrangements and organisation in place which will serve instead.
One of the major deceits of modern political theory hides in the persistent theme that the
state, with a centralised monopoly of force, is necessary in order to assure adequate public
goods, including public order. But the most that appears required, the most that arguments
would deliver, are specific organisations that look after specific kinds of goods. There is no
inherent reason why societies should not institute and regulate specialised bodies, coordinated
among themselves by negotiation, or failing that by recognised arbitrators, to ensure the
adequate maintenance or production of various types of public goods, including control of
damaging crime. Each such institution would gain community standing from its support base,
for instance through possessing fairly general democratically-generated recognition. Such an
institution would aim to secure execution of its recommendations and decisions by sanctions and
like means, and for this it could mobilize in co-operation with other recognised institutions.
spheres
postal and communication arrangements (Kropotkin's favourite examples) to sport.
Each major sport has its international [organisation] that regulates a variety
of matters ranging from the rules of the game to the administration of
competitions. Such bodies are, of course, open to schisms and rivalries,
but these are rarely a major problem, in spite of the fact that they have no
sanctions to enforce their authority other than excluding competitors from
participation in the events they organise (Burnheim p.221, whom the
whole preceding paragraph paraphrases).
�* An apparently powerful argument for the state, again from public order concerns, advances
the following claim:- The state is required to control and limit such social evils as crime and
corruption. Observe, it is not supposed these features of life are eliminated under the state; so
questions arise about tolerable levels, cost-benefit ratios upon varying levels of controls (down
to the point of any controls at all), and so on. Observe again that the typical state, so far from
limiting corruption and crime, is itself a major source of them. The state structure, by virtue of
its power, expanse and character, indMcay much of the evil it is supposed to remove, such as the
extent of crime. There are several different reasons for this. For one, the state tends to become
the guardian of a partisan morality, and tried to prosecute what, outside a "moral minority", are
not offences at all, are victimless "crimes", and so on. Thus a range of medical, sexual and
drug "offences". For another, the state acts to protect its questionable monopolies, whence a
range of banking, gambling, gaming and other offences. Differently, state-supported or
sponsored social outcomes, such as gross inequalities, and privatization of wealth and
resources, encourage property crime.
Anarchists agree that the major background source of these crimes, the state and its legion
of "law and order" officers, should be removed. Over what, if anything, replaces this extensive
apparatus, they differ. Different forms of anarchism are bound to offer different suggestions.
For example, under communist forms, where an extensive institution of private property
vanishes, property crimes will therewith disappear also; but under individualistic forms which
sanction unlimited accumulation of property, some procedures for safeguarding property will
need to be provided. There are again many ways, much less demanding than resort to the state
to achieve some requisite protection of property. One is what effectively operates in many
places that also waste their finances paying for police protection, namely insurance. Another is
private, neighbourhood, or community security.
�n/Q^-
--T'-
;
��Sojustified or not, there is no practical aiternative to the state. A/^e .f ika
* Anarchism has not worked in practice, and is unworkable.^ Meiiher is true. Before the
modern era of states it seemed to work well enough in some places, for instance in parts of the
Americas and of the Pacific. Since the modem advent of states, it has been afforded but little
opportunity to work at the national level, but it remains operative - a most striking example - at
the transnational level.
According to a condescending pragmatic argument, simple primitive societies may have
been able to struggle along without state structure or organisation, but it is entirely out of the
question for the practical operation for modem industrial societies. No recent anarchist societies
have worked. A short response is that but few have had an opportunity to succeed. There is
extroardinarily little room for social experiment in modem state dominated societies. Moreover,
where anarchist societies have had some chance to flourish, as briefly in Spain before they were
�4^^
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�20
suppressed, they appear to have functioned moderately well.
At the international level, anarchy has operated for many generations, although few would
wish to argue that the arrangements, though they
though successful in a sense, are
particularly satisfactory. The international order is anarchistic, because there is no coercive
government or authoritiative political body, with the authority backed by enforcing power.
International order is instead a prime example of anarchy (not a wonderful example, but then nor
are many states terrific examples of archy). And it affords a conspicuous counterexample to
stock arguments, like that of Hobbes, to some sort of well-ordering authority such as the state.
Granted, then, international order leaves much to be desired (though it is not significantly
worse than order in some states); so there are repeated calls for new world orders of one sort or
another. It has been persuasively argued (through a sort of top-down argument against states)
that international order is as bad as it is because of the power and intransigence of states. One
way to an improved world order is through the erosion of states, diminution of state
sovereignty.
As for real testing in practice, there is now no experimental space outside states. There
used to be some room in the world for sizeable political experimentation, for testing different
arrangements. We are now locked into large, overpopulated states with little room to move, let
alone experiment without states. There is however space w/r/un more liberal states for limited
experimentation, and there is increasing scope for simulation and modellings as computer power
and versatility grow. Most of the experimentation has been with small commune arrangements.
[What practice has shown, about all it has shown negatively, is that communistic arrangements
do not tend to work well for long with present humans, unless they are committed to an
authoritarian ideology.]
*
As some stage as the dialectic advances, argument merges, as here, with responses to
criticism. But before criticisms are considered in more detail, it is important to examine
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��The prob!em of cont robing the
power of the state and preventing
the State once established from
usurping further power to the
State in the mandate, is oniy
satisfactorily solved by not ceding
power to the State in the first
place.
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The following has been redacted from access file (PDF) due to copyright restrictions.
Annotated cutting (photocopy) of Meyers DT (1981) 'The inevitability of the state', Analysis,
41:46-47, https://doi.org/10.2307/3327871. (3 leaves)
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The strategy of the first section of the book is to see where we might
fnd up if we began with a state of nature as described by Locke and
ttuck within the constraints of the Lockean "laws of nature". We "focus
a nonstate situation in which peopie generally satisfy moral conuratnts and generally act as they ought. Such an assumption is not wildly
'Wmistic... Yet it is the best anarchic situation one could reasonably ! )
for... If one could show that the State would be superior event to
most favored situation of anarchy... it would justify the state." (5)
J
why should we do this? Presumably Locke and before him
painted their pictures of the state of nature as they did because
thought that's the way people really were. Nozick doesn't seem to
that, thought he also seems to think that Hobbes' characterization
^mptjusibte or unreliable. But if truth to fact isn't the motive, then what
there is. in short, the question of how we are to
the alternatives
. *hat ^nteria of superiority one is going to use. And here lies the rub.
^jrcty Locke and Hobbes were trying to paint a picture of the "state
^*!urc which wou!d not only provide a point of comparison but also
-2993>
<M-C
avC-
3.
In §2 introduce contrast between left-leaning and right-leaning anarchisms.
In the enlarged version will carry both of these through the arguments, comparing
The main initial, and striking, differences concern replace
and contrasting them.
ment.
The following, for example, is how mere right-leaning replacement will tend
to look:[A ?irst complication of the simulation argument:-
A properly democratic
state can be simulated, in that all it accomplishes that is considered
worthwhile can be duplicated.
The argument is as before for services for
which the means can be obtained.
_ ___ ___ __
.
Otherwise let S'
be a service for which
s^L-Lici. und.it cnjmpu_L so ry caxarion Or tLie
, -
But if it is in the collective interest then it will obtain the means, e.g. it
generates these by its own operation, as a telephone service does, or it raises
the equivalent of subscriptions as a community television station or magazine may.
Then however the network n may be replaced by a network n* of relations of operators
who choose to do the work without state directives and n' accomplishes a service
s^ which duplicates s.^
Given the means, which the collective interest assumed,
state authority is nowhere required for such a service, as is evident from examples
where community or private services grow up alongside state services where permitted
to do so.
Often anarchists have such services will be performed better than the
A
H
state services they replace.
Note that the left-leaning argument does not assume
that organisation is unnecessary or that people
in their 0^1 interest.
It assumes
will always and inevi/j&6 ly act
that people themselves,
and net some power
ful elite in charge, are best placed to determine what is in their
and to pMcfe it
though VcJunhiry
04M interest
organisation and cooperation.
However people will do things themselves in an organised way, instead of
being, as often now, passive recipients of welfare.
Beneficial services, such as community-access radio and television stations,
and also welfare arrangements, would in general be reorganised so that all the
necessary infrastructure became community owned, and those wishing to use the
service would
and^ to operate it, would carry out much of the operation
themselves - taking the operation into their own hands instead of being the
passive recipients of good things metered out to them by powerful agencies or
professionals who take it upon themselves to judge what is in their [best!]
interests.
3.^
the means are not forthcoming.
Then the state would not be able to
supply means either unless it exceeded its democratic mandate.]
Let service s, e.g. a telephone or postal or transport service, be some state
activity which is in the collective interest, and let it be accomplished by network
n which will include a system of operators standing in various relations.
Picture
the network that makes up a state postal system or a local radio station.
Such a
system does not require the authority of the state of operate:
what it may require
is means to operate acquired by methods other than compulsory taxation or the like.
But if it is in the collective interest then it will obtain the means, e.g. it
generates these by its own operation, as a telephone service does, or it raises
the equivalent of subscriptions as a community television station or magazine may.
Then however the network n may be replaced by a network n of relations of operators
who choose to do the work without state directives and n' accomplishes a service
s^ which duplicates s.^
Given the means, which the collective interest assumed,
state authority is nowhere required for such a service, as is evident from examples
where community or private services grow up alongside state services where permitted
to do so.
/a?
Often anarchists have such services will be performed better than the
n
A
state services they replace.
Note that the left-leaning argument does not assume
that organisation is unnecessary or that people
in their 0^1 interest.
It assumes
will always and inevi/a.bly act
that people themselves,
and not some power
ful elite in charge, are best placed to determine what is in their
and to pn?$qe it
tliough V<7?un?ary
OMH interest
organisation and cooperation.
However people will do things themselves in an organised way, instead of
being, as often now, passive recipients of welfare.
Beneficial services, such as community—access radio and television stations,
and also welfare arrangements, would in general be reorganised so that all the
necessary infrastructure became community owned, and those wishing to use the
service would
and^to operate it, would carry out much of the operation
themselves - taking the operation into their own hands instead of being the
passive recipients of good things metered out to them by powerful agencies or
professionals who take it upon themselves to judge what is in their [best!]
interests.
7^
Arguments from freedom, autonomy and personhood.
Re §8:
Observe that these
arguments do not require the rejection of society or of voluntary cooperation:
it is the (claim to supreme) authority of the State that is essential to the
Nor do the arguments depend on individualistic assumptions, such as
argument.
that persons stand in isolation and are not intensionally inter-related to one
another:
all that is supposed is that responsibility for actions can be (largely)
individually assigned.^
8.
Re §9:
It is likely to be objected that most of the experience is of pre
industrial societies.
experience.
First, this is not true:
there is now lots of local
Secondly, insofar as it is true regarding large-scale industrial
societies, it is not damaging.
For it is precisely the structures of these
societies that the aim is to change.
Etc.
Re §10.
The replacement (or substitution) argument when duly followed through
i)
that is elaborated in requisite detail for each component of State actually that
9.
is in the collective interest, shows that the State is not necessary.
There are finitely many components which can be readily enumerated.
In the
case of each component anarchist replacements or alternatives have already been
worked out, often in some detail;
Put alternatively,
see especially Kropotkin's work.
the replacements enable the construction of a model
which reveals a society functioning without the State, the design of,
what can be arrived at in other less constructive ways, a practically
possible stateless world;
(practically) necessary.
and this shows that the State is not
But it can always be claimed that the modelling
procedure has left out some critical feature of real world circumstances
especially as to human psychology, that makes the model inapplicable to
real world circumstances.
This is a further point where^ appeal to the argument fjc/pi experience,
that at various times and places anarchism has worked.
Examples of
Were the argument to depend on individualistic assumptions, it could be re-presented in an interesting reductio form, beginning: Suppose, as arguments for the
State do, that persons are individuals (of the following cast; purely selfinterested, competing, ...). Then ...
10.
such organisation with.a State suffice to show that critical real-
world features have not been omitted.
Criticism of Undirected Happening, and Anarchism with^Organistion
In §10.
10.
In particular, the Roszak position of an undirected change just happening is
inadequate.
The conditions for change have to be determined in some detail at
least, and nurtured.
No more satisfactory than the Let's Leave Everything Open,
and so excessively to chance, is the Blueprint for the Future idea which tries to
set everything into place.
For example, how untried arrangements will work is
uncertain, and in future possibilities may arise which have not yet been clearly
envisaged.
A much
more flexible model is wanted:
model is intended to provide.
(See also 13).
Beware of arguments concering organisation based &n efficiency (as usually
11.
Need replacement for efficiency as for several other organis
defined E = 0/1).
ational values.
Similarly for economic terms
:
optimum quantity of as defined in economic terms.
quantities of nuclear power.
12.
this the forest succession
e.g.
(in §3) be
This may
i of
eid^e.g.^to optimum
Point same as with respect to efficiency.
Although the forest succession model (pp.11-13) is attractive, you do not
seem to have provided any gripping arguments for its superiority, which might run
along the lines of the moral value of anarchist means reflecting anarchist ends,
or more concretely in terms of a political analysis of contemporary society (e.g.
as done by Dennis Altman).
as a relevant one.
In short, the model needs to be justified in some way
More generally, the basic thrust of the paper is on the
superiority of anarchism as an end state.
The part on strategy opens up a vast
new area, including for example the tactics of anarchists in relation to elections,
to mass uprisings, to opportunities opened by social cataclysms (e.g. Germany
after WWI), to heavily authoritarian governments, etc. - which you don't treat
so far.
13.
Re
6:
The Tragedy of Commons issues arise again between States, e.g. over
fisheries, air pollution, etc., as well as war (cf. also Sinking Ark, p.105).
11.
14.
In footnote 14.
Th^s Bakunin urged a revolution everywhere at once:
other
wise there remained a continual risk and worry of State colonisation of adjacent
areas, as of State imperialism.
In footnote 12:
There are steps towards locally managed legal arrangements,
on which see Stone in Nemos XIX.
15.
2)
On self-managed medicine, see Illych.
Footnotes not fully taken up (through some overlap):
A detailed argument to this conclusion is presented in Taylor, who also points
out how the "Tragedy of the Commons" is the same general type.
In fact Taylor
Contends that arguments of the type -represent 'the strongest ca$e which can be made
for the desirability of the State'
5)
The small f^rms of economic
(p.9), and that they are wanting.
theory and the natipn states of political theory
also, of course, satisfy the independence requirements.
An independence require
ment is retained in Hobbes' theory, though an individual's payoff is supposed to
depend as well on the individual's eminence.
[Marxists on social determinism?]
Such organisations could in any case be valuable, not only in improving the
Some.
e/*
eV"
lot of those $*tuck in dilemma situations, but in providing ^situations, a matter
8)
?)
about which there is increasing speculations and argument.
9)
We don't of course wish to suggest that working within the system is just a
waste of time, and we should watch it all go while we sit back and wait for the
revolution.
But in each urgent battle it's easy to lose sight of fact that each
hard won victory is only temporary, to lose sight of the urgent necessity to
begin constructing the sort of society in which they will not be so temporary.
This is not and cannot be a matter of imposing some sort of Boy Scout 'Conservation
Ethic' or minor changes in the direction of energy saving on a society which
produces environmental degradation as a matter of its fundamental structure.
12)
It also overlooks the extent to which the structure generates its own style
of politicians and its own self-supporting procedures and mechanisms.
16.
Opposition to the theoretical in Australian intellectual life runs right up
through the universities even to research institutes, e.g. the Research School of
Social Sciences at the Australian National University.
12.
17.
None of the ways are original, all being found in at least rudimentary form
in 19th century anarchist writings.
original.
18.
But no more were the ways of Aquinas
[Ties with several footnotes.]
Re detailed replacement:
In the contemporary situations of privatisation
of wealth and resources (by State distribution and enforcement thereof) nonstatist
public and community organisations all struggle, even given a supply of voluntary
labour, for want of community infrastructure, which under alternative social
arrangements would be provided.
Because under (&. g.) left-leaning (communal)
forms of anarchism, wealth, resources, etc., are held or controlled by the
community, there is no need to apply coercion to wrest these from often unwilling
privatised individuals in order to /^rnisA infrastructure, etc.
The situation in right-leaning anarchism is very different.
19.
The extent to which States operate in the public good is vastly exaggerated.
The situation as regards wealth, large corporations, etc, are only some examples.
Cities are another:
they are not designed so that they operate in the interests
of people, of all those who dwell in them or visit them, but are dominated at
present by the interests of commerce.
Compare also modern metropolitan, where
cities dominate life of the countrysides.
20.
Serious defects in Wolff's arguments:
a) reasons on p.78 are quite inadequate,
b) false dichotomy between voluntary/constracts.
21.
Conclusion:
the State has
the myth of legitimacy.
no legitimacy.
Weber has material (essay?) on
This should be compared with Edelman's material on bogus
legitimacy obtained by symbolic means.
The transformation of the State is through the State;
the removal of the
State is by the State.
22.
Rewiode!:
(1)
In some of these things alternative groups work with the
State or its representatives (as rainforest patches grow within a eucalypt
forest).
This does not imply recognition of the State as legitimate, as a power
de jure;
but its de facto power is hard to avoid, and like the judo expert
alternative groups will try to take advantage of the power of the operation.
points OK:
reeXD/-e$$*. ]
[Seme
13.
(2)
An appropriate natural evolution model exonerates us from the difficult -
and unnecessary - task of setting down a blueprint for change, or for trying to
predict how things should go.
false dichotomy.
23.
It shows that revolution/evolution presents a
In between is, e.g. Encouraged of speeded-up evolution
Further questions.
Re §1:
a) All current States are evil,
but is even
the best State attainable seriously flawed? While ideal states with ideal
citizens are not evil (as model worlds will show), the ideal is unattainable?
Otherwise, where is the necessity (of evil)?
one-world necessity, virtually:
Also "necessity" contracts to
in all worlds like the real one is having states,
there are states, so "necessarily" there are states,
b)
of upturns to individuals is over intensional features.
The reduction failure
The point deserves
expanding.
Re §10:
The extent to which the new organisations permit punishment, or
a)
constraints, or rely upon it, is a ticklish issue, especially given the
argument,
b)
Generally there are various ways of changing or regulating an
organisation, e.g. external/internal.
For instance, outside, state,regulation
is replaced by group regulation, e.g. worker-consumer, which is an intery)a^*eA&Mrn<t/
mix.
24.
How
useful is this distinction?
An important prerequisite for directed (i.e. unaimless) change is an alter
native view, such as the Alternative Paradigm affords, the rudiments of theory,
where some goals are indicated.
Once such a view is obtained, in rough outline,
efforts can be made to further it, e.g. to put into practice with, for example,
more people attempting to introduce changes into their own lives.
In the energy case, to take a major example, the goals are clear enough:
maih"T.y to lead less energy consumptive lives. Ways to do this are well enough
known, e.g. to wear sweaters instead of switching on radiators, to reduce motor
commuting by living nearer one's work and friends or going less frequently or
using alternative transport, e.g. public or bicycle.
But— though most Australians
14.
(e.g.) are in favour of energy conservation, in principle - social arrangements
are so structured that some of the alternatives are impossibly difficult or are
arduous, e.g. a may may have little option but to commute long distances when
the factory at which he works moves to an outer industrial suburb, and all his
commitments lie in the areas to which he is mortgaged.
Similarly packaging is
increasingly difficult if not impossible to avoid, even in essential purchases
and those designed to lead the good life.
Thus an effective change is often
going to have to be part of a more far-reaching change.
For a working example - reforming and restructuring forest services - see
Anarchism letter, p.3 ff.
Further Arguments for the State, not already taken up explicitly:-
25.
The argument from efficiency, growth, etc:
(1)
isation !
really the argument from organ
Efficiency is little double edged as e.g. in efficiency ys employment:
There is a trade-off.
(Griffin
on 6?ff,C4C7tcyof smaM-scale argiculture).
itarian states more efficient, etc. (disputed).
Total
Maximization of efficiency is not
that the game is about - antifreedom, antidemocratic, anti-good-life, and what is
valuable.
Also reward for initiative in terms of grossly inequitable distrib
ution of wealth is not required.
Work is often undesirable.
No way in which the
the upper<$ worth the salaries they get.
The argument from political possiblity, "reality".
(2)
argument from the status quo, from^Old Paradigm.
invalidity.
realistic" or
The argument is really an
An historical comparison shows
Life without the Church would no doubt have been dismissed as "un
impossible" by many of those who lived in the Middle
Ages.
More generally different economies are extar)t and many more are possible.
Supply demand theory and theory of historic market will work without profit
maxim assumption, but instead e.g. certain satisfactions (satisfying).
is needed is an assu_jnption of rea SO/) able return.
All that
A range of other assumptions.
However, marginal (calculus) theory builds in assumption of profit op* return
15.
Maximisation.
There are several Myths concerning the Market to dispose of here:
a) it s historic
b) it's efficient: depends how assess:
e.g. net
of new technology.
Paradigm differences, deep differences in what is considered valuable, begin
to emerge rather quickly in arguments for the State, once discussion of their
the Dominant Paradigm organisational goals of
In particular,
adequacy begins.
efficiency and growth (on which see Scott), instead of being taken for granted as
formerly, are up for debate and overturning.
Is it possible to obtain an exhaustive diversification of arguments for
26.
the State?
It is doubtful that theoretical classifications so far are of nh/cA
merit.
Classification Scheme 1:-
Empiricist (pragmatist)
*Non empiricist
( ?
Idealist
*Nonidealist
Classification 2:-
?
?
*Non-u^itarian
?
?
Empirical survey gives
Contract
U^.ity
economic
Idealist
Don't often
get State, but only
Society,as e.g. in Green.
And it is important to distinguish these: for anarchism admits Society.
27.
a)
Russell, History of \N. Phil, makes some useful points:
Glorification of the State begins, so far as modern times are concerned, with
the Reformation.
In the Roman Empire, The Emperor was defied, and the State
/
16.
thereby acquired a sacred character;
but the philosophers of the Middle Ages,
with few exceptions, were ecclesiastical, and therefore put the Church before
the State.
Luther began the opposite practice ... Hobbes ... developed the
doctrine of the supremacy of the State, and Spinoza, on the whole, agreed with
him.
u.
Rosseau ... thought that the State should not tolerate other political
organisations.
Hegel ... goes to lengths which are astonishing (p.739).
that these are all protestants that are cited.)
(Note
On p.742 there is a goodish
page on Hegel's doctrine of State including:
' If shj} follow
from Hegel's principles that every interested which
is not Aatmftll ^the community and which can be promoted by cooperation,
have its appropriate organisation ... 'jjhere is also some good stuff in
Russell on holism (trad, logic) ett. on pp.744-5 and p.732 bettei^J
Comment on collectivism
"Collectivism -the doctrine that the means of production
should be collectively owned - is,
like many other
features of radical dogma, the bastard child of
capitalist parents.
Collectivism is the doctrine of
people who imagine production as taking place in large
collectively operated units - it's a factory or production-line
picture.
Historically it arose after the industrial
revolution had driven people off the land and created
workers for the large-scale factory enterprises set up
by capitalists for their own profit.
The class which
supported it were the urban workers in such enterprises,
not the peasants, and others in self-directed employment,
such as craftspeople, carpenters and shoemakers - the
latter group were mostly mutualists, later anarchists.
This is why Marxism, which lays heavy stress on collectivism,
also emphasises the role of the urban proletariat at the
expense of other non-capitalist groups, and also stresses
the idiocy of rural life, the blessings of progress,
technology, and industrialism generally.
Collectivism essentially buys the large-scale, mass-producticn
technology-dependent character of capitalist economic
organisation.
It does not see that if one does not have
such a structure, collectivism amounts to an otiose,
damaging and unjustifiable restriction on possible forms
of non-capitalist social and economic organisation, ruling
out particularly the self-directed type of option for
production and various combination cooperative forms."- Richard
Routley and Vai Routley
The following have been redacted from access file (PDF) due to copyright restrictions.
1. Cutting of Routley R and Routley V (1982) 'The irrefutability of anarchism', Social
Alternatives, 2(3):23-29. (9 leaves)
2. Annotated cutting (photocopy) of Grofman B (1980) 'Review, Taylor, Michael, Anarchy
and Cooperation, John Wiley and Sons, London, 1976', Theory and decision, 12(1):107114, https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00154661. (5 leaves)
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. * The state is necessary ybr this or that, for the optimal provision of public goods (including,
but not merely, preservation of public order). Notice that this important type of argument need
/ot presume to establish necessity. It is obvious, from the operation of nastier states, that
' societies can function not only without optimal provision of public goods, but indeed with very
little
provision of any such goods. It would, moreover, be a rash archist who pretended
that modern states deliver anything remotely approaching optimal allocations of public goods.
Competition for anarchistic alternatives is accordingly not with opdmal allocations, but perhaps
only a matter of exceeding rather poor provision. More generally, it is enough that these
alternatives do well enough, satisize not maximize.
Most of the arguments from provision of public good depend not only upon maximization
assumptions, just rejected, but also upon, what flows from individualism, a false private/public
dichotomy, with the private delivered by individuals or individual firms, and the public by the
state. In between, however, lie many social groupings: clubs, communities, unions, societies,
clans, tribes, and so on. Such groups can deliver social goods.
As the modern state developed more or less at the time of the rise of individualism in its
extreme modem forms, it is hardly surprising that there is a heavy individualistic setting
presumed in most arguments to the state. An important group of the arguments alluded to
(variations upon Prisoners' Dilemma, Tragedy of the Commons,...) take the following broad
form:- individuals operating on their own, in a certain prearranged settings which involve
relations to other individuals also operating independently, will make seriously suboptimal
18
decisions or follow suboptimal practices - unless brought into line by an outside authority,
swiftly presumed to be a surrogate of the state. It should be evident, even without proper details
of the arguments, that the state is neither sufficient nor necessary for resolution of the problems
that issue from independent individual operations and from individual competition. It is not
sufficient because commons' tragedies, such as the overexploitation of commons' resources by
individual competing firms, can proceed apace in the presence of the state and may even be
encouraged through state activity. It is not necessary because the dependence-relations of
individuals in dilemma or tragedy situations can be exposed, and restored, in a variety of ways
into which the state does not enter; for example, by establishing communication linkages, by
social activity or arbitration by engaged societies, special groups, and so on. (Commonly such
relations are, in any case, evident in analogous real-life situations before the state becomes
involved, or can be persuaded or pushed into being involved.) Also indicated thereby is how
anarchism can resolve such dilemmas as need to be resolved in the absence of the state, namely
by having alternative arrangements and organisation in place which will serve instead.
One of the major deceits of modern political theory hides in the persistent theme that the
state, with a centralised monopoly of force, is necessary in order to assure adequate public
goods, including public order. But the most that appears required, the most that arguments
would deliver, are specific organisations that look after specific kinds of goods. There is no
inherent reason why societies should not institute and regulate specialised bodies, coordinated
among themselves by negotiation, or failing that by recognised arbitrators, to ensure the
adequate maintenance or production of various types of public goods, including control of
damaging crime. Each such institution would gain community standing from its support base,
for instance through possessing fairly general democratically-generated recognition. Such an
institution would aim to secure execution of its recommendations and decisions by sanctions and
like means, and for this it could mobilize in co-operation with other recognised institutions.
spheres
postal and communication arrangements (Kropotkin's favourite examples) to sport.
Each major sport has its international [organisation] that regulates a variety
of matters ranging from the rules of the game to the administration of
competitions. Such bodies are, of course, open to schisms and rivalries,
but these are rarely a major problem, in spite of the fact that they have no
sanctions to enforce their authority other than excluding competitors from
participation in the events they organise (Burnheim p.221, whom the
whole preceding paragraph paraphrases).
* An apparently powerful argument for the state, again from public order concerns, advances
the following claim:- The state is required to control and limit such social evils as crime and
corruption. Observe, it is not supposed these features of life are eliminated under the state; so
questions arise about tolerable levels, cost-benefit ratios upon varying levels of controls (down
to the point of any controls at all), and so on. Observe again that the typical state, so far from
limiting corruption and crime, is itself a major source of them. The state structure, by virtue of
its power, expanse and character, indMcay much of the evil it is supposed to remove, such as the
extent of crime. There are several different reasons for this. For one, the state tends to become
the guardian of a partisan morality, and tried to prosecute what, outside a "moral minority", are
not offences at all, are victimless "crimes", and so on. Thus a range of medical, sexual and
drug "offences". For another, the state acts to protect its questionable monopolies, whence a
range of banking, gambling, gaming and other offences. Differently, state-supported or
sponsored social outcomes, such as gross inequalities, and privatization of wealth and
resources, encourage property crime.
Anarchists agree that the major background source of these crimes, the state and its legion
of "law and order" officers, should be removed. Over what, if anything, replaces this extensive
apparatus, they differ. Different forms of anarchism are bound to offer different suggestions.
For example, under communist forms, where an extensive institution of private property
vanishes, property crimes will therewith disappear also; but under individualistic forms which
sanction unlimited accumulation of property, some procedures for safeguarding property will
need to be provided. There are again many ways, much less demanding than resort to the state
to achieve some requisite protection of property. One is what effectively operates in many
places that also waste their finances paying for police protection, namely insurance. Another is
private, neighbourhood, or community security.
n/Q^-
--T'-
;
Sojustified or not, there is no practical aiternative to the state. A/^e .f ika
* Anarchism has not worked in practice, and is unworkable.^ Meiiher is true. Before the
modern era of states it seemed to work well enough in some places, for instance in parts of the
Americas and of the Pacific. Since the modem advent of states, it has been afforded but little
opportunity to work at the national level, but it remains operative - a most striking example - at
the transnational level.
According to a condescending pragmatic argument, simple primitive societies may have
been able to struggle along without state structure or organisation, but it is entirely out of the
question for the practical operation for modem industrial societies. No recent anarchist societies
have worked. A short response is that but few have had an opportunity to succeed. There is
extroardinarily little room for social experiment in modem state dominated societies. Moreover,
where anarchist societies have had some chance to flourish, as briefly in Spain before they were
4^^
// c
20
suppressed, they appear to have functioned moderately well.
At the international level, anarchy has operated for many generations, although few would
wish to argue that the arrangements, though they
though successful in a sense, are
particularly satisfactory. The international order is anarchistic, because there is no coercive
government or authoritiative political body, with the authority backed by enforcing power.
International order is instead a prime example of anarchy (not a wonderful example, but then nor
are many states terrific examples of archy). And it affords a conspicuous counterexample to
stock arguments, like that of Hobbes, to some sort of well-ordering authority such as the state.
Granted, then, international order leaves much to be desired (though it is not significantly
worse than order in some states); so there are repeated calls for new world orders of one sort or
another. It has been persuasively argued (through a sort of top-down argument against states)
that international order is as bad as it is because of the power and intransigence of states. One
way to an improved world order is through the erosion of states, diminution of state
sovereignty.
As for real testing in practice, there is now no experimental space outside states. There
used to be some room in the world for sizeable political experimentation, for testing different
arrangements. We are now locked into large, overpopulated states with little room to move, let
alone experiment without states. There is however space w/r/un more liberal states for limited
experimentation, and there is increasing scope for simulation and modellings as computer power
and versatility grow. Most of the experimentation has been with small commune arrangements.
[What practice has shown, about all it has shown negatively, is that communistic arrangements
do not tend to work well for long with present humans, unless they are committed to an
authoritarian ideology.]
*
As some stage as the dialectic advances, argument merges, as here, with responses to
criticism. But before criticisms are considered in more detail, it is important to examine
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The prob!em of cont robing the
power of the state and preventing
the State once established from
usurping further power to the
State in the mandate, is oniy
satisfactorily solved by not ceding
power to the State in the first
place.
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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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https://www.antipodean-antinuclearism.org/files/original/b924da0714a05e99687172f7e19976c9.pdf
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�f
Chapter 10
_
CRITICS OF ANARCHISM AND FURTHER CRITICISM.
..
One of the regular obstacles almost any innovative ideology encounters is hardened
dogfpMdwi. Hardened dogmatism characteristically sees little scope for movement from some
established status quo. There are many hardened dogmatists who see no alternative to the
modern state. In this they join company with a huge and motley crew of political "realists":
'There simply is no way an advanced industrial state can cope with technological complexities,
can minimize waste and misery and the danger of revolutions without strong government
controls' (Gardner!, our sample dcifnatist, selected^because he has ranted^at verbose length,on
his anti-anarchist disposition). We can grant that there is no viable state without requisite
government controls, no state without a state. The question is rather whether such objectives as
reduction of waste and misery and control of technology even he accomplished, perhaps
significantly better without the state, which tends to wagnt/y the problems concerned.
A feature of dogmatism is that assertion, reiterated assertion, replaces argument. So it is
with^state dogmatism: 'As things are, there simply is no way a modem industrial society can
flourish without a strong government to enforce the law' (p.123). international industrial
society flourishes, after a fashion ^without such a government. Analogous functional ways in
which regional industrial societies can operate, way implicit in historic anarchism, have been
explained. 'It is not just the necessity of a state to preserve law and order that makes the
anarchist dream so hopeless' (p.124). Order requires only a certain organisation^, for which the
state is quite unnecessary. As for law, the necessity is but analytic on the law being state-law.
But a wide network of conventions and regulations can operate without a state; there are many
examples, beginning with stateless societies, continuing through a range of voluntary
organisations.
Why 'so hopeless'?
,,
Even if small communities [observe the limitation on anarchism
immediately slippst in]... found a way to police themselves, there is no way
they could maintain, let alone establish, an industrial society. Small selfgoverning groups are incapable of building reservoirs to bring them clean
water, or roads to connect cities, or dynamos to supply electricity, or cars,
or printing presses, or modem hospitals, or anything else that is a product of
an advanced technology. Big tasks can be done only by big corporations
that are either state-owned or state-controlled, or that operate as vast
independent oligarches within the state (p.124).
eV
As well as intellectually lazy, this is hopelessly astray: there resides the hopelessness. In some
regions, pioneer societies and industrial society developed more or less regardless of the state.
Even small f^rm communities built themselves reservoirs for stock and household water
supplies, built their local roads, and so on (in Australia, USA, and elsewhere). They still do.
Electricity generates and printing presses can be manufactured in fairly unsophisticated
i
.
Martin Gardner
776-7SS.
e
W7ry.y i?/
*#
/
ch.7
Aafe.- WTry 7 owi
an
'
�workshops, where the state need be nowhere in evidence. As for big tasks, international
organisations (for construction, forestry, dam building, oil-well sinking,^ substantially
independent of particular states can, and do, perform the work. They may presently be required
to have a state location, but that is strictly unnecessary for accomplishing the tasks; they are
certainly not state-owned, or state-controlled, nor do they, in any real sense, operate within the
states'. Furthermore, regions investing in large works beyond their capacities can set up their
own specialized structures, to oversee such big tasks, to monitor activities and ensure
accountability, and to exclude cowboy operations. It is simply false that the advancement and
application of science and technology requires the state, as much history reveals. In a similar
way, it is simply misleading that 'if we want to enjoy the benefits of science and technology,
the ideals of an archism are as irrelevant as the ideals of the Sermon on the Mount' (p.124). By
contrast with the ideals of the Sermon, the impact of which are quite indirect, much anarchist
output concerns science and technology, their promotion and qualified benefits, proper place
and appropriateness.
Next our philosophical scrivener turns to pulling down anarchism by a superficial
comparison with and sen^up of the American 'counter culture scene of the sixties' (pp. 1244-5).
As technology is not condemned by one bad result, nor is anarchism shown impracticable by
one presumed form wht^e merit remain a matter of controversy. In any case, m^re accurate
comparisons are available than Gardner's prejudical poQ)ourL These set anarchist elements of
the counterculture substantially witli^th&\merican individual, pro-violence form of anarchism.
Hardened dogmatists are almost invariably crt^ss critics. They do not ever get at close
quaters^et alon^ inside, what they are criticising; so they do not achieve a good view, still less
adequate
sympathetic view, of what they ^/are criticising. Fortunately there are less cr^ss
critics, most of them with heavy commitments to democratic states (Gardner, though he makes
obeisant gestures towards democracy, is underneath it committed to the strong tech,o-cratic
state.) It should be plain that any critic with heavy commit^nts to democracy would have to
take anarchism more seriously as an option; for the demos may chose, or rule, to remove their
state. (Quite constitutional means may, and should, permit this.) The point, though elementary,
has escaped apparently more sympathetic opponents of anarchism such as Dahl, who premisses
his critique of anarchism upon the incompatibility of anarchism with democracy. He appears to
manage this yhnx
by mistakenly equating democracy with the democratic state. Certainly
anarchism is incompatible with the democratic state, as with any state, but it does not follow,
except through a variant of the mistaken equation, that it is incompatible with democracy. And
it should be evident that this latter incompatibility is contested. For the^e have many proposals
for combining anarchism with m^re participatory democracy (ul^minating on enterprises like
Burgheim's quest fortrue democracy^ which arrives at a dilute anarchism).
Dahl begins his criticism of anarchism by asserting that anarchist (and guardianship)
'objections to democracy aare so fundamental that unless they can be satisfactorily met any
further explanations of the democratic idea would be futile' (p.37).
Given the heavy
�commitment of much anarchism to democratic processes, this assertion faces evident
rejoinders. And Dahl himself quickly shifts ground (though a page later he shifts back,
assuming that his archetypal democrat and anarchist are opposed as archist and anarchist):
'Because democracy might well be the most des^be process for governing [anarchist
v^lu^ttpry]
it might also be the prevented form of government in an anarchist society.
But i^ the anarchist view democracy cannot redeem a state
*
(p.37, two paragraphs down).
Since nothing can redeem the state, ergo neither gods nor people nor democracy can. Yet Dahl
begins his cri^tism with this curious twist: since the state^coercism, and coercisaa is
intrinsically bad, can the democratic process somehow make it good?
*
(p.37). This problem for
archism, which Dahl assumes, is no problem at all for anarchism. Instead of addressing the
question posed, Dahl switches focus, by challenging the coherence and consistency of
anarchism. But all his exhibition of divWity/shows is that anarchism is a family-resemblance
notion, like many Wittgenstein pointed outigbwc, warAewatic.?, and so on. It is a family
resemblance notion with certain key features (as being played, is of a game), namely rejection
of archie authority, ^percion and the state; beyond that there is a plurality of forms. Once the
pluralistic conceptualisation is appreciated, there need be no incoherence; it all fits together.
^^Many of the criticisms of anarchism turn on the issue of
especially how
economic activity such asf marketing, distribution, and so on, is to be organised in the absence
of a central state authority. Meeting these criticisms in appropriate detail is no mean feat,
requiring the elaboration of substantially new economic theory (except for excessively
individualistic anarchists like Rothbart, but sketchy details and hints have been offered by
anarchist theorists). While economic criticisms bulk large in recent criticism of anarchism, the
state having assumed the role of grand macro-economic organiser, these by no means exhaust
criticisms. There are serious issues also concerning political and cultural organisation,
concerning the presumed enemies of organisation and order.
In many criticisms it is simply assumed that anarchistic organisation will have to take
over the arrangements of present mega-states and somehow substitute for those, without mega
states. The assumption is astray. Mega-states are mostly recent undesirable constructions,
obtained by conquest or war dealings, and held together coercive means and other devices of
state. These would, would be allowed to, fragment into regional components. Thus the
problem of organisation is a substantially smaller problem than that of organisation of mega
states; namely, that of organisation of regions. The regions would naturally be grouped
together, by principles of federation. (The new Europe provides a partial, suggestive example.)
No strand of anarchism 'has developed an adequate economic theory. The individualists
are stymied by the public goods problem, the communists by the problems of coordination.
[Even more plausible intermediate positions] require the support of the state at a number of
critical points' (M p.172). How the state is presumed to provide its benign supportative role is
well illustrated in the case of more individualistic anarchism, where the familiar problem of
public goods is also taken to manifest itself.
�4
A cynic might well observe that no strand of capitalism or of socialism has developed an
adequate economic theory. But theories there no doubt are, in certain narrow reaches in
abundance.
*
Anarchism assumes the benefits of autonomous
operations, indeed the
individualistic ideal is one of personal sovereignty in the market place', but 'is not the state an
indispensible prerequisite for a successfully functioning economy?' (M p.169). There are two
parts to a response. First, markets functioned before states, and function outside states, for
example internationally. Second, whatever institutions are required for the operation of
markets can be supplied regionally under anarchistic fragmentation of the state.
How much background structure do markets depend upon, which might presuppose
apparatus of state. A market has a place of transactions, which can be common or waste
ground, a supply of goods or services to be exchanged there for other goods or services (barter)
or currency (in a money economy). Buyers and sellers enter the market to effect exchanges.
No doubt presupposed are at least limited entitlements (leasehold or property rights, so a seller
is entitled to dispose of, to a new user, holder or owner, what is offered for sale), contractual
arrangements, and in a money economy, some recognised currency. Also presumed, normally
where markets operate, are certain levels of safety, for instance protection against invasion,
assault and theft. But these are normal expectations for much of social life, for even conducting
a conversation. As for the rest, except perhaps for currency, it is a mere pretence that a state is
required for their assurance: customary or tribal arrangements will ensure both property in
transportable goods and recognition of verbal contracts or undertakings. An appropriate
currency too can develop in the absence of states, as exemplified in the shell currencies of
Melanesia and the bank notes of early America. Bank notes are not fully public goods; for a
bank which can profit from their circulation or issue has an incentive to supply them. (And
banks themselves do not require a sponsoring state, even if sometimes that helps, as in bailing
them out.)
It is worth observing that much of the conventional apparatus presumed for markets is
already presupposed
for the fictional covenant by which the state is supposedly
established. Namely, meeting in relative safety, entering into contractual arrangements (in the
case of the state of a very sophisticated sophistical sort).
* Anarchism has not met the 'intractable ... problem of co-ordinating the activities of many
independent social units without recourse to central authority' (M p.181). But there are many
examples, most notably at an international level again, where such coordination has been
achieved (e.g. IUCO). Examples are increasing with new networking arrangements (e.g.
Pegasus network).
Where substantially self-managing arrangements, such as traditional
markets are allowed to flourish, there are no such intractable problems. Certainly, however,
with anarcho-communist structures which aim to suppress such self-managing arrangements,
there are problems: namely those of
* co-ordinating productive activity, aligning production with the needs of consumers without
�5
markets or central planning.
Key approach: localising production, face-to-face.
How can this work in an advanced industrial economy, where a high degree of specialization
and much division of labour. Suggestion CAN'T!
* motivating people to work.
Pressure, sanctions, rewards. While this is a problem in any setting, it is caAaaccJ since certain
personal rewards removed.
*
a central agency seems necessary to maintain any society-wide distribution of resources'
(p.172). W/nc/i resources? Where markets operate, many resources will be distributed without
any role for a central agency, which would often serve as a serious blockage. WAat
distribution? What was intended was: a
distribution of resources, so the blatant inequalities
now observed in even the wealthist societies are mitigated and the conditions of the worst-off
are alleviated. That is drawing upon experience of capitalism: anarchism would not start out
from such an invidious position. Further, it is assumed that there are only two ways of righting
such (capitalistic) maldistribution: through purely private means or by a centralised state means.
So presented it represents an extremely familiar false dichotomy, private or state, in which
society is either equated with the state or else drops out, and all other public means disappear.
For socially-inclined anarchists there is no disputing that there need to be safety nets in
place for the poor and disadvantaged. What is in question is how those nets are placed and
administered, and whether the state has an essential role or is rather a less efficient more
officious nuisance. One option is an exposed tithing system, where members of society are
offered a choice of schemes to contribute to, and expected to contribute to these, and
encouraged to make their contribution open to public inspection. Those who tried to evade
contribution and closed their books would be subject to a range of social pressures.
It is further claimed that while smaller anarchist communities, especially those of a
collectivistic or communistic bent, may be able to resolve inequitable distribution problems,
'there are major difficulties' in attempting to realise some distributive ideal 'between
communities' (p.173). There may be major difficulties, there are now, but that is scarcely an
argument for a central authority. Some redistribution and a small transfer of wealth occurs
intentionally without a central authority. There is not even decisive evidence that a central
authority helps, so far from making matters worse.
* AaarcA/sw
no
/or /aw.
Anarchism cannot traffic in law - at least in the initial and prominent sense of /aw
(ventured e.g. in the OED), namely 'a rule of conduct imposed by authority', imposed by
authority and characteristically backed up by coercion, it may be added. To some extent
counter balancing this prognostication is a second sense of 'law' (the third comprises 'scientific
and philosophical uses' from which likewise anarchism is not debarred): namely 'without
reference to an external commanding authority'. Thus as the term gavcrawcar is variably
determinable, so also is /aw. Under the main determinate, law is incompatible with anarchism.
�6
But under a different determinate, there is no incompatibility. Anarchism could operate with
such a derminate (as with appropriate notions of moral law, and similar). Law, however,
deservedly has a tarnished reputation, in anarchism as elsewhere. Most of it is arcane,
administered by an expensive oligopolistic priesthood. Too often it is an oppressive tool of the
state.
While anarchism is hostile to such law, and incompatible with heavy authoritarian law, it
is in no way opposed to rules, to regulations, to conventions of freely assented to sorts, and so
on. These can substitute.
The state has other less conspicuous roles than law and order, war and defence, and
managing the economy.
* The state serves as representative of national identity, which people crave. Anarchism does
not cater for this basic human need. This is pretty dubious stuff. Such a need is by no means
ubiquitous, and is, if not manufactured, certainly exaggerated in convenient cases, by state
devices. But let us concede a need hypothesis (there is nothing basic about it). Is it true that
The anarchist does nothing to replace the notion; his ideal society is devoid of any features
which might serve as a focus of identity' (M p.180)? No. The components in terms of which
an anarchistic society is structured — the local community, the local region, the regional
federations,... - offer foci for identification, bases for sporting teams, and so on. But, in any
event, nothing excludes national organisations, fielding cultural groups, artistic troupes,
sporting teams, and so on. The present structure of national sporting bodies, only loosely
affiliated with states, and coordinated in model anarchist fashion, provides in fact a worthwhile
example of anarchism in action (Burnheim again).
Do such concessions to features of nationhood 'naturally lead to a demand for self
government', and thence for a nation-state (p.181)? They may (as with the Basques) or may
not (as with the Cornish), and if so more likely the former than the latter? Further these
demands may come only from a small minority of nationals, or may be ill-founded. A demand
on its own demonstates comparatively
of merit, for all that modem economics would have
us imagine.
A repeated criticism of anarchism is that 'with the state removed, the system has no
ultimate guarantor ...'. So it used to be said in favour of God. But who guarantees the
guarantor? (A state may underwrite a bank, but a state itself can fail, despite support of other
states.) There is no ultimate guarantor. There are other issues also, such as the character of the
guarantor. While it is seen to in theology, as a matter of further (illicit) characterisation, that
God has the right features, nothing guarantees that an "ultimate guarantor" is not, rather like
most states, corrupt, unfair, heavy handed and incompetent.^ Even if an ultimate guarantee was
needed, none could be provided. But lesser assurances can be offered. For example, a bank's
2
If a guarantee cannot be obtained without violence, it is most unlikely that a satisfactory one
will be obtained with it.
�7
books can be open to public scrutiny and assessment, so that it can be seen that it is trading in a
responsible and viable fashion. (It is better that a person's healthy state be assured by
observation that the person is functioning well, than by maintaining the person as a closed
system and relying on the doctor's guarantee of the person's health.)
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there is no way they could maintain, let alone establish, an industrial
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society. Small self-governing groups are incapable of building reser1
voirs to bring them clean water, or roads to connect cities, or dynamos
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to supply electricity, or cars, or printing presses, or modern hospitals, '
product of
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advanced technology.
technology. Btg
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or anything else that is a product
can be done only by big corporations tha^are either state-owned or
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�Many of the criticisms of anarchism turn on the issue of orgam.Mric'K, especially how
gconcwHC activity such as: marketing, distribution, and so on, is to be organised in the absence
of a central state authority. Meeting these criticisms in appropriate detail is no mean feat,
requiring the elaboration of substantially new economic theory (except for excessively
individualistic anarchists like Rothbart, but sketchy details and hints have been offered by
anarchist theorists). While economic criticisms bulk large in recent criticism of anarchism, the
state having assumed the role of grand macro-economic organiser, these by no means exhaust
criticisms. There are serious issues also concerning political and cultural organisation,
concerning the presumed enemies of organisation and order.
In many criticisms it is simply assumed that anarchistic organisation will have to take over
�the arrangements of present mega-states and somehow substitute for those, without mega-states.
The assumption is astray. Mega-states are mostly recent undesirable constructions, obtained by
conquest or war dealings, and held together coercive means and other devices of state. These
would, would be allowed to, fragment into regional components. Thus the problem of
organisation is a substantially smaller problem than that of organisation of mega-states; namely,
that of organisation of regions. The regions would naturally be grouped together, by principles
of federation. (The new Europe provides a partial, suggestive example.)
J
*
No strand of anarchism 'has developed an adequate economic theory.
The
individualists are stymied by the public goods problem, the communists by the problems of
coordination. [Even more plausible intermediate positions] require the support of the state at a
number of critical points' (M p.172). How the state is presumed to provide its benign
supportative role is well illustrated in the case of more individualistic anarchism, where the
familiar problem of public goods is also taken to manifest itself.
A cynic might well observe that no strand of capitalism or of socialism has developed an
adequate economic theory. But theories there no doubt are, in certain narrow reaches in
abundance.
* Anarchism assumes the benefits of autonomous market operations, indeed The individualistic
ideal is one of personal sovereignty in the market place', but 'is not the state an indispensible
prerequisite for a successfully functioning economy?' (M p.169). There are two parts to a
response. First, markets functioned before states, and function outside states, for example
internationally. Second, whatever institutions are required for the operation of markets can be
supplied regionally under anarchistic fragmentation of the state.
How much background structure do markets depend upon, which might presuppose
apparatus of state. A market has a place of transactions, which can be common or waste
ground, a supply of goods or services to be exchanged there for other goods or services (barter)
or currency (in a money economy). Buyers and sellers enter the market to effect exchanges.
No doubt presupposed are at least limited entitlement (leasehold or property rights, so a seller is
entitled to dispose of, to a new user, holder or owner, what is offered for sale), contractual
arrangements, and in a money economy, some recognised currency. Also presumed, normally
where markets operate, are certain levels of safety, for instance protection against invasion,
assault and theft. But these are normal expectations for much of social life, for even conducting
a conversation. As for the rest, except perhaps for currency, it is a mere pretence that a state is
required for their assurance: custom^ or tribal arrangements will ensure both property in
transportable goods and recognition of verbal contracts or undertakings. An appropriate
currency too can develop in the absence of states, as exemplified in the shell currencies of
Melanesia and the bank notes of early America. Bank notes are not fully public goods; for a
bank which can profit from their circulation or issue has an incentive to supply them. (And
�32
banks themselves do not require a sponsoring state, even if sometimes that helps, as in bailing
them out.)
It is worth observing that much of the conventional apparatus presumed for markets is
already presupposed prg-sMfe for the fictional covenant by which the state is supposedly
established. Namely, meeting in relative safety, entering into contractual arrangements (in the
case of the state of a very sophisticated sophistical sort).
* Anarchism has not met the 'intractable ... problem of co-ordinating the activities of many
examples, most notably at an international level again, where such coordination has been
achieved (e.g. IUCO). Examples are increasing with new networking arrangements (e.g.
Pegasus network). Where substantially self-managing arrangements, such as traditional
markets are allowed to flourish, there are no such intractable problems. Certainly, however,
with anarcho-communist structures which aim to suppress such self-managing arrangements,
there are problems:
* ^o-ordinating productive activity, aligning production with
*needs
of
consumers without markets <?r central planning.
Key approach: localising production, face-to-face.
How can this work in an advanced industrial economy, where a high degree of specialization
and much division of labour. Suggestion CAN'T!
* motivating people to work.
Pressure, sanctions, rewards.
in any setting, but
rewards removed.
since certain personal
* '... a central agency seems necessary to maintain any society-tide distribution of resources'
(p.172). WTu'cA resources? Where markets operate, many resources will be distributed without
any role for a central agency, which would often serve as a serious blockage.
What
distribution? What was intended was: ayMst distribution of resources, so the blatant inequalities
now observed in even the wealthist societies are mitigated and the conditions of the worst-off
are alleviated. That is drawing upon experience of capitalism: anarchism would not start out
from such an invidious position. Further, it is assumed that there are only two ways of righting
such (capitalistic) maldistribution: through purely private means or by a centralised state means.
So presented it represents an extremely familiar false dichotomy, private or state, in which
society is either equated with the state or else drops out, and all other public means disappear.
For socially-inclined anarchists there is no disputing that there need to be safety nets in
place for the poor and disadvantaged. What is in question is how those nets are placed and
administered, and whether the state has an essential role or is rather a less efficient more
officious nuisance. One option is an exposed tithing system, where members of society are
/v
�33
offered a choice of schemes to contribute to, and expected to contribute to these, and encouraged
to make their contribution open to public inspection. Those who tried to evade contribution and
closed their books would be subject to a range of social pressures.
It is further claimed that while smaller anarchist communities, especially those of a
collectivistic or communistic bent, may be able to resolve inequitable distribution problems,
'there are major difficulties' in attempting to realise some distributive ideal
communities' (p.173). There may be major difficulties, there are now, but that is scarcely an
argument for a central authority. Some redistribution and a small transfer of wealth occurs
intentionally without a central authority. There is not even decisive evidence that a central
authority helps, so far from making matters worse.
The state has other less conspicuous roles than law and order, war and defence, and
managing the economy.
* The state serves as representative of national identity, which people crave. Anarchism does
not cater for this basic human need. This is pretty dubious stuff. Such a need is by no means
ubiquitous, and is, if not manufactured, certainly exaggerated in convenient cases, by state
devices. But let us concede a need hypothesis? Is it true that 'the anarchist does nothing to
replace the notion; his ideal society is devoid of any features which might serve as a focus of
identity' (M p.180)? No. The components in terms of which an anarchistic society is structured
- the local community, the local region, the regional federations, ... — offer foci for
identification, bases for sporting teams, and so on. But, in any event, nothing excludes national
organisations, fielding cultural groups, artistic troupes, sporting teams, and so on. The present
structure of national sporting bodies, only loosely affiliated with states, and coordinated in
model anarchist fashion, provides in fact a worthwhile example of anarchism in action
(Bumheim again).
Do such concessions to features of nationhood 'naturally lead to a demand for self
government', and thence for a nation-state (p.181)? They may (as with the Basques) or may not
(as with the Cornish), and if so more likely the former than the latter? Further these demands
may come only from a small minority of nationals, or may be ill-founded. A demand on its own
demonstates comparatively ZZrr/e of merit, for all that modern economics would have us imagine.
A repeated criticism of anarchism is that 'with the state removed, the system has no
ultimate guarantor ...'. So it used to be said in favour of God. But who guarantees the
guarantor? (A state may underwrite a bank, but a state itself can fail, despite support of other
states.) There is no ultimate guarantor. There are other issues also, such as the character of the
�s
[Jj[government is variably determinable, so also is /ow. Under the mam
a JS/'
/A%>
determinate, law is incompatible with anarchism. But under a different determinate, there is no
( incmpatibiHty.
--------------- —----------------- ------------------------------ ------ L_
--- Cjy.
Anarchism cannot traffic in law, in the initial and prominent sense of /<2w(offered in the
OEE^, namely 'a rule of conduct imposed by authority', imposed by authority and
characteristically backed up by coercion, it may be added. To some extent counter^teducing this
prognostication is a second sense of 'law' (the third comprises 'scientific and philosophical
-
uses'): namely 'without reference to an external commanding authority'.
^aw deservedly has a tarnished reputation^ m anarchism. Most of it is arcane,
administered by an expensive, priesthood. Too often it is an oppression tool of the state.
While anarchism is hostile to such law, and incompatable with heavy authoritarian law, it
is in no way opposed to rules, to regulations, to conventions of freely assented to Kats, and so
On.
can
t
?
�guarantor. While it is seen to in theology, as a matter of further (illicit) characterisation, that
God has the right features, nothing guarantees that an "ultimate guarantor" is not, rather like
most states, corrupt, unfair, heavy handed and incompetent? Even if an ultimate guarantee was
needed, none could be provided. But lesser assurances can be offered. For example, a bank's
books can be open to public scrutiny and assessment, so that it can be seen that it is trading in a
responsible and viable fashion. (It is better that a person's healthy state be assured by
observation that the person is functioning well, than by maintaining the person as a closed
system and relying on the doctor's guarantee of the person s health.)
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���1
A DEEP RIFT ON PROPERTY
A main element in the major divide between right and left anarchism, as between left and
right, is property. Other elements in the divide, such as the accumulation of capital essential to
capitalism, depend upon property, because it in it as a transferable commodity that capital is held.
It is unremarkable then that property balks large, as an institution to be defended and even extended
(with new rights to address environmental issues) in right-leaving political theory and, what heavily
overlaps that g^ave. American anarchism. At the opposing end of the right-left tug of war, state,
.social or common ownership of property used to be all the go: but left coalitions are presently
down-playing such ideals and aspirations.
Reflective green theory once again moves off the right-left axis, questioning aspects of the
strong ownership and control relations presumed in the tug-of war. Prope^tarian relations are all
based upon older domination and control ideologies, but diluted in kinder stewardship approaches,
not removed. For, while the idea of land as a mere commodity subject to the $hims of present
owners is softened, the steward normally but manages and controls for some higher master, god or
humanity. Reflect further on what both private owners and state owners may do to the
environments and habitats they "own".
Green reflection le^ds then towards the modification of entrenched institutions of private and
state property.
Green anarchism automatically eliminates certain types of ownership, namely state ownership
which has to depart with the state. The demise of the state should at least suggest that associated
institutions such as property and the law may be in some trouble. So it proves, to an interesting
extent. For, much as arguments to the state are, like those to the Master, Dominus, fatally flawed,
so are those to strong and established systems of property subject to lethal objections. Further,
much as the unwarranted state may be substituted for less dominating justifiable institutions, so
property and its adjuncts may be replaced by alternative less dominating arrangements, such as use
hold, leasehold, and the like.
A central claim, argued^ detail, will be that none of the arguments for property as justified,
as an entitlement as right, succeeds,?!// that the whole run of arguments supports is the need, or
desirability for some lesser arrangements. It is advantageous to have some terminology to cover
both property anJ lesser arrangements, <7aa.n-proper?y so to say, or gua/efty as will be said.
'The concept of property is fundamental to our [U.S.] society, probably to any workable
society' (Friedman p.3). The second claim is soon strengthened, and a third insupportable claim
added: '... property is a central economic institution of any society, and private property is the
central institution of a free society' (p.4). The onus of proof strictly lies with those who claim
property, property rights, etc. For outside certain far from universal social conditions there is no
such property as is claimed. Considering the way the onus falls, the situation is remarkable. 77?ere
are no JecM/ve argawenM, so far as I can ascertain,/or such an institution as property. That
/r
�<t
2
situation, if confirmed, raises important questions, such as how and w/ry the institution is in place?
But first the arguments, such as they are.
The main argument preferred by Friedman in support of his grand claims takes off from the
problem of the distribution of scarce material resources among competing parties who seek access
or use.
The usual solution is for the use of each t/ung to be decided by a person or
some group of persons organised under some
o/
Such t/ungs are
called property. If each thing is controlled by an individual who has the
power to transfer that control to any other individual, we call the institution
private property (p.4).
Firstly, all the distribution of resources problem points to is some allocation of uses, or some
sharing thereof. For such purposes many arrangements far short of property will serve; for
instance, lease, limited use rights, and so on. Secondly, what immediately stands out, an attempt is
made to close the chasm between what is so far delivered and what the claims concerning property
require through an appallingly low redefinition of 'property'. What one gets to use under some set
of rules may not be property at all (e.g. a cove, a sea passage,...). Property requires much more:
ownership in a nonv^cuous sense, coupled with a high level of potential control. Nor, thirdly, is
the characterisation of private property satisfactory, as transferable leasehold will meet the
conditions given. It may be argued that leasehold itself requires owne^h^ip; it will be argued that it
does not. But it certainly does not require private property, nor does proprietorship transfer across
leasehold arrangements.
That is^ it. Friedman proceeds, on the quite unwarranted assumption that all is property, to
argue the respective merits of private property and demerits of what is not private, public property
so it is supposed. 'Under public property, the values of the public as a whole are imposed on the
individuals who require the use of that property to accomplish their ends' (p.7). Something
remotely
that may hold for the example Friedman is discussing, the inordinately dull broadcast
media of the USA; but it certainly does not hold generally given the remainder way in which 'public
property' is characterised, so that no values whatsoever may be imposed.
What subjects hold property rights (if any) or like rights? The standard chauvinistic
assumption is that the class of such subjects comprises humans, or competent humans, or humans
who have competent guardians. But why should other creatures not hold and maintain territories,
as many appear to do? And if incompetent or disqualified humans can hold property managed by
guardians, trustees and the like, and if legal persons such as corporations can do likewise, why
should not a range of nonhumans (for instance, those that are credited with interests) do something
similar?
Given that many nonhumans can (and do) have proprietory rights, there can be a head-on
conflict between human rights and property rights (in opposition to Friedman p.3).
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Anarchistic societies of any complexity will typically consist of a network of decentralised
organisation, or a federation of these (etc.). The organisations will thus be regional, but
beyond that set up according to issue, role or function. Thus they will include what might well
be accounted
Many of the stock features of political functionalism, as
decentralised, will accordingly recur, separation of powers, tailoring of administration to need,
�for instance. The organisations will furthermore be noncoercive; no individual or group will be
forced to join. Typically they will be voluntary arrangements.
A critical question is to how these organisations, substituting for the operation of state,
are to be controlled, regulated, and so on. In such favoured democratic structures control is
usually remarkably indirect. A populace weakly selects a central parliament, which exercises
through other bodies some control of state organisations. A full anarchism is obliged to
dissolve or substitute for central parliaments. It has a obvious option, namely direct democratic
control of state-substituting organisations. A simple way of achieving this is through sortition:
the membership of the governing component of each organisation is chosen randomly from
those of the regional community who volunteer to be on it. In some cases volunteers may
require accessible qualifications, and disqualifications (e.g. by having served before, by some
disqualifying record). Where the community decides that certain categories of people should be
represented, e.g. disable, minorities, then it is a matter of arranging random selection of the
required fraction of group numbers from these categories. This style of statistical democracy
dates back at least to original democracies of Greek city states where public officials were
sometimes selected by lot (it is discussed under democracy in Aristotle's Po/m'cy). Nowadays it
is called dwxirc/ty (a term with an unfortunate prior meaning); here in its anarchistic form it will
be alluded to under the ecologism dewa/tarcAy.
Such demanarchy has the immediate virtue of removing an expensive duplication,
government ministers and their departmental counterparts (e.g. finance ministers and
corresponding appointed treasury officials). Indeed, the whole charade of parliamentary
government, ministers and hordes of minders, governments and replicating opposition teams, is
duly removed - as it has to be under non-centralization. Such parliamentary centres are
eliminated; insofar as anything replaces them, it is the dispersed community, no centre, which is
directly linked to functional organisation.
Gone with the centre, or seriously reduced, are several standard political worries, such as
those of coup or take-over, insurrection or invasion. These usually involve capturing the centre
and its command structure, no longer there to capture.^ Community defence is thereby
rendered much easier. Also considerably reduced is the standard problem of who controls the
controllers: partly because control is so diffused, and prartly because a main controller is the
community (one of the advantages of democracy).
Appropriate institutions take care of the day-to-day running of community affairs; but
what of major issue decisions, changes of direction or structure. These can be accomplished
3
For there is no command or control structure that could be taken by an invador or internal
insurrection.
�from the bottom, through referenda, propositions and the iike (organised through a suitably
independent college), rather than in present top-down inflexible fashion. (These methods, of
which there is worthwhile experience in parts of Europe, are investigated in Wolff.)
A regular early question is how such a stateless structure is to be financed wirAoM? coecive
mechanisms available. Of course if coercive institutions were in place, then the overall structure
could be financed in the sorts of ways that states are presently financed. It should be observed,
in any case, that coercive means are very rarely resorted to (unless the target is persued for
reasons, such as crime) in order to obtain revenue payments from wealthy corporations, firms
or individuals, where in a more equitible community much of the funding would derive from
(by contrast with most present states). There are several parts to a satisfactory answer:* Mt/cA less public revenue would be required because the most expensive, most wasteful, and
least productive components of state have been excised. These include the whole apparatus of
central government and electoral politics, and the associated system of coercion, standard
military forces and defense establishment, espionage framework, and police forces, prison
establishment and expensive courts.
Nonetheless there remain many institutions to finance, include smaller substitutes for
some of the abolished structures (e.g. social defence arrangements).
* Many institutions can be largely or entirely self-financing, because like customs and import
organisation they collect revenue, or through fair user-pays principles. Reasonable returns
taken can be channelled to an independent revenue office with no outside spending or
redistribution powers.
* Much, if not all, further social revenue could be raised through resources taxation (adequate
royalties and the like), rental taxes on property, gift and gains taxes, and through auctions (of
previously inherited goods), how this would work depends upon community arrangements.
Consider however a preferred anarchistic arrangement where that problematic item, private
property, has not been instituted or has been oblished (as with most European anarchism, by
contrast with North American forms). Valuable durables (roughly, any durable with stealing
for sale in present systems) will be rented instead of bought. Learnchold systems can be
operated very like private property (as the land system in A.C.T. reveals) fruit-feting market
operations, but they offer significantly better control, for instance environmentally, they enable
the social component of generated wealth to be reflected, through a rental, and they can be of
finite terms and to a given individual, so inheritance transfer is excluded. In place of the
�customery land titles office a larger durables office with subdivision for types of durables
would be instituted, with each durable now indelibly marked or described.^
4
Here as with rcfcraHs, computing fasiiibiies remove many previous obstacles to each arguments.
Organisation can move with new technology.
��,.
—--
-------------------------
^4^
/
A
����CHAPTER
ROADS TO ANARCHY: OLD ROUTES AND NEW INPUTS
STRATEGIES FOR TRANSITION TO ANARCHIST SOCIETIES,
AND AFTER.
As there is a plurality of anarchistic positions and end-states, so, but not in a directly
corresponding way, there is a plurality of routes to anarchism. As the positions vary very
considerably in quality, so do the routes, some of them risky, all of them difficult.
Anarchism, even though theoretical viable, undoubtedly looks /iard to obtain on any scale.
For states are now extremely well entrenched - in furthermore a mutually supportive exclusive
club of states. There is now immense resistance to their removal, deriving from several sources.
In particular, state actors and power-brokers are most unlikely to modify statist arrangements in
ways inadvantageous to themselves, to relinquish any power, still less to step down easily. Such
actors will often take desperate steps to retain institutional power; it is very difficult to persuade
most political human to relinquish power simply and gracefully.
Nonetheless opportunities arise for overthrowing or superseding states (for instance, in most
of Eastern Europe and much of Western Asia in the early 1990s). Periods of crises or "power
vacuum", in particular, afford opportunities, which should be seized as they may not arise often in
more stable states (most recently in 1974 in Australia). A well-prepared anarchist movement will
organise, then, and when the moment arrives, pounce (a partial model is feline hunting practice).
But such opportunistic and risky revolutionary routes are only one way to change, as the following
diagram, designed to survey the possibility field, should reveal.
Diagram 5.7 Ways /a poZiWca/ change.
WAYS
Intra-State:
within State
setting
EVOLUTIONARY
1. typically slow or incremental
REVOLUTIONARY
]
'
operations through received
political channels
2.
t
<
j
typically rapid
operations circuiting
established channels:
coups, insurrections, etc.
)
Extra-State
3. operations establishing
alternative organisations
bypassing or substituting
for statist arrangements, or
functioning within the
interstices of the state
!
*
4. operations comprising
j)
.
'
]
external inference or
intervention: by negotiation,
military means, sanctions,
examples, etc.
�0
2
Pluralistic anarchist practice will pursue each and every one of these ways and means, so far
as resources indicate and permit, subject to constraints. For example, a nonviolent movement will
not adopt violent means (unless it insists upon a strange separation of ends and means). There is
nothing distinctively anarchist about these ways, except for 3; all otherwise are ways of changing
state arrangements, 2 of trading one sort of state for another, 3 of imposing state control and
discipline where it is lapsing from "approved" form or where there may have been none (as with
colonial adventures).
As there have been many attempts to narrowly delimit anarchism, so there have been
repeated attempts to restrict roads and byways to anarchism. Exposing these attempts will at the
same time show what is open.
J, Deploying and making wore
sZads/ po/f/fcaf arrange/ncnis
Use of orthodox political channels is not excluded. Pluralistic anarchism is not obliged to
dismiss political routes to anarchism or to anarchist objectives. Parliamentary and other
constitutional routes (such as through referenda) to an anarchist end-state are perfectly possible, if
difficult because of the tendency of state apparatus to endeavour to perpetuate itself. (As a related
example, a main successful party in the multi-party Australian Capital Territory government was
organised and supported by those opposed to such a government.) A main difficulty confronting
change through conventional political procedure is simply that, w/tere it does occur, it is usually
extraordinarily slow and limited, it is almost invariably small change at the margins.
It may take a little lateral reasoning to see the advantages, or occasionally practical necessity,
of working through or within a system or even strengthening it first in order to demolish it
(strengthening does not imply endorsing forever, but nothing more "counterintuitive" than appears
in a battery of stock psychological tests or clever martial arts). Authentic Marxism, for example,
which is ultimately anarchistic, is committed to very much such a circuitous route: the circuit goes
through a rejuvenated super-productive state, which in old age withers away.
A main reason why it has been imagined that use of established political channels is
excluded, in anarchist practice, is not because of the slow evolutionary nature of the process, but
because of a doctrine of means-ends congruence, which is given too circumscribed a construal.
This over-strong congruence doctrine requires more than what coherence seems to demand,
namely that the means should be compatible with comprehensive ends sought (thus precluding, for
example, violent means to achieve non-violent ends). It further requires that in anarchist action,
particularly the revolution, the end of a stateless society should be "prefigured", not some
intervening non-congruent objective. Even if the geometric metaphor were duly clarified, few
reasons have been advanced for accepting the crippling doctrine, which is not self-evident.
�3
Frankly, anarchism does not need to give itself unnecessary handicaps; it faces enough real-world
obstacles without dubious doctrinaire additions from well-intentioned friends.
An anarchist organisation is plainly not a contradiction in terms; nor therefore is an anarchist
coalition or party, committed for instance to removing coercive institutions. Pursuing this tack, an
anarchist can vote for a party which comes closer to realising immediate anarchist objectives than
other parties, or, very differently, for a party which will assist long-term anarchist objectives (for
instance, by wreaking the national economy and thereby helping green objectives and generating
appropriate political discontent and dissent), without any commitment to the parties concerned, and
without endorsing the political system within which they operate. Strategic voting is not
precluded; strategic anarchist voters may well (unlike totalitarian voters) support (preferential)
democratic procedures.
While the state is to be dis-established, meanwhile there are more benign and less benign
states, in relevant respects, apart from how decently they treat their citizens and noncitizens and
aliens. It is no longer altogether accurate to insist, as anarchists used to a century ago, that 'every
state is an agency whereby a ruling minority exploits and oppresses a majority' (M p.87). Many in
majorities may do very nicely, thank you, while some in the elite minority may be grindstoned.
Moreover, the mass of people is generally not only resistant to change, but highly reluctant to force
changed unless there is very considerable dis-ease, which in most developed states there is not.
These are some of a mix of reasons why a revolution is so remote in comfortable countries; no
longer the incendiary states kindled for the anarchist match that 19th century anarchists imagined.
Despite mass lethargy, dissatisfaction with the state is extensive and comes from right across
the conventional political spectrum. There is widespread popular sentiment to the effect that "the
state has become our master instead of our servant", a reversal of roles that should not surprise
Hegelians. Libertarians interpret this in terms of a much reduced state, a much leaner and
hopefully much less hungry state - a route to anarchism if dismantling went in a right direction and
far enough. Right-thinking socialists interpret it in terms of a much transformed state, a helping
but unobtrusive rather than a commanding busybody state. A familiar view of the state from a
section of Green Movement represents a turn on the old anarcho-socialist view:
The ... state and the corporate sector are in alliance for the sake of "development".... We
try to wean people away from the belief that the state will act in the interest of the cidzens.
So we believe the ... state is best viewed as an oppressor (Orton, Response to Dwandik
Quesdons, p.6).
Orton argues on the basis of this for not trying 'to "use" the state' and 'not seeking government
funds'. But if the funds largely represent social wealth, why not judicious use? And if the state is
1
Social psychology appears to show as much.
�4
the only legal means of requisite change? And so on.. In fact Orton himself proposes to make
changes through the state by mobilizing the people.
A state may also be more benign in other significant respects: for instance, in that it facilitates
minority political representation, including green anarchist groups, and in that it does not
significantly impede anarchist political and practical activity or render paths significantly more
difficult. Overlapping that, more benign less domineering states may leave substantial room for
significant anarchist practice both in lifestyle and in building organisational structures and (as it
were) alternatives to archist arrangements (such as peoples' books, time stores, etc.) What are in
important respects anarchist communities can operate within, as well as be modelled within, less
intrusive states (the limits to this quasi-anarchism, elaborated in Nozick, are explained in UT).
States that better meet anarchist (and green socialist) criteria for benignness can conveniently be
disdnguished as more .sywparico states.
Committed anarchists can quite well also be committed, as an intermediate goal among
others, to achieving more sympatico states, which may involve conventional (as well as
unconventional) political activity. No doubt engagement in conventional political activity carries a
risk of co-option; but there are obvious way of reducing that risk, of avoiding the 'slide into
collaboration with the bourgeoisie [and] ... willingness to play the game of parliamentary
politics'.2 For example, precautionary strategies include: engagement also in unconventional
political activity, anarchist or communal practice, consciousness-raising exercises, and use of time
limits, interruption tactics, rotations of leaders, and so on. Green party activities and procedures
can serve as a useful model here?.
Apart from the real dangers of co-option and state collaboration, there are other intertwined
objections standardly made to attempting political roads to anarchism and socialism. One objection
is that any attempt to use the state 'unavoidably reproduces all the features of that institution', such
as exploitation by a ruling or elite minority, and oppression of the majority. Few, it is continued,
will escape from effective control, or, when if offers, be able to resist using the immense powers
of the state. New people, new power-holders, will be transformed (by the usual devices, such as
being made to feel important, given an exaggerated impression of their own worth). It should be
evident that the objection has drifted from "reproduction of the state" to variants of "power
corrupts". Both are overstated, and there are strategies for overcoming both. Sometimes the state
c/tang&y, perhaps for the better; the British state has altered significantly in the last 300 years,
seemingly for better.
Corresponding the power of certain power-holders has declined
significantly, from monarchs and aristocracy down.
2
3
M p.89, see also Goodin in Green Politics.
See Spretnak and Capra 86 for details.
�5
Another objection is better focussed. It is that use of the state leads the wrong ways,
through organisation by centralization and hierarchy, and action by legislation. As a result state
routes will not lead to decentralization, distribution of power and wealth downwards, and so on.
While state practices are commonly antipathetic to the sort of constructive objectives indicated, they
are not always, and they do not /Mvg to be. States, like large corporations, can reorganise, and
occasionally attempt to (thus reform and restructuring of bureaucracies, or even of whole public
services, etc.). Although unlikely for reasons indirected, state reorganisation can in principle
proceed by decentralization and devolution of power. Nor is there any lethal objection to achieving
action by legislation, so long as that legislation is not enforced by inadmissible coercive methods.
In sum, what the objection reemphasizes is that considerable care has to be exercised in using the
state, as with any major source of power. Further it shows again that transition can only proceed
so far through the state; the state route only leads so far, after which other means of transport need
to be taken or considered.
There are other ways of amending statist political arrangements than political approaches,
notably legal means, through courts. There is little anarchist precedence for such activity; mostly
anarchists have had heavy legal apparatus used against them. However, once again environmental
practice serves as a valuable exemplar, with many worthwhile results achieved (especially in
American courts) through litigation. In principle there is much that could be achieved in this way,
in state and international courts, to reduce the power of states and their instrumentalities. For
example, in Australia there are very many statues and laws which unjustifiably limit freedoms and
restrict individual and group action: examples include not only little activated but appalling
legislation on sedition, assembly, and similar, but a sweeping range of actively used and
opportunistically exploited legislation concerning defamation and freedom of speech, victimless
crimes, paternalism, restrictive trade and banking, sheltered professions, compulsory voting, and
so on, and on.
There is also much room for variation and experimentation within prevailing political and
legal arrangements. For example, applying procedures of statistical democracy to a few greater
range of activities than (adjusted) jury servicing to the organisation of municipal services, public
companies, and so on.
alternative structures and the forest succession model.
A main strategy for transition, emerging from the arguments for the viability of anarchism, is
that of replacement: transition to a new anarchist social order proceeds by replacement or
adaptation 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
<?,
�6
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 structural 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 scales, way 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 continue because the area is burnt occasionally, e.g. by
State officers, in which case protection against fire will be required: for with burning (and the
suppression) regimes rainforest seedlings are killed and eucalypt dominance perpetuated.
Furthermore, evolution can be hastened or induced by introducing 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 political entrepreneurs to flourish are excluded in an emerging anarchist society).
Gradually, as the rainforest grows, only scattered giant eucalypts protrude 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 clearfelling the eucalypt forest, replanting with rainforest,
protecting the new forest, and removing eucalyptus regrowth, are wocA more problematic. To be
applied they require either a large workforce or much mechanical power (so it is with violent
revolutions which need a large support basis not generally available in advanced capitalist and state
�7
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 can sometimes afford good conditions for
rainforest growth, e.g. plant protection from excessive sun, from occasional frosts, and from
drying winds, better moisture retention conditions, and so on. Similarly anarchist social
organisations may sometimes be able to
the environment afforded by the State to get started.
Thus not all forms of the State are necessarily equally inimical, and some may provide much more
favourable conditions for the development of anarchist social organisation than others.^
The forest model (together with preceding arguments) helps to illustrate why violent and
catastrophic methods are not congruent witty the goals of an anarchist society and why there is an
intimate connection between these goals and a strong preference for nonmilitaristic and non-violent
methods of achieving change. Replacement involves a (normally gradual) process of developing
alternative institutions and forms of social organisation and the growth of the new form of society
within the old, and is not a catastrophic single event conceived of as outside the normal order of
things, and for whose advent all other action for change is held suspended. And just as methods
of change such as clearfelling are likely to perpetuate the eucalypt cycle and are unlikely to favour
the development of the rainforest, so the use of catastrophic and especially militaristic methods is
likely to perpetuate an authoritarian social order and unlikely to favour the development of a co
operative, non-violent and non-coercive one.
* applying the forest succession model.
How to apply the model is not difficult to appreciate at least in broad outline. As well 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 lifestyles built on self-management and mutual aid.$ The seeds of anarchism should be
broadcast or planted, anarchist (non-Statist) arrangements instituted or strengthened, and efforts
made to replace or modify vulnerable Statist arrangements, e.g. by democratisation 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. Others are slightly less
familiar: avoidance of State influence by arrangements beyond State reach such as costless (or
alternative currency) interchanges of goods and services, barter, black-green economies, and so
on, action directed at removing decision-making from State departments, such as forest services,
and into citizen hands, and ultimately, to decentralized interested communities. In this sort of way,
4
5
This has an important bearing on strategies for achieving change: see D. Altman, ReAearsaAs ybr CAange,
Fontana, Melbourne. 1980.
As sketched in some of the material already cited, for example, Routley, p.284 ff.,SM.
�8
worthwhile State arrangements can be replaced, and power can be progressively transferred from
the State, and returned to the communities and to people more directly involved.
Formation of networks of anarchistic communities and neighbourhoods, functioning within
the interstices of the state and state bureaucracies, would represent a significant stage in
succession. Something like this is beginning to develop in Australia (by contrast with the USA
where the commune movement appears to have gone into decline).^
3. Types of individual and small group actions
While strategies proceeding through movements are social in character, a variety of
individna/ action can also be highly effective if widely enough separately undertaken. Naturally if
there is some solidarity, some coordination of individuals, such action will be both fostered and
enhanced. Witness the practice of early Christians, which combined individual action and
consciousness change, within a support and solidarity network. But Christianity misleadingly
promised more than anarchism and environmentalism can, not merely future better lives, but after
lives in splendour, a bogus transcendentalism which however was, and still is, widely believed, a
damaging transcendentalism too, in that satisfactory lives in real space-time can be foregone, in
favour of virtual after-lives.
*
fran-y/br/nano/M. There are a range of proposals for comprehensive personal
change, but they all share fundamentals, which are personal improvement and enhanced personal
relationships. It is because of these shared fundamentals that religious change, such as that offered
under new Testament Christianity shades into the quasi-spiritualism of sects linked to Deep
Ecology (such as Council of All-Beings, Homage to Gaia, Earth Empowerment, etc.) which in
tum shades into Californian personal therapy fashions. Proposals for transformation do not
however have to hang^ out on the fringes of religion; hardheads like Passmore (in direct descent^
from 18th century sympathy-based ethics) have emphasized both personal relationships, love for
others, and moral improvement, better adherence to tested moral principles. Put together, these
individual changes would lead us, it is optimistically imagined, out of the environmental morass
and to a socially and environmentally better world. While it is not that simple, while the problems
lie deeper, some thought it was simpler still. Either the Beatles in their famous lines 'All you need
is love', reflecting an extremely popular sentiment, only saw one part of what was recognised, or
they erroneously supposed that part would yield the remainder. Love slobs are one sort of
counterexample; they achieve love and just wallow in that, not seeking any sort of improvement,
moral or other.
Let us not diminish the relevance of these proposals: the more rounded people among the
thin paper-mache economic and political men focussed only upon maximizing their own self-
interested utility in material consumer goods the better, the better for many concerns, including no
6
Refs
�9
doubt prospects for anarchism. But let us not delude ourselves that herein lies the way out or
forward. Many of those proposals have been around for rather long time, and suggested again and
again, with no conspicuous results. A lot of it is to found in Spinoza, whence it has percolated
through both to Deep Ecology and Freudian therapy. The Deep Ecological emphasis on self
realisation goes back at leas a century, to Humboldt and Mill, with Self already expanded in
German and British idealists. German and British industrial development did not lose a beat.
A mental revolution, in some people's minds, is no doubt essential for a properly planned
revolution. But mental transformations have to be translated into action, to practices that make a
material difference. And consciousness transformations may not translate into appropriate action;
many such transformations are politically very conservative, and lead to no relevant action or effort
for structural change.
Much of what is said of consciousness transformation applies also to
*
a route to change recommended by reformers and radicals for at least a century, from
Mill through Bookchin. Education, appropriately undertaken, can amend ideology, change
consciousness. But at its best it is very slow in operation, very partial because it has to compete
against other sources of propaganda (such as media, dominant society, etc.). And it is more likely
to carry dominant messages, and reinforce dominant attitudes. There is a major problem in getting
alternative messages appropriately delivered and action undertaken.
* c^pting oat (so far as this is possible or even now possible).
To be effective, this has to be focussed, not merely a dropping out parasitic on the state system. It
has to be focussed in way^which challenge the state systems, it inevitability, decidability, etc., in
Redirect
*-F
ways which withdraw contributions to it and ^.... activity elsewhere^creating an atwojpaere, of
expectation and of belief (perhaps even if false). .
If you or your group produce the impression that there is going to be a continuing recession
or a revolution, if your spread the conviction that there is widespread dissatisfaction, that society is
sick or rotten to the core and is about to decline further or collapse, then you are taking a
significant step towards such outcomes, towards decline or fall? If these efforts to develop an
atmosphere are widely orchestrated then they are likely to be so much the more effective. It is
appreciated in business and advertising circles how much psychological atmosphere counts; a
Pint
,
*
Al
r
climate of confidence is
important ^for climbing out of a recession. A climate of
revolutionary expectation can set the scene for revolution events.
While it is dishonest to create an impression of imminent decline and disaster knowing full
well that such scenarios are utterly unlikely, informed greens and anarchists are not in any such
compromised situation. Environmental decline, continuing extensive unemployment, persisting
7
To adapt Joll p.222.
v /s
�10
periodic recession, and in due course collapse, are likely futures under present capitalist state
trajectories.
Anarchists can assist in producing an atmosphere of gloom and depression and pessimism
about capitalist economic circumstances and prospects. But they will aim to generate a quite
different impression of the stability of capitalistic arrangements.
4. Widening operations to exceed standard political and legal arrangements.
Unorthodox political ways and means, a prominent part of historical anarchist activity, are
much more extensive than political textbooks would suggest (or have impressionable readers
believe). These have been restored to contemporary prominence through civil disobedience
practices, and peace and environmental actions. Methods have also been modified (for instance to
exclude pointless personal violence) and substantially expanded. Practical tactics include protests,
occupations, blockades, parades demonstrations, theatre, civil disobedience, refusals, boycotts,
tax and financial withholdings, plant disobilizations, monkey wrenching, and so on.8 Such
methods, more accurately active applications of those tactics, are grouped under Jirec? action, a
vague appellation sometimes taken or extended to include forms of guerrilla warfare on the one
side and more indirect pressure group activity (lobbying, petitioning, public meetings, etc) on the
other. (Such tactics substantially improve upon, and rechannel, the often misguided and rather illfated "deeds" and "acts of propaganda" of late 19th C anarchists.) Such tactics can be both shorttermed and sustained. Important among sustained practices are resistance movements and
organised refusals (preferably without conspicuous leaders). While individuals can be selectively
picked off, enough people well organised cannot. Mass social actions and Grand Refusals could
constitute significant political happenings. Such strategies can be pursued both for specific
objectives (to preserve a forest here, a building there) and for much more general objectives, up to
and including dislodging an unpopular governing party, or overturning a state.
For more general and dramatic results to be achieved, there are some important preliminary
desiderata to be satisfied. These include
* establishment of a movement, to carry out actions, and subsequently to participate in the
supersession of the state.
* a certain amount of planning, of how to proceed, to direct limited resources. Subsequently, as
supersession of the state becomes a live issue, much planning of the transition and of post-state
arrangements is important, if a successful outcome, or even a good attempt, is to be achieved.
Proper preparation is critical. Once again, planning and organisation of anarchist activity is
certainly not excluded, in revolutionary movements or elsewhere. The rival spontaneity view, still
fashionable in anarchist circles, is underpinned by a confused picture of freedom;^ is inconsistent
8
9
See Coover et al, B. Martin, Changing t/te %bgs, G Sharp.
Duly criticised in "Hot immigration".
�11
with the coupled congruence doctrine where end-states are prefigured; and issues in poor decision
making, choice deliberately uninformed by available information. But naturally planning is not,
and cannot be, total; and it should not be too inflexible, but allow for contingencies, extraordinary
happenings, even spontaneous redirection (e.g. though a range of flexible ranked options).
Initiating an anarchist movement virtually from a zero base (the present situation in most
developed states), would be a slow difficult and no doubt frustrating task. Fortunately there are
attractive alternatives, such as integration with already effective movements, notably those already
engaged and experienced in direct action.
Declared or self-conscious anarchists are now few in number, and lacking in power.
Contemporary anarchists live like the counterculture did, around the margins or in the interstices of
contemporary dominant statist societies, rarely seen in the boardrooms of top companies or at the
clubs of power brokers. Accordingly, transitions to anarchism are most unlikely to proceed at all
directly, either upwards by democratic or popular procedures or downwards through constitutional
procedures invoked by controlling elites. Anarchist strategies, in order to work, will need to be
indirect and smarter. There is much scope for such strategies.
For direct action along the lines sketched to amount to anything, an anarchist movement with
considerable organisational capabilities is needed. The most promising way of fast-tracking such a
movement is to mobilize already established movements, namely, once again, green and peace and
like movements. The idea, in brief, to form an active anarchist movement within the union of
green and peace movements. It will have to be wif/un these movements. For not all those
affiliated with those loose movements are opposed to statist political arrangements or
anarchistically inclined. Many of the leaders and prominent spokespeople among
environmentalists for instance, have a cosy relationship with state political figures and bureaucrats.
Indeed these days many of these state-intricated people, who may well have genuine environmental
commitments, account themselves green, but they are generally unlikely to consider rocking the
ship of state. Nor do these state people generally participate in extended or vigorous protest
operations, of which there are increasing many. An anarchist movement will link into the
extensive more radical end of green and peace movements. There is already considerable linkage,
and considerable scope for expansion of linkage. Many radical greens are vaguely aware of the
anarchist character of several of their own proposals for change.
More radical greens are mostly already aware of the extent of state involvement in
environmental degradation, and of state connections with, and encouragement of, large
corporations engaged in environmentally destructive enterprises. Nor will they be long bought off
by (what threatens to split the green movement) attempts at reconciliation, most recently under the
ambiguous banner of "sustainable development". It is becoming clear to more radical greens that
this normally means sustaining economic development, that is capitalistic business and
macroeconomic growth largely as usual, not sustaining the already developed environmental
heritage. More radical peace activists are even more keenly aware of the intrication of states in
�12
activities hostile to peace such as military activity, weapons production, support of repressive
states and client army/armies funding of counter-insurgency, terrorist and destabilization operators,
and so on. There is evidently much common ground to build upon, from which to organise.
Correladvely, mobilization through loose green and peace movements effects the character of
the activated anarchism, shaping and limiting its forms. It will be an ecosocial anarchism of pacific
slant: ESP anarchism for short (for ecosociopacific anarchism). There is no similar prospect of
mobilizing most other forms of anarchism, in particular robustly individualistic varieties. For the
natural allies of the latter varieties, economic rationalist and libertarianians are overwhelmingly
committed to a minimalistic state to guarantee, coercively, the fundamentals of market capitalism
(private property, constitu^onal and contract law, etc.).
Until a movement is organised there is little chance of a satisfactory revolution. While a few
people may be able to gain control, briefly, of some states, without a larger movement requisite
restructuring of state functions cannot be carried through.
A viable anarchism further supposes some alternative fairly detailed organisational and social
arrangements. If such a system is to come to pass and to persist, then its prospects are
exceedingly poor if it is a do-nothing set of arrangements spontaneously arising out of a
revolution. But the state as it grows tends to undermine or eliminate such alternative arrangements;
and simultaneously people come more and more to expect the government to do what they might
formerly have done, or banded together to do, themselves. The state again proceeds, like other
persistent systems and ecosystems, to establish conditions for its own survival: to be needed for
social and even individual activities.
Formation q/ movements wMwn movements.
There is presently very little in the way of organised anarchist activity anywhere in the
world, and no real movements. There is, for instance, Liberty Foundation in USA which supports
anarchist productions, but it does not discriminate in what it supports between anarchism and
minimal statism and economic rationalism. There are other organisations that do or could play a
creative role in anarchist movements (such as Black Rose publicadons in Montreal, and the small
Institute of Social Ecology in Vermont). As it takes some time, and much effort, to establish a
viable movement, the situation for anarchistic change may look bleak. But there is no reason why
anarchism need form an independent movement; it can hitch to already established movements.
There are obvious movements, of very sympathetic character, to join (this is no inHitration or
annexation): namely the green movement and the peace movement. In both these overlapping
movements there is wide appreciation that states themselves are major sources of the issues they
are concerned with; for states are the main cause of wars, major participants in nuclear industries,
major sources of the issues they are concerned with; for states are the main cause of wars, major
participants in nuclear industries, major proponents of economic growth and its concomitant
pollution and waste. (Despite the definite descriptions, these "movement" are really loose
A
�13
c
coalitions, often not even organised in one group in individual countries.) Development of
anarchist groundswells within green organisations and among green sympathizers appears
particularly promising. For many greens are beginning to recognise that they are getting nowhere
much, or even going backwards, through state support and state-directed appeals and activity.
Turning enough of these doubtful or disillusional greens in positive anarchist directions looks a
genuine prospect, io
There are very great advantages in mobilizing relevant parts of green and peace movements
(
in anarchistic direcdons. Not only are there substantially concordant ideologies and goods; further
the
to these ends lie available and quite well developed. Readily to be drawn upon is much
knowledge of and experience in direct action methods, nonviolent resistance and sabotage, civil
(and state) disobedience, and similar.n While several of these methods and procedures derive
from earlier anarchist, resistance and civil disobedience practices (and many are common currency
of direct oppositional organisations everywhere), they have been brought to a new level of
refinement. Further, some extremely important restrictions are recognised. By contrast with
methods deployed by "illegal" armies, guerillas, insurgents and the like, paramilitary techniques
are out. Such paramilitary organisations are, in any case, operating within the statist paradigm,
normally aiming to replace some state arrangements by others. Methods applied are expected to be
nonviolent, and to inflict no serious damage upon living creatures.^
What is foreshadowed, then, is formation and development, in each region, of a radical
change movement, a radwienf or
Ideal radments in different regions are in
communication and loosely federated. A radment proceeds to undertake both reformist action and
radical action, marginally political and extra-political action, up to and including revolutionary
action. Much action is undertaken by smaller groups within the radment, vands (to choose a heady
combination of "band" and "van").^ Vands undertake specific projects, of a wide variety of sorts.
So far much of their activity has been directed to halting or redirecting specific vandalistic activities
of governments, governmental authorities or government-licensed corporations, such as logging,
whaling, sealing, polluting, transporting hazardous waste,... The simple proposal is that the range
10
11
12
13
Experiences or processes of change involved do not amount to conversion; for there is no adoption of a
faith. Anarchism resembles atheism, a loss of faith, rather than a religion. Rather there is a comingdown-to-earth, a realisation that institutions in which trust and hope had been placed did not warrant those
investments and were without justificatory clothes.
There is now an array of texts documenting methods, explaining how they are applied, how they can be
taught (e.g. through enactments, drama, practice, etc), and so on. See (as above).
There are some controversial procedures, such as the tree spiking used by Earth-Firsters and MonkeyWrenchers. Those may do minor damage to some trees spiked, and serious damage to loggers and
sawmillers who proceed to mill spiked trees, (a careful formulation of admissible procedures and practices
is required.)
Vands may include wanderers and wanderlebeners, but they are not vandals. Environmental vandalism is
one of the major practices they oppose.
�14
of vand activity should be expanded, to include revolutionary action. Such action would include
counter-option, taking over the administrations of organisations that are being specifically
combated or targeted. Experience could be gained on organisations like universities, though the
ultimate target is naturally the state.
Designing a s/nari revo/afton.'
and revo/MZfonary achion.
If the state were justified, if it had a moral right to be there, the action, revolutionary or
other, by ethically guided anarchists to dislodge or remove it would be excluded. But it is not. So
action, including revolutionary action against it, is not thereby excluded.
Perhaps the richest literature on rapid transformation of society, on revolution, falls within
the orbit of marxism. There is much to be learnt from this literature, and much from it can be
adopted. Some of the elements for textual adaptation are simple. Replace 'the working class' or
'workers' appropriately (unfortunately the replacement is not uniform). For example, substitute
'people's councils' for 'workers councils'; replace 'vanguard class' by 'revolutionary coalition',
etc. Not only does marxism presume a vanguard class; more difficult it presumes violence as an
inevitable component of revolutionary action. Here the direct and other action methods already
alluded to substitute for marxist methods.
But while much can be learnt form Marxist socialists, there are fundamental differences as to
the point and character of revolution. While the Marxist objective is to siege power and use it, the
anarchist objective is not to seize power, and then remove it or relinquish it, a dubious and risky
indirect route, but rather to neutralize and remove power directly.
There are said to be classic problems confronting any revolutionary movement. One of these
is the alleged stability of states, in the West at least. This stability, which does not extend far east,
or even into Central Europe, is considerably exaggerated; belief in this stability, which was shaken
by the events in Paris in 1968, can be undermined, by an appropriate subversive campaign, so that
belief no longer constitutes such an intellectual obstacle to revolutionary activity. Another classic
problem turns upon the issue of revolutionary organisation. Some of these organisation^ problems,
practices in green and peace movements, especially in groups like Greenpeace, have already
effectively solved.[detail].
Z/te ZransMon.
Like stages before the transition, stages q/fer transitions to post-state societies will not be
easy. There is a commonplace anarchist sentiment that removal of the state, its burden and
oppressiveness, a real incubus, will release an enormous amount of energy, with great scope for
spontaneity, fulfilment of human potentialities, and so on. Although this sentiment is widely
reiterated, very little evidence for the sentiment is ever assembled. My own sentiment is that the
commonplace sentiment, and what is taken to ensue from it, is largely moonshine, because, for
one thing, there is a countermodel that is at least as plausible. Those who are released from an
�15
immense burden, or very hard oppressive forced labour, simply stop, relax and do very little, or
little more than is necessary for life and limb.
For similar reasons the common anarchist proposition that productivity will rise enormously
after the state is stripped away is very doubtful. If the state is like some sort of slave-driver, post
state productivity will presumably fall. The flood of goods and the end of scarcity, with the
demise of the state and its well-published appropriation of the surplus, looks unlikely (not to say
environmentally undesirable because the impact of the "goods"). Wishful thinking appears to have
gained control in much anarchist literature. There are other important reasons why parts of post
state productivity will decline considerably. Much too much of present production, fostered by the
state, involves erosion of biological capital, and should be wound down accordingly, and
alternatives sought.
In a similar way, anarchists often look far too optimistic about the rapid regeneration of
supportative societies destroyed by, and through machinations of the state. Some of those
supportative arrangements, developed in ages of suppression are gone, perhaps forever; others
will take much tiwg to repair. Social healing is sometimes very slow.
As with post-war reconstruction, living and social arrangements could be very difficult for
some for some considerable time. There will need to be, for instance,
* intermediate support structures put in place to ease the transition for some;
* much flexibility, and some preparedness to experiment to see what works;
* vigilance to ensure that old forces of state do not remerge on the back of social discontent.
Intelligent anarchist arrangements will have flexible plans, enabling anticipation of main problem
areas and sensitive coping with them.
5. External interference
�Chapter 11
FEASIBLE ANARCHIST CONTRIBUTIONS
TO
GLOBAL, REGIONAL AND LOCAL PROBLEMS
Heavy criticisms of anarchism, driving in strongly from socialist and marxist quarters,
include these: that anarchism offers no worthwhile practice for and offers no useful
contributions far coping with global problems^ meaning problems in present social and political
conditions (not usually problems concerning world environments). Among the problems
alluded to, which it is alleged anarchism does not and cannot address, are human proverty,
human malnutrition, inequitable distribution of resources, human (over-)population, and so on.
Granted, there are great many problems, many of them getting worse rapidly. Though
anarchist arrangements played little or no part in producing these problems — many of them
o
developing and getting out of control under free-enterprise capitalist and state-socialist
arrangements — it is sometimes outrageously claimed that anarchism should be able to deal
successfully with an array of these problems. To add to the insult, it is said to fail as a theory
because it is unable to do so. Why on earth should anarchism be presumed to do this? One
critic endowed with this level of 'gall' (one A. Wertheimer)
contends that anarchism is unable to successfully deal with four
presently existing world social conditions. These are: 1) that "the
population of the earth is (perhaps) too large, but increasing at a
rapid rate with no prospect for a serious reduction"; 2) that "in much
of the world, basic human needs are not being satisfied"; 3) that "the
world's natural and human resources are not evenly distributed
across the globe"; and finally 4) that "the present level of subsistence
is based on a high level of social and economic interdependence
among various regions of the world and within the regions
themselves". In addition [5)J... anarchism is unable to cope with
conflicts between individual self-interest and social needs,
particularly as relates to ... defense (Clark p.142).
The short response is, So what? Anarchism is not really saddled with the global legacies
of p^archist practice. A longer response begins thus:- Firstly, insofar as these conditions
constitute problems ("condition " 3) is more a "fact" than a "problem"), no political theory is
coping successfully, only an all-conquering ideology would pretend to be able to cope.
Democratic capitalism has had (important isolated pockets excepted) little impact in limiting
India's gross population; Maoist socialism^' has de^ only a little better in China. Part of the
problem in almost all such overpopulated regions lies in getting the problem recognised as a
problem, and making appropriate adjustments; as with education and adjustment concerning the
hazards of pollution and smoking, this is largely because of remiss state practice. Part of the
problem, the present resolutions will have ethically inadmissible outcomes or by-products.
—------------ .------------------ ——___
�2
Only for the future is there some glimmer of hope, but not under present archist arrangements.
Secondly, prospects of success for anarchism are primarily regional, not global. But a region
can hardly be expected to handle, rather than make limited contributions towards, world
problems. Suppose, for instance, Niue became (or reverted to) an anarchist society, a
successful one locally. It would be no detraction from its local success that it made no impact
upon demilitarizing the USA or in halting the world's resource drain te thereto, or that its
success was (through standard US media practice) scarcely known about there.
*
iMMM. As we have already noticed, it is often asserted that anarchism cannot work
in regions of large populations or with high population densities. That anarchy only has
prospects of success in small, and perhaps technologically unsophisticated, communities is a
widely espoused thesis? These kinds of assertion have already been criticised.
What do not work are stock archist procedures, e.g. expanding \m out-of-touch
bureaucracy. Poly-archic arrangements cannot handle tough decisions. By contrast, sortition
allows them to be taken (Burgheim). This is important as wide range of decisions: transport
systems, restructuring urban systems, and so on, as well as population and immigration
policies. As there is a range of lobbies (ethnics, etc.) in favour of population increase: hard for
party systems to ignor these lobbies, because of voting system.
* Deliberate social reorganisation, which undercuts reasons for large families, namely old-age
care, cheap labour in fields, etc. (Seeams as successor (technology here)?
* Scarcity is re/aftw to wants and presumed needs. Similarly abundance: it depends
on extent to which materialism, consumerism, ete, prevail. When wants are large, perhaps
insatiable, there will always be scarcity. Wants are not a given; needs, through culturally
dependent, can be. Whan needs are set high (e.g. to include domestic ref^rgeaati^s), then too
there will be scarcity for the foreseeable future?
No doubt there is a rough band of minimal sustenance and shelter requirement for keeping
humans (why are we back to this) alive, for bare sustenance. Even if they could be met,
satisfactory lives would not result.
* Creation of needs (Marx). Industrial revolution under capitalism aggravated
of scarcity
and toil.
* Anarchists have a bad track-record on scarcity. They have tended to assume abundance. A
vast increase once the shades of the state are removed.
A
Following Kropotkin's proposals they have taken for granted enormous productivity from
labour-intensive garden plots, a sort of anarchist green revolution, neglecting the extensive
*
3
4
Even so, oneway to resolve/is by building up from local and regional solutions. Compare
nuclear freedom, peace, etc.(
Thus both sympathetic and unsympathetic commentators; Taylor, Wertheimer etc.
n frequently claimed that we know more or less how to meet population problems. Only
political structures and vested interests stand in way of doing so. But it is not quite that simple
and easy.
Arguments that wants/needs distinction cannot be drawn.
//'
�3
inputs required to make this feasible, (water, energy, manure, pesticides, etc.). [Thus e.g. Clark
p.148.)
* There are some sharp limits on the extent of growth to cater for human populations and their
"needs". An important limitation can be seen by tracking energy, which is limited, more
abundant production of which encounters other limits (pollution, nasty works production, etc.)
D&triZwHon,
q/T&Kmrcgs.
. 4.
* Necessity is regularly exaggerated. Often this done to enable capitalist routes to be taken,
access to foreign business provided etc.
*
'Necessity
becomes part of imperialistic exploitation. Contrast the equally unsatisfactory
Marxist line: distribution is one with production. What is required is a change in technological
systems and productive relations. Undesirable patterns of production result in maldistribution.
'... the entire problematic of "redistribution" is bared jn the questionable assumption of the
feasibility of seeking a solution to the problem while continuing a technological system
founded ^n dependency and disproperti%s in economic power
*
(Clark p.154).
* The Aid record of present liberal democratic states is dismal.
* As regards more basic provisioning, mutual aid through free federation. Example of
Spanish collective ((^ebal ref 19 pp. 184-5).
Argument that anarchist approach could succeed, from socio-psychological assumption:
'unless humans develop patterns of life and values based on mutual aid at level of small groups
and local communities, one cannot expect them to go very far in the practice of mutual aid at
any other level of social organisation
*
(Clark p.154).
But really heeds the convert: when have no developed, can be suspected to deliver aid.
Present arrangement for human living are not made on the basis of
quality of life for the livers, but all too often to suit the needs of industry J returns to capitalism,
etc. The results are everywhere conspicuous, especially in contemporary cities — which
characteristically dominate whole regions.
Many major local problems derive from the environmental states and living conditions of
cities. An anarchist resolution involves restructuring cities. This would include development
of network cities and restoration of community.
�4. Appendix:
ON SELECTION OF COMMITTEES
For how committees should be comprised, look at what they are supposed to accomplish, what
sorts of decisions deliver, and so on.
For example, the basis of decision for allocating public money has to be: 'attempting to balance
all legitimate claims on the basis of need and public benefit in accordance with recognised
moral values and principles'.^
Evidently such committees should not be composed of
1. members of competing constitutions seeking funds (i.e. anti-model is premiers conference)
2. power traders (i.e. anti-model is /...... or typical bureaucratic committee).
What appears to be required are candidates who are
* impartial (without chauvinistic or other prejudices)
* varied in evolutionary complex claims
* informed of.... moral values and principles, and committed to some such.
H
<3-.
After that try statically for spread of attitudes from conservative to radical.
Such committees according directly violate (Burheim) relevant interests criteria. In general
however for lower level committees relevance criteria obtain.
5. Demanarchoid ecodesigns for Australia
�Chapter 5.1
THE EMERGING CHARACTER OF ANARCHISM:
VARIETIES AND OPTIONS
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 no doubt on voluntary co
operation and direct democracy.
The society which emerges may be much as Bakunin and Kropotkin sometimes pictured
it, or it may not. It may well be based on smaller-scale decentralised communities: for
otherwise such arrangements as community replacements of State welfare arrangements,
control of their environment, removal of Prisoners" Dilemmas, and participatory democracy,
will work less satisfactorily. Communities may well be federated and control will be bottomup, not merely by representation and subject to a downward system of command. Within each
community there will, under such social anarchism, not be great discrepancies in the
distribution of wealth and property, and no highly concentrated economic power. Under social
anarchism, a community will be a rather equalitarian group, sharing in much that is
communally owned or not owned at all.
While theoretical arguments help outline the general shape of social and also economic
arrangements, they are very far from determining them completely; they offer no detailed
blueprint. Accordingly what emerges is not a particular from of anarchism, for instance
anarchist communism, but a more experimental and
anarchism, such as was broadly
instituted in the Spanish collectives.
There are several recognised varieties of anarchism, among the more common:
individualistic anarchisms, anarcho-capitalisms, anarcho-communisms, mutualisms, anarchosyndicalisms, libertarian socialisms, social anarchisms, and now eco-anarchisms.
These
varieties are not particularly well-characterised. They are by no means at all exclusive. They
certainly do not exhaust the interesting possibilities. So far indeed a satisfactory classification
is lacking. Usually something of a ragbag is offered: textbooks single out a very few varieties,
and look at them. Invariably they leave out important varieties.
�2
But it is not difficult to discern some of the more independent dimensions^ along which
variation occurs, and which accordingly are relevant to an improved multi-dimensional tabular
classification:
Part-w/to/e dimension:
atomism pole O
<—
individual social---------- communal
—O total holism
This is a most important dimension of variation among organisational arrangements (for
analysis see SM). It accounts for a major bifurcation between European anarchisms, which tend
to be socially oriented, and American anarchisms, which are usually highly individualistic
(religious communities and some European transplants excepted). For markedly holistic
arrangements to persist, some strong ideological relational glue appears required, such as an
immersing spiritual ideology.
Property spectrum:
Although this can be compressed into two dimensional form, it is better presented three
dimensionally as follows:
full
O <individualistic ---privatization
communalistic
-> O full public
(tribal) ownership
diminished
ownership
no ownership
This spectrum evidently connects with the preceding holistic dimension, and both contribute to
what was the old right-left political division (a sort of crude super-position), and to what should
be superseding it, three-colour political spectrum:
(old right) blue
<-
red (old left)
green (new environmental)
and electoral spectrum:
Gronp
fully
O <- bottom up
— democratic — oligopolistic — top down
participatory
O fully
dictatorial
Change proceJnre dimensions:
violent
non-constitutional
constitutional <pacific
1
Some of these "dimensions" are not really linear in the way strictly required. That they are not,
and that they are not fully independent, does not impede a much improved classification.
�3
C/tangg wufMfors: vanguard group or class;
<Lumpen-proletariat-workers' syndicates
bottom
"the people"
-----------------business
political
companies
parties
ruling elites
top
greens
alternative
coalitions
And so on. The schema presented are clearly far from exhaustive; nothing has been directly
included concerning distribution methods (market vs command, open vs closed storehouses,
etc.), admissible technology, or work-leisure arrangements, to take three important examples.
More pieces will be picked up as we proceed (the approximate number of dimensions is
computationally small), and some of the rather schematic sketches ventured above, elements of
which should be familiar, will receive some development in what follows.
Once the (n) dimensions are duly elaborated an anarc/tAm can be located and classified
(pigeon-holed in n-space) by placement in each dimension. For instance, the form of anarchism
preferred by me (see SM for an early presentation), is located as follows: it is social (with a
significantly qualified communistic safety net: each according to her or his basic needs), local
market-oriented but non-capitalistic, with diminished ownership, democratic but without
politicians and with alternative electoral arrangements, pacific but not bound by "constitutional"
procedures, utilizing modest safe technologies,.... But it is but one sort never to be instituted
everywhere, from a rich variety of alternatives
There are then MMny anarchisms, a rich variety of different forms, some of them scarcely
investigated or known. That anarchism comprises such a plurality has proved puzzling to those
(for example of one name-one thing persuasion) who assumed it must be a single ideology,
either individual or collective,.... Indeed the pluralist character of anarchism has led even more
apparently sympathetic critics, to 'wonder whether anarchism is really an ideology at all, or
merely a jumble of beliefs ...' (M. p.3). Of course the impression that anarchism 'is amorphous
and full of paradoxes and contradictions' is marvellously assisted by conflating degenarchism
with anarchism, chaos with order, and by combining the variant forms, individualism with
socialism and communism.
By properly regarding anarchism as a sheaf of overlapping
positions assembled around a core characterisation, a standard model for pluralism, the
problematic elements of anarchism as an ideology disappear. No doubt it is not an ideology
like Marxism, but then Marxism is atypical in its set of paradigmatic texts, concentrated in the
works of the master. Other ideologies such as liberalism or environmentalism afford better
comparisons. While anarchism is an ideology (in both good and bad senses), it is not really a
movement. There is not, anywhere really, such a movement, in the way there have been a
succession of liberation movements or there is a green movement and within it a deep ecology
movement.
�4
As anarchisms are plural, so by similar arguments are green, and deep-green, anarchisms.
Certainly green effect a select among their cluse of anarchism; it excludes, for example, the run
of individualistic anarchisms peddial in USA, because these admit much anti-environmental
activity, manifested for instance through "externalities" and market failure (some of these could
be very pale green). But selection does not, even for deep-green tend to a singleton, but still to
a wide pluralism.
These pluralisms are not merely descriptive, but normative. Insofar as any anarchism is
duly based on removal of unacceptable means, it should be
* pluralistic, because for example it cannot impose a single formulation on communities who
want to organise differently than its preferred way.
It should also be
* non-violent. Terrorist forms of anarchism are strictly incompatible with broad-based non
coercion. For terrorism typically involves coercion, stand-over tactics, and the like.2
That is, there is a doublish standard on vio/encg: It is alright to apply violence against state
(and others) while not alright to have coercive state, which applies violence. No doubt this can
be justified through
namely it is OK for me to do violence to you bot not OK for you to
apply violence to me. Accordingly a
conc/MMon is: A moral anarchism will not be a
form committed to violence (except unavoidable forms etc.).
Such pluralism does not enjoy a strong historic track-record, and does not go unopposed.
Standard anarchist positions, sketching of which was mainly a nineteenth century preoccupation
(but extending into twentieth century science fiction and utopian literature), shied away from
pluralism in the direction of monistic forms, towards insistence upon particular structure,
organisation and distributional methods. Such monistic rigidity led to much intense, often
fruitless discussion and friction between anarchists committed to different arrangements.
Certainly there was a doctrine of spontaneity — according to which in a state-overthrowing
revolution (in the very heat of the revolution!) the masses world spontaneously decide upon
new arrangements — which makes it appear that any structures at all were open for
consideration; but it was also assumed that certain arrangements would be selected, towards
which active anarchists would provide guidance.
It is not difficult to indicate some of the broad features of emergent arrangements features
that flow from the character of anarchism. But anarchists, over-attracted like others to monistic
schemes, have regularly attempted to advance their own schemes, introducing many further
postulates, that reach far beyond what flows from the basic characterisation, and that need not
2
There are serious pro&Anw for anarchism that accept coercive methods: why not aiso
accept the state then? Such positions tend to be forced back towards an organised
individualism.
But how then do they stop voluntary organisation arising (legitimately)?
�5
be adopted by genuine anarchistics (some further examples of optional and rejectable extras
from a recent manifesto: ... direct democracy, destruction of all hierarchies, maximization of
freedom, total Revolution, no ends-means distinction, no leaders, optimism about an anarchist
future,...).
Because of the expansive pluralism of anarchism, it overlaps many other ideologies,
indeed virtually all that do not include as a theme unmitigated commitment to a state or like
central authority. Thus while anarchism excludes fascism and is incompatible with state
capitalism, anarchism overlaps liberalism, democracy, and even Marxism, since Marxism
affords a long-term anarchism. There has been much confusion about these interrelations.
Take democracy. Anarchism does not entail democracy, as is sometimes claimed. Advice of a
select minority or of a single sage could regularly be adopted, though the advice did not reflect
the will of the people and its source was not elected or appointed by the people. Nor does
anarchism entail undemocratic procedures. There are, in the plurality, democratic forms, of
various sorts, and undemocratic forms. Democratic forms may have a better prospect of
enabling genuine democracy than life under the state. For as some have argued, 'both the
nation state and electoral democracy are inadequate as vehicles for democracy under modern
conditions' (Bumheim p.218).
Is its goal individual freedom or communal solidarity? Sometimes one, sometimes the
other, sometimes neither, sometimes both (a typical four-valued logical structure). A pluralistic
anarchism offers several different sorts of communities, not just one kind: for instance,
independent individuals, perhaps interrelated and organised through contracts, solidaristic
groups working freely together and sharing according to need, and various attractive
intermediaries, where there may be more individual-oriented market arrangements but there are
also safety nets ensuring distribution according to basic needs.
It is not difficult in theory to devise structures that allow a wide variety of kinds. For
example, in simple cases this can be accomplished through regional patterning, as illustrated in
the following
with 6 varieties.
2
1
5
3
6
4
(Such a modelling for political pluralism is further elaborated in UT.) The brief interlude of
anarchism in Spain afforded a small-scale example of regional patterning at work
The kinds of anarchistic societies are bound to be of very variable quality, both
theoretically and in practice. Some will only work with rather special sorts of people, for
instance certain communes with members with strong religious or ideological commitments;
some will not succeed at all. Some verge on incoherence, for instance those against coercive
organisation that approve group terrorist tactics. But while some kinds of anarchism are
entangled in serious problems, others are not. Anarchists generally have no obligation to
�6
defend defective kinds; yet many criticisms of anarchism are directed at just such defective
forms.
Although there is a rich variety of anarchistic end-states (virtually uninstantiated
possibilities), there are same common or overlapping organisational and structural features.
Such family-resemblance features are what hold the plurality together, and include noncoercive
versions of those arrangements essential to a functioning society: for instance, broad features of
arrangements for production and distribution, for arbitration and reconciliation, and so on, and
on. But although each such anarchist society will have some such organizational features, they
will differ in detail. For example, a main distributional feature of a simple communist society
may comprise a common storehouse from which members take according to need, whereas in
individualist societies distribution will normally proceed through some sort of exchange in
market systems. More generally different types of anarchism will offer different economic
theories. Those with stronger individualistic component will tend to rely upon not merely
market or allied exchange arrangements, but upon capitalistic organisation. The type of
anarchism favoured here strikes an intermediate route: markets without capitalism.
How is such complex organisation to be achieved without a state? Does not such
organisation and government require a state? To remove that familiar assumption and
associated blockages — encouraged by too much life under states and no experience of
alternatives - take a wider look around. Look at how many activities and procedures are
organised without states or essential participation of states. By voluntary arrangements.
Prominent examples are again sporting organisations, labour unions and business corporations
of various sorts. In short, organisation can be accomplished through a range of appropriate
institutions.
Such examples also provide the appropriate key unlocking the door as to how more
extensive organisation can be achieved in the absence of the state, namely through appropriate
institutions. The state dissolves into functioning components, a set of appropriate institutions,
and at bottom into its relevant minimization. It fragments into compartments — in two
interconnected ways: into regional parts and into capacities, functional parts.
There are other valuable clues to stateless reorganisation. What happens within the more
self-regulating state can also happen without it. As Gramsci emphasized,
the ability to govern without overt coercion depends largely on the ability
of those in power to exploit systems of belief that the larger population
shares. The nature of that system of belief is to some extent determinable
by policy makers, since in the modern state they possess a significant
ability to propagandize for their view. Yet.... (p.63).
Recent empirical investigations tend to yield similar results. People tend to follow rules and
obey laws they regard as moral or otherwise satisfactory. There are important messages for
anarchistic organisation here also, for arrangements without coercion, overt or other.
�7
Anarchistic rules will try to go with the prevailing flow, and will only vary (as over vindictive
punishment) where an evidently satisfactory justification can be given. More generally, smarter
anarchistic arrangements will aim to include desirable self-regulating systems, such as small-
scale markets.
Though there are many different strands that can be interwoven through the pluralistic
out-fall from the basic characterisation, there are some broad tendencies of anarchistic
arrangement which include:
* reliance on self-regulatory methods of organisation that require little or no intervention, as
opposed to highly regulated procedures, perhaps tending towards centralism or paternalism.
This is one reason why markets are often favoured, analogues of centralised control and
coercive legal systems are not.
* emphasis on voluntary methods, in place of imposed methods — coercive methods are of
course excluded by virtue of basic characterisation. Certainly de facto power may remain, but it
will be without justification.
* favouring of decentralisation and deconcentration rather than centralised or concentrated
structures.
That does not imply there can be no downward relations. Of course under federal arrangements
there will be, and sideways natural relations as well (a full control system).
* discouragement of empowerment, encouragement of depowerment.
* opposition to oppression is a corollary.
There are too many alternatives in the pluralistic basket to look at all of them. Let us
consider only some of them, with however preferred features. (An example that does not rank
highly and will not be further assessed is Stimer's individualism.) Anarchistic societies of any
complexity will typically consist of a network of decentralised organisations, or a federation of
these (etc.). The organisations will thus be regional, but beyond that set up according to issue,
role or function.
Thus they will include what might well be accounted gcorggiowuZ
/hnctiona/iym. Many of the stock features of political functionalism, as decentralised, will
accordingly recur, separation of powers, tailoring of administration to need, for instance. The
organisations will furthermore be noncoercive; no individual or group will be forced to join.
Typically they will be voluntary arrangements.
A critical question concerns how these organisations, substituting for the operation of
state, are to be controlled, regulated, and so on. In much favoured democratic structures, such
as electoral bureaucracies, control is usually weak and remarkably mJirgct. A populace weakly
selects a central parliament, which exercises through other bureaucratic bodies some control of
state organisations. A full anarchism is obliged to dissolve or substitute for central parliaments.
It has a obvious option, namely direct democratic control of state-substituting organisations. A
simple way of achieving this is through sortition: the membership of the governing component
of each organisation is chosen randomly from those qualified of the regional community who
volunteer to be on it. In some cases volunteers may require accessible qualifications (e.g.
�8
having served before at a lower level), and avoid disqualifications (e.g. having acquired a
disqualifying record).^ Where the community decides that certain categories of people should
be represented, for instance disabled, minorities, and so forth, then it is a matter of arranging
random selection of the required fraction of group numbers from these categories. This style of
statistical democracy dates back at least to original democracies of Greek city states where
public officials were sometimes selected by lot (it is discussed under democracy in Aristotle's
Po/t/fc^). Nowadays it is called Je/narchy (a term with an unfortunate prior meaning); here in
its anarchistic form it will be alluded to under the neologism JewMwiarc/ty.
Such demanarchy has the immediate virtue of removing a most expensive duplication,
government ministers and their departmental counterparts (e.g. finance ministers and
corresponding appointed treasury officials). Indeed, the whole charade of central parliamentary
government, ministers and hordes of minders, governments and replicating opposition teams, is
duly removed - as it has to be under non-centralization. Such parliamentary centres are
eliminated; insofar as anything replaces them, it is the dispersed community, itself no centre,
which is directly linked to functional organisation.
Gone with the centre, or seriously reduced, are several standard political worries, such as
those of coup or take-over, insurrection or invasion. These usually involve capturing the centre
and its command structure, no longer there to capture (for there is no command or control
structure that could be taken by an invader or with internal insurrection). Community defence
is thereby rendered much easier. Also considerably reduced is the standard problem of who
controls the controllers: partly because control is so diffused, partly because also gone are
legions of soldiers and security forces, and partly because a main controller is the community
(one of the advantages of more direct democracy).
Appropriate institutions take care then of the day-to-day running of community affairs.
But what of major issue decisions, changes of direction or structure?
These can be
accomplished from the bottom, through referenda, propositions and the like (with public
assessment organised through a suitably independent college), rather than in present top-down
inflexible fashion. (Some of these methods, of which there is worthwhile experience in parts of
Europe, are investigated in Wolff.)
A regular early question is how such a stateless structure is to be financed
coercive mechanisms available. Of course if coercive institutions were in place, then the
overall structure could be financed in the sorts of ways that states are presently financed. It
3
People can serve their administrative apprenticeship at iocal or group levels. One when they are
adjudged to have exhibited sufficient competence here are they entitled to nominate for selection
at grander levels. That is, there is a tiered structure for administralive careers, which would no
longer be full-time or working life long. This is one reasonable way of obtained some quality
control in selection of administrators. (Note these/evefy do not provide a vicious hierarchy.)
�9
should be observed, in any case, that coercive means are very rarely resorted to (unless the
target is pursued for
reasons, such as crime) in order to obtain revenue payments from
wealthy corporations, firms or individuals, from where in a more equitable community much of
the funding would derive (by contrast with most present states). There are several parts to a
satisfactory answer:* Muc/t less public revenue would be required because the most expensive, most wasteful, and
least productive components of state have been excised. These include the whole apparatus of
central government and electoral politics, and the associated system of coercion, standard
military forces and defence establishment, espionage framework, and police forces, prison
establishment and expensive courts.
*
Nonetheless there remain many institutions to finance,
include smaller substitutes for some of the abolished structures (e.g. social defence
arrangements).
* Many institutions can be largely or entirely self-financing, because like customs and import
organisations they collect revenue, or through fair user-pays principles. Reasonable returns
taken can be channelled to an independent revenue office with no outside spending or
redistribution powers.
* Much, if not all, further social revenue could be raised through resources taxation (adequate
royalties and the like), rental taxes on property or leases, gift and gains taxes, and through
auctions (of previously inherited goods). How this would work depends upon community
arrangements.
Consider for instance anarchistic arrangements where that problematic item, private
property, has not been instituted or has been abolished (as under main examples of European
anarchism, by contrast with North American forms). Valuable durables (roughly, any durable
worth stealing for sale in present systems) will be
instead of bought. Leasehold systems
can be operated very like private property (as the land system in the Australian Capital Territory
reveals) thus facilitating market operations, but they offer significantly better control, for
instance environmentally, they enable the social component of generated wealth to be reflected,
through a rental, and they can be of finite term and to a given individual, so inheritance transfer
is excluded.
In place of the customary land titles office a larger durables office with
subdivision for types of durables would be instituted, with each durable now indelibly marked
or described. Here, as with referenda, computing facilities remove many previous obstacles to
such developments. Organisation can move with newer technologies.
Leasehold arrangements are readily applied to prevent the accumulation ol scarce
property resources, such as urban land, which is a major feature of capitalism. For leases of
scarce commodities can be allocated according to need and ability to use, not merely through a
4
The costs are enormous. A minute component, a singie federai election in Australia, now costs
about $54 million to arrange.
�10
historically rooted market distribution as with private property. It is private property, not a
market system of distribution, that is really distinctive of capitalism, since it not only provides a
place to park and increase capital, but it enables transmission of accumulated wealth (e.g.
within a family or dynasty) and control of the means of production.
Where can anarchism work — satisfactively: on stock presumptions of community and
smallness.
Even proponents of the state have allowed that anarchy can work, indeed their position
often depends upon it. The horrible alternative to their, or their friends' or patrons', splendid
state and statecraft, is that a region should lapse into anarchy (a regular fear of the US
administration). Anarchism, that is, works, but works very nastily, like that presumed in "states
of nature", like that many in fact encounter in the encampments, slums or ghettos of terrorist or
other states.
But it now fairly widely appreciated, outside those intellectually incarcerated in the allencompassing realm of states, that anarchism can work rather satisfactorily, and did in may pre
state societies.
Concurrent anthropological findings concerning small communities and collective action
results concerning small collective have demolished the assumption that anarchy is impossible,
either in practice or techno-logically. Since then it has become fashionable to concede that
anarchy is possible but on/y where there is a suitable small community. This sort of anarchimin-the-small is commonly conceded by socialists, but dismissively. While anarchism may, it is
allowed, work well enough in small, isolated or primitive communities, it cannot work in large
industrial or urban societies such as now predominate globally. Anarchism is accordingly but a
marginal possibility, unworthly any longer of much serious political concern. Such dismissals
tend to be strong on claims and unfavourable judgements but excessingly weak on supporting
argument, where socialist handwaving takes over (obviously this widespread phenomenon is
not confined to socialism, or even to political debate). Confidence that anarchism cannot
succeed seems to be largely founded on the erroneous assumption that anarchism cannot supply
any but a primitive organisational structure.
By contrast, a sort of anarchism-in-the-small has been forcefully pursued, with due
argument, by Taylor, who contends that 'anarchy is viable to the extent that the relations
between people are those which are characteristic of community', a small community (-.166).
That is: '... community is nec&wary — if people are to live without the state' (p.3).
The argument to community that Taylor offers reduces a modified Hobbesianism; social
order can only be maintained, without the state and in the small, if the relations between
individuals are those of community (cf. p.2). Insofar as it is detailed, it is a remarkably broken-
down argument. As Taylor himself helps to show, 'the liberal justification of the state' — from
the failure of individuals in a large public to voluntarily cooperated to provide themselves
without requisite collective goods — breaks down at every critical point, in its premisses, in its
�1
11
argument, and in its concluding inference to the state was the on/y means of ensuring the supply
of such goods (p.59).
It is this final lacuna onto which Taylor latches. Granting the rest, 'all that can be inferred
is that, if public goods are to be provided,
means must be found of getting people to do
their part in providing them' (p.59). There are, Taylor swiftly finds, three pure methods of
ensuring provision of the goods in question: the state, the market, and the community. The
argument then proceeds by elimination, of the market. Taylor 'contends that social order
cannot satisfactorily be put on the market' (p.2), though his arguments to this contention are
unfortunately far from decisive. That leaves the state for public larger than communities, and
communitarian anarchism as an extra-terrestrial possibility for small communities (because
communities in the vicinity of states do not, it is claimed, survive). For all the talk about
anarchism, it looks like another triumph for the state.
But the argument is unsound, because there are
methods than those Taylor locates.
Non-statist organisation, which comes in a range of forms — functional, regional and others —
is not a combination of the pure methods considered. As a broad type of method it is hardly
"unproposed", or without precedents or examples (e.g. medieval orders and present
international order).
While there is no need to dispute that prospects for anarchism tend to be enhanced in
smaller communities, or in conglomerates that can be arranged in networks of smaller
communities, anarchism can work, if less satisfactorily, in modem mass society. Such is one of
the large themes being advanced.
�777E EA7FFG//VG
OF
/LV1/?C77/.SM: ^/<^r
cipy?^s
,
i
The
arguments
outlined,
predominancy theoretical, inform the
practical, revealing the options open for
anarchism, courses of action in superan
nuating the State and for transition to a
stateless Society, and so on. For exam
ple, spontaneous anarchism — accor
ding to which organisation is un
necessary 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 transi
tion by any strengthening oj^he cen
tralised State), relying heavil\^on volun
tary co-operation and direct democracy.
^ The society which emerges mciy be much
. ..as Bakunin and Kropotkin sometimes
piAuredH^lt /9^be based on smallerscale decentralised communities? for
otherwise such arrangements as com
munity replacement of State welfare ar
rangements, control of their environ
ment, removal of Prisoners' Dilemmas,
and participatory democracy, will w(?rk
less satisfactorily. Communities
.be
federated and control will be bottom-up,
not merely by representation and subject
to a downward system of command.__
Within each community there will hot be
great discrepancies in the distribution of
weakh and property, ar^p hi^^ycom
centrated economic powercommum
ty win be a rather equaiitarian group,
sharing in much that is communally
owned or not owned at a!i.
White theoretical arguments heip
outtine the generat shape of social, ami
aiso economic arrangements,they
determine^them compietety; they offer
no detaited btueprint. Accordingty what
emerges is not a particular form of anar
chism, for instance anarchist com
munism, but a more experinienta^an.^
p/ura/bhc anarchism, such as was^tnstituted in the Spanish cokectives.
traced/
\^^There are several recognised varieties of anarchism among the more common:
individualistic anarchisms, anarcho-capitalisms, anarcho-communisms, mutualisms, anarcho-
syndicalisms, libertarian socialisms, social anarchisms, and now eco-anarchisms. These
varieties are not particularly well-characterised, /hey are by no means at all exclusive. So far
indeed a satisfactory classification is lacking. Usually something of a ragbag is offered:
textbooks single out a very few varieties, and look at them. Invariably they leave out important
varieties.
��But it is not difficult to discern some of the more independent dimensions^ along which
variation occurs, and which accordingly are relevant to an improved multi-dimensional tabular
classification:
Parf-w/zo/g/ dimension:
atomism pole O <— individual ----
social
----
communal
—> O total holism
This is a most important dimension of variation among organisational arrangements (for
analysis see SM). It accounts for a major bifpriation between European anarchisms, which tend
...
.
1
'S^
to be socially oriented, and American anarchism^ which are usually highly individual (religious
communities^ some European transplants/ excepted). For markedly holistic arrangements to
persist, some strong ideological relational glue appears required, such as an immersing spiritual
ideology.
Properly spectrum:
Although this can be compressed into two dimensional form, it is better presented three
dimensionally as follows:
full
privatization
—> O full public
(tribal) ownership
no ownership
This spectrum evidently connects with the preceding holistic dimension, and both contribute to
what was the old right-left political division (a sort of crude super-position), and to what should
be superseding it, three-colour political spectrum:
(old right) blue
<------------------------ .--------------------------- >
red (old left)
green (new environmental)
Group Jectwon and electoral spectrum:
fully
O <- bottom up — democratic —y oligopolistic — top down
participatory
C/umge procedure dimensions:
^violent
-*
O fully
dictatorial
constitutional <------------------------- —---------------------------------- > non-constitutional
pacific
5
Some of these "dimensions" are not really h'wear in the way strictly required. That they are not, and that
they are not fully independent, does not impede a much improved classification.
�22
CTtangc mmai/ors': vanguard group or class;
<—
Lumpen-proletariat—workers
*
syndicates
bottom
"the people"
political
parties
business ---companies
top
alternative
ccylitions
a/
And so on. The schema presented are clearly far from exhaustive; nothing has been directly
included concerning distribution methods (market vs command, open vs closed storehouses,
etc.), admissible technology, or work-leisure arrangements, to take three important examples.
More pieces will be picked up as we proceed (the approximate number of dimensions is
computationally small), and some of the rather schematic sketches ventured above, elements of
which should be familiar, will receive some development in what follows^ Once the (n)
dimensions are duly elaborated an anarchism can be located and classified (pidgeon-holed in n-
space) by placement in sach dimension. For instance, the form of anarchism preferred by me
(s<$SM for an early presentation),[But one sort never to be^instituted everywhere/rom a riciT'
<L. variety of altematie^s located as follows: it is social (with a significantly qualified communistic
safety net: each according to her or his basic needs),' market-oriented but non-capitalistic, with
diminished ownership, democratic but without politicians and with alternative electoral
arrangements, pacific but not bound by "constitutional" procedures, utilizing modest safe
technologies, ....
There are then many anarchisms, a rich variety of different forms, some of them scarcely
investigated or known. That anarchism comprises such a plurality has proved puzzling to those
(for example of one name-one thing persuasion) who assumed it must be a single ideology,
either individual or collective,.... Indeed the pluralist character of anarchism has led even more
apparently sympathetic critics, to 'wonder whether anarchism is really an ideology at all, or
merely a jumble of beliefs
(M, p.3). Of course the impression that anarchism 'is amorphous
and full of paradoxes and contradictions' is marvellously assisted by conflating degenarchism
with anarchism, chaos with order, and by combining the variant forms, individualism with
socialism and communism. By properly regarding anarchism as a sheaf of overlapping
positions assembled around a core characterisation, a standard model for pluralism, the
problematic elements of anarchism as an ideology disappear. No doubt it is not an ideology like
Marxism, but then Marxism is atypical in its set of paradigmatic texts, concentrated in the works
of the master. Other ideologies such as liberalism or environmentalism afford better
comparisons. While anarchism is an ideology (in both good and bad senses), it is not really a
movement. There is not, anywhere really, such a movement, in the way there have been a
succession of liberation movements or there is a green ^deep ecology^movement.
9
2 : . /
A
/f
7
�z^4-v^-
/i
cY&v-e, Insofar a^ anarchism is duly based on removal of unacceptable means, it
should be
* pluralistic, because for example it cannot impose a single formulation on communities who
want to organise differently thatiits preferred way.
* non-violent. Terrorist forms of anarchism are strictly incompatible with broad-based non
coercion. For terrorism typically involves coercion, stand-over tactics, and the like/
That is, there is a doublish standard on violence: It is alright to apply violence against
state (and others) while not alright to have coercive state, which applies violence. No doubt
this can be justified through cgoLwr namely OK for me to do violence to you but not OK for
you to apply violence to me. Accordingly tentative conc/MMon is: A moral anarchism will not
be a form committed to violence Except unavoidable forms etc.
Such pluralism does not enjoy a strong historic track-record, and does not go
unopposed. Standard anarchist positions, sketching of which was mainly a nineteenth
century preoccupation (but extending into twentieth century science fiction and utopian
literature), shied away from pluralism in the direction of monistic forms, towards
insistence upon particular structure, organisation and distributional methods. Such
monistic rigidity led to much intense, often fruitless discussion and friction between
anarchists committed to different arrangements. Certainly there was a doctrine of
spontaneity — according to which in a state-overthrowing revolution (in the very heat of
the revolution!) the masses world spontaneously decide upon new arrangements — which
makes it appear that any structures at all were open for consideration; but it was also
assumed that certain arrangements would be selected, towards which active anarchists
would provide guidance.
It is not difficult to indicate some of the broad features of emergent arrangemens
features that flow from the character of anarchism. But anarchists, over-attracted like
others to monistic schemes, have regularly attempted to advance their own schemes,
introducing many further postulates, that reach far beyond what flows from the basic
characterisation, and that need not be adopted by genuine anarchistics (some further
examples of optional and rejectable extras from a recent manifesto:... direct democracy,
destruction of all hierarchies, maximization of freedom, total Revolution, no ends-means
distinction, no leaders, optimism about an anarchist future,...).
�23
Because of the expansive pluralism of anarchism, it overlaps many other ideologies,
indeed all that do not include as a theme unmitigated commitment to a state or like central
authority. Thus while anarchism excludes fascism and is incompatible with state capitalism,
anarchism overlaps liberalism, democracy, and even Marxism, since Marxism affords a long
term anarchism. There has been much confusion about these interrelations. Take democracy.
Anarchism does not entail democracy, as is sometimes claimed. Advice of a select minority or
of a^sage could regularly be adopted, though the advice did not reflect the will of the people and
its source was not elected or appointed by the people. Nor does anarchism entail undemocratic
procedures. There are, in the plurality, democratic forms, of various sorts, and undemocratic
forms. Democratic forms may have a better prospect of enabling genuine democracy than life
under the state. For as some have argued, 'both the nation state and electoral democracy are
inadequate as vehicles for democracy under modem conditions' (Bumheim p.218).
Is its goal individual freedom or communal solidarity? Sometimes one, sometimes the
other, sometimes neither, sometimes both (a typical four-valued logical structure). A pluralistic
anarchism offers several different sorts of communities, not just one kind: for instance,
independent individuals, perhaps interrelated and organised through contracts, solidaristic
groups working freely together and sharing according to need, and various attractive
intermediaries, where there may be more individual-oriented market arrangements but there are
also safety nets ensuring distribution according to basic needs.
It is not difficult in theory to devise structures that allow a wide variety of kinds. For
example, in simple cases this can be accomplished through regional patterning, as illustrated
with 6 varieties.
(Such a modelling for political pluralism is further elaborated in UT.) The brief interlude of
anarchism in Spain afforded a small-scale example of regional patterning at work
The kinds of anarchistic societies are bound to be of very variable quality, both
theoretically and in practice. Some will only work with rather special sorts of people, for
instance certain Answers with members with strong religious or ideological commitments; some
will not succeed at all. Some verge on incoherence, for instance those against coercive
organistions that approve group terrqist tactics. But while some kinds of anarchism are
entangled in serious problems, others are not. Anarchists generally have no obligation to
defend defective kinds; yet many criticisms of anarchism are directed at just such defective
forms.
Although there is a rich variety of anarchistic end-states (virtually uninstantiated
) f
/-I'y e
�24
or
1^-
*rc!
n
possibilities), there are^ common organisational and structural features. Such cluster features are
A
J
what hold the plurality together, and include noncoercive versions of those arrangements
essential to a functioning society: for instance, broad features of arrangements for production
and distribution, for arbitration and reconciliation, and so on, and on. But although each such
anarchist society will have such organizational features, they will differ in detail. For example,
a main distributional feature of a simple communist society may comprise a common
storehouse from which members take according to need, whereas in individualist societies
distribution will normally proceed through some sort of exchange in market systems. MoK
(
generally different types of anarchism will offer different economic theories. Those with
stronger individualistic component will tend to rely upon not merely market or allied exchange
arrangements, but upon capitalistic organisation. The type of anarchism favoured here strikes
an intermediate route: markets without capitalism.
How is such complex organisation to be achieved without a state? Does not such
organisation and government require a state? To remove that familiar assumption and
associated blockages - encouraged by too much life under states and no experience of
alternatives - take a wider look around. Look at how many activities and procedures are
organised without states or essential participation of states. By voluntary arrangements.
Prominent examples are again sporting organisations, labour unions and business corporations
of various sorts. In short, organisation can be accomplished through a range of appropriate
institutions.
Such examples also provide the appropriate key unlocking the door as to how more
extensive organisation can be achieved in the absence of the state, namely through appropriate
institutions. The state dissolves into functioning components, a set of appropriate institutions,
and at bottom into its relevant minimization. It fragments into compartments - in two
interconnected ways: into regional parts and into capacities, functional parts.
There are other valuable clues to stateless reorganisation. What happens within the more
self-regulating state can also happen without it. As Gramsci emphasized,
the ability to govern without overt coercion depends largely on the ability of
those in power to exploit systems of belief that the larger population shares.
The nature of that system of belief is to some extent determinable by policy
makers, since in the modern state they possess a significant ability to
propagandize for their view. Yet.... (p.63).
Recent empirical investigations tend to yield similar results. People tend to follow rules and
obey laws they regard as moral or otherwise satisfactory. There are important messages for
anarchistic organisation here also, for arrangements without coercion, overt or other.
Anarchistic rules will try to go with the prevailing flow, and will only vary (as over vindictive
punishment) where an evidently satisfactory justification can be given. More generally, smarter
anarchistic arrangements will aim to include desirable self-regulating systems, such as small-
/<?
�25
scale markets.
t
There are too many alternatives in the pluralistic basket to look at all of them. Let us
consider only some of them, with however preferred features. (An example that does not rank
highly and will not be further assessed is Stirner's individualism.) Anarchistic societies of any
complexity will typically consist of a network of decentralised organisations, or a federation of
these (etc.). The organisations will thus be regional, but beyond that set up according to issue,
role or function.
Thus they will include what might well be accounted ecoregiona/
Many of the stock features of political functionalism, as decentralised, will
accordingly recur, separation of powers, tailoring of administration to need, for instance. The
organisations will furthermore be noncoercive; no individual or group will be forced to join.
Typically they will be voluntary arrangements.
A critical question is-to how these organisations, substitudng for the operation of state, are
to be controlled, regulated, and so on. In much favoured democratic structures, such as
electoral bureaucracies, control is usually weak and remarkably tnJtrecf. A populace weakly
selects a central parliament, which exercises through other bureaucratic bodies some control of
state organisations. A full anarchism is obliged to dissolve or substitute for central parliaments.
It has a obvious option, namely direct democratic control of state-substituting organisations. A
simple way of achieving this is through sortition: the membership of the governing component
of each organisation is chosen randomly from those qualified of the regional community who
volunteer to be on it. In some cases volunteers may require accessible qualifications (e.g.
having served before at a lower level), and avoid disqualifications (e.g. having acquired a
disqualifying record).6 Where the community decides that certain categories of people should be
represented, for instance disabled, minorities, and so forth, then it is a matter of arranging
random selection of the required fraction of group numbers from these categories. This style of
statistical democracy dates back at least to original democracies of Greek city states where public
officials were sometimes selected by lot (it is discussed under democracy in Aristotle's P<?/iric.y).
Nowadays it is called t/gwarcAy (a term with an unfortunate prior meaning); here in its
anarchistic form it will be alluded to under the neologism dewanarcAy.
Such demanarchy has the immediate virtue of removing a most expensive duplication,
government ministers and their departmental counterparts (e.g. finance ministers and
corresponding appointed treasury officials). Indeed, the whole charade of central parliamentary
6
People can serve their administrative apprenticeship at local or group levels. One when they are adjudged
to have exhibited sufficient competence here are they entitled to nominate for selection at grander levels.
This is one reasonable way of obtained some quality control in selection of administrators. (Note /gve/^ do
not provide a vicious hierarchy.)
A""
�—H
Though there are many different strands that can be interwoven through the
pluralistic out-fall from the basic characterisation, there are some broad tendencies of
anarchistic arrangement which include:
*
reliance on self-regulatory methods of organisation that require little or no
intervention, as opposed to highly regulated procedures, perhaps tending towards
centralism
or
paternalism.
This is one reason why markets are favoured, analogues of centralised control and
coercive legal systems are not.
* emphasis on voluntary methods, in place of imposed methods - coercive methods are
of course excluded by virtue of basic characterisation. Certainly de facto power may
remain, but it will be without justification.
* favouring of decentralisation and deconcentration rather than centralised or
concentrated structures.
That does not imply there can be no downward relations. Of course under federal
arrangements there will be, and sideways natural relations as well (a full control
system).
* discouragement of empowerment, encouragement of depowerment.
* opposition to oppression is a corollary.
�26
government, ministers and hordes of minders, governments and replicating opposition teams, is
duly removed — as it has to be under non-centralization. Such parliamentary centres are
.
....
eliminated; insofar as anything replaces them, it is the dispersed community, no centre, which is
directly linked to functional organisation.
Gone with the centre, or seriously reduced, are several standard political worries, such as
those of coup or take-over, insurrection or invasion. These usually involve capturing the centre
and its command structure, no longer there to capture (for there is no command or control
structure that could be taken by an invador or with internal insurrection). Community defence is
thereby rendered much easier. Also considerably reduced is the standard problem of who
controller is the community (one of the advantages of more direct democracy).
Appropriate institutions take care then of the day-to-day running of community affairs.
But what of major issue decisions, changes of direction or structure? These can be
accomplished from the bottom, through referenda, propositions and the like (with public
assessment organised through a suitably independent college), rather than in present top-down
inflexible fashion. (Some of these methods, of which there is worthwhile experience in parts of
Europe, are investigated in Wolff.)
A regular early question is how such a stateless structure is to be financed
coecive
mechanisms available. Of course if coercive institutions were in place, then the overall structure
could be financed in the sorts of ways that states are presently financed. It should be observed,
in any case, that coercive means are very rarely resorted to (unless the target is pursued for otAgr
reasons, such as crime) in order to obtain revenue payments from wealthy corporations, firms or
individuals, from where in a more equitable community much of the funding would derive (by
contrast with most present states). There are several parts to a satisfactory answer:* AfMcA less public revenue would be required because the most expensive, most wasteful, and
least productive components of state have been excised. These include the whole apparatus of
central government and electoral politics, and the associated system of coercion, standard
military forces and defense establishment, espionage framework, and police forces, prison
establishment and expensive courts. -—
Nonetheless there remain many institutions to finance, include smaller substitutes for some of
the abolished structures (e.g. social defence arrangements).
* Many institutions can be largely or entirely self-financing, because like customs and import
organisation^ they collect revenue, or through fair user-pays principles. Reasonable returns
taken can be channelled to an independent revenue office with no outside spending or
redistribution powers.
* Much, if not all, further social revenue could be raised through resources taxation (adequate
�royalties and the like), rental taxes on property or leases, gift and gains taxes, and through
auctions (of previously inherited goods). How this would work depends upon community
arrangements.
Consider for instance anarchistic arrangements where that problematic item, private
property, has not been instituted or has been abolished (as under main examples of European
anarchism, by contrast with North American forms). Valuable durables (roughly, any durable
worth stealing for sale in present systems) will be renfed instead of bought. Leasehold systems
can be operated very like private property (as the land system in the Australian Capital Territory
reveals)^facilitating market operations, but they offer significantly better control, for instance
environmentally, they enable the social component of generated wealth to be reflected, through a
rental, and they can be of finite term and to a given individual, so inheritance transfer is
excluded. In place of the customary land titles office a larger durables office with subdivision
for types of durables would be instituted, with each durable now indelibly marked or described.
(Here, as with referenda, computing facililies remove many previous obstacles to such
developments. Organisation can move with newer technologies.
Leasehold arrangements are readily applied to prevent the accumulation of scarce property
resources, such as urban land, which is a major feature of capitalism. For leases of scarce
commodities can be allocated according to need and ability to use, not merely through a
historically rooted market distribution as with private property. It is private property, not a
market system of distribution, that is really distinctive of capitalism, since it not only provides a
place to park and increase capital, but it enables transmission of accumulated wealth (e.g. within
a family or dynasty) and control of the means of production.
CZ
�4^? y
and SwiaMness
7^4
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Aa A ^//x/---?
-—
/^c
�has become fashionable/^ince th^oncurrent anthropological findings concerning
small communities and the collective action results concerning small collectives demolished the
assumption that anarchy
impossible, t& concede that anarchy is possible but only where
there is a suitable small community.
/Az'
-
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//
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�a—
- sort of anarchism in-the-small has been forcefully
pursued by Taylor, who contends that 'anarchy is viable to the extent that the relations between
people are those which are characteristic of community', a small community (p.166). That is:
... community is necawa/y — if people are to live without the state' (p.3).
The argument to community that Taylor offers reduces a modified Hobbesipnism; social
order can oly be maintained, without the state and in the small, if the relations between
individuals are those of community (cf p.2). Insofar as it is detailed, it is a remarkably brokeddown argument. As Taylor himself helps to show, 'the liberal justification of the state' - from
the failure of individuals in a large public to voluntarily cooperate to provide themselves without
requisite collective goods - breaks down at every critical point, in its premisses, in its
argument, and in its concluding inference to the state was the on/y means of ensuring the
supply of such goods (p.59).
It is this final lacuna onto which Taylor latches. Granting the rest, 'all that can be inferred
is that, if public goods are to be provided, jowc means must be found of getting people to do
their part in providing them' (p.59). There are, Taylor swiftly finds, three pure methods of
ensuring provision of the goods in question: the state, the market, and the community. The
argument then proceeds by elimination, of the market. Taylor 'contends that social order
cannot satisfactorily be put on the market' (p.2), though his arguments to this contention are far
from decisive. That leaves the state for public larger than communities, and communitarian
anarchism as an extra-terrestial possibility for small communities (because communities in the
vicinity of states do not, it is claimed, survive). For all the talk about anarchism^it looks like
another triumph for the state.
&t the argument is unsound, because there are other methods than those Taylor locates.
Non-statist organisation, which comes in a range of forms^ is not a combination of the pure
methods considered. As a broad type of method it is hardly "unproposed", or without
precedents or examples (e.g. medieval orders and present international order).
7^
A
er
C
4
�!/V
[1] p.3O Important among these practices are resistance movements and organised
refusals (preferably without conspicuous leaders). While individuals can be selectively picked
off, enough people well organsed cannot. As a result grand refusals could be significant
political happenings.
[3] p.4? The practice of anarchism, generously construed, naturally includes the state of
being in anarchist conditions, of living under anarchism (though perhaps unaware). There is
cope for anarchism without doctrine. Many primitive societies thus qualify on anarchistic; they
practice, or practiced, anarchism though unaware (somewhat as wild animals practice hygine).
Further, no doubt now stretching 'practice' beyond its assumed anthropic context, many animal
communities practice anarchism. Many attracted ^anarchism, an anarchism without name
even, long for analogous pure practice.^ Th^ hope that whatever it is ill operate, perhps even
materilize, without any heave-
ithouteness or e
any intellectualizing, perhaps
without even thought or much ef
on their part. In contemporary circumstances they would
thave to be extrordinary lucky (a paternal state with caring elements, such as safe jobs and
spoon-fed indoctrinal education for all citizens, does not relinquish its control voluntarily).
[4] #awan Harare. This is a theoretical notion which has been used for multifarious
/refprious, social and political purposes. Typically the notion has been deployed in a effort to
force various restrictive types of social arrangements, archie ones (including defence focus,
standing armies, survellience etc.)
[5] about p.20 (connector^
Present minolithic governments have assumed far too many roles, for many of which
they are not competent, ffom some of wlpdrihey are disqualified by other roles (e.g. as
impartial referees by ^h^r/businessjsofnmitments). Because the centre tries to do and control
too much, as a consequenc$4tdoes very much unsatisifactorily. Improved arrangements would
separate these roles, deconcentrating and decentralizing power.
[6] p.30. As^?ovemmenr is variably determinable, so also is /aw. Under the main
determinate, law is incompatible with anarchism. But under a different determinate, there is no
incompatibility.
Anarchism cannot traffic in law, in the initial and prominent sense of /aw offered in the
OED, namely 'a rule of conduct imposed by authority', imposed by authority and
characteristically backed up by coercion, it may be added. To some extent counter reducing this
prognastication is a'second sense of 'law' (the third comprises 'scientific and philosophical
uses'): namely 'without reference to an external commanding authority'.
�Law deservedly has a tarnished reputation in anarchism.
Most of it is arcane,
administered by an expensive priesthood. Too often it is an oppression tool of the state.
While anarchism is hostile to such law, and incompatable with heavy authoritarian law, it
is in no way opposed to rules, to regulations, to conventions of freely asserted to lists, and so
on.
[7] Democracy within ANARCHY, and DEMANARCHY
Present electoral arrangements offer what? What presently have is a competative game
between competating blocks of the ruling elite (with professional power-brokers who trade with
each other their patronage and cites/br the acclaimed right to govern.
Thus elections hardly represent a genuine expression of agreement by the populace to be
governed; rather they are occasions when the populace is duped into supporting one or other
elite team.
For the most part power is concentrated in organisations which are not elected, not
controlled by the people effected by their contractions and not representative.
By and large, satisfactory democratic arrangements will not be participatory (see
Burnheim).
are valuable for limited purposes, viz. as /a// bacty. B argues that they are not
satisfactory in general (p.91). There is no need to dissent.
Mows 1. Encourage those without interest in, or not genuinely affected by issue not to vote.
2. only structural, not material issues to refs. Certainly not material moral issues, for
instance, not capital punishment, not abortion.
Dgwarc/ty has the wrong etymology and the wrong meaning for anarchist purposes. It
means 'the office of a demarch [a president, chief magistrate, major or governnorj; a popular
government. The municipal body of a modern Greek commune' (OED). Anarchism recognises
no chiefs or leaders, even democratic ones or demogogues. What can be done very simply,
however, is to enlarge the word by a simple important syllable 'an', giving Jcwa/MrAy.
[8] [after authority, coercion.
To coerce is maintain or change state, normaliy of another creature, by force.
�Re Chap 4) Insofar as anarchism is duly based on removal of unacceptable means, it
should be
* pluralistic, because for example it cannot impose a single formulation on communities who
want to organise differently that its preferred way.
* non-violent. Terrorist forms of anarchism are strictly incompatibile with broad-based non
coercion. For terrorism typically involves coercion, stand-over tactics, and the like.
That is, there is a doublish standard on vio/ence: It is alright to apply violence against
state (and others) while not alright to have coercive state, which applies violence. No doubt this
can be justified through ggoi-sw: namely OK for me to do violence to you but not OK for you to
apply violence to me. Accordingly afentadve
is: A moral anarchism will not be a
form committed to violence - except unavoidable forms etc.
[9]
anJ Smallness
It has become fashionable, since the concurrent anthropological finalings concerning
small communities and the collective action results concerning small collectiyes demolisted the
assumption that anarchy was impossible, to concede that anarchy is possible but only where
there is a suitable small community. This sort of anarchism in-the-small has been forcefully
pursued by Taylor, who contends that 'anarchy is viable to the extent that the relations between
people are those which are characteristic of community', a small community (p.166). That is:
... community is necessary - if people are to live without the state' (p.3).
The argument to community that Taylor offeysreduces a modified Hobbesionism; social
order can oly be maintained, without the st^te and in the small, if the relations between
individuals are those of community (cf p.2L lnsofar as it is detailed, it is a remarkably brokeddown argument. As Taylor himself helps to show, 'the liberal jusdfication of the state' - from
the failure of individuals in a large public to voluntarily cooperate to provide themselves without
requisite collective goods - brdaks down at every critical point, in its premisses, in its
argument, and in its concluding inference to the state was the on/y means of ensuring the supply
of such goods (p.59).
It is this final lacuna onto which Taylor latches. Granting the rest, 'all that can be inferred
is that, if public goods are to be provided, some means must be found of getting people to do
their part in providing them' (p.59). There are, Taylor swiftly finds, three pure methods of
ensuring provision of the goods in question: the state, the market, and the community. The
argument then proceeds by elimination, of the market. Taylor 'contends that social order cannot
satisfactorily be put on the market' (p.2), though his arguments to this contention are far from
�14
e
OF
/
7
One
appalling
mes from a Russi
icrionary
that is hostile to all
-bourgeours socio-political tr
authority a
e, and counterpasses ' intere^s of petty private
ownersbib and small
ant economy to
progress of^ociety based on
large-scale production
v, 2nd revision
s, Progress,
bsever, 1989).
^nether-dismal-eharaeterisati
[4]
scientistIfApter).
narurg. This is a theoretical notion which has been used for multifarious
reforious, social and political purposes. Typically the notion has been deployed in a effort to
.v(0
force various restrictive types of social arrangements, archie ones [including defence focus,
standing armies, survellience etc.)
*[5FabouFpT2O-(G0miect0f)
Present\p^nolithic governments have assumed far too many roles, for many of which
they are not co
etent, from some of which they are disqualified by other roles (e.g. as
KHLI Ut
impartial referees by\[ieir business commitments). Because the centre tries to do and epntro
too much, as a conseque
it does very much unsatisifactofily. Improve
tents wouldl
.separate these roles, deconcen^ating and decentralizing power.
[7] Democracy within ANARCHY, and DEMANARCHY
Present electoral arrangements offer what? What presently have is a competative game
between competating blocks of the ruling elite (with professional power-brokers who trade with
each other their patronage and citesybr the acclaimed right to govern.
Thus elections hardly represent a genuine expression of agreement by the populace to be
governed; rather they are occasions when the populace is duped into supporting one or other
elite team.
For the most part power is concentrated in organisations which are not elected, not
controlled by the people effected by their contractions and not representative.
By and large, satisfactory democratic arrangements will not be participatory (see
Burnheim).
o
�— /^W/
6'J
n /
/I
15
7?^/<?rc/!^Az are valuable for limited purposes, viz. as /<
*/// /?ocA.s'. B argues that they are not
satisfactory in general (p.91). There is no need to dissent.
Moray 1. Encourage those without interest in, or not genuinely affected by issue not to vote.
2. only structural, not material issues to refs. Certainly not material moral issues, for
instance, not capital punishment, not abortion.
Z)^marc/ty has the wrong etymology and the wrong meaning for anarchist purposes. It
means the office of a demarch [a president, chief magistrate, major or govemnor]; a popular
government. The municipal body of a modem Greek commune' (OED). Anarchism recognises
no chiefs or leaders, even democratic ones or demogogues. What can be done very simply,
however, is to enlarge the word by a simple important syllable 'an', giving
IM) A
�*
*
��Chapter 8A
ELEMENTS OF SOCIAL AND POLITICAL THEORY
AND OF A PREFERRED THEORY
There are many preliminaries. One, like preparing a badly used building site, consists in
removing the rubbish. That of course is but the beginning of philosophy, not the sole content
and end, as some zealous followers of Lockejhave supposed.
1. Issues in appalling methodology.
Many of the prevailing sins of philosophy are writ large in political philosophy, i Bad
practices abound; anarchism has suffered particularly as a result.
Redefinitions, and
redefinitional stratagems to try to close gappy arguments, abound. Large assumptions are
imported and regularly used, without due notice, or too often any awareness: particularly
pernicious are those of individualism and atomism, and of thoroughgoing egoism. It hardly
needs stressing that such assumptions are environmentally unfriendly, at best.
False
dichotomies abound. And so on. Among the deleterious practices, several deserve special
mention:
* 7%#/
o/
There is a deeply embedded in modern
mainstream intellectual activity and strikingly manifest in political theory. A general feature of
contemporary thought, as of much contemporary technology and practice, is that of over
powering or of excessive strength. The phenomenon, as exhibited in contemporary mainstream
logic, where it shows up in excessive assumptions, and principles more powerful than reason
can justify, is dis-assessed elsewhere (from the perspective of relevant logic, in RLR). Some of
the same unwarranted assumptions, notably those of invariant consistency and maximization,
reach far beyond stock logical theory to apply, so it is regularly claimed, to all rational practice,
including political decision-making and institutional arrangements (see MR).
Analogous features are incorporated in many of the arguments against anarchism. For
example, it is argued that anarchism cannot realise optimal delivery of public goods, ideal
conditions for this or that (e.g. free market functioning, capital formation and flow), and so on.
Not only do other alternatives not measure up to these standards (certainly prevailing
arrangements fall very far short), the standards themselves are quite excessive. Instead it is
enough that certain sorts of adequacy standards are met, that reasonable thresholds are
1
One reason is that much of it is done by political
thinking.
with no adequate grounding tn logic or
�/'
m we/Ttoi/o/ogy. Many of the prevailing sins of philosophy are writ large in political
*
philosophy.
Redefinitions, and redefinitional otologies to try to close gappy arguments,
abound. Large assumptions are imported and regularly used, without due notice, or too often
any awareness: particularly pernicious are those of individualism and atomism, and of
thoroughgoing egoism. It hardly needs stressing that such assumptions are environmentally
unfriendly, at best.
P/tcno/ncnon o/
* excessive strength. There is a deeply embedded in modern mainstream
intellectual activity and strikingly manifest in political theory.
A general feature of contemporary thought, as of much contemporary technology and
practice, is that of over-powering or of excessive strength. The phenomenon, as exhibited in
contemporary mainstream logic, where it shows up in excessive assumptions, and principles
more powerful than reason can justify, is disassesed elsewhere (from the perspective of relevant
logic, in RLR). Some of the same unwarranted assumptions, notably those of invariant
consistency and maximization, reach far beyond stock logical theory to apply, so it is regularly
claimed, to all rational practice, including political decision making and obstitutional
arrangements (see MR).
Analogous features are incorporated in many of the arguments against anarchism. For
example, it is argued that anarchism cannot realise optimal delivery of public goods, ideal
conditions for this or that (e.g. free market functioning, capital formation and flow), and so on.
Not only do other alternatives not measure up to these standards (certainly prevailing
arrangements fall very far short), the standards themselves are quite excessive. Instead it is
enough that certain sorts of adequacy standards are met, that reasonable thresholds are
achieved. There is a most important corollary: that arguments against anarchism or anarchistic
institutional arrangement which assume maximizing principles or the like (as are presumed in
Prisimers Dilemma arguments, game theory, mainstream economics, etc.) are flowed from the
very outset, and should be set aside.
A central time in anarchism offers a somewhat different display of the excess
phenomenon. The issue concerns alleged justifications of the state, or state-like institutions.
Here all that reason and argument appear to warrant are much less powerful institutions, not
arrangements with the excessive powers of the state. To close the gap between what argument
and practice appear,to justify and what the state claims, some opportunistic intellectuals have
1
One reason is that much of it is done by poiiticai szds with no adequate grounding in logic or critical
thinking.
�tried, rather......... to redefine the state. But such low redefinitions, while imposing states on
societies that operated without them, leaves the contemporary state besereft of adequate
justification. In brief, such intellectual strategies lead from the frying pan to the fire.
So it is similarly with institutions within the state, such as property and law. Reason and
argument do not justify state property arrangements, only an opportunistically redefined
"property" which does not fulfil the same state and capitalistic role. Similarly with law and state
legal systems.
ON DEFINING ANARCHISM DEFINITIONS OF ANARCHISM
One characterisation that is utterly appalling comes from a Russian Dictionary of
PAi/<9^o/?Ay:
'Anarc&i.wn, a petty-bourgeours socio-political trend that is hostile to all
authority and the state, and counterpasses the interests of petty private
ownership and small peasant economy to the progress of society based on
large-scale production' (ed I. Frolov, 2nd revision eds, Progress,
Plosever, 1989).
Another dismal characterisation comes from an American political scientist (Apter).
Defective definitions of anarchism abound, many supplied by high profile anarchists
(whereupon they assume a certain air of authority, a bogus air). A few examples will be
considered, mostly drawn from a large list of similarly defective definitions included in Clark,
p.ll8ff., who is out to show that any definition which attempts to do justice to anarchism
through an assentialistic definition deploying one simple idea is bound to fail, abysmally.
AnarcAy does not "mean literally "without government'" contrary to Caster p.14. It does
however imply without governments of prevailing cuts which is what the immediately proceeds
to: 'and the lowerst common demominstor of anarchist thought is the conviction that existing
forms of government are productive of wars, internal violence, repression and misery' (p.14).
Right on!
The very short characterisation of anarc/iAy/?? (and redition of anarc/taj) as 'no *
government'is defective because of the elosticity, and slippiness of 'government'. For
example, according to one dictionary (Dniverya/ E/tg/Bh) govern/ytenr means '... system of
polity in a state; territory ruled by a governor ...' in which case it fy incompatible with
Thus, e.g. Carter, Websters (?).
�2
achieved. There is a most important corollary: that arguments against anarchism or anarchistic
institutional arrangement which assume maximizing principles or the like (as are presumed in
Prisoners Dilemma arguments, game theory, mainstream economics, etc.) are flawed from the
very outset, and should be set aside.
A central issue in anarchism offers a somewhat different display of the excess
phenomenon. The issue concerns alleged justifications of the state, or state-like institutions.
Here all that reason and argument appear to warrant are much less powerful institutions, not
arrangements with the excessive powers of the state. To close the gap between what argument
and practice appear to justify and what the state claims, some opportunistic intellectuals have
tried, rather deviously, to redefine the state. But such low redefinitions, while imposing states
on societies that operated without them, leaves the contemporary state bereft of adequate
justification. In brief, such intellectual strategies lead from the frying pan to the fire.
So it is similarly with institutions within the state, such as property and law. Reason and
argument do not justify state property arrangements, only an opportunistically redefined
"property" which does not fulfil the same state and capitalistic role. Similarly with law and state
legal systems.
* Htg/t anJ low
Wolffs little book, billed as "a defence of anarchism" is a
small treasury of these. Virtually all the characterisations proposed at the beginning of this
book, of state, sovereignty, authority, power, actomomy, are defective, often by virtue of
definitional features. Consider Wolffs opening:
'Politics is the exercise of the power of the state, or the attempt to influence that exercise.
Political philosophy is therefore ... the philosophy of the state' (p.3 also p.ll). Politics went
on before the rise of the state, and with some good fortune, will persist often its demise.
Again, consider: 'the state is a group of persons who have or exercise suppose authority within
a given territory' (p3; repeated p.5). This shows the fallacy of redirectionism. For a state
normally does not change when those who exercise power do. On the de facto state Wolff is
also astray: 'a & Jacio state is simply a state whose subjects believe it to be ligitimate (i.e. really
to have the authority it claims for itself)' (p.10). Many subjects may nor believe that, but be
intimidated through state power. Very fashionable in removing anarchism are low redefinitions
of Ftare, where there is a state given any positional components in society, such as political
specialisation or division of labour (see Taylor on anthopoligical efforts on societies without
states). As a result there can be effortessly be both anarchy and "state"; any complex anarchist
society is a state!
Another rich source of redefinitions is founded by Taylor's books on anarchism.
Examples include: a fairly hopeless definition of gooJ.' it is desired (p.45). Most interesting is a
�3
disgustingly low redefinition of property.- 'Property' is here a shorthand for a variety of
entilements or use rights (Taylor 82 p.44). So as I am entitled to use the byway or to bathe in
the stream, they are my property, so I run them? Another example concerns coercion: In the
claim that to avoid the Hobbesian prisoners' dilemma 'every man must be coerced', Taylor
continues (87 p. 145), 'by which I mean simply that he must be made to behave differently than
he otherwise would (... (i.e.) would "ovlantarily" in the state of nature).' But such a difference
may be effectively achieved, depending on the subject, by noncoercive means, such as
persassion, sanctions, and so forth. Furthermore it would not guarantee what Taylor and
Hobbes appear to expect, authority and sovereignty.
Among the most pernicious of redefinitions, constraints, and elides are those concerning
interests and preferences - often reduction bases for gooJ and other value qualities, often
quickly converted from interest to self-interest (thus Taylor)^ Examples from within this circle
include harmony and cooperation.
For instance.'Harmony requires complete identity of
interests' (in Ope, p.226). It hardly requires comment. Again '...cooperation occurs when
actors adjust their behaviour to the actual or anticipated preferences of others (in Ope p.226).
But suppose creatures simply work or act together (what 'cooperation' means).
psychological accounts are seriously astray.
* ZHc%#%MnoMS
or ctf^cr-or-M/n.
Such
Humans are extraordinarily addicted to
flawed dichotomous reasoning, again powerfully exhibited with regard to anarchism and the
state? For example, the alternative to the state is presumed to be anarchism which is equated
with disorder; so it is either the state or disorder. Again, the only alternative to a market system
of government is central control - market or control - and the market has won out decisively
now (one of the presumed reasons for the prematurely announced "end to ideology").
Other objectionable methodological assumptions include
'..Po.w&Mh'g mJzvo/aa/LSW (after McP p.3)
'Its possessive quality is its conception of the individual as essentially the proprietor of his own
person or capacities, owning nothing to society for them. The individual (is not)... part of a
larger..... whole, but... surer of himself.'
As a result:
'Society consists of relations of exchange between proprietors. Political socieity becomes a
celebrated device for the protection of this property and for the maintenance of an orderly
relation of exchange.'
2
3
The fallacious shifts are dealt with in 'Aquinst,
A famous Australian example is the truculent stance of its richest mum, Packer, in a parliamentary
inquiry: Either you believe me or call be a liar. Reflect on how far "call me a liar" goes beyond "you
do not believe me".
,
„
There should be some eodness^ that we are now trying to build machines in our own inadequate
image. (Many examples in SM).
�4
(a prime example in economics: the data of extremality).
* /tM/nan
* g/fwn o/va/ne, or reduction of value to preference.
All of these have been crically assessed elsewhere. But some features deserve further
elaboration:
* f/tg
tAgo/y
With rule and compass techniques it is wn/MM.n&Zg to trirect angle. Of course by measuring it is
rather easy.
Similarly with rationality: wider means can do what state was supposed to be necessary for.
Put differently, the theoretical state is an artifact on a certain ultra-thin theory of rationality.
The thin theory of rationality is an extraordinarily widespread ideological....... among
Anglo-American social theorists (many of whom feel obliged to make public dealeraatous of
faith). But that it is 'almost universally taken for granted by economists' does nothing to show
its correctness, unless an argument from expectise has required a new validity. What it reveals
rather is something about the ideological commitments,...........of economists.
The thing theory of rationality is almost invariably coupled with individualism,
methodological individualism as it is usually cleverly called (after Popper's theorizing).^
Many of these objectionabl assumption are melted together in theories of /mman nafnrg.
Mafnrg, CM/tMrg anJconfro/.
Part of the intellectual aim of a theory of human nature is to achieve an account of hum^n
/motivation. But a uniform story of motivation is scarcely more likely drawn as uniform account
of human nature.^ Motivations are no doubt important; but they are many and various.
It is still fashionable to assert, as if it was a truism, that 'all political philosophies ... base
themselves upon a conception of human nature' (Wolff Povgrty p. 140, pluralised). That is no
longer so (certainly, since Foucault) is that the notion of //n/nnn nnturg is not well defined, and
never was except under high redefinitions.
Work in decqtralized artificial intelligence readily suggests that communities of robots
could operate without statist arrangements (nor need outiside imput be state bound). That
suggests in tum that it is something about humans, as many humans, that leads to development
or imposition of states. That something has been ascribed, rather too quickly, to human nature,
or to human culture, or to some mix of human genetypic and phenotypic features, features that
other creatures or artificial intelligences do not share. It is something peculiarly pertaining to
and special to humans, their nature or culture, that amends institutional control. But has never
been satisfactorily explained what these special features are or how they operate. There is much
space for total scepticism about such justificatory or apologetic approaches.
4
5
Taylor has a dreadful argumejpj (892 p.57) that people are agents, because otherewise default to
understand why so many goods and supplied (also 87 p.109).
The usual uniform story depends upon self inferey/, which is widened into mteresM under pressure.
�5
2. Aa/Mrc, CM/tMro, awJ contra/.
A major function of culture is to regulate and control changed Political change in the
South Pacific, and political divergence from the industrial North, can, in principle then, be
grounded in and powered by features of local and regional culture. One organising theme, a
corollary of the argument, facilitates the transition from principle to practice:- It is that the
requisite elements are present in regional cultures, the potentiality is there, for the South Pacific
region (and Australia in particular) to proceed in a very different social political direction from
the North (and from the USA in particular). Given the radical unsatisfactoriness of the
American arrangements, in many frequently exposed respects,7 such a different direction is
worth taking — if it can be.
But a serious problem in the way of change is imposition of political arrangements, from
outside or from above. And, since imposition shades into political pressure, this is only one of
the obstacles impeding change in the South Pacific and elsewhere. Another forcing more and
more peoples, no longer sheltered by geographical isolation, into the same type of socio
political arrangements is supposed to derive from human nature itself. Free people are
economic people, in pretty much the American mould, so it is claimed. By this route, economic
imperialism can replace political imperialism.
A key question in political theory — one to which we are said to have no satisfactory
answer in the absence of a worthwhile theory of human nature (or human natures) — is
supposedly this:To what extent does human nature allow for alternative political and social arrangements? Or,
to tum the question around:- What restrictions are imposed in virtue of the nature of humans on
the broad range of political possibilities? How does that "nature" reduce the organisational
options?
A much-promoted Anglo-American answer, directly descended from the
Enlightenment, is that once /rcc/Y from systems of myths, taboos and tribal controls, from
superstition, people are essentially (and will generally become) self-centred individuals,
(properly) concerned with maximising their own gain or interests; that is, but for their shortage
of information (including technical know-how), free people are basically economic peopled
As ought now to be evident, that is to replace one ideology by another. But the Enlightenment
ideology is no longer so evident^: what recommends it? Under pressure of this sort, the AngloAmerican answer gets transformed to the theme that the economic picture of human nature is
superior, and fitting of rational creatures. That 'self-appointed West European superiority' has
6
7
8
9
Thus Abraham p.29ff.; Awa p.30. These sections are drawn from Cu/turc onJ rAc RooM of Political
Divergence.' a SowtA Pacific perspective.
For a recent trenchant expose, see Cohen and Rogers.
These people are also picked out under various alternative (but not strictly equivalent) descriptions,
e g. as acquisitive individuals, possessive individuals.
See e g. DP, chapter 10.
�6
in turn been disputed, since the time of Herder and the Romantics.^ Fortunately, however,
the extensive ensuing dialectic can be substantially avoided.
For all these questions and answers presuppose, to begin with, a certain misplaced
essentialism, that there is such an invariant nature common to human beings, which exactly
separates humans from other creatures. Attempts to specify such an essence, suitably constant
and invariant and given by necessary and sufficient conditions,^ are legion. They are
a frequent feature of Enlightenment thought. All ment are the same
because of universal drives [such as to pleasure and avoidance of pain].
These drives will operate independently of any location.
Chief among those drives was that towards self-preservation — Holbach,
for instance, stipulates:
we shall call nafare in man the collection of properties and qualities
which constitute him what he is, which are inherent to his species, which
distinguish him from other animal species or which he as in common with
them ... every man feels, things, acts and seeks his own well-being at all
times; these are the qualities and properties that constitute human nature
12
But this attempt at essentialist definition of /mman naA/re fails, in a quite characteristic way. As
it stands, the definition is inadequate; for not all humans seek just their own well-being always;
some are "stupid", some are altruistic, some have other commitments. However, suppose we
avoid such familiar counter-instances to egoism, by replacing 'well-being' by say 'broad well-
being', thus rendering such internal egoism analytic. And suppose to avoid other counter
expales (such as human vegetables, morons and the like), we normalise the definition, replacing
'every man' by 'every normal human'. But then the definition is again inadequate; for it fails to
distinguish humans from, for example, dolphins. It applies equally to Jo/p/un natMrg or, for
that matter, to gon/Z# natMrg.
10
11
12
See Berry, p.30ff., from whom the quote is taken. It is worth spelling out a little the extent of
agreement and disagreement with Herder. What is applauded is
1. 'Herder's dismissal of the Enlightenment's conception of human nature as static, acultural and
ahistorical' (Berry, p.32), but nor
*1. Herder's cultural relativism, that 'each culture ... should be treated on its own merits and not
judged by some faulty perspective such as Io bel/e nature' (p.30), or from any other perspective. In
the pluralistic framework of the text (which presuppoes PPP), a good many cross-cultural judgements
ate made and defended.
*2. Herder's relativisation of human nature to culture, and embodiment of it in culture; for example,
'it is through language that human nature can be seen to be .spect/iicaPy embodied in culture' (p.32).
With relativisation the notion loses its original theoretical point; but while failing in this role,
cultural nature is open to many of the same sorts of objections as human nature. Nor can language
bear the weight Herder loads upon it.
*3. Herder's human chauvinism: '... it is speech and with that reason and freedom, that differentiates
man. Man can choose, man is king' (p.36). Wild animals are free, can choose, communicate, solve
puzzles, and carry out elementary reasoning; in these respects they surpass children and many other
humans. Furthermore, *
*3 gets Herder into serious trouble, not to say inconsistency, with 1.
Abraham, drawing on Wittgenstein, presents just these conditions for an essence, p.23ff.
Berry p.17. Berry supplies several other similar examples.
�7
Of course the definition can again be patched, by appealing to the anatomical cluster of
features that separate humans from other mammals or to the biological specification of /tomo
But the resulting normalised definition, with its analytical egoism, does little more
than such biological definitions of An/nan: it does not supply a natnrg, it does not deliver
-ynp^rbiological features of political relevance. The notion of human nature thus fragments: into
the satisfactory enough biological notion of human, and an unsatisfactory superbiological (or
sociobiological) addition: that of human nature or essence. What is this further, problematic
nature? The Romantics can be read as arguing that there is none, no nature as distinct from
culture, only /oca/ nature (Herder's term) which coincides with culture. Peeling off cultural
excretions and variations in order to reach an essence leaves, like Wittgenstein's artichoke,
nothing. Just nothing.
The notion of human nature is a theoretical item, introduced to provide stability amid
cultural variability, a constant bulwark against relativism, but designed as well to justify — as
natural or, failing that as superior — a porr/cn/or type of political economy, state and legislature,
and its imposition everywhere else. 13 But its application is even grander: Human nature is a
theoretical notion which has been used for multifarious nefarious, social and political purposes.
Typically the notion has been deployed in a effort to justify or enforce various restrictive types
of social arrangements, statist ones (including defence forces, standing armies, survellience —
arrangements, and so on). Human nature is a highly resilient notion which has been widely
applied in such fashions; it is not so easily dissolved, certainly not through one illustration.
However the fact that the notion is written large in much political theory, and is received, does
not show that it or the embedding theory is sound. And it is not, but is defective, and in its
socio-political selectivity it is, as the illustration reveals, virtually of a piece with human
chauvinism (which would assign an unduly privileged position to human beings in the
ecological scheme of things).
Most conveniently, the superbiological notion of human nature begins to dissolve under
any attempt to set it down, in mmuch the way that attempts supporting human chauvinism to set
down something ethically special about humans disintegrate.
*^
13
14
The notion of human nature —
Hence the Enlightenment program of imposing enlightened Western culture everywhere, later
emphasised by Bentham. 'The Legislator, Knowing that human nature is ever the same [different
countries do not have different catalogues of pleasure and pain], can reform the laws and even
transplant them from one society to another' (Berry, p.18).
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 the alleged social-arrangement-dictating features of
human nature, like similar alleged features of economic or technological determinism, are rather
major obstacles to be removed — especially insofar as they supposedly severely and inevitably
restrict the character of future societies — than the main business of the present enterprise.
Fortunately then the claim, that the superbiological notion of human nature is a defective theoretical
one which dissolves, is defended elsewhere: not only, in effect, in work of Romantics from Herder
�8
a nature or essence for a// and on/y humans (some special classes of humans excepted perhaps)
— presuppoes that there are some stable or constant social features holding for all peoples,
across different cultures, which are furthermore distinctively human features.
The
presupposition fails, because once cultural variation between peoples is fully taken into account,
only some rather trivial shared characteristics remain, which furthermore are shared by various
animal cultures, such as those of primates.
Consider, first, such products or tools of more literary cultures as books, or of
contemporary cultures as telephones and computers. Since most historical cultures lacked such
items, their possession or distribution obviously cannot figure as part of what marks out human
nature. Consider next, then, what are commonly taken to be key components of (human)
nature, certain basic human needs, such as food and shelter. These requirements are far from
free of cultural and environmental determinants. For look at what is regarded as required in the
way of shelter, and how it varies from culture to culture, place to place. (And even what is
taken as basic can often be met in a myriad of ways, though acceptably in some cultures only in
a few fixed ways.) The common denominator is the rather trivial requirement of some sort of
shelter under more extreme conditions — a requirement also of wombats. The situation with
food, sex, and so on, is hardly better. Dietary requirements vary considerably from race to
race, Europeans for example being very inefficient by many tribal standards and unable to
survive satisfactorily where tribal people flourish. 1$ Again the somewhat trivial lowest
common denominator applies also to various groups of animals. Nor are attempts to mark out
the human nature by some more complex list of jointly necessary and sufficient conditions, or
more loosely by a cluster of natural features, 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 emerge^ impose little constraint at all on a political direction, since a
variety of political arrangements is compatible with such listings.
15
16
on, but also in significant recent literature. Foucault, for example, can be read as saying that human
nature is an invention of the Enlightenment which dissolves: 'his much discussed ... di&MdMhon of
mon 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 profoundly unstable' (Philp, p.15,
italics added).
The converse is seen in the extent to which tribal peoples gain weight on European diets. At another
level, consider the Maori attitude to, and underlying revulsion by, cooked food: see Alpers, p.7-9.
For one such list, which however requires pruning and adjustment, see Wilson, p.22. As it happens,
Wilson 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).
�9
Accordingly, human nature as such is not an important constraint on political theory, or a
theory of human nature a key ingredient in endeavours to work out a political philosophy or
political directions. *7 The reason is like the reason that determining the conditions for the good
life would not impose a satisfactory constraint on a political theory, namely presupposition
failure. Like the meaning of life
*s,
the good life fails to demarcate a single thing; there are
many styles of good lives. So too there is human nature and human nature, depending on the
culture or social paradigm and on the setting. Nature, both human and not, varies with culture
and environment. Because of this two-way dependence, there is no unique stable
superbiological human nature.
A corollary of the dissolution of the notion of human nature is the rejection also, as
misleading, of the usual picture of nature as given, as a stable notion across races and tribes,
with culture as a variable on top. There is no such culturally invariant division: culture affects
local nature. The picture is flawed in much the same way, then, as the familiar picture of
perception, as consisting of given uninterpreted sense data, stable across (normal) perceivers,
with interpretation imposed on the neutral data.
Nor therefore is culture something that can be creamed off the top, so to speak, to find
real human features or basic nature underneath. Certainly, cultures can be destroyed; however
what results from removal by destruction of a culture is not something closer to real people, but
people with a destroyed culture. So it is also with attempts like Hobbes or Rawls to peel
political organisation off the the top, in order to locate in a quasi-analytical or quasi-historical
way, a state of nature underneath or preceding some organised state or other. A flawed picture,
derived from mistaken or questionable presuppositions, is assumed.
What will be found underneath, or in the original (natural) state, is, it is usually
conveniently assumed, a nature that fits the view to be developed — with the right values very
fortunately in-built. Given that what is to be explained or justified is something like present
socio-political arrangements and the privileged position of some status quo — as well as a
dominant culture's image of itself, and elements of the dominant Northern social paradigm —
underlying human nature turns out to be, hardly surprisingly, that of fully competitive
possessive individualism (much the same model, that is, which serves for economic man, for
Enlightenment man, for the "rational person", etc.) The myth of unique human nature
17
18
For more on contemporary "scientific" efforts to deploy a theory of human nature for social and
political ends, see Appendix 2.
Which 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.
On which see Routley and Griffin.
�10
functions, like many other myths, to perpetuate or instil particular social arrangements and
special privilege.
Thus too the myth of human nature is linked to other culture-based myths, the myths of
all (normal) humans as aggressive individuals and as predominantly self-interested maximizers
(at least insofar as they are rational) — to bring in some of the myths bound up with the image
of contemporary urban-industrial humans. As there is no underlying hard ground, no firm
starting point in human nature, so there is none in these associated myths. The South Pacific
was, and remains, rich in cultures which upset these associated myths. Non of the
Melanesians, Polynesians or Australian aboriginal peoples comprised societies of individuallyoriented maximizers; indeed their strongly communal lifestyles and preparedness to stop, work
especially, after a low sufficiency threshold had been reached, was a major and repeated source
of criticism from the European cultures that came to dominate the region.
Even forms and types of aggressiveness, and approaches to war, often taken to be solid
ground, are culture and environment dependent, and vary with both parameters. 19
Aggressiveness is often supposed to impose hugh 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 arranged, for
instance through crowding or provocation or cultural relocation, where peoples of more familiar
cultures will become aggressive^ — and perhaps people of other cultures will not, but will just
give up, as people often do in the face of immense brutality. Certainly some arrangements are
required to cope with or suitably isolate aggression, but these can be of a wide range of
alternative types. Once again, what is normally accounted human nature depends upon and
varies with culture and environment, which people often shortsightedly see as fixed: certainly,
such components as selfishness, cooperativeness, individuality do.
What is often much more important than either culture or nature in determining social
arrangements is another factor: namely, outside control or imposition. Whatever social
arrangements have evolved in a region (through local "nature and culture") can be overridden,
A striking illustration of environmental variation is afforded by the differences between savannah
dwelling and forest dwelling tribes of baboons. For a local illustration, consider Maori approaches to
war (like war conventions, a social phenomenon), before European corruption. Thus Best reports
that 'an individual, or a whole clan, might decline to take part in an engagement on account of some
evil omen, and such an action would be approved of (p.15). There are several, apparently reliable,
stories of Maoris engaged in war supplying the opposition with equipment or ammunition, or
temporarily abandoning their fighting effort to help out the other (British) side, so the battle could
proceed properly.
20Wilson's argument that humans are innately aggressive involves such an invalid move: he looks at the
behaviour of Semai men when 'taken out of their nonviolent society' by recruitment in a British
colonial army (p.100)! As well, Wilson's case rests on a dubious redefinition of innateness, and a
low redefinition of aggressiveness to take in form of mere (nonaggressive) conflict (pp.99-100).
19
�11
and new arrangements imposed, in one way or another. With long-standing arrangements,
imposition is almost invariably from without, and the changes in arrangements typically involve
either violence in their adaption or mass migration of people or both. In the last two hundred
years, especially, the South Pacific has, like much of the newer world, been drastically so
affected, in a complex way. And the changes, still flowing strongly from the North, continue.
We are in the last days of the destruction of old cultures, and the destruction is now to a
considerable extend by more subtle cultural, economic and technological means than the cruder
methods of slightly earlier times. Outside control can be exercised, or occur, in many ways less
blatant than direct intervention of one sort or another, such as through introduction of new
technologies, economic sanctions, monetary and loan policies, etc., as well as through
exchange and training programs, textbooks, advertising and magazines, film and television (i.e.
through physical exemplifications of culture). European peoples in the South pacific are often
unwittingly, part of this quieter process of cultural conversion and erosion; but many of us are
now victimes as well as, or rather than, perpetrators (cf. Crough and Wheelwright).
Human communities have been — and many still are — as insensitive to other human
cultures as they are to the natural environment (witness American and their allies in Vietnam).
Like an ecosystem, a culture can be destroyed, or pushed beyond redemption. This is
sufficiently well-known. Yet the creation of political disaster areas proceeds apace — in blatant
cases typically by disruption of culture and lifestyle using violence^ There is furthermore,
where recovery is possible at all, a long recovery period, perhaps sometimes of the order of
human generations. Yet there is increasing production of these politically contaminated regions,
especially through imperialism, e.g. USA in Central America, Israel in Lebanon, 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 American. American companies, businessmen, academics, tourists
and warships, their technology and patents, films and television programs, are the most evident
and influential. There can be various motives and aims (and assumptions) behind the newer
cultural and economic imperialism, behind endeavours such as the American to install their "free
enterprise" philosophy and practice everywhere. 22 Granted it mostly contributes to American
economic supremacy, to American business23 and to the transfer of substantial regional wealth
and surplus value to the USA. But national economic reasons are not the only sort of reasons
21
22
23
These disaster areas should perhaps be cordoned off like those infected by communicable disease, but
from continuing disruptive, outside interference.
What is said about American cultural and political imperialism applies, with adaption, in a lesser
way, to imperialism and colonialism by other nation-states such as USSR, Britian, France and
Indonesia. USA has no monopoly on imperialism. US imerialism in the third world is in part
documented and analysed in Chomsky and Herman.
Though not invariably as the experience with the Japanese motor industry has indicated.
�12
such policies are pursued; apart from the side-issue of integrity, that many Americans really do
believe in the optimality of their local ideals to the exclusion of other arrangements, there are
deeper and somewhat more respectable ideological reasons as well.
The imperialistic endeavours can be underpinned by a J^cripftve assumption that all
human nature is at bottom really like American human nature, for instance highly economically
oriented. Thus, but for political distortions (a political analogue of economic externalities) and
lack of technological means, other peoples would choose the American (political and economic)
way: they simply have not really been given the opportunity or means. For many peoples this
is simply not true; 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 to be like American nature at its best, because America not only has the best
way of life in the world and mostly the best ways of doing things^, but has a special hold on
rationality. The free-enterprise system (perhaps with representative democracy American-style
tackedon) is the rational enterprise embodied. Certainly the system is sometimes peddled, by
genuine believers in the American way, with the same evangelism as Christianity, which was
often seen and presented as the rational religion, at least before science got at it. Well, science
hasn't got at the free-enterprise religion yet, but on the contrary now has a social division
heavily devoted to its justification and furtherance.^ However some philosophy has got at the
system, sufficiently to reveal that it is no unique embodiment of rationality — there is none such
— but is a decidedly irrational practice in many circumstances. Thus, it is especially irrational if
local goals are to preserve local environments and cultures, as much experience helps attest.
It is aspects of the false descriptive assumption, and what can emerge with its rejection,
that are a main focus in what follows (though various of the reasons for rejecting the
prescriptive assumption will also emerge or get recorded). An important underlying theme will
24
25
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 reginal 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 life and conditions elsewhere, upon siphoning off wealth and especially resources (US
currently uses about one-fifth of world resources and 30% of world energy) from other regions. To be
sure, economic apologetics proffer other explanations of American transcendence, e.g. ingenious
constuctions like that of Olson, built on a sandy logic of economic actors collectively locked into
economically determined arrangements, substantially independent of the resource base.
In elaborating on how modem societies control their citizens, Foucaul has explained various
extensive types of social control exercised and licensed through received social sciences, by way of
approved standards of normality, health, stability, adequacy, rationality, etc.: See Phil p.15.
�13
continue to be that neither broader nor basic human nature is a single stable thing, but varies
substantially in ways that are highly political relevant — relevant to the sort of political
framework a society adopts. In freer societies, less imposed upon from outside or above, the
variation can be largely accounted for through cultural variation (which in tum depends on
environment, etc.). The alternative assumptions, are then, those of cultural pluralism, that
culture is part of "nature", shaping in particular local human nature. Of course once again
"human nature" can be pared back and back to try to remove cultural variations; but in this way
what are taken to be important superbiological features of human nature for political theory are
also excised (e.g. features that make prisoners' dilemmas and commons' tragedies come out
one way rather than another).
Just as different cultures can mean different social arrangements, so in a larger setting
they can imply different political organisation and different political directions. Where requisite
differences do not occur, because incongrous arrangements have been imposed, ca/tMra/
can
a powcr/hZ /brcc ybr change. Likewise developing elements of cultural
difference can be a potent base for social change — or resistance to imposed change —
(especially, in communities where other more orthodox bases for change, such as economic
incentives or penalties, have become inoperative or failed, or are not available.
Culture is however a double-edged instrument, not only to be used, but resisted. For
example, though leading [valuable] features of indigenous Pacific cultures are to be reactivated,
as forces for change, some features of these cultures are to be resisted (such as male
domination), along with many features of modern Western cultures. Features of culture are
thus used to resist and confront undesirable (implanted or imported) sorces of culture; such as,
inequitable political arrangements, excessive consumerism, persuasive advertising media and
loaded news systems, hollow suburbia, alienating job structures, etc. It is important not only to
build and design alternatives — for which elements of local culture afford a solid foundation —
but also to dismantle, and build up resistance against, prime sources of antagonistic culture.
This is as true for American culture as Antipodean. One of the chief reasons why mainstream
American culture is so individualistic, so competitive, so violent, and so forth, is that
movements offering or encouraging alternatives have been repressed by the dominant
corporations and the state apparatus (see especially Goldstein).
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/ssues fa wef/todo/ogy. Many of the prevailing sins of philosophy are writ large in
political philosophy.; Redefinitions, and redefinitional -otolJgies to try to close gappy
arguments, abound. Large assumptions are imported and regularly used, without due notice,
or too often any awareness: particularly pernicious are those of individualism and atomism, and
of thoroughgoing egoism. It hardly needs stressing that such assumptions are environmentally
unfriendly, at best,
w,
—-— —
* /%&1L ^p&enoMienon o/ excessive sfrengt/i. There is a deeply embedded in modern mainstream
intellectual aedvity and strikingly manifest in polidcal theory.
2
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One reason is that much of it is done by poiitical 6,..Is with no adequate grounding in logic or critical
thinking.
�A general feature of contemporary thought, as of much contemporary technology and
practice, is that of over-powering or of excessive strength. The phenomenon, as exhibited in
contemporary mainstream logic, where it shows up in excessive assumptions, and principles
more powerful than reason can justify, is dis^assesed elsewhere (from the perspective of
relevant logic, in RLR). Some of the same unwarranted assumptions, notably those of invariant
consistency and maximization, reach far beyond stock logical theory to apply, so it is regularly
claimed, to all rational practice, including political decision-making and obstitutional
arrangements (see MR).
Analogous features are incorporated in many of the arguments against anarchism. For
example, it is argued that anarchism cannot realise optimal delivery of public goods, ideal
conditions for this or that (e.g. free market functioning, capital formation and flow), and so on.
Not only do other alternatives not measure up to these standards (certainly prevailing
arrangements fall very far short), the standards themselves are quite excessive. Instead it is
enough that certain sorts of adequacy standards are met, that reasonable thresholds are
achieved. There is a most important corollary: that arguments against anarchism or anarchistic
institutional arrangement which assume maximizing principles or the like (as are presumed in
Prisoners Dilemma arguments, game theory, mainstream economics, etc.) are flowed from the
very outset, and should be set aside.
A central time in anarchism offers a somewhat different display of the excess
phenomenon. The issue concerns alleged justifications of the state, or state-like institutions.
Here all that reason and argument appear to warrant are much less powerful institutions, not
arrangements with the excessive powers of the state. To close the gap between what argument
and practice appear to justify and what the state claims, some opportunistic intellectuals have
tried, rather ^".^..^to redefine the state. But such low redefinitions, while imposing states on
societies that operated without them, leaves the contemporary state be^ereft of adequate
justification. In brief, such intellectual strategies lead from the frying pan to the fire.
So it is similarly with institutions within the state, such as property and law. Reason and
argument do not justify state property arrangements, only an opportunistically redefined
"property" which does not fulfil the same state and capitalistic role. Similarly with law and
state legal systems.
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�NQRK4-N&-5RAFT
CULTURE AND THE ROOTS OF POLITICAL DIVERGENCE:
a South Pacific perspective
the Austral ian/American contrast
major
A
Political
change
industrial
of
-Function
in
in
regulate
and
control
and political divergence
principle then,
features of local and regional culture.
the
to
is
the South Pacific,
can,
North,
culture
be grounded in and
change. 1
from
the
powered
by
One organising theme, a corollary of
facilitates the transition from principle to practice:- It
argument,
is
that the requisite elements are present in regional cultures, the potentiality
is
for
there,
South Pacific region (and Australia
the
particular)
in
to
proceed in a very different social and political direction from the North (and
from
USA in particular).
the
American arrangements,
unsatisfactoriness of
the
2
in many frequently exposed respects , such a different
Given the radical
direction is worth taking - if it can be.
serious problem in the nay 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
by geographical isolation,
arrangements
of
socio-political
is supposed to derive from human nature itself.
Free people are
economic people,
into the same type
in pretty much the American mould,
this route, economic imperialism can replace political
1.
Nature,
theory
- one
culture,
to
which
and control.
so it
is
By
claimed.
imperialism.
A supposedly,key question in political
we are said to have no satisfactory'' answer
in
the
absence of a worthwhile theory of human nature (or human natures) - is .his:
1.
Thus Abraham p.29ff.; Awa p.30.
2.
For a recent trenchant expose, see Cohen and Rogers.
1
*
7%-
�To
extent does human nature allow tor alternative political and
what
arrangements? Or, to turn the question around:-
in
virtue
of
the
nature
of
possibilities?
How does that
much-promoted
Anglo-American
Enlightenment,
is
controls,
become)
from
or
superstition,
answer,
people
broad
range
directly
taboos and
(and
6
from
descended
are essentially
but for their
will
the
tribal
generally
shortage
information
of
free people are basically economic
people.
that is to replace one ideology by another.
ideology is no longer so
Enlightenment
political
of
(properly) concerned with maximising their
that is,
interests;
As ought now to be evident,
the
the
that once freed from systems of myths,
technical know-how),
(including
on
What restrictions are imposed
"nature" reduce the organisational options?
self-centred individuals,
gain
own
humans
social
evident:
what
But
recommends
it?
Under pressure of this sort, the Anglo-American answer gets transformed to the
that the economic picture of human nature is superior,
theme
rational
creatures.
and fitting
That 'self-appointed West European superiority
*
turn been disputed, since the time of Herder and the Romantics.
has
of
in
Fortunately,
however, the extensive ensuing dialectic can be substantially avoided
For all
these questions and answers presuppose, to begin
with, a certain
misplaced essential ism, that there is such an invariant nature common to human
beings,
which
such
exactly
separates humans from other
creatures.
suitably constant and invariant
5
necessary and sufficient conditions , are legion. They are
specify
an
essence,
Attempts
and
given
to
by
a frequent feature of Enlightenment thought. All men are the same
because of universal drives [such as to pleasure and the avoidance of
pain). These drives will operate independently of any location.
Chief among those drives was that towards self-preservation - Holbach,
for instance, stipulates:
we .shall
call
nature in man the collection of properties and
qualities which constitute him what he is, which are inherent
.o
his species, which distinguish him from other animal
species ur
which he has in common with them ... every man feels,
thinks,
3.
These people are also picked out under various alternative (but
strictly equivalent)
descriptions, e.g. as acquisitive m i?i ua s,
possessive individuals.
�acts and seeks his own well-being at all times,
these are^
kilties and property thet constitute human nature ... o.
But th,, attempt at essenti.list defin.ti.n of human nature fail,,
in a quite
A, -t stands, th. d.dtniti.n is inadequate; tor net a!)
*c
yo<
/
humans seek just their o<an ujeii-being always; .ssome ar. altruistic, s<xne have
characterrst-c ^y.
other commitment,.
to
ego-sm,
by
replacing
rendering such internal
examples
suppose
Hoover,
uell-being-
egoism analytic.
(such a, human vegetables,
definition,
replacing
every
definition 1, again inadequate;
example,
avoid such tamtl.ar counter.ostance,
by
say
broad
m.ll-being',
And suppose to avoid other counter
morons and th. like),
man' by
thus
every normal human'.
^normalise
the
then
the
But
tor it fails to distinguish humans from, for
It applies equally to dolphin nature or, for that matter,
dolphins.
to aori11 a nature.
Of
4.
course
the
definition can again be patched,
by
appealing
to
the
(From previous page)
See Berry, p.30ff., from whom the quote is taken,
It
is worth spelling out a little the extent of agreement and
disagreement with Herder. Nhat is applauded is
1.
'Herder's dismissal
dismissal of
of the
the Enlightenment's
Enlightenment's conception
conception of human nature
as static, acultural and ahistorical' (Berry, p.32), but no^
that 'each culture
... should be
31.
Herder's cultural relativism,
t judged by some faulty perspective such
treated on its own merits and no! .
"nature' (p.30), or from any other perspective.
In the
as
la belle
p.u,77^^k
of th. text ("huh presupposes PPP),
a good many
pluralistic cross-cultural judgements are made and defended.
Order's relativisation of human nature to culture,
and embodiment
32.
Herder s relafivisatio
through language that human nature
of it in culture; for example,
it is
Mi th
* 32).
(p
can be seen to be specifically embodied in culture'
but
theoretical
point;
relativisation the notion loses its original
same
cultural nature is open to many of the
ojhile failing in this role,
Nor can language bear the weight
sorts of objections as human nature.
Herder loads upon it.
A
it is speech and with that reason
Herder's human chauvinism:
33.
Man can choose, man
is king'
that differentiates man.
and freedom,
can choose, communicate, solve puzzles,
<
<=Hrn^^s
(p.36).
1Wild animals are free, ---- -----) out elementary reasoning;
m these ^^=-7
;
and carryand many other humans. Furthermore, 33 gets Herder into serious
chi 1dren
trouble, not to say inconsistency, with 1.
5.
6.
drying on Nittg.nste.n,
Abraham,
essence, p.23ff.
Berry p.17.
Berry supplies severa
pre^nt, Just these condition, for an
1 other similar examples.
�cluster of -features that separate humans from other mammals or
anatomical
the
biological specification of homo sapiens.
But the resulting
to
normalised
definition,
with its analytical egoism, does little more than such biological
definitions
of
human:
it does not supply a nature,
deliver
not
does
it
The notion of human
superbiological
features of political relevance.
thus fragments:
into the satisfactory enough biological notion of human,
an
unsatisfactory
superbiological (or sociobiological)
and
of
that
addition^
The Romantics
What is this further, problematic, nature?
nature or essence.
nature
can be read as arguing that there is none, no nature as distinct from culture,
cultural
off
Peeling
only local nature (Herder's term) which coincides with culture.
excretions and variations in order to reach an essence leaves,
liKe
Wittgenstein's artichoke, nothing.
of human nature is a theoretical item,
The notion
cultural variability,
amid
stabi1i ty
but designed as wel 1
particular
type
everywhere
else.
of
7
fashionj;
fact
and
that
received,
not,
the
introduced to
a constant bulwark against
to justify ^as natural or, failing that,
political
economy and legislature, and
provide
relativism,
as superior^
its
imposi t i on
such
Tlsf?s resilient notion has been widely applied in
i
is not so easily dissolved,
notion
by one illustration.
is wri tten large in much
political
but is defective,
3
However the
theory,
the embedding theory is sound.
does not show that it or
a
and
is
Hnd it is
and in its socio-political selectivity it is,
as the
a piece with human chauvinism (which would
assign an unduly privileged position to human beings in the ecological
scheme
of things).
under
7.
. the superbiological notion of human nature begins to dissol\
*
A
any attempt to set it down,
in much the way that attempts supporting
Hence the Enlightenment program of imposing enlightened Western cultur^
everywhere,
later emphasised by Bentham. 'The Legislator, lowing t
human nature is ever the same [different countries do not have
catalogues of pleasure and pain], can reform the laws and even transplan
them from one society to another' (Berry, p.18).
namrg. This is a theoretical notion which has been used for multifarious
reforious, social and political purposes. Typically the notion has been deployed in a effort toy
i
.7"& $ 11T
A
enforce various restrictive types of social arrangements, archie ones (including defence foc^s,
�to
chauvinism
human
humans
that
there
ethically
something
about
special
humans
The notion of human nature - a nature or essence for alj_
disintegrate.
only
down
set
(some special classes of humans excepted perhaps)
are
stable or constant social
some
- presupposes
holding
features
and
for
all
across different cultures, which are furthermore distinctively human
peoples,
features.
peoples
The
is
presupposition fails,
fully
characteristics
taken
remain,
because once cultural variation between
into account,
which
some
only
furthermore
are
rather
shared
by
trivial
shared
various
animal
cultures, such as those of primates.
Consider,
books,
or
historical
first,
such
products or tools of more literary cultures as
of contemporary cultures as telephones and computers.
cultures
lacked
such items,
their
possession
or
Since
most
distribution
obviously cannot figure as part of what marks out human nature. Consider next,
what are commonly taken to be key components of (human) nature, certain
then,
basic human needs,
such as food and shelter.
free of cultural and environmental
as required in the way of shelter,
place to place.
of
ways,
common
under
8.
These requirements are far from
determinants.
For look at what is regarded
and how it varies from culture to culture,
(And even what is taken as basic can often be met in a myriad
though acceptably in some cultures only in a few fixed
ways.)
denominator is the rather trivial requirement of some sort of
more extreme conditions - a requirement also of wombats.
The
shelter
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 ex -or
the alleged social-arrangement-dictating features of human nature,
like
similar alleged features of economic or technological
determinism, are
rather major obstacles to be removed - especially insofar as they
supposedly severely and inevitably restrict the character of
u ure
societies - than the main business of the present enterprise.
Fortunately then the claim,
that the superbiological notion of human
nature is a defective theoretical one which dissolves,
is defende
elsewhere: not only, in effect, in work 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 which
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 an
profoundly unstable" (Philp, p.15, italics added).
5
�with
1-ood,
sex,
and
so on,
considerably from race to race,
by
many
people
is hardly better.
vary
Europeans for example being very inefficient
tribal standards and unable to survive satisfactorily where tribal
9
flourish.
figain the somewhat
trivial
lowest common denominator
applies also to various groups of animals.
human
requirements
Dietary
by some more complex list of jointly necessary
nature
conditions,
Nor are attempts to mark out
more
or
loosely
by a cluster of natural
and
features,
the
sufficient
more
much
successful, or of direct political application without the importation of what
is culturally at issue - values.
In any case, such vague and general
impose little constraint at all on apolitical
emerge
direction,
lists as
since
a
variety of political arrangements is compatible with such listings.
Accordingly,
political
theory,
human
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
to
.
The reason is
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
The
converse is seen in the extent to which tribal peoples gain weight
on European diets. At another level, consider the Maori 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, Wilson 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.a.
p. 39) .
For more on contemporary "scientific" efforts to deploy a theory of human
nature for social and political ends, see Appendix 2.
11.
Which 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.
�and human nature,
nature
depending on the culture or social paradigm and
on
Nature, both human and not, varies with culture and environment.
the setting.
there is no unique stable superbiological
Because of this two-way dependence,
human nature.
of
corollary
6
rejection also,
across races and tribes,
The picture is flawed in much the same way,
the
on
top.
culture affects local nature.
as the familiar picture of
then,
consisting of given uninterpreted sense data,
as
is
with culture as a variable
There is no such culturally invariant division:
perception,
nature
of the usual picture of nature as given, as a
as misleading,
notion
stable
the dissolution of the notion of human
stable
across
(normal) perceivers, with 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.
cultures can be destroyed; however what results from removal by destruction of
a culture is not something closer to real people,
culture.
So
organisation
but people with a destroyed
it is also with attempts like Hobbes or Rawls to peel
off
in order to locate in a
the the top,
political
quasi-analytical
or
quasi-historical way, a state of nature underneath or preceding some organised
state
or
other.
A
flawed picture,
derived from mistaken
or
questionable
presuppositions, is assumed.
Nhat will be found underneath, or in the original
(natural) state, is, it
is usually conveniently assumed, a nature that fits the view to be developed
with the
explained
the
and
culture's
right values very fortunately in-built.
is
privileged
image
position of some
of itself,
and
status quo -
elements of the
as well
dominant
as
a
Northern
be
serves
for
economic man,
7
dominant
social
hardly surprisingly, that
fully competitive possessive individualism (much the same model,
which
to
or justified is something like present socio-political arrangements
paradigm - underlying human nature turns out to be,
of
Given that what
for Enlightenment man,
for
the
that is,
rational
�myths,
The myth of unique human nature functions,
etc.)
person",
perpetuate
to
other
tike many
or instit particular social arrangements
special
and
pr ivi1ege.
Thus too the myth of human nature is linked to other culture-based myths,
myths
the
predominantly
rational)
all
of
humans
(normal)
self-interested
- to
bring
maximizers
no firm starting point in human nature,
myths.
aggressive
(at
least
some of the myths bound
in
urban-industrial humans.
contemporary
as
individuals
as
they
are
Mi th
the
image
of
up
As there is no underlying hard ground,
associated
so there is none in these
The South Pacific Mas, and remains, rich in cultures Mhich upset these
of
the
Melanesians,
Polynesians
None
aboriginal
peoples
comprised societies of individually-oriented
after
especially,
lifestyles and
strongly communal
their
to
a loM sufficiency threshold had been reached,
source of criticism from the
repeated
preparedness
European cultures
Australian
or
myths.
and
as
insofar
associated
indeed
and
maximizers;
Mork
stop,
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.
for
13.
The most that appears
instance
clear is that circumstances can be
through croMding or provocation or cultural
arranged,
relocation,
Mhere
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
properly.
8
�14
of
peoples
cultures will become aggressive
familiar
more
but Mill just give up,
people of other cultures Mill not,
in the face of immense brutality.
types.
depends
upbn
Once
shortsightedly
again,
as fixed:
see
as people often do
but these can be of a Mide range of
Mhat is normally
accounted
varies Mi th culture and environment,
and
perhaps
Certainly some arrangements are required to
cope Mi th or suitably isolate aggression,
alternative
- and
certainly,
such
nature
people
Mhich
components
human
as
often
selfishness,
cooperativeness, individuality do.
What
much more important than either culture or nature
is
determining social arrangements is another factor:
social
Whatever
imposition.
one
May or another.
from
invariably
namely, outside control or
arrangements have evolved in a
local^nature and cultureican be overridden,
through
region
and neM arrangements imposed,
With long-standing arrangements,
Mithout,
imposition
is
and the changes in arrangements typically
the South Pacific has,
especially,
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. And the changes,
neMer world,
still flowing strongly from the North, continue.
We
are
in the last days of the destruction of
old
and
cultures,
destruction is now to a considerable extent by more subtle cultural,
and
technological
Outside
direct
control can be exercised,
economic sanctions,
film
and
television (i.e.
economic
earlier
times.
in many ways less blatant
such as through introduction
monetary and loan policies,
as through exchange and training programs,
magazines,
14.
or occur,
intervention of one sort or another,
new technologies,
well
means than the cruder methods of slightly
textbooks,
through physical
the
etc.,
advertising
than
of
as
and
exemplifications of
Wilson's argument that humans are innately aggressive involves such an
invalid move: he looks at the behaviour of Semai men when taken out of
their nonviolent society'' by recruitment in a British colonial
army
(p.100)!
As well, Wilson's case rests on a dubious redefinition of
innateness, and a low redefinition of aggressiveness to take in forms of
mere (nonaggressive) conflict (pp.99-100).
9
�process of cultural conversion and erosion;
this quieter
are
unwittingly, part
European peoples in the South Pacific are often
culture).
or 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
to
insensiti
other human cultures as they are to the natural environment (witness Americans
Like an ecosystem, a culture can be destroyed,
and their allies in Vietnam).
pushed
creation
political
of
typically
This is
beyond redemption.
disaster
sufficiently
apace
areas proceeds
where
is possible at all,
recovery
a
sometimes of the order of human generations.
production
of
imperial ism,
- in
these politically
e.g.
USA
in
contaminated
Central America,
long
blatant
cases
There
recovery
is
period,
Yet there is increasing
regions,
Israel
the
Yet
disruption of cultu-e and lifestyle using violence.
by
-fur thermore,
perhaps
well-known.
in
especially
Lebanon,
through
Russia
in
Afghanistan, Indonesia in East Timor and West Papua, etc.
In the South Pacific, there are
but
the
strongest now is unquestionably the
businessmen,
films
can
many quieter Northern influences at work,
academics,
American.
American
companies,
tourists and warships, their technology and patents,
are the most evident and influential.
and television programs,
be various motives and aims (and assumptions) behind the
newer
There
cultural
behind endeavours such as the American
16
Granted it
everywhere
.
their "free enterprise
*
philosophy and practice
17
to American business
and
mostly contributes to American economic supremacy,
and
economic imperialism,
These disaster areas should perhaps be cordoned off li.e
by communicable disease,
but from continuing disruptive,
infec ted
outside
in ter-ference.
What is said about American cultural and political imperialism applies,
with adaption,
in a lesser way,
to imperialism and colonialism by other
nation-states such as USSR, Britain, France and Indonesia.. USA
L.. has no
in
the
third
world
is in part
monopoly on imperialism. US imperialism i......... documented and analysed in Chomsky and Herman.
Though
not md.riaMy a. th. experience "ith the Japanese ctor industry
has indicated.
10
�to
the transfer of substantia! regional wealth and surplus value to the
But
national economic reasons &re not the only sort of reasons such
are
pursued;
apart
from the side-issue of integrity,
really do believe in the optimality of their local
USA.
policies
Americans
that many
ideals to the exclusion
of
other arrangements, there are deeper and somewhat more respectable ideological
reasons as Mel 1.
imperialistic
The
assumption
that
(a
distortions
technological
economic)
means.
can
be
underpinned
all human nature is at bottom really
instance highly economically oriented.
for
nature,
endeavours
political
means,
May:
they
by
American
like
Thus,
descr i pt ive
a
human
but for political
analogue of economic externalities)
and
lack
other peoples Mould choose the American (political
simply have not really been given the
For many peoples this is simply not true;
of
and
opportunity
or
for most other cultures let
us hope, or pray, that this is not the case. Alternatively, or as Mell, a more
arrogant
prescriptive assumption may be at Mork,
that all human nature ought
to be like American nature at its
best, because America not only has the best
18
May of life in the Morld and mostly the best Mays of doing things
, but has
a
special
hold
on rationality.
The free-enterprise
representative democracy American-style tacked on)
18.
system
(perhaps
is the rational
Mith
enterprise
Thus, for example, American agricultural textbooks and agricultural
spokespeople are fond of announcing that American agriculture is the best
in the Morld;
similarly for environmental
protection,
forestry,
technology, university education, and so on.
But since they are the
best,
it is evident that these American Mays 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 Mays may interfere Mith 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 loMer standard of
life and conditions elseMhere, upon siphoning off Meal th and especially
resources (US currently uses about one-fifth of Morld resources and 30 X
of Morld energy) from other regions.
To be sure, economic apologetics
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.
�by genuine believers in
bridled
Certainly the system is sometimes peddl
,
embodied.
which Mas often
with the same evangelism as Christianity,
American way,
the
at least before science got at
rational
religion,
as the
seen and presented
yet, but on the
got at the free-enterprise religion
hasn't
i t. MeH, science
justification and
division heavily devoted to its
contrary now has a social
sufficiently to
19
philosophy has got at the system,
furtherance.
However some
_
tp,t it is no unique embodiment of rationality - there -s none sue
reveal
decidedly irrational practice in many circumstances.
is
but
a
preserve local
environments
end
if local goals are to
irrational
especial ly
Thus,
cultures, as much experience helps attest.
is aspects of
tt
with
false descriptive
and what can
assumption,
.what follows (though various of
are a main focus in
rejection,that
th. prescripts, assumption Mill .'so -.rg. °r 9^
its
the reasons for rejecting
underlying theme Mil! continue to be
An
recorded).
nor
broader
emerge
basic
human
.
nature
is
a
single
in
substantially
sort of political framework a society adopts. In
outside
cultural
nei ther
important
ways that are highly political
upon *from
that
or above, the variation can be
variation
<Mhich
turn
in
depends
stable
thing,
varies
but
the
to
relevant - relevant
freer societies, less imposed
largely accounted for through
The
environment,etc).
on
those of cuitura! pluralism, that culture
alternative
assumptions,
are then,
..cal human nature. Of course once
is part of "nature",
"human nature"
again
^nations-,
but
shaping in particular
can be pared back and back to try to
m this way what are taken to be
remove
important
superbi ologi c a
*
matures of human nature for political theory are also excised (e.g
that
make prisoners' dilemmas and commons' tragedies
cu1tura'
feature
one way
rathe
than another).
1?.
in
elaborating on h.M
has
explained
^"soc'ial"control
various extensile typ
p. 15.
12
exercised
py^.y of approved
�Just as dttterent cultures can.mean different social arrangements,
so tn
, larger setting they can imply different political organisation and different
directions.
political
incongrous
Where
requisite differences
had.
arrangements
been imposed,
do
not
occur,
because
cultural differences can
b.^.
nnuerful force for change. Lihemse d^.loping elements of cultural difference
can
a potent base for social change - or resistance to imposed
be
in communities inhere other more orthodox
(especially)
a, economic mcertioes or penalties,
have
bases for change,
become inoperative or
-
change
such
tailed,
or
used,
but
are not avaitable.
Culture is hotter a double-edged instrument,
For
resisted.
though
example,
leading
not only to be
of
[valuable] features
indigenous
Pacific cultures are to be reactivated, as forces for change, some features of
these cultures are to be resisted (such as male domination),
features
modern Western cultures.
of
along mth
used
Features of culture are thus
and confront undesirable (implanted or imported) sources
resist
many
to
culture;
of
such as, inequitable political arrangements, excessive consumerism, persuasive
advertising
media and loaded news systems,
structures,
etc.
for
culture.
chief
build
and
competi tive
encouraging
culture afford a solid foundation - but also
prime sources of
up resistance against,
is as true for American culture as Antipodean.
This
reasons
alienating
^hy
so
job
build and design alternatives
It is important not only to
which elements of local
dismantle,
holloa suburbia,
mainstream American culture
violent,
and
so
forth,
is
is
that
so
to
antagonistic
One
of
the
ndividualistlc,
so
offering
or
movements
alternatives have been repressed by the dominant corporations and
the state apparatus (see especially Goldstein).
2.
The
Why work with such an unfavourable contrast case as Australian—^iety^
regional and environmental orientation.
cultural variation and their force for change,
contrast
than
US
In defence of theme.
for instance Melanesian culture.
13
g
it Mould no doubt be easier to
culture with some other culture which diverges
Australian culture,
<_on-_
more
Or,
strikingly
differe
y,
�ELEMENTS OF POLITICAL PLURALLISM
*
Let us begin by sketching, in summary form, what political pluralism was, and then
explaining what it becomes under contemporary plurallism, ecopluralism in particular. These
new pluralisms, while they differ markedly from former political pluralsm, undoubtedly can
build upon it
Political pluralism used to be a theory viewing social life in terms of groups, which were
said to be the priwMry .s*oc/o/
On this theory, an individual's primary allegiance is not to
any abstract government but to groups, unions, clubs, churches. Thus there is no absolute
necessity for a highly unified political or legal order - whence developed a critical stance
towards the state and towards sovereignty among somg pluralists and so elements of anarchistic
pluralism.
There was, however, no systematic theory of political pluralism (a further anarchistic
feature). The position (and both British and American pluralism, however different) were
unified not by any doctrine but by crinco/ response to growth of the state.
A major theme was, and remains, moderate
(as further explained in EP). Humans
are neither isolated atoms, nor components of centralised states, but social creatures who
function in crisscrossing groups of their own choice. Moreover, groups are genuine objects
with choices, capacities, purposes, etc.
Pluralist society respects and tries to reconcile diverse interests of humans without
thwarting them. Groups communicate via negotiation and the like; their operations are not
delegative from some higher authority.
Contemporary ecological pluralism takes over most of these scene setting features, but
emphasizes the communitarian bases, and expands the scope of communities and groups to
include
communities, which include creatures and systems other than humans. Perhaps
the best known example of such a mixed community is that, introduced by Naess and
elaborated by Devall (in 89) of a Norwegian community of bears and wolves, sheep and
humans (but earlier Leopold and other had offered examples of expanded communities). A
problem which group theory hides, perhaps deliberately, but which such communities at once
expose, is that of internal conflict. Conflict cannot be avoided even by going right down to
families or individuals; for as much conflict may be bottled up in a family or even in one
*
Early versions of the first section of these notes drew heavily on Vincent, TAeonej of
ytote. The text takes up the working draft of 'Philosophy, politics and pluralism: II.
Anarchistic pluralism'.
�2
individual as in a small group. That is, there are no pure conflict-free atoms from which to
build up group or community structure.
Conflict within individuals is strikingly exhibited in certain sorts of schizopherenia. But
it happens also in many humans. On conflict issues, in dilemmatic situations, and similar, one
part of a person pulls in one direction, another part in another. Or, more accurately, because
often no such neat separation into directional components can be affected, there are inconsistent
allegiances, derives, drives. Under orthodox theory, it is presumed that such conflicts,
personal inconsistency, can be removed by artificial fragmentation. What happens in orthodox
social theory is that individuals are effectively broken down and whittled down, not without
significant.... . into iJca/ components — classical individuals — with properly organised
(duly transitive, etc.) preferences and coherent desires. While such idealization is alright for
limited theoretical purposes, let us not falsey imagine that it is adequate for a satisfactory social
theory. Let us not pretend that such thin classical individuals offer a saatisfactory model for
rich actual individuals.
Ecopluralism not only extends the group basis; like gontc contemporary pluralism, the
variety of positions and practices is also much expanded. Early political pluralism (so-called)
was far from advocating a plural variety. (Figgin, an early British pluralist, would have been
shocked at such a supposition: Vincent p.182.) A fairly narrow normative consensus was
assumed, e.g. Christian morality in British "pluralism", American political arrangements in
American "pluralism". Indeed several American "pluralists", political scientists from Bentley
on, erroneously "saw pluralism as a description of the American political system. In this usage,
pluralism moves into the area of interest group and pressure group theory' (Vincent p.183).
Herein lies the route to
p/ura/hwn: While the state may remain discredited as a unitary
order, it is now seen a complex multiple entity, which tried to incorporate and theorize diversity
of group life. In the American version, groups are seen as interested in reaching some kind of
bargain. Government policy is the outcome of group pressures. Government is alleged to seek
out some abstract national interest.
Public police is ...' the equilibrium reached in this struggle at any given
moment' .... Today's loser, it is blithely assumed, will be tomorrow's
winner.
Most American pluralists of this ilk assume that the contest between
groups will be fair and that there is some kind of lurking normative
consensus in the background. Certain types of behaviour are
presumably un-American. Practical politics, therefore, for the American
pluralist is about bargaining, compromise and trade-offs. There is no
normative appraisal of the State, but rather an gjtp/anation anJ partial/y %
yn^ti/icarion o/ wAat t/tgy ta%g to
actaa//y tAg ca^g in tAg qo/irica/
qrocc.y^g.y of the USA. Government is not an impartial umpire. It
reflects the dominant coalition on a particular policy — although it will
try to maintain some balance. ... In American pluralism a group is
simply a collection or aggregation of individuals acting in specific roles.
�3
Most significantly the American pluralists were not concerned with any
normative account of the State as an institution or practice. They were
far more interested in examing, empirically, the effects of group
pressures on the actual activity of government (Vincent p.190 emphasis
added).
In even more degenerate Eastern European forms, pluralism comes down to some sort of
multi-party electoral arrangements;
plurality just amounts to many parties. Political
arrangements can however remain highly paternalistic and authoritarian. Because we are
interested in genuine free pluralisms, we shall leave these desperate terms behind.
EXTRA SPACE
Now consider the organisational possibilities for the Earth, i The Earth divides variously
into (geographical) regions; under ecological organisation the decomposition will be into
ecoregions. Those regions that are occupied will be occupied by structures of (mixed)
communities. The assumption that each occupied region is occupied by a single community is
too simple to account even for the present impoverished arrangements offering on Earth. Some
regions are occupied by communities of communities,
community structure so to
say.2 It seems unlikely that on Earth, given a suitable choice of regions, it is necessary to
ascend beyond communities of communities to third-order community structures. Thus for
each region it is appropriate to begin with the ancient ideal of a community of communities.
But of course there will be higher-order structure involved, such as regional federations of
regions, and federations of these federations, and so on and up. Call this organisational
structure, the Earth frame. This frame is not of course unique; there are many other ways, of
varying levels of adequacy, of unscrambling an organisational grid.
1
Off the Earth, in free logical space, case arrangements are wry much greater. Not only
can many terrestrial limitations be transcended, for instance with wiser creatures than
humans, and many fairer regions, but the interaction of regions can be avoided, so that,
for example, an intense dense industrial society need not transmit its pollution outside
its own borders, indeed in the right circumstances it need not be polluting at all. A
beginning is made in investigating this richer structure by Nozick, but even his useful
beginnings leave much to be desired, as brought out in UT.
2
Whether communities of communities amount just to communities will depend upon
the final characterisation of community, or what sort of members they can have and
the extent and character of the interrelations of their members. If communities were
mere set-like objects, it would be a matter of the transitivity of membership; but
obviously communities are more than mere sets, internal relations counting for much.
�4
The frame selected is in fact intimately tied to real mundane arrangements. For the short
time that they survived state interference, the Spanish anarchistic communities coexisted and
coevolved in genuine pluralistic fashion (as Dolgoffs sympathetic description has revealed).
That is by no means the only occasion on which the old ideal of a community of communities
(communitas communitatorum) has achieved partial realisation, but is one of the better known
recent examples involving anarchistic communities in a limited geographic region - at a time in
world history when state domination of social life continues to break up communities and
impose a grey uniformity across former community diversity. But the concern here is not with
what is, with present depressing (but temporary) political realities, but with how things might
well be, with different and - no difficult feat - superior political arrangements, in particular
pluralist arrangements.
A recent picture of pluralistic political arrangements by Nozick supposedly allows for
virtually anarchistic communities within an overarching minarchic framework. It would seem a
simple matter to vary this picture, in particular, to weaken or strengthen the overarching
framework; and that indeed the system of Spanish communities (which of course did not
persist) weakened the minimum state arrangements in true anarchistic fashion to zero. Nozick
has however a complex (and also seriously flawed) argument that variations are without
justification, that political possibilities which can be justified are omc/t tighter than the wide
range of the logical possibilities would suggest.
A crucial early question once an Earth frame is untangled is, for each structural level:
what are the broad organising principles? Consider a more important case, the regional level.
Will the same broad principles reappear for each region? Only in a very tenuous fashion, if
such desiderata as regional diversity are to be given appropriate play. Naturally these had better
be included some procedure or other for conflict resolution where conflict is severe, but there is
a wide variety of procedures of very varying merit; some procedures or other for the numerous
issues that have to be dealt with to keep communities functioning, such as to take a sample of
issues, burying the dead, taking care of the indigent.
*
A crucial question, for each structural level,is: what are the broad organisational
principles? One working idea is that in the sort of organisational framework sought will enable
a mix of desiderata to be pushed over some far out natural thresholds. The comy desiderata
include liberal and environmental objectives, such as those of freedom, liberation. Life, liberty,
pursuit of happiness, etc.
3
Levels of organisation, by geographical region (functional with a that), local, small
ecoregion, large ecoregion, ... (old large state), continent - federations, world federation.
�Direction of world reorganisation: to a plurality of possibilities, with different possibilities
in different regions. Cities for those who like them in the substantially ecologically destroyed
urban land recipes of the North. Etc.
Diversity is a prime desideratum. We should rgjoicc in Jhw-yity where it recurs, and
encourage ir where it does not, subject as always to certain constraints. In particular, then,
attempt to impose fashionable ideologies everywhere should be strongly resisted; this includes
religious faith and other gospels such as those of market capitalism and state socialism. Such
drives to unity and conformity, and intellectual monoculture, should be derailed. Evidently in
an interlinked system such as the Earth form, federal organisation should include arrangements
to block imposition of ideologies by expansive neighbours on other regions. (Included herein
are states; here is yet another reason for the abolition of states.)
Not to be encouraged, but opposed, are mc.MMnic ging/c-way movements, such as
messianic catholism, messianic communism, and messianic capitalism. These come with a
amvcrya/Mtic perspectic, and a single, allegedly universal set of values: they do not, unless
severely cut down in size, fit into a generous plurallism. Needless to say, these universalistic
(one-tuming) movements cannot rationally justify their practices. It can no more be established
that there is only one god with such and such properties (e.g. those ascribed to Allah under
Islam) than it can be established that there is only one logic; indeed the justificatory situation is
considerably worse (imagine the faithful chanting each day, facing one Cambridge or other,
"There is no logic but classical logic ..."; of course most Anglo-American philosophers are
committed to something like this in their philosophical practice, but they rarely recognise the
character of the commitment).
Note: Many of the economic objectives presented as absolute, are not merely dubious. They
are not intrinsic values, but merely instrumental, and instrumental to goals that a community
may not have. Leading examples of such objectives are efficiency, production.
Out of the same stable as broad monoculturalism, with its uniform urban systems,
universities, etc., is the method of consensus (or
one opinion, as it might as well
have been called). Consensus — unless severely limited, as for instance to argument on a
pluralistic structure — is anti-pluralistic. Nonetheless there can be consensus of a sort at one
remove, metaconsensus on one story, "agreement" to differ.
Limited agreement does however have its virtues in conflict resolution.
* To be sure, cases where have to resolve what is to be done, how to act. Many ways to go:
single uniform recipe approach too absolutist. On the other hand, it is not entirely situational.
Set of recognised decent procedures.
�6
The problematicness of conflict, and need for its removal, is much exaggerated. The
drive for conflict-free conditions is like, and linked to, the drive for consistency. But conflict is
not always undesirable, but often advantageous (and perhaps, as Heracleitus claimed,
necessary). Often conflict should just be allowed to stand; it does not require resolution.
Political and social arrangements should allow for it and be able to absorb it. Where removal is
required, it is often by achieved by distancing, regionalisations etc.
APPENDICES
1. On Walzer's p/ara/Mm there is a plurality of distributive systems. From Plato onwards it is
suggested that only one distributive arrangement that can be justified, (p.5). Walzer suggests
the Rawlsian picture of reeled strand choosers provides
modern arrangements. But
'Justice is a human construction, and it is doubtful that it can be made in only one way' (p.5).
Thus there is a plurality also of distributive justice. While the argument is plausible, its
construction prescription is not. Walzers' 7%Mt'.? (p.6) is: 'the principles of justice are
themselves pluralistic in form [whatever that means); that different social goods ought to be
distributed for different reasons, in accordance with different procedures, by different agents;
and that all these differences derive from different understandings of the social goods
themselves — the inevitable product of historical and cultural particularism'.
There is also a theory of goods, and f/teir distribution. In the usual form, people
distribute goods to people. The basic relation is a proc^Jarg. In fact there are many
procedures: given, allocating, exchanging, selling, etc. Walzer wants to claim: People
conceived create goods, which they then distribute among themselves. This is really a
Concatenation of two procedures. His iJea is to split goods into quaser sphere, and to have
different dibtributive criteria for different spheres. This is said to be complex e^aa/ity (p. 18)!
According to Walzer, there are sp/tereg/ or regions of competition, etc. For example, in
Pascal: strength, beauty, intelligence, devoteness;
but it could be: rugby, soccer, rules, horse racing, mountain climbing, etc.
However there are divisions, barriers between these — but they compete for key items e.g.
money, fields, etc. [so population growth is a total menance for a easily pluralistic society.)
1] 'Personal qualities and social goods have their own spheres of operation, where they work
their effects freely, spontaneously legitimately' (p.19) wAat does this seem: work? by
legitimally? etc.
2] Disregard of those sepaate spheres is tyranny; Attempting to convert one good in one place
to another in another is ruled out.
Meaning of "complex equality" (nothing much of equality about it): 'no citizens' standing in
one sphere or with regard to one social good can be undercut by his standing in some other
�sphere, with regard to one other good' (p.19). Thus political advantage does not confer
advantage in other spheres, e.g. health care, advoting, etc.
W 'open-ended distributive principle' (p.20): 'no social good x should be distributed to nea
.... who possess some other good y merely because they possess y and without regard to the
meaning of x'.
�*^-V
^T)/ ^/'
y-a-y^,
C-V
?^^-<-
,
ece/."*
y4^^y
Z—r
'^/?^'
A// g)Z
y
ELEMENTS OF POLITICAL PLURALLISM^
Political pluralism was a theory viewing social life in terms of groups, which were
said to be the primary social objects. Further an individual's primary allegiance is not to
any abstract government but to groups, unions, clubs, churches. Thus there is no absolute
necessity for a highly unified political or legal order - whence developed a critical stance
towards the state and towards sovereignty among yomg pluralist^and so elements of
anarchistic pluralism.
There was, however, no systematic theory of political pluralism (a further anarchistic
feature.) The position (and both British and American pluralism, however different) were
unified not by any doctrine but by crit/ca/ response to growth of the state.
A major theme wa^aadd^a^ay&M^ one (as/in EP)t humans are neither isolated atoms,
nor components of centralised states, but social creatures who^werkedin crisscrossing
groups of their own choice. Moreover, groups are genuine objects with choices, capacities,
purposes, etc.
Pluralist society respects and tries to reconcile diverse interests of humans without
,
.
,
—
.
.
.
thwarting them. Groups communicate via negotiation etc.; their operations are not
delegadve from some higher authority.
Contemporary ecological pluralism takes over most of these scene setting features, but
emphasizes the communitarian bases, and expands the scope of communities and groups to
include
communities, which include creatures and systems other than humans.
Perhaps the best known example of such a mixed community is the exampley-^givaa by
Naess and elaborated by Devall (89^dhapter-^3)^of a Norwegian community of bears and
wolves, sheep and humans'. A problem which group theory hides, perhaps deliberately, but
which such communities at once expose, is that of internal conflict. Conflict cannot be
avoided even by going right down to familiar or individuals; for as much conflict may be
Early versions of the first section of these notes drew heavily on Vincent, TAcorier <?f
The text takes up the working drift of 'Philosophy, politics and pluralism: II.
Anarchistic pluralism',, and thus completes (so far as it can presently be taken) a series
on this generous topic
*.
; TW J
�^4?
^c
A
/^T
%T
j
f iSj
!^3
Ph..
r
t>
", ',
P
*
<r
'*^
c
e \y—Z
,
")"WMnm reached In d.i, Hn<wk at aav'tiv'en
m..n<„, <l<AS,p. 31,). Today', loser, i, I, bh.hol, a,,u,„ed. wdl ho
tomorrow s wmner.
Most American pluralists of this ilk assume that the contest
tween groups wtll be fhir and that there is some kind of lurking
normative consensus in the background. Certain types of behaviour
are presumably un-American. Practical politics, therefore, fbr the
mertcan p urahst is about bargaining, compromise and trade-ofls
lore is no normative appraisal of the State, but rather an
of what they take to be
acm^
processesTnhXUSA
Gov
*
. dm^c^updTe^J^a
"——------ -R—-±A1 1 PLl^uSses^oi
the USA. Government
is
not an impartial umpire. It reflects
reflects the
the domii.^
dominant coalition on a
particular policy - although it will try to maintain some balance
*
I'.--D.
D. Roosevelt remarked, 'The
'
science of politics, indeed, mav
properly be said to be m large part the science of the adjustment of
conflicting group interests' (quoted in Nicholls, 1974, p. 2). This aim
is contrary to that of the English pluralists, who would have been
deeply critical of the idea that the State becomes a focal point for
group pressure, also that policy should emanate from dominant
coalitions of groups via the State apparatus. Individuals, in English
pluralism, pursue their goals within groups. The State should not be
inked to any such partial interests. Each of theSe groups is
recognized as a moral person with a legal status. In American
pluralism a group is simply a collection or aggregation of individuals
acting m specific roles. Most significantly the American pluralists
were not concerned with any normative account of the State as an
institution or practice. They were fhr more interested in examining
empirically, the effects of group pressures on the actual activity of
government,
th^y ^in not
cltscnsswn.
�7bottled up in a family or even in one individual as in a small group. That is, there are no
<*/o
pure conflict-free it^ms from which to build up group or community structure.
'
@
Ecopluralism not only extends the group basis; like
contemporary pluralism, the
variety of positions and practices is much expanded. Early political pluralism (so-called)
was far from advocating a plural variety. (Figgin, an early British pluralist, would have
been shocked at such a supposition: Vincent p.182.) A fairly narrow normative consensus
was assumed, e.g. Christian morality in British "pluralism", American political
arrangements in American "pluralism". Indeed several American "pluralists", political
scientists from Bentley Erroneously on^'saw pluralism as a description of the American
political system. In this usage, pluralism moves into the area of interest group and pressure
group theory" (Vincent p.183). Herein lies the route to
While the state jLSxiiscredited as a unitary ordef} it is now seen a complex
multiple entity, which tried to incorporate and theorize diversity of group life. In the
American version, groups are seen as interested in reaching some kind of bargain.
Government policy is the outcome of group pressures. Government is alleged to seek out
some abstract national interest^In even more degenerate Eastern European forms, pluralism
comes down to some sort of multiparty electoral arrangements; plurality just amounts to
many parties. Political arrangements can however remain highly paternalistic and
. Because we are interested in genuine free pluralisms, we shall leave these
desperate ^rms behind.
/^copyV^ncent-l$0, on US pluraKstsof this sort]
/)^onsider the organisational possibilities for the Earth.i The Earth divides variously
into (geographical) rggto/ts; under ecological organisation the decomposition will be into
jporegions. Those regions that are occupied will be occupied by structures of (mixed)
communities. The assumption that each occupied region is occupied by a single community
is too simple to account even for the present impoverished arrangements offering on Earth.
Some regions are occupied by communities of communities,
community
structure so to say.z It seems unlikely that Earth, given a suitable choice of regions, it is
_
.
cm
1
Off the Earth, in free logicat space, case arrangements are very much greater. Not only
can many terrestrial iimiations be transcended, (widi for instance wiscr creatures than
humans, and many fairer regions, but the interaction of regions can be avoided, so that,
for example, an intense dense industrial society need not transmit its pollution outside
its own borders, indeed in the right circumstances it need not be polluting at all. A
beginning is made in investigating this richer structure by Nozick, but even his
beginnings leave much to be desired?
*.
4/7
2
Whether communities of communities amount just to communities will depend upon
the final characterisation of comwMnhy, or what sort of members they can have and
c?
/-
�3
necessary to ascend beyond communities of communities to third-order community
structures. Thus for each region it is appropriate to begin with the ancient ideal of a
community of communities. But of course there will be higher-order structure involved,
such as regional federations of regions, and federations of these federations, and so on and
up. Call this organisational structure, the Earth frame. This frame is not of course unique;
there are many other ways, of varying levels of adequacy, of unscrambling an
organisational grid.
The frame selected is in fact intimately tied to real mundane arrangements. For the
short time that they survived state interference, the Spanish anarchistic communities
coexisted and coevolved in genuine pluralistic fashion (as Dolgoff s sympathetic description
has revealed). That is by no means the only occasion on which the old ideal of a
community of communities (communitas communitatorum) has achieved partial realisation,
but is one of the better known recent examples involving anarchistic communities in a
limited geographic region - at a time in world history when state domination of social life
continues to break up communities and impose a grey uniformity across former community
diversity. But the concern here is not with what is, with present depressing (but temporary)
political realities, but with how things might well be, with different and - no difficult feat superior political arrangements, in particular pluralist arrangements.
A recent picture of pluralistic political arrangements by Nozick supposedly allows for
virtually anarchistic communities within an overarching minarchic framework. It would
seem a simple matter to vary this picture, in particular, to weaken or strengthen the
overarching framework; and that indeed the system of Spanish communities (which of
course did not persist) weakened the minimum state arrangements in true anarchisdc fashion
to zero. Nozick has however a complex (and also seriously flawed) argument that
variations are without justification, that political possibilities which can be justified are mMc/z
tighter than the wide range of the logical possibilities would suggest.
A crucial early question once an Earth frame is untangled is, for each structural level:
what are the broad organising principles? Consider a more important case, the regional
level. Will the same broad principles reappear for each region? Only in a very tenu/ous
fashion, if such desiderate as regional diversity are to be given appropriate play. Naturally
the extent and character of the interrelations of their members. If communities were
mere set-like objects, it would be a matter of the transitivity of membership; but
obviously communities are more than mere sets, internal relations counting for much.
*j
�these had better be some procedure or other for conflict resolution where conflict is severe,
but there is a wide variety of procedures of very varying merit; some procedures or other for
the numerous issues that have to be dealt with to keep communities functioning, such as to
take a sample of issues, burying the dead, taking care of the indigent.
A crucial question, for each structural level, is: what are the broad organisational
principles?
.
The working idea is that in the sort of organisational framework sought will enable a
mix of desiderata to be pushed over some far out natural thresholds. The, desiderata include
liberal and environmental objectives, each as those of freedom, liberation. Life liberty,
pursuit of happiness^etc.
Direction of world reorganisation: to a plurality of possibilities, with different
possibilities in different regions. Cities for those who like them in the substantially
ecologically destroyed urban land recipes of the North. Etc.
Diversity is a prime desideratum. We should re/'ozce in JivgrHfy where it recurs, and
if where it does not, subject as always to certain constraints. In particular, then,
attempts to impose fashionable ideologies everywhere should be strongly resisted; this
includes religious faith and other gospels such as those of market capitalism and state
socialism. Such drives to unity and conformity, and intellectualm^njt culture, should be
derailed. Evidently in an interlinked system such as the Earth form; federal organisation
should include arrangements to block imposition of ideologies by expansive neighbours on
other regions. (Included herein are states; here is yet another reason for the ahabition of
states.)
Not to be encouraged, but opposed, are
sing/c-way movements, such as
messianic catholism, messianic communism, and messianic capitalism. These come with a
M/uvcrM/Af/c perspectic, and a single, allegedly universal set of values: they do not, unless
severely cut down in size, fit into a generous plurallism. Needless to say, these
universalistic (one-turning) movements cannot rationally justify their practices. It can no
more be established that there is only one god with such and such properties (e.g. thvse
ascribed to Allah under Islam) than it can be established that there is only one logic; indeed
the justificatory situation is considerably worse (imagine the faithful chanting each day,
facing one Cambridge or other, "There is no logic but classical logic
of course most
Anglo-American philosophers are committed to something like this in their philosophical
practice, but they rarely recognise the character of the commitment).
�Note: Many of the economic objectives presented as absolute, are not merely dubious.
They are not intrinsic values, but merely instrumental, and instrumental to %^that a
community may not have. Leading examples of such objectives are efficiency, production.
Out of the same stable as broad monoculturalism, with its uniform urban systems,
universities, etc., is the method of consensus (or
one opinion, as it might as well
have been called). Consensus - unless severely limited, as for instance to argument on a
pluralistic structure - is anti-pluralistic. Nonetheless there can be consensus of a sort at one
remove, metacon^ensus on^ one story, "agreement" to differ.
Limited agreement does however have its virtues in conflict resolution.
* To be sure, cases where have to resolve what is to be down, how to act. Many ways to
go: -si^i uniform recipe approach too absolutist. On the other hand act entirely situational.
Last of recognised decent procedures.
The problematicness of conflict, and need for its removal, is much exaggerated. The
drive for conflict-free conditions is like, and linked to, the drive for consistency. But
conflict is not always undesirable, but often advantageous (read perhaps, as Heracleitus
claimed, necessary). Often conflict should just be allowed to stand; it does not require
resolution. Political and social arrangements should allow for it and be able to absorb it.
��C**------ -
�
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f
Chapter 10
_
CRITICS OF ANARCHISM AND FURTHER CRITICISM.
..
One of the regular obstacles almost any innovative ideology encounters is hardened
dogfpMdwi. Hardened dogmatism characteristically sees little scope for movement from some
established status quo. There are many hardened dogmatists who see no alternative to the
modern state. In this they join company with a huge and motley crew of political "realists":
'There simply is no way an advanced industrial state can cope with technological complexities,
can minimize waste and misery and the danger of revolutions without strong government
controls' (Gardner!, our sample dcifnatist, selected^because he has ranted^at verbose length,on
his anti-anarchist disposition). We can grant that there is no viable state without requisite
government controls, no state without a state. The question is rather whether such objectives as
reduction of waste and misery and control of technology even he accomplished, perhaps
significantly better without the state, which tends to wagnt/y the problems concerned.
A feature of dogmatism is that assertion, reiterated assertion, replaces argument. So it is
with^state dogmatism: 'As things are, there simply is no way a modem industrial society can
flourish without a strong government to enforce the law' (p.123). international industrial
society flourishes, after a fashion ^without such a government. Analogous functional ways in
which regional industrial societies can operate, way implicit in historic anarchism, have been
explained. 'It is not just the necessity of a state to preserve law and order that makes the
anarchist dream so hopeless' (p.124). Order requires only a certain organisation^, for which the
state is quite unnecessary. As for law, the necessity is but analytic on the law being state-law.
But a wide network of conventions and regulations can operate without a state; there are many
examples, beginning with stateless societies, continuing through a range of voluntary
organisations.
Why 'so hopeless'?
,,
Even if small communities [observe the limitation on anarchism
immediately slippst in]... found a way to police themselves, there is no way
they could maintain, let alone establish, an industrial society. Small selfgoverning groups are incapable of building reservoirs to bring them clean
water, or roads to connect cities, or dynamos to supply electricity, or cars,
or printing presses, or modem hospitals, or anything else that is a product of
an advanced technology. Big tasks can be done only by big corporations
that are either state-owned or state-controlled, or that operate as vast
independent oligarches within the state (p.124).
eV
As well as intellectually lazy, this is hopelessly astray: there resides the hopelessness. In some
regions, pioneer societies and industrial society developed more or less regardless of the state.
Even small f^rm communities built themselves reservoirs for stock and household water
supplies, built their local roads, and so on (in Australia, USA, and elsewhere). They still do.
Electricity generates and printing presses can be manufactured in fairly unsophisticated
i
.
Martin Gardner
776-7SS.
e
W7ry.y i?/
*#
/
ch.7
Aafe.- WTry 7 owi
an
'
workshops, where the state need be nowhere in evidence. As for big tasks, international
organisations (for construction, forestry, dam building, oil-well sinking,^ substantially
independent of particular states can, and do, perform the work. They may presently be required
to have a state location, but that is strictly unnecessary for accomplishing the tasks; they are
certainly not state-owned, or state-controlled, nor do they, in any real sense, operate within the
states'. Furthermore, regions investing in large works beyond their capacities can set up their
own specialized structures, to oversee such big tasks, to monitor activities and ensure
accountability, and to exclude cowboy operations. It is simply false that the advancement and
application of science and technology requires the state, as much history reveals. In a similar
way, it is simply misleading that 'if we want to enjoy the benefits of science and technology,
the ideals of an archism are as irrelevant as the ideals of the Sermon on the Mount' (p.124). By
contrast with the ideals of the Sermon, the impact of which are quite indirect, much anarchist
output concerns science and technology, their promotion and qualified benefits, proper place
and appropriateness.
Next our philosophical scrivener turns to pulling down anarchism by a superficial
comparison with and sen^up of the American 'counter culture scene of the sixties' (pp. 1244-5).
As technology is not condemned by one bad result, nor is anarchism shown impracticable by
one presumed form wht^e merit remain a matter of controversy. In any case, m^re accurate
comparisons are available than Gardner's prejudical poQ)ourL These set anarchist elements of
the counterculture substantially witli^th&\merican individual, pro-violence form of anarchism.
Hardened dogmatists are almost invariably crt^ss critics. They do not ever get at close
quaters^et alon^ inside, what they are criticising; so they do not achieve a good view, still less
adequate
sympathetic view, of what they ^/are criticising. Fortunately there are less cr^ss
critics, most of them with heavy commitments to democratic states (Gardner, though he makes
obeisant gestures towards democracy, is underneath it committed to the strong tech,o-cratic
state.) It should be plain that any critic with heavy commit^nts to democracy would have to
take anarchism more seriously as an option; for the demos may chose, or rule, to remove their
state. (Quite constitutional means may, and should, permit this.) The point, though elementary,
has escaped apparently more sympathetic opponents of anarchism such as Dahl, who premisses
his critique of anarchism upon the incompatibility of anarchism with democracy. He appears to
manage this yhnx
by mistakenly equating democracy with the democratic state. Certainly
anarchism is incompatible with the democratic state, as with any state, but it does not follow,
except through a variant of the mistaken equation, that it is incompatible with democracy. And
it should be evident that this latter incompatibility is contested. For the^e have many proposals
for combining anarchism with m^re participatory democracy (ul^minating on enterprises like
Burgheim's quest fortrue democracy^ which arrives at a dilute anarchism).
Dahl begins his criticism of anarchism by asserting that anarchist (and guardianship)
'objections to democracy aare so fundamental that unless they can be satisfactorily met any
further explanations of the democratic idea would be futile' (p.37).
Given the heavy
commitment of much anarchism to democratic processes, this assertion faces evident
rejoinders. And Dahl himself quickly shifts ground (though a page later he shifts back,
assuming that his archetypal democrat and anarchist are opposed as archist and anarchist):
'Because democracy might well be the most des^be process for governing [anarchist
v^lu^ttpry]
it might also be the prevented form of government in an anarchist society.
But i^ the anarchist view democracy cannot redeem a state
*
(p.37, two paragraphs down).
Since nothing can redeem the state, ergo neither gods nor people nor democracy can. Yet Dahl
begins his cri^tism with this curious twist: since the state^coercism, and coercisaa is
intrinsically bad, can the democratic process somehow make it good?
*
(p.37). This problem for
archism, which Dahl assumes, is no problem at all for anarchism. Instead of addressing the
question posed, Dahl switches focus, by challenging the coherence and consistency of
anarchism. But all his exhibition of divWity/shows is that anarchism is a family-resemblance
notion, like many Wittgenstein pointed outigbwc, warAewatic.?, and so on. It is a family
resemblance notion with certain key features (as being played, is of a game), namely rejection
of archie authority, ^percion and the state; beyond that there is a plurality of forms. Once the
pluralistic conceptualisation is appreciated, there need be no incoherence; it all fits together.
^^Many of the criticisms of anarchism turn on the issue of
especially how
economic activity such asf marketing, distribution, and so on, is to be organised in the absence
of a central state authority. Meeting these criticisms in appropriate detail is no mean feat,
requiring the elaboration of substantially new economic theory (except for excessively
individualistic anarchists like Rothbart, but sketchy details and hints have been offered by
anarchist theorists). While economic criticisms bulk large in recent criticism of anarchism, the
state having assumed the role of grand macro-economic organiser, these by no means exhaust
criticisms. There are serious issues also concerning political and cultural organisation,
concerning the presumed enemies of organisation and order.
In many criticisms it is simply assumed that anarchistic organisation will have to take
over the arrangements of present mega-states and somehow substitute for those, without mega
states. The assumption is astray. Mega-states are mostly recent undesirable constructions,
obtained by conquest or war dealings, and held together coercive means and other devices of
state. These would, would be allowed to, fragment into regional components. Thus the
problem of organisation is a substantially smaller problem than that of organisation of mega
states; namely, that of organisation of regions. The regions would naturally be grouped
together, by principles of federation. (The new Europe provides a partial, suggestive example.)
No strand of anarchism 'has developed an adequate economic theory. The individualists
are stymied by the public goods problem, the communists by the problems of coordination.
[Even more plausible intermediate positions] require the support of the state at a number of
critical points' (M p.172). How the state is presumed to provide its benign supportative role is
well illustrated in the case of more individualistic anarchism, where the familiar problem of
public goods is also taken to manifest itself.
4
A cynic might well observe that no strand of capitalism or of socialism has developed an
adequate economic theory. But theories there no doubt are, in certain narrow reaches in
abundance.
*
Anarchism assumes the benefits of autonomous
operations, indeed the
individualistic ideal is one of personal sovereignty in the market place', but 'is not the state an
indispensible prerequisite for a successfully functioning economy?' (M p.169). There are two
parts to a response. First, markets functioned before states, and function outside states, for
example internationally. Second, whatever institutions are required for the operation of
markets can be supplied regionally under anarchistic fragmentation of the state.
How much background structure do markets depend upon, which might presuppose
apparatus of state. A market has a place of transactions, which can be common or waste
ground, a supply of goods or services to be exchanged there for other goods or services (barter)
or currency (in a money economy). Buyers and sellers enter the market to effect exchanges.
No doubt presupposed are at least limited entitlements (leasehold or property rights, so a seller
is entitled to dispose of, to a new user, holder or owner, what is offered for sale), contractual
arrangements, and in a money economy, some recognised currency. Also presumed, normally
where markets operate, are certain levels of safety, for instance protection against invasion,
assault and theft. But these are normal expectations for much of social life, for even conducting
a conversation. As for the rest, except perhaps for currency, it is a mere pretence that a state is
required for their assurance: customary or tribal arrangements will ensure both property in
transportable goods and recognition of verbal contracts or undertakings. An appropriate
currency too can develop in the absence of states, as exemplified in the shell currencies of
Melanesia and the bank notes of early America. Bank notes are not fully public goods; for a
bank which can profit from their circulation or issue has an incentive to supply them. (And
banks themselves do not require a sponsoring state, even if sometimes that helps, as in bailing
them out.)
It is worth observing that much of the conventional apparatus presumed for markets is
already presupposed
for the fictional covenant by which the state is supposedly
established. Namely, meeting in relative safety, entering into contractual arrangements (in the
case of the state of a very sophisticated sophistical sort).
* Anarchism has not met the 'intractable ... problem of co-ordinating the activities of many
independent social units without recourse to central authority' (M p.181). But there are many
examples, most notably at an international level again, where such coordination has been
achieved (e.g. IUCO). Examples are increasing with new networking arrangements (e.g.
Pegasus network).
Where substantially self-managing arrangements, such as traditional
markets are allowed to flourish, there are no such intractable problems. Certainly, however,
with anarcho-communist structures which aim to suppress such self-managing arrangements,
there are problems: namely those of
* co-ordinating productive activity, aligning production with the needs of consumers without
5
markets or central planning.
Key approach: localising production, face-to-face.
How can this work in an advanced industrial economy, where a high degree of specialization
and much division of labour. Suggestion CAN'T!
* motivating people to work.
Pressure, sanctions, rewards. While this is a problem in any setting, it is caAaaccJ since certain
personal rewards removed.
*
a central agency seems necessary to maintain any society-wide distribution of resources'
(p.172). W/nc/i resources? Where markets operate, many resources will be distributed without
any role for a central agency, which would often serve as a serious blockage. WAat
distribution? What was intended was: a
distribution of resources, so the blatant inequalities
now observed in even the wealthist societies are mitigated and the conditions of the worst-off
are alleviated. That is drawing upon experience of capitalism: anarchism would not start out
from such an invidious position. Further, it is assumed that there are only two ways of righting
such (capitalistic) maldistribution: through purely private means or by a centralised state means.
So presented it represents an extremely familiar false dichotomy, private or state, in which
society is either equated with the state or else drops out, and all other public means disappear.
For socially-inclined anarchists there is no disputing that there need to be safety nets in
place for the poor and disadvantaged. What is in question is how those nets are placed and
administered, and whether the state has an essential role or is rather a less efficient more
officious nuisance. One option is an exposed tithing system, where members of society are
offered a choice of schemes to contribute to, and expected to contribute to these, and
encouraged to make their contribution open to public inspection. Those who tried to evade
contribution and closed their books would be subject to a range of social pressures.
It is further claimed that while smaller anarchist communities, especially those of a
collectivistic or communistic bent, may be able to resolve inequitable distribution problems,
'there are major difficulties' in attempting to realise some distributive ideal 'between
communities' (p.173). There may be major difficulties, there are now, but that is scarcely an
argument for a central authority. Some redistribution and a small transfer of wealth occurs
intentionally without a central authority. There is not even decisive evidence that a central
authority helps, so far from making matters worse.
* AaarcA/sw
no
/or /aw.
Anarchism cannot traffic in law - at least in the initial and prominent sense of /aw
(ventured e.g. in the OED), namely 'a rule of conduct imposed by authority', imposed by
authority and characteristically backed up by coercion, it may be added. To some extent
counter balancing this prognostication is a second sense of 'law' (the third comprises 'scientific
and philosophical uses' from which likewise anarchism is not debarred): namely 'without
reference to an external commanding authority'. Thus as the term gavcrawcar is variably
determinable, so also is /aw. Under the main determinate, law is incompatible with anarchism.
6
But under a different determinate, there is no incompatibility. Anarchism could operate with
such a derminate (as with appropriate notions of moral law, and similar). Law, however,
deservedly has a tarnished reputation, in anarchism as elsewhere. Most of it is arcane,
administered by an expensive oligopolistic priesthood. Too often it is an oppressive tool of the
state.
While anarchism is hostile to such law, and incompatible with heavy authoritarian law, it
is in no way opposed to rules, to regulations, to conventions of freely assented to sorts, and so
on. These can substitute.
The state has other less conspicuous roles than law and order, war and defence, and
managing the economy.
* The state serves as representative of national identity, which people crave. Anarchism does
not cater for this basic human need. This is pretty dubious stuff. Such a need is by no means
ubiquitous, and is, if not manufactured, certainly exaggerated in convenient cases, by state
devices. But let us concede a need hypothesis (there is nothing basic about it). Is it true that
The anarchist does nothing to replace the notion; his ideal society is devoid of any features
which might serve as a focus of identity' (M p.180)? No. The components in terms of which
an anarchistic society is structured — the local community, the local region, the regional
federations,... - offer foci for identification, bases for sporting teams, and so on. But, in any
event, nothing excludes national organisations, fielding cultural groups, artistic troupes,
sporting teams, and so on. The present structure of national sporting bodies, only loosely
affiliated with states, and coordinated in model anarchist fashion, provides in fact a worthwhile
example of anarchism in action (Burnheim again).
Do such concessions to features of nationhood 'naturally lead to a demand for self
government', and thence for a nation-state (p.181)? They may (as with the Basques) or may
not (as with the Cornish), and if so more likely the former than the latter? Further these
demands may come only from a small minority of nationals, or may be ill-founded. A demand
on its own demonstates comparatively
of merit, for all that modem economics would have
us imagine.
A repeated criticism of anarchism is that 'with the state removed, the system has no
ultimate guarantor ...'. So it used to be said in favour of God. But who guarantees the
guarantor? (A state may underwrite a bank, but a state itself can fail, despite support of other
states.) There is no ultimate guarantor. There are other issues also, such as the character of the
guarantor. While it is seen to in theology, as a matter of further (illicit) characterisation, that
God has the right features, nothing guarantees that an "ultimate guarantor" is not, rather like
most states, corrupt, unfair, heavy handed and incompetent.^ Even if an ultimate guarantee was
needed, none could be provided. But lesser assurances can be offered. For example, a bank's
2
If a guarantee cannot be obtained without violence, it is most unlikely that a satisfactory one
will be obtained with it.
7
books can be open to public scrutiny and assessment, so that it can be seen that it is trading in a
responsible and viable fashion. (It is better that a person's healthy state be assured by
observation that the person is functioning well, than by maintaining the person as a closed
system and relying on the doctor's guarantee of the person's health.)
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there is no way they could maintain, let alone establish, an industrial
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society. Small self-governing groups are incapable of building reser1
voirs to bring them clean water, or roads to connect cities, or dynamos
S
to supply electricity, or cars, or printing presses, or modern hospitals, '
product of
ofan
an advanced
advanced technology.
technology. Btg
Big tasks
tasks i,
1
or anything else that is a product
can be done only by big corporations tha^are either state-owned or
state-controlled, or that operate as vast independent oligarchies wtthm
;
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!
Many of the criticisms of anarchism turn on the issue of orgam.Mric'K, especially how
gconcwHC activity such as: marketing, distribution, and so on, is to be organised in the absence
of a central state authority. Meeting these criticisms in appropriate detail is no mean feat,
requiring the elaboration of substantially new economic theory (except for excessively
individualistic anarchists like Rothbart, but sketchy details and hints have been offered by
anarchist theorists). While economic criticisms bulk large in recent criticism of anarchism, the
state having assumed the role of grand macro-economic organiser, these by no means exhaust
criticisms. There are serious issues also concerning political and cultural organisation,
concerning the presumed enemies of organisation and order.
In many criticisms it is simply assumed that anarchistic organisation will have to take over
the arrangements of present mega-states and somehow substitute for those, without mega-states.
The assumption is astray. Mega-states are mostly recent undesirable constructions, obtained by
conquest or war dealings, and held together coercive means and other devices of state. These
would, would be allowed to, fragment into regional components. Thus the problem of
organisation is a substantially smaller problem than that of organisation of mega-states; namely,
that of organisation of regions. The regions would naturally be grouped together, by principles
of federation. (The new Europe provides a partial, suggestive example.)
J
*
No strand of anarchism 'has developed an adequate economic theory.
The
individualists are stymied by the public goods problem, the communists by the problems of
coordination. [Even more plausible intermediate positions] require the support of the state at a
number of critical points' (M p.172). How the state is presumed to provide its benign
supportative role is well illustrated in the case of more individualistic anarchism, where the
familiar problem of public goods is also taken to manifest itself.
A cynic might well observe that no strand of capitalism or of socialism has developed an
adequate economic theory. But theories there no doubt are, in certain narrow reaches in
abundance.
* Anarchism assumes the benefits of autonomous market operations, indeed The individualistic
ideal is one of personal sovereignty in the market place', but 'is not the state an indispensible
prerequisite for a successfully functioning economy?' (M p.169). There are two parts to a
response. First, markets functioned before states, and function outside states, for example
internationally. Second, whatever institutions are required for the operation of markets can be
supplied regionally under anarchistic fragmentation of the state.
How much background structure do markets depend upon, which might presuppose
apparatus of state. A market has a place of transactions, which can be common or waste
ground, a supply of goods or services to be exchanged there for other goods or services (barter)
or currency (in a money economy). Buyers and sellers enter the market to effect exchanges.
No doubt presupposed are at least limited entitlement (leasehold or property rights, so a seller is
entitled to dispose of, to a new user, holder or owner, what is offered for sale), contractual
arrangements, and in a money economy, some recognised currency. Also presumed, normally
where markets operate, are certain levels of safety, for instance protection against invasion,
assault and theft. But these are normal expectations for much of social life, for even conducting
a conversation. As for the rest, except perhaps for currency, it is a mere pretence that a state is
required for their assurance: custom^ or tribal arrangements will ensure both property in
transportable goods and recognition of verbal contracts or undertakings. An appropriate
currency too can develop in the absence of states, as exemplified in the shell currencies of
Melanesia and the bank notes of early America. Bank notes are not fully public goods; for a
bank which can profit from their circulation or issue has an incentive to supply them. (And
32
banks themselves do not require a sponsoring state, even if sometimes that helps, as in bailing
them out.)
It is worth observing that much of the conventional apparatus presumed for markets is
already presupposed prg-sMfe for the fictional covenant by which the state is supposedly
established. Namely, meeting in relative safety, entering into contractual arrangements (in the
case of the state of a very sophisticated sophistical sort).
* Anarchism has not met the 'intractable ... problem of co-ordinating the activities of many
examples, most notably at an international level again, where such coordination has been
achieved (e.g. IUCO). Examples are increasing with new networking arrangements (e.g.
Pegasus network). Where substantially self-managing arrangements, such as traditional
markets are allowed to flourish, there are no such intractable problems. Certainly, however,
with anarcho-communist structures which aim to suppress such self-managing arrangements,
there are problems:
* ^o-ordinating productive activity, aligning production with
*needs
of
consumers without markets <?r central planning.
Key approach: localising production, face-to-face.
How can this work in an advanced industrial economy, where a high degree of specialization
and much division of labour. Suggestion CAN'T!
* motivating people to work.
Pressure, sanctions, rewards.
in any setting, but
rewards removed.
since certain personal
* '... a central agency seems necessary to maintain any society-tide distribution of resources'
(p.172). WTu'cA resources? Where markets operate, many resources will be distributed without
any role for a central agency, which would often serve as a serious blockage.
What
distribution? What was intended was: ayMst distribution of resources, so the blatant inequalities
now observed in even the wealthist societies are mitigated and the conditions of the worst-off
are alleviated. That is drawing upon experience of capitalism: anarchism would not start out
from such an invidious position. Further, it is assumed that there are only two ways of righting
such (capitalistic) maldistribution: through purely private means or by a centralised state means.
So presented it represents an extremely familiar false dichotomy, private or state, in which
society is either equated with the state or else drops out, and all other public means disappear.
For socially-inclined anarchists there is no disputing that there need to be safety nets in
place for the poor and disadvantaged. What is in question is how those nets are placed and
administered, and whether the state has an essential role or is rather a less efficient more
officious nuisance. One option is an exposed tithing system, where members of society are
/v
33
offered a choice of schemes to contribute to, and expected to contribute to these, and encouraged
to make their contribution open to public inspection. Those who tried to evade contribution and
closed their books would be subject to a range of social pressures.
It is further claimed that while smaller anarchist communities, especially those of a
collectivistic or communistic bent, may be able to resolve inequitable distribution problems,
'there are major difficulties' in attempting to realise some distributive ideal
communities' (p.173). There may be major difficulties, there are now, but that is scarcely an
argument for a central authority. Some redistribution and a small transfer of wealth occurs
intentionally without a central authority. There is not even decisive evidence that a central
authority helps, so far from making matters worse.
The state has other less conspicuous roles than law and order, war and defence, and
managing the economy.
* The state serves as representative of national identity, which people crave. Anarchism does
not cater for this basic human need. This is pretty dubious stuff. Such a need is by no means
ubiquitous, and is, if not manufactured, certainly exaggerated in convenient cases, by state
devices. But let us concede a need hypothesis? Is it true that 'the anarchist does nothing to
replace the notion; his ideal society is devoid of any features which might serve as a focus of
identity' (M p.180)? No. The components in terms of which an anarchistic society is structured
- the local community, the local region, the regional federations, ... — offer foci for
identification, bases for sporting teams, and so on. But, in any event, nothing excludes national
organisations, fielding cultural groups, artistic troupes, sporting teams, and so on. The present
structure of national sporting bodies, only loosely affiliated with states, and coordinated in
model anarchist fashion, provides in fact a worthwhile example of anarchism in action
(Bumheim again).
Do such concessions to features of nationhood 'naturally lead to a demand for self
government', and thence for a nation-state (p.181)? They may (as with the Basques) or may not
(as with the Cornish), and if so more likely the former than the latter? Further these demands
may come only from a small minority of nationals, or may be ill-founded. A demand on its own
demonstates comparatively ZZrr/e of merit, for all that modern economics would have us imagine.
A repeated criticism of anarchism is that 'with the state removed, the system has no
ultimate guarantor ...'. So it used to be said in favour of God. But who guarantees the
guarantor? (A state may underwrite a bank, but a state itself can fail, despite support of other
states.) There is no ultimate guarantor. There are other issues also, such as the character of the
s
[Jj[government is variably determinable, so also is /ow. Under the mam
a JS/'
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determinate, law is incompatible with anarchism. But under a different determinate, there is no
( incmpatibiHty.
--------------- —----------------- ------------------------------ ------ L_
--- Cjy.
Anarchism cannot traffic in law, in the initial and prominent sense of /<2w(offered in the
OEE^, namely 'a rule of conduct imposed by authority', imposed by authority and
characteristically backed up by coercion, it may be added. To some extent counter^teducing this
prognostication is a second sense of 'law' (the third comprises 'scientific and philosophical
-
uses'): namely 'without reference to an external commanding authority'.
^aw deservedly has a tarnished reputation^ m anarchism. Most of it is arcane,
administered by an expensive, priesthood. Too often it is an oppression tool of the state.
While anarchism is hostile to such law, and incompatable with heavy authoritarian law, it
is in no way opposed to rules, to regulations, to conventions of freely assented to Kats, and so
On.
can
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guarantor. While it is seen to in theology, as a matter of further (illicit) characterisation, that
God has the right features, nothing guarantees that an "ultimate guarantor" is not, rather like
most states, corrupt, unfair, heavy handed and incompetent? Even if an ultimate guarantee was
needed, none could be provided. But lesser assurances can be offered. For example, a bank's
books can be open to public scrutiny and assessment, so that it can be seen that it is trading in a
responsible and viable fashion. (It is better that a person's healthy state be assured by
observation that the person is functioning well, than by maintaining the person as a closed
system and relying on the doctor's guarantee of the person s health.)
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1
A DEEP RIFT ON PROPERTY
A main element in the major divide between right and left anarchism, as between left and
right, is property. Other elements in the divide, such as the accumulation of capital essential to
capitalism, depend upon property, because it in it as a transferable commodity that capital is held.
It is unremarkable then that property balks large, as an institution to be defended and even extended
(with new rights to address environmental issues) in right-leaving political theory and, what heavily
overlaps that g^ave. American anarchism. At the opposing end of the right-left tug of war, state,
.social or common ownership of property used to be all the go: but left coalitions are presently
down-playing such ideals and aspirations.
Reflective green theory once again moves off the right-left axis, questioning aspects of the
strong ownership and control relations presumed in the tug-of war. Prope^tarian relations are all
based upon older domination and control ideologies, but diluted in kinder stewardship approaches,
not removed. For, while the idea of land as a mere commodity subject to the $hims of present
owners is softened, the steward normally but manages and controls for some higher master, god or
humanity. Reflect further on what both private owners and state owners may do to the
environments and habitats they "own".
Green reflection le^ds then towards the modification of entrenched institutions of private and
state property.
Green anarchism automatically eliminates certain types of ownership, namely state ownership
which has to depart with the state. The demise of the state should at least suggest that associated
institutions such as property and the law may be in some trouble. So it proves, to an interesting
extent. For, much as arguments to the state are, like those to the Master, Dominus, fatally flawed,
so are those to strong and established systems of property subject to lethal objections. Further,
much as the unwarranted state may be substituted for less dominating justifiable institutions, so
property and its adjuncts may be replaced by alternative less dominating arrangements, such as use
hold, leasehold, and the like.
A central claim, argued^ detail, will be that none of the arguments for property as justified,
as an entitlement as right, succeeds,?!// that the whole run of arguments supports is the need, or
desirability for some lesser arrangements. It is advantageous to have some terminology to cover
both property anJ lesser arrangements, <7aa.n-proper?y so to say, or gua/efty as will be said.
'The concept of property is fundamental to our [U.S.] society, probably to any workable
society' (Friedman p.3). The second claim is soon strengthened, and a third insupportable claim
added: '... property is a central economic institution of any society, and private property is the
central institution of a free society' (p.4). The onus of proof strictly lies with those who claim
property, property rights, etc. For outside certain far from universal social conditions there is no
such property as is claimed. Considering the way the onus falls, the situation is remarkable. 77?ere
are no JecM/ve argawenM, so far as I can ascertain,/or such an institution as property. That
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situation, if confirmed, raises important questions, such as how and w/ry the institution is in place?
But first the arguments, such as they are.
The main argument preferred by Friedman in support of his grand claims takes off from the
problem of the distribution of scarce material resources among competing parties who seek access
or use.
The usual solution is for the use of each t/ung to be decided by a person or
some group of persons organised under some
o/
Such t/ungs are
called property. If each thing is controlled by an individual who has the
power to transfer that control to any other individual, we call the institution
private property (p.4).
Firstly, all the distribution of resources problem points to is some allocation of uses, or some
sharing thereof. For such purposes many arrangements far short of property will serve; for
instance, lease, limited use rights, and so on. Secondly, what immediately stands out, an attempt is
made to close the chasm between what is so far delivered and what the claims concerning property
require through an appallingly low redefinition of 'property'. What one gets to use under some set
of rules may not be property at all (e.g. a cove, a sea passage,...). Property requires much more:
ownership in a nonv^cuous sense, coupled with a high level of potential control. Nor, thirdly, is
the characterisation of private property satisfactory, as transferable leasehold will meet the
conditions given. It may be argued that leasehold itself requires owne^h^ip; it will be argued that it
does not. But it certainly does not require private property, nor does proprietorship transfer across
leasehold arrangements.
That is^ it. Friedman proceeds, on the quite unwarranted assumption that all is property, to
argue the respective merits of private property and demerits of what is not private, public property
so it is supposed. 'Under public property, the values of the public as a whole are imposed on the
individuals who require the use of that property to accomplish their ends' (p.7). Something
remotely
that may hold for the example Friedman is discussing, the inordinately dull broadcast
media of the USA; but it certainly does not hold generally given the remainder way in which 'public
property' is characterised, so that no values whatsoever may be imposed.
What subjects hold property rights (if any) or like rights? The standard chauvinistic
assumption is that the class of such subjects comprises humans, or competent humans, or humans
who have competent guardians. But why should other creatures not hold and maintain territories,
as many appear to do? And if incompetent or disqualified humans can hold property managed by
guardians, trustees and the like, and if legal persons such as corporations can do likewise, why
should not a range of nonhumans (for instance, those that are credited with interests) do something
similar?
Given that many nonhumans can (and do) have proprietory rights, there can be a head-on
conflict between human rights and property rights (in opposition to Friedman p.3).
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Anarchistic societies of any complexity will typically consist of a network of decentralised
organisation, or a federation of these (etc.). The organisations will thus be regional, but
beyond that set up according to issue, role or function. Thus they will include what might well
be accounted
Many of the stock features of political functionalism, as
decentralised, will accordingly recur, separation of powers, tailoring of administration to need,
for instance. The organisations will furthermore be noncoercive; no individual or group will be
forced to join. Typically they will be voluntary arrangements.
A critical question is to how these organisations, substituting for the operation of state,
are to be controlled, regulated, and so on. In such favoured democratic structures control is
usually remarkably indirect. A populace weakly selects a central parliament, which exercises
through other bodies some control of state organisations. A full anarchism is obliged to
dissolve or substitute for central parliaments. It has a obvious option, namely direct democratic
control of state-substituting organisations. A simple way of achieving this is through sortition:
the membership of the governing component of each organisation is chosen randomly from
those of the regional community who volunteer to be on it. In some cases volunteers may
require accessible qualifications, and disqualifications (e.g. by having served before, by some
disqualifying record). Where the community decides that certain categories of people should be
represented, e.g. disable, minorities, then it is a matter of arranging random selection of the
required fraction of group numbers from these categories. This style of statistical democracy
dates back at least to original democracies of Greek city states where public officials were
sometimes selected by lot (it is discussed under democracy in Aristotle's Po/m'cy). Nowadays it
is called dwxirc/ty (a term with an unfortunate prior meaning); here in its anarchistic form it will
be alluded to under the ecologism dewa/tarcAy.
Such demanarchy has the immediate virtue of removing an expensive duplication,
government ministers and their departmental counterparts (e.g. finance ministers and
corresponding appointed treasury officials). Indeed, the whole charade of parliamentary
government, ministers and hordes of minders, governments and replicating opposition teams, is
duly removed - as it has to be under non-centralization. Such parliamentary centres are
eliminated; insofar as anything replaces them, it is the dispersed community, no centre, which is
directly linked to functional organisation.
Gone with the centre, or seriously reduced, are several standard political worries, such as
those of coup or take-over, insurrection or invasion. These usually involve capturing the centre
and its command structure, no longer there to capture.^ Community defence is thereby
rendered much easier. Also considerably reduced is the standard problem of who controls the
controllers: partly because control is so diffused, and prartly because a main controller is the
community (one of the advantages of democracy).
Appropriate institutions take care of the day-to-day running of community affairs; but
what of major issue decisions, changes of direction or structure. These can be accomplished
3
For there is no command or control structure that could be taken by an invador or internal
insurrection.
from the bottom, through referenda, propositions and the iike (organised through a suitably
independent college), rather than in present top-down inflexible fashion. (These methods, of
which there is worthwhile experience in parts of Europe, are investigated in Wolff.)
A regular early question is how such a stateless structure is to be financed wirAoM? coecive
mechanisms available. Of course if coercive institutions were in place, then the overall structure
could be financed in the sorts of ways that states are presently financed. It should be observed,
in any case, that coercive means are very rarely resorted to (unless the target is persued for
reasons, such as crime) in order to obtain revenue payments from wealthy corporations, firms
or individuals, where in a more equitible community much of the funding would derive from
(by contrast with most present states). There are several parts to a satisfactory answer:* Mt/cA less public revenue would be required because the most expensive, most wasteful, and
least productive components of state have been excised. These include the whole apparatus of
central government and electoral politics, and the associated system of coercion, standard
military forces and defense establishment, espionage framework, and police forces, prison
establishment and expensive courts.
Nonetheless there remain many institutions to finance, include smaller substitutes for
some of the abolished structures (e.g. social defence arrangements).
* Many institutions can be largely or entirely self-financing, because like customs and import
organisation they collect revenue, or through fair user-pays principles. Reasonable returns
taken can be channelled to an independent revenue office with no outside spending or
redistribution powers.
* Much, if not all, further social revenue could be raised through resources taxation (adequate
royalties and the like), rental taxes on property, gift and gains taxes, and through auctions (of
previously inherited goods), how this would work depends upon community arrangements.
Consider however a preferred anarchistic arrangement where that problematic item, private
property, has not been instituted or has been oblished (as with most European anarchism, by
contrast with North American forms). Valuable durables (roughly, any durable with stealing
for sale in present systems) will be rented instead of bought. Learnchold systems can be
operated very like private property (as the land system in A.C.T. reveals) fruit-feting market
operations, but they offer significantly better control, for instance environmentally, they enable
the social component of generated wealth to be reflected, through a rental, and they can be of
finite terms and to a given individual, so inheritance transfer is excluded. In place of the
customery land titles office a larger durables office with subdivision for types of durables
would be instituted, with each durable now indelibly marked or described.^
4
Here as with rcfcraHs, computing fasiiibiies remove many previous obstacles to each arguments.
Organisation can move with new technology.
,.
—--
-------------------------
^4^
/
A
CHAPTER
ROADS TO ANARCHY: OLD ROUTES AND NEW INPUTS
STRATEGIES FOR TRANSITION TO ANARCHIST SOCIETIES,
AND AFTER.
As there is a plurality of anarchistic positions and end-states, so, but not in a directly
corresponding way, there is a plurality of routes to anarchism. As the positions vary very
considerably in quality, so do the routes, some of them risky, all of them difficult.
Anarchism, even though theoretical viable, undoubtedly looks /iard to obtain on any scale.
For states are now extremely well entrenched - in furthermore a mutually supportive exclusive
club of states. There is now immense resistance to their removal, deriving from several sources.
In particular, state actors and power-brokers are most unlikely to modify statist arrangements in
ways inadvantageous to themselves, to relinquish any power, still less to step down easily. Such
actors will often take desperate steps to retain institutional power; it is very difficult to persuade
most political human to relinquish power simply and gracefully.
Nonetheless opportunities arise for overthrowing or superseding states (for instance, in most
of Eastern Europe and much of Western Asia in the early 1990s). Periods of crises or "power
vacuum", in particular, afford opportunities, which should be seized as they may not arise often in
more stable states (most recently in 1974 in Australia). A well-prepared anarchist movement will
organise, then, and when the moment arrives, pounce (a partial model is feline hunting practice).
But such opportunistic and risky revolutionary routes are only one way to change, as the following
diagram, designed to survey the possibility field, should reveal.
Diagram 5.7 Ways /a poZiWca/ change.
WAYS
Intra-State:
within State
setting
EVOLUTIONARY
1. typically slow or incremental
REVOLUTIONARY
]
'
operations through received
political channels
2.
t
<
j
typically rapid
operations circuiting
established channels:
coups, insurrections, etc.
)
Extra-State
3. operations establishing
alternative organisations
bypassing or substituting
for statist arrangements, or
functioning within the
interstices of the state
!
*
4. operations comprising
j)
.
'
]
external inference or
intervention: by negotiation,
military means, sanctions,
examples, etc.
0
2
Pluralistic anarchist practice will pursue each and every one of these ways and means, so far
as resources indicate and permit, subject to constraints. For example, a nonviolent movement will
not adopt violent means (unless it insists upon a strange separation of ends and means). There is
nothing distinctively anarchist about these ways, except for 3; all otherwise are ways of changing
state arrangements, 2 of trading one sort of state for another, 3 of imposing state control and
discipline where it is lapsing from "approved" form or where there may have been none (as with
colonial adventures).
As there have been many attempts to narrowly delimit anarchism, so there have been
repeated attempts to restrict roads and byways to anarchism. Exposing these attempts will at the
same time show what is open.
J, Deploying and making wore
sZads/ po/f/fcaf arrange/ncnis
Use of orthodox political channels is not excluded. Pluralistic anarchism is not obliged to
dismiss political routes to anarchism or to anarchist objectives. Parliamentary and other
constitutional routes (such as through referenda) to an anarchist end-state are perfectly possible, if
difficult because of the tendency of state apparatus to endeavour to perpetuate itself. (As a related
example, a main successful party in the multi-party Australian Capital Territory government was
organised and supported by those opposed to such a government.) A main difficulty confronting
change through conventional political procedure is simply that, w/tere it does occur, it is usually
extraordinarily slow and limited, it is almost invariably small change at the margins.
It may take a little lateral reasoning to see the advantages, or occasionally practical necessity,
of working through or within a system or even strengthening it first in order to demolish it
(strengthening does not imply endorsing forever, but nothing more "counterintuitive" than appears
in a battery of stock psychological tests or clever martial arts). Authentic Marxism, for example,
which is ultimately anarchistic, is committed to very much such a circuitous route: the circuit goes
through a rejuvenated super-productive state, which in old age withers away.
A main reason why it has been imagined that use of established political channels is
excluded, in anarchist practice, is not because of the slow evolutionary nature of the process, but
because of a doctrine of means-ends congruence, which is given too circumscribed a construal.
This over-strong congruence doctrine requires more than what coherence seems to demand,
namely that the means should be compatible with comprehensive ends sought (thus precluding, for
example, violent means to achieve non-violent ends). It further requires that in anarchist action,
particularly the revolution, the end of a stateless society should be "prefigured", not some
intervening non-congruent objective. Even if the geometric metaphor were duly clarified, few
reasons have been advanced for accepting the crippling doctrine, which is not self-evident.
3
Frankly, anarchism does not need to give itself unnecessary handicaps; it faces enough real-world
obstacles without dubious doctrinaire additions from well-intentioned friends.
An anarchist organisation is plainly not a contradiction in terms; nor therefore is an anarchist
coalition or party, committed for instance to removing coercive institutions. Pursuing this tack, an
anarchist can vote for a party which comes closer to realising immediate anarchist objectives than
other parties, or, very differently, for a party which will assist long-term anarchist objectives (for
instance, by wreaking the national economy and thereby helping green objectives and generating
appropriate political discontent and dissent), without any commitment to the parties concerned, and
without endorsing the political system within which they operate. Strategic voting is not
precluded; strategic anarchist voters may well (unlike totalitarian voters) support (preferential)
democratic procedures.
While the state is to be dis-established, meanwhile there are more benign and less benign
states, in relevant respects, apart from how decently they treat their citizens and noncitizens and
aliens. It is no longer altogether accurate to insist, as anarchists used to a century ago, that 'every
state is an agency whereby a ruling minority exploits and oppresses a majority' (M p.87). Many in
majorities may do very nicely, thank you, while some in the elite minority may be grindstoned.
Moreover, the mass of people is generally not only resistant to change, but highly reluctant to force
changed unless there is very considerable dis-ease, which in most developed states there is not.
These are some of a mix of reasons why a revolution is so remote in comfortable countries; no
longer the incendiary states kindled for the anarchist match that 19th century anarchists imagined.
Despite mass lethargy, dissatisfaction with the state is extensive and comes from right across
the conventional political spectrum. There is widespread popular sentiment to the effect that "the
state has become our master instead of our servant", a reversal of roles that should not surprise
Hegelians. Libertarians interpret this in terms of a much reduced state, a much leaner and
hopefully much less hungry state - a route to anarchism if dismantling went in a right direction and
far enough. Right-thinking socialists interpret it in terms of a much transformed state, a helping
but unobtrusive rather than a commanding busybody state. A familiar view of the state from a
section of Green Movement represents a turn on the old anarcho-socialist view:
The ... state and the corporate sector are in alliance for the sake of "development".... We
try to wean people away from the belief that the state will act in the interest of the cidzens.
So we believe the ... state is best viewed as an oppressor (Orton, Response to Dwandik
Quesdons, p.6).
Orton argues on the basis of this for not trying 'to "use" the state' and 'not seeking government
funds'. But if the funds largely represent social wealth, why not judicious use? And if the state is
1
Social psychology appears to show as much.
4
the only legal means of requisite change? And so on.. In fact Orton himself proposes to make
changes through the state by mobilizing the people.
A state may also be more benign in other significant respects: for instance, in that it facilitates
minority political representation, including green anarchist groups, and in that it does not
significantly impede anarchist political and practical activity or render paths significantly more
difficult. Overlapping that, more benign less domineering states may leave substantial room for
significant anarchist practice both in lifestyle and in building organisational structures and (as it
were) alternatives to archist arrangements (such as peoples' books, time stores, etc.) What are in
important respects anarchist communities can operate within, as well as be modelled within, less
intrusive states (the limits to this quasi-anarchism, elaborated in Nozick, are explained in UT).
States that better meet anarchist (and green socialist) criteria for benignness can conveniently be
disdnguished as more .sywparico states.
Committed anarchists can quite well also be committed, as an intermediate goal among
others, to achieving more sympatico states, which may involve conventional (as well as
unconventional) political activity. No doubt engagement in conventional political activity carries a
risk of co-option; but there are obvious way of reducing that risk, of avoiding the 'slide into
collaboration with the bourgeoisie [and] ... willingness to play the game of parliamentary
politics'.2 For example, precautionary strategies include: engagement also in unconventional
political activity, anarchist or communal practice, consciousness-raising exercises, and use of time
limits, interruption tactics, rotations of leaders, and so on. Green party activities and procedures
can serve as a useful model here?.
Apart from the real dangers of co-option and state collaboration, there are other intertwined
objections standardly made to attempting political roads to anarchism and socialism. One objection
is that any attempt to use the state 'unavoidably reproduces all the features of that institution', such
as exploitation by a ruling or elite minority, and oppression of the majority. Few, it is continued,
will escape from effective control, or, when if offers, be able to resist using the immense powers
of the state. New people, new power-holders, will be transformed (by the usual devices, such as
being made to feel important, given an exaggerated impression of their own worth). It should be
evident that the objection has drifted from "reproduction of the state" to variants of "power
corrupts". Both are overstated, and there are strategies for overcoming both. Sometimes the state
c/tang&y, perhaps for the better; the British state has altered significantly in the last 300 years,
seemingly for better.
Corresponding the power of certain power-holders has declined
significantly, from monarchs and aristocracy down.
2
3
M p.89, see also Goodin in Green Politics.
See Spretnak and Capra 86 for details.
5
Another objection is better focussed. It is that use of the state leads the wrong ways,
through organisation by centralization and hierarchy, and action by legislation. As a result state
routes will not lead to decentralization, distribution of power and wealth downwards, and so on.
While state practices are commonly antipathetic to the sort of constructive objectives indicated, they
are not always, and they do not /Mvg to be. States, like large corporations, can reorganise, and
occasionally attempt to (thus reform and restructuring of bureaucracies, or even of whole public
services, etc.). Although unlikely for reasons indirected, state reorganisation can in principle
proceed by decentralization and devolution of power. Nor is there any lethal objection to achieving
action by legislation, so long as that legislation is not enforced by inadmissible coercive methods.
In sum, what the objection reemphasizes is that considerable care has to be exercised in using the
state, as with any major source of power. Further it shows again that transition can only proceed
so far through the state; the state route only leads so far, after which other means of transport need
to be taken or considered.
There are other ways of amending statist political arrangements than political approaches,
notably legal means, through courts. There is little anarchist precedence for such activity; mostly
anarchists have had heavy legal apparatus used against them. However, once again environmental
practice serves as a valuable exemplar, with many worthwhile results achieved (especially in
American courts) through litigation. In principle there is much that could be achieved in this way,
in state and international courts, to reduce the power of states and their instrumentalities. For
example, in Australia there are very many statues and laws which unjustifiably limit freedoms and
restrict individual and group action: examples include not only little activated but appalling
legislation on sedition, assembly, and similar, but a sweeping range of actively used and
opportunistically exploited legislation concerning defamation and freedom of speech, victimless
crimes, paternalism, restrictive trade and banking, sheltered professions, compulsory voting, and
so on, and on.
There is also much room for variation and experimentation within prevailing political and
legal arrangements. For example, applying procedures of statistical democracy to a few greater
range of activities than (adjusted) jury servicing to the organisation of municipal services, public
companies, and so on.
alternative structures and the forest succession model.
A main strategy for transition, emerging from the arguments for the viability of anarchism, is
that of replacement: transition to a new anarchist social order proceeds by replacement or
adaptation 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
<?,
6
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 structural 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 scales, way 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 continue because the area is burnt occasionally, e.g. by
State officers, in which case protection against fire will be required: for with burning (and the
suppression) regimes rainforest seedlings are killed and eucalypt dominance perpetuated.
Furthermore, evolution can be hastened or induced by introducing 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 political entrepreneurs to flourish are excluded in an emerging anarchist society).
Gradually, as the rainforest grows, only scattered giant eucalypts protrude 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 clearfelling the eucalypt forest, replanting with rainforest,
protecting the new forest, and removing eucalyptus regrowth, are wocA more problematic. To be
applied they require either a large workforce or much mechanical power (so it is with violent
revolutions which need a large support basis not generally available in advanced capitalist and state
7
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 can sometimes afford good conditions for
rainforest growth, e.g. plant protection from excessive sun, from occasional frosts, and from
drying winds, better moisture retention conditions, and so on. Similarly anarchist social
organisations may sometimes be able to
the environment afforded by the State to get started.
Thus not all forms of the State are necessarily equally inimical, and some may provide much more
favourable conditions for the development of anarchist social organisation than others.^
The forest model (together with preceding arguments) helps to illustrate why violent and
catastrophic methods are not congruent witty the goals of an anarchist society and why there is an
intimate connection between these goals and a strong preference for nonmilitaristic and non-violent
methods of achieving change. Replacement involves a (normally gradual) process of developing
alternative institutions and forms of social organisation and the growth of the new form of society
within the old, and is not a catastrophic single event conceived of as outside the normal order of
things, and for whose advent all other action for change is held suspended. And just as methods
of change such as clearfelling are likely to perpetuate the eucalypt cycle and are unlikely to favour
the development of the rainforest, so the use of catastrophic and especially militaristic methods is
likely to perpetuate an authoritarian social order and unlikely to favour the development of a co
operative, non-violent and non-coercive one.
* applying the forest succession model.
How to apply the model is not difficult to appreciate at least in broad outline. As well 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 lifestyles built on self-management and mutual aid.$ The seeds of anarchism should be
broadcast or planted, anarchist (non-Statist) arrangements instituted or strengthened, and efforts
made to replace or modify vulnerable Statist arrangements, e.g. by democratisation 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. Others are slightly less
familiar: avoidance of State influence by arrangements beyond State reach such as costless (or
alternative currency) interchanges of goods and services, barter, black-green economies, and so
on, action directed at removing decision-making from State departments, such as forest services,
and into citizen hands, and ultimately, to decentralized interested communities. In this sort of way,
4
5
This has an important bearing on strategies for achieving change: see D. Altman, ReAearsaAs ybr CAange,
Fontana, Melbourne. 1980.
As sketched in some of the material already cited, for example, Routley, p.284 ff.,SM.
8
worthwhile State arrangements can be replaced, and power can be progressively transferred from
the State, and returned to the communities and to people more directly involved.
Formation of networks of anarchistic communities and neighbourhoods, functioning within
the interstices of the state and state bureaucracies, would represent a significant stage in
succession. Something like this is beginning to develop in Australia (by contrast with the USA
where the commune movement appears to have gone into decline).^
3. Types of individual and small group actions
While strategies proceeding through movements are social in character, a variety of
individna/ action can also be highly effective if widely enough separately undertaken. Naturally if
there is some solidarity, some coordination of individuals, such action will be both fostered and
enhanced. Witness the practice of early Christians, which combined individual action and
consciousness change, within a support and solidarity network. But Christianity misleadingly
promised more than anarchism and environmentalism can, not merely future better lives, but after
lives in splendour, a bogus transcendentalism which however was, and still is, widely believed, a
damaging transcendentalism too, in that satisfactory lives in real space-time can be foregone, in
favour of virtual after-lives.
*
fran-y/br/nano/M. There are a range of proposals for comprehensive personal
change, but they all share fundamentals, which are personal improvement and enhanced personal
relationships. It is because of these shared fundamentals that religious change, such as that offered
under new Testament Christianity shades into the quasi-spiritualism of sects linked to Deep
Ecology (such as Council of All-Beings, Homage to Gaia, Earth Empowerment, etc.) which in
tum shades into Californian personal therapy fashions. Proposals for transformation do not
however have to hang^ out on the fringes of religion; hardheads like Passmore (in direct descent^
from 18th century sympathy-based ethics) have emphasized both personal relationships, love for
others, and moral improvement, better adherence to tested moral principles. Put together, these
individual changes would lead us, it is optimistically imagined, out of the environmental morass
and to a socially and environmentally better world. While it is not that simple, while the problems
lie deeper, some thought it was simpler still. Either the Beatles in their famous lines 'All you need
is love', reflecting an extremely popular sentiment, only saw one part of what was recognised, or
they erroneously supposed that part would yield the remainder. Love slobs are one sort of
counterexample; they achieve love and just wallow in that, not seeking any sort of improvement,
moral or other.
Let us not diminish the relevance of these proposals: the more rounded people among the
thin paper-mache economic and political men focussed only upon maximizing their own self-
interested utility in material consumer goods the better, the better for many concerns, including no
6
Refs
9
doubt prospects for anarchism. But let us not delude ourselves that herein lies the way out or
forward. Many of those proposals have been around for rather long time, and suggested again and
again, with no conspicuous results. A lot of it is to found in Spinoza, whence it has percolated
through both to Deep Ecology and Freudian therapy. The Deep Ecological emphasis on self
realisation goes back at leas a century, to Humboldt and Mill, with Self already expanded in
German and British idealists. German and British industrial development did not lose a beat.
A mental revolution, in some people's minds, is no doubt essential for a properly planned
revolution. But mental transformations have to be translated into action, to practices that make a
material difference. And consciousness transformations may not translate into appropriate action;
many such transformations are politically very conservative, and lead to no relevant action or effort
for structural change.
Much of what is said of consciousness transformation applies also to
*
a route to change recommended by reformers and radicals for at least a century, from
Mill through Bookchin. Education, appropriately undertaken, can amend ideology, change
consciousness. But at its best it is very slow in operation, very partial because it has to compete
against other sources of propaganda (such as media, dominant society, etc.). And it is more likely
to carry dominant messages, and reinforce dominant attitudes. There is a major problem in getting
alternative messages appropriately delivered and action undertaken.
* c^pting oat (so far as this is possible or even now possible).
To be effective, this has to be focussed, not merely a dropping out parasitic on the state system. It
has to be focussed in way^which challenge the state systems, it inevitability, decidability, etc., in
Redirect
*-F
ways which withdraw contributions to it and ^.... activity elsewhere^creating an atwojpaere, of
expectation and of belief (perhaps even if false). .
If you or your group produce the impression that there is going to be a continuing recession
or a revolution, if your spread the conviction that there is widespread dissatisfaction, that society is
sick or rotten to the core and is about to decline further or collapse, then you are taking a
significant step towards such outcomes, towards decline or fall? If these efforts to develop an
atmosphere are widely orchestrated then they are likely to be so much the more effective. It is
appreciated in business and advertising circles how much psychological atmosphere counts; a
Pint
,
*
Al
r
climate of confidence is
important ^for climbing out of a recession. A climate of
revolutionary expectation can set the scene for revolution events.
While it is dishonest to create an impression of imminent decline and disaster knowing full
well that such scenarios are utterly unlikely, informed greens and anarchists are not in any such
compromised situation. Environmental decline, continuing extensive unemployment, persisting
7
To adapt Joll p.222.
v /s
10
periodic recession, and in due course collapse, are likely futures under present capitalist state
trajectories.
Anarchists can assist in producing an atmosphere of gloom and depression and pessimism
about capitalist economic circumstances and prospects. But they will aim to generate a quite
different impression of the stability of capitalistic arrangements.
4. Widening operations to exceed standard political and legal arrangements.
Unorthodox political ways and means, a prominent part of historical anarchist activity, are
much more extensive than political textbooks would suggest (or have impressionable readers
believe). These have been restored to contemporary prominence through civil disobedience
practices, and peace and environmental actions. Methods have also been modified (for instance to
exclude pointless personal violence) and substantially expanded. Practical tactics include protests,
occupations, blockades, parades demonstrations, theatre, civil disobedience, refusals, boycotts,
tax and financial withholdings, plant disobilizations, monkey wrenching, and so on.8 Such
methods, more accurately active applications of those tactics, are grouped under Jirec? action, a
vague appellation sometimes taken or extended to include forms of guerrilla warfare on the one
side and more indirect pressure group activity (lobbying, petitioning, public meetings, etc) on the
other. (Such tactics substantially improve upon, and rechannel, the often misguided and rather illfated "deeds" and "acts of propaganda" of late 19th C anarchists.) Such tactics can be both shorttermed and sustained. Important among sustained practices are resistance movements and
organised refusals (preferably without conspicuous leaders). While individuals can be selectively
picked off, enough people well organised cannot. Mass social actions and Grand Refusals could
constitute significant political happenings. Such strategies can be pursued both for specific
objectives (to preserve a forest here, a building there) and for much more general objectives, up to
and including dislodging an unpopular governing party, or overturning a state.
For more general and dramatic results to be achieved, there are some important preliminary
desiderata to be satisfied. These include
* establishment of a movement, to carry out actions, and subsequently to participate in the
supersession of the state.
* a certain amount of planning, of how to proceed, to direct limited resources. Subsequently, as
supersession of the state becomes a live issue, much planning of the transition and of post-state
arrangements is important, if a successful outcome, or even a good attempt, is to be achieved.
Proper preparation is critical. Once again, planning and organisation of anarchist activity is
certainly not excluded, in revolutionary movements or elsewhere. The rival spontaneity view, still
fashionable in anarchist circles, is underpinned by a confused picture of freedom;^ is inconsistent
8
9
See Coover et al, B. Martin, Changing t/te %bgs, G Sharp.
Duly criticised in "Hot immigration".
11
with the coupled congruence doctrine where end-states are prefigured; and issues in poor decision
making, choice deliberately uninformed by available information. But naturally planning is not,
and cannot be, total; and it should not be too inflexible, but allow for contingencies, extraordinary
happenings, even spontaneous redirection (e.g. though a range of flexible ranked options).
Initiating an anarchist movement virtually from a zero base (the present situation in most
developed states), would be a slow difficult and no doubt frustrating task. Fortunately there are
attractive alternatives, such as integration with already effective movements, notably those already
engaged and experienced in direct action.
Declared or self-conscious anarchists are now few in number, and lacking in power.
Contemporary anarchists live like the counterculture did, around the margins or in the interstices of
contemporary dominant statist societies, rarely seen in the boardrooms of top companies or at the
clubs of power brokers. Accordingly, transitions to anarchism are most unlikely to proceed at all
directly, either upwards by democratic or popular procedures or downwards through constitutional
procedures invoked by controlling elites. Anarchist strategies, in order to work, will need to be
indirect and smarter. There is much scope for such strategies.
For direct action along the lines sketched to amount to anything, an anarchist movement with
considerable organisational capabilities is needed. The most promising way of fast-tracking such a
movement is to mobilize already established movements, namely, once again, green and peace and
like movements. The idea, in brief, to form an active anarchist movement within the union of
green and peace movements. It will have to be wif/un these movements. For not all those
affiliated with those loose movements are opposed to statist political arrangements or
anarchistically inclined. Many of the leaders and prominent spokespeople among
environmentalists for instance, have a cosy relationship with state political figures and bureaucrats.
Indeed these days many of these state-intricated people, who may well have genuine environmental
commitments, account themselves green, but they are generally unlikely to consider rocking the
ship of state. Nor do these state people generally participate in extended or vigorous protest
operations, of which there are increasing many. An anarchist movement will link into the
extensive more radical end of green and peace movements. There is already considerable linkage,
and considerable scope for expansion of linkage. Many radical greens are vaguely aware of the
anarchist character of several of their own proposals for change.
More radical greens are mostly already aware of the extent of state involvement in
environmental degradation, and of state connections with, and encouragement of, large
corporations engaged in environmentally destructive enterprises. Nor will they be long bought off
by (what threatens to split the green movement) attempts at reconciliation, most recently under the
ambiguous banner of "sustainable development". It is becoming clear to more radical greens that
this normally means sustaining economic development, that is capitalistic business and
macroeconomic growth largely as usual, not sustaining the already developed environmental
heritage. More radical peace activists are even more keenly aware of the intrication of states in
12
activities hostile to peace such as military activity, weapons production, support of repressive
states and client army/armies funding of counter-insurgency, terrorist and destabilization operators,
and so on. There is evidently much common ground to build upon, from which to organise.
Correladvely, mobilization through loose green and peace movements effects the character of
the activated anarchism, shaping and limiting its forms. It will be an ecosocial anarchism of pacific
slant: ESP anarchism for short (for ecosociopacific anarchism). There is no similar prospect of
mobilizing most other forms of anarchism, in particular robustly individualistic varieties. For the
natural allies of the latter varieties, economic rationalist and libertarianians are overwhelmingly
committed to a minimalistic state to guarantee, coercively, the fundamentals of market capitalism
(private property, constitu^onal and contract law, etc.).
Until a movement is organised there is little chance of a satisfactory revolution. While a few
people may be able to gain control, briefly, of some states, without a larger movement requisite
restructuring of state functions cannot be carried through.
A viable anarchism further supposes some alternative fairly detailed organisational and social
arrangements. If such a system is to come to pass and to persist, then its prospects are
exceedingly poor if it is a do-nothing set of arrangements spontaneously arising out of a
revolution. But the state as it grows tends to undermine or eliminate such alternative arrangements;
and simultaneously people come more and more to expect the government to do what they might
formerly have done, or banded together to do, themselves. The state again proceeds, like other
persistent systems and ecosystems, to establish conditions for its own survival: to be needed for
social and even individual activities.
Formation q/ movements wMwn movements.
There is presently very little in the way of organised anarchist activity anywhere in the
world, and no real movements. There is, for instance, Liberty Foundation in USA which supports
anarchist productions, but it does not discriminate in what it supports between anarchism and
minimal statism and economic rationalism. There are other organisations that do or could play a
creative role in anarchist movements (such as Black Rose publicadons in Montreal, and the small
Institute of Social Ecology in Vermont). As it takes some time, and much effort, to establish a
viable movement, the situation for anarchistic change may look bleak. But there is no reason why
anarchism need form an independent movement; it can hitch to already established movements.
There are obvious movements, of very sympathetic character, to join (this is no inHitration or
annexation): namely the green movement and the peace movement. In both these overlapping
movements there is wide appreciation that states themselves are major sources of the issues they
are concerned with; for states are the main cause of wars, major participants in nuclear industries,
major sources of the issues they are concerned with; for states are the main cause of wars, major
participants in nuclear industries, major proponents of economic growth and its concomitant
pollution and waste. (Despite the definite descriptions, these "movement" are really loose
A
13
c
coalitions, often not even organised in one group in individual countries.) Development of
anarchist groundswells within green organisations and among green sympathizers appears
particularly promising. For many greens are beginning to recognise that they are getting nowhere
much, or even going backwards, through state support and state-directed appeals and activity.
Turning enough of these doubtful or disillusional greens in positive anarchist directions looks a
genuine prospect, io
There are very great advantages in mobilizing relevant parts of green and peace movements
(
in anarchistic direcdons. Not only are there substantially concordant ideologies and goods; further
the
to these ends lie available and quite well developed. Readily to be drawn upon is much
knowledge of and experience in direct action methods, nonviolent resistance and sabotage, civil
(and state) disobedience, and similar.n While several of these methods and procedures derive
from earlier anarchist, resistance and civil disobedience practices (and many are common currency
of direct oppositional organisations everywhere), they have been brought to a new level of
refinement. Further, some extremely important restrictions are recognised. By contrast with
methods deployed by "illegal" armies, guerillas, insurgents and the like, paramilitary techniques
are out. Such paramilitary organisations are, in any case, operating within the statist paradigm,
normally aiming to replace some state arrangements by others. Methods applied are expected to be
nonviolent, and to inflict no serious damage upon living creatures.^
What is foreshadowed, then, is formation and development, in each region, of a radical
change movement, a radwienf or
Ideal radments in different regions are in
communication and loosely federated. A radment proceeds to undertake both reformist action and
radical action, marginally political and extra-political action, up to and including revolutionary
action. Much action is undertaken by smaller groups within the radment, vands (to choose a heady
combination of "band" and "van").^ Vands undertake specific projects, of a wide variety of sorts.
So far much of their activity has been directed to halting or redirecting specific vandalistic activities
of governments, governmental authorities or government-licensed corporations, such as logging,
whaling, sealing, polluting, transporting hazardous waste,... The simple proposal is that the range
10
11
12
13
Experiences or processes of change involved do not amount to conversion; for there is no adoption of a
faith. Anarchism resembles atheism, a loss of faith, rather than a religion. Rather there is a comingdown-to-earth, a realisation that institutions in which trust and hope had been placed did not warrant those
investments and were without justificatory clothes.
There is now an array of texts documenting methods, explaining how they are applied, how they can be
taught (e.g. through enactments, drama, practice, etc), and so on. See (as above).
There are some controversial procedures, such as the tree spiking used by Earth-Firsters and MonkeyWrenchers. Those may do minor damage to some trees spiked, and serious damage to loggers and
sawmillers who proceed to mill spiked trees, (a careful formulation of admissible procedures and practices
is required.)
Vands may include wanderers and wanderlebeners, but they are not vandals. Environmental vandalism is
one of the major practices they oppose.
14
of vand activity should be expanded, to include revolutionary action. Such action would include
counter-option, taking over the administrations of organisations that are being specifically
combated or targeted. Experience could be gained on organisations like universities, though the
ultimate target is naturally the state.
Designing a s/nari revo/afton.'
and revo/MZfonary achion.
If the state were justified, if it had a moral right to be there, the action, revolutionary or
other, by ethically guided anarchists to dislodge or remove it would be excluded. But it is not. So
action, including revolutionary action against it, is not thereby excluded.
Perhaps the richest literature on rapid transformation of society, on revolution, falls within
the orbit of marxism. There is much to be learnt from this literature, and much from it can be
adopted. Some of the elements for textual adaptation are simple. Replace 'the working class' or
'workers' appropriately (unfortunately the replacement is not uniform). For example, substitute
'people's councils' for 'workers councils'; replace 'vanguard class' by 'revolutionary coalition',
etc. Not only does marxism presume a vanguard class; more difficult it presumes violence as an
inevitable component of revolutionary action. Here the direct and other action methods already
alluded to substitute for marxist methods.
But while much can be learnt form Marxist socialists, there are fundamental differences as to
the point and character of revolution. While the Marxist objective is to siege power and use it, the
anarchist objective is not to seize power, and then remove it or relinquish it, a dubious and risky
indirect route, but rather to neutralize and remove power directly.
There are said to be classic problems confronting any revolutionary movement. One of these
is the alleged stability of states, in the West at least. This stability, which does not extend far east,
or even into Central Europe, is considerably exaggerated; belief in this stability, which was shaken
by the events in Paris in 1968, can be undermined, by an appropriate subversive campaign, so that
belief no longer constitutes such an intellectual obstacle to revolutionary activity. Another classic
problem turns upon the issue of revolutionary organisation. Some of these organisation^ problems,
practices in green and peace movements, especially in groups like Greenpeace, have already
effectively solved.[detail].
Z/te ZransMon.
Like stages before the transition, stages q/fer transitions to post-state societies will not be
easy. There is a commonplace anarchist sentiment that removal of the state, its burden and
oppressiveness, a real incubus, will release an enormous amount of energy, with great scope for
spontaneity, fulfilment of human potentialities, and so on. Although this sentiment is widely
reiterated, very little evidence for the sentiment is ever assembled. My own sentiment is that the
commonplace sentiment, and what is taken to ensue from it, is largely moonshine, because, for
one thing, there is a countermodel that is at least as plausible. Those who are released from an
15
immense burden, or very hard oppressive forced labour, simply stop, relax and do very little, or
little more than is necessary for life and limb.
For similar reasons the common anarchist proposition that productivity will rise enormously
after the state is stripped away is very doubtful. If the state is like some sort of slave-driver, post
state productivity will presumably fall. The flood of goods and the end of scarcity, with the
demise of the state and its well-published appropriation of the surplus, looks unlikely (not to say
environmentally undesirable because the impact of the "goods"). Wishful thinking appears to have
gained control in much anarchist literature. There are other important reasons why parts of post
state productivity will decline considerably. Much too much of present production, fostered by the
state, involves erosion of biological capital, and should be wound down accordingly, and
alternatives sought.
In a similar way, anarchists often look far too optimistic about the rapid regeneration of
supportative societies destroyed by, and through machinations of the state. Some of those
supportative arrangements, developed in ages of suppression are gone, perhaps forever; others
will take much tiwg to repair. Social healing is sometimes very slow.
As with post-war reconstruction, living and social arrangements could be very difficult for
some for some considerable time. There will need to be, for instance,
* intermediate support structures put in place to ease the transition for some;
* much flexibility, and some preparedness to experiment to see what works;
* vigilance to ensure that old forces of state do not remerge on the back of social discontent.
Intelligent anarchist arrangements will have flexible plans, enabling anticipation of main problem
areas and sensitive coping with them.
5. External interference
Chapter 11
FEASIBLE ANARCHIST CONTRIBUTIONS
TO
GLOBAL, REGIONAL AND LOCAL PROBLEMS
Heavy criticisms of anarchism, driving in strongly from socialist and marxist quarters,
include these: that anarchism offers no worthwhile practice for and offers no useful
contributions far coping with global problems^ meaning problems in present social and political
conditions (not usually problems concerning world environments). Among the problems
alluded to, which it is alleged anarchism does not and cannot address, are human proverty,
human malnutrition, inequitable distribution of resources, human (over-)population, and so on.
Granted, there are great many problems, many of them getting worse rapidly. Though
anarchist arrangements played little or no part in producing these problems — many of them
o
developing and getting out of control under free-enterprise capitalist and state-socialist
arrangements — it is sometimes outrageously claimed that anarchism should be able to deal
successfully with an array of these problems. To add to the insult, it is said to fail as a theory
because it is unable to do so. Why on earth should anarchism be presumed to do this? One
critic endowed with this level of 'gall' (one A. Wertheimer)
contends that anarchism is unable to successfully deal with four
presently existing world social conditions. These are: 1) that "the
population of the earth is (perhaps) too large, but increasing at a
rapid rate with no prospect for a serious reduction"; 2) that "in much
of the world, basic human needs are not being satisfied"; 3) that "the
world's natural and human resources are not evenly distributed
across the globe"; and finally 4) that "the present level of subsistence
is based on a high level of social and economic interdependence
among various regions of the world and within the regions
themselves". In addition [5)J... anarchism is unable to cope with
conflicts between individual self-interest and social needs,
particularly as relates to ... defense (Clark p.142).
The short response is, So what? Anarchism is not really saddled with the global legacies
of p^archist practice. A longer response begins thus:- Firstly, insofar as these conditions
constitute problems ("condition " 3) is more a "fact" than a "problem"), no political theory is
coping successfully, only an all-conquering ideology would pretend to be able to cope.
Democratic capitalism has had (important isolated pockets excepted) little impact in limiting
India's gross population; Maoist socialism^' has de^ only a little better in China. Part of the
problem in almost all such overpopulated regions lies in getting the problem recognised as a
problem, and making appropriate adjustments; as with education and adjustment concerning the
hazards of pollution and smoking, this is largely because of remiss state practice. Part of the
problem, the present resolutions will have ethically inadmissible outcomes or by-products.
—------------ .------------------ ——___
2
Only for the future is there some glimmer of hope, but not under present archist arrangements.
Secondly, prospects of success for anarchism are primarily regional, not global. But a region
can hardly be expected to handle, rather than make limited contributions towards, world
problems. Suppose, for instance, Niue became (or reverted to) an anarchist society, a
successful one locally. It would be no detraction from its local success that it made no impact
upon demilitarizing the USA or in halting the world's resource drain te thereto, or that its
success was (through standard US media practice) scarcely known about there.
*
iMMM. As we have already noticed, it is often asserted that anarchism cannot work
in regions of large populations or with high population densities. That anarchy only has
prospects of success in small, and perhaps technologically unsophisticated, communities is a
widely espoused thesis? These kinds of assertion have already been criticised.
What do not work are stock archist procedures, e.g. expanding \m out-of-touch
bureaucracy. Poly-archic arrangements cannot handle tough decisions. By contrast, sortition
allows them to be taken (Burgheim). This is important as wide range of decisions: transport
systems, restructuring urban systems, and so on, as well as population and immigration
policies. As there is a range of lobbies (ethnics, etc.) in favour of population increase: hard for
party systems to ignor these lobbies, because of voting system.
* Deliberate social reorganisation, which undercuts reasons for large families, namely old-age
care, cheap labour in fields, etc. (Seeams as successor (technology here)?
* Scarcity is re/aftw to wants and presumed needs. Similarly abundance: it depends
on extent to which materialism, consumerism, ete, prevail. When wants are large, perhaps
insatiable, there will always be scarcity. Wants are not a given; needs, through culturally
dependent, can be. Whan needs are set high (e.g. to include domestic ref^rgeaati^s), then too
there will be scarcity for the foreseeable future?
No doubt there is a rough band of minimal sustenance and shelter requirement for keeping
humans (why are we back to this) alive, for bare sustenance. Even if they could be met,
satisfactory lives would not result.
* Creation of needs (Marx). Industrial revolution under capitalism aggravated
of scarcity
and toil.
* Anarchists have a bad track-record on scarcity. They have tended to assume abundance. A
vast increase once the shades of the state are removed.
A
Following Kropotkin's proposals they have taken for granted enormous productivity from
labour-intensive garden plots, a sort of anarchist green revolution, neglecting the extensive
*
3
4
Even so, oneway to resolve/is by building up from local and regional solutions. Compare
nuclear freedom, peace, etc.(
Thus both sympathetic and unsympathetic commentators; Taylor, Wertheimer etc.
n frequently claimed that we know more or less how to meet population problems. Only
political structures and vested interests stand in way of doing so. But it is not quite that simple
and easy.
Arguments that wants/needs distinction cannot be drawn.
//'
3
inputs required to make this feasible, (water, energy, manure, pesticides, etc.). [Thus e.g. Clark
p.148.)
* There are some sharp limits on the extent of growth to cater for human populations and their
"needs". An important limitation can be seen by tracking energy, which is limited, more
abundant production of which encounters other limits (pollution, nasty works production, etc.)
D&triZwHon,
q/T&Kmrcgs.
. 4.
* Necessity is regularly exaggerated. Often this done to enable capitalist routes to be taken,
access to foreign business provided etc.
*
'Necessity
becomes part of imperialistic exploitation. Contrast the equally unsatisfactory
Marxist line: distribution is one with production. What is required is a change in technological
systems and productive relations. Undesirable patterns of production result in maldistribution.
'... the entire problematic of "redistribution" is bared jn the questionable assumption of the
feasibility of seeking a solution to the problem while continuing a technological system
founded ^n dependency and disproperti%s in economic power
*
(Clark p.154).
* The Aid record of present liberal democratic states is dismal.
* As regards more basic provisioning, mutual aid through free federation. Example of
Spanish collective ((^ebal ref 19 pp. 184-5).
Argument that anarchist approach could succeed, from socio-psychological assumption:
'unless humans develop patterns of life and values based on mutual aid at level of small groups
and local communities, one cannot expect them to go very far in the practice of mutual aid at
any other level of social organisation
*
(Clark p.154).
But really heeds the convert: when have no developed, can be suspected to deliver aid.
Present arrangement for human living are not made on the basis of
quality of life for the livers, but all too often to suit the needs of industry J returns to capitalism,
etc. The results are everywhere conspicuous, especially in contemporary cities — which
characteristically dominate whole regions.
Many major local problems derive from the environmental states and living conditions of
cities. An anarchist resolution involves restructuring cities. This would include development
of network cities and restoration of community.
4. Appendix:
ON SELECTION OF COMMITTEES
For how committees should be comprised, look at what they are supposed to accomplish, what
sorts of decisions deliver, and so on.
For example, the basis of decision for allocating public money has to be: 'attempting to balance
all legitimate claims on the basis of need and public benefit in accordance with recognised
moral values and principles'.^
Evidently such committees should not be composed of
1. members of competing constitutions seeking funds (i.e. anti-model is premiers conference)
2. power traders (i.e. anti-model is /...... or typical bureaucratic committee).
What appears to be required are candidates who are
* impartial (without chauvinistic or other prejudices)
* varied in evolutionary complex claims
* informed of.... moral values and principles, and committed to some such.
H
<3-.
After that try statically for spread of attitudes from conservative to radical.
Such committees according directly violate (Burheim) relevant interests criteria. In general
however for lower level committees relevance criteria obtain.
5. Demanarchoid ecodesigns for Australia
Chapter 5.1
THE EMERGING CHARACTER OF ANARCHISM:
VARIETIES AND OPTIONS
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 no doubt on voluntary co
operation and direct democracy.
The society which emerges may be much as Bakunin and Kropotkin sometimes pictured
it, or it may not. It may well be based on smaller-scale decentralised communities: for
otherwise such arrangements as community replacements of State welfare arrangements,
control of their environment, removal of Prisoners" Dilemmas, and participatory democracy,
will work less satisfactorily. Communities may well be federated and control will be bottomup, not merely by representation and subject to a downward system of command. Within each
community there will, under such social anarchism, not be great discrepancies in the
distribution of wealth and property, and no highly concentrated economic power. Under social
anarchism, a community will be a rather equalitarian group, sharing in much that is
communally owned or not owned at all.
While theoretical arguments help outline the general shape of social and also economic
arrangements, they are very far from determining them completely; they offer no detailed
blueprint. Accordingly what emerges is not a particular from of anarchism, for instance
anarchist communism, but a more experimental and
anarchism, such as was broadly
instituted in the Spanish collectives.
There are several recognised varieties of anarchism, among the more common:
individualistic anarchisms, anarcho-capitalisms, anarcho-communisms, mutualisms, anarchosyndicalisms, libertarian socialisms, social anarchisms, and now eco-anarchisms.
These
varieties are not particularly well-characterised. They are by no means at all exclusive. They
certainly do not exhaust the interesting possibilities. So far indeed a satisfactory classification
is lacking. Usually something of a ragbag is offered: textbooks single out a very few varieties,
and look at them. Invariably they leave out important varieties.
2
But it is not difficult to discern some of the more independent dimensions^ along which
variation occurs, and which accordingly are relevant to an improved multi-dimensional tabular
classification:
Part-w/to/e dimension:
atomism pole O
<—
individual social---------- communal
—O total holism
This is a most important dimension of variation among organisational arrangements (for
analysis see SM). It accounts for a major bifurcation between European anarchisms, which tend
to be socially oriented, and American anarchisms, which are usually highly individualistic
(religious communities and some European transplants excepted). For markedly holistic
arrangements to persist, some strong ideological relational glue appears required, such as an
immersing spiritual ideology.
Property spectrum:
Although this can be compressed into two dimensional form, it is better presented three
dimensionally as follows:
full
O <individualistic ---privatization
communalistic
-> O full public
(tribal) ownership
diminished
ownership
no ownership
This spectrum evidently connects with the preceding holistic dimension, and both contribute to
what was the old right-left political division (a sort of crude super-position), and to what should
be superseding it, three-colour political spectrum:
(old right) blue
<-
red (old left)
green (new environmental)
and electoral spectrum:
Gronp
fully
O <- bottom up
— democratic — oligopolistic — top down
participatory
O fully
dictatorial
Change proceJnre dimensions:
violent
non-constitutional
constitutional <pacific
1
Some of these "dimensions" are not really linear in the way strictly required. That they are not,
and that they are not fully independent, does not impede a much improved classification.
3
C/tangg wufMfors: vanguard group or class;
<Lumpen-proletariat-workers' syndicates
bottom
"the people"
-----------------business
political
companies
parties
ruling elites
top
greens
alternative
coalitions
And so on. The schema presented are clearly far from exhaustive; nothing has been directly
included concerning distribution methods (market vs command, open vs closed storehouses,
etc.), admissible technology, or work-leisure arrangements, to take three important examples.
More pieces will be picked up as we proceed (the approximate number of dimensions is
computationally small), and some of the rather schematic sketches ventured above, elements of
which should be familiar, will receive some development in what follows.
Once the (n) dimensions are duly elaborated an anarc/tAm can be located and classified
(pigeon-holed in n-space) by placement in each dimension. For instance, the form of anarchism
preferred by me (see SM for an early presentation), is located as follows: it is social (with a
significantly qualified communistic safety net: each according to her or his basic needs), local
market-oriented but non-capitalistic, with diminished ownership, democratic but without
politicians and with alternative electoral arrangements, pacific but not bound by "constitutional"
procedures, utilizing modest safe technologies,.... But it is but one sort never to be instituted
everywhere, from a rich variety of alternatives
There are then MMny anarchisms, a rich variety of different forms, some of them scarcely
investigated or known. That anarchism comprises such a plurality has proved puzzling to those
(for example of one name-one thing persuasion) who assumed it must be a single ideology,
either individual or collective,.... Indeed the pluralist character of anarchism has led even more
apparently sympathetic critics, to 'wonder whether anarchism is really an ideology at all, or
merely a jumble of beliefs ...' (M. p.3). Of course the impression that anarchism 'is amorphous
and full of paradoxes and contradictions' is marvellously assisted by conflating degenarchism
with anarchism, chaos with order, and by combining the variant forms, individualism with
socialism and communism.
By properly regarding anarchism as a sheaf of overlapping
positions assembled around a core characterisation, a standard model for pluralism, the
problematic elements of anarchism as an ideology disappear. No doubt it is not an ideology
like Marxism, but then Marxism is atypical in its set of paradigmatic texts, concentrated in the
works of the master. Other ideologies such as liberalism or environmentalism afford better
comparisons. While anarchism is an ideology (in both good and bad senses), it is not really a
movement. There is not, anywhere really, such a movement, in the way there have been a
succession of liberation movements or there is a green movement and within it a deep ecology
movement.
4
As anarchisms are plural, so by similar arguments are green, and deep-green, anarchisms.
Certainly green effect a select among their cluse of anarchism; it excludes, for example, the run
of individualistic anarchisms peddial in USA, because these admit much anti-environmental
activity, manifested for instance through "externalities" and market failure (some of these could
be very pale green). But selection does not, even for deep-green tend to a singleton, but still to
a wide pluralism.
These pluralisms are not merely descriptive, but normative. Insofar as any anarchism is
duly based on removal of unacceptable means, it should be
* pluralistic, because for example it cannot impose a single formulation on communities who
want to organise differently than its preferred way.
It should also be
* non-violent. Terrorist forms of anarchism are strictly incompatible with broad-based non
coercion. For terrorism typically involves coercion, stand-over tactics, and the like.2
That is, there is a doublish standard on vio/encg: It is alright to apply violence against state
(and others) while not alright to have coercive state, which applies violence. No doubt this can
be justified through
namely it is OK for me to do violence to you bot not OK for you to
apply violence to me. Accordingly a
conc/MMon is: A moral anarchism will not be a
form committed to violence (except unavoidable forms etc.).
Such pluralism does not enjoy a strong historic track-record, and does not go unopposed.
Standard anarchist positions, sketching of which was mainly a nineteenth century preoccupation
(but extending into twentieth century science fiction and utopian literature), shied away from
pluralism in the direction of monistic forms, towards insistence upon particular structure,
organisation and distributional methods. Such monistic rigidity led to much intense, often
fruitless discussion and friction between anarchists committed to different arrangements.
Certainly there was a doctrine of spontaneity — according to which in a state-overthrowing
revolution (in the very heat of the revolution!) the masses world spontaneously decide upon
new arrangements — which makes it appear that any structures at all were open for
consideration; but it was also assumed that certain arrangements would be selected, towards
which active anarchists would provide guidance.
It is not difficult to indicate some of the broad features of emergent arrangements features
that flow from the character of anarchism. But anarchists, over-attracted like others to monistic
schemes, have regularly attempted to advance their own schemes, introducing many further
postulates, that reach far beyond what flows from the basic characterisation, and that need not
2
There are serious pro&Anw for anarchism that accept coercive methods: why not aiso
accept the state then? Such positions tend to be forced back towards an organised
individualism.
But how then do they stop voluntary organisation arising (legitimately)?
5
be adopted by genuine anarchistics (some further examples of optional and rejectable extras
from a recent manifesto: ... direct democracy, destruction of all hierarchies, maximization of
freedom, total Revolution, no ends-means distinction, no leaders, optimism about an anarchist
future,...).
Because of the expansive pluralism of anarchism, it overlaps many other ideologies,
indeed virtually all that do not include as a theme unmitigated commitment to a state or like
central authority. Thus while anarchism excludes fascism and is incompatible with state
capitalism, anarchism overlaps liberalism, democracy, and even Marxism, since Marxism
affords a long-term anarchism. There has been much confusion about these interrelations.
Take democracy. Anarchism does not entail democracy, as is sometimes claimed. Advice of a
select minority or of a single sage could regularly be adopted, though the advice did not reflect
the will of the people and its source was not elected or appointed by the people. Nor does
anarchism entail undemocratic procedures. There are, in the plurality, democratic forms, of
various sorts, and undemocratic forms. Democratic forms may have a better prospect of
enabling genuine democracy than life under the state. For as some have argued, 'both the
nation state and electoral democracy are inadequate as vehicles for democracy under modern
conditions' (Bumheim p.218).
Is its goal individual freedom or communal solidarity? Sometimes one, sometimes the
other, sometimes neither, sometimes both (a typical four-valued logical structure). A pluralistic
anarchism offers several different sorts of communities, not just one kind: for instance,
independent individuals, perhaps interrelated and organised through contracts, solidaristic
groups working freely together and sharing according to need, and various attractive
intermediaries, where there may be more individual-oriented market arrangements but there are
also safety nets ensuring distribution according to basic needs.
It is not difficult in theory to devise structures that allow a wide variety of kinds. For
example, in simple cases this can be accomplished through regional patterning, as illustrated in
the following
with 6 varieties.
2
1
5
3
6
4
(Such a modelling for political pluralism is further elaborated in UT.) The brief interlude of
anarchism in Spain afforded a small-scale example of regional patterning at work
The kinds of anarchistic societies are bound to be of very variable quality, both
theoretically and in practice. Some will only work with rather special sorts of people, for
instance certain communes with members with strong religious or ideological commitments;
some will not succeed at all. Some verge on incoherence, for instance those against coercive
organisation that approve group terrorist tactics. But while some kinds of anarchism are
entangled in serious problems, others are not. Anarchists generally have no obligation to
6
defend defective kinds; yet many criticisms of anarchism are directed at just such defective
forms.
Although there is a rich variety of anarchistic end-states (virtually uninstantiated
possibilities), there are same common or overlapping organisational and structural features.
Such family-resemblance features are what hold the plurality together, and include noncoercive
versions of those arrangements essential to a functioning society: for instance, broad features of
arrangements for production and distribution, for arbitration and reconciliation, and so on, and
on. But although each such anarchist society will have some such organizational features, they
will differ in detail. For example, a main distributional feature of a simple communist society
may comprise a common storehouse from which members take according to need, whereas in
individualist societies distribution will normally proceed through some sort of exchange in
market systems. More generally different types of anarchism will offer different economic
theories. Those with stronger individualistic component will tend to rely upon not merely
market or allied exchange arrangements, but upon capitalistic organisation. The type of
anarchism favoured here strikes an intermediate route: markets without capitalism.
How is such complex organisation to be achieved without a state? Does not such
organisation and government require a state? To remove that familiar assumption and
associated blockages — encouraged by too much life under states and no experience of
alternatives - take a wider look around. Look at how many activities and procedures are
organised without states or essential participation of states. By voluntary arrangements.
Prominent examples are again sporting organisations, labour unions and business corporations
of various sorts. In short, organisation can be accomplished through a range of appropriate
institutions.
Such examples also provide the appropriate key unlocking the door as to how more
extensive organisation can be achieved in the absence of the state, namely through appropriate
institutions. The state dissolves into functioning components, a set of appropriate institutions,
and at bottom into its relevant minimization. It fragments into compartments — in two
interconnected ways: into regional parts and into capacities, functional parts.
There are other valuable clues to stateless reorganisation. What happens within the more
self-regulating state can also happen without it. As Gramsci emphasized,
the ability to govern without overt coercion depends largely on the ability
of those in power to exploit systems of belief that the larger population
shares. The nature of that system of belief is to some extent determinable
by policy makers, since in the modern state they possess a significant
ability to propagandize for their view. Yet.... (p.63).
Recent empirical investigations tend to yield similar results. People tend to follow rules and
obey laws they regard as moral or otherwise satisfactory. There are important messages for
anarchistic organisation here also, for arrangements without coercion, overt or other.
7
Anarchistic rules will try to go with the prevailing flow, and will only vary (as over vindictive
punishment) where an evidently satisfactory justification can be given. More generally, smarter
anarchistic arrangements will aim to include desirable self-regulating systems, such as small-
scale markets.
Though there are many different strands that can be interwoven through the pluralistic
out-fall from the basic characterisation, there are some broad tendencies of anarchistic
arrangement which include:
* reliance on self-regulatory methods of organisation that require little or no intervention, as
opposed to highly regulated procedures, perhaps tending towards centralism or paternalism.
This is one reason why markets are often favoured, analogues of centralised control and
coercive legal systems are not.
* emphasis on voluntary methods, in place of imposed methods — coercive methods are of
course excluded by virtue of basic characterisation. Certainly de facto power may remain, but it
will be without justification.
* favouring of decentralisation and deconcentration rather than centralised or concentrated
structures.
That does not imply there can be no downward relations. Of course under federal arrangements
there will be, and sideways natural relations as well (a full control system).
* discouragement of empowerment, encouragement of depowerment.
* opposition to oppression is a corollary.
There are too many alternatives in the pluralistic basket to look at all of them. Let us
consider only some of them, with however preferred features. (An example that does not rank
highly and will not be further assessed is Stimer's individualism.) Anarchistic societies of any
complexity will typically consist of a network of decentralised organisations, or a federation of
these (etc.). The organisations will thus be regional, but beyond that set up according to issue,
role or function.
Thus they will include what might well be accounted gcorggiowuZ
/hnctiona/iym. Many of the stock features of political functionalism, as decentralised, will
accordingly recur, separation of powers, tailoring of administration to need, for instance. The
organisations will furthermore be noncoercive; no individual or group will be forced to join.
Typically they will be voluntary arrangements.
A critical question concerns how these organisations, substituting for the operation of
state, are to be controlled, regulated, and so on. In much favoured democratic structures, such
as electoral bureaucracies, control is usually weak and remarkably mJirgct. A populace weakly
selects a central parliament, which exercises through other bureaucratic bodies some control of
state organisations. A full anarchism is obliged to dissolve or substitute for central parliaments.
It has a obvious option, namely direct democratic control of state-substituting organisations. A
simple way of achieving this is through sortition: the membership of the governing component
of each organisation is chosen randomly from those qualified of the regional community who
volunteer to be on it. In some cases volunteers may require accessible qualifications (e.g.
8
having served before at a lower level), and avoid disqualifications (e.g. having acquired a
disqualifying record).^ Where the community decides that certain categories of people should
be represented, for instance disabled, minorities, and so forth, then it is a matter of arranging
random selection of the required fraction of group numbers from these categories. This style of
statistical democracy dates back at least to original democracies of Greek city states where
public officials were sometimes selected by lot (it is discussed under democracy in Aristotle's
Po/t/fc^). Nowadays it is called Je/narchy (a term with an unfortunate prior meaning); here in
its anarchistic form it will be alluded to under the neologism JewMwiarc/ty.
Such demanarchy has the immediate virtue of removing a most expensive duplication,
government ministers and their departmental counterparts (e.g. finance ministers and
corresponding appointed treasury officials). Indeed, the whole charade of central parliamentary
government, ministers and hordes of minders, governments and replicating opposition teams, is
duly removed - as it has to be under non-centralization. Such parliamentary centres are
eliminated; insofar as anything replaces them, it is the dispersed community, itself no centre,
which is directly linked to functional organisation.
Gone with the centre, or seriously reduced, are several standard political worries, such as
those of coup or take-over, insurrection or invasion. These usually involve capturing the centre
and its command structure, no longer there to capture (for there is no command or control
structure that could be taken by an invader or with internal insurrection). Community defence
is thereby rendered much easier. Also considerably reduced is the standard problem of who
controls the controllers: partly because control is so diffused, partly because also gone are
legions of soldiers and security forces, and partly because a main controller is the community
(one of the advantages of more direct democracy).
Appropriate institutions take care then of the day-to-day running of community affairs.
But what of major issue decisions, changes of direction or structure?
These can be
accomplished from the bottom, through referenda, propositions and the like (with public
assessment organised through a suitably independent college), rather than in present top-down
inflexible fashion. (Some of these methods, of which there is worthwhile experience in parts of
Europe, are investigated in Wolff.)
A regular early question is how such a stateless structure is to be financed
coercive mechanisms available. Of course if coercive institutions were in place, then the
overall structure could be financed in the sorts of ways that states are presently financed. It
3
People can serve their administrative apprenticeship at iocal or group levels. One when they are
adjudged to have exhibited sufficient competence here are they entitled to nominate for selection
at grander levels. That is, there is a tiered structure for administralive careers, which would no
longer be full-time or working life long. This is one reasonable way of obtained some quality
control in selection of administrators. (Note these/evefy do not provide a vicious hierarchy.)
9
should be observed, in any case, that coercive means are very rarely resorted to (unless the
target is pursued for
reasons, such as crime) in order to obtain revenue payments from
wealthy corporations, firms or individuals, from where in a more equitable community much of
the funding would derive (by contrast with most present states). There are several parts to a
satisfactory answer:* Muc/t less public revenue would be required because the most expensive, most wasteful, and
least productive components of state have been excised. These include the whole apparatus of
central government and electoral politics, and the associated system of coercion, standard
military forces and defence establishment, espionage framework, and police forces, prison
establishment and expensive courts.
*
Nonetheless there remain many institutions to finance,
include smaller substitutes for some of the abolished structures (e.g. social defence
arrangements).
* Many institutions can be largely or entirely self-financing, because like customs and import
organisations they collect revenue, or through fair user-pays principles. Reasonable returns
taken can be channelled to an independent revenue office with no outside spending or
redistribution powers.
* Much, if not all, further social revenue could be raised through resources taxation (adequate
royalties and the like), rental taxes on property or leases, gift and gains taxes, and through
auctions (of previously inherited goods). How this would work depends upon community
arrangements.
Consider for instance anarchistic arrangements where that problematic item, private
property, has not been instituted or has been abolished (as under main examples of European
anarchism, by contrast with North American forms). Valuable durables (roughly, any durable
worth stealing for sale in present systems) will be
instead of bought. Leasehold systems
can be operated very like private property (as the land system in the Australian Capital Territory
reveals) thus facilitating market operations, but they offer significantly better control, for
instance environmentally, they enable the social component of generated wealth to be reflected,
through a rental, and they can be of finite term and to a given individual, so inheritance transfer
is excluded.
In place of the customary land titles office a larger durables office with
subdivision for types of durables would be instituted, with each durable now indelibly marked
or described. Here, as with referenda, computing facilities remove many previous obstacles to
such developments. Organisation can move with newer technologies.
Leasehold arrangements are readily applied to prevent the accumulation ol scarce
property resources, such as urban land, which is a major feature of capitalism. For leases of
scarce commodities can be allocated according to need and ability to use, not merely through a
4
The costs are enormous. A minute component, a singie federai election in Australia, now costs
about $54 million to arrange.
10
historically rooted market distribution as with private property. It is private property, not a
market system of distribution, that is really distinctive of capitalism, since it not only provides a
place to park and increase capital, but it enables transmission of accumulated wealth (e.g.
within a family or dynasty) and control of the means of production.
Where can anarchism work — satisfactively: on stock presumptions of community and
smallness.
Even proponents of the state have allowed that anarchy can work, indeed their position
often depends upon it. The horrible alternative to their, or their friends' or patrons', splendid
state and statecraft, is that a region should lapse into anarchy (a regular fear of the US
administration). Anarchism, that is, works, but works very nastily, like that presumed in "states
of nature", like that many in fact encounter in the encampments, slums or ghettos of terrorist or
other states.
But it now fairly widely appreciated, outside those intellectually incarcerated in the allencompassing realm of states, that anarchism can work rather satisfactorily, and did in may pre
state societies.
Concurrent anthropological findings concerning small communities and collective action
results concerning small collective have demolished the assumption that anarchy is impossible,
either in practice or techno-logically. Since then it has become fashionable to concede that
anarchy is possible but on/y where there is a suitable small community. This sort of anarchimin-the-small is commonly conceded by socialists, but dismissively. While anarchism may, it is
allowed, work well enough in small, isolated or primitive communities, it cannot work in large
industrial or urban societies such as now predominate globally. Anarchism is accordingly but a
marginal possibility, unworthly any longer of much serious political concern. Such dismissals
tend to be strong on claims and unfavourable judgements but excessingly weak on supporting
argument, where socialist handwaving takes over (obviously this widespread phenomenon is
not confined to socialism, or even to political debate). Confidence that anarchism cannot
succeed seems to be largely founded on the erroneous assumption that anarchism cannot supply
any but a primitive organisational structure.
By contrast, a sort of anarchism-in-the-small has been forcefully pursued, with due
argument, by Taylor, who contends that 'anarchy is viable to the extent that the relations
between people are those which are characteristic of community', a small community (-.166).
That is: '... community is nec&wary — if people are to live without the state' (p.3).
The argument to community that Taylor offers reduces a modified Hobbesianism; social
order can only be maintained, without the state and in the small, if the relations between
individuals are those of community (cf. p.2). Insofar as it is detailed, it is a remarkably broken-
down argument. As Taylor himself helps to show, 'the liberal justification of the state' — from
the failure of individuals in a large public to voluntarily cooperated to provide themselves
without requisite collective goods — breaks down at every critical point, in its premisses, in its
1
11
argument, and in its concluding inference to the state was the on/y means of ensuring the supply
of such goods (p.59).
It is this final lacuna onto which Taylor latches. Granting the rest, 'all that can be inferred
is that, if public goods are to be provided,
means must be found of getting people to do
their part in providing them' (p.59). There are, Taylor swiftly finds, three pure methods of
ensuring provision of the goods in question: the state, the market, and the community. The
argument then proceeds by elimination, of the market. Taylor 'contends that social order
cannot satisfactorily be put on the market' (p.2), though his arguments to this contention are
unfortunately far from decisive. That leaves the state for public larger than communities, and
communitarian anarchism as an extra-terrestrial possibility for small communities (because
communities in the vicinity of states do not, it is claimed, survive). For all the talk about
anarchism, it looks like another triumph for the state.
But the argument is unsound, because there are
methods than those Taylor locates.
Non-statist organisation, which comes in a range of forms — functional, regional and others —
is not a combination of the pure methods considered. As a broad type of method it is hardly
"unproposed", or without precedents or examples (e.g. medieval orders and present
international order).
While there is no need to dispute that prospects for anarchism tend to be enhanced in
smaller communities, or in conglomerates that can be arranged in networks of smaller
communities, anarchism can work, if less satisfactorily, in modem mass society. Such is one of
the large themes being advanced.
777E EA7FFG//VG
OF
/LV1/?C77/.SM: ^/<^r
cipy?^s
,
i
The
arguments
outlined,
predominancy theoretical, inform the
practical, revealing the options open for
anarchism, courses of action in superan
nuating the State and for transition to a
stateless Society, and so on. For exam
ple, spontaneous anarchism — accor
ding to which organisation is un
necessary 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 transi
tion by any strengthening oj^he cen
tralised State), relying heavil\^on volun
tary co-operation and direct democracy.
^ The society which emerges mciy be much
. ..as Bakunin and Kropotkin sometimes
piAuredH^lt /9^be based on smallerscale decentralised communities? for
otherwise such arrangements as com
munity replacement of State welfare ar
rangements, control of their environ
ment, removal of Prisoners' Dilemmas,
and participatory democracy, will w(?rk
less satisfactorily. Communities
.be
federated and control will be bottom-up,
not merely by representation and subject
to a downward system of command.__
Within each community there will hot be
great discrepancies in the distribution of
weakh and property, ar^p hi^^ycom
centrated economic powercommum
ty win be a rather equaiitarian group,
sharing in much that is communally
owned or not owned at a!i.
White theoretical arguments heip
outtine the generat shape of social, ami
aiso economic arrangements,they
determine^them compietety; they offer
no detaited btueprint. Accordingty what
emerges is not a particular form of anar
chism, for instance anarchist com
munism, but a more experinienta^an.^
p/ura/bhc anarchism, such as was^tnstituted in the Spanish cokectives.
traced/
\^^There are several recognised varieties of anarchism among the more common:
individualistic anarchisms, anarcho-capitalisms, anarcho-communisms, mutualisms, anarcho-
syndicalisms, libertarian socialisms, social anarchisms, and now eco-anarchisms. These
varieties are not particularly well-characterised, /hey are by no means at all exclusive. So far
indeed a satisfactory classification is lacking. Usually something of a ragbag is offered:
textbooks single out a very few varieties, and look at them. Invariably they leave out important
varieties.
But it is not difficult to discern some of the more independent dimensions^ along which
variation occurs, and which accordingly are relevant to an improved multi-dimensional tabular
classification:
Parf-w/zo/g/ dimension:
atomism pole O <— individual ----
social
----
communal
—> O total holism
This is a most important dimension of variation among organisational arrangements (for
analysis see SM). It accounts for a major bifpriation between European anarchisms, which tend
...
.
1
'S^
to be socially oriented, and American anarchism^ which are usually highly individual (religious
communities^ some European transplants/ excepted). For markedly holistic arrangements to
persist, some strong ideological relational glue appears required, such as an immersing spiritual
ideology.
Properly spectrum:
Although this can be compressed into two dimensional form, it is better presented three
dimensionally as follows:
full
privatization
—> O full public
(tribal) ownership
no ownership
This spectrum evidently connects with the preceding holistic dimension, and both contribute to
what was the old right-left political division (a sort of crude super-position), and to what should
be superseding it, three-colour political spectrum:
(old right) blue
<------------------------ .--------------------------- >
red (old left)
green (new environmental)
Group Jectwon and electoral spectrum:
fully
O <- bottom up — democratic —y oligopolistic — top down
participatory
C/umge procedure dimensions:
^violent
-*
O fully
dictatorial
constitutional <------------------------- —---------------------------------- > non-constitutional
pacific
5
Some of these "dimensions" are not really h'wear in the way strictly required. That they are not, and that
they are not fully independent, does not impede a much improved classification.
22
CTtangc mmai/ors': vanguard group or class;
<—
Lumpen-proletariat—workers
*
syndicates
bottom
"the people"
political
parties
business ---companies
top
alternative
ccylitions
a/
And so on. The schema presented are clearly far from exhaustive; nothing has been directly
included concerning distribution methods (market vs command, open vs closed storehouses,
etc.), admissible technology, or work-leisure arrangements, to take three important examples.
More pieces will be picked up as we proceed (the approximate number of dimensions is
computationally small), and some of the rather schematic sketches ventured above, elements of
which should be familiar, will receive some development in what follows^ Once the (n)
dimensions are duly elaborated an anarchism can be located and classified (pidgeon-holed in n-
space) by placement in sach dimension. For instance, the form of anarchism preferred by me
(s<$SM for an early presentation),[But one sort never to be^instituted everywhere/rom a riciT'
<L. variety of altematie^s located as follows: it is social (with a significantly qualified communistic
safety net: each according to her or his basic needs),' market-oriented but non-capitalistic, with
diminished ownership, democratic but without politicians and with alternative electoral
arrangements, pacific but not bound by "constitutional" procedures, utilizing modest safe
technologies, ....
There are then many anarchisms, a rich variety of different forms, some of them scarcely
investigated or known. That anarchism comprises such a plurality has proved puzzling to those
(for example of one name-one thing persuasion) who assumed it must be a single ideology,
either individual or collective,.... Indeed the pluralist character of anarchism has led even more
apparently sympathetic critics, to 'wonder whether anarchism is really an ideology at all, or
merely a jumble of beliefs
(M, p.3). Of course the impression that anarchism 'is amorphous
and full of paradoxes and contradictions' is marvellously assisted by conflating degenarchism
with anarchism, chaos with order, and by combining the variant forms, individualism with
socialism and communism. By properly regarding anarchism as a sheaf of overlapping
positions assembled around a core characterisation, a standard model for pluralism, the
problematic elements of anarchism as an ideology disappear. No doubt it is not an ideology like
Marxism, but then Marxism is atypical in its set of paradigmatic texts, concentrated in the works
of the master. Other ideologies such as liberalism or environmentalism afford better
comparisons. While anarchism is an ideology (in both good and bad senses), it is not really a
movement. There is not, anywhere really, such a movement, in the way there have been a
succession of liberation movements or there is a green ^deep ecology^movement.
9
2 : . /
A
/f
7
z^4-v^-
/i
cY&v-e, Insofar a^ anarchism is duly based on removal of unacceptable means, it
should be
* pluralistic, because for example it cannot impose a single formulation on communities who
want to organise differently thatiits preferred way.
* non-violent. Terrorist forms of anarchism are strictly incompatible with broad-based non
coercion. For terrorism typically involves coercion, stand-over tactics, and the like/
That is, there is a doublish standard on violence: It is alright to apply violence against
state (and others) while not alright to have coercive state, which applies violence. No doubt
this can be justified through cgoLwr namely OK for me to do violence to you but not OK for
you to apply violence to me. Accordingly tentative conc/MMon is: A moral anarchism will not
be a form committed to violence Except unavoidable forms etc.
Such pluralism does not enjoy a strong historic track-record, and does not go
unopposed. Standard anarchist positions, sketching of which was mainly a nineteenth
century preoccupation (but extending into twentieth century science fiction and utopian
literature), shied away from pluralism in the direction of monistic forms, towards
insistence upon particular structure, organisation and distributional methods. Such
monistic rigidity led to much intense, often fruitless discussion and friction between
anarchists committed to different arrangements. Certainly there was a doctrine of
spontaneity — according to which in a state-overthrowing revolution (in the very heat of
the revolution!) the masses world spontaneously decide upon new arrangements — which
makes it appear that any structures at all were open for consideration; but it was also
assumed that certain arrangements would be selected, towards which active anarchists
would provide guidance.
It is not difficult to indicate some of the broad features of emergent arrangemens
features that flow from the character of anarchism. But anarchists, over-attracted like
others to monistic schemes, have regularly attempted to advance their own schemes,
introducing many further postulates, that reach far beyond what flows from the basic
characterisation, and that need not be adopted by genuine anarchistics (some further
examples of optional and rejectable extras from a recent manifesto:... direct democracy,
destruction of all hierarchies, maximization of freedom, total Revolution, no ends-means
distinction, no leaders, optimism about an anarchist future,...).
23
Because of the expansive pluralism of anarchism, it overlaps many other ideologies,
indeed all that do not include as a theme unmitigated commitment to a state or like central
authority. Thus while anarchism excludes fascism and is incompatible with state capitalism,
anarchism overlaps liberalism, democracy, and even Marxism, since Marxism affords a long
term anarchism. There has been much confusion about these interrelations. Take democracy.
Anarchism does not entail democracy, as is sometimes claimed. Advice of a select minority or
of a^sage could regularly be adopted, though the advice did not reflect the will of the people and
its source was not elected or appointed by the people. Nor does anarchism entail undemocratic
procedures. There are, in the plurality, democratic forms, of various sorts, and undemocratic
forms. Democratic forms may have a better prospect of enabling genuine democracy than life
under the state. For as some have argued, 'both the nation state and electoral democracy are
inadequate as vehicles for democracy under modem conditions' (Bumheim p.218).
Is its goal individual freedom or communal solidarity? Sometimes one, sometimes the
other, sometimes neither, sometimes both (a typical four-valued logical structure). A pluralistic
anarchism offers several different sorts of communities, not just one kind: for instance,
independent individuals, perhaps interrelated and organised through contracts, solidaristic
groups working freely together and sharing according to need, and various attractive
intermediaries, where there may be more individual-oriented market arrangements but there are
also safety nets ensuring distribution according to basic needs.
It is not difficult in theory to devise structures that allow a wide variety of kinds. For
example, in simple cases this can be accomplished through regional patterning, as illustrated
with 6 varieties.
(Such a modelling for political pluralism is further elaborated in UT.) The brief interlude of
anarchism in Spain afforded a small-scale example of regional patterning at work
The kinds of anarchistic societies are bound to be of very variable quality, both
theoretically and in practice. Some will only work with rather special sorts of people, for
instance certain Answers with members with strong religious or ideological commitments; some
will not succeed at all. Some verge on incoherence, for instance those against coercive
organistions that approve group terrqist tactics. But while some kinds of anarchism are
entangled in serious problems, others are not. Anarchists generally have no obligation to
defend defective kinds; yet many criticisms of anarchism are directed at just such defective
forms.
Although there is a rich variety of anarchistic end-states (virtually uninstantiated
) f
/-I'y e
24
or
1^-
*rc!
n
possibilities), there are^ common organisational and structural features. Such cluster features are
A
J
what hold the plurality together, and include noncoercive versions of those arrangements
essential to a functioning society: for instance, broad features of arrangements for production
and distribution, for arbitration and reconciliation, and so on, and on. But although each such
anarchist society will have such organizational features, they will differ in detail. For example,
a main distributional feature of a simple communist society may comprise a common
storehouse from which members take according to need, whereas in individualist societies
distribution will normally proceed through some sort of exchange in market systems. MoK
(
generally different types of anarchism will offer different economic theories. Those with
stronger individualistic component will tend to rely upon not merely market or allied exchange
arrangements, but upon capitalistic organisation. The type of anarchism favoured here strikes
an intermediate route: markets without capitalism.
How is such complex organisation to be achieved without a state? Does not such
organisation and government require a state? To remove that familiar assumption and
associated blockages - encouraged by too much life under states and no experience of
alternatives - take a wider look around. Look at how many activities and procedures are
organised without states or essential participation of states. By voluntary arrangements.
Prominent examples are again sporting organisations, labour unions and business corporations
of various sorts. In short, organisation can be accomplished through a range of appropriate
institutions.
Such examples also provide the appropriate key unlocking the door as to how more
extensive organisation can be achieved in the absence of the state, namely through appropriate
institutions. The state dissolves into functioning components, a set of appropriate institutions,
and at bottom into its relevant minimization. It fragments into compartments - in two
interconnected ways: into regional parts and into capacities, functional parts.
There are other valuable clues to stateless reorganisation. What happens within the more
self-regulating state can also happen without it. As Gramsci emphasized,
the ability to govern without overt coercion depends largely on the ability of
those in power to exploit systems of belief that the larger population shares.
The nature of that system of belief is to some extent determinable by policy
makers, since in the modern state they possess a significant ability to
propagandize for their view. Yet.... (p.63).
Recent empirical investigations tend to yield similar results. People tend to follow rules and
obey laws they regard as moral or otherwise satisfactory. There are important messages for
anarchistic organisation here also, for arrangements without coercion, overt or other.
Anarchistic rules will try to go with the prevailing flow, and will only vary (as over vindictive
punishment) where an evidently satisfactory justification can be given. More generally, smarter
anarchistic arrangements will aim to include desirable self-regulating systems, such as small-
/<?
25
scale markets.
t
There are too many alternatives in the pluralistic basket to look at all of them. Let us
consider only some of them, with however preferred features. (An example that does not rank
highly and will not be further assessed is Stirner's individualism.) Anarchistic societies of any
complexity will typically consist of a network of decentralised organisations, or a federation of
these (etc.). The organisations will thus be regional, but beyond that set up according to issue,
role or function.
Thus they will include what might well be accounted ecoregiona/
Many of the stock features of political functionalism, as decentralised, will
accordingly recur, separation of powers, tailoring of administration to need, for instance. The
organisations will furthermore be noncoercive; no individual or group will be forced to join.
Typically they will be voluntary arrangements.
A critical question is-to how these organisations, substitudng for the operation of state, are
to be controlled, regulated, and so on. In much favoured democratic structures, such as
electoral bureaucracies, control is usually weak and remarkably tnJtrecf. A populace weakly
selects a central parliament, which exercises through other bureaucratic bodies some control of
state organisations. A full anarchism is obliged to dissolve or substitute for central parliaments.
It has a obvious option, namely direct democratic control of state-substituting organisations. A
simple way of achieving this is through sortition: the membership of the governing component
of each organisation is chosen randomly from those qualified of the regional community who
volunteer to be on it. In some cases volunteers may require accessible qualifications (e.g.
having served before at a lower level), and avoid disqualifications (e.g. having acquired a
disqualifying record).6 Where the community decides that certain categories of people should be
represented, for instance disabled, minorities, and so forth, then it is a matter of arranging
random selection of the required fraction of group numbers from these categories. This style of
statistical democracy dates back at least to original democracies of Greek city states where public
officials were sometimes selected by lot (it is discussed under democracy in Aristotle's P<?/iric.y).
Nowadays it is called t/gwarcAy (a term with an unfortunate prior meaning); here in its
anarchistic form it will be alluded to under the neologism dewanarcAy.
Such demanarchy has the immediate virtue of removing a most expensive duplication,
government ministers and their departmental counterparts (e.g. finance ministers and
corresponding appointed treasury officials). Indeed, the whole charade of central parliamentary
6
People can serve their administrative apprenticeship at local or group levels. One when they are adjudged
to have exhibited sufficient competence here are they entitled to nominate for selection at grander levels.
This is one reasonable way of obtained some quality control in selection of administrators. (Note /gve/^ do
not provide a vicious hierarchy.)
A""
—H
Though there are many different strands that can be interwoven through the
pluralistic out-fall from the basic characterisation, there are some broad tendencies of
anarchistic arrangement which include:
*
reliance on self-regulatory methods of organisation that require little or no
intervention, as opposed to highly regulated procedures, perhaps tending towards
centralism
or
paternalism.
This is one reason why markets are favoured, analogues of centralised control and
coercive legal systems are not.
* emphasis on voluntary methods, in place of imposed methods - coercive methods are
of course excluded by virtue of basic characterisation. Certainly de facto power may
remain, but it will be without justification.
* favouring of decentralisation and deconcentration rather than centralised or
concentrated structures.
That does not imply there can be no downward relations. Of course under federal
arrangements there will be, and sideways natural relations as well (a full control
system).
* discouragement of empowerment, encouragement of depowerment.
* opposition to oppression is a corollary.
26
government, ministers and hordes of minders, governments and replicating opposition teams, is
duly removed — as it has to be under non-centralization. Such parliamentary centres are
.
....
eliminated; insofar as anything replaces them, it is the dispersed community, no centre, which is
directly linked to functional organisation.
Gone with the centre, or seriously reduced, are several standard political worries, such as
those of coup or take-over, insurrection or invasion. These usually involve capturing the centre
and its command structure, no longer there to capture (for there is no command or control
structure that could be taken by an invador or with internal insurrection). Community defence is
thereby rendered much easier. Also considerably reduced is the standard problem of who
controller is the community (one of the advantages of more direct democracy).
Appropriate institutions take care then of the day-to-day running of community affairs.
But what of major issue decisions, changes of direction or structure? These can be
accomplished from the bottom, through referenda, propositions and the like (with public
assessment organised through a suitably independent college), rather than in present top-down
inflexible fashion. (Some of these methods, of which there is worthwhile experience in parts of
Europe, are investigated in Wolff.)
A regular early question is how such a stateless structure is to be financed
coecive
mechanisms available. Of course if coercive institutions were in place, then the overall structure
could be financed in the sorts of ways that states are presently financed. It should be observed,
in any case, that coercive means are very rarely resorted to (unless the target is pursued for otAgr
reasons, such as crime) in order to obtain revenue payments from wealthy corporations, firms or
individuals, from where in a more equitable community much of the funding would derive (by
contrast with most present states). There are several parts to a satisfactory answer:* AfMcA less public revenue would be required because the most expensive, most wasteful, and
least productive components of state have been excised. These include the whole apparatus of
central government and electoral politics, and the associated system of coercion, standard
military forces and defense establishment, espionage framework, and police forces, prison
establishment and expensive courts. -—
Nonetheless there remain many institutions to finance, include smaller substitutes for some of
the abolished structures (e.g. social defence arrangements).
* Many institutions can be largely or entirely self-financing, because like customs and import
organisation^ they collect revenue, or through fair user-pays principles. Reasonable returns
taken can be channelled to an independent revenue office with no outside spending or
redistribution powers.
* Much, if not all, further social revenue could be raised through resources taxation (adequate
royalties and the like), rental taxes on property or leases, gift and gains taxes, and through
auctions (of previously inherited goods). How this would work depends upon community
arrangements.
Consider for instance anarchistic arrangements where that problematic item, private
property, has not been instituted or has been abolished (as under main examples of European
anarchism, by contrast with North American forms). Valuable durables (roughly, any durable
worth stealing for sale in present systems) will be renfed instead of bought. Leasehold systems
can be operated very like private property (as the land system in the Australian Capital Territory
reveals)^facilitating market operations, but they offer significantly better control, for instance
environmentally, they enable the social component of generated wealth to be reflected, through a
rental, and they can be of finite term and to a given individual, so inheritance transfer is
excluded. In place of the customary land titles office a larger durables office with subdivision
for types of durables would be instituted, with each durable now indelibly marked or described.
(Here, as with referenda, computing facililies remove many previous obstacles to such
developments. Organisation can move with newer technologies.
Leasehold arrangements are readily applied to prevent the accumulation of scarce property
resources, such as urban land, which is a major feature of capitalism. For leases of scarce
commodities can be allocated according to need and ability to use, not merely through a
historically rooted market distribution as with private property. It is private property, not a
market system of distribution, that is really distinctive of capitalism, since it not only provides a
place to park and increase capital, but it enables transmission of accumulated wealth (e.g. within
a family or dynasty) and control of the means of production.
CZ
4^? y
and SwiaMness
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has become fashionable/^ince th^oncurrent anthropological findings concerning
small communities and the collective action results concerning small collectives demolished the
assumption that anarchy
impossible, t& concede that anarchy is possible but only where
there is a suitable small community.
/Az'
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a—
- sort of anarchism in-the-small has been forcefully
pursued by Taylor, who contends that 'anarchy is viable to the extent that the relations between
people are those which are characteristic of community', a small community (p.166). That is:
... community is necawa/y — if people are to live without the state' (p.3).
The argument to community that Taylor offers reduces a modified Hobbesipnism; social
order can oly be maintained, without the state and in the small, if the relations between
individuals are those of community (cf p.2). Insofar as it is detailed, it is a remarkably brokeddown argument. As Taylor himself helps to show, 'the liberal justification of the state' - from
the failure of individuals in a large public to voluntarily cooperate to provide themselves without
requisite collective goods - breaks down at every critical point, in its premisses, in its
argument, and in its concluding inference to the state was the on/y means of ensuring the
supply of such goods (p.59).
It is this final lacuna onto which Taylor latches. Granting the rest, 'all that can be inferred
is that, if public goods are to be provided, jowc means must be found of getting people to do
their part in providing them' (p.59). There are, Taylor swiftly finds, three pure methods of
ensuring provision of the goods in question: the state, the market, and the community. The
argument then proceeds by elimination, of the market. Taylor 'contends that social order
cannot satisfactorily be put on the market' (p.2), though his arguments to this contention are far
from decisive. That leaves the state for public larger than communities, and communitarian
anarchism as an extra-terrestial possibility for small communities (because communities in the
vicinity of states do not, it is claimed, survive). For all the talk about anarchism^it looks like
another triumph for the state.
&t the argument is unsound, because there are other methods than those Taylor locates.
Non-statist organisation, which comes in a range of forms^ is not a combination of the pure
methods considered. As a broad type of method it is hardly "unproposed", or without
precedents or examples (e.g. medieval orders and present international order).
7^
A
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4
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[1] p.3O Important among these practices are resistance movements and organised
refusals (preferably without conspicuous leaders). While individuals can be selectively picked
off, enough people well organsed cannot. As a result grand refusals could be significant
political happenings.
[3] p.4? The practice of anarchism, generously construed, naturally includes the state of
being in anarchist conditions, of living under anarchism (though perhaps unaware). There is
cope for anarchism without doctrine. Many primitive societies thus qualify on anarchistic; they
practice, or practiced, anarchism though unaware (somewhat as wild animals practice hygine).
Further, no doubt now stretching 'practice' beyond its assumed anthropic context, many animal
communities practice anarchism. Many attracted ^anarchism, an anarchism without name
even, long for analogous pure practice.^ Th^ hope that whatever it is ill operate, perhps even
materilize, without any heave-
ithouteness or e
any intellectualizing, perhaps
without even thought or much ef
on their part. In contemporary circumstances they would
thave to be extrordinary lucky (a paternal state with caring elements, such as safe jobs and
spoon-fed indoctrinal education for all citizens, does not relinquish its control voluntarily).
[4] #awan Harare. This is a theoretical notion which has been used for multifarious
/refprious, social and political purposes. Typically the notion has been deployed in a effort to
force various restrictive types of social arrangements, archie ones (including defence focus,
standing armies, survellience etc.)
[5] about p.20 (connector^
Present minolithic governments have assumed far too many roles, for many of which
they are not competent, ffom some of wlpdrihey are disqualified by other roles (e.g. as
impartial referees by ^h^r/businessjsofnmitments). Because the centre tries to do and control
too much, as a consequenc$4tdoes very much unsatisifactorily. Improved arrangements would
separate these roles, deconcentrating and decentralizing power.
[6] p.30. As^?ovemmenr is variably determinable, so also is /aw. Under the main
determinate, law is incompatible with anarchism. But under a different determinate, there is no
incompatibility.
Anarchism cannot traffic in law, in the initial and prominent sense of /aw offered in the
OED, namely 'a rule of conduct imposed by authority', imposed by authority and
characteristically backed up by coercion, it may be added. To some extent counter reducing this
prognastication is a'second sense of 'law' (the third comprises 'scientific and philosophical
uses'): namely 'without reference to an external commanding authority'.
Law deservedly has a tarnished reputation in anarchism.
Most of it is arcane,
administered by an expensive priesthood. Too often it is an oppression tool of the state.
While anarchism is hostile to such law, and incompatable with heavy authoritarian law, it
is in no way opposed to rules, to regulations, to conventions of freely asserted to lists, and so
on.
[7] Democracy within ANARCHY, and DEMANARCHY
Present electoral arrangements offer what? What presently have is a competative game
between competating blocks of the ruling elite (with professional power-brokers who trade with
each other their patronage and cites/br the acclaimed right to govern.
Thus elections hardly represent a genuine expression of agreement by the populace to be
governed; rather they are occasions when the populace is duped into supporting one or other
elite team.
For the most part power is concentrated in organisations which are not elected, not
controlled by the people effected by their contractions and not representative.
By and large, satisfactory democratic arrangements will not be participatory (see
Burnheim).
are valuable for limited purposes, viz. as /a// bacty. B argues that they are not
satisfactory in general (p.91). There is no need to dissent.
Mows 1. Encourage those without interest in, or not genuinely affected by issue not to vote.
2. only structural, not material issues to refs. Certainly not material moral issues, for
instance, not capital punishment, not abortion.
Dgwarc/ty has the wrong etymology and the wrong meaning for anarchist purposes. It
means 'the office of a demarch [a president, chief magistrate, major or governnorj; a popular
government. The municipal body of a modern Greek commune' (OED). Anarchism recognises
no chiefs or leaders, even democratic ones or demogogues. What can be done very simply,
however, is to enlarge the word by a simple important syllable 'an', giving Jcwa/MrAy.
[8] [after authority, coercion.
To coerce is maintain or change state, normaliy of another creature, by force.
Re Chap 4) Insofar as anarchism is duly based on removal of unacceptable means, it
should be
* pluralistic, because for example it cannot impose a single formulation on communities who
want to organise differently that its preferred way.
* non-violent. Terrorist forms of anarchism are strictly incompatibile with broad-based non
coercion. For terrorism typically involves coercion, stand-over tactics, and the like.
That is, there is a doublish standard on vio/ence: It is alright to apply violence against
state (and others) while not alright to have coercive state, which applies violence. No doubt this
can be justified through ggoi-sw: namely OK for me to do violence to you but not OK for you to
apply violence to me. Accordingly afentadve
is: A moral anarchism will not be a
form committed to violence - except unavoidable forms etc.
[9]
anJ Smallness
It has become fashionable, since the concurrent anthropological finalings concerning
small communities and the collective action results concerning small collectiyes demolisted the
assumption that anarchy was impossible, to concede that anarchy is possible but only where
there is a suitable small community. This sort of anarchism in-the-small has been forcefully
pursued by Taylor, who contends that 'anarchy is viable to the extent that the relations between
people are those which are characteristic of community', a small community (p.166). That is:
... community is necessary - if people are to live without the state' (p.3).
The argument to community that Taylor offeysreduces a modified Hobbesionism; social
order can oly be maintained, without the st^te and in the small, if the relations between
individuals are those of community (cf p.2L lnsofar as it is detailed, it is a remarkably brokeddown argument. As Taylor himself helps to show, 'the liberal jusdfication of the state' - from
the failure of individuals in a large public to voluntarily cooperate to provide themselves without
requisite collective goods - brdaks down at every critical point, in its premisses, in its
argument, and in its concluding inference to the state was the on/y means of ensuring the supply
of such goods (p.59).
It is this final lacuna onto which Taylor latches. Granting the rest, 'all that can be inferred
is that, if public goods are to be provided, some means must be found of getting people to do
their part in providing them' (p.59). There are, Taylor swiftly finds, three pure methods of
ensuring provision of the goods in question: the state, the market, and the community. The
argument then proceeds by elimination, of the market. Taylor 'contends that social order cannot
satisfactorily be put on the market' (p.2), though his arguments to this contention are far from
14
e
OF
/
7
One
appalling
mes from a Russi
icrionary
that is hostile to all
-bourgeours socio-political tr
authority a
e, and counterpasses ' intere^s of petty private
ownersbib and small
ant economy to
progress of^ociety based on
large-scale production
v, 2nd revision
s, Progress,
bsever, 1989).
^nether-dismal-eharaeterisati
[4]
scientistIfApter).
narurg. This is a theoretical notion which has been used for multifarious
reforious, social and political purposes. Typically the notion has been deployed in a effort to
.v(0
force various restrictive types of social arrangements, archie ones [including defence focus,
standing armies, survellience etc.)
*[5FabouFpT2O-(G0miect0f)
Present\p^nolithic governments have assumed far too many roles, for many of which
they are not co
etent, from some of which they are disqualified by other roles (e.g. as
KHLI Ut
impartial referees by\[ieir business commitments). Because the centre tries to do and epntro
too much, as a conseque
it does very much unsatisifactofily. Improve
tents wouldl
.separate these roles, deconcen^ating and decentralizing power.
[7] Democracy within ANARCHY, and DEMANARCHY
Present electoral arrangements offer what? What presently have is a competative game
between competating blocks of the ruling elite (with professional power-brokers who trade with
each other their patronage and citesybr the acclaimed right to govern.
Thus elections hardly represent a genuine expression of agreement by the populace to be
governed; rather they are occasions when the populace is duped into supporting one or other
elite team.
For the most part power is concentrated in organisations which are not elected, not
controlled by the people effected by their contractions and not representative.
By and large, satisfactory democratic arrangements will not be participatory (see
Burnheim).
o
— /^W/
6'J
n /
/I
15
7?^/<?rc/!^Az are valuable for limited purposes, viz. as /<
*/// /?ocA.s'. B argues that they are not
satisfactory in general (p.91). There is no need to dissent.
Moray 1. Encourage those without interest in, or not genuinely affected by issue not to vote.
2. only structural, not material issues to refs. Certainly not material moral issues, for
instance, not capital punishment, not abortion.
Z)^marc/ty has the wrong etymology and the wrong meaning for anarchist purposes. It
means the office of a demarch [a president, chief magistrate, major or govemnor]; a popular
government. The municipal body of a modem Greek commune' (OED). Anarchism recognises
no chiefs or leaders, even democratic ones or demogogues. What can be done very simply,
however, is to enlarge the word by a simple important syllable 'an', giving
IM) A
*
*
Chapter 8A
ELEMENTS OF SOCIAL AND POLITICAL THEORY
AND OF A PREFERRED THEORY
There are many preliminaries. One, like preparing a badly used building site, consists in
removing the rubbish. That of course is but the beginning of philosophy, not the sole content
and end, as some zealous followers of Lockejhave supposed.
1. Issues in appalling methodology.
Many of the prevailing sins of philosophy are writ large in political philosophy, i Bad
practices abound; anarchism has suffered particularly as a result.
Redefinitions, and
redefinitional stratagems to try to close gappy arguments, abound. Large assumptions are
imported and regularly used, without due notice, or too often any awareness: particularly
pernicious are those of individualism and atomism, and of thoroughgoing egoism. It hardly
needs stressing that such assumptions are environmentally unfriendly, at best.
False
dichotomies abound. And so on. Among the deleterious practices, several deserve special
mention:
* 7%#/
o/
There is a deeply embedded in modern
mainstream intellectual activity and strikingly manifest in political theory. A general feature of
contemporary thought, as of much contemporary technology and practice, is that of over
powering or of excessive strength. The phenomenon, as exhibited in contemporary mainstream
logic, where it shows up in excessive assumptions, and principles more powerful than reason
can justify, is dis-assessed elsewhere (from the perspective of relevant logic, in RLR). Some of
the same unwarranted assumptions, notably those of invariant consistency and maximization,
reach far beyond stock logical theory to apply, so it is regularly claimed, to all rational practice,
including political decision-making and institutional arrangements (see MR).
Analogous features are incorporated in many of the arguments against anarchism. For
example, it is argued that anarchism cannot realise optimal delivery of public goods, ideal
conditions for this or that (e.g. free market functioning, capital formation and flow), and so on.
Not only do other alternatives not measure up to these standards (certainly prevailing
arrangements fall very far short), the standards themselves are quite excessive. Instead it is
enough that certain sorts of adequacy standards are met, that reasonable thresholds are
1
One reason is that much of it is done by political
thinking.
with no adequate grounding tn logic or
/'
m we/Ttoi/o/ogy. Many of the prevailing sins of philosophy are writ large in political
*
philosophy.
Redefinitions, and redefinitional otologies to try to close gappy arguments,
abound. Large assumptions are imported and regularly used, without due notice, or too often
any awareness: particularly pernicious are those of individualism and atomism, and of
thoroughgoing egoism. It hardly needs stressing that such assumptions are environmentally
unfriendly, at best.
P/tcno/ncnon o/
* excessive strength. There is a deeply embedded in modern mainstream
intellectual activity and strikingly manifest in political theory.
A general feature of contemporary thought, as of much contemporary technology and
practice, is that of over-powering or of excessive strength. The phenomenon, as exhibited in
contemporary mainstream logic, where it shows up in excessive assumptions, and principles
more powerful than reason can justify, is disassesed elsewhere (from the perspective of relevant
logic, in RLR). Some of the same unwarranted assumptions, notably those of invariant
consistency and maximization, reach far beyond stock logical theory to apply, so it is regularly
claimed, to all rational practice, including political decision making and obstitutional
arrangements (see MR).
Analogous features are incorporated in many of the arguments against anarchism. For
example, it is argued that anarchism cannot realise optimal delivery of public goods, ideal
conditions for this or that (e.g. free market functioning, capital formation and flow), and so on.
Not only do other alternatives not measure up to these standards (certainly prevailing
arrangements fall very far short), the standards themselves are quite excessive. Instead it is
enough that certain sorts of adequacy standards are met, that reasonable thresholds are
achieved. There is a most important corollary: that arguments against anarchism or anarchistic
institutional arrangement which assume maximizing principles or the like (as are presumed in
Prisimers Dilemma arguments, game theory, mainstream economics, etc.) are flowed from the
very outset, and should be set aside.
A central time in anarchism offers a somewhat different display of the excess
phenomenon. The issue concerns alleged justifications of the state, or state-like institutions.
Here all that reason and argument appear to warrant are much less powerful institutions, not
arrangements with the excessive powers of the state. To close the gap between what argument
and practice appear,to justify and what the state claims, some opportunistic intellectuals have
1
One reason is that much of it is done by poiiticai szds with no adequate grounding in logic or critical
thinking.
tried, rather......... to redefine the state. But such low redefinitions, while imposing states on
societies that operated without them, leaves the contemporary state besereft of adequate
justification. In brief, such intellectual strategies lead from the frying pan to the fire.
So it is similarly with institutions within the state, such as property and law. Reason and
argument do not justify state property arrangements, only an opportunistically redefined
"property" which does not fulfil the same state and capitalistic role. Similarly with law and state
legal systems.
ON DEFINING ANARCHISM DEFINITIONS OF ANARCHISM
One characterisation that is utterly appalling comes from a Russian Dictionary of
PAi/<9^o/?Ay:
'Anarc&i.wn, a petty-bourgeours socio-political trend that is hostile to all
authority and the state, and counterpasses the interests of petty private
ownership and small peasant economy to the progress of society based on
large-scale production' (ed I. Frolov, 2nd revision eds, Progress,
Plosever, 1989).
Another dismal characterisation comes from an American political scientist (Apter).
Defective definitions of anarchism abound, many supplied by high profile anarchists
(whereupon they assume a certain air of authority, a bogus air). A few examples will be
considered, mostly drawn from a large list of similarly defective definitions included in Clark,
p.ll8ff., who is out to show that any definition which attempts to do justice to anarchism
through an assentialistic definition deploying one simple idea is bound to fail, abysmally.
AnarcAy does not "mean literally "without government'" contrary to Caster p.14. It does
however imply without governments of prevailing cuts which is what the immediately proceeds
to: 'and the lowerst common demominstor of anarchist thought is the conviction that existing
forms of government are productive of wars, internal violence, repression and misery' (p.14).
Right on!
The very short characterisation of anarc/iAy/?? (and redition of anarc/taj) as 'no *
government'is defective because of the elosticity, and slippiness of 'government'. For
example, according to one dictionary (Dniverya/ E/tg/Bh) govern/ytenr means '... system of
polity in a state; territory ruled by a governor ...' in which case it fy incompatible with
Thus, e.g. Carter, Websters (?).
2
achieved. There is a most important corollary: that arguments against anarchism or anarchistic
institutional arrangement which assume maximizing principles or the like (as are presumed in
Prisoners Dilemma arguments, game theory, mainstream economics, etc.) are flawed from the
very outset, and should be set aside.
A central issue in anarchism offers a somewhat different display of the excess
phenomenon. The issue concerns alleged justifications of the state, or state-like institutions.
Here all that reason and argument appear to warrant are much less powerful institutions, not
arrangements with the excessive powers of the state. To close the gap between what argument
and practice appear to justify and what the state claims, some opportunistic intellectuals have
tried, rather deviously, to redefine the state. But such low redefinitions, while imposing states
on societies that operated without them, leaves the contemporary state bereft of adequate
justification. In brief, such intellectual strategies lead from the frying pan to the fire.
So it is similarly with institutions within the state, such as property and law. Reason and
argument do not justify state property arrangements, only an opportunistically redefined
"property" which does not fulfil the same state and capitalistic role. Similarly with law and state
legal systems.
* Htg/t anJ low
Wolffs little book, billed as "a defence of anarchism" is a
small treasury of these. Virtually all the characterisations proposed at the beginning of this
book, of state, sovereignty, authority, power, actomomy, are defective, often by virtue of
definitional features. Consider Wolffs opening:
'Politics is the exercise of the power of the state, or the attempt to influence that exercise.
Political philosophy is therefore ... the philosophy of the state' (p.3 also p.ll). Politics went
on before the rise of the state, and with some good fortune, will persist often its demise.
Again, consider: 'the state is a group of persons who have or exercise suppose authority within
a given territory' (p3; repeated p.5). This shows the fallacy of redirectionism. For a state
normally does not change when those who exercise power do. On the de facto state Wolff is
also astray: 'a & Jacio state is simply a state whose subjects believe it to be ligitimate (i.e. really
to have the authority it claims for itself)' (p.10). Many subjects may nor believe that, but be
intimidated through state power. Very fashionable in removing anarchism are low redefinitions
of Ftare, where there is a state given any positional components in society, such as political
specialisation or division of labour (see Taylor on anthopoligical efforts on societies without
states). As a result there can be effortessly be both anarchy and "state"; any complex anarchist
society is a state!
Another rich source of redefinitions is founded by Taylor's books on anarchism.
Examples include: a fairly hopeless definition of gooJ.' it is desired (p.45). Most interesting is a
3
disgustingly low redefinition of property.- 'Property' is here a shorthand for a variety of
entilements or use rights (Taylor 82 p.44). So as I am entitled to use the byway or to bathe in
the stream, they are my property, so I run them? Another example concerns coercion: In the
claim that to avoid the Hobbesian prisoners' dilemma 'every man must be coerced', Taylor
continues (87 p. 145), 'by which I mean simply that he must be made to behave differently than
he otherwise would (... (i.e.) would "ovlantarily" in the state of nature).' But such a difference
may be effectively achieved, depending on the subject, by noncoercive means, such as
persassion, sanctions, and so forth. Furthermore it would not guarantee what Taylor and
Hobbes appear to expect, authority and sovereignty.
Among the most pernicious of redefinitions, constraints, and elides are those concerning
interests and preferences - often reduction bases for gooJ and other value qualities, often
quickly converted from interest to self-interest (thus Taylor)^ Examples from within this circle
include harmony and cooperation.
For instance.'Harmony requires complete identity of
interests' (in Ope, p.226). It hardly requires comment. Again '...cooperation occurs when
actors adjust their behaviour to the actual or anticipated preferences of others (in Ope p.226).
But suppose creatures simply work or act together (what 'cooperation' means).
psychological accounts are seriously astray.
* ZHc%#%MnoMS
or ctf^cr-or-M/n.
Such
Humans are extraordinarily addicted to
flawed dichotomous reasoning, again powerfully exhibited with regard to anarchism and the
state? For example, the alternative to the state is presumed to be anarchism which is equated
with disorder; so it is either the state or disorder. Again, the only alternative to a market system
of government is central control - market or control - and the market has won out decisively
now (one of the presumed reasons for the prematurely announced "end to ideology").
Other objectionable methodological assumptions include
'..Po.w&Mh'g mJzvo/aa/LSW (after McP p.3)
'Its possessive quality is its conception of the individual as essentially the proprietor of his own
person or capacities, owning nothing to society for them. The individual (is not)... part of a
larger..... whole, but... surer of himself.'
As a result:
'Society consists of relations of exchange between proprietors. Political socieity becomes a
celebrated device for the protection of this property and for the maintenance of an orderly
relation of exchange.'
2
3
The fallacious shifts are dealt with in 'Aquinst,
A famous Australian example is the truculent stance of its richest mum, Packer, in a parliamentary
inquiry: Either you believe me or call be a liar. Reflect on how far "call me a liar" goes beyond "you
do not believe me".
,
„
There should be some eodness^ that we are now trying to build machines in our own inadequate
image. (Many examples in SM).
4
(a prime example in economics: the data of extremality).
* /tM/nan
* g/fwn o/va/ne, or reduction of value to preference.
All of these have been crically assessed elsewhere. But some features deserve further
elaboration:
* f/tg
tAgo/y
With rule and compass techniques it is wn/MM.n&Zg to trirect angle. Of course by measuring it is
rather easy.
Similarly with rationality: wider means can do what state was supposed to be necessary for.
Put differently, the theoretical state is an artifact on a certain ultra-thin theory of rationality.
The thin theory of rationality is an extraordinarily widespread ideological....... among
Anglo-American social theorists (many of whom feel obliged to make public dealeraatous of
faith). But that it is 'almost universally taken for granted by economists' does nothing to show
its correctness, unless an argument from expectise has required a new validity. What it reveals
rather is something about the ideological commitments,...........of economists.
The thing theory of rationality is almost invariably coupled with individualism,
methodological individualism as it is usually cleverly called (after Popper's theorizing).^
Many of these objectionabl assumption are melted together in theories of /mman nafnrg.
Mafnrg, CM/tMrg anJconfro/.
Part of the intellectual aim of a theory of human nature is to achieve an account of hum^n
/motivation. But a uniform story of motivation is scarcely more likely drawn as uniform account
of human nature.^ Motivations are no doubt important; but they are many and various.
It is still fashionable to assert, as if it was a truism, that 'all political philosophies ... base
themselves upon a conception of human nature' (Wolff Povgrty p. 140, pluralised). That is no
longer so (certainly, since Foucault) is that the notion of //n/nnn nnturg is not well defined, and
never was except under high redefinitions.
Work in decqtralized artificial intelligence readily suggests that communities of robots
could operate without statist arrangements (nor need outiside imput be state bound). That
suggests in tum that it is something about humans, as many humans, that leads to development
or imposition of states. That something has been ascribed, rather too quickly, to human nature,
or to human culture, or to some mix of human genetypic and phenotypic features, features that
other creatures or artificial intelligences do not share. It is something peculiarly pertaining to
and special to humans, their nature or culture, that amends institutional control. But has never
been satisfactorily explained what these special features are or how they operate. There is much
space for total scepticism about such justificatory or apologetic approaches.
4
5
Taylor has a dreadful argumejpj (892 p.57) that people are agents, because otherewise default to
understand why so many goods and supplied (also 87 p.109).
The usual uniform story depends upon self inferey/, which is widened into mteresM under pressure.
5
2. Aa/Mrc, CM/tMro, awJ contra/.
A major function of culture is to regulate and control changed Political change in the
South Pacific, and political divergence from the industrial North, can, in principle then, be
grounded in and powered by features of local and regional culture. One organising theme, a
corollary of the argument, facilitates the transition from principle to practice:- It is that the
requisite elements are present in regional cultures, the potentiality is there, for the South Pacific
region (and Australia in particular) to proceed in a very different social political direction from
the North (and from the USA in particular). Given the radical unsatisfactoriness of the
American arrangements, in many frequently exposed respects,7 such a different direction is
worth taking — if it can be.
But a serious problem in the way of change is imposition of political arrangements, from
outside or from above. And, since imposition shades into political pressure, this is only one of
the obstacles impeding change in the South Pacific and elsewhere. Another forcing more and
more peoples, no longer sheltered by geographical isolation, into the same type of socio
political arrangements is supposed to derive from human nature itself. Free people are
economic people, in pretty much the American mould, so it is claimed. By this route, economic
imperialism can replace political imperialism.
A key question in political theory — one to which we are said to have no satisfactory
answer in the absence of a worthwhile theory of human nature (or human natures) — is
supposedly this:To what extent does human nature allow for alternative political and social arrangements? Or,
to tum the question around:- What restrictions are imposed in virtue of the nature of humans on
the broad range of political possibilities? How does that "nature" reduce the organisational
options?
A much-promoted Anglo-American answer, directly descended from the
Enlightenment, is that once /rcc/Y from systems of myths, taboos and tribal controls, from
superstition, people are essentially (and will generally become) self-centred individuals,
(properly) concerned with maximising their own gain or interests; that is, but for their shortage
of information (including technical know-how), free people are basically economic peopled
As ought now to be evident, that is to replace one ideology by another. But the Enlightenment
ideology is no longer so evident^: what recommends it? Under pressure of this sort, the AngloAmerican answer gets transformed to the theme that the economic picture of human nature is
superior, and fitting of rational creatures. That 'self-appointed West European superiority' has
6
7
8
9
Thus Abraham p.29ff.; Awa p.30. These sections are drawn from Cu/turc onJ rAc RooM of Political
Divergence.' a SowtA Pacific perspective.
For a recent trenchant expose, see Cohen and Rogers.
These people are also picked out under various alternative (but not strictly equivalent) descriptions,
e g. as acquisitive individuals, possessive individuals.
See e g. DP, chapter 10.
6
in turn been disputed, since the time of Herder and the Romantics.^ Fortunately, however,
the extensive ensuing dialectic can be substantially avoided.
For all these questions and answers presuppose, to begin with, a certain misplaced
essentialism, that there is such an invariant nature common to human beings, which exactly
separates humans from other creatures. Attempts to specify such an essence, suitably constant
and invariant and given by necessary and sufficient conditions,^ are legion. They are
a frequent feature of Enlightenment thought. All ment are the same
because of universal drives [such as to pleasure and avoidance of pain].
These drives will operate independently of any location.
Chief among those drives was that towards self-preservation — Holbach,
for instance, stipulates:
we shall call nafare in man the collection of properties and qualities
which constitute him what he is, which are inherent to his species, which
distinguish him from other animal species or which he as in common with
them ... every man feels, things, acts and seeks his own well-being at all
times; these are the qualities and properties that constitute human nature
12
But this attempt at essentialist definition of /mman naA/re fails, in a quite characteristic way. As
it stands, the definition is inadequate; for not all humans seek just their own well-being always;
some are "stupid", some are altruistic, some have other commitments. However, suppose we
avoid such familiar counter-instances to egoism, by replacing 'well-being' by say 'broad well-
being', thus rendering such internal egoism analytic. And suppose to avoid other counter
expales (such as human vegetables, morons and the like), we normalise the definition, replacing
'every man' by 'every normal human'. But then the definition is again inadequate; for it fails to
distinguish humans from, for example, dolphins. It applies equally to Jo/p/un natMrg or, for
that matter, to gon/Z# natMrg.
10
11
12
See Berry, p.30ff., from whom the quote is taken. It is worth spelling out a little the extent of
agreement and disagreement with Herder. What is applauded is
1. 'Herder's dismissal of the Enlightenment's conception of human nature as static, acultural and
ahistorical' (Berry, p.32), but nor
*1. Herder's cultural relativism, that 'each culture ... should be treated on its own merits and not
judged by some faulty perspective such as Io bel/e nature' (p.30), or from any other perspective. In
the pluralistic framework of the text (which presuppoes PPP), a good many cross-cultural judgements
ate made and defended.
*2. Herder's relativisation of human nature to culture, and embodiment of it in culture; for example,
'it is through language that human nature can be seen to be .spect/iicaPy embodied in culture' (p.32).
With relativisation the notion loses its original theoretical point; but while failing in this role,
cultural nature is open to many of the same sorts of objections as human nature. Nor can language
bear the weight Herder loads upon it.
*3. Herder's human chauvinism: '... it is speech and with that reason and freedom, that differentiates
man. Man can choose, man is king' (p.36). Wild animals are free, can choose, communicate, solve
puzzles, and carry out elementary reasoning; in these respects they surpass children and many other
humans. Furthermore, *
*3 gets Herder into serious trouble, not to say inconsistency, with 1.
Abraham, drawing on Wittgenstein, presents just these conditions for an essence, p.23ff.
Berry p.17. Berry supplies several other similar examples.
7
Of course the definition can again be patched, by appealing to the anatomical cluster of
features that separate humans from other mammals or to the biological specification of /tomo
But the resulting normalised definition, with its analytical egoism, does little more
than such biological definitions of An/nan: it does not supply a natnrg, it does not deliver
-ynp^rbiological features of political relevance. The notion of human nature thus fragments: into
the satisfactory enough biological notion of human, and an unsatisfactory superbiological (or
sociobiological) addition: that of human nature or essence. What is this further, problematic
nature? The Romantics can be read as arguing that there is none, no nature as distinct from
culture, only /oca/ nature (Herder's term) which coincides with culture. Peeling off cultural
excretions and variations in order to reach an essence leaves, like Wittgenstein's artichoke,
nothing. Just nothing.
The notion of human nature is a theoretical item, introduced to provide stability amid
cultural variability, a constant bulwark against relativism, but designed as well to justify — as
natural or, failing that as superior — a porr/cn/or type of political economy, state and legislature,
and its imposition everywhere else. 13 But its application is even grander: Human nature is a
theoretical notion which has been used for multifarious nefarious, social and political purposes.
Typically the notion has been deployed in a effort to justify or enforce various restrictive types
of social arrangements, statist ones (including defence forces, standing armies, survellience —
arrangements, and so on). Human nature is a highly resilient notion which has been widely
applied in such fashions; it is not so easily dissolved, certainly not through one illustration.
However the fact that the notion is written large in much political theory, and is received, does
not show that it or the embedding theory is sound. And it is not, but is defective, and in its
socio-political selectivity it is, as the illustration reveals, virtually of a piece with human
chauvinism (which would assign an unduly privileged position to human beings in the
ecological scheme of things).
Most conveniently, the superbiological notion of human nature begins to dissolve under
any attempt to set it down, in mmuch the way that attempts supporting human chauvinism to set
down something ethically special about humans disintegrate.
*^
13
14
The notion of human nature —
Hence the Enlightenment program of imposing enlightened Western culture everywhere, later
emphasised by Bentham. 'The Legislator, Knowing that human nature is ever the same [different
countries do not have different catalogues of pleasure and pain], can reform the laws and even
transplant them from one society to another' (Berry, p.18).
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 the alleged social-arrangement-dictating features of
human nature, like similar alleged features of economic or technological determinism, are rather
major obstacles to be removed — especially insofar as they supposedly severely and inevitably
restrict the character of future societies — than the main business of the present enterprise.
Fortunately then the claim, that the superbiological notion of human nature is a defective theoretical
one which dissolves, is defended elsewhere: not only, in effect, in work of Romantics from Herder
8
a nature or essence for a// and on/y humans (some special classes of humans excepted perhaps)
— presuppoes that there are some stable or constant social features holding for all peoples,
across different cultures, which are furthermore distinctively human features.
The
presupposition fails, because once cultural variation between peoples is fully taken into account,
only some rather trivial shared characteristics remain, which furthermore are shared by various
animal cultures, such as those of primates.
Consider, first, such products or tools of more literary cultures as books, or of
contemporary cultures as telephones and computers. Since most historical cultures lacked such
items, their possession or distribution obviously cannot figure as part of what marks out human
nature. Consider next, then, what are commonly taken to be key components of (human)
nature, certain basic human needs, such as food and shelter. These requirements are far from
free of cultural and environmental determinants. For look at what is regarded as required in the
way of shelter, and how it varies from culture to culture, place to place. (And even what is
taken as basic can often be met in a myriad of ways, though acceptably in some cultures only in
a few fixed ways.) The common denominator is the rather trivial requirement of some sort of
shelter under more extreme conditions — a requirement also of wombats. The situation with
food, sex, and so on, is hardly better. Dietary requirements vary considerably from race to
race, Europeans for example being very inefficient by many tribal standards and unable to
survive satisfactorily where tribal people flourish. 1$ Again the somewhat trivial lowest
common denominator applies also to various groups of animals. Nor are attempts to mark out
the human nature by some more complex list of jointly necessary and sufficient conditions, or
more loosely by a cluster of natural features, 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 emerge^ impose little constraint at all on a political direction, since a
variety of political arrangements is compatible with such listings.
15
16
on, but also in significant recent literature. Foucault, for example, can be read as saying that human
nature is an invention of the Enlightenment which dissolves: 'his much discussed ... di&MdMhon of
mon 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 profoundly unstable' (Philp, p.15,
italics added).
The converse is seen in the extent to which tribal peoples gain weight on European diets. At another
level, consider the Maori attitude to, and underlying revulsion by, cooked food: see Alpers, p.7-9.
For one such list, which however requires pruning and adjustment, see Wilson, p.22. As it happens,
Wilson 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).
9
Accordingly, human nature as such is not an important constraint on political theory, or a
theory of human nature a key ingredient in endeavours to work out a political philosophy or
political directions. *7 The reason is like the reason that determining the conditions for the good
life would not impose a satisfactory constraint on a political theory, namely presupposition
failure. Like the meaning of life
*s,
the good life fails to demarcate a single thing; there are
many styles of good lives. So too there is human nature and human nature, depending on the
culture or social paradigm and on the setting. Nature, both human and not, varies with culture
and environment. Because of this two-way dependence, there is no unique stable
superbiological human nature.
A corollary of the dissolution of the notion of human nature is the rejection also, as
misleading, of the usual picture of nature as given, as a stable notion across races and tribes,
with culture as a variable on top. There is no such culturally invariant division: culture affects
local nature. The picture is flawed in much the same way, then, as the familiar picture of
perception, as consisting of given uninterpreted sense data, stable across (normal) perceivers,
with interpretation imposed on the neutral data.
Nor therefore is culture something that can be creamed off the top, so to speak, to find
real human features or basic nature underneath. Certainly, cultures can be destroyed; however
what results from removal by destruction of a culture is not something closer to real people, but
people with a destroyed culture. So it is also with attempts like Hobbes or Rawls to peel
political organisation off the the top, in order to locate in a quasi-analytical or quasi-historical
way, a state of nature underneath or preceding some organised state or other. A flawed picture,
derived from mistaken or questionable presuppositions, is assumed.
What will be found underneath, or in the original (natural) state, is, it is usually
conveniently assumed, a nature that fits the view to be developed — with the right values very
fortunately in-built. Given that what is to be explained or justified is something like present
socio-political arrangements and the privileged position of some status quo — as well as a
dominant culture's image of itself, and elements of the dominant Northern social paradigm —
underlying human nature turns out to be, hardly surprisingly, that of fully competitive
possessive individualism (much the same model, that is, which serves for economic man, for
Enlightenment man, for the "rational person", etc.) The myth of unique human nature
17
18
For more on contemporary "scientific" efforts to deploy a theory of human nature for social and
political ends, see Appendix 2.
Which 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.
On which see Routley and Griffin.
10
functions, like many other myths, to perpetuate or instil particular social arrangements and
special privilege.
Thus too the myth of human nature is linked to other culture-based myths, the myths of
all (normal) humans as aggressive individuals and as predominantly self-interested maximizers
(at least insofar as they are rational) — to bring in some of the myths bound up with the image
of contemporary urban-industrial humans. As there is no underlying hard ground, no firm
starting point in human nature, so there is none in these associated myths. The South Pacific
was, and remains, rich in cultures which upset these associated myths. Non of the
Melanesians, Polynesians or Australian aboriginal peoples comprised societies of individuallyoriented maximizers; indeed their strongly communal lifestyles and preparedness to stop, work
especially, after a low sufficiency threshold had been reached, was a major and repeated source
of criticism from the European cultures that came to dominate the region.
Even forms and types of aggressiveness, and approaches to war, often taken to be solid
ground, are culture and environment dependent, and vary with both parameters. 19
Aggressiveness is often supposed to impose hugh 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 arranged, for
instance through crowding or provocation or cultural relocation, where peoples of more familiar
cultures will become aggressive^ — and perhaps people of other cultures will not, but will just
give up, as people often do in the face of immense brutality. Certainly some arrangements are
required to cope with or suitably isolate aggression, but these can be of a wide range of
alternative types. Once again, what is normally accounted human nature depends upon and
varies with culture and environment, which people often shortsightedly see as fixed: certainly,
such components as selfishness, cooperativeness, individuality do.
What is often much more important than either culture or nature in determining social
arrangements is another factor: namely, outside control or imposition. Whatever social
arrangements have evolved in a region (through local "nature and culture") can be overridden,
A striking illustration of environmental variation is afforded by the differences between savannah
dwelling and forest dwelling tribes of baboons. For a local illustration, consider Maori approaches to
war (like war conventions, a social phenomenon), before European corruption. Thus Best reports
that 'an individual, or a whole clan, might decline to take part in an engagement on account of some
evil omen, and such an action would be approved of (p.15). There are several, apparently reliable,
stories of Maoris engaged in war supplying the opposition with equipment or ammunition, or
temporarily abandoning their fighting effort to help out the other (British) side, so the battle could
proceed properly.
20Wilson's argument that humans are innately aggressive involves such an invalid move: he looks at the
behaviour of Semai men when 'taken out of their nonviolent society' by recruitment in a British
colonial army (p.100)! As well, Wilson's case rests on a dubious redefinition of innateness, and a
low redefinition of aggressiveness to take in form of mere (nonaggressive) conflict (pp.99-100).
19
11
and new arrangements imposed, in one way or another. With long-standing arrangements,
imposition is almost invariably from without, and the changes in arrangements typically involve
either violence in their adaption or mass migration of people or both. In the last two hundred
years, especially, the South Pacific has, like much of the newer world, been drastically so
affected, in a complex way. And the changes, still flowing strongly from the North, continue.
We are in the last days of the destruction of old cultures, and the destruction is now to a
considerable extend by more subtle cultural, economic and technological means than the cruder
methods of slightly earlier times. Outside control can be exercised, or occur, in many ways less
blatant than direct intervention of one sort or another, such as through introduction of new
technologies, economic sanctions, monetary and loan policies, etc., as well as through
exchange and training programs, textbooks, advertising and magazines, film and television (i.e.
through physical exemplifications of culture). European peoples in the South pacific are often
unwittingly, part of this quieter process of cultural conversion and erosion; but many of us are
now victimes as well as, or rather than, perpetrators (cf. Crough and Wheelwright).
Human communities have been — and many still are — as insensitive to other human
cultures as they are to the natural environment (witness American and their allies in Vietnam).
Like an ecosystem, a culture can be destroyed, or pushed beyond redemption. This is
sufficiently well-known. Yet the creation of political disaster areas proceeds apace — in blatant
cases typically by disruption of culture and lifestyle using violence^ There is furthermore,
where recovery is possible at all, a long recovery period, perhaps sometimes of the order of
human generations. Yet there is increasing production of these politically contaminated regions,
especially through imperialism, e.g. USA in Central America, Israel in Lebanon, 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 American. American companies, businessmen, academics, tourists
and warships, their technology and patents, films and television programs, are the most evident
and influential. There can be various motives and aims (and assumptions) behind the newer
cultural and economic imperialism, behind endeavours such as the American to install their "free
enterprise" philosophy and practice everywhere. 22 Granted it mostly contributes to American
economic supremacy, to American business23 and to the transfer of substantial regional wealth
and surplus value to the USA. But national economic reasons are not the only sort of reasons
21
22
23
These disaster areas should perhaps be cordoned off like those infected by communicable disease, but
from continuing disruptive, outside interference.
What is said about American cultural and political imperialism applies, with adaption, in a lesser
way, to imperialism and colonialism by other nation-states such as USSR, Britian, France and
Indonesia. USA has no monopoly on imperialism. US imerialism in the third world is in part
documented and analysed in Chomsky and Herman.
Though not invariably as the experience with the Japanese motor industry has indicated.
12
such policies are pursued; apart from the side-issue of integrity, that many Americans really do
believe in the optimality of their local ideals to the exclusion of other arrangements, there are
deeper and somewhat more respectable ideological reasons as well.
The imperialistic endeavours can be underpinned by a J^cripftve assumption that all
human nature is at bottom really like American human nature, for instance highly economically
oriented. Thus, but for political distortions (a political analogue of economic externalities) and
lack of technological means, other peoples would choose the American (political and economic)
way: they simply have not really been given the opportunity or means. For many peoples this
is simply not true; 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 to be like American nature at its best, because America not only has the best
way of life in the world and mostly the best ways of doing things^, but has a special hold on
rationality. The free-enterprise system (perhaps with representative democracy American-style
tackedon) is the rational enterprise embodied. Certainly the system is sometimes peddled, by
genuine believers in the American way, with the same evangelism as Christianity, which was
often seen and presented as the rational religion, at least before science got at it. Well, science
hasn't got at the free-enterprise religion yet, but on the contrary now has a social division
heavily devoted to its justification and furtherance.^ However some philosophy has got at the
system, sufficiently to reveal that it is no unique embodiment of rationality — there is none such
— but is a decidedly irrational practice in many circumstances. Thus, it is especially irrational if
local goals are to preserve local environments and cultures, as much experience helps attest.
It is aspects of the false descriptive assumption, and what can emerge with its rejection,
that are a main focus in what follows (though various of the reasons for rejecting the
prescriptive assumption will also emerge or get recorded). An important underlying theme will
24
25
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 reginal 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 life and conditions elsewhere, upon siphoning off wealth and especially resources (US
currently uses about one-fifth of world resources and 30% of world energy) from other regions. To be
sure, economic apologetics proffer other explanations of American transcendence, e.g. ingenious
constuctions like that of Olson, built on a sandy logic of economic actors collectively locked into
economically determined arrangements, substantially independent of the resource base.
In elaborating on how modem societies control their citizens, Foucaul has explained various
extensive types of social control exercised and licensed through received social sciences, by way of
approved standards of normality, health, stability, adequacy, rationality, etc.: See Phil p.15.
13
continue to be that neither broader nor basic human nature is a single stable thing, but varies
substantially in ways that are highly political relevant — relevant to the sort of political
framework a society adopts. In freer societies, less imposed upon from outside or above, the
variation can be largely accounted for through cultural variation (which in tum depends on
environment, etc.). The alternative assumptions, are then, those of cultural pluralism, that
culture is part of "nature", shaping in particular local human nature. Of course once again
"human nature" can be pared back and back to try to remove cultural variations; but in this way
what are taken to be important superbiological features of human nature for political theory are
also excised (e.g. features that make prisoners' dilemmas and commons' tragedies come out
one way rather than another).
Just as different cultures can mean different social arrangements, so in a larger setting
they can imply different political organisation and different political directions. Where requisite
differences do not occur, because incongrous arrangements have been imposed, ca/tMra/
can
a powcr/hZ /brcc ybr change. Likewise developing elements of cultural
difference can be a potent base for social change — or resistance to imposed change —
(especially, in communities where other more orthodox bases for change, such as economic
incentives or penalties, have become inoperative or failed, or are not available.
Culture is however a double-edged instrument, not only to be used, but resisted. For
example, though leading [valuable] features of indigenous Pacific cultures are to be reactivated,
as forces for change, some features of these cultures are to be resisted (such as male
domination), along with many features of modern Western cultures. Features of culture are
thus used to resist and confront undesirable (implanted or imported) sorces of culture; such as,
inequitable political arrangements, excessive consumerism, persuasive advertising media and
loaded news systems, hollow suburbia, alienating job structures, etc. It is important not only to
build and design alternatives — for which elements of local culture afford a solid foundation —
but also to dismantle, and build up resistance against, prime sources of antagonistic culture.
This is as true for American culture as Antipodean. One of the chief reasons why mainstream
American culture is so individualistic, so competitive, so violent, and so forth, is that
movements offering or encouraging alternatives have been repressed by the dominant
corporations and the state apparatus (see especially Goldstein).
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/ssues fa wef/todo/ogy. Many of the prevailing sins of philosophy are writ large in
political philosophy.; Redefinitions, and redefinitional -otolJgies to try to close gappy
arguments, abound. Large assumptions are imported and regularly used, without due notice,
or too often any awareness: particularly pernicious are those of individualism and atomism, and
of thoroughgoing egoism. It hardly needs stressing that such assumptions are environmentally
unfriendly, at best,
w,
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* /%&1L ^p&enoMienon o/ excessive sfrengt/i. There is a deeply embedded in modern mainstream
intellectual aedvity and strikingly manifest in polidcal theory.
2
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One reason is that much of it is done by poiitical 6,..Is with no adequate grounding in logic or critical
thinking.
A general feature of contemporary thought, as of much contemporary technology and
practice, is that of over-powering or of excessive strength. The phenomenon, as exhibited in
contemporary mainstream logic, where it shows up in excessive assumptions, and principles
more powerful than reason can justify, is dis^assesed elsewhere (from the perspective of
relevant logic, in RLR). Some of the same unwarranted assumptions, notably those of invariant
consistency and maximization, reach far beyond stock logical theory to apply, so it is regularly
claimed, to all rational practice, including political decision-making and obstitutional
arrangements (see MR).
Analogous features are incorporated in many of the arguments against anarchism. For
example, it is argued that anarchism cannot realise optimal delivery of public goods, ideal
conditions for this or that (e.g. free market functioning, capital formation and flow), and so on.
Not only do other alternatives not measure up to these standards (certainly prevailing
arrangements fall very far short), the standards themselves are quite excessive. Instead it is
enough that certain sorts of adequacy standards are met, that reasonable thresholds are
achieved. There is a most important corollary: that arguments against anarchism or anarchistic
institutional arrangement which assume maximizing principles or the like (as are presumed in
Prisoners Dilemma arguments, game theory, mainstream economics, etc.) are flowed from the
very outset, and should be set aside.
A central time in anarchism offers a somewhat different display of the excess
phenomenon. The issue concerns alleged justifications of the state, or state-like institutions.
Here all that reason and argument appear to warrant are much less powerful institutions, not
arrangements with the excessive powers of the state. To close the gap between what argument
and practice appear to justify and what the state claims, some opportunistic intellectuals have
tried, rather ^".^..^to redefine the state. But such low redefinitions, while imposing states on
societies that operated without them, leaves the contemporary state be^ereft of adequate
justification. In brief, such intellectual strategies lead from the frying pan to the fire.
So it is similarly with institutions within the state, such as property and law. Reason and
argument do not justify state property arrangements, only an opportunistically redefined
"property" which does not fulfil the same state and capitalistic role. Similarly with law and
state legal systems.
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NQRK4-N&-5RAFT
CULTURE AND THE ROOTS OF POLITICAL DIVERGENCE:
a South Pacific perspective
the Austral ian/American contrast
major
A
Political
change
industrial
of
-Function
in
in
regulate
and
control
and political divergence
principle then,
features of local and regional culture.
the
to
is
the South Pacific,
can,
North,
culture
be grounded in and
change. 1
from
the
powered
by
One organising theme, a corollary of
facilitates the transition from principle to practice:- It
argument,
is
that the requisite elements are present in regional cultures, the potentiality
is
for
there,
South Pacific region (and Australia
the
particular)
in
to
proceed in a very different social and political direction from the North (and
from
USA in particular).
the
American arrangements,
unsatisfactoriness of
the
2
in many frequently exposed respects , such a different
Given the radical
direction is worth taking - if it can be.
serious problem in the nay 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
by geographical isolation,
arrangements
of
socio-political
is supposed to derive from human nature itself.
Free people are
economic people,
into the same type
in pretty much the American mould,
this route, economic imperialism can replace political
1.
Nature,
theory
- one
culture,
to
which
and control.
so it
is
By
claimed.
imperialism.
A supposedly,key question in political
we are said to have no satisfactory'' answer
in
the
absence of a worthwhile theory of human nature (or human natures) - is .his:
1.
Thus Abraham p.29ff.; Awa p.30.
2.
For a recent trenchant expose, see Cohen and Rogers.
1
*
7%-
To
extent does human nature allow tor alternative political and
what
arrangements? Or, to turn the question around:-
in
virtue
of
the
nature
of
possibilities?
How does that
much-promoted
Anglo-American
Enlightenment,
is
controls,
become)
from
or
superstition,
answer,
people
broad
range
directly
taboos and
(and
6
from
descended
are essentially
but for their
will
the
tribal
generally
shortage
information
of
free people are basically economic
people.
that is to replace one ideology by another.
ideology is no longer so
Enlightenment
political
of
(properly) concerned with maximising their
that is,
interests;
As ought now to be evident,
the
the
that once freed from systems of myths,
technical know-how),
(including
on
What restrictions are imposed
"nature" reduce the organisational options?
self-centred individuals,
gain
own
humans
social
evident:
what
But
recommends
it?
Under pressure of this sort, the Anglo-American answer gets transformed to the
that the economic picture of human nature is superior,
theme
rational
creatures.
and fitting
That 'self-appointed West European superiority
*
turn been disputed, since the time of Herder and the Romantics.
has
of
in
Fortunately,
however, the extensive ensuing dialectic can be substantially avoided
For all
these questions and answers presuppose, to begin
with, a certain
misplaced essential ism, that there is such an invariant nature common to human
beings,
which
such
exactly
separates humans from other
creatures.
suitably constant and invariant
5
necessary and sufficient conditions , are legion. They are
specify
an
essence,
Attempts
and
given
to
by
a frequent feature of Enlightenment thought. All men are the same
because of universal drives [such as to pleasure and the avoidance of
pain). These drives will operate independently of any location.
Chief among those drives was that towards self-preservation - Holbach,
for instance, stipulates:
we .shall
call
nature in man the collection of properties and
qualities which constitute him what he is, which are inherent
.o
his species, which distinguish him from other animal
species ur
which he has in common with them ... every man feels,
thinks,
3.
These people are also picked out under various alternative (but
strictly equivalent)
descriptions, e.g. as acquisitive m i?i ua s,
possessive individuals.
acts and seeks his own well-being at all times,
these are^
kilties and property thet constitute human nature ... o.
But th,, attempt at essenti.list defin.ti.n of human nature fail,,
in a quite
A, -t stands, th. d.dtniti.n is inadequate; tor net a!)
*c
yo<
/
humans seek just their o<an ujeii-being always; .ssome ar. altruistic, s<xne have
characterrst-c ^y.
other commitment,.
to
ego-sm,
by
replacing
rendering such internal
examples
suppose
Hoover,
uell-being-
egoism analytic.
(such a, human vegetables,
definition,
replacing
every
definition 1, again inadequate;
example,
avoid such tamtl.ar counter.ostance,
by
say
broad
m.ll-being',
And suppose to avoid other counter
morons and th. like),
man' by
thus
every normal human'.
^normalise
the
then
the
But
tor it fails to distinguish humans from, for
It applies equally to dolphin nature or, for that matter,
dolphins.
to aori11 a nature.
Of
4.
course
the
definition can again be patched,
by
appealing
to
the
(From previous page)
See Berry, p.30ff., from whom the quote is taken,
It
is worth spelling out a little the extent of agreement and
disagreement with Herder. Nhat is applauded is
1.
'Herder's dismissal
dismissal of
of the
the Enlightenment's
Enlightenment's conception
conception of human nature
as static, acultural and ahistorical' (Berry, p.32), but no^
that 'each culture
... should be
31.
Herder's cultural relativism,
t judged by some faulty perspective such
treated on its own merits and no! .
"nature' (p.30), or from any other perspective.
In the
as
la belle
p.u,77^^k
of th. text ("huh presupposes PPP),
a good many
pluralistic cross-cultural judgements are made and defended.
Order's relativisation of human nature to culture,
and embodiment
32.
Herder s relafivisatio
through language that human nature
of it in culture; for example,
it is
Mi th
* 32).
(p
can be seen to be specifically embodied in culture'
but
theoretical
point;
relativisation the notion loses its original
same
cultural nature is open to many of the
ojhile failing in this role,
Nor can language bear the weight
sorts of objections as human nature.
Herder loads upon it.
A
it is speech and with that reason
Herder's human chauvinism:
33.
Man can choose, man
is king'
that differentiates man.
and freedom,
can choose, communicate, solve puzzles,
<
<=Hrn^^s
(p.36).
1Wild animals are free, ---- -----) out elementary reasoning;
m these ^^=-7
;
and carryand many other humans. Furthermore, 33 gets Herder into serious
chi 1dren
trouble, not to say inconsistency, with 1.
5.
6.
drying on Nittg.nste.n,
Abraham,
essence, p.23ff.
Berry p.17.
Berry supplies severa
pre^nt, Just these condition, for an
1 other similar examples.
cluster of -features that separate humans from other mammals or
anatomical
the
biological specification of homo sapiens.
But the resulting
to
normalised
definition,
with its analytical egoism, does little more than such biological
definitions
of
human:
it does not supply a nature,
deliver
not
does
it
The notion of human
superbiological
features of political relevance.
thus fragments:
into the satisfactory enough biological notion of human,
an
unsatisfactory
superbiological (or sociobiological)
and
of
that
addition^
The Romantics
What is this further, problematic, nature?
nature or essence.
nature
can be read as arguing that there is none, no nature as distinct from culture,
cultural
off
Peeling
only local nature (Herder's term) which coincides with culture.
excretions and variations in order to reach an essence leaves,
liKe
Wittgenstein's artichoke, nothing.
of human nature is a theoretical item,
The notion
cultural variability,
amid
stabi1i ty
but designed as wel 1
particular
type
everywhere
else.
of
7
fashionj;
fact
and
that
received,
not,
the
introduced to
a constant bulwark against
to justify ^as natural or, failing that,
political
economy and legislature, and
provide
relativism,
as superior^
its
imposi t i on
such
Tlsf?s resilient notion has been widely applied in
i
is not so easily dissolved,
notion
by one illustration.
is wri tten large in much
political
but is defective,
3
However the
theory,
the embedding theory is sound.
does not show that it or
a
and
is
Hnd it is
and in its socio-political selectivity it is,
as the
a piece with human chauvinism (which would
assign an unduly privileged position to human beings in the ecological
scheme
of things).
under
7.
. the superbiological notion of human nature begins to dissol\
*
A
any attempt to set it down,
in much the way that attempts supporting
Hence the Enlightenment program of imposing enlightened Western cultur^
everywhere,
later emphasised by Bentham. 'The Legislator, lowing t
human nature is ever the same [different countries do not have
catalogues of pleasure and pain], can reform the laws and even transplan
them from one society to another' (Berry, p.18).
namrg. This is a theoretical notion which has been used for multifarious
reforious, social and political purposes. Typically the notion has been deployed in a effort toy
i
.7"& $ 11T
A
enforce various restrictive types of social arrangements, archie ones (including defence foc^s,
to
chauvinism
human
humans
that
there
ethically
something
about
special
humans
The notion of human nature - a nature or essence for alj_
disintegrate.
only
down
set
(some special classes of humans excepted perhaps)
are
stable or constant social
some
- presupposes
holding
features
and
for
all
across different cultures, which are furthermore distinctively human
peoples,
features.
peoples
The
is
presupposition fails,
fully
characteristics
taken
remain,
because once cultural variation between
into account,
which
some
only
furthermore
are
rather
shared
by
trivial
shared
various
animal
cultures, such as those of primates.
Consider,
books,
or
historical
first,
such
products or tools of more literary cultures as
of contemporary cultures as telephones and computers.
cultures
lacked
such items,
their
possession
or
Since
most
distribution
obviously cannot figure as part of what marks out human nature. Consider next,
what are commonly taken to be key components of (human) nature, certain
then,
basic human needs,
such as food and shelter.
free of cultural and environmental
as required in the way of shelter,
place to place.
of
ways,
common
under
8.
These requirements are far from
determinants.
For look at what is regarded
and how it varies from culture to culture,
(And even what is taken as basic can often be met in a myriad
though acceptably in some cultures only in a few fixed
ways.)
denominator is the rather trivial requirement of some sort of
more extreme conditions - a requirement also of wombats.
The
shelter
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 ex -or
the alleged social-arrangement-dictating features of human nature,
like
similar alleged features of economic or technological
determinism, are
rather major obstacles to be removed - especially insofar as they
supposedly severely and inevitably restrict the character of
u ure
societies - than the main business of the present enterprise.
Fortunately then the claim,
that the superbiological notion of human
nature is a defective theoretical one which dissolves,
is defende
elsewhere: not only, in effect, in work 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 which
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 an
profoundly unstable" (Philp, p.15, italics added).
5
with
1-ood,
sex,
and
so on,
considerably from race to race,
by
many
people
is hardly better.
vary
Europeans for example being very inefficient
tribal standards and unable to survive satisfactorily where tribal
9
flourish.
figain the somewhat
trivial
lowest common denominator
applies also to various groups of animals.
human
requirements
Dietary
by some more complex list of jointly necessary
nature
conditions,
Nor are attempts to mark out
more
or
loosely
by a cluster of natural
and
features,
the
sufficient
more
much
successful, or of direct political application without the importation of what
is culturally at issue - values.
In any case, such vague and general
impose little constraint at all on apolitical
emerge
direction,
lists as
since
a
variety of political arrangements is compatible with such listings.
Accordingly,
political
theory,
human
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
to
.
The reason is
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
The
converse is seen in the extent to which tribal peoples gain weight
on European diets. At another level, consider the Maori 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, Wilson 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.a.
p. 39) .
For more on contemporary "scientific" efforts to deploy a theory of human
nature for social and political ends, see Appendix 2.
11.
Which 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.
and human nature,
nature
depending on the culture or social paradigm and
on
Nature, both human and not, varies with culture and environment.
the setting.
there is no unique stable superbiological
Because of this two-way dependence,
human nature.
of
corollary
6
rejection also,
across races and tribes,
The picture is flawed in much the same way,
the
on
top.
culture affects local nature.
as the familiar picture of
then,
consisting of given uninterpreted sense data,
as
is
with culture as a variable
There is no such culturally invariant division:
perception,
nature
of the usual picture of nature as given, as a
as misleading,
notion
stable
the dissolution of the notion of human
stable
across
(normal) perceivers, with 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.
cultures can be destroyed; however what results from removal by destruction of
a culture is not something closer to real people,
culture.
So
organisation
but people with a destroyed
it is also with attempts like Hobbes or Rawls to peel
off
in order to locate in a
the the top,
political
quasi-analytical
or
quasi-historical way, a state of nature underneath or preceding some organised
state
or
other.
A
flawed picture,
derived from mistaken
or
questionable
presuppositions, is assumed.
Nhat will be found underneath, or in the original
(natural) state, is, it
is usually conveniently assumed, a nature that fits the view to be developed
with the
explained
the
and
culture's
right values very fortunately in-built.
is
privileged
image
position of some
of itself,
and
status quo -
elements of the
as well
dominant
as
a
Northern
be
serves
for
economic man,
7
dominant
social
hardly surprisingly, that
fully competitive possessive individualism (much the same model,
which
to
or justified is something like present socio-political arrangements
paradigm - underlying human nature turns out to be,
of
Given that what
for Enlightenment man,
for
the
that is,
rational
myths,
The myth of unique human nature functions,
etc.)
person",
perpetuate
to
other
tike many
or instit particular social arrangements
special
and
pr ivi1ege.
Thus too the myth of human nature is linked to other culture-based myths,
myths
the
predominantly
rational)
all
of
humans
(normal)
self-interested
- to
bring
maximizers
no firm starting point in human nature,
myths.
aggressive
(at
least
some of the myths bound
in
urban-industrial humans.
contemporary
as
individuals
as
they
are
Mi th
the
image
of
up
As there is no underlying hard ground,
associated
so there is none in these
The South Pacific Mas, and remains, rich in cultures Mhich upset these
of
the
Melanesians,
Polynesians
None
aboriginal
peoples
comprised societies of individually-oriented
after
especially,
lifestyles and
strongly communal
their
to
a loM sufficiency threshold had been reached,
source of criticism from the
repeated
preparedness
European cultures
Australian
or
myths.
and
as
insofar
associated
indeed
and
maximizers;
Mork
stop,
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.
for
13.
The most that appears
instance
clear is that circumstances can be
through croMding or provocation or cultural
arranged,
relocation,
Mhere
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
properly.
8
14
of
peoples
cultures will become aggressive
familiar
more
but Mill just give up,
people of other cultures Mill not,
in the face of immense brutality.
types.
depends
upbn
Once
shortsightedly
again,
as fixed:
see
as people often do
but these can be of a Mide range of
Mhat is normally
accounted
varies Mi th culture and environment,
and
perhaps
Certainly some arrangements are required to
cope Mi th or suitably isolate aggression,
alternative
- and
certainly,
such
nature
people
Mhich
components
human
as
often
selfishness,
cooperativeness, individuality do.
What
much more important than either culture or nature
is
determining social arrangements is another factor:
social
Whatever
imposition.
one
May or another.
from
invariably
namely, outside control or
arrangements have evolved in a
local^nature and cultureican be overridden,
through
region
and neM arrangements imposed,
With long-standing arrangements,
Mithout,
imposition
is
and the changes in arrangements typically
the South Pacific has,
especially,
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. And the changes,
neMer world,
still flowing strongly from the North, continue.
We
are
in the last days of the destruction of
old
and
cultures,
destruction is now to a considerable extent by more subtle cultural,
and
technological
Outside
direct
control can be exercised,
economic sanctions,
film
and
television (i.e.
economic
earlier
times.
in many ways less blatant
such as through introduction
monetary and loan policies,
as through exchange and training programs,
magazines,
14.
or occur,
intervention of one sort or another,
new technologies,
well
means than the cruder methods of slightly
textbooks,
through physical
the
etc.,
advertising
than
of
as
and
exemplifications of
Wilson's argument that humans are innately aggressive involves such an
invalid move: he looks at the behaviour of Semai men when taken out of
their nonviolent society'' by recruitment in a British colonial
army
(p.100)!
As well, Wilson's case rests on a dubious redefinition of
innateness, and a low redefinition of aggressiveness to take in forms of
mere (nonaggressive) conflict (pp.99-100).
9
process of cultural conversion and erosion;
this quieter
are
unwittingly, part
European peoples in the South Pacific are often
culture).
or 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
to
insensiti
other human cultures as they are to the natural environment (witness Americans
Like an ecosystem, a culture can be destroyed,
and their allies in Vietnam).
pushed
creation
political
of
typically
This is
beyond redemption.
disaster
sufficiently
apace
areas proceeds
where
is possible at all,
recovery
a
sometimes of the order of human generations.
production
of
imperial ism,
- in
these politically
e.g.
USA
in
contaminated
Central America,
long
blatant
cases
There
recovery
is
period,
Yet there is increasing
regions,
Israel
the
Yet
disruption of cultu-e and lifestyle using violence.
by
-fur thermore,
perhaps
well-known.
in
especially
Lebanon,
through
Russia
in
Afghanistan, Indonesia in East Timor and West Papua, etc.
In the South Pacific, there are
but
the
strongest now is unquestionably the
businessmen,
films
can
many quieter Northern influences at work,
academics,
American.
American
companies,
tourists and warships, their technology and patents,
are the most evident and influential.
and television programs,
be various motives and aims (and assumptions) behind the
newer
There
cultural
behind endeavours such as the American
16
Granted it
everywhere
.
their "free enterprise
*
philosophy and practice
17
to American business
and
mostly contributes to American economic supremacy,
and
economic imperialism,
These disaster areas should perhaps be cordoned off li.e
by communicable disease,
but from continuing disruptive,
infec ted
outside
in ter-ference.
What is said about American cultural and political imperialism applies,
with adaption,
in a lesser way,
to imperialism and colonialism by other
nation-states such as USSR, Britain, France and Indonesia.. USA
L.. has no
in
the
third
world
is in part
monopoly on imperialism. US imperialism i......... documented and analysed in Chomsky and Herman.
Though
not md.riaMy a. th. experience "ith the Japanese ctor industry
has indicated.
10
to
the transfer of substantia! regional wealth and surplus value to the
But
national economic reasons &re not the only sort of reasons such
are
pursued;
apart
from the side-issue of integrity,
really do believe in the optimality of their local
USA.
policies
Americans
that many
ideals to the exclusion
of
other arrangements, there are deeper and somewhat more respectable ideological
reasons as Mel 1.
imperialistic
The
assumption
that
(a
distortions
technological
economic)
means.
can
be
underpinned
all human nature is at bottom really
instance highly economically oriented.
for
nature,
endeavours
political
means,
May:
they
by
American
like
Thus,
descr i pt ive
a
human
but for political
analogue of economic externalities)
and
lack
other peoples Mould choose the American (political
simply have not really been given the
For many peoples this is simply not true;
of
and
opportunity
or
for most other cultures let
us hope, or pray, that this is not the case. Alternatively, or as Mell, a more
arrogant
prescriptive assumption may be at Mork,
that all human nature ought
to be like American nature at its
best, because America not only has the best
18
May of life in the Morld and mostly the best Mays of doing things
, but has
a
special
hold
on rationality.
The free-enterprise
representative democracy American-style tacked on)
18.
system
(perhaps
is the rational
Mith
enterprise
Thus, for example, American agricultural textbooks and agricultural
spokespeople are fond of announcing that American agriculture is the best
in the Morld;
similarly for environmental
protection,
forestry,
technology, university education, and so on.
But since they are the
best,
it is evident that these American Mays 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 Mays may interfere Mith 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 loMer standard of
life and conditions elseMhere, upon siphoning off Meal th and especially
resources (US currently uses about one-fifth of Morld resources and 30 X
of Morld energy) from other regions.
To be sure, economic apologetics
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.
by genuine believers in
bridled
Certainly the system is sometimes peddl
,
embodied.
which Mas often
with the same evangelism as Christianity,
American way,
the
at least before science got at
rational
religion,
as the
seen and presented
yet, but on the
got at the free-enterprise religion
hasn't
i t. MeH, science
justification and
division heavily devoted to its
contrary now has a social
sufficiently to
19
philosophy has got at the system,
furtherance.
However some
_
tp,t it is no unique embodiment of rationality - there -s none sue
reveal
decidedly irrational practice in many circumstances.
is
but
a
preserve local
environments
end
if local goals are to
irrational
especial ly
Thus,
cultures, as much experience helps attest.
is aspects of
tt
with
false descriptive
and what can
assumption,
.what follows (though various of
are a main focus in
rejection,that
th. prescripts, assumption Mill .'so -.rg. °r 9^
its
the reasons for rejecting
underlying theme Mil! continue to be
An
recorded).
nor
broader
emerge
basic
human
.
nature
is
a
single
in
substantially
sort of political framework a society adopts. In
outside
cultural
nei ther
important
ways that are highly political
upon *from
that
or above, the variation can be
variation
<Mhich
turn
in
depends
stable
thing,
varies
but
the
to
relevant - relevant
freer societies, less imposed
largely accounted for through
The
environment,etc).
on
those of cuitura! pluralism, that culture
alternative
assumptions,
are then,
..cal human nature. Of course once
is part of "nature",
"human nature"
again
^nations-,
but
shaping in particular
can be pared back and back to try to
m this way what are taken to be
remove
important
superbi ologi c a
*
matures of human nature for political theory are also excised (e.g
that
make prisoners' dilemmas and commons' tragedies
cu1tura'
feature
one way
rathe
than another).
1?.
in
elaborating on h.M
has
explained
^"soc'ial"control
various extensile typ
p. 15.
12
exercised
py^.y of approved
Just as dttterent cultures can.mean different social arrangements,
so tn
, larger setting they can imply different political organisation and different
directions.
political
incongrous
Where
requisite differences
had.
arrangements
been imposed,
do
not
occur,
because
cultural differences can
b.^.
nnuerful force for change. Lihemse d^.loping elements of cultural difference
can
a potent base for social change - or resistance to imposed
be
in communities inhere other more orthodox
(especially)
a, economic mcertioes or penalties,
have
bases for change,
become inoperative or
-
change
such
tailed,
or
used,
but
are not avaitable.
Culture is hotter a double-edged instrument,
For
resisted.
though
example,
leading
not only to be
of
[valuable] features
indigenous
Pacific cultures are to be reactivated, as forces for change, some features of
these cultures are to be resisted (such as male domination),
features
modern Western cultures.
of
along mth
used
Features of culture are thus
and confront undesirable (implanted or imported) sources
resist
many
to
culture;
of
such as, inequitable political arrangements, excessive consumerism, persuasive
advertising
media and loaded news systems,
structures,
etc.
for
culture.
chief
build
and
competi tive
encouraging
culture afford a solid foundation - but also
prime sources of
up resistance against,
is as true for American culture as Antipodean.
This
reasons
alienating
^hy
so
job
build and design alternatives
It is important not only to
which elements of local
dismantle,
holloa suburbia,
mainstream American culture
violent,
and
so
forth,
is
is
that
so
to
antagonistic
One
of
the
ndividualistlc,
so
offering
or
movements
alternatives have been repressed by the dominant corporations and
the state apparatus (see especially Goldstein).
2.
The
Why work with such an unfavourable contrast case as Australian—^iety^
regional and environmental orientation.
cultural variation and their force for change,
contrast
than
US
In defence of theme.
for instance Melanesian culture.
13
g
it Mould no doubt be easier to
culture with some other culture which diverges
Australian culture,
<_on-_
more
Or,
strikingly
differe
y,
ELEMENTS OF POLITICAL PLURALLISM
*
Let us begin by sketching, in summary form, what political pluralism was, and then
explaining what it becomes under contemporary plurallism, ecopluralism in particular. These
new pluralisms, while they differ markedly from former political pluralsm, undoubtedly can
build upon it
Political pluralism used to be a theory viewing social life in terms of groups, which were
said to be the priwMry .s*oc/o/
On this theory, an individual's primary allegiance is not to
any abstract government but to groups, unions, clubs, churches. Thus there is no absolute
necessity for a highly unified political or legal order - whence developed a critical stance
towards the state and towards sovereignty among somg pluralists and so elements of anarchistic
pluralism.
There was, however, no systematic theory of political pluralism (a further anarchistic
feature). The position (and both British and American pluralism, however different) were
unified not by any doctrine but by crinco/ response to growth of the state.
A major theme was, and remains, moderate
(as further explained in EP). Humans
are neither isolated atoms, nor components of centralised states, but social creatures who
function in crisscrossing groups of their own choice. Moreover, groups are genuine objects
with choices, capacities, purposes, etc.
Pluralist society respects and tries to reconcile diverse interests of humans without
thwarting them. Groups communicate via negotiation and the like; their operations are not
delegative from some higher authority.
Contemporary ecological pluralism takes over most of these scene setting features, but
emphasizes the communitarian bases, and expands the scope of communities and groups to
include
communities, which include creatures and systems other than humans. Perhaps
the best known example of such a mixed community is that, introduced by Naess and
elaborated by Devall (in 89) of a Norwegian community of bears and wolves, sheep and
humans (but earlier Leopold and other had offered examples of expanded communities). A
problem which group theory hides, perhaps deliberately, but which such communities at once
expose, is that of internal conflict. Conflict cannot be avoided even by going right down to
families or individuals; for as much conflict may be bottled up in a family or even in one
*
Early versions of the first section of these notes drew heavily on Vincent, TAeonej of
ytote. The text takes up the working draft of 'Philosophy, politics and pluralism: II.
Anarchistic pluralism'.
2
individual as in a small group. That is, there are no pure conflict-free atoms from which to
build up group or community structure.
Conflict within individuals is strikingly exhibited in certain sorts of schizopherenia. But
it happens also in many humans. On conflict issues, in dilemmatic situations, and similar, one
part of a person pulls in one direction, another part in another. Or, more accurately, because
often no such neat separation into directional components can be affected, there are inconsistent
allegiances, derives, drives. Under orthodox theory, it is presumed that such conflicts,
personal inconsistency, can be removed by artificial fragmentation. What happens in orthodox
social theory is that individuals are effectively broken down and whittled down, not without
significant.... . into iJca/ components — classical individuals — with properly organised
(duly transitive, etc.) preferences and coherent desires. While such idealization is alright for
limited theoretical purposes, let us not falsey imagine that it is adequate for a satisfactory social
theory. Let us not pretend that such thin classical individuals offer a saatisfactory model for
rich actual individuals.
Ecopluralism not only extends the group basis; like gontc contemporary pluralism, the
variety of positions and practices is also much expanded. Early political pluralism (so-called)
was far from advocating a plural variety. (Figgin, an early British pluralist, would have been
shocked at such a supposition: Vincent p.182.) A fairly narrow normative consensus was
assumed, e.g. Christian morality in British "pluralism", American political arrangements in
American "pluralism". Indeed several American "pluralists", political scientists from Bentley
on, erroneously "saw pluralism as a description of the American political system. In this usage,
pluralism moves into the area of interest group and pressure group theory' (Vincent p.183).
Herein lies the route to
p/ura/hwn: While the state may remain discredited as a unitary
order, it is now seen a complex multiple entity, which tried to incorporate and theorize diversity
of group life. In the American version, groups are seen as interested in reaching some kind of
bargain. Government policy is the outcome of group pressures. Government is alleged to seek
out some abstract national interest.
Public police is ...' the equilibrium reached in this struggle at any given
moment' .... Today's loser, it is blithely assumed, will be tomorrow's
winner.
Most American pluralists of this ilk assume that the contest between
groups will be fair and that there is some kind of lurking normative
consensus in the background. Certain types of behaviour are
presumably un-American. Practical politics, therefore, for the American
pluralist is about bargaining, compromise and trade-offs. There is no
normative appraisal of the State, but rather an gjtp/anation anJ partial/y %
yn^ti/icarion o/ wAat t/tgy ta%g to
actaa//y tAg ca^g in tAg qo/irica/
qrocc.y^g.y of the USA. Government is not an impartial umpire. It
reflects the dominant coalition on a particular policy — although it will
try to maintain some balance. ... In American pluralism a group is
simply a collection or aggregation of individuals acting in specific roles.
3
Most significantly the American pluralists were not concerned with any
normative account of the State as an institution or practice. They were
far more interested in examing, empirically, the effects of group
pressures on the actual activity of government (Vincent p.190 emphasis
added).
In even more degenerate Eastern European forms, pluralism comes down to some sort of
multi-party electoral arrangements;
plurality just amounts to many parties. Political
arrangements can however remain highly paternalistic and authoritarian. Because we are
interested in genuine free pluralisms, we shall leave these desperate terms behind.
EXTRA SPACE
Now consider the organisational possibilities for the Earth, i The Earth divides variously
into (geographical) regions; under ecological organisation the decomposition will be into
ecoregions. Those regions that are occupied will be occupied by structures of (mixed)
communities. The assumption that each occupied region is occupied by a single community is
too simple to account even for the present impoverished arrangements offering on Earth. Some
regions are occupied by communities of communities,
community structure so to
say.2 It seems unlikely that on Earth, given a suitable choice of regions, it is necessary to
ascend beyond communities of communities to third-order community structures. Thus for
each region it is appropriate to begin with the ancient ideal of a community of communities.
But of course there will be higher-order structure involved, such as regional federations of
regions, and federations of these federations, and so on and up. Call this organisational
structure, the Earth frame. This frame is not of course unique; there are many other ways, of
varying levels of adequacy, of unscrambling an organisational grid.
1
Off the Earth, in free logical space, case arrangements are wry much greater. Not only
can many terrestrial limitations be transcended, for instance with wiser creatures than
humans, and many fairer regions, but the interaction of regions can be avoided, so that,
for example, an intense dense industrial society need not transmit its pollution outside
its own borders, indeed in the right circumstances it need not be polluting at all. A
beginning is made in investigating this richer structure by Nozick, but even his useful
beginnings leave much to be desired, as brought out in UT.
2
Whether communities of communities amount just to communities will depend upon
the final characterisation of community, or what sort of members they can have and
the extent and character of the interrelations of their members. If communities were
mere set-like objects, it would be a matter of the transitivity of membership; but
obviously communities are more than mere sets, internal relations counting for much.
4
The frame selected is in fact intimately tied to real mundane arrangements. For the short
time that they survived state interference, the Spanish anarchistic communities coexisted and
coevolved in genuine pluralistic fashion (as Dolgoffs sympathetic description has revealed).
That is by no means the only occasion on which the old ideal of a community of communities
(communitas communitatorum) has achieved partial realisation, but is one of the better known
recent examples involving anarchistic communities in a limited geographic region - at a time in
world history when state domination of social life continues to break up communities and
impose a grey uniformity across former community diversity. But the concern here is not with
what is, with present depressing (but temporary) political realities, but with how things might
well be, with different and - no difficult feat - superior political arrangements, in particular
pluralist arrangements.
A recent picture of pluralistic political arrangements by Nozick supposedly allows for
virtually anarchistic communities within an overarching minarchic framework. It would seem a
simple matter to vary this picture, in particular, to weaken or strengthen the overarching
framework; and that indeed the system of Spanish communities (which of course did not
persist) weakened the minimum state arrangements in true anarchistic fashion to zero. Nozick
has however a complex (and also seriously flawed) argument that variations are without
justification, that political possibilities which can be justified are omc/t tighter than the wide
range of the logical possibilities would suggest.
A crucial early question once an Earth frame is untangled is, for each structural level:
what are the broad organising principles? Consider a more important case, the regional level.
Will the same broad principles reappear for each region? Only in a very tenuous fashion, if
such desiderata as regional diversity are to be given appropriate play. Naturally these had better
be included some procedure or other for conflict resolution where conflict is severe, but there is
a wide variety of procedures of very varying merit; some procedures or other for the numerous
issues that have to be dealt with to keep communities functioning, such as to take a sample of
issues, burying the dead, taking care of the indigent.
*
A crucial question, for each structural level,is: what are the broad organisational
principles? One working idea is that in the sort of organisational framework sought will enable
a mix of desiderata to be pushed over some far out natural thresholds. The comy desiderata
include liberal and environmental objectives, such as those of freedom, liberation. Life, liberty,
pursuit of happiness, etc.
3
Levels of organisation, by geographical region (functional with a that), local, small
ecoregion, large ecoregion, ... (old large state), continent - federations, world federation.
Direction of world reorganisation: to a plurality of possibilities, with different possibilities
in different regions. Cities for those who like them in the substantially ecologically destroyed
urban land recipes of the North. Etc.
Diversity is a prime desideratum. We should rgjoicc in Jhw-yity where it recurs, and
encourage ir where it does not, subject as always to certain constraints. In particular, then,
attempt to impose fashionable ideologies everywhere should be strongly resisted; this includes
religious faith and other gospels such as those of market capitalism and state socialism. Such
drives to unity and conformity, and intellectual monoculture, should be derailed. Evidently in
an interlinked system such as the Earth form, federal organisation should include arrangements
to block imposition of ideologies by expansive neighbours on other regions. (Included herein
are states; here is yet another reason for the abolition of states.)
Not to be encouraged, but opposed, are mc.MMnic ging/c-way movements, such as
messianic catholism, messianic communism, and messianic capitalism. These come with a
amvcrya/Mtic perspectic, and a single, allegedly universal set of values: they do not, unless
severely cut down in size, fit into a generous plurallism. Needless to say, these universalistic
(one-tuming) movements cannot rationally justify their practices. It can no more be established
that there is only one god with such and such properties (e.g. those ascribed to Allah under
Islam) than it can be established that there is only one logic; indeed the justificatory situation is
considerably worse (imagine the faithful chanting each day, facing one Cambridge or other,
"There is no logic but classical logic ..."; of course most Anglo-American philosophers are
committed to something like this in their philosophical practice, but they rarely recognise the
character of the commitment).
Note: Many of the economic objectives presented as absolute, are not merely dubious. They
are not intrinsic values, but merely instrumental, and instrumental to goals that a community
may not have. Leading examples of such objectives are efficiency, production.
Out of the same stable as broad monoculturalism, with its uniform urban systems,
universities, etc., is the method of consensus (or
one opinion, as it might as well
have been called). Consensus — unless severely limited, as for instance to argument on a
pluralistic structure — is anti-pluralistic. Nonetheless there can be consensus of a sort at one
remove, metaconsensus on one story, "agreement" to differ.
Limited agreement does however have its virtues in conflict resolution.
* To be sure, cases where have to resolve what is to be done, how to act. Many ways to go:
single uniform recipe approach too absolutist. On the other hand, it is not entirely situational.
Set of recognised decent procedures.
6
The problematicness of conflict, and need for its removal, is much exaggerated. The
drive for conflict-free conditions is like, and linked to, the drive for consistency. But conflict is
not always undesirable, but often advantageous (and perhaps, as Heracleitus claimed,
necessary). Often conflict should just be allowed to stand; it does not require resolution.
Political and social arrangements should allow for it and be able to absorb it. Where removal is
required, it is often by achieved by distancing, regionalisations etc.
APPENDICES
1. On Walzer's p/ara/Mm there is a plurality of distributive systems. From Plato onwards it is
suggested that only one distributive arrangement that can be justified, (p.5). Walzer suggests
the Rawlsian picture of reeled strand choosers provides
modern arrangements. But
'Justice is a human construction, and it is doubtful that it can be made in only one way' (p.5).
Thus there is a plurality also of distributive justice. While the argument is plausible, its
construction prescription is not. Walzers' 7%Mt'.? (p.6) is: 'the principles of justice are
themselves pluralistic in form [whatever that means); that different social goods ought to be
distributed for different reasons, in accordance with different procedures, by different agents;
and that all these differences derive from different understandings of the social goods
themselves — the inevitable product of historical and cultural particularism'.
There is also a theory of goods, and f/teir distribution. In the usual form, people
distribute goods to people. The basic relation is a proc^Jarg. In fact there are many
procedures: given, allocating, exchanging, selling, etc. Walzer wants to claim: People
conceived create goods, which they then distribute among themselves. This is really a
Concatenation of two procedures. His iJea is to split goods into quaser sphere, and to have
different dibtributive criteria for different spheres. This is said to be complex e^aa/ity (p. 18)!
According to Walzer, there are sp/tereg/ or regions of competition, etc. For example, in
Pascal: strength, beauty, intelligence, devoteness;
but it could be: rugby, soccer, rules, horse racing, mountain climbing, etc.
However there are divisions, barriers between these — but they compete for key items e.g.
money, fields, etc. [so population growth is a total menance for a easily pluralistic society.)
1] 'Personal qualities and social goods have their own spheres of operation, where they work
their effects freely, spontaneously legitimately' (p.19) wAat does this seem: work? by
legitimally? etc.
2] Disregard of those sepaate spheres is tyranny; Attempting to convert one good in one place
to another in another is ruled out.
Meaning of "complex equality" (nothing much of equality about it): 'no citizens' standing in
one sphere or with regard to one social good can be undercut by his standing in some other
sphere, with regard to one other good' (p.19). Thus political advantage does not confer
advantage in other spheres, e.g. health care, advoting, etc.
W 'open-ended distributive principle' (p.20): 'no social good x should be distributed to nea
.... who possess some other good y merely because they possess y and without regard to the
meaning of x'.
*^-V
^T)/ ^/'
y-a-y^,
C-V
?^^-<-
,
ece/."*
y4^^y
Z—r
'^/?^'
A// g)Z
y
ELEMENTS OF POLITICAL PLURALLISM^
Political pluralism was a theory viewing social life in terms of groups, which were
said to be the primary social objects. Further an individual's primary allegiance is not to
any abstract government but to groups, unions, clubs, churches. Thus there is no absolute
necessity for a highly unified political or legal order - whence developed a critical stance
towards the state and towards sovereignty among yomg pluralist^and so elements of
anarchistic pluralism.
There was, however, no systematic theory of political pluralism (a further anarchistic
feature.) The position (and both British and American pluralism, however different) were
unified not by any doctrine but by crit/ca/ response to growth of the state.
A major theme wa^aadd^a^ay&M^ one (as/in EP)t humans are neither isolated atoms,
nor components of centralised states, but social creatures who^werkedin crisscrossing
groups of their own choice. Moreover, groups are genuine objects with choices, capacities,
purposes, etc.
Pluralist society respects and tries to reconcile diverse interests of humans without
,
.
,
—
.
.
.
thwarting them. Groups communicate via negotiation etc.; their operations are not
delegadve from some higher authority.
Contemporary ecological pluralism takes over most of these scene setting features, but
emphasizes the communitarian bases, and expands the scope of communities and groups to
include
communities, which include creatures and systems other than humans.
Perhaps the best known example of such a mixed community is the exampley-^givaa by
Naess and elaborated by Devall (89^dhapter-^3)^of a Norwegian community of bears and
wolves, sheep and humans'. A problem which group theory hides, perhaps deliberately, but
which such communities at once expose, is that of internal conflict. Conflict cannot be
avoided even by going right down to familiar or individuals; for as much conflict may be
Early versions of the first section of these notes drew heavily on Vincent, TAcorier <?f
The text takes up the working drift of 'Philosophy, politics and pluralism: II.
Anarchistic pluralism',, and thus completes (so far as it can presently be taken) a series
on this generous topic
*.
; TW J
^4?
^c
A
/^T
%T
j
f iSj
!^3
Ph..
r
t>
", ',
P
*
<r
'*^
c
e \y—Z
,
")"WMnm reached In d.i, Hn<wk at aav'tiv'en
m..n<„, <l<AS,p. 31,). Today', loser, i, I, bh.hol, a,,u,„ed. wdl ho
tomorrow s wmner.
Most American pluralists of this ilk assume that the contest
tween groups wtll be fhir and that there is some kind of lurking
normative consensus in the background. Certain types of behaviour
are presumably un-American. Practical politics, therefore, fbr the
mertcan p urahst is about bargaining, compromise and trade-ofls
lore is no normative appraisal of the State, but rather an
of what they take to be
acm^
processesTnhXUSA
Gov
*
. dm^c^updTe^J^a
"——------ -R—-±A1 1 PLl^uSses^oi
the USA. Government
is
not an impartial umpire. It reflects
reflects the
the domii.^
dominant coalition on a
particular policy - although it will try to maintain some balance
*
I'.--D.
D. Roosevelt remarked, 'The
'
science of politics, indeed, mav
properly be said to be m large part the science of the adjustment of
conflicting group interests' (quoted in Nicholls, 1974, p. 2). This aim
is contrary to that of the English pluralists, who would have been
deeply critical of the idea that the State becomes a focal point for
group pressure, also that policy should emanate from dominant
coalitions of groups via the State apparatus. Individuals, in English
pluralism, pursue their goals within groups. The State should not be
inked to any such partial interests. Each of theSe groups is
recognized as a moral person with a legal status. In American
pluralism a group is simply a collection or aggregation of individuals
acting m specific roles. Most significantly the American pluralists
were not concerned with any normative account of the State as an
institution or practice. They were fhr more interested in examining
empirically, the effects of group pressures on the actual activity of
government,
th^y ^in not
cltscnsswn.
7bottled up in a family or even in one individual as in a small group. That is, there are no
<*/o
pure conflict-free it^ms from which to build up group or community structure.
'
@
Ecopluralism not only extends the group basis; like
contemporary pluralism, the
variety of positions and practices is much expanded. Early political pluralism (so-called)
was far from advocating a plural variety. (Figgin, an early British pluralist, would have
been shocked at such a supposition: Vincent p.182.) A fairly narrow normative consensus
was assumed, e.g. Christian morality in British "pluralism", American political
arrangements in American "pluralism". Indeed several American "pluralists", political
scientists from Bentley Erroneously on^'saw pluralism as a description of the American
political system. In this usage, pluralism moves into the area of interest group and pressure
group theory" (Vincent p.183). Herein lies the route to
While the state jLSxiiscredited as a unitary ordef} it is now seen a complex
multiple entity, which tried to incorporate and theorize diversity of group life. In the
American version, groups are seen as interested in reaching some kind of bargain.
Government policy is the outcome of group pressures. Government is alleged to seek out
some abstract national interest^In even more degenerate Eastern European forms, pluralism
comes down to some sort of multiparty electoral arrangements; plurality just amounts to
many parties. Political arrangements can however remain highly paternalistic and
. Because we are interested in genuine free pluralisms, we shall leave these
desperate ^rms behind.
/^copyV^ncent-l$0, on US pluraKstsof this sort]
/)^onsider the organisational possibilities for the Earth.i The Earth divides variously
into (geographical) rggto/ts; under ecological organisation the decomposition will be into
jporegions. Those regions that are occupied will be occupied by structures of (mixed)
communities. The assumption that each occupied region is occupied by a single community
is too simple to account even for the present impoverished arrangements offering on Earth.
Some regions are occupied by communities of communities,
community
structure so to say.z It seems unlikely that Earth, given a suitable choice of regions, it is
_
.
cm
1
Off the Earth, in free logicat space, case arrangements are very much greater. Not only
can many terrestrial iimiations be transcended, (widi for instance wiscr creatures than
humans, and many fairer regions, but the interaction of regions can be avoided, so that,
for example, an intense dense industrial society need not transmit its pollution outside
its own borders, indeed in the right circumstances it need not be polluting at all. A
beginning is made in investigating this richer structure by Nozick, but even his
beginnings leave much to be desired?
*.
4/7
2
Whether communities of communities amount just to communities will depend upon
the final characterisation of comwMnhy, or what sort of members they can have and
c?
/-
3
necessary to ascend beyond communities of communities to third-order community
structures. Thus for each region it is appropriate to begin with the ancient ideal of a
community of communities. But of course there will be higher-order structure involved,
such as regional federations of regions, and federations of these federations, and so on and
up. Call this organisational structure, the Earth frame. This frame is not of course unique;
there are many other ways, of varying levels of adequacy, of unscrambling an
organisational grid.
The frame selected is in fact intimately tied to real mundane arrangements. For the
short time that they survived state interference, the Spanish anarchistic communities
coexisted and coevolved in genuine pluralistic fashion (as Dolgoff s sympathetic description
has revealed). That is by no means the only occasion on which the old ideal of a
community of communities (communitas communitatorum) has achieved partial realisation,
but is one of the better known recent examples involving anarchistic communities in a
limited geographic region - at a time in world history when state domination of social life
continues to break up communities and impose a grey uniformity across former community
diversity. But the concern here is not with what is, with present depressing (but temporary)
political realities, but with how things might well be, with different and - no difficult feat superior political arrangements, in particular pluralist arrangements.
A recent picture of pluralistic political arrangements by Nozick supposedly allows for
virtually anarchistic communities within an overarching minarchic framework. It would
seem a simple matter to vary this picture, in particular, to weaken or strengthen the
overarching framework; and that indeed the system of Spanish communities (which of
course did not persist) weakened the minimum state arrangements in true anarchisdc fashion
to zero. Nozick has however a complex (and also seriously flawed) argument that
variations are without justification, that political possibilities which can be justified are mMc/z
tighter than the wide range of the logical possibilities would suggest.
A crucial early question once an Earth frame is untangled is, for each structural level:
what are the broad organising principles? Consider a more important case, the regional
level. Will the same broad principles reappear for each region? Only in a very tenu/ous
fashion, if such desiderate as regional diversity are to be given appropriate play. Naturally
the extent and character of the interrelations of their members. If communities were
mere set-like objects, it would be a matter of the transitivity of membership; but
obviously communities are more than mere sets, internal relations counting for much.
*j
these had better be some procedure or other for conflict resolution where conflict is severe,
but there is a wide variety of procedures of very varying merit; some procedures or other for
the numerous issues that have to be dealt with to keep communities functioning, such as to
take a sample of issues, burying the dead, taking care of the indigent.
A crucial question, for each structural level, is: what are the broad organisational
principles?
.
The working idea is that in the sort of organisational framework sought will enable a
mix of desiderata to be pushed over some far out natural thresholds. The, desiderata include
liberal and environmental objectives, each as those of freedom, liberation. Life liberty,
pursuit of happiness^etc.
Direction of world reorganisation: to a plurality of possibilities, with different
possibilities in different regions. Cities for those who like them in the substantially
ecologically destroyed urban land recipes of the North. Etc.
Diversity is a prime desideratum. We should re/'ozce in JivgrHfy where it recurs, and
if where it does not, subject as always to certain constraints. In particular, then,
attempts to impose fashionable ideologies everywhere should be strongly resisted; this
includes religious faith and other gospels such as those of market capitalism and state
socialism. Such drives to unity and conformity, and intellectualm^njt culture, should be
derailed. Evidently in an interlinked system such as the Earth form; federal organisation
should include arrangements to block imposition of ideologies by expansive neighbours on
other regions. (Included herein are states; here is yet another reason for the ahabition of
states.)
Not to be encouraged, but opposed, are
sing/c-way movements, such as
messianic catholism, messianic communism, and messianic capitalism. These come with a
M/uvcrM/Af/c perspectic, and a single, allegedly universal set of values: they do not, unless
severely cut down in size, fit into a generous plurallism. Needless to say, these
universalistic (one-turning) movements cannot rationally justify their practices. It can no
more be established that there is only one god with such and such properties (e.g. thvse
ascribed to Allah under Islam) than it can be established that there is only one logic; indeed
the justificatory situation is considerably worse (imagine the faithful chanting each day,
facing one Cambridge or other, "There is no logic but classical logic
of course most
Anglo-American philosophers are committed to something like this in their philosophical
practice, but they rarely recognise the character of the commitment).
Note: Many of the economic objectives presented as absolute, are not merely dubious.
They are not intrinsic values, but merely instrumental, and instrumental to %^that a
community may not have. Leading examples of such objectives are efficiency, production.
Out of the same stable as broad monoculturalism, with its uniform urban systems,
universities, etc., is the method of consensus (or
one opinion, as it might as well
have been called). Consensus - unless severely limited, as for instance to argument on a
pluralistic structure - is anti-pluralistic. Nonetheless there can be consensus of a sort at one
remove, metacon^ensus on^ one story, "agreement" to differ.
Limited agreement does however have its virtues in conflict resolution.
* To be sure, cases where have to resolve what is to be down, how to act. Many ways to
go: -si^i uniform recipe approach too absolutist. On the other hand act entirely situational.
Last of recognised decent procedures.
The problematicness of conflict, and need for its removal, is much exaggerated. The
drive for conflict-free conditions is like, and linked to, the drive for consistency. But
conflict is not always undesirable, but often advantageous (read perhaps, as Heracleitus
claimed, necessary). Often conflict should just be allowed to stand; it does not require
resolution. Political and social arrangements should allow for it and be able to absorb it.
C**------ -
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Text
Richapd'Sylvan
/> << Ji
197d
p. I
WHAT IS WRONG WITH APPLIED ETHICS
Richard Sylvan
There is much that is wrong with and in applied ethics. Specifically, there are three comprehensive
counts where things are wrong with the commodity concerned, applied ethics, that is with applied
ethics so economically viewed.1 Namely on the following three counts:
•
extraneous, with the supply, delivery, consumption, and the like of applied ethics, AE. The
category prominently includes the delivery of applied ethics: what is done, taught and learnt,
by whom, and how qualified (e.g. whether taught by professionals, professional ethicists or
philosophers in particular). That has tended to presume that the commodity itself is more or
less in order, though the presumption lacks good pedigree, delivery of defective goods being
almost as ubiquitous as business enterprise.
The present focus is not however upon the delivery, or other features of the production and
consumption, packaging and marketing of the goods, but on features of the commodity itself, applied
ethics itself. Thus
•
intraneous counts, concerning the commodity itself, where a further two things are wrong:
••
the applied idea, and
•••
what the application is presumed to be made to, established - or, should it be,
establishment - ethics.
Because an implicit premiss in organising the Philosophy and Applied Ethics Re-examined1
Conference seems to have been that the issues to be addressed are predominantly extraneous, and
because most of the papers actually relevant to the Conference topic appear to focus on extraneous
issues, the present exercise, by contrast, concentrates upon intraneous problems, especially the third:
radical deficiencies in what is supposed to be applied, prevailing ethics, and some extensive repairs
thereto.
1.
The applied count
To begin with, there is something decidedly3 odd, not to say radically unsatisfactory, about the very
idea of applied ethics. To bring out the oddness, the conceptual inadequacy, it helps to consider the
dictionary senses and established usage of applied. The term in the only relevant sense (the other
obsolete sense is that offolded) means: ‘put to practical use; practical as distinguished from abstract
or theoretical' (OED, similarly Concise English). Relevant examples cited are: ‘the applied sciences’
(from Babbage 1832), ‘applied logic (as distinguished from pure)’ (from Thomson 1806).4
It may appear then, that "applied ethics" amounts to pleonasm, a popular tautology (and "pure ethics"
correspondingly to an oxymoron), because ethics itself is already practical, for instance much or all
of it being concerned with practical action and its qualities (such is Maclver s assumption: moral
philosophy is practical - in a way in which other branches of philosophy are not’, p.206). In this
respect "applied ethics", even more "applied morals", is rather like "applied motoring", "applied
nursing" or "applied housekeeping". Conceptual confusion would be considerably reduced by
removing the modifier ‘applied .5 Such a charge of confusion can however be mitigated by properly
I7
�18
What is wrong with applied ethics
distinguishing ethics, which includes philosophy and theory of morality, from morals, thereby
revealing, perhaps, elements of some theory apt for application. No doubt something like this is the
presupposition of those who preach or profit from practical ethics (similarly practical economics, but
doubtfully practical housekeeping): that standing in contrast is a suitably established theoretical ethics
(could it perchance be utilitarianism?) which can rather uncontroversiarbe used to guide practice.
But is there such a theory, apt for application, for translation into practice?
To appreciate what is required for adequacy, consider successful applied subjects. Let us compare
"applied ethics" with^long established applied discipline, namely applied mathematics, which often
boasts a separate department in universities (a discipline I was obliged to study as an undergraduate
in order to proceed further in pure mathematics). In the first place, applied mathematics contrasts with
pure mathematics, applied logic with pure. Where, a naive outsider may ask, is pure ethics that
similarly stands in contrast with applied ethics? Could there decently be separate departments of pure
and of applied ethics?
For the most part, applied mathematics applies to practice, in some wide sense, a body of pure
mathematics that is more or less correct, at least within the assumption framework and contextual
settings where it is applied. (The qualified formulation is given for pluralistic reasons; given the
dominant paradigm, the pure mathematics that is applied is correct without further qualification,
correct period.) A body of substantially correct theory ready for application is then the first of several
pertinent features of that relational object, applied mathematics, the first of several dubiously
matchable by "applied ethics". The proviso ‘for the most part’ (introducing the paragraph) signals
another discrepancy. There is a, presumably derivative, part of applied mathematics that investigates,
in essentially the manner of pure mathematics, theories, algebras, spaces and similar, selected through
postulates, principles or equational sets drawn from standard applied mathematics (thus e.g. Newtonian
theories where classical force laws are satisfied, Hilbert and phase spaces, and so on).6 Such
derivative applied mathematics need not compromise at all normal methodological requirements (such
as they are) of pure mathematics, for rigour, exactness, and similar.
Ordinary applied mathematics, in its quest, even haste, for practical results, does compromise, or
violate, pure mathematical methodology. For example, shortcuts are taken, simplifications made,
information shed, figures rounded, approximations adopted, and so. Science veers towards art. From
a pure perspective, dreadful things are often done to data or mathematical transformations of data.
Skilled practitioners tend to appreciate what they can get away with in this sort of regard. Again,
none of this, neither the body of information nor the kinds of skills, is really matched in ethics, in
putting ethical theory to practical work.
Next, the mathematics that is applied, a body of pure mathematics, is not thoroughly contested. Ethics
however is. There is nothing in ethics like arithmetic or elementary mechanics; the nearest thing
ethics can offer is some controversial development along axiomatic geometric lines. Mathematics has
its critics, both inside (e.g. intuitionists) and out (e.g., cultural relativists), but none (hard core sceptics
excepted) suggest changing all of it or tampering with most of what is applied. By contrast, in ethics,
there continues to be an array of competing theories, none of which has managed to win broad
allegiance. What pure theory is there to apply, to do dreadful things to? It might be said in response:
whichever of them is adopted!
Even that, a hollow compromise will not stand up for long. For deeper environmental ethics challenge
a broad range of pure theory that is alleged to be applied! What challenges a whole subject, that
would change it, can hardly be an application of it. The rise of such environmental ethics is one
reason why the modifier applied is a misnomer. For deeper environmental ethics is not any sort of
/
�Richard Sylvan
19
application of ethics; it instead challenges prevailing ethics. Nor is it, like stock "applied ethics", an
adaptation of ethics within an environmental context.
The label applied is substantially, if not entirely, a misnomer. Adjectives in modifier or attributive
roles, in the combination adjective-noun phrase, often enough do not signify application. The
assumption that all modification is application invokes a dubious, presumably false, theory of
adjectival attribution. Consider a few examples involving a relevant adjective, ‘medical’.
Combinations such as ‘medical student’, ‘medical book’, ‘medical trial’ do not signify applications.
A medical s is not normally an application of s to medical matters (of books or students in this
fashion); normally it is a type (an m type) of s.7 There are occasional exceptions, in which case
compounds are liable to be recorded in dictionaries, as with medical jurisprudence which is not a type
of jurisprudence, but ‘the legal knowledge required of a doctor’. There is good reason to think that
ethics induces no exception, that medical ethics, and similarly business ethics, follow the normal
pattern. Thus business ethics is a type of ethics, namely ethics within a specifically business setting,
and accordingly adapted thereto. Observe that such a preliminary account incorporates automatically
(what gives the applied presumption some problemsj^sce-^ppendix T) allowance for variations in
standards, that business corporations for example should not be expected to measure up to standards
set up for ordinary persons (any more than they should iw»t be expected to pay the same levels of
taxes)!
Given the manifold inadequacies of the label applied, amendment of terminology appears warranted.
Amendment, not abandonment. After all, what ‘applied ethics’ is supposed to comprehend, such as
medical ethics, business ethics, even environmental ethics, are not themselves in court, but presently
taken as viable fields. A superior label is field, for field-defined or field-restricted; another is type,
for type-delimited, another domain. Where others speak of "applied ethics", let us discourse about
field ethics. Investment ethics, for instance, is a field ethic, with field investment. An "institute for
applied ethics concentrating upon applications to business" is an institute for field ethics with main
field business. The "applied ethics" movement becomes effectively a field ethics movement.
Observe that professional ethics are field ethics, with the field in each case the profession concerned.
But professional ethics in sum form a quite proper subclass of field ethics; bio-ethics and ecological
ethics are plainly not professional ethics. Less obviously, more importantly, field ethics differs from
practical ethics (as usually poorly defined), with which "applied ethics" is regularly conflated. For,
on the one side, ordinary living and daily life, central to practical ethics, are not fields. On the other,
field ethics are not confined to practice, but may involve considerable theoretical material, particularly
from the fields concerned.
2.
The ethics count
Not only is the applied operation in trouble, ethics also is in deep trouble. Indeed, in a way, the main
problem lies here. There is not a fit, properly satisfactory subject, for some significant applications.
For some "applications" have to change and develop the subject! But, the problems do not vanish
when the amendment to field ethics is made. Satisfactory fieldwork, satisfactory outcomes in field
ethics are seriously hampered by long-standing troubles in ethics. For as field ethics involve ethics,
whatever is wrong with ethics affects field ethics.
To glimpse these troubles, consider recent ambivalence towards ethics. Is ethics even a good good.
There is a most curious contrast in later 20th century attitudes towards ethics. On the one side, there
are great expectations, for instance for what ethics can contribute, to social and professional lite
�20
What is -wrong with applied ethics
especially; but on the other there is serious disquiet, occasionally verging upon despair and into
nihilism, as to ethics, and its role. Virtually the whole spectrum from great expectations through no
expectations to substantial forebodings is selectively represented. A few examples:
•
Great expectations for ethics, beginning to re-emerge these days, tend to come from outside
professional philosophical ranks, from scientists and social scientists.8 Ethics is seen as taking
up again its grand legitimization and critical roles. It can indeed be used in this respect as
regards to a wide variety of practices, such as in business, economics, government, scientific
experimentation, and so on. Of course it cannot always succeed, because one ethics can be
pitted against another, and each and all challenged.
( p-— These expectations, a bit surprising after the drab days of analytic moral philosophy (where
I
philosophy could express no interesting moral opinions), contrast sharply with
' /•—•
heavy disquiet or worse as to present ethics. A recent example is afforded by
z
MacIntyre’s disturbing introduction to After Virtue', that ‘we have - very largely, if not
entirely - lost our comprehension, both theoretical and practical of morality’ (p.2).
Some, like MacIntyre, promise a happy, even a great, outcome, should we return to
proper paths, to a virtue ethic in the tradition of Aristotle. Others are not so sanguine;
,
there is
1
•
no hope for ethics. There are divergent routes here. Either it can play no relevant
,
role any longer, or it can play only a negative or damaging role (thus e.g. Hinckfuss).
Though both these routes lead badly astray, present (merely classificatory) objectives
do not include showing as much.9
There is, furthermore, reason for at least serious disquiet. Should we care to look closely at, and try
to assess, the total ethical heritage, then what we find is not very promising.
•
What is on offer is mostly extremely sketchy and very piecemeal, much of it a hotchpotch.
There are extraordinarily few well-worked out and detailed ethics. Spinoza’s Ethics is perhaps
one rare example.
•
Most of what is on offer is seriously biassed or prejudiced, indeed from a deep environmental
perspective even unethical. Prime examples include
•
religious bias, heavily constraining or distorting creatures’ lives, and putting them to
work to serve imagined religious objectives.
•
spiritualistic distortion. Even where an explicit religion does not feature, as in
Platonism and neo-Platonism and in edified Buddhism, the whole of life may be
distorted through promise of an after-life or successor life or extra-material life, where
furthermore some system of rewards or punishments may be dished out for previous
performance. No doubt such biasses help in conferring upon ethics authority,
unwarranted authority (fulfil duties or be dammed, etc.).
•
humanistic distortion, summed up as human chauvinism. It is upon this prejudice,
critical for environmental ethics, that we concentrate.
A main matter that is wrong with ethics, and ipso facto its practice and its belated appearance in many
professional settings (when it$ should have been in evidence long ago), is its anthropic bias, its
considerable prejudice in favour of (present) humans.10 The matter is highly material in several fields,
most obviously in environmental ethics, but also in medical ethics, bio-ethics, agricultural and
vefinarian ethics, and similar.
It is widely assumed, however, that ethics is inevitably human biassed, that it has to be
anthropocentric. That is not so. Ethics can be repaired. So much is the substance of ethics without
humans. Both morals and ethics can be characterised, in substantially reportive ways, so as to free
�Richard Sylvan
21
them of anthropocentrism and the like.11 Furthermore, the whole superstructural theory can be
developed in a fashion that makes no essential reference to humans or any other biological species.12
These repairs represent, however, only the beginning of adjustment and change - of many changes if
a satisfactory deep-green ethics is to be reached. When repairing goods, there often comes a stage,
increasingly rapidly encountered those days, when it becomes a more attractive proposition to acquire
new items than to persist with repairs. So it may be, it is now suggested, with ethics. So increasingly
it has been suggested this century, with demands for new ethics, new moral philosophies. Those
making such proposals include Schweitzer, Maclver, Leopold, along with many others.13
Suppose we should arrive, through addressing different or new fields, at what amounts to a new ethics,
as many think we do (thus Maclver, p. 179 and many ecocentric philosophers). Then what emerges
is no "application" of a standard ethics, but something different, not an applied standard ethics at all.
Now something similar may appear to occur for normal applied subjects. A newly encountered group
of physical phenomena, for instance, leads not to the elevation of some dusty mathematical theory
buried in archives, what is mostly the case, but to elaboration of a new mathematical theory.
Normally in this event, the main body of pure mathematics would remain untouched; a new annex or
suburb would simply be added to it.14 With ethics, however, things are different. There are grounds
for contending that the green (environmental) revolution has shaken ethics to its (dubious) foundations
and core, and, as coupled with associated non domination themes (as emphasised especially in
ecofeminism), has left comparatively little untouched. The standard city of ethics is not left alone,
unscathed.
Much the same sort of points can be presented in the form of a dilemma, for standard ethics and a
proposed field, such as environmental issues. Either standard ethics will not cover the field (or cannot
be extended to do so because it (or its extension) does not apply, or through being forced upon the
field it twists or damages the data, for instance leaves an indelible anthropic bias. A homely carpentry
analogy may help: there is some cabinet work where delicate hammering would be appropriate, but
the only tool we have is a sledgehammer.15 Likewise, a standard chauvinistic ethic is the wrong tool
to try to use or extend for deeper environmental work.
Unremarkably, the three options emerging, namely (inappropriate) application, extension or adjustment,
and fashioning of something new or different, correspond more or less to the now familiar threefold
division of environmental positions, into shallow, intermediate and deep.16 As before, deep ethics are
not "applications", but near ethics.
3.
Extraneous issues
Among the many extraneous issues concerning field ethics, those that have come to exercise
philosophers do look distinctly partisan:17 namely, the role of philosophers, especially professionals;
the place of philosophy in field ethics; and the poor practice of these ethics, particularly from a
professional philosophical perspective. Here the main thesis to be advanced inclines towards these
professionally unsympathetic lines: insofar as these matters, philosophical extranalities, are of negatixe
impact for philosophy, philosophers have largely themselves to blame, for they are largely of their own
making (or, to sheet some of the responsibility more accurately, of the controlling power elite of the
profession}.18 Let us investigate some of the extraneous issues seriatim.
Because a field ethics concerns the field as well as (relevant parts of) ethics, its investigation, practice
and teaching, requires an intersection of capacities and skills, drawn from both ethics and the field.
�n
What is wrong with applied ethics
This simple observation enables an immediate response to such questions as: if not philosophers, then
who is to investigate, and teach, field ethics? That response is: those from one area or the other who
have acquired requisite knowledge and technique in the other, or less promising, those from outside
(but with some appropriate informational background) who acquire these prerequisites in both. In
medical ethics, where there is perhaps a larger pool of information concerning the field than there is
regarding ethics, a moral philosopher untrained in medicine may have more to learn than a medical
doctor unversed in ethics and lacking philosophical skills. (Really, neither should be let loose on
students before they are duly prepared in the intersection.) It is evident, then, that philosophy enjoys
no natural monopoly in field ethics. The place of philosophy is less exalted, and certainly is not
dominant - still less given recent proposed (but hardly well justified) decoupling of ethics from
philosophy.19
There are corollaries regarding the roles of philosophers on committees relating to field ethics, in
decision-making and so on on these topics. Philosophers do not have an automatic place. Unless they
are well-informed as to ethics (many philosophers are not) and as to the field, they do not deserve a
place at all (of course they still may gain a role for want of any better placed). Ousting of
under-informed or unenergetic philosophers is not always such a bad thing.
While the informational situation is now significantly better than in 1945 when Maclver was agonising
over the predicament of moral philosophy, it is still true that ‘academic moral philosophers are not
using ‘every opportunity to make themselves acquainted, so far as possible, with the real difficulties
of those [not merely present humans] who need the help of moral philosophy most... I ... confess that
I myself lack the factual knowledge which would be required to do this work well. I suspect that
many ethic philosophers are in the same position ...20 One of the reasons why philosophy has lost
prestige in recent years is that it has not kept pace’ (pp.204-205). One example Maclver incisively
develops concerns ‘discoveries associated with the name of Freud. The behaviour of philosophers in
this connection is particularly hard to excuse. At first they flatly denied the reality of the alleged
discoveries - maintained that the notion of "unconscious mind" was self contradictory, and so forth.
But all this has now been given up. ... Philosophers no longer dispute ... details of the Freudian
system - but disregard them. If they mention them at all, they talk as if they somehow concerned
none but medical men - as if the same propositions could be sene in medicine and false outside it.
In the light of the recognition of unconscious motives the whole traditional theory of moral
responsibility needs overhauling, but no moral philosopher undertakes this’ (p.205). The reason why
the corresponding philosophical debate (about whether unconscious desires are sometimes evil, whether
relevant moral predicates are restricted to conscious motives, and so forth) had not "by 1945, after 40
years of exposure to Freudian issues, Maclver attributed to the mass of psychological literature which
philosophers have not read and would have to read, reading that is obligatory if moral philosophy is
to be made ‘the subject which it ought to be’ (p.206).
There has been disappointment among some professional philosophers, those with expansionist .
instin^tions, that field ethics has not turned out to be quite the bonanza anticipated, that the expected /
boom in new opportunities and positions began to dissipate as field practitioners started to supply their
own "field ethicists".21 None of this should have been surprising, for broad inductive reasons.
Philosophy had long shed subjects and fields of overlap; and those professionals who have hung in
have become something different (economists instead of social philosophers, computer scientists
instead of logicians22) Nor have philosophers, especially those who have not changed or reskilled, all
the virtues assumed by professionals; e.g. they have little or no theory, they are too fuzzy, they are
indecisive, or vacillate, etc. (remember the sophists; these provide some of the reasons too why
philosophers are often not welcome on committees).
(
�Richard Sylvan
23
Some outside inputs into ethics, such as field studies or field workers may supply, would not go
astray. For there is theoretically little that is new or interesting on the standard ethics scene. Much
of it is 19th century revival, refinement of utilitarianism or Kantianism, and ornate additions (with
bells and whistles). One of the few "new" offerings is the revival of Aristotelian virtue ethics!
Nothing, however, stops outside inputs. Anyone is free to attempt philosophy. Professionals have no
exclusive rights over philosophy, still less over ethics; nor should they. There is a case for widening
practice of philosophy, and encouraging paraphilosophers. For critical problems emerging are not so
much those of philosophy itself (which could be very different from the way it is practised and
professionalised), but of philosophy as professionalised and as conducted. The immediate future does
not bode well for change in the latter, for several reasons; the prevailing materialistic technological
ethos (which dev^lyes pure intellectual activity), the consequent marginalisation of subjects like
philosophy and continuing narrowness of dominant philosophical activity.
Nor, moreover, have philosophers proceeded well, particularly in the Antipodes, in training and
"^pp^ing students who can readily adapt to become field ethicists. Philosophy has never been strongly
employment-market driven (but has tended to rely on a version of Say’s flawed law); indeed there are
features intrinsic to philosophy, such as its contemplative character, that renders it antithetical to the
veiy idea of responding to markets at all. There are other regional features that compound this sort
of problem: the conservative, and class, bias of philosophy (inherited from similar British
arrangements), which has meant that Australian philosophy has not been innovative in adapting its
topics and emphases to changing circumstances;23 and the heavy concentration, as in British
empiricism (still dominant in Australia), upon epistemology, with ethics and what went into moral
sciences and social philosophy still regarded as second class arenas and not what philosophy was really
about or what first class chaps would mainly concern themselves. These are major reasons why
philosophy lost out, and Reserved to lose.
It is for those latter sorts of reasons in particular, that environmental ethics and environmental
philosophy have been unable to gain more than occasional marginal status in philosophy curricula in
Australian universities. Fuller accounts of the predicament of environmental philosophy have been
given elsewhere.24 Its predicament tends to illustrate a general problem for field ethics, with bioethics
(with its own institutional settings) the only partial exception.
Now that field ethics is being lost to the fields in many cases, there are complaints about the calibre
of what is done and taught, the quality of the investigators and teachers, and so on. No doubt much
of this criticism is warranted; some similar criticism of ethics within philosophy would also be
warranted. Among the justified criticisms are these:
•
that field ethics as done from the field is divorced from ethical theory (from what theory has
so far been developed). Too much comprises mere case studies, as with business MBAs.
•
that the field practitioners are not trained in ethical theory, and are often ill-informed ethically
and lacking in analytic and critical skills crucial for satisfactory philosophy.
A different complaint, of importance, concerns the poor ethical practice, even the unethical practice
in some of the fields, despite the development of field ethics. Such a problem is particularly
conspicuous in the field of business.25 But this has been a long-standing problem for ethics itself;
how to get people to behave as they ought? Teaching agents ethics can certainly enable, and
encourage, them to be moral: but it cannot make them moral. Nor would it be proper for it to do so.
The field ethics movement, successor to the late AE movement, is both important and timely,
especially as regards getting ethics and axiology back into many fields that hard tried, erroneously it
now appears, to eliminate them. The movement will have to be carefully orchestrated however to
\
I
1
�24
What is wrong with applied ethics
avoid capture by the very power structures and disciplinary paradigms that it should transform. These
are certainly grounds for some cynicism about such movements: that they are easy targets for
co-option, that they can bemused to cover up abuses by power structures, and to authorise dubious
procedures, or worse,^with a rubber stamp of ethical approval from appropriate ethics’ committees and
inquiries. Such grounds for cynicism can be reasoned, however, and new hope inaugurated, given
more adequate formulation and development of relevant field ethics (exercises including considerable
theoretical work), along with independent and impartial administration of emerging codes and decision
methods, and with appropriate openness of the formerly abused procedures they are intended to
regulate fairly.
REFERENCES
Callicott, J.B., In Defense of the Land Ethic, State University of New York Press, Albany, 1989.
Edwards, J.C., Ethics without Philosophy, University Presses of Florida, Tampa, 1982.
Engel, J.R., Ethics of Environment and Development, Belhaven Press, 1990.
Hinkfuss, I., The Moral Society: Its Structure and Effects, Discussion papers in environmental
philosophy, no. 16, The Australian National University, 1987.
Leopold, A., A Sand Country Almanac, Oxford University Press, New York, 1949.
MacIntyre, A., After Virtue, University of Notre Dame Press, Notre Dame, 1981.
Maclver, A.M., "Towards anew moral philosophy", Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, no. 46
(1945-6): 179-206.
Sylvan, R. "Prospects for regional philosophy in Australasia", Australasian Journal of Philosophy,
1986.
Sylvan, R., From Wisdom to Wowserism, typescript, 1991.
Sylvan, R., Deep-Green Ethics, typescript, 1993.
i
Sylvan, R. and Bennett, H., The Greening of Ethics, White Horse Press, Cambridge, 199^.
Wilson, E.O. (ed.), Biodiversity, National Academy Press, Washington, DC, 1988.
NOTES
1. For such a treatment of items like ethics, as economic goods, see further Greening of Ethics.
2. The Conference, organised by the University of Newcastle in August 1993, where this paper was
presented.
3. Ethical theory has tended to borrow classifications from elsewhere, from apparently more successful
enterprises. Thus, for instance, the (normative) ethics/meta-ethics distinction lifted, none too adeptly,
�25
Richard Sylvan
from logical theory. Thus too the present pure/applied distinction, also purloined. By no means
everything that intelligent agents dream up and promote is entirely in order. Rather uncontroversially
colourless green ideas is one such combination, more controversially human nature, deep ecology and
post-modernism are such. Applied ethics appears to belong to this not-in-satisfactory-order or
out-of-order bunch.
4. ‘Applied. Practical, put to practical use. Applied science. Science of which the abstract principles
are put to practical use in the arts’ (Concise English').
‘2. Put to practical use; practical as distinguished from abstract or theoretical’ (OED). Though
we persevere with these dictionary explications, there are grounds for complaint; there are neglected
nuances. For example, the practical/theoretical contrast (just one of the muddy contrasts with
practical) differs from an applied/pure contrast. A theory can in principle be applied (a plying to, i.e.,
a mapping) in a non practical, or impractical, field. Different again is that concrete/abstract contrast.
And what exactly is practical?
5. The advance notices for the Conference (which look pretty confused, even mumbo jumbo), well
they add insult to injury by invoking talk of a theory of applied ethics. There is said to ‘appear to be
a significant gap between the theory of applied ethics and its practice’; this is said to be why
‘disillusionment has set in’ now. While there may be a theory of applications, talk of a "theory of
applied ethics" heaps confusion (‘theory of) upon confusion (‘applied ethics’). As for gaps (really,
between the theory and practice of ethics), there are two, as we shall see; there is an ambiguity in
‘gap’As for mumbo jumbo, try the following sentence:
‘The teaching and practice of applied ethics has grown rapidly and in an unruly manner across many
disciplines, with many practitioners now not possessing any depth of philosophical knowledge and
expertise and, because of difficulties experienced with the theory and practice given, in some cases
deciding that same is relevant.’ Its sequel is easily unscrambled:
‘We wish to hold a conference to explore this issue for the Australian community and its practical
consequences.’
6. Thus, too, there is a two way process. Application feeds back to inform theory and to enrich the
pure subject. With ethics, as we shall see, something similar or more dramatic happens. Field
developments not merely may inform and enlarge the ethical theory; some may alter it irrevocably.
7. Of course not all adjectives function in this way. butTor. instance without types of responded s.
Thus, e.g. possible, probable, alleged, putative,etc.
I
8. Examples include Wilson in Biodiversity, Engel.
9. We try to
show as much elsewherey-Routley and HTIF.
10. This is by no means all that is wrong with standard ethics. Another, important for field ethics,
is the lack of an adequate theory of ethical dilemmas, confronting which is a main engine of progress
in ethics.
11. See Greening of Ethics', also ‘Ethics without humans. Philosophy without humans', Observe that
^repairs are not unique.
<y :
»
12. As to how this is accomplished, see the annular theory, reiterated in Greening'.
X
�26
What is wrong with applied ethics
13. Maclver suggests ‘that all the old codes are out of date and a satisfactory new one has still to be
discovered. A lost moral code cannot be recovered, and a new one obtained, simply for the asking’
(p.201).
14. Nothing, no paradigm shift as revolution has effected the whole citadel of mathematics; none is
likely to (even dialethism, more threatening than much else, because central areas can be protected by /w roj
due qualification).
15. A different example: an isolated person has an extensive weeding tool in a weed invaded forest,
with the only techniques availabe a broad-acre chemical defoliant.
16. For a classification of environmental positions along the lines of the three options, see Callicott
Introduction, where attention is also drawn to shortcomings in the applied idea.
17. On extraneous issues in ethics, including especially field ethics such as environmental ethics, see
for a detailed treatment Greening of Ethics, part II/.
JJ
18. Among other things, philosophers did not act, did not respond to incipient demand, fast enough
in organising appropriate structures for delivery of field ethics.
<5?
19. See esp. Edwards, plhieswilhourPhilosophy^
20. Maclver continues ‘and for this reason this conception of the task of moral philosophy is unlikely
to be popular in the profession.’ There are two troubles with the tack: firstly, field ethics do not should not - exhaust ethics; secondly, field ethics are enjoying some popularity.
21. The proposition, from the circulated Conference announcement, that field ethics might rejuvenate
a flagging philosophy, that they had ‘given philosophy a rebirth’ can hardly be taken seriously (for
all that they may have given jaded philosophy departments a fillip). Concrete working examples and
dilemmas might stimulate ethical investigation, but would only exceptionally impact an ethical theory,
and moreover ethics itself has but rarely been a source of growth and development in philosophy.
Field practitioners, who often have their own expansionist and imperialist ambitions and
programs, are unlikely to let a service subject be supplied from elsewhere unless they cannot yet
manage the subject themselves and then only so long as times are good so they do not need the jobs
and can avoid chores involved.
22. Interestingly there has been no similar fuss from professionals regarding the attrition of logicians
within philosophy (for which some of them have responsibility), or the on-going loss of logic to
computing science and mathematics.
23. It is for this sort of reason that philosophy in Australia, unlike that in parts of USA^,missed the
field van.
24. See Sylvan 1986, The Greening of Ethics, From Wisdom to Wowserism.
iSrn-
25. A problem in fact exacerbated under prominent ethical positions, e.g., crude utilitarian fostering
"greed is good" notions, most social Darwinism encouraging cut-throat competition.
I'
�
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p. I
WHAT IS WRONG WITH APPLIED ETHICS
Richard Sylvan
There is much that is wrong with and in applied ethics. Specifically, there are three comprehensive
counts where things are wrong with the commodity concerned, applied ethics, that is with applied
ethics so economically viewed.1 Namely on the following three counts:
•
extraneous, with the supply, delivery, consumption, and the like of applied ethics, AE. The
category prominently includes the delivery of applied ethics: what is done, taught and learnt,
by whom, and how qualified (e.g. whether taught by professionals, professional ethicists or
philosophers in particular). That has tended to presume that the commodity itself is more or
less in order, though the presumption lacks good pedigree, delivery of defective goods being
almost as ubiquitous as business enterprise.
The present focus is not however upon the delivery, or other features of the production and
consumption, packaging and marketing of the goods, but on features of the commodity itself, applied
ethics itself. Thus
•
intraneous counts, concerning the commodity itself, where a further two things are wrong:
••
the applied idea, and
•••
what the application is presumed to be made to, established - or, should it be,
establishment - ethics.
Because an implicit premiss in organising the Philosophy and Applied Ethics Re-examined1
Conference seems to have been that the issues to be addressed are predominantly extraneous, and
because most of the papers actually relevant to the Conference topic appear to focus on extraneous
issues, the present exercise, by contrast, concentrates upon intraneous problems, especially the third:
radical deficiencies in what is supposed to be applied, prevailing ethics, and some extensive repairs
thereto.
1.
The applied count
To begin with, there is something decidedly3 odd, not to say radically unsatisfactory, about the very
idea of applied ethics. To bring out the oddness, the conceptual inadequacy, it helps to consider the
dictionary senses and established usage of applied. The term in the only relevant sense (the other
obsolete sense is that offolded) means: ‘put to practical use; practical as distinguished from abstract
or theoretical' (OED, similarly Concise English). Relevant examples cited are: ‘the applied sciences’
(from Babbage 1832), ‘applied logic (as distinguished from pure)’ (from Thomson 1806).4
It may appear then, that "applied ethics" amounts to pleonasm, a popular tautology (and "pure ethics"
correspondingly to an oxymoron), because ethics itself is already practical, for instance much or all
of it being concerned with practical action and its qualities (such is Maclver s assumption: moral
philosophy is practical - in a way in which other branches of philosophy are not’, p.206). In this
respect "applied ethics", even more "applied morals", is rather like "applied motoring", "applied
nursing" or "applied housekeeping". Conceptual confusion would be considerably reduced by
removing the modifier ‘applied .5 Such a charge of confusion can however be mitigated by properly
I7
18
What is wrong with applied ethics
distinguishing ethics, which includes philosophy and theory of morality, from morals, thereby
revealing, perhaps, elements of some theory apt for application. No doubt something like this is the
presupposition of those who preach or profit from practical ethics (similarly practical economics, but
doubtfully practical housekeeping): that standing in contrast is a suitably established theoretical ethics
(could it perchance be utilitarianism?) which can rather uncontroversiarbe used to guide practice.
But is there such a theory, apt for application, for translation into practice?
To appreciate what is required for adequacy, consider successful applied subjects. Let us compare
"applied ethics" with^long established applied discipline, namely applied mathematics, which often
boasts a separate department in universities (a discipline I was obliged to study as an undergraduate
in order to proceed further in pure mathematics). In the first place, applied mathematics contrasts with
pure mathematics, applied logic with pure. Where, a naive outsider may ask, is pure ethics that
similarly stands in contrast with applied ethics? Could there decently be separate departments of pure
and of applied ethics?
For the most part, applied mathematics applies to practice, in some wide sense, a body of pure
mathematics that is more or less correct, at least within the assumption framework and contextual
settings where it is applied. (The qualified formulation is given for pluralistic reasons; given the
dominant paradigm, the pure mathematics that is applied is correct without further qualification,
correct period.) A body of substantially correct theory ready for application is then the first of several
pertinent features of that relational object, applied mathematics, the first of several dubiously
matchable by "applied ethics". The proviso ‘for the most part’ (introducing the paragraph) signals
another discrepancy. There is a, presumably derivative, part of applied mathematics that investigates,
in essentially the manner of pure mathematics, theories, algebras, spaces and similar, selected through
postulates, principles or equational sets drawn from standard applied mathematics (thus e.g. Newtonian
theories where classical force laws are satisfied, Hilbert and phase spaces, and so on).6 Such
derivative applied mathematics need not compromise at all normal methodological requirements (such
as they are) of pure mathematics, for rigour, exactness, and similar.
Ordinary applied mathematics, in its quest, even haste, for practical results, does compromise, or
violate, pure mathematical methodology. For example, shortcuts are taken, simplifications made,
information shed, figures rounded, approximations adopted, and so. Science veers towards art. From
a pure perspective, dreadful things are often done to data or mathematical transformations of data.
Skilled practitioners tend to appreciate what they can get away with in this sort of regard. Again,
none of this, neither the body of information nor the kinds of skills, is really matched in ethics, in
putting ethical theory to practical work.
Next, the mathematics that is applied, a body of pure mathematics, is not thoroughly contested. Ethics
however is. There is nothing in ethics like arithmetic or elementary mechanics; the nearest thing
ethics can offer is some controversial development along axiomatic geometric lines. Mathematics has
its critics, both inside (e.g. intuitionists) and out (e.g., cultural relativists), but none (hard core sceptics
excepted) suggest changing all of it or tampering with most of what is applied. By contrast, in ethics,
there continues to be an array of competing theories, none of which has managed to win broad
allegiance. What pure theory is there to apply, to do dreadful things to? It might be said in response:
whichever of them is adopted!
Even that, a hollow compromise will not stand up for long. For deeper environmental ethics challenge
a broad range of pure theory that is alleged to be applied! What challenges a whole subject, that
would change it, can hardly be an application of it. The rise of such environmental ethics is one
reason why the modifier applied is a misnomer. For deeper environmental ethics is not any sort of
/
Richard Sylvan
19
application of ethics; it instead challenges prevailing ethics. Nor is it, like stock "applied ethics", an
adaptation of ethics within an environmental context.
The label applied is substantially, if not entirely, a misnomer. Adjectives in modifier or attributive
roles, in the combination adjective-noun phrase, often enough do not signify application. The
assumption that all modification is application invokes a dubious, presumably false, theory of
adjectival attribution. Consider a few examples involving a relevant adjective, ‘medical’.
Combinations such as ‘medical student’, ‘medical book’, ‘medical trial’ do not signify applications.
A medical s is not normally an application of s to medical matters (of books or students in this
fashion); normally it is a type (an m type) of s.7 There are occasional exceptions, in which case
compounds are liable to be recorded in dictionaries, as with medical jurisprudence which is not a type
of jurisprudence, but ‘the legal knowledge required of a doctor’. There is good reason to think that
ethics induces no exception, that medical ethics, and similarly business ethics, follow the normal
pattern. Thus business ethics is a type of ethics, namely ethics within a specifically business setting,
and accordingly adapted thereto. Observe that such a preliminary account incorporates automatically
(what gives the applied presumption some problemsj^sce-^ppendix T) allowance for variations in
standards, that business corporations for example should not be expected to measure up to standards
set up for ordinary persons (any more than they should iw»t be expected to pay the same levels of
taxes)!
Given the manifold inadequacies of the label applied, amendment of terminology appears warranted.
Amendment, not abandonment. After all, what ‘applied ethics’ is supposed to comprehend, such as
medical ethics, business ethics, even environmental ethics, are not themselves in court, but presently
taken as viable fields. A superior label is field, for field-defined or field-restricted; another is type,
for type-delimited, another domain. Where others speak of "applied ethics", let us discourse about
field ethics. Investment ethics, for instance, is a field ethic, with field investment. An "institute for
applied ethics concentrating upon applications to business" is an institute for field ethics with main
field business. The "applied ethics" movement becomes effectively a field ethics movement.
Observe that professional ethics are field ethics, with the field in each case the profession concerned.
But professional ethics in sum form a quite proper subclass of field ethics; bio-ethics and ecological
ethics are plainly not professional ethics. Less obviously, more importantly, field ethics differs from
practical ethics (as usually poorly defined), with which "applied ethics" is regularly conflated. For,
on the one side, ordinary living and daily life, central to practical ethics, are not fields. On the other,
field ethics are not confined to practice, but may involve considerable theoretical material, particularly
from the fields concerned.
2.
The ethics count
Not only is the applied operation in trouble, ethics also is in deep trouble. Indeed, in a way, the main
problem lies here. There is not a fit, properly satisfactory subject, for some significant applications.
For some "applications" have to change and develop the subject! But, the problems do not vanish
when the amendment to field ethics is made. Satisfactory fieldwork, satisfactory outcomes in field
ethics are seriously hampered by long-standing troubles in ethics. For as field ethics involve ethics,
whatever is wrong with ethics affects field ethics.
To glimpse these troubles, consider recent ambivalence towards ethics. Is ethics even a good good.
There is a most curious contrast in later 20th century attitudes towards ethics. On the one side, there
are great expectations, for instance for what ethics can contribute, to social and professional lite
20
What is -wrong with applied ethics
especially; but on the other there is serious disquiet, occasionally verging upon despair and into
nihilism, as to ethics, and its role. Virtually the whole spectrum from great expectations through no
expectations to substantial forebodings is selectively represented. A few examples:
•
Great expectations for ethics, beginning to re-emerge these days, tend to come from outside
professional philosophical ranks, from scientists and social scientists.8 Ethics is seen as taking
up again its grand legitimization and critical roles. It can indeed be used in this respect as
regards to a wide variety of practices, such as in business, economics, government, scientific
experimentation, and so on. Of course it cannot always succeed, because one ethics can be
pitted against another, and each and all challenged.
( p-— These expectations, a bit surprising after the drab days of analytic moral philosophy (where
I
philosophy could express no interesting moral opinions), contrast sharply with
' /•—•
heavy disquiet or worse as to present ethics. A recent example is afforded by
z
MacIntyre’s disturbing introduction to After Virtue', that ‘we have - very largely, if not
entirely - lost our comprehension, both theoretical and practical of morality’ (p.2).
Some, like MacIntyre, promise a happy, even a great, outcome, should we return to
proper paths, to a virtue ethic in the tradition of Aristotle. Others are not so sanguine;
,
there is
1
•
no hope for ethics. There are divergent routes here. Either it can play no relevant
,
role any longer, or it can play only a negative or damaging role (thus e.g. Hinckfuss).
Though both these routes lead badly astray, present (merely classificatory) objectives
do not include showing as much.9
There is, furthermore, reason for at least serious disquiet. Should we care to look closely at, and try
to assess, the total ethical heritage, then what we find is not very promising.
•
What is on offer is mostly extremely sketchy and very piecemeal, much of it a hotchpotch.
There are extraordinarily few well-worked out and detailed ethics. Spinoza’s Ethics is perhaps
one rare example.
•
Most of what is on offer is seriously biassed or prejudiced, indeed from a deep environmental
perspective even unethical. Prime examples include
•
religious bias, heavily constraining or distorting creatures’ lives, and putting them to
work to serve imagined religious objectives.
•
spiritualistic distortion. Even where an explicit religion does not feature, as in
Platonism and neo-Platonism and in edified Buddhism, the whole of life may be
distorted through promise of an after-life or successor life or extra-material life, where
furthermore some system of rewards or punishments may be dished out for previous
performance. No doubt such biasses help in conferring upon ethics authority,
unwarranted authority (fulfil duties or be dammed, etc.).
•
humanistic distortion, summed up as human chauvinism. It is upon this prejudice,
critical for environmental ethics, that we concentrate.
A main matter that is wrong with ethics, and ipso facto its practice and its belated appearance in many
professional settings (when it$ should have been in evidence long ago), is its anthropic bias, its
considerable prejudice in favour of (present) humans.10 The matter is highly material in several fields,
most obviously in environmental ethics, but also in medical ethics, bio-ethics, agricultural and
vefinarian ethics, and similar.
It is widely assumed, however, that ethics is inevitably human biassed, that it has to be
anthropocentric. That is not so. Ethics can be repaired. So much is the substance of ethics without
humans. Both morals and ethics can be characterised, in substantially reportive ways, so as to free
Richard Sylvan
21
them of anthropocentrism and the like.11 Furthermore, the whole superstructural theory can be
developed in a fashion that makes no essential reference to humans or any other biological species.12
These repairs represent, however, only the beginning of adjustment and change - of many changes if
a satisfactory deep-green ethics is to be reached. When repairing goods, there often comes a stage,
increasingly rapidly encountered those days, when it becomes a more attractive proposition to acquire
new items than to persist with repairs. So it may be, it is now suggested, with ethics. So increasingly
it has been suggested this century, with demands for new ethics, new moral philosophies. Those
making such proposals include Schweitzer, Maclver, Leopold, along with many others.13
Suppose we should arrive, through addressing different or new fields, at what amounts to a new ethics,
as many think we do (thus Maclver, p. 179 and many ecocentric philosophers). Then what emerges
is no "application" of a standard ethics, but something different, not an applied standard ethics at all.
Now something similar may appear to occur for normal applied subjects. A newly encountered group
of physical phenomena, for instance, leads not to the elevation of some dusty mathematical theory
buried in archives, what is mostly the case, but to elaboration of a new mathematical theory.
Normally in this event, the main body of pure mathematics would remain untouched; a new annex or
suburb would simply be added to it.14 With ethics, however, things are different. There are grounds
for contending that the green (environmental) revolution has shaken ethics to its (dubious) foundations
and core, and, as coupled with associated non domination themes (as emphasised especially in
ecofeminism), has left comparatively little untouched. The standard city of ethics is not left alone,
unscathed.
Much the same sort of points can be presented in the form of a dilemma, for standard ethics and a
proposed field, such as environmental issues. Either standard ethics will not cover the field (or cannot
be extended to do so because it (or its extension) does not apply, or through being forced upon the
field it twists or damages the data, for instance leaves an indelible anthropic bias. A homely carpentry
analogy may help: there is some cabinet work where delicate hammering would be appropriate, but
the only tool we have is a sledgehammer.15 Likewise, a standard chauvinistic ethic is the wrong tool
to try to use or extend for deeper environmental work.
Unremarkably, the three options emerging, namely (inappropriate) application, extension or adjustment,
and fashioning of something new or different, correspond more or less to the now familiar threefold
division of environmental positions, into shallow, intermediate and deep.16 As before, deep ethics are
not "applications", but near ethics.
3.
Extraneous issues
Among the many extraneous issues concerning field ethics, those that have come to exercise
philosophers do look distinctly partisan:17 namely, the role of philosophers, especially professionals;
the place of philosophy in field ethics; and the poor practice of these ethics, particularly from a
professional philosophical perspective. Here the main thesis to be advanced inclines towards these
professionally unsympathetic lines: insofar as these matters, philosophical extranalities, are of negatixe
impact for philosophy, philosophers have largely themselves to blame, for they are largely of their own
making (or, to sheet some of the responsibility more accurately, of the controlling power elite of the
profession}.18 Let us investigate some of the extraneous issues seriatim.
Because a field ethics concerns the field as well as (relevant parts of) ethics, its investigation, practice
and teaching, requires an intersection of capacities and skills, drawn from both ethics and the field.
n
What is wrong with applied ethics
This simple observation enables an immediate response to such questions as: if not philosophers, then
who is to investigate, and teach, field ethics? That response is: those from one area or the other who
have acquired requisite knowledge and technique in the other, or less promising, those from outside
(but with some appropriate informational background) who acquire these prerequisites in both. In
medical ethics, where there is perhaps a larger pool of information concerning the field than there is
regarding ethics, a moral philosopher untrained in medicine may have more to learn than a medical
doctor unversed in ethics and lacking philosophical skills. (Really, neither should be let loose on
students before they are duly prepared in the intersection.) It is evident, then, that philosophy enjoys
no natural monopoly in field ethics. The place of philosophy is less exalted, and certainly is not
dominant - still less given recent proposed (but hardly well justified) decoupling of ethics from
philosophy.19
There are corollaries regarding the roles of philosophers on committees relating to field ethics, in
decision-making and so on on these topics. Philosophers do not have an automatic place. Unless they
are well-informed as to ethics (many philosophers are not) and as to the field, they do not deserve a
place at all (of course they still may gain a role for want of any better placed). Ousting of
under-informed or unenergetic philosophers is not always such a bad thing.
While the informational situation is now significantly better than in 1945 when Maclver was agonising
over the predicament of moral philosophy, it is still true that ‘academic moral philosophers are not
using ‘every opportunity to make themselves acquainted, so far as possible, with the real difficulties
of those [not merely present humans] who need the help of moral philosophy most... I ... confess that
I myself lack the factual knowledge which would be required to do this work well. I suspect that
many ethic philosophers are in the same position ...20 One of the reasons why philosophy has lost
prestige in recent years is that it has not kept pace’ (pp.204-205). One example Maclver incisively
develops concerns ‘discoveries associated with the name of Freud. The behaviour of philosophers in
this connection is particularly hard to excuse. At first they flatly denied the reality of the alleged
discoveries - maintained that the notion of "unconscious mind" was self contradictory, and so forth.
But all this has now been given up. ... Philosophers no longer dispute ... details of the Freudian
system - but disregard them. If they mention them at all, they talk as if they somehow concerned
none but medical men - as if the same propositions could be sene in medicine and false outside it.
In the light of the recognition of unconscious motives the whole traditional theory of moral
responsibility needs overhauling, but no moral philosopher undertakes this’ (p.205). The reason why
the corresponding philosophical debate (about whether unconscious desires are sometimes evil, whether
relevant moral predicates are restricted to conscious motives, and so forth) had not "by 1945, after 40
years of exposure to Freudian issues, Maclver attributed to the mass of psychological literature which
philosophers have not read and would have to read, reading that is obligatory if moral philosophy is
to be made ‘the subject which it ought to be’ (p.206).
There has been disappointment among some professional philosophers, those with expansionist .
instin^tions, that field ethics has not turned out to be quite the bonanza anticipated, that the expected /
boom in new opportunities and positions began to dissipate as field practitioners started to supply their
own "field ethicists".21 None of this should have been surprising, for broad inductive reasons.
Philosophy had long shed subjects and fields of overlap; and those professionals who have hung in
have become something different (economists instead of social philosophers, computer scientists
instead of logicians22) Nor have philosophers, especially those who have not changed or reskilled, all
the virtues assumed by professionals; e.g. they have little or no theory, they are too fuzzy, they are
indecisive, or vacillate, etc. (remember the sophists; these provide some of the reasons too why
philosophers are often not welcome on committees).
(
Richard Sylvan
23
Some outside inputs into ethics, such as field studies or field workers may supply, would not go
astray. For there is theoretically little that is new or interesting on the standard ethics scene. Much
of it is 19th century revival, refinement of utilitarianism or Kantianism, and ornate additions (with
bells and whistles). One of the few "new" offerings is the revival of Aristotelian virtue ethics!
Nothing, however, stops outside inputs. Anyone is free to attempt philosophy. Professionals have no
exclusive rights over philosophy, still less over ethics; nor should they. There is a case for widening
practice of philosophy, and encouraging paraphilosophers. For critical problems emerging are not so
much those of philosophy itself (which could be very different from the way it is practised and
professionalised), but of philosophy as professionalised and as conducted. The immediate future does
not bode well for change in the latter, for several reasons; the prevailing materialistic technological
ethos (which dev^lyes pure intellectual activity), the consequent marginalisation of subjects like
philosophy and continuing narrowness of dominant philosophical activity.
Nor, moreover, have philosophers proceeded well, particularly in the Antipodes, in training and
"^pp^ing students who can readily adapt to become field ethicists. Philosophy has never been strongly
employment-market driven (but has tended to rely on a version of Say’s flawed law); indeed there are
features intrinsic to philosophy, such as its contemplative character, that renders it antithetical to the
veiy idea of responding to markets at all. There are other regional features that compound this sort
of problem: the conservative, and class, bias of philosophy (inherited from similar British
arrangements), which has meant that Australian philosophy has not been innovative in adapting its
topics and emphases to changing circumstances;23 and the heavy concentration, as in British
empiricism (still dominant in Australia), upon epistemology, with ethics and what went into moral
sciences and social philosophy still regarded as second class arenas and not what philosophy was really
about or what first class chaps would mainly concern themselves. These are major reasons why
philosophy lost out, and Reserved to lose.
It is for those latter sorts of reasons in particular, that environmental ethics and environmental
philosophy have been unable to gain more than occasional marginal status in philosophy curricula in
Australian universities. Fuller accounts of the predicament of environmental philosophy have been
given elsewhere.24 Its predicament tends to illustrate a general problem for field ethics, with bioethics
(with its own institutional settings) the only partial exception.
Now that field ethics is being lost to the fields in many cases, there are complaints about the calibre
of what is done and taught, the quality of the investigators and teachers, and so on. No doubt much
of this criticism is warranted; some similar criticism of ethics within philosophy would also be
warranted. Among the justified criticisms are these:
•
that field ethics as done from the field is divorced from ethical theory (from what theory has
so far been developed). Too much comprises mere case studies, as with business MBAs.
•
that the field practitioners are not trained in ethical theory, and are often ill-informed ethically
and lacking in analytic and critical skills crucial for satisfactory philosophy.
A different complaint, of importance, concerns the poor ethical practice, even the unethical practice
in some of the fields, despite the development of field ethics. Such a problem is particularly
conspicuous in the field of business.25 But this has been a long-standing problem for ethics itself;
how to get people to behave as they ought? Teaching agents ethics can certainly enable, and
encourage, them to be moral: but it cannot make them moral. Nor would it be proper for it to do so.
The field ethics movement, successor to the late AE movement, is both important and timely,
especially as regards getting ethics and axiology back into many fields that hard tried, erroneously it
now appears, to eliminate them. The movement will have to be carefully orchestrated however to
\
I
1
24
What is wrong with applied ethics
avoid capture by the very power structures and disciplinary paradigms that it should transform. These
are certainly grounds for some cynicism about such movements: that they are easy targets for
co-option, that they can bemused to cover up abuses by power structures, and to authorise dubious
procedures, or worse,^with a rubber stamp of ethical approval from appropriate ethics’ committees and
inquiries. Such grounds for cynicism can be reasoned, however, and new hope inaugurated, given
more adequate formulation and development of relevant field ethics (exercises including considerable
theoretical work), along with independent and impartial administration of emerging codes and decision
methods, and with appropriate openness of the formerly abused procedures they are intended to
regulate fairly.
REFERENCES
Callicott, J.B., In Defense of the Land Ethic, State University of New York Press, Albany, 1989.
Edwards, J.C., Ethics without Philosophy, University Presses of Florida, Tampa, 1982.
Engel, J.R., Ethics of Environment and Development, Belhaven Press, 1990.
Hinkfuss, I., The Moral Society: Its Structure and Effects, Discussion papers in environmental
philosophy, no. 16, The Australian National University, 1987.
Leopold, A., A Sand Country Almanac, Oxford University Press, New York, 1949.
MacIntyre, A., After Virtue, University of Notre Dame Press, Notre Dame, 1981.
Maclver, A.M., "Towards anew moral philosophy", Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, no. 46
(1945-6): 179-206.
Sylvan, R. "Prospects for regional philosophy in Australasia", Australasian Journal of Philosophy,
1986.
Sylvan, R., From Wisdom to Wowserism, typescript, 1991.
Sylvan, R., Deep-Green Ethics, typescript, 1993.
i
Sylvan, R. and Bennett, H., The Greening of Ethics, White Horse Press, Cambridge, 199^.
Wilson, E.O. (ed.), Biodiversity, National Academy Press, Washington, DC, 1988.
NOTES
1. For such a treatment of items like ethics, as economic goods, see further Greening of Ethics.
2. The Conference, organised by the University of Newcastle in August 1993, where this paper was
presented.
3. Ethical theory has tended to borrow classifications from elsewhere, from apparently more successful
enterprises. Thus, for instance, the (normative) ethics/meta-ethics distinction lifted, none too adeptly,
25
Richard Sylvan
from logical theory. Thus too the present pure/applied distinction, also purloined. By no means
everything that intelligent agents dream up and promote is entirely in order. Rather uncontroversially
colourless green ideas is one such combination, more controversially human nature, deep ecology and
post-modernism are such. Applied ethics appears to belong to this not-in-satisfactory-order or
out-of-order bunch.
4. ‘Applied. Practical, put to practical use. Applied science. Science of which the abstract principles
are put to practical use in the arts’ (Concise English').
‘2. Put to practical use; practical as distinguished from abstract or theoretical’ (OED). Though
we persevere with these dictionary explications, there are grounds for complaint; there are neglected
nuances. For example, the practical/theoretical contrast (just one of the muddy contrasts with
practical) differs from an applied/pure contrast. A theory can in principle be applied (a plying to, i.e.,
a mapping) in a non practical, or impractical, field. Different again is that concrete/abstract contrast.
And what exactly is practical?
5. The advance notices for the Conference (which look pretty confused, even mumbo jumbo), well
they add insult to injury by invoking talk of a theory of applied ethics. There is said to ‘appear to be
a significant gap between the theory of applied ethics and its practice’; this is said to be why
‘disillusionment has set in’ now. While there may be a theory of applications, talk of a "theory of
applied ethics" heaps confusion (‘theory of) upon confusion (‘applied ethics’). As for gaps (really,
between the theory and practice of ethics), there are two, as we shall see; there is an ambiguity in
‘gap’As for mumbo jumbo, try the following sentence:
‘The teaching and practice of applied ethics has grown rapidly and in an unruly manner across many
disciplines, with many practitioners now not possessing any depth of philosophical knowledge and
expertise and, because of difficulties experienced with the theory and practice given, in some cases
deciding that same is relevant.’ Its sequel is easily unscrambled:
‘We wish to hold a conference to explore this issue for the Australian community and its practical
consequences.’
6. Thus, too, there is a two way process. Application feeds back to inform theory and to enrich the
pure subject. With ethics, as we shall see, something similar or more dramatic happens. Field
developments not merely may inform and enlarge the ethical theory; some may alter it irrevocably.
7. Of course not all adjectives function in this way. butTor. instance without types of responded s.
Thus, e.g. possible, probable, alleged, putative,etc.
I
8. Examples include Wilson in Biodiversity, Engel.
9. We try to
show as much elsewherey-Routley and HTIF.
10. This is by no means all that is wrong with standard ethics. Another, important for field ethics,
is the lack of an adequate theory of ethical dilemmas, confronting which is a main engine of progress
in ethics.
11. See Greening of Ethics', also ‘Ethics without humans. Philosophy without humans', Observe that
^repairs are not unique.
<y :
»
12. As to how this is accomplished, see the annular theory, reiterated in Greening'.
X
26
What is wrong with applied ethics
13. Maclver suggests ‘that all the old codes are out of date and a satisfactory new one has still to be
discovered. A lost moral code cannot be recovered, and a new one obtained, simply for the asking’
(p.201).
14. Nothing, no paradigm shift as revolution has effected the whole citadel of mathematics; none is
likely to (even dialethism, more threatening than much else, because central areas can be protected by /w roj
due qualification).
15. A different example: an isolated person has an extensive weeding tool in a weed invaded forest,
with the only techniques availabe a broad-acre chemical defoliant.
16. For a classification of environmental positions along the lines of the three options, see Callicott
Introduction, where attention is also drawn to shortcomings in the applied idea.
17. On extraneous issues in ethics, including especially field ethics such as environmental ethics, see
for a detailed treatment Greening of Ethics, part II/.
JJ
18. Among other things, philosophers did not act, did not respond to incipient demand, fast enough
in organising appropriate structures for delivery of field ethics.
<5?
19. See esp. Edwards, plhieswilhourPhilosophy^
20. Maclver continues ‘and for this reason this conception of the task of moral philosophy is unlikely
to be popular in the profession.’ There are two troubles with the tack: firstly, field ethics do not should not - exhaust ethics; secondly, field ethics are enjoying some popularity.
21. The proposition, from the circulated Conference announcement, that field ethics might rejuvenate
a flagging philosophy, that they had ‘given philosophy a rebirth’ can hardly be taken seriously (for
all that they may have given jaded philosophy departments a fillip). Concrete working examples and
dilemmas might stimulate ethical investigation, but would only exceptionally impact an ethical theory,
and moreover ethics itself has but rarely been a source of growth and development in philosophy.
Field practitioners, who often have their own expansionist and imperialist ambitions and
programs, are unlikely to let a service subject be supplied from elsewhere unless they cannot yet
manage the subject themselves and then only so long as times are good so they do not need the jobs
and can avoid chores involved.
22. Interestingly there has been no similar fuss from professionals regarding the attrition of logicians
within philosophy (for which some of them have responsibility), or the on-going loss of logic to
computing science and mathematics.
23. It is for this sort of reason that philosophy in Australia, unlike that in parts of USA^,missed the
field van.
24. See Sylvan 1986, The Greening of Ethics, From Wisdom to Wowserism.
iSrn-
25. A problem in fact exacerbated under prominent ethical positions, e.g., crude utilitarian fostering
"greed is good" notions, most social Darwinism encouraging cut-throat competition.
I'
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2051THE IRREFUTABILITY of anarchism
1.
GOD, THE CHURCH, AND THE STATE.
The State is like God:
the
anarchist is like the atheist in disbelief and nonrecognition 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 fence
sitting 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 forest
destructive 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 managed 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
�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 be 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,
security, 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
WAvditai 3
the State's propping up of gross
.
A community which seriously
A
limits (or dispenses with) the institution of private property and removes
«//
gross inequities in 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. 5? This then is the main classical argument
for anarchism.
The argument has however been challenged, both by historical
�and more recent objections, which are designed to show that people cannot
act in their collective interest without coercion.
I
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
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.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
S(ilence)
C(onfess)
S
-1, -1
-8, 0
C
0, -8
S t rategies
-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 would 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
optimal outcome - should be set up by the State's own operative.Of course
the State's presence in arranging (or accentuating) some such dilemmas is
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.?
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
o
undoubtedly be much higher.
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,tate arrangements involved in providing
public goods/-oueh as—taxatioa-y 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 prisoners 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
�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, sufficiently many interest-interdependent people in a small community
A
(which is not thoroughly impoverished) is normally enough, given their social
influence, to avoid or resolve, by cooperation, the types of Prisoners'
Dilemma situations that appear to count in favour of the State.
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
outs tanding Dilemma situations, which are relevant and important, and also
o’wt foot
damaging if unresolved, lint ypsoHved by State intervention, and only so
g-
fa
(optimally) resolved, ami Finallythat 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, if 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 whichf reasonable parties can differ.
/W/’
chuck
The selection of Dilemmas,provides an example: after all there are many such
A
A
Dilemmas (e.g. as to environmental degradation, of overexploitation, of
.—t>n Vi o!-c h
family -fs*tds) 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' Dilemma 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 supergame.
But in many such sequential
Prisoners' Dilemma games, rational "cooperation" can occur, even assuming
separated players with purely egoistic interests/^ For what sequential
games permit that isolated games exclude, is that 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 J'1
Informational input may also be important, e.g. news that each prisoner has
a good record of adhering, or if not is prepared to stake collateral, etc.
A
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
is known (should
is used even by the State, e.g.
But at no stage is the State
gifts, deprivation, social pressure, etc.
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.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
/J
has very extensive effects, many of them negative, so that the gains made, if
any, in so resolving Dilemma^ 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
ty showing may not help but may worsen some situations, and more
,
new Dilemmas may be initiated by State activity, as/
/A
t * /<»
the working
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
�9
to accept.
(Toleration of such a tamed democracy then brings benefits to
those who hold power, especially the cover of legitimation).
But institutional
checks which operate only insofar as a ^system*^ acceptable to the powerholders
is not seriously challenged, and which depend ultimately upon the toleration
of those checked,^ are not really checks at all.
£
gand preventing
The problem of controlling the power of the State, 'ur
IA
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
what to do on each occasion oneself; not acting simply on direction from outside,A
4
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.
7
s
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
, ika.
/J
18
personhiood implies^anarchism.
V
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,
On the contrary,
such direct democratic methods are part of the very stuff of anarchistic
organisation.
�10
9.
The replacement
THE FIFTH WAY : THE ARGUMENT FROM ANARCHIST EXPERIENCE.
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
20
arrangements within the State structure.
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 arrange
ments 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.
which these theoretical arguments.
A
The sort of anarchist society
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
communities, for otherwise such arrangements as community replacement of
State welfare arrangements, control of their environment, removal of
Prisoners' Dilemmas, and participatory democracy, will work less satisfactorily.
Communities will be federated and control will be bottom-up, not merely by
representation and subject to a downward system of command.
Within each
community there will not be great discrepancies in the distribution of wealth
and property, and no highly concentrated economic
power.
community will be a rather equalitarian group, sharing in much that is
communally 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 addption 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 structural 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 scales 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
�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
22.
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
vulnerable Statist arrangements.^ Some of the practices are familiar :
'anarchist groups, clubs, pamphlets, broadcasts, newsletters, etc.; (anarchist)
cooperatives, exchanges, neighbourhood groups, rural communities, etc.
Others
are slightly less familiar: 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.
"V-
ht)
�FOOTNOTES
1.
Bakunin on Anarchy (edited S. Dolgoff), Allen & Unwin, London,
especially p. 139.
1973,
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
(relatively 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 take 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', A
Nomos / XIX^New York University Press, 1978, pp. 213-4.
V
4.
J-
Arguments of this type are sometimes said to represent 'the strongest
case that can be made for the desirability of the State'
Anarchy and Cooperation, Wiley, London, 1976, p. 9).
(M. Taylor,
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
X
not merely e^gjistic (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,
5.
1980.
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 info
The figures
smaller communities.
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,
Theories, Self Management, and
'Social
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 Self-
Managing Environment, Allison & BUfsby, 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 discussion 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 modem economic and political theorising.
Both are to be
found in Abram's final chapter, for example, and the firstJ^(with an
attempt to plaster over the gap with a definition^/
op. cit., p. 250 ff.
13. For instance, a certain social escapism : one escapes
one's social roles
erf
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.
cit., chapter 7.
A related argument, also in Bakunin, is from the way
o/icA
14. The argument, to be found in Bakunin, is elaborated a little in Taylor, op.
in which emergence of the State compromises and even closes off
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 (overshoot) 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 State1, '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: see p. 209 and p.(^25jTP
18. The argument, outlined by Bakunin, is much elaborated in R.P. l/olff,
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
i
nonstate solutions to problems of social organisation in adjoining
�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 nonrecognition 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 fence
Soundly based atheism goes further than agnosticism, not
sit-ting position.
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
,
nene.
based anarchism^ which can both faults arguments for the State^and
(ncisi'je.
X case against the State.
A more obvious comparison, appreciated from Reformation on and again
emphasised by Bakunin^- is that of State and Church.Clx 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
A
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. 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 forest
destructive 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 J$ind.
This does not upset the replacement argument for anarchism.
The argumertf:, 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 managed 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 be 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,
security, 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
ol
3
the State's propping up of gross inequities.
A community which seriously
limits (or dispenses with) the institution of private property and removes
a//
gross inequities in 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 distributionThis then is the main classical argument
for anarchism.
The argument has however been challenged, both by historical
�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. (6J
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.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 2
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 would 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
optimal outcome - should be set up by the State's own operative.Of course
the State's presence in arranging (or accentuating) some such dilemma£is
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.?
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
o
undoubtedly be much higher.
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 deviousState arrangements involved in providing
public goodsy such as taxation', 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 prisoners 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
�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^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'
Dilemma situations that appear to count in favour of the State.
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
qaA'-fkc-l'
oft
damaging if unresolved,\but resolve^/by State intervention, and only so
A A- jZAz-zv
(optimally) resolved, and finally.that in the course of so resolving these
Dilemma situations, worse situation than those that are resolved are not
thereby induced.
These complex conditions cannot be satisfied, if 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^provides an example^: after all there are many such
Dilemmas (e.g. as to environmental degradation, of overexploitation, of
l/«o|on<c or
family, 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' Dilemma 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 supergame.
But in many such sequential
Prisoners' Dilemma games, rational "cooperation" can occur, even assuming
separated players with purely egoistic interests?^ For what sequential
games permit that isolated games exclude, is that 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.
Informational input may also be important, e.g. news that each prisoner has
a good record of adhering, or if not is prepared to stake collateral, etc.
A
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
is known (should
is used even by the State, e.g.
But at no stage is the State
gifts, deprivation, social pressure, etc.
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-
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
has very extensive effects', many of them negative, so that the gains made, if
any, in so resolving Dilemma1
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
/A
of
important, new Dilemmas may be initiated by State activity, as with the working
example, or 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
14
emergence of modem secular States.
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
oontrols or balances the power of the
inequitable distribution of power, what
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
controller".^ The only promising way of avoiding this problem - other routes
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.
Others go further:
This
'democracy Lis]
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
"democratic" 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'.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).
But institutional
/I
checks which operate only insofar as a "system" acceptable to the powerholders
is not seriously challenged, and which depend ultimately upon the toleration
of those checked, are not really checks at all.
n.
? ’■
The problem of controlling the power of the State, u/surping 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
what to do on each occasion oneself; not acting simply on direction from outside,£»/
A
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
ike.
a
>18
personhood implies anarchism.
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.
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
20
arrangements within the State structure.
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 arrange
ments 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
deJintafe.
which these theoretical arguments
will certainly be organised, but the
A
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
communities, for otherwise such arrangements as community replacement of
State welfare arrangements, control of their environment, removal of
Prisoners' Dilemmas, and participatory democracy, will work less satisfactorily.
Communities will be federated and control will be bottom-up, not merely by
representation and subject to a downward system of command.
Within each
community there will not be great discrepancies in the distribution of wealth
Zand property, and no highly concentrated economic
power. A
community will be a rather equalitarian group, sharing in much that is
communally owned or not owned at all.
�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
(relatively 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 take 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.O. 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(<y>»~7
Nomos, XIX), New York University Press, 1978, pp. 213-4.
4.
Arguments of this type are sometimes said to represent 'the strongest
case that can be made for the desirability of the State'
Anarchy and Cooperation, Wiley, London, 1976, p. 9).
(M. Taylor,
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 eristic (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
che 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,
5.
1980.
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 Self-
Managing Environment, Allison & Ba<sby, London, 1979, chapter 10,
<A./
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.
).
Cf.
the discussion in Taylor, op. cit., p. 93.
�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
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.
X
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 Regan Paul, London, 1962, p.
129 and p.
127.
The (overshoot) 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 State1,
Marxists never had 'any well-considered view'
'upon which'
(p. 129).
17. V. Lauber, 'Ecology, politics and liberal democracy', Government and
Opposition 13 ( 1978), 199-2 17: see p. 209 and p. 211 .
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.
Wolff's
argument, for example, is disputed by G. Wall, 'Philosophical
anarchism revised' Nomos XIX, op. cit., p. 273 ff.
While theoretical arguments help outline the general shape of social and
also economic arrangements they do not determine them completely,
no detailed blueprint.
they offer
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.
�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,
284 ff.
�
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b'l
2051THE IRREFUTABILITY of anarchism
1.
GOD, THE CHURCH, AND THE STATE.
The State is like God:
the
anarchist is like the atheist in disbelief and nonrecognition 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 fence
sitting 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 forest
destructive 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 managed 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
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 be 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,
security, 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
WAvditai 3
the State's propping up of gross
.
A community which seriously
A
limits (or dispenses with) the institution of private property and removes
«//
gross inequities in 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. 5? This then is the main classical argument
for anarchism.
The argument has however been challenged, both by historical
and more recent objections, which are designed to show that people cannot
act in their collective interest without coercion.
I
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
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.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
S(ilence)
C(onfess)
S
-1, -1
-8, 0
C
0, -8
S t rategies
-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 would 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
optimal outcome - should be set up by the State's own operative.Of course
the State's presence in arranging (or accentuating) some such dilemmas is
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.?
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
o
undoubtedly be much higher.
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,tate arrangements involved in providing
public goods/-oueh as—taxatioa-y 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 prisoners 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
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, sufficiently many interest-interdependent people in a small community
A
(which is not thoroughly impoverished) is normally enough, given their social
influence, to avoid or resolve, by cooperation, the types of Prisoners'
Dilemma situations that appear to count in favour of the State.
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
outs tanding Dilemma situations, which are relevant and important, and also
o’wt foot
damaging if unresolved, lint ypsoHved by State intervention, and only so
g-
fa
(optimally) resolved, ami Finallythat 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, if 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 whichf reasonable parties can differ.
/W/’
chuck
The selection of Dilemmas,provides an example: after all there are many such
A
A
Dilemmas (e.g. as to environmental degradation, of overexploitation, of
.—t>n Vi o!-c h
family -fs*tds) 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' Dilemma 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 supergame.
But in many such sequential
Prisoners' Dilemma games, rational "cooperation" can occur, even assuming
separated players with purely egoistic interests/^ For what sequential
games permit that isolated games exclude, is that 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 J'1
Informational input may also be important, e.g. news that each prisoner has
a good record of adhering, or if not is prepared to stake collateral, etc.
A
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
is known (should
is used even by the State, e.g.
But at no stage is the State
gifts, deprivation, social pressure, etc.
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.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
/J
has very extensive effects, many of them negative, so that the gains made, if
any, in so resolving Dilemma^ 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
ty showing may not help but may worsen some situations, and more
,
new Dilemmas may be initiated by State activity, as/
/A
t * /<»
the working
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
9
to accept.
(Toleration of such a tamed democracy then brings benefits to
those who hold power, especially the cover of legitimation).
But institutional
checks which operate only insofar as a ^system*^ acceptable to the powerholders
is not seriously challenged, and which depend ultimately upon the toleration
of those checked,^ are not really checks at all.
£
gand preventing
The problem of controlling the power of the State, 'ur
IA
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
what to do on each occasion oneself; not acting simply on direction from outside,A
4
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.
7
s
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
, ika.
/J
18
personhiood implies^anarchism.
V
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,
On the contrary,
such direct democratic methods are part of the very stuff of anarchistic
organisation.
10
9.
The replacement
THE FIFTH WAY : THE ARGUMENT FROM ANARCHIST EXPERIENCE.
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
20
arrangements within the State structure.
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 arrange
ments 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.
which these theoretical arguments.
A
The sort of anarchist society
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
communities, for otherwise such arrangements as community replacement of
State welfare arrangements, control of their environment, removal of
Prisoners' Dilemmas, and participatory democracy, will work less satisfactorily.
Communities will be federated and control will be bottom-up, not merely by
representation and subject to a downward system of command.
Within each
community there will not be great discrepancies in the distribution of wealth
and property, and no highly concentrated economic
power.
community will be a rather equalitarian group, sharing in much that is
communally 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 addption 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 structural 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 scales 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
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
22.
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
vulnerable Statist arrangements.^ Some of the practices are familiar :
'anarchist groups, clubs, pamphlets, broadcasts, newsletters, etc.; (anarchist)
cooperatives, exchanges, neighbourhood groups, rural communities, etc.
Others
are slightly less familiar: 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.
"V-
ht)
FOOTNOTES
1.
Bakunin on Anarchy (edited S. Dolgoff), Allen & Unwin, London,
especially p. 139.
1973,
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
(relatively 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 take 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', A
Nomos / XIX^New York University Press, 1978, pp. 213-4.
V
4.
J-
Arguments of this type are sometimes said to represent 'the strongest
case that can be made for the desirability of the State'
Anarchy and Cooperation, Wiley, London, 1976, p. 9).
(M. Taylor,
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
X
not merely e^gjistic (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,
5.
1980.
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 info
The figures
smaller communities.
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,
Theories, Self Management, and
'Social
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 Self-
Managing Environment, Allison & BUfsby, 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 discussion 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 modem economic and political theorising.
Both are to be
found in Abram's final chapter, for example, and the firstJ^(with an
attempt to plaster over the gap with a definition^/
op. cit., p. 250 ff.
13. For instance, a certain social escapism : one escapes
one's social roles
erf
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.
cit., chapter 7.
A related argument, also in Bakunin, is from the way
o/icA
14. The argument, to be found in Bakunin, is elaborated a little in Taylor, op.
in which emergence of the State compromises and even closes off
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 (overshoot) 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 State1, '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: see p. 209 and p.(^25jTP
18. The argument, outlined by Bakunin, is much elaborated in R.P. l/olff,
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
i
nonstate solutions to problems of social organisation in adjoining
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 nonrecognition 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 fence
Soundly based atheism goes further than agnosticism, not
sit-ting position.
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
,
nene.
based anarchism^ which can both faults arguments for the State^and
(ncisi'je.
X case against the State.
A more obvious comparison, appreciated from Reformation on and again
emphasised by Bakunin^- is that of State and Church.Clx 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
A
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. 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 forest
destructive 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 J$ind.
This does not upset the replacement argument for anarchism.
The argumertf:, 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 managed 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 be 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,
security, 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
ol
3
the State's propping up of gross inequities.
A community which seriously
limits (or dispenses with) the institution of private property and removes
a//
gross inequities in 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 distributionThis then is the main classical argument
for anarchism.
The argument has however been challenged, both by historical
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. (6J
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.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 2
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 would 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
optimal outcome - should be set up by the State's own operative.Of course
the State's presence in arranging (or accentuating) some such dilemma£is
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.?
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
o
undoubtedly be much higher.
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 deviousState arrangements involved in providing
public goodsy such as taxation', 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 prisoners 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
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^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'
Dilemma situations that appear to count in favour of the State.
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
qaA'-fkc-l'
oft
damaging if unresolved,\but resolve^/by State intervention, and only so
A A- jZAz-zv
(optimally) resolved, and finally.that in the course of so resolving these
Dilemma situations, worse situation than those that are resolved are not
thereby induced.
These complex conditions cannot be satisfied, if 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^provides an example^: after all there are many such
Dilemmas (e.g. as to environmental degradation, of overexploitation, of
l/«o|on<c or
family, 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' Dilemma 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 supergame.
But in many such sequential
Prisoners' Dilemma games, rational "cooperation" can occur, even assuming
separated players with purely egoistic interests?^ For what sequential
games permit that isolated games exclude, is that 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.
Informational input may also be important, e.g. news that each prisoner has
a good record of adhering, or if not is prepared to stake collateral, etc.
A
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
is known (should
is used even by the State, e.g.
But at no stage is the State
gifts, deprivation, social pressure, etc.
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-
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
has very extensive effects', many of them negative, so that the gains made, if
any, in so resolving Dilemma1
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
/A
of
important, new Dilemmas may be initiated by State activity, as with the working
example, or 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
14
emergence of modem secular States.
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
oontrols or balances the power of the
inequitable distribution of power, what
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
controller".^ The only promising way of avoiding this problem - other routes
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.
Others go further:
This
'democracy Lis]
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
"democratic" 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'.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).
But institutional
/I
checks which operate only insofar as a "system" acceptable to the powerholders
is not seriously challenged, and which depend ultimately upon the toleration
of those checked, are not really checks at all.
n.
? ’■
The problem of controlling the power of the State, u/surping 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
what to do on each occasion oneself; not acting simply on direction from outside,£»/
A
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
ike.
a
>18
personhood implies anarchism.
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.
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
20
arrangements within the State structure.
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 arrange
ments 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
deJintafe.
which these theoretical arguments
will certainly be organised, but the
A
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
communities, for otherwise such arrangements as community replacement of
State welfare arrangements, control of their environment, removal of
Prisoners' Dilemmas, and participatory democracy, will work less satisfactorily.
Communities will be federated and control will be bottom-up, not merely by
representation and subject to a downward system of command.
Within each
community there will not be great discrepancies in the distribution of wealth
Zand property, and no highly concentrated economic
power. A
community will be a rather equalitarian group, sharing in much that is
communally owned or not owned at all.
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
(relatively 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 take 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.O. 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(<y>»~7
Nomos, XIX), New York University Press, 1978, pp. 213-4.
4.
Arguments of this type are sometimes said to represent 'the strongest
case that can be made for the desirability of the State'
Anarchy and Cooperation, Wiley, London, 1976, p. 9).
(M. Taylor,
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 eristic (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
che 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,
5.
1980.
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 Self-
Managing Environment, Allison & Ba<sby, London, 1979, chapter 10,
<A./
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.
).
Cf.
the discussion in Taylor, op. cit., p. 93.
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
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.
X
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 Regan Paul, London, 1962, p.
129 and p.
127.
The (overshoot) 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 State1,
Marxists never had 'any well-considered view'
'upon which'
(p. 129).
17. V. Lauber, 'Ecology, politics and liberal democracy', Government and
Opposition 13 ( 1978), 199-2 17: see p. 209 and p. 211 .
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.
Wolff's
argument, for example, is disputed by G. Wall, 'Philosophical
anarchism revised' Nomos XIX, op. cit., p. 273 ff.
While theoretical arguments help outline the general shape of social and
also economic arrangements they do not determine them completely,
no detailed blueprint.
they offer
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.
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,
284 ff.
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Box 14: Green Projects in Progress
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Text
GAEAN GREENHOUSE, NUCLEAR WINTER,
AND ANTHROPIC DOOMSDAY.
... climate change, like no other issue, calls the whole notion of human progress
into question. The [ever promised] benefits of newer technologies, more
efficient economics, and improved political systems could be overwhelmed by
uncontrolled global warming.
... the pace of climate change will soon overwhelm natural variability in the
earth's climate. Indeed, it can be improved with nuclear war for its potential to
disrupt a wide range of human and natural systems, [severely] complicating the
back of moneying economics and coping with other problems. Irrigation
works, settlement patterns, and food production [among others] would be
tragically disrupted ... (Worldwatch 89, p.ll, p.10)
There are many approaches to the Greenhouse problematique, upon which this philosophical
investigation focuses. These approaches, range from playing the issue down entirely,
dismissing it as not a problem, not something anyone should worry about, at the one end of
the range, to playing it up at the other. Those who play it up may even foresee the demise of
the human race, the substantially new socio-economic arrangements soon eventuate.
There is certainly plenty of room for different approaches, and for some eclecticism.
For what is being relied upon, in every case, comprises shaky and contestable arguments,
from flimsy forecasting models lacking many apparently relevant details. No one of sound
judgment, aware that weather reports for twelve hours ahead can be wildly astray, would
place a very high level of confidence on climatic forests for fifty years ahead down a very
hazardous track. But there is enough information to act; and there is information rationally
requiring action.
For things in the future are not going to be the same. It is very doubtful that they are
going to be any better (though much important economic theorizing presupposes as much,
such as the monetary discounting of the future). They are not going to be similar even,
because so many parameters important to life are changing, several at exponential rates.
Significant in these changes are likely climatic changes. The Greenhouse effect is among
those, a result of the increases of “greenhouse” gases, especially carbon dioxide and
methane, in the Earth's atmosphere, which have followed exponential paths since the highenergy phase of industrial culture. The growth in gas concentration produces, what it is
lagged by, but is now apparent, a significant increase in mean global temperatures. This has
major implications for much of life on Earth.
�2
Diagram 1. Spectrum of approaches:
Course of action
Reasons offered
Short response
No problem
Refutable
No certainty
Irrational
Adaptive capacity
Exaggerated
High tech resolution
Wishful thinking
Severe dislocation
otherwise
Utopian
Individual
survival
Pointless
No action1
Moderate action
Considerable action
These very condensed responses will be expanded and explained as we proceed.
Breifly too the outcome is that there is no easy path; future humans should expect a hard
landing.
1. Investigative philosophy, argument and rational decision
The role of philosophy in such a complex problematique as that of Greenhouse is not
difficult to state briefly. Philosophy, Anglo-American philosophy especially, is concerned
above all with argument. Investigative philosophy is applied philosophy, investigating
arguments, their features - assumptions, reliability, etc. - and their generalisation to rational
processes, but outside normal philosophical topics. The generalisation to rational processes
comprehends a wider range of philosophical throughput than the orthodox range of argument
typically addressed in logic courses; to probabilistic and plausibilistic reasoning, to decision
processing and making.
A main objective in this piece of investigative philosophy is to consider certain
arguments for severe dislocation pprobabilities, as a result of Greenhouse effects, and the
resulting impact on rational decision formation and action. There are certain arguments of
particular interest radical decision and action: various neo-Malthusian arguments, and
doomsday arguments.
1
Taoist no-action would be different. It would not have undertaken excessive industrial action in
the first place.
�3
The main run of arguments to considerable action are neo-Malthusian in character. The
general form of these arguments is simply this: growth in some parameter encounters limits,
with severe effects. A characteristic graphic representation is as follows:
limits
growth
parameter
time
exponential growth
pattern
J
encountering
limits
subsequent
varying unstable
behavior
The limits are often imposed just by finitude, e.g. finiteness of a resource or a sink. But
other limits can be important, for instance where new phenomena or thresholds come into
play. General Malthusian arguments loom in the background in what follows.
But a different argument, of especial concern as regard climatic changes, is the
following anthropic doomsday argument:• There is some probability that the Gaean “greenhouse effect”, generated by human
activity, will get out of control, that Gaean control mechanisms will fail, and that the Earth
will, for example, overheat (Runaway Greenhouse, or Lesser Venus Prospect, premiss).
• That result would be disastrous for human activities, and indeed for humans (Catastrophe
Prospect).
• Because of the unusual, and unusually precarious, position of humans, such a probability
of disaster is not in fact small but decidedly large
As a consequence then, the human species will probably sharply decline, and even become
extinct (Catastrophe Probability).
That is, by a rectified version of Murphy's law - that if something can go wrong then in
appropriate unusual conditions, it very probability will - an incrementally small probability is
inflated into a very large probability.
�4
It would be a mistake to conclude that because the argument itself is an unlikely one,
everyone can stop worrying. The argument is but one of a substantial raft of arguments that
should have everyone worried; it is but a final intellectual string, so to say, from the
inconspicuous cosmological tail.
Such a doomsday argument no doubt puts together, in one more exact form, some of the
sorts of considerations that are troubling many people, especially concerned youth, about the
Greenhouse business: that humans (including themselves) are on a decline or extinction path.
It is no doubt not the only consideration that should be troubling them or us. For whether or
not doomsday warnings are warranted, there are other matters that should be sufficiently
worrisome, to anyone of moral integrity:• Future times are likely to be exceedingly uncomfortable for very many creatures, as
habitats are destroyed, food producing regions are eliminated, and environments seriously
impoverished.
(Many of these creatures are nonexistents, mere future existents, i.e.
creatures that do not yet exist or participate in market or voting rituals, but who -will exist and
may participate. But, despite their presently unfavourable ontological status, they are entitled
to fair and decent treatment.)
• Given such future prospects, present practices which do nothing or vanishingly little to
ameliorate these prospects, are decidedly irrational. Indeed a main message that will emerge
from the present exercise is the moral irrationality of critical large-scale human practices.
The irrationality, morally-weighed-down irrationality, of present large-scale human
practices is already conspicuous from the wintry downside of climatic prospects of which
Greenhouse warming is the upside.
Diagram 2. Macro-climatic setting.
Bands: all
boundaries fuzzy
mean
global
temperature
(degrees C)
escalating
emissions
Disequilibrium:
Venus prospect
increasing dislocation
possible adaptation
increasing dislocation
thermonuclear
war
disequilibrium: Mars
prospect
�5
1860
1990
The apparatus for conducting a world-wide nuclear wars is entirely in place and indeed
on alert. The probability of such a war, even if small, is not zero. Among the many awful
effects of a large nuclear war is that of nuclear winter, which would bring about the demise
of present human civilisation, and would at the very least mean enormous dislocation for
most surviving humans and other creatures. A sufficiently diabolical chemo-nuclear war,
reaching into all inhabited parts of the globe, could indeed drive the human species close to
extinction.
The decidedly dubious rationality and morality of these nuclear arrangements - both
through what they are in themselves for what purposes, and through their moral opportunity
costs - are widely appreciated. The thesis that the arrangements and practices are immoral,
irrational, and ought to be dismantled - already much argued, and also contested2 - is not the
present concern. The thermonuclear downside is, by comparison, a very easy case to
examine philosophically, and argue, as compared with the greenhouse upside.3 For there is,
for instance, a case of sorts, for much increased use of greenhouse gases, such as CFCs in
refrigerators, a case that hardly extends very plausibly to nuclear weapons. It is a case
heavily pressed by some “developing” nations, for polluting devices already in widespread
use in more affluent places, as necessary for local standards of living.
Greenhouse and nuclear winter are more intricately connected than being the upside
and downside of meteorological phenomena. One of the high-tech solutions suggestions for
atmospheric overheating, involves the generation of wintering effects - to cool things down -
by flinging enough dust up into the atmosphere, a trick most easily achieved no doubt on the
requisite scale by nuclear explosives. Needless to say, like backburning against out-of-
control fires, artificial winter would be a pretty desperate and, given present expertise,
irrational expedient.
2. The Greenhouse debate, main policy responses, and irrational decision.
The Greenhouse debate, as to what to do, if anything, about forecast Greenhouse
effects on Earth, is intellectually disturbing. For it has revealed, as we shall soon see, that
many of those who have spoken, worse that many who have some role in decision making
For my very small contribution to this, see the War and Peace series in Discussion Papers in
Environmental Philosophy, RSSS, Australian National UniversityGlobal warming, by no means entirely certain, is assumed to be the outcome of increasing
greenhouse gas build up. Of course though some temperatures will rise, cooling will probably
occur also in some localized regions.
�6
(including both experts and politicians), lack a firm grasp on decision-making in conditions
of uncertainty or possible risk.4
The main canvassed policy approaches to the Greenhouse problematique lie firmly
within the dominant social paradigm, the high-tech growth and development ideology.
Diagram 2 Broad policy responses to the Greenhouse problematique.
Dominant paradigm
Alternative paradigm
Procrastination (wait-and-see)
Soft energy paths and
alternative regulation
Adaptation (sink-or-swim)
Socio-economic
transformation
Regulation
Intervention (star wars)
We will briefly outline, and find wanting, all the dominant approaches.
• Procrastination, the prevailing response. In fact the main gooon mental and conservative
response thus far has been procrastination, or “wait-and-see” as it is more benignly known.5
The approach makes much of the uncertainties, of the shortcomings in even the most
elaborate general circulation models, of the high noise-to-signal levels. On such bases, it
contends that it is too early to do anything, except staging some meetings, organising some
review committees, undertaking some monitoring, and funding a little more “research”. It
obviously does nothing to rock the growth ideology boat.
There is the pretence that we do not know enough to act6 But it is known that carbon
dioxide, methane and other greenhouse gases are fast increasing. The main causes and
enough likely consequences are also known. Theoretical consideration, have already been
partially confirmed by rising temperatures in the eighties. Outlines of rising temperatures are
also known in broad outline, rising sea levels, and so forth. In addition, there are partial
Following Knight, some economists (try to) distinguish between uncertainty and risk. Risk is
said to obtain when some more or less objective numberable probabilities can be assigned to
outcomes, a situation not obtaining as regards the global greenhouse effect. Bayesians, who can
always assign subjective probabilities tend to eschew the distinction, e.g. Cyert and DeGroot,
also say that ‘decision making under uncertainty refers to situations in which the outcome of the
decision is not precisely predictable’ (p.3). Either way, Greenhouse involves uncertainty.
There is significant rhetorical art in the choice of classificatory labels, a rather philosophically
neglected art. A PR person must have been hired to produce the Greenhouse adaptation of
‘adaptation’.
Part of the problem is that scientists have been caught out (e.g. crying wolf) and have become
ultra-cautious. With the advent of thermodymumies, for instance, scientists begin ‘threatening
mankind with a rather swift “bad death’” as the universe random ‘Thus m. Aber, on ‘balant
ideological use of science even by scientists themselves’ (Bernard p.9).
�7
small-scale models of the Greenhouse effect in action. For example a city such as MexicoCity, which is situated in the bowl-like valley is placed in an environment traps heat as well
as pollution. The ecological affects, like the human affects, are pretty dramatic even at this
small level, and hardly to be sought, or amelated elsewhere.
There is a pretence, fostered also by many scientists, that Greenhouse difficulties have
only just been discovered; a date commonly set for that watershed even is the Villiers
conference and statement of 1986 (e.g. Pittoch ....). Actually there have been Greenhouse
warmings for more than a decade, and there has been a corresponding decade of inaction.
Nor is any action of much significance presently seriously contemplated.
Back in 1979 Bernard wrote at length about and reported the substantial concern of
climate logists about Greenhouse effects. Even the magazine Nature, not noted for its green
sympathies, recorded that ‘the release of carbon dioxide to the atmosphere by the burning of
fossil fuels is, concemally, the most important environmental issue in the world today’ (May
? 1975). Bernard quotes many other concerned scientists, several asserting that ‘the
government must start dealing with this problem now’. They meant the United States
government. “The” government didn't take the hint. For more than a decade then scientists
have been emphasizing that the greenhouse threat is a major environmental problem, and that
action should be taken immediately. Over 10 years nothing of real significance to counter the
problem has happened. There has been more than a decade of inaction , during which
matters have got worse, and the time frame for evasive action disturbingly shorter. It is
already evident that requisite decision making under uncertainty is not taking place. On
straight inductive grounds, it would be reasonable to expect nothing will be done. While
there are theoretical grounds to bark up such an assessment, still it is only just beginning to
get through to a much wider public (which can exercise a marginal influence on what
politicians say) that there is - or may be, as some more reactionary modal-managering
academics would have - a problem or two.
Many scientists have joined the wait-and-see queue, with their begging bowls, hoping
for more hand-outs for research. They assume, rightly enough, that more information would
assist with rational decision-making, and also, quite wrongly, that “scientific activity” is
required for action to be taken. Physical scientists are not done in their misapprehension of
rational decision methods.
Although there is a good deal of practical experience available of statistical-type decision
making order uncertainty, for instance as regards insurance coverage and engineering
projects, decision theory, especially as regards unreputable situations, has not penetrated
very far into standard scientific methodology or much into mainstream parts of social
sciences. ‘Economists in particular have shown a talent for bringing ever problem back to a
world of certainty where all solutions are known or can be easily found.’ Natural scientists
�including dematologists are, for the most part, on the same erroneous-reduction-toconlittainable-certainty trip. ‘This is not to say that economists have not worked on
uncertainty. ... however ... uncertainty is introduced and then taken out by assumption’
(Cyort and DeGroot p.l). But there are several classes of problematic situations, where
decision and action may be required, where uncertainty cannot be discarded by first,
reduction strategeness or otherwise, notably:• inheritantly probabilistic situations, such as those of indeterminacy in quantum theory;
• essentially unpredictable situations (which may be deterministic) such as those now under
investigation chaos theory;
• presently uncertain situations and outcomes, which may eventually resolve into certain
cases, or may turn into some of the above classes, where there is not time to wait for
resolution.
The Greenhouse problem is regularly put into the latter class, a standard assumption being
that with enough money and research effort thrown at it, it will resolve to decent certainty.
But it may well not; there are grounds for supposing that critical parts of climatology will fall
into the essentially unpredictable class. The standard approach of too many research
scientists is a pathetic begging-bowl posture: Supply more funding so we can go on
researching until we obtain certainty.7
There are some severe problems with this standard response. Firstly, it is irrational.
Certainty if achieved may be achieved too late. What was required for rationality was
decision making in advance of certainty. Secondly, certainty may be unobtainable. The
meteorological equations may be non additive (non additive) and so incapable of delivering
stable results over slightly fluctuating in strict data. The standard response is
methodologically unsound.
• Adaptation, learning to live with and love the Greenhouse. The policy ‘that tends to be
favoured by most economists’ is an adaptive strategy: “Let society adjust to environmental
changes without attempting to mitigate or prevent the changes in advance” We could adapt to
climate change for example, by planting alternative crop strain [themselves] ... more widely
adopted... ’ (Schneider p.8). Observe, however, that it is a decidedly restricted “adaptation”
that is being proposed, that humans adjust to the results of present economic and industrial
practices, rather than adjusting them. It is assumed that economic growth comes first, that
we do not change (e.g. through decent regulation) high energy industrial practices. A fuller
and smarter adaptation would adapt these practices. The policy is like a pernicious
agriculture policy that says, “Let farmers adjust to the results of soil erosion, salination and
7
It does not seem to have occurred to most research scientists demanding more money (even more
per article) that an important reason why they are not obtaining the funding they expect is
because their research results could, if unfavorable, act a serious drag on the industrial
establishment. They are not going to be funded to delegitimize modem industrial society.
�9
so on, without attempting to mitigate or prevent these deleterious changes in advance.” Such
“adaptative agriculture”, the present predominant practice in advanced agriculture, is antienvironmental, but is given a spurious air of evolutionary inevitability and evolutionary
redistributive justice; you can't back natural evolution, which is entirely natural, can you.
Let us condense such far-from-inevitable and highly artificial mal-adaptation in the neologism
badaptation. Greenhouse adaptation, like nuclear adaptation, is badaptation (some, less
kind, would say medaptation).
There is a pragmatic, if cynical, political argument for badaptation, namely, that
unilateral action to prevent a warning is unfeasible and requisite international cooperation
unattainble. Both contentions open to doubt. Unilateral action by the USA, by far the
World's heaviest resource and energy consumer (per capita and on several other relevant
domains) backed up by pressure (familiar from other settings, such as the narcotics war) on
other nations and through the United Nations could make a major difference. Unfortunately
the USA is also the world's largest supplier of influential grown economists. In any case,
international agreements such as those in whaling and Antarctica, are attainable, and
sometimes effective. The ozone protocols, limiting production of CFCs show that results
can be achieved to limit trace gas emissions.
The adaptation proposal is presently compatible with wait-and-see; both mean no
hauling back on trace gas production. Indeed procrastination will force societies towards
badaptation. Typical of adaptation, like procrastination, is an (over-)emphasis on the
uncertainties of Greenhouse forecasts, and on the decision-theoretic paralysis such
uncertainties are alleged to produce. Characteristic of adaptation too is a minimisation of the
extent of Greenhouse modification. No doubt the impression that things won't be so very
different, or far removed from what has already been experienced, is important in getting
adaptationism more readily accepted, as a rational course of action (instead of the seemingly
irrational course it is). Thus badaptation tends to play with figures at the law end of
projected ranges of temperature increase, such as 1.5°C for 2050, when in fact present data
indicates something rather in the vicinity of 4°C - in a setting, furthermore, where fractions
of a degree centigrade may well be linked ot macro-physical and macro-biological change.
Recent modellings deliver, an average, on increase in 2°C attributable to carbon dioxide, and
it is widely thought that other trace gases will double the CO2 effect, yielding a 4°C
temperature increase.8
8
Sources. Note that methane is beginning to rival carbon dioxide as a gas where atmospheric
propostems really matter and whose present increase is excessive.
�10
The colossal extent of future human dislocation has correspondingly been deliberately
underemphasized. The adaptive capacities of human arrangements, when humans are living
at the margin, to massive natural shifts, has been grossly exaggerated.
Consider agriculture alone - set aside flooded cities, sunken atoll islands, and all the
rest. Some of the Earth's major grain producing regions - upon which famine relief projects
depend - could be pushed substantially out of business. The conditions which prevailed
during the American dust-bowl experience of the nineteen-thirties were benign indeed
compared with those which threaten with mid twenty-first century Greenhouse conditions.
The mid continental summer temperatures were only 1-2° C warmer than the present
average, under greenhouse conditions they could be more than 3-4° C warmer. In the dustbowl rainfall only slipped at critical growing times (e.g. July for northern com) to 80% of
the contemporary norm; but under Greenhouse conditions it could be significantly less again.
A super dust-bowl is not improbable (for much more detail, see Bernard). Similarly for
other similar latitude Northern grain producing regions. But the high-energy industrial
superstructure is crucially based upon sufficient cheap food (bread) for the urban masses.
• Intervention, high-tech Gaean engineering. Interventionist proposals so far floated include
• New oceans in parts of the Earth's land surface lying below, at, or near sea level. These
projects would make the mega-dams of recent times look like childrens' play.
• Wintering effects. Production of sufficient dust in the atmosphere, achieved for instance
by nuclear detonations, to mitigate heating effects. Such enterprise would make modification
of the weather by cloud seeding look like childs' play.
Fortunately these and other expensive and grandiose proposals, which would call for
considerable international cooperation, are far down the planning track; with these schemes
procrastination is rational.
• Regulation, controlling free(-wheeling) enterprise.
Regulation itself, not so bureaucratically popular under that presentation in these latter days
of economic irrationalism, is of course transparadigmatic, where it belongs depend on what
measures (what sorts of constraints, rights, etc.) are proposed and how they are imposed or
enforced. If it is, for example, some industrial law-and-order, smokestack scrubbing
regulations or Greenhouse polluting rights, within the status quo, that is one thing, but if a
minimally-constrained growth paradigm is questioned and alternative socio-economic
arrangements advocated, that is quite another, and falls outside the dominant paradigm.
Such policies involving regulations controlling fossil fuel emissions especially, are
negatively labelled prevention in the predominantly American policy literature, though there
is now no preventing some Greenhouse effects; but the worse to follow could still be
prevented. What is usually covered under the label is however some regulation within
prevailing political arrangements. So energy efficiencies and savings for investment in
�11
growth elsewhere is comprehensible, straight growth-curtailing non-consumption is not
contemplated. But the latter is just what alternatives do contemplate.
Democratic political arrangements do not exclude such alternatives both the power
bases of political leaders and economic prescriptions do. Adequate regulation within
prevailing socio-economic arrangements is going to prove impossible, without adjustment of
power structures and economic imperatives, in effect without far-reaching systems and a
devological adjustment. While such adjustment may be rational, it is unlikely. Power
structures have too much to lose.9
This is an opposite point to record the chauvinism and environmental shallowness of
the Greenhouse debate. Like heart disease and cancer, the Greenhouse effect is gaining
much discussion and some funding because it just may severely effect the affluent, affluent
people and affluent nations, that have a good deal to lose, in North America especially. The
impact will, however, be at least as severe in some third world nations, whose lands or much
of them will be flooded, countries which cannot afford extensive expensive dyking (or where
such effort would be in the longer term, as seas rise, pointless), countries such as Pacific
coral atoll nations and delta states like Bangladesh. But the really serious losers will no
doubt be, not humans , rich or poor, but nonhumans.
Biological diversity, already being reduced by various human activities, may be
one of the chief casualties of global worming. Massive destruction of forests,
wetlands, and even the polar tundra could irrevocably destroy complex ecosystems that have existed for millennia. Indeed, various biological reserves
created in the past decade to protect species diversity could become virtual death
traps as wildlife attempt to survive in conditions for which they are poorly
suited. Accelerated species extinction is an inevitable consequence of a rapid
warming (Worldwatch p.10).
3. Arguments to dislocation and for a Lesser Venus Prospect.
There is at least a small probability that predicted increase in mean atmospheric
temperatures will seriously interfere with most remaining natural environments and result in
the degeneration or destruction of many of them, especially forests wetlands, maritime
environments. Nor will adaptationism help here; for natural evolution is much too slow for
adaptationism to succeed (cf. Keeton pp.763-4).
Natural ecosystems will not adapt effectively to rapid climatic change,... With
regard to forests, habitats for plants and animals cannot be re-created or
transplanted rapidly. Continuing climatic changes would strain the capabilities
Holistic problems are too extensive for individuals, or even small collectives, to make much
difference acting or their own. Some are too beg even for large collectives or states, but would
require whole regions of the Earth acting in concerte. But of course some state players, such as
the superpowers, as regards nuclear winter, can make a substantial difference, or even all the
difference.
�12
of management practices even in commercial tree plantations (Beijer Institute
Report pp.21-3).
The decline or demise of these systems, vast reservoirs for greenhouse gases will accelerate
the warming, and accordingly make matters substantially worse:
Trees are adapted to a narrow range of temperature and moisture levels, and
cannot cope with rapid climate change. A temperature increase of 1 degree
Celsius per decade in mid- to upper latitudes translates into a shift in vegetation
zones of 60-100 miles northward. Terrestrial ecosystems cannot migrate that
fast. Vast numbers of trees are likely to die, and new trees adapted to warmer
temperatures are unlikely to be able to replace them rapidly. During such a
disruption, huge areas of forest could die and, as they decay or bum, send large
quantities of additional CO2 into the atmosphere, accelerating the warming
(Brown p.10).
Of course the immediate climate patterns would be somewhat more complex. If enough soot
and ash from fires were flung into the atmosphere there would be a cooling effect, like that of
a small nuclear winter, before heating accelerated. The present pattern of ecosystemic loss
would also be sharply accelerated. When natural ecosystems get reduced to about 30% of
their initial size, they tend to collapse of themselves.
Moreover, there would be other significant positive feedback from ecosystems other
than the terrestrial forests, from the oceans especially. As the oceans warm, they lose their
capacity to serve as carbon dioxide reservoirs. So they too release additional gases,
including previously absorbed CO2, back into the atmosphere, further accelerating the
warming. A critical question arises as to how much danger such positive feedback poses?
As so often, informed opinions, and so probability estimates differ. However ‘several
scientists working in the area consider that positive feedback effects will force a very bleak
picture to be drawn’ (p.19 ref?)10
Unlike the interim effect of a small nuclear winter, where after a few years at most,
climatic behavior (as distinct from radioactivity levels) would presumably return towards the
previous norm, there will be no similar recovery under greenhouse impact. Technically
then, stability would be lost under the impact,11 disequilibrium induced. An eventual longterm return to some different equilibrium could well be excluded. Under new climatic
regimes plants themselves may be able to do little more than hang on for part of their own
lives. In many places conditions would be too severe for much of the “year” to permit
normal plant functioning, including what is crucial for greenhouse amelioration,
photosynthesis. In most plants, photosynthesis only occurs across a narrow band of
Second order probabilities, probabilities and uncertainties in the light of first order subjective
probabilities, enter importantly.
Stability is defined in physics in terms of return to an initial (inertial) position after small
disturbance.
�13
temperatures (e.g. 6 - 34°C); outside that range the plants shut down operations.12 Even
more important, many plants would leave few or no successful successors. Even where
plants set seed, seedlings would not survive under the severe conditions expected; for
instance, they would be killed by hot dry summer conditions, or in other places by frosts to
which they are not adapted, both phenomena already familiar after clearfelling of forests.
The situation at... in southern Sahara, where there is but one ancient tree hanging on in
thousands of square kilometers of desert, a tree with viable seeds which sets no seedlings,
could be more or less replicated in many other places where forests or woody plants once
grew.
In fact we are already witnessing the demise of the trees in much of Australia. Already
dead and dying trees form a predominant feature of the Australian rural landscape. Virtually
whichever way ecologists travel in Australia where trees remain, they are confronted with
dead and dying trees 13 The reasons for the present decline of trees in rural Australia is, for
the most part, not to be attributed to early greenhouse or even pollution effects.14 It is
thought to be due to a complex of factors, including a range of insect predators whose effects
are enhanced on isolated trees left after an excessive zeal for clearing (i.e. holistic effects
enter as regards healthy persistence of trees). The relevant point is that these features are
likely to be accelerated given the additional impact of greenhouse warming on plant
functioning and reproduction.
There are several major ways through which the maintenance structures of the Earth
can be not merely awkwardly disturbed, but thrown right out of kilter - perhaps, given the
delicacy of several critical matters, never to return present norms. Most obvious and
immediately threatening is
• nuclear warfare, and therewith nuclear Winter.
But there are of course other severe shocks the planet could suffer than those chemo-nuclear
warfare, some human induced, some a “chance” matter of the planets' position in space,
namely
• a mini Big Bang, or an undermining of metastability, brought about through very high
energy experimentation (see Leslie)
• a collision with a large meteorite or asteroid.
Such uncertainties, not germane to the main climatic arguments, are listed, not to achieve a
bogus completeness, but to emphasize that complete certainty is not to expected, not
rationally.. Should we obtain it, should we obtain easy relatively unproblematic lives, then
we have, by world standards, been rather lucky. Moreover, these latter uncertainties do
The upper bound may be difficult to appreciate in most of Aotearoa. But in much of Australia,
during the summer, many plants close down their operations for much of the day.
Reported by Recher on Earthworm.
Thus coastline vegetational destruction through detergents in sewerage waters.
�14
appear negligible compared with those bound up with climate, ascribable to:
• excess economic development. The practices involve a complex and sustained assault on
most of the Earth's major ecosystems, forests, seas, etc, along with the alteration of
atmospheric composition by greenhouse gases. For example, the forests are cut down,
burnt, poisoned by herbicides and acid rain, or otherwise removed or destroyed. (Therewith
too a great deal more carbon dioxide is released into the atmosphere and major sinks of
carbon dioxide are removed.) As a result of these concerted growth-and-development
activities such systems are driven to limits, and breakdown occurs. Once it occurs at some
weak point it can escalate elsewhere, like a conflagration.; thus again ecosystemic collapse
for example.
Quite apart from breakdown at or approaching limits, for instance because of systemic
overload, remarkable changes can occur in desiccative systems under stress or strain.
• excess energy or chemical loading. Though such striking examples as the chemical clock,
it has been demonstrated that dissipative systems can suddenly, and often rather
unpredictably, undergo extraordinary changes, as for instance energy flux is increased
(Prigogine and others), [describe briefly]
Such non-additive, or nonlinear, effects, characteristic of more holistic dissipative
systems, are bound to occur within the Earth's atmosphere and oceans as they undergo
compositional changes. Carbon dioxide itself provides a good example.
With small quantities its effect on the temperature of the air is proportional to the
amount added; there is a linear effect. However once the carbon dioxide
concentration in the air approaches 1%, new nonlinear effects come into play
and heating greatly increases. In the absence of a biosphere to fix carbon
dioxide, its concentration in the atmosphere would probably exceed the critical
figure of 1%. The Earth would then heat up rapidly to a temperature near to that
of boiling water. Increasing temperatures would speed up chemical reactions
and accelerate their progress towards chemical equilibrium. ... eventually ...
the Earth would become permanently cocooned in a brilliant white cloud - a
second Venus, although not quite as hot (Lovelock pp.45-6).
Fortunately for Gaean prospects, the percentage of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is now
nowhere near 1% nor likely to be pushed near 1% by projected doubting of carbon dioxide
levels under economic activity over the next 50 years15. However eventual exponential
growth will lead towards levels, and the side effect of such growth, the release of carbon
dioxide from forests and oceans and the considerable reduction in fixation of carbon dioxide
with the decline of forests, will lead in that disastrous direction rather more rapidly. The 1%
15
In the atmosphere of the very early Earth, CO2 exceeded the critical 1% figure; but solar
luminority was about 25% less than now. With increasing solar flux the Earth would have
overheated had the proposition of CO2 not been much reduced (e.g. see Lovelock 88 p.56).
�15
bound constitutes just one of the many serious limits to continuation of present
developmental practices.
Now there can be no rational confidence with respect to complex dissipative systems -
about the behavior of which we presently know comparatively little - that no other
nonadditive effects will no be encountered at a much earlier stage. After all, the Gaean
system, its atmosphere, oceans and ecosystems, will be pushed into essentially
unexperienced and substantially unknown reaches. There is, for example, no experience
from past times of such elevated temperatures as Green house effects will lead to, to draw
upon. ‘There is no evidence that the land-bound glaciers in Greenland and Antarctica have
ever completely melted in the last two million years’. There is experience of much colder
periods. ‘During ice ages, the earth's average temperature has been about 5°C colder than at
present, with glaciers covering major portions of continents’ (Barth p.7). But there is no
similar experience of temperatures 4-5° C warmer than at present (in a warm interglacial
period), ‘a global increase of more than 2°C above present is unprecedented in the era of
human civilization’ (Schneider p.6)
It would accordingly be decidedly rash, rash decision makings, to assign a zero or
negligible probability to the emergence of new or unknown effects of relevance, to assume
all will go smoothly and well. That would presuppose, in any event, a completeness in
present scientific knowledge, contrary to the information we have that present investigation
of holistic systems, among much else, is still in its infancy. The probability of something
critical (e.g. perhaps radicals like hydroxyl) having been left out of estimations, of room
accordingly for something unexpected or for something to go wrong, may be small, though
experience implies it is not always so but it certainly appears to be non-zero.
For the overconfident, with excess faith in the flimsy scientific edifice, there is a
salutary lesson to be drawn from the erratic and stumbling path of the main proponent of
Gaia hypotheses, Lovelock. Lovelock, coming from a working life as an industrial chemist,
part of that time for a giant chemical transnational, had, and retained for a considerable time
after he began his holistic hypothesizing a strong antipathy for environmentalists.16 Even
Gaia was for industry and against the environmentalists; she was going to laughingly soak
up all the pollution, courtesy of the chemical companies especially, that we humans could
throw at her. In particular, we did not really need to worry much about ozone depletion or
greenhouse gas escalation.17 ‘Contrary to the forebodings of many environmentalists,
Coupled with this, there is a certain schizophrenia in Lovelock's attitude to the natural
environment. There is also a matching schizophrenia as to the fragility of life on Earth. On the
one side, it required very delicate settings and fine barring to arise; this is part of the argument for
a Gaia hypothesis. On the other side, life is ‘tough, robust, and [highly] adaptable’, virtually
indestructable (p.90). But though a flawed hero, Lovelock is a hero nonetheless.
See Lovelock 79, p.40ff; and also 88? [detail]
�16
finding a suitable’ destructive agent to bring about a ‘doom scenario’ ‘turns out to be an
almost insoluble problem’ (p.40). Lovelock makes it easier for himself by helping himself to
the assumption that a doomsday scenario involves the destruction of all “life”, ‘down to the
last spore of some deep-buried anaerobic bacteria’ (p.40). But even for the least chauvinistic
of environmentalists, destruction of all humans but the select elect would be quite enough for
a decent doomsday. Lovelock's high redefinition of a environmental ‘doomsday scenario’ is
unacceptable. Lovelock does not however stay within the bound of his redefinition. He
proceeds to pooh-pooh the idea that anything much that we humans could accomplish would
make any difference to Gaia (p.41) or even to most humans, including use of nuclear
devices.
Unfortunately for Lovelock's credibility, he was writing three years before the
seemingly obvious wintering effects of a major nuclear war were realised by the accredited
scientific community. Appealing in a common scientific fashion to scientific authority, he
proceeds to minimalize the human and ecological effects of a major war. The report he relies
upon as authoritative was a 1975 (unreferenced) one of ‘the US National Academy of
Sciences ... prepared by an eight-man committee of their own distinguished members,
assisted by forty-eight other scientists chosen from those expert in the effects of nuclear
explosions and all things subsequent to them’ (p.41, italics added). Lovelock draws from
the distinguished expert report the findings that
... if half of all the nuclear weapons in the world's arsenals, about 10,000
megatons, were used in a nuclear war the effects on most of the human and
man-made ecosystems of the world would be small at first and would become
negligible within thirty years. Both aggressor and victim nations would of
course suffer catastrophic local devastation, but areas remote from the battle
and, especially important in the biosphere, marine and coastal ecosystems
would be minimally disturbed (p.41).
Three years later Turco and others proceeded to detail a very different scenario that of
widespread and ecologically damaging nuclear winter.. Not for the first time, Lovelock had
been caught out badly.
As with pollution, Lovelock has more recently shifted ground18 considerably in the
vulnerability of the Earth to human-induced disturbance. When a system such as Gaia in
homeostatis
is stressed to near the limits of regulation even a small disturbance may cause it
to jump to a new stable state or even fail entirely....
Shifting ground may be fine, especially when it is to an improved position. But it should be
done honestly and openly, not stealthily or shiftily. Lovelock proceeds to attribute a caricuture of
his own previous position to critics of the Gaia hypothesis (as a clever ‘fabrication’ which it was
not); that it is ‘an argument developed to allow industry to pollute at will, since mother Gaia will
clean up the mess (85 p.53).
�17
It could be that the regulation of the Earth's climate is not far from one of these
limits. Thus if some part of climate regulation is connected with the natural
level of CO2 then clearly we are close to the limits of its regulation. This is
because CO2 cannot be reduced much below the level observed for the last
glaciation, about 180 ppm, without seriously limiting the rate of growth of the
more abundant C3 type plants. If we perturb the Earth's radiation balance by
adding more CO2 and other greenhouse gases to the atmosphere or reduce its
capacity to regulate by decreasing the area of forests or both of these together
then we could be surprised by a sudden jump of both CO2 and temperature to a
new and much warmer steady state; or by the initiation of periodic fluctuations
between that state and our present climate.
The anomalously low abundance of CO2 on Earth when compared with the
other terrestrial planets and especially the fact that the mean temperature of the
Earth is on the cool side of the optimum for regulation, suggests strongly that
the biota is regulating the climate by pumping CO2 from the air. The common
feature of most of our pollutions and of our exploitation of the land surface
seems to be unintentionally to thwart this natural process (Lovelock 85 pp5354).
The argument to the lesser Venus path, to significant disequilibrium with the Earth's
ecological support system destabilized, takes the following lines. The Earth appears to be a
discipative (far-from-equilibrium) system held at its present balance by a combination of an
(increasing) solar flux - a main energy input into the system - and its major ecological
arrangements, especially vegetation complanes and live oceans. The sheer extent to which
the resulting system differs from the stable dead system it could otherwise be is shown by
the following table for atmospheric and oceanic composition.
TABLE 1.
Substance
Carbon dioxide
A
Nitrogen
T
R
Oxygen
Argon
0
C
E
A
N
S
Water
Planetary comparisons
(principal components per cent).
Equilibrium
Earth
Venus
Lifeless
Earth
Mass
Present
Earth
99
0
98
1.9
98
1.9
95
2.7
0.03
79
0
1
trace
0.1
trace
0.1
0.13
2
21
1
63
Salt
3.5
Sodium
nitrate
1.7
96
n.a.
n.a.
3.5
traces
Surface
temperatures (°C)
n.a
477
Total pressure
(bars)
n.a.
90
290±50
60
-53
13
0064
1
The table is based upon tables 1 and 2 of Lovelock 79, pp37 and p.39.
�18
The whole Earth system is accordingly far from equilibrium. Unpredictable behavior
as locals increase is therefore almost to be expected. A likely moral is presumably: stress
they system, or destabilize ecosystem controls sufficiently, and the system may be in deep
trouble. It is relevant to inquire into what evidence we have on this case.
To do so let us reconsider some of the array of arguments there are from some sort of
holistic organisation of the Earth (for a modest Gaia hypothesis). But for the participation of
the Earth's ecological support systems, plant complexes especially the Earth would not be
blessed with its present life-benign physical characteristics. The oceans would be much
saltios and too salty for most life, the air would not contain the present rich mixture of
oxygen and carbon dioxide so important for terrestrial life, and so on, perhaps most
important the Earth would be significantly hotter and too hot for most life, for what of what
does the regulating and stabilizing of present conditions. For the solar flux has increased in
intensity about 30% since life appeared on Earth, but the mean global temperatures have
exhibited no corresponding increase, but have remained relatively constant. Such an
expected consistency in the face of disturbing inputs is ascribed, under holistic approaches
that do something to explain it, to the concerted activity of plants, [detail] Lovelock and
collaberaters have devised an elementary daisy world model which reveals how a feedback
system with two types of daisies can, within limits, stabilize temperatures despite increasing
energy input. The limits are important, for as these limits are approached the maintenance
systems break down.
diagram Q
Similarly several of the well-known chemical cycles, such as those for nitrogen,
sulphur, sodium and so forth depends for their maintenance on the adequate operation of
active ecological structures. Plainly if a cycle loops through a component, such as forests,
which is severely disturbed then the cycle itself could be disrupted.
There is some probability furthermore that the foregoing changes will disturb crucial
equilibrium systems and chemical cycles. Some of these feedback systems are in fact
maintained in equilibrium by natural ecosystems (an example is Lovelock's daisy world
model, which becomes unstable when temperature rises too high). Instability could ensue
under disturbance [explain, include Greenhouse holism].
Without doubt these matters are bad enough. Demise of most of the Earth's richness19
is not a minor matter. Worse could follow.
Natural richness is the main richness, much exceeding human artifice.
�19
The general tenor of the argument is so far this:- By arguments from physical models,
and because of uncertainties, the probability that something could go badly wrong is
nonzero,20 and indeed far from negligible. Part of the argument can be put as follows: there
is a decent probability that a modest Gaia hypothesis holds. But then, there is a considerable
probability that excessive Greenhouse build up will lead to damaging system destabilization.
So containing probabilities, there at least a nonneglizible probability of such destabilization.
An analogy should now emphasize both the dubiousness of what is being proposed
under adaptationism and the precariousness of the human predicament. The proposal is to
take this ancient craft, now overloaded with human passengers and their heavy baggage, a
cargo it was never organised to carry, out on new routes and run it fast and higher than it has
ever travelled before. Even for an experimental prototype, a now very fast (air-)bus say,
with a select text crew, such a procedure, of running over new uncharted routes at speeds
and heights never attained before, would be risky enterprise. With an ancient craft, with a
heavy nonelite cargo of baggage and passengers (some whom try to interfere with the
controls), the proposal is extremely rash. For the chances that the craft will breakdown and
perhaps crash, with serious consequences to passengers and for the baggage, are greatly
elevated over the risks of proceeding as usual much more slowly. With the costs of crashing
so severe, rational operators and sensible pilots would not take them.21
Unfortunately the analogy is not at all far-fetched, but resembles what is in store for
spaceship Earth, already under significant stress with its excessive human passenger load
and their heavy ecological practices. Not only is the future itself pretty new territory, but it is
a future at terrestrial temperatures, important processes will proceed faster than ever before,
in particular all chemical processes. Simply to take the craft up there, as do-nothing and
adaptation approaches would have is to emulate the risks and hubris of Daedelus; such
approaches are aptly rarely Daedelian
4. The Sting in the Cosmic Tail: the mini-Furphy theorem and the likely
demise of homo sapiens, spp. economicus..
The trouble with the initial formulation of Murphy's law:
if anything can go wrong, it will,
From logical theories of probability such as Carnap's non-zero probabilities are rather easily
reached (perhaps too easily, with the converse feature that natural laws never obtain high
probabilities. The difficulty can be characteristed, to some extent, by restruction to physical
models).
The analogy is an old one, which we exploited before in the nuclear case; for the “bus analogy”,
see Routley and Routley. The analogy admits of much graphic variation. Instead of running the
craft at excess speed, an alternative or additional image is that of destroying the controls of the
craft. Lovelock deploys this opposite image (88 p.63), which corresponds to the demolition of
Gaians control systems.
�20
was that it was insufficiently qualified, much too absolutist, and apparently self-refuting..22
Certain crucial qualifications are required:• Replacement of the certain (certainlistic) conclusion by a somewhat weaker probabilistic
one: namely, it probably will.
• Correlative to weakening the conclusion, strengthening the premiss, by rendering it more
specific; namely, in place of ‘anything’ or ‘something’ put ‘some thing ... given a chancy
situation’.
The modified formulation is accordingly the following Mini-Furphy result:23
if some thing can genuinely go wrong, given a relatively chancy situation,
it probably will.
Here ‘chancy’ means more or less what it means according to the dictionaries: doubtful,
decidedly risky, or as we shall construe it, having a comparatively low probability vis-a-vis
its alternatives. The precise extent of relative chanciness will be explained as we go.
To prove this proposition, let us first recast it in appropriate symbolic form. Let D be
some arbitrary bad situation, a suitable disaster. Let the possibility of D's happening something's going wrong - be represented by a non-zero probability, and genuineness by
non-negligible probability. It can be assumed that that probability, P(D), is small, otherwise
the requisite conclusion would follow in any case. Let C represent the features that render
the situation chancy. Then what we aim to show is that where P(D) is small positive, P(D <
C) is probable.
The proof applies a special case of Bayes' theorem, which take the following form
where there are n alternative hypotheses hi,...,hn including h:
Pv(h) x P(i < h)
P(h < i)
X P(hr) X P(i < hr)
r = 1
Here h is the hypothesis, which in our application is D, i is the additional information (or, is
in Carnap, a new observation), which in our case is C.24 P(h < i) is the probability of h
22
23
24
For this and other formulations of Murphy's law, and many loosely associated humorous maxims
with grains of truth encapsulated, see Block. As to the history of the “law”, which originated
with J.M. Chase, editor of Aviation Mechanics, see the Encyclopaedia Americana', Chase's initial
formulation in a 1955 issue read ‘If an aircraft part can be installed in correctly, someone will
install it the way”.
This little theorem was originally more accurately entitled the Murphy-Leslie theorem. It is an
adaptation, suggested by Leslie's work, of Murphy's Law. This section is overwhelmingly
indebted to Leslie; for Leslie's debts, and so the transitive debts of this section, see Leslie
himself, who deserves to be read in defence his legitimate doomsday apprehensions. The next not
indicates the limited extent to which Leslie's arguments are endorsed.
The formulation is a special case of that proved in Carnap, p.331; namely that (absolute) case
where the evidence e is elided, or e set = 1. A similar result follows, subject to slightly more
rigorous conditions, in relevant probability theory; see Routley 79 p.954.
�21
given i, or of h on condition i (the backward arrow notation, <, symbolises the condition
involved and shows its direction). For simplicity we shall suppose that all the alternatives to
D are concentrated (as far as symbolic exposure goes) in one, namely D*. Then the form we
seek to apply is simply:
p(D < C)
__________ P(D) x P(C < D)__________
P(D) x P(C < D) + P(D*) x P(C < D*)'
=
The arithmetic details needed can be tabulated in a revealing form as follows:
Cases
D
D*
Initial (or prior) probability
d
1-d
m, say Vd
m/l, say 1/dl
of outcome
relative chance that C
As it is the relative chance of C that matters, we can rescale to set m = 1/d. To make C
relatively chancy, I has some modest size; specifically let I exceed 1-d/d.
Then the probability to be estimated, P(D < C), is
d x 1/d
d x 1/d + (l-d)/dl
where
k
=
•
1
1+k
_
“
That is»
and P(D < C) | y when k < 1, i.e. when I [
p(D
<
C) =
where
k
=
1,
.
Thud D is probable, at least in being more probable than not, given C, when I is of at least
modest size, i.e. given C is relatively chancy. In a merely apparently more general form of
the estimation, where we do not align m to d,
In effect we shall look at the form
P(h < i) =
--------------- < h)------------------------------P(h) X P(i < h) + XP(hr) X P(i < hr)’
n
with the sum excluding the product for h.
Though demonstrable given satisfiable exclusion and exhaustion conditions, Bayes' theorem is
not lacking critics, in part because of the surprises this bit of logic can deliver. Carnap meets the
objection that Bayes' theorem has sometimes ‘been applied to cases where it led to strange or
even absurd results’ thus: ‘This was mostly due to an uncritical use of the principle of
indifference :... [The] theorem is provable ... on the basis of those weak assumptions which
practically all theories of probability seem to have in common’ (p.331, sub 1 elided). Of course
the present applications could (just) be objected to on the grounds that the logical conditions for
the theorem to apply are not fully satisfied.
�P(D [ C)
22
d x m
d x m + (1-d) x m/l
1
1 + k’
1
as before. That is m drops out, only the relative chanciness really matters. The little Furphy
theorem follows as before.
Now to put some relevant flesh on these abstract statements and figures. Let D be
some future disaster such as the catastrophic decline, for instance, through summer or winter
phenomena of the human species, from which the enormous present population never
recovers. At worst (from a chauvinistic angle) the population, like many catastrophically
effected by human activities, goes extinct. Suppose, for a bifurcating outcome, there is a
catastrophe stage, before halfway through next century, 2050. If humans do not get their act
together before then, they go into catastrophic decline, as already indicated. If however they
do get their ecopolitical act together then humans, while they hardly live happily ever after
(poverty, inequality, domination, and other evils not being removed), they continue to persist
or even grow in numbers, perhaps fanning out through the solar system ( in the way
envisaged by too many physicists). Suppose further we are optimists, imagining that the
prior probability of D ecodisaster and human decline, is small, say 1%. That is d = .01, and
the initial probability of D*, human “success”, is .99. The figures are pretty notional.
Supreme optimists would want to set d much smaller, pessimists rather at a higher
probability.
Application Table 1.
Cases
D human decline
D* human success
Initial probabilities
1%, i.e. .01
99%, i.e. .99
Relative chanciness,
VlOO, i.e. .01
1/100 x l/l
ofC
Then the probability of human decline given
.01 x ,01
P(D < C)
.01 x .01 + .99 x .01/1
1
!/2
, when I > 99.
�23
It remains to fill out C, thereby showing that I is likely much much larger, and
correspondingly human decline so much the more probable in the light of additional
information, i.e. a posteriori probable in the usual jargon.
There are several high risk factors, acting in a certain concert, factors emphasized more
than a decade ago in world systems modellings (such as, most famously that, of the Club of
Rome) Malthusian factors such as human population, economic product, pollution, energy
consumption,.... It is appropriate for estimate posterier probability relative to anyone of
these, any of which can serve as C, in order to expose the riskiness of present gross human
practices. In brief, because there are several high risk factors, so there are several
appropriate relative or reference classes. Thus the posterier probability is assessed relative to
such matters as our being alive, humans being thus and so (Leslie's reference class), this
being present energy use, present wast output, present forest destruction and so forth.25
The anthropic argument considers the environmentally invidious situation of present
humans on the Earth. The argument can be carried through either in terms of sheer
population, gross numbers, or in terms of human resource grabbing, as estimated for
instance through energy consumption.
Let us consider the prospects given additional information as to the present phase of
gross human population. C will be some such proposition as: the proportional
preponderance of humans who have ever lived alive now, or to personalize it: the chance that
you or your family, is alive now.
Chart: Our present population predictment on the two scenerios.
Demise scenerio
“Success” scenerio -
representative
zjs
human numbers
human numbers
On of the weaknesses in the argument may appear to be its dependence on an appropriate choice
of relative class. For, the relative probabilities can fall away if different reference classes, not
exhibiting such growth patterns are taken, e.g. present wattle distribution, birds being thus and
so. On the other hand, probabilities can be elevated even more by selection of more unusual
reference classes cuh as our being scientists, or being computer programmers, etc..
�24
Humans have got themselves - to some extent put themselves, though much may be the
result of muddling through - into an extremely dubious, environmentally insidious and
unsustainable position, on a range of critical parameters. Their numbers are excessive, their
high energy use is excessive, their waste and their pollution are both excessive - and all
chose and other excesses are at the steep end of upward exponential curves.
Several relevant graphs are distressingly exponential, with the present in the near
vertical growth phase:
graphs
Many other similarly shaped graphs26 could be added, for instance for growth of
pollution, of waste products, of weapons (in terms of tonnes of explosive power), of other
greenhouse gases such as methane, and so on. The display typifies the accelerating human
roller coaster.
Those curves are tightly interconnected, in criss-crossing fashion. For example, the
productivity of contemporary agriculture which enables the feeding of hugh urbanised human
populations depends on a very high energy use (in term of energy efficiency, contemporary
high-tech agriculture falls below that of much traditional agriculture). The maintenance of
high populations with supplies of cheap food depends in turn on fossil fuel agriculture.
Because of the intertwining of these phenomena, there is no easy way of getting off the
accelerating roller-coaster.
26
All the graphs exhibited are drawn from Boyden.
�25
Nor, as observed, is there much effort devoted to slowing the coaster. For politicians
it would be politically risky and inexpedient to try (for them the rhetoric about an ecologically
sustainable future must remain just that, more rhetoric). For many other power holders and
brokers such ideas are ideologically excluded: growth remains the gospel. So a precarious
position becomes ever more precarious. Humans are in a decidedly chancy position, because
of their population situation and other Malthusian factors; they are becoming very disasterprone.
If humans want an acceptable future for themselves - they have virtually ruled out an
acceptable future for many other creatures, through their predominantly selfish thoughtless
greedy practices - then they will probably have to mend their ways, very considerably and
very soon. But, given the nature of the beast, that itself seems improbable.
Humans, if they seek a more assured future, should make a concerted effort to put
themselves into a less precarious position. That could be achieved by proceeding to reduce
relative risks. These relative risks, sharply reducing prospects for a reliable future, fall into
two classes:• manufactured risk factors, including weaponry such as mega-nuclear devices and elements
of biochemical warfard, and experimental equipment such as very high energy particle
accelerators (which could perhaps tunnel under a metastable state or induce a min-Big-Bang;
see Leslie).
• Accumulated risk factors, such as the hugh relative size of human population, energy
consumption, greenhouse gas production, etc..27
Despite the ideological obstacles, enormous political, religious and economic obstacles
blocking the way of requisite change, major efforts should be put into reducing both these
types of risks. Philosophers could have a significant role in breaking down the ideological
barriers and in clarifying and developing the arguments involved.
5. What ought to be done about Greenhouse?
The general result already reached, that humans collectively should reduce their risk
taking, and in particular reduce their gross numbers, extends to rational Greenhouse decision
and action theory. But that large and difficult challenge is not all that there is to try, that
should rationally be attempted.
While some increase in mean global temperatures, and all that implies, can no longer be
averted, the potentially most damaging effects can be: namely, by curtailing human-induced
27
As before, there are various different reasons why these induce risk, neo-Malthusian and
probabilistic in particular.
�26
output of Greenhouse gases. Moreover, there is an approximate upper bound upon
temperature of importance, which can serve to supply a significant limit as output. That
bound - which reduces risk taking by confining encountered situations to those where there
is some past experiential basis - is given by estimated temperatures during Altithermal and
Eemian eras. Those temperatures are estimated to have been between about 1/2 a degree and
1 degree Centigrade above contemporary (pre-1980) temperatures; so the upper bound is
about 1°C.
Not only will a continuation of current emission trends take global temperatures clean
through and way beyond that bound, so also will an alternative set-up where emission rates
are fixed more or less at current rates. The only apparent way to remain rationally within an
experiential domain is to curtail sharply trace gas emissions beginning easily in the 1990s.
That means shifting from the dominant growth paradigm; it means expensive re- and deindustrialisation. It is unlikely.
Final corollary: Humans collectively are not (particularly) rational. But we had already
guessed as much from the latest...... in the long history of human wars.
References
H.W. Bernard, The Greenhouse Effect, Ballinger, Cambridge Mass., 1980.
A. Block, Murphy's Law. Book Two, Magnum, Methuen, ...
S. Boyden, Western Civilization in Biological Perspective, Clarendon, Oxford, 1987.
L.R. Brown and others, State of the World 1989, Norton/Worldwatch, New York, 1989;
referred to as Worldwatch.
R. Carnap, Logical Foundations of Probability, Second edition, University of Chicago
Press, 1962.
R.M. Cyert and M.H. DeGroot, Bayesian Analysis and Uncertainty in Economic Theory,
Rowman & Littfield, New Jersey, 1987.
‘Developing policies for responding to climatic change’, Report of the Beijer Institute,
February 1988.
Keeton,
J. Leslie, ‘Risking and World's End’, Bulletin of the Curiadian Nuclear Society 10(3)
(1989) 1-6; all references to Leslie are to this article unless otherwise indicated.
J. Leslie, ‘Is the end of the world nigh?’, The Philosophical Quarterly, to appear; referred to
as PQ.
J.E. Lovelock, Gaia. A new look at life on Earth, Oxford University Press, 1979.
J. Lovelock, ‘Are we destabilising world climate?’, The Ecologist 15(1985) 52-55.
�27
J.Lovelock, ‘Man and Gaia’, The Earth Report Monitoring the Battle for Our Environment,
(ed. E. Goldsmith and N. Hilgard) Mitchell Benzley, London, 1988, 51-64.
R. and V. Routley, ‘Nuclear energy and obligations to the future’, Inquirey 21(1978) 133R. Routley, ‘Ultralogic as universal?’ reprinted as an Appendix in Exploring Meinong's
Jungle, RSSS, Australian National University, 1979.
S. Schneider ‘Not to decide is to decide’, in Greenhouse 1988: Planning for Climate Change
(ed. T. Dendy), Department of Environment and Planning, Adelaide, 1989, 5-10.
R.P. Turco and others, ‘Nuclear winter: Global consequences of multiple nuclear
explosions’, Science 222 (1983) 1283-1292.
�
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GAEAN GREENHOUSE, NUCLEAR WINTER,
AND ANTHROPIC DOOMSDAY.
... climate change, like no other issue, calls the whole notion of human progress
into question. The [ever promised] benefits of newer technologies, more
efficient economics, and improved political systems could be overwhelmed by
uncontrolled global warming.
... the pace of climate change will soon overwhelm natural variability in the
earth's climate. Indeed, it can be improved with nuclear war for its potential to
disrupt a wide range of human and natural systems, [severely] complicating the
back of moneying economics and coping with other problems. Irrigation
works, settlement patterns, and food production [among others] would be
tragically disrupted ... (Worldwatch 89, p.ll, p.10)
There are many approaches to the Greenhouse problematique, upon which this philosophical
investigation focuses. These approaches, range from playing the issue down entirely,
dismissing it as not a problem, not something anyone should worry about, at the one end of
the range, to playing it up at the other. Those who play it up may even foresee the demise of
the human race, the substantially new socio-economic arrangements soon eventuate.
There is certainly plenty of room for different approaches, and for some eclecticism.
For what is being relied upon, in every case, comprises shaky and contestable arguments,
from flimsy forecasting models lacking many apparently relevant details. No one of sound
judgment, aware that weather reports for twelve hours ahead can be wildly astray, would
place a very high level of confidence on climatic forests for fifty years ahead down a very
hazardous track. But there is enough information to act; and there is information rationally
requiring action.
For things in the future are not going to be the same. It is very doubtful that they are
going to be any better (though much important economic theorizing presupposes as much,
such as the monetary discounting of the future). They are not going to be similar even,
because so many parameters important to life are changing, several at exponential rates.
Significant in these changes are likely climatic changes. The Greenhouse effect is among
those, a result of the increases of “greenhouse” gases, especially carbon dioxide and
methane, in the Earth's atmosphere, which have followed exponential paths since the highenergy phase of industrial culture. The growth in gas concentration produces, what it is
lagged by, but is now apparent, a significant increase in mean global temperatures. This has
major implications for much of life on Earth.
2
Diagram 1. Spectrum of approaches:
Course of action
Reasons offered
Short response
No problem
Refutable
No certainty
Irrational
Adaptive capacity
Exaggerated
High tech resolution
Wishful thinking
Severe dislocation
otherwise
Utopian
Individual
survival
Pointless
No action1
Moderate action
Considerable action
These very condensed responses will be expanded and explained as we proceed.
Breifly too the outcome is that there is no easy path; future humans should expect a hard
landing.
1. Investigative philosophy, argument and rational decision
The role of philosophy in such a complex problematique as that of Greenhouse is not
difficult to state briefly. Philosophy, Anglo-American philosophy especially, is concerned
above all with argument. Investigative philosophy is applied philosophy, investigating
arguments, their features - assumptions, reliability, etc. - and their generalisation to rational
processes, but outside normal philosophical topics. The generalisation to rational processes
comprehends a wider range of philosophical throughput than the orthodox range of argument
typically addressed in logic courses; to probabilistic and plausibilistic reasoning, to decision
processing and making.
A main objective in this piece of investigative philosophy is to consider certain
arguments for severe dislocation pprobabilities, as a result of Greenhouse effects, and the
resulting impact on rational decision formation and action. There are certain arguments of
particular interest radical decision and action: various neo-Malthusian arguments, and
doomsday arguments.
1
Taoist no-action would be different. It would not have undertaken excessive industrial action in
the first place.
3
The main run of arguments to considerable action are neo-Malthusian in character. The
general form of these arguments is simply this: growth in some parameter encounters limits,
with severe effects. A characteristic graphic representation is as follows:
limits
growth
parameter
time
exponential growth
pattern
J
encountering
limits
subsequent
varying unstable
behavior
The limits are often imposed just by finitude, e.g. finiteness of a resource or a sink. But
other limits can be important, for instance where new phenomena or thresholds come into
play. General Malthusian arguments loom in the background in what follows.
But a different argument, of especial concern as regard climatic changes, is the
following anthropic doomsday argument:• There is some probability that the Gaean “greenhouse effect”, generated by human
activity, will get out of control, that Gaean control mechanisms will fail, and that the Earth
will, for example, overheat (Runaway Greenhouse, or Lesser Venus Prospect, premiss).
• That result would be disastrous for human activities, and indeed for humans (Catastrophe
Prospect).
• Because of the unusual, and unusually precarious, position of humans, such a probability
of disaster is not in fact small but decidedly large
As a consequence then, the human species will probably sharply decline, and even become
extinct (Catastrophe Probability).
That is, by a rectified version of Murphy's law - that if something can go wrong then in
appropriate unusual conditions, it very probability will - an incrementally small probability is
inflated into a very large probability.
4
It would be a mistake to conclude that because the argument itself is an unlikely one,
everyone can stop worrying. The argument is but one of a substantial raft of arguments that
should have everyone worried; it is but a final intellectual string, so to say, from the
inconspicuous cosmological tail.
Such a doomsday argument no doubt puts together, in one more exact form, some of the
sorts of considerations that are troubling many people, especially concerned youth, about the
Greenhouse business: that humans (including themselves) are on a decline or extinction path.
It is no doubt not the only consideration that should be troubling them or us. For whether or
not doomsday warnings are warranted, there are other matters that should be sufficiently
worrisome, to anyone of moral integrity:• Future times are likely to be exceedingly uncomfortable for very many creatures, as
habitats are destroyed, food producing regions are eliminated, and environments seriously
impoverished.
(Many of these creatures are nonexistents, mere future existents, i.e.
creatures that do not yet exist or participate in market or voting rituals, but who -will exist and
may participate. But, despite their presently unfavourable ontological status, they are entitled
to fair and decent treatment.)
• Given such future prospects, present practices which do nothing or vanishingly little to
ameliorate these prospects, are decidedly irrational. Indeed a main message that will emerge
from the present exercise is the moral irrationality of critical large-scale human practices.
The irrationality, morally-weighed-down irrationality, of present large-scale human
practices is already conspicuous from the wintry downside of climatic prospects of which
Greenhouse warming is the upside.
Diagram 2. Macro-climatic setting.
Bands: all
boundaries fuzzy
mean
global
temperature
(degrees C)
escalating
emissions
Disequilibrium:
Venus prospect
increasing dislocation
possible adaptation
increasing dislocation
thermonuclear
war
disequilibrium: Mars
prospect
5
1860
1990
The apparatus for conducting a world-wide nuclear wars is entirely in place and indeed
on alert. The probability of such a war, even if small, is not zero. Among the many awful
effects of a large nuclear war is that of nuclear winter, which would bring about the demise
of present human civilisation, and would at the very least mean enormous dislocation for
most surviving humans and other creatures. A sufficiently diabolical chemo-nuclear war,
reaching into all inhabited parts of the globe, could indeed drive the human species close to
extinction.
The decidedly dubious rationality and morality of these nuclear arrangements - both
through what they are in themselves for what purposes, and through their moral opportunity
costs - are widely appreciated. The thesis that the arrangements and practices are immoral,
irrational, and ought to be dismantled - already much argued, and also contested2 - is not the
present concern. The thermonuclear downside is, by comparison, a very easy case to
examine philosophically, and argue, as compared with the greenhouse upside.3 For there is,
for instance, a case of sorts, for much increased use of greenhouse gases, such as CFCs in
refrigerators, a case that hardly extends very plausibly to nuclear weapons. It is a case
heavily pressed by some “developing” nations, for polluting devices already in widespread
use in more affluent places, as necessary for local standards of living.
Greenhouse and nuclear winter are more intricately connected than being the upside
and downside of meteorological phenomena. One of the high-tech solutions suggestions for
atmospheric overheating, involves the generation of wintering effects - to cool things down -
by flinging enough dust up into the atmosphere, a trick most easily achieved no doubt on the
requisite scale by nuclear explosives. Needless to say, like backburning against out-of-
control fires, artificial winter would be a pretty desperate and, given present expertise,
irrational expedient.
2. The Greenhouse debate, main policy responses, and irrational decision.
The Greenhouse debate, as to what to do, if anything, about forecast Greenhouse
effects on Earth, is intellectually disturbing. For it has revealed, as we shall soon see, that
many of those who have spoken, worse that many who have some role in decision making
For my very small contribution to this, see the War and Peace series in Discussion Papers in
Environmental Philosophy, RSSS, Australian National UniversityGlobal warming, by no means entirely certain, is assumed to be the outcome of increasing
greenhouse gas build up. Of course though some temperatures will rise, cooling will probably
occur also in some localized regions.
6
(including both experts and politicians), lack a firm grasp on decision-making in conditions
of uncertainty or possible risk.4
The main canvassed policy approaches to the Greenhouse problematique lie firmly
within the dominant social paradigm, the high-tech growth and development ideology.
Diagram 2 Broad policy responses to the Greenhouse problematique.
Dominant paradigm
Alternative paradigm
Procrastination (wait-and-see)
Soft energy paths and
alternative regulation
Adaptation (sink-or-swim)
Socio-economic
transformation
Regulation
Intervention (star wars)
We will briefly outline, and find wanting, all the dominant approaches.
• Procrastination, the prevailing response. In fact the main gooon mental and conservative
response thus far has been procrastination, or “wait-and-see” as it is more benignly known.5
The approach makes much of the uncertainties, of the shortcomings in even the most
elaborate general circulation models, of the high noise-to-signal levels. On such bases, it
contends that it is too early to do anything, except staging some meetings, organising some
review committees, undertaking some monitoring, and funding a little more “research”. It
obviously does nothing to rock the growth ideology boat.
There is the pretence that we do not know enough to act6 But it is known that carbon
dioxide, methane and other greenhouse gases are fast increasing. The main causes and
enough likely consequences are also known. Theoretical consideration, have already been
partially confirmed by rising temperatures in the eighties. Outlines of rising temperatures are
also known in broad outline, rising sea levels, and so forth. In addition, there are partial
Following Knight, some economists (try to) distinguish between uncertainty and risk. Risk is
said to obtain when some more or less objective numberable probabilities can be assigned to
outcomes, a situation not obtaining as regards the global greenhouse effect. Bayesians, who can
always assign subjective probabilities tend to eschew the distinction, e.g. Cyert and DeGroot,
also say that ‘decision making under uncertainty refers to situations in which the outcome of the
decision is not precisely predictable’ (p.3). Either way, Greenhouse involves uncertainty.
There is significant rhetorical art in the choice of classificatory labels, a rather philosophically
neglected art. A PR person must have been hired to produce the Greenhouse adaptation of
‘adaptation’.
Part of the problem is that scientists have been caught out (e.g. crying wolf) and have become
ultra-cautious. With the advent of thermodymumies, for instance, scientists begin ‘threatening
mankind with a rather swift “bad death’” as the universe random ‘Thus m. Aber, on ‘balant
ideological use of science even by scientists themselves’ (Bernard p.9).
7
small-scale models of the Greenhouse effect in action. For example a city such as MexicoCity, which is situated in the bowl-like valley is placed in an environment traps heat as well
as pollution. The ecological affects, like the human affects, are pretty dramatic even at this
small level, and hardly to be sought, or amelated elsewhere.
There is a pretence, fostered also by many scientists, that Greenhouse difficulties have
only just been discovered; a date commonly set for that watershed even is the Villiers
conference and statement of 1986 (e.g. Pittoch ....). Actually there have been Greenhouse
warmings for more than a decade, and there has been a corresponding decade of inaction.
Nor is any action of much significance presently seriously contemplated.
Back in 1979 Bernard wrote at length about and reported the substantial concern of
climate logists about Greenhouse effects. Even the magazine Nature, not noted for its green
sympathies, recorded that ‘the release of carbon dioxide to the atmosphere by the burning of
fossil fuels is, concemally, the most important environmental issue in the world today’ (May
? 1975). Bernard quotes many other concerned scientists, several asserting that ‘the
government must start dealing with this problem now’. They meant the United States
government. “The” government didn't take the hint. For more than a decade then scientists
have been emphasizing that the greenhouse threat is a major environmental problem, and that
action should be taken immediately. Over 10 years nothing of real significance to counter the
problem has happened. There has been more than a decade of inaction , during which
matters have got worse, and the time frame for evasive action disturbingly shorter. It is
already evident that requisite decision making under uncertainty is not taking place. On
straight inductive grounds, it would be reasonable to expect nothing will be done. While
there are theoretical grounds to bark up such an assessment, still it is only just beginning to
get through to a much wider public (which can exercise a marginal influence on what
politicians say) that there is - or may be, as some more reactionary modal-managering
academics would have - a problem or two.
Many scientists have joined the wait-and-see queue, with their begging bowls, hoping
for more hand-outs for research. They assume, rightly enough, that more information would
assist with rational decision-making, and also, quite wrongly, that “scientific activity” is
required for action to be taken. Physical scientists are not done in their misapprehension of
rational decision methods.
Although there is a good deal of practical experience available of statistical-type decision
making order uncertainty, for instance as regards insurance coverage and engineering
projects, decision theory, especially as regards unreputable situations, has not penetrated
very far into standard scientific methodology or much into mainstream parts of social
sciences. ‘Economists in particular have shown a talent for bringing ever problem back to a
world of certainty where all solutions are known or can be easily found.’ Natural scientists
including dematologists are, for the most part, on the same erroneous-reduction-toconlittainable-certainty trip. ‘This is not to say that economists have not worked on
uncertainty. ... however ... uncertainty is introduced and then taken out by assumption’
(Cyort and DeGroot p.l). But there are several classes of problematic situations, where
decision and action may be required, where uncertainty cannot be discarded by first,
reduction strategeness or otherwise, notably:• inheritantly probabilistic situations, such as those of indeterminacy in quantum theory;
• essentially unpredictable situations (which may be deterministic) such as those now under
investigation chaos theory;
• presently uncertain situations and outcomes, which may eventually resolve into certain
cases, or may turn into some of the above classes, where there is not time to wait for
resolution.
The Greenhouse problem is regularly put into the latter class, a standard assumption being
that with enough money and research effort thrown at it, it will resolve to decent certainty.
But it may well not; there are grounds for supposing that critical parts of climatology will fall
into the essentially unpredictable class. The standard approach of too many research
scientists is a pathetic begging-bowl posture: Supply more funding so we can go on
researching until we obtain certainty.7
There are some severe problems with this standard response. Firstly, it is irrational.
Certainty if achieved may be achieved too late. What was required for rationality was
decision making in advance of certainty. Secondly, certainty may be unobtainable. The
meteorological equations may be non additive (non additive) and so incapable of delivering
stable results over slightly fluctuating in strict data. The standard response is
methodologically unsound.
• Adaptation, learning to live with and love the Greenhouse. The policy ‘that tends to be
favoured by most economists’ is an adaptive strategy: “Let society adjust to environmental
changes without attempting to mitigate or prevent the changes in advance” We could adapt to
climate change for example, by planting alternative crop strain [themselves] ... more widely
adopted... ’ (Schneider p.8). Observe, however, that it is a decidedly restricted “adaptation”
that is being proposed, that humans adjust to the results of present economic and industrial
practices, rather than adjusting them. It is assumed that economic growth comes first, that
we do not change (e.g. through decent regulation) high energy industrial practices. A fuller
and smarter adaptation would adapt these practices. The policy is like a pernicious
agriculture policy that says, “Let farmers adjust to the results of soil erosion, salination and
7
It does not seem to have occurred to most research scientists demanding more money (even more
per article) that an important reason why they are not obtaining the funding they expect is
because their research results could, if unfavorable, act a serious drag on the industrial
establishment. They are not going to be funded to delegitimize modem industrial society.
9
so on, without attempting to mitigate or prevent these deleterious changes in advance.” Such
“adaptative agriculture”, the present predominant practice in advanced agriculture, is antienvironmental, but is given a spurious air of evolutionary inevitability and evolutionary
redistributive justice; you can't back natural evolution, which is entirely natural, can you.
Let us condense such far-from-inevitable and highly artificial mal-adaptation in the neologism
badaptation. Greenhouse adaptation, like nuclear adaptation, is badaptation (some, less
kind, would say medaptation).
There is a pragmatic, if cynical, political argument for badaptation, namely, that
unilateral action to prevent a warning is unfeasible and requisite international cooperation
unattainble. Both contentions open to doubt. Unilateral action by the USA, by far the
World's heaviest resource and energy consumer (per capita and on several other relevant
domains) backed up by pressure (familiar from other settings, such as the narcotics war) on
other nations and through the United Nations could make a major difference. Unfortunately
the USA is also the world's largest supplier of influential grown economists. In any case,
international agreements such as those in whaling and Antarctica, are attainable, and
sometimes effective. The ozone protocols, limiting production of CFCs show that results
can be achieved to limit trace gas emissions.
The adaptation proposal is presently compatible with wait-and-see; both mean no
hauling back on trace gas production. Indeed procrastination will force societies towards
badaptation. Typical of adaptation, like procrastination, is an (over-)emphasis on the
uncertainties of Greenhouse forecasts, and on the decision-theoretic paralysis such
uncertainties are alleged to produce. Characteristic of adaptation too is a minimisation of the
extent of Greenhouse modification. No doubt the impression that things won't be so very
different, or far removed from what has already been experienced, is important in getting
adaptationism more readily accepted, as a rational course of action (instead of the seemingly
irrational course it is). Thus badaptation tends to play with figures at the law end of
projected ranges of temperature increase, such as 1.5°C for 2050, when in fact present data
indicates something rather in the vicinity of 4°C - in a setting, furthermore, where fractions
of a degree centigrade may well be linked ot macro-physical and macro-biological change.
Recent modellings deliver, an average, on increase in 2°C attributable to carbon dioxide, and
it is widely thought that other trace gases will double the CO2 effect, yielding a 4°C
temperature increase.8
8
Sources. Note that methane is beginning to rival carbon dioxide as a gas where atmospheric
propostems really matter and whose present increase is excessive.
10
The colossal extent of future human dislocation has correspondingly been deliberately
underemphasized. The adaptive capacities of human arrangements, when humans are living
at the margin, to massive natural shifts, has been grossly exaggerated.
Consider agriculture alone - set aside flooded cities, sunken atoll islands, and all the
rest. Some of the Earth's major grain producing regions - upon which famine relief projects
depend - could be pushed substantially out of business. The conditions which prevailed
during the American dust-bowl experience of the nineteen-thirties were benign indeed
compared with those which threaten with mid twenty-first century Greenhouse conditions.
The mid continental summer temperatures were only 1-2° C warmer than the present
average, under greenhouse conditions they could be more than 3-4° C warmer. In the dustbowl rainfall only slipped at critical growing times (e.g. July for northern com) to 80% of
the contemporary norm; but under Greenhouse conditions it could be significantly less again.
A super dust-bowl is not improbable (for much more detail, see Bernard). Similarly for
other similar latitude Northern grain producing regions. But the high-energy industrial
superstructure is crucially based upon sufficient cheap food (bread) for the urban masses.
• Intervention, high-tech Gaean engineering. Interventionist proposals so far floated include
• New oceans in parts of the Earth's land surface lying below, at, or near sea level. These
projects would make the mega-dams of recent times look like childrens' play.
• Wintering effects. Production of sufficient dust in the atmosphere, achieved for instance
by nuclear detonations, to mitigate heating effects. Such enterprise would make modification
of the weather by cloud seeding look like childs' play.
Fortunately these and other expensive and grandiose proposals, which would call for
considerable international cooperation, are far down the planning track; with these schemes
procrastination is rational.
• Regulation, controlling free(-wheeling) enterprise.
Regulation itself, not so bureaucratically popular under that presentation in these latter days
of economic irrationalism, is of course transparadigmatic, where it belongs depend on what
measures (what sorts of constraints, rights, etc.) are proposed and how they are imposed or
enforced. If it is, for example, some industrial law-and-order, smokestack scrubbing
regulations or Greenhouse polluting rights, within the status quo, that is one thing, but if a
minimally-constrained growth paradigm is questioned and alternative socio-economic
arrangements advocated, that is quite another, and falls outside the dominant paradigm.
Such policies involving regulations controlling fossil fuel emissions especially, are
negatively labelled prevention in the predominantly American policy literature, though there
is now no preventing some Greenhouse effects; but the worse to follow could still be
prevented. What is usually covered under the label is however some regulation within
prevailing political arrangements. So energy efficiencies and savings for investment in
11
growth elsewhere is comprehensible, straight growth-curtailing non-consumption is not
contemplated. But the latter is just what alternatives do contemplate.
Democratic political arrangements do not exclude such alternatives both the power
bases of political leaders and economic prescriptions do. Adequate regulation within
prevailing socio-economic arrangements is going to prove impossible, without adjustment of
power structures and economic imperatives, in effect without far-reaching systems and a
devological adjustment. While such adjustment may be rational, it is unlikely. Power
structures have too much to lose.9
This is an opposite point to record the chauvinism and environmental shallowness of
the Greenhouse debate. Like heart disease and cancer, the Greenhouse effect is gaining
much discussion and some funding because it just may severely effect the affluent, affluent
people and affluent nations, that have a good deal to lose, in North America especially. The
impact will, however, be at least as severe in some third world nations, whose lands or much
of them will be flooded, countries which cannot afford extensive expensive dyking (or where
such effort would be in the longer term, as seas rise, pointless), countries such as Pacific
coral atoll nations and delta states like Bangladesh. But the really serious losers will no
doubt be, not humans , rich or poor, but nonhumans.
Biological diversity, already being reduced by various human activities, may be
one of the chief casualties of global worming. Massive destruction of forests,
wetlands, and even the polar tundra could irrevocably destroy complex ecosystems that have existed for millennia. Indeed, various biological reserves
created in the past decade to protect species diversity could become virtual death
traps as wildlife attempt to survive in conditions for which they are poorly
suited. Accelerated species extinction is an inevitable consequence of a rapid
warming (Worldwatch p.10).
3. Arguments to dislocation and for a Lesser Venus Prospect.
There is at least a small probability that predicted increase in mean atmospheric
temperatures will seriously interfere with most remaining natural environments and result in
the degeneration or destruction of many of them, especially forests wetlands, maritime
environments. Nor will adaptationism help here; for natural evolution is much too slow for
adaptationism to succeed (cf. Keeton pp.763-4).
Natural ecosystems will not adapt effectively to rapid climatic change,... With
regard to forests, habitats for plants and animals cannot be re-created or
transplanted rapidly. Continuing climatic changes would strain the capabilities
Holistic problems are too extensive for individuals, or even small collectives, to make much
difference acting or their own. Some are too beg even for large collectives or states, but would
require whole regions of the Earth acting in concerte. But of course some state players, such as
the superpowers, as regards nuclear winter, can make a substantial difference, or even all the
difference.
12
of management practices even in commercial tree plantations (Beijer Institute
Report pp.21-3).
The decline or demise of these systems, vast reservoirs for greenhouse gases will accelerate
the warming, and accordingly make matters substantially worse:
Trees are adapted to a narrow range of temperature and moisture levels, and
cannot cope with rapid climate change. A temperature increase of 1 degree
Celsius per decade in mid- to upper latitudes translates into a shift in vegetation
zones of 60-100 miles northward. Terrestrial ecosystems cannot migrate that
fast. Vast numbers of trees are likely to die, and new trees adapted to warmer
temperatures are unlikely to be able to replace them rapidly. During such a
disruption, huge areas of forest could die and, as they decay or bum, send large
quantities of additional CO2 into the atmosphere, accelerating the warming
(Brown p.10).
Of course the immediate climate patterns would be somewhat more complex. If enough soot
and ash from fires were flung into the atmosphere there would be a cooling effect, like that of
a small nuclear winter, before heating accelerated. The present pattern of ecosystemic loss
would also be sharply accelerated. When natural ecosystems get reduced to about 30% of
their initial size, they tend to collapse of themselves.
Moreover, there would be other significant positive feedback from ecosystems other
than the terrestrial forests, from the oceans especially. As the oceans warm, they lose their
capacity to serve as carbon dioxide reservoirs. So they too release additional gases,
including previously absorbed CO2, back into the atmosphere, further accelerating the
warming. A critical question arises as to how much danger such positive feedback poses?
As so often, informed opinions, and so probability estimates differ. However ‘several
scientists working in the area consider that positive feedback effects will force a very bleak
picture to be drawn’ (p.19 ref?)10
Unlike the interim effect of a small nuclear winter, where after a few years at most,
climatic behavior (as distinct from radioactivity levels) would presumably return towards the
previous norm, there will be no similar recovery under greenhouse impact. Technically
then, stability would be lost under the impact,11 disequilibrium induced. An eventual longterm return to some different equilibrium could well be excluded. Under new climatic
regimes plants themselves may be able to do little more than hang on for part of their own
lives. In many places conditions would be too severe for much of the “year” to permit
normal plant functioning, including what is crucial for greenhouse amelioration,
photosynthesis. In most plants, photosynthesis only occurs across a narrow band of
Second order probabilities, probabilities and uncertainties in the light of first order subjective
probabilities, enter importantly.
Stability is defined in physics in terms of return to an initial (inertial) position after small
disturbance.
13
temperatures (e.g. 6 - 34°C); outside that range the plants shut down operations.12 Even
more important, many plants would leave few or no successful successors. Even where
plants set seed, seedlings would not survive under the severe conditions expected; for
instance, they would be killed by hot dry summer conditions, or in other places by frosts to
which they are not adapted, both phenomena already familiar after clearfelling of forests.
The situation at... in southern Sahara, where there is but one ancient tree hanging on in
thousands of square kilometers of desert, a tree with viable seeds which sets no seedlings,
could be more or less replicated in many other places where forests or woody plants once
grew.
In fact we are already witnessing the demise of the trees in much of Australia. Already
dead and dying trees form a predominant feature of the Australian rural landscape. Virtually
whichever way ecologists travel in Australia where trees remain, they are confronted with
dead and dying trees 13 The reasons for the present decline of trees in rural Australia is, for
the most part, not to be attributed to early greenhouse or even pollution effects.14 It is
thought to be due to a complex of factors, including a range of insect predators whose effects
are enhanced on isolated trees left after an excessive zeal for clearing (i.e. holistic effects
enter as regards healthy persistence of trees). The relevant point is that these features are
likely to be accelerated given the additional impact of greenhouse warming on plant
functioning and reproduction.
There are several major ways through which the maintenance structures of the Earth
can be not merely awkwardly disturbed, but thrown right out of kilter - perhaps, given the
delicacy of several critical matters, never to return present norms. Most obvious and
immediately threatening is
• nuclear warfare, and therewith nuclear Winter.
But there are of course other severe shocks the planet could suffer than those chemo-nuclear
warfare, some human induced, some a “chance” matter of the planets' position in space,
namely
• a mini Big Bang, or an undermining of metastability, brought about through very high
energy experimentation (see Leslie)
• a collision with a large meteorite or asteroid.
Such uncertainties, not germane to the main climatic arguments, are listed, not to achieve a
bogus completeness, but to emphasize that complete certainty is not to expected, not
rationally.. Should we obtain it, should we obtain easy relatively unproblematic lives, then
we have, by world standards, been rather lucky. Moreover, these latter uncertainties do
The upper bound may be difficult to appreciate in most of Aotearoa. But in much of Australia,
during the summer, many plants close down their operations for much of the day.
Reported by Recher on Earthworm.
Thus coastline vegetational destruction through detergents in sewerage waters.
14
appear negligible compared with those bound up with climate, ascribable to:
• excess economic development. The practices involve a complex and sustained assault on
most of the Earth's major ecosystems, forests, seas, etc, along with the alteration of
atmospheric composition by greenhouse gases. For example, the forests are cut down,
burnt, poisoned by herbicides and acid rain, or otherwise removed or destroyed. (Therewith
too a great deal more carbon dioxide is released into the atmosphere and major sinks of
carbon dioxide are removed.) As a result of these concerted growth-and-development
activities such systems are driven to limits, and breakdown occurs. Once it occurs at some
weak point it can escalate elsewhere, like a conflagration.; thus again ecosystemic collapse
for example.
Quite apart from breakdown at or approaching limits, for instance because of systemic
overload, remarkable changes can occur in desiccative systems under stress or strain.
• excess energy or chemical loading. Though such striking examples as the chemical clock,
it has been demonstrated that dissipative systems can suddenly, and often rather
unpredictably, undergo extraordinary changes, as for instance energy flux is increased
(Prigogine and others), [describe briefly]
Such non-additive, or nonlinear, effects, characteristic of more holistic dissipative
systems, are bound to occur within the Earth's atmosphere and oceans as they undergo
compositional changes. Carbon dioxide itself provides a good example.
With small quantities its effect on the temperature of the air is proportional to the
amount added; there is a linear effect. However once the carbon dioxide
concentration in the air approaches 1%, new nonlinear effects come into play
and heating greatly increases. In the absence of a biosphere to fix carbon
dioxide, its concentration in the atmosphere would probably exceed the critical
figure of 1%. The Earth would then heat up rapidly to a temperature near to that
of boiling water. Increasing temperatures would speed up chemical reactions
and accelerate their progress towards chemical equilibrium. ... eventually ...
the Earth would become permanently cocooned in a brilliant white cloud - a
second Venus, although not quite as hot (Lovelock pp.45-6).
Fortunately for Gaean prospects, the percentage of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is now
nowhere near 1% nor likely to be pushed near 1% by projected doubting of carbon dioxide
levels under economic activity over the next 50 years15. However eventual exponential
growth will lead towards levels, and the side effect of such growth, the release of carbon
dioxide from forests and oceans and the considerable reduction in fixation of carbon dioxide
with the decline of forests, will lead in that disastrous direction rather more rapidly. The 1%
15
In the atmosphere of the very early Earth, CO2 exceeded the critical 1% figure; but solar
luminority was about 25% less than now. With increasing solar flux the Earth would have
overheated had the proposition of CO2 not been much reduced (e.g. see Lovelock 88 p.56).
15
bound constitutes just one of the many serious limits to continuation of present
developmental practices.
Now there can be no rational confidence with respect to complex dissipative systems -
about the behavior of which we presently know comparatively little - that no other
nonadditive effects will no be encountered at a much earlier stage. After all, the Gaean
system, its atmosphere, oceans and ecosystems, will be pushed into essentially
unexperienced and substantially unknown reaches. There is, for example, no experience
from past times of such elevated temperatures as Green house effects will lead to, to draw
upon. ‘There is no evidence that the land-bound glaciers in Greenland and Antarctica have
ever completely melted in the last two million years’. There is experience of much colder
periods. ‘During ice ages, the earth's average temperature has been about 5°C colder than at
present, with glaciers covering major portions of continents’ (Barth p.7). But there is no
similar experience of temperatures 4-5° C warmer than at present (in a warm interglacial
period), ‘a global increase of more than 2°C above present is unprecedented in the era of
human civilization’ (Schneider p.6)
It would accordingly be decidedly rash, rash decision makings, to assign a zero or
negligible probability to the emergence of new or unknown effects of relevance, to assume
all will go smoothly and well. That would presuppose, in any event, a completeness in
present scientific knowledge, contrary to the information we have that present investigation
of holistic systems, among much else, is still in its infancy. The probability of something
critical (e.g. perhaps radicals like hydroxyl) having been left out of estimations, of room
accordingly for something unexpected or for something to go wrong, may be small, though
experience implies it is not always so but it certainly appears to be non-zero.
For the overconfident, with excess faith in the flimsy scientific edifice, there is a
salutary lesson to be drawn from the erratic and stumbling path of the main proponent of
Gaia hypotheses, Lovelock. Lovelock, coming from a working life as an industrial chemist,
part of that time for a giant chemical transnational, had, and retained for a considerable time
after he began his holistic hypothesizing a strong antipathy for environmentalists.16 Even
Gaia was for industry and against the environmentalists; she was going to laughingly soak
up all the pollution, courtesy of the chemical companies especially, that we humans could
throw at her. In particular, we did not really need to worry much about ozone depletion or
greenhouse gas escalation.17 ‘Contrary to the forebodings of many environmentalists,
Coupled with this, there is a certain schizophrenia in Lovelock's attitude to the natural
environment. There is also a matching schizophrenia as to the fragility of life on Earth. On the
one side, it required very delicate settings and fine barring to arise; this is part of the argument for
a Gaia hypothesis. On the other side, life is ‘tough, robust, and [highly] adaptable’, virtually
indestructable (p.90). But though a flawed hero, Lovelock is a hero nonetheless.
See Lovelock 79, p.40ff; and also 88? [detail]
16
finding a suitable’ destructive agent to bring about a ‘doom scenario’ ‘turns out to be an
almost insoluble problem’ (p.40). Lovelock makes it easier for himself by helping himself to
the assumption that a doomsday scenario involves the destruction of all “life”, ‘down to the
last spore of some deep-buried anaerobic bacteria’ (p.40). But even for the least chauvinistic
of environmentalists, destruction of all humans but the select elect would be quite enough for
a decent doomsday. Lovelock's high redefinition of a environmental ‘doomsday scenario’ is
unacceptable. Lovelock does not however stay within the bound of his redefinition. He
proceeds to pooh-pooh the idea that anything much that we humans could accomplish would
make any difference to Gaia (p.41) or even to most humans, including use of nuclear
devices.
Unfortunately for Lovelock's credibility, he was writing three years before the
seemingly obvious wintering effects of a major nuclear war were realised by the accredited
scientific community. Appealing in a common scientific fashion to scientific authority, he
proceeds to minimalize the human and ecological effects of a major war. The report he relies
upon as authoritative was a 1975 (unreferenced) one of ‘the US National Academy of
Sciences ... prepared by an eight-man committee of their own distinguished members,
assisted by forty-eight other scientists chosen from those expert in the effects of nuclear
explosions and all things subsequent to them’ (p.41, italics added). Lovelock draws from
the distinguished expert report the findings that
... if half of all the nuclear weapons in the world's arsenals, about 10,000
megatons, were used in a nuclear war the effects on most of the human and
man-made ecosystems of the world would be small at first and would become
negligible within thirty years. Both aggressor and victim nations would of
course suffer catastrophic local devastation, but areas remote from the battle
and, especially important in the biosphere, marine and coastal ecosystems
would be minimally disturbed (p.41).
Three years later Turco and others proceeded to detail a very different scenario that of
widespread and ecologically damaging nuclear winter.. Not for the first time, Lovelock had
been caught out badly.
As with pollution, Lovelock has more recently shifted ground18 considerably in the
vulnerability of the Earth to human-induced disturbance. When a system such as Gaia in
homeostatis
is stressed to near the limits of regulation even a small disturbance may cause it
to jump to a new stable state or even fail entirely....
Shifting ground may be fine, especially when it is to an improved position. But it should be
done honestly and openly, not stealthily or shiftily. Lovelock proceeds to attribute a caricuture of
his own previous position to critics of the Gaia hypothesis (as a clever ‘fabrication’ which it was
not); that it is ‘an argument developed to allow industry to pollute at will, since mother Gaia will
clean up the mess (85 p.53).
17
It could be that the regulation of the Earth's climate is not far from one of these
limits. Thus if some part of climate regulation is connected with the natural
level of CO2 then clearly we are close to the limits of its regulation. This is
because CO2 cannot be reduced much below the level observed for the last
glaciation, about 180 ppm, without seriously limiting the rate of growth of the
more abundant C3 type plants. If we perturb the Earth's radiation balance by
adding more CO2 and other greenhouse gases to the atmosphere or reduce its
capacity to regulate by decreasing the area of forests or both of these together
then we could be surprised by a sudden jump of both CO2 and temperature to a
new and much warmer steady state; or by the initiation of periodic fluctuations
between that state and our present climate.
The anomalously low abundance of CO2 on Earth when compared with the
other terrestrial planets and especially the fact that the mean temperature of the
Earth is on the cool side of the optimum for regulation, suggests strongly that
the biota is regulating the climate by pumping CO2 from the air. The common
feature of most of our pollutions and of our exploitation of the land surface
seems to be unintentionally to thwart this natural process (Lovelock 85 pp5354).
The argument to the lesser Venus path, to significant disequilibrium with the Earth's
ecological support system destabilized, takes the following lines. The Earth appears to be a
discipative (far-from-equilibrium) system held at its present balance by a combination of an
(increasing) solar flux - a main energy input into the system - and its major ecological
arrangements, especially vegetation complanes and live oceans. The sheer extent to which
the resulting system differs from the stable dead system it could otherwise be is shown by
the following table for atmospheric and oceanic composition.
TABLE 1.
Substance
Carbon dioxide
A
Nitrogen
T
R
Oxygen
Argon
0
C
E
A
N
S
Water
Planetary comparisons
(principal components per cent).
Equilibrium
Earth
Venus
Lifeless
Earth
Mass
Present
Earth
99
0
98
1.9
98
1.9
95
2.7
0.03
79
0
1
trace
0.1
trace
0.1
0.13
2
21
1
63
Salt
3.5
Sodium
nitrate
1.7
96
n.a.
n.a.
3.5
traces
Surface
temperatures (°C)
n.a
477
Total pressure
(bars)
n.a.
90
290±50
60
-53
13
0064
1
The table is based upon tables 1 and 2 of Lovelock 79, pp37 and p.39.
18
The whole Earth system is accordingly far from equilibrium. Unpredictable behavior
as locals increase is therefore almost to be expected. A likely moral is presumably: stress
they system, or destabilize ecosystem controls sufficiently, and the system may be in deep
trouble. It is relevant to inquire into what evidence we have on this case.
To do so let us reconsider some of the array of arguments there are from some sort of
holistic organisation of the Earth (for a modest Gaia hypothesis). But for the participation of
the Earth's ecological support systems, plant complexes especially the Earth would not be
blessed with its present life-benign physical characteristics. The oceans would be much
saltios and too salty for most life, the air would not contain the present rich mixture of
oxygen and carbon dioxide so important for terrestrial life, and so on, perhaps most
important the Earth would be significantly hotter and too hot for most life, for what of what
does the regulating and stabilizing of present conditions. For the solar flux has increased in
intensity about 30% since life appeared on Earth, but the mean global temperatures have
exhibited no corresponding increase, but have remained relatively constant. Such an
expected consistency in the face of disturbing inputs is ascribed, under holistic approaches
that do something to explain it, to the concerted activity of plants, [detail] Lovelock and
collaberaters have devised an elementary daisy world model which reveals how a feedback
system with two types of daisies can, within limits, stabilize temperatures despite increasing
energy input. The limits are important, for as these limits are approached the maintenance
systems break down.
diagram Q
Similarly several of the well-known chemical cycles, such as those for nitrogen,
sulphur, sodium and so forth depends for their maintenance on the adequate operation of
active ecological structures. Plainly if a cycle loops through a component, such as forests,
which is severely disturbed then the cycle itself could be disrupted.
There is some probability furthermore that the foregoing changes will disturb crucial
equilibrium systems and chemical cycles. Some of these feedback systems are in fact
maintained in equilibrium by natural ecosystems (an example is Lovelock's daisy world
model, which becomes unstable when temperature rises too high). Instability could ensue
under disturbance [explain, include Greenhouse holism].
Without doubt these matters are bad enough. Demise of most of the Earth's richness19
is not a minor matter. Worse could follow.
Natural richness is the main richness, much exceeding human artifice.
19
The general tenor of the argument is so far this:- By arguments from physical models,
and because of uncertainties, the probability that something could go badly wrong is
nonzero,20 and indeed far from negligible. Part of the argument can be put as follows: there
is a decent probability that a modest Gaia hypothesis holds. But then, there is a considerable
probability that excessive Greenhouse build up will lead to damaging system destabilization.
So containing probabilities, there at least a nonneglizible probability of such destabilization.
An analogy should now emphasize both the dubiousness of what is being proposed
under adaptationism and the precariousness of the human predicament. The proposal is to
take this ancient craft, now overloaded with human passengers and their heavy baggage, a
cargo it was never organised to carry, out on new routes and run it fast and higher than it has
ever travelled before. Even for an experimental prototype, a now very fast (air-)bus say,
with a select text crew, such a procedure, of running over new uncharted routes at speeds
and heights never attained before, would be risky enterprise. With an ancient craft, with a
heavy nonelite cargo of baggage and passengers (some whom try to interfere with the
controls), the proposal is extremely rash. For the chances that the craft will breakdown and
perhaps crash, with serious consequences to passengers and for the baggage, are greatly
elevated over the risks of proceeding as usual much more slowly. With the costs of crashing
so severe, rational operators and sensible pilots would not take them.21
Unfortunately the analogy is not at all far-fetched, but resembles what is in store for
spaceship Earth, already under significant stress with its excessive human passenger load
and their heavy ecological practices. Not only is the future itself pretty new territory, but it is
a future at terrestrial temperatures, important processes will proceed faster than ever before,
in particular all chemical processes. Simply to take the craft up there, as do-nothing and
adaptation approaches would have is to emulate the risks and hubris of Daedelus; such
approaches are aptly rarely Daedelian
4. The Sting in the Cosmic Tail: the mini-Furphy theorem and the likely
demise of homo sapiens, spp. economicus..
The trouble with the initial formulation of Murphy's law:
if anything can go wrong, it will,
From logical theories of probability such as Carnap's non-zero probabilities are rather easily
reached (perhaps too easily, with the converse feature that natural laws never obtain high
probabilities. The difficulty can be characteristed, to some extent, by restruction to physical
models).
The analogy is an old one, which we exploited before in the nuclear case; for the “bus analogy”,
see Routley and Routley. The analogy admits of much graphic variation. Instead of running the
craft at excess speed, an alternative or additional image is that of destroying the controls of the
craft. Lovelock deploys this opposite image (88 p.63), which corresponds to the demolition of
Gaians control systems.
20
was that it was insufficiently qualified, much too absolutist, and apparently self-refuting..22
Certain crucial qualifications are required:• Replacement of the certain (certainlistic) conclusion by a somewhat weaker probabilistic
one: namely, it probably will.
• Correlative to weakening the conclusion, strengthening the premiss, by rendering it more
specific; namely, in place of ‘anything’ or ‘something’ put ‘some thing ... given a chancy
situation’.
The modified formulation is accordingly the following Mini-Furphy result:23
if some thing can genuinely go wrong, given a relatively chancy situation,
it probably will.
Here ‘chancy’ means more or less what it means according to the dictionaries: doubtful,
decidedly risky, or as we shall construe it, having a comparatively low probability vis-a-vis
its alternatives. The precise extent of relative chanciness will be explained as we go.
To prove this proposition, let us first recast it in appropriate symbolic form. Let D be
some arbitrary bad situation, a suitable disaster. Let the possibility of D's happening something's going wrong - be represented by a non-zero probability, and genuineness by
non-negligible probability. It can be assumed that that probability, P(D), is small, otherwise
the requisite conclusion would follow in any case. Let C represent the features that render
the situation chancy. Then what we aim to show is that where P(D) is small positive, P(D <
C) is probable.
The proof applies a special case of Bayes' theorem, which take the following form
where there are n alternative hypotheses hi,...,hn including h:
Pv(h) x P(i < h)
P(h < i)
X P(hr) X P(i < hr)
r = 1
Here h is the hypothesis, which in our application is D, i is the additional information (or, is
in Carnap, a new observation), which in our case is C.24 P(h < i) is the probability of h
22
23
24
For this and other formulations of Murphy's law, and many loosely associated humorous maxims
with grains of truth encapsulated, see Block. As to the history of the “law”, which originated
with J.M. Chase, editor of Aviation Mechanics, see the Encyclopaedia Americana', Chase's initial
formulation in a 1955 issue read ‘If an aircraft part can be installed in correctly, someone will
install it the way”.
This little theorem was originally more accurately entitled the Murphy-Leslie theorem. It is an
adaptation, suggested by Leslie's work, of Murphy's Law. This section is overwhelmingly
indebted to Leslie; for Leslie's debts, and so the transitive debts of this section, see Leslie
himself, who deserves to be read in defence his legitimate doomsday apprehensions. The next not
indicates the limited extent to which Leslie's arguments are endorsed.
The formulation is a special case of that proved in Carnap, p.331; namely that (absolute) case
where the evidence e is elided, or e set = 1. A similar result follows, subject to slightly more
rigorous conditions, in relevant probability theory; see Routley 79 p.954.
21
given i, or of h on condition i (the backward arrow notation, <, symbolises the condition
involved and shows its direction). For simplicity we shall suppose that all the alternatives to
D are concentrated (as far as symbolic exposure goes) in one, namely D*. Then the form we
seek to apply is simply:
p(D < C)
__________ P(D) x P(C < D)__________
P(D) x P(C < D) + P(D*) x P(C < D*)'
=
The arithmetic details needed can be tabulated in a revealing form as follows:
Cases
D
D*
Initial (or prior) probability
d
1-d
m, say Vd
m/l, say 1/dl
of outcome
relative chance that C
As it is the relative chance of C that matters, we can rescale to set m = 1/d. To make C
relatively chancy, I has some modest size; specifically let I exceed 1-d/d.
Then the probability to be estimated, P(D < C), is
d x 1/d
d x 1/d + (l-d)/dl
where
k
=
•
1
1+k
_
“
That is»
and P(D < C) | y when k < 1, i.e. when I [
p(D
<
C) =
where
k
=
1,
.
Thud D is probable, at least in being more probable than not, given C, when I is of at least
modest size, i.e. given C is relatively chancy. In a merely apparently more general form of
the estimation, where we do not align m to d,
In effect we shall look at the form
P(h < i) =
--------------- < h)------------------------------P(h) X P(i < h) + XP(hr) X P(i < hr)’
n
with the sum excluding the product for h.
Though demonstrable given satisfiable exclusion and exhaustion conditions, Bayes' theorem is
not lacking critics, in part because of the surprises this bit of logic can deliver. Carnap meets the
objection that Bayes' theorem has sometimes ‘been applied to cases where it led to strange or
even absurd results’ thus: ‘This was mostly due to an uncritical use of the principle of
indifference :... [The] theorem is provable ... on the basis of those weak assumptions which
practically all theories of probability seem to have in common’ (p.331, sub 1 elided). Of course
the present applications could (just) be objected to on the grounds that the logical conditions for
the theorem to apply are not fully satisfied.
P(D [ C)
22
d x m
d x m + (1-d) x m/l
1
1 + k’
1
as before. That is m drops out, only the relative chanciness really matters. The little Furphy
theorem follows as before.
Now to put some relevant flesh on these abstract statements and figures. Let D be
some future disaster such as the catastrophic decline, for instance, through summer or winter
phenomena of the human species, from which the enormous present population never
recovers. At worst (from a chauvinistic angle) the population, like many catastrophically
effected by human activities, goes extinct. Suppose, for a bifurcating outcome, there is a
catastrophe stage, before halfway through next century, 2050. If humans do not get their act
together before then, they go into catastrophic decline, as already indicated. If however they
do get their ecopolitical act together then humans, while they hardly live happily ever after
(poverty, inequality, domination, and other evils not being removed), they continue to persist
or even grow in numbers, perhaps fanning out through the solar system ( in the way
envisaged by too many physicists). Suppose further we are optimists, imagining that the
prior probability of D ecodisaster and human decline, is small, say 1%. That is d = .01, and
the initial probability of D*, human “success”, is .99. The figures are pretty notional.
Supreme optimists would want to set d much smaller, pessimists rather at a higher
probability.
Application Table 1.
Cases
D human decline
D* human success
Initial probabilities
1%, i.e. .01
99%, i.e. .99
Relative chanciness,
VlOO, i.e. .01
1/100 x l/l
ofC
Then the probability of human decline given
.01 x ,01
P(D < C)
.01 x .01 + .99 x .01/1
1
!/2
, when I > 99.
23
It remains to fill out C, thereby showing that I is likely much much larger, and
correspondingly human decline so much the more probable in the light of additional
information, i.e. a posteriori probable in the usual jargon.
There are several high risk factors, acting in a certain concert, factors emphasized more
than a decade ago in world systems modellings (such as, most famously that, of the Club of
Rome) Malthusian factors such as human population, economic product, pollution, energy
consumption,.... It is appropriate for estimate posterier probability relative to anyone of
these, any of which can serve as C, in order to expose the riskiness of present gross human
practices. In brief, because there are several high risk factors, so there are several
appropriate relative or reference classes. Thus the posterier probability is assessed relative to
such matters as our being alive, humans being thus and so (Leslie's reference class), this
being present energy use, present wast output, present forest destruction and so forth.25
The anthropic argument considers the environmentally invidious situation of present
humans on the Earth. The argument can be carried through either in terms of sheer
population, gross numbers, or in terms of human resource grabbing, as estimated for
instance through energy consumption.
Let us consider the prospects given additional information as to the present phase of
gross human population. C will be some such proposition as: the proportional
preponderance of humans who have ever lived alive now, or to personalize it: the chance that
you or your family, is alive now.
Chart: Our present population predictment on the two scenerios.
Demise scenerio
“Success” scenerio -
representative
zjs
human numbers
human numbers
On of the weaknesses in the argument may appear to be its dependence on an appropriate choice
of relative class. For, the relative probabilities can fall away if different reference classes, not
exhibiting such growth patterns are taken, e.g. present wattle distribution, birds being thus and
so. On the other hand, probabilities can be elevated even more by selection of more unusual
reference classes cuh as our being scientists, or being computer programmers, etc..
24
Humans have got themselves - to some extent put themselves, though much may be the
result of muddling through - into an extremely dubious, environmentally insidious and
unsustainable position, on a range of critical parameters. Their numbers are excessive, their
high energy use is excessive, their waste and their pollution are both excessive - and all
chose and other excesses are at the steep end of upward exponential curves.
Several relevant graphs are distressingly exponential, with the present in the near
vertical growth phase:
graphs
Many other similarly shaped graphs26 could be added, for instance for growth of
pollution, of waste products, of weapons (in terms of tonnes of explosive power), of other
greenhouse gases such as methane, and so on. The display typifies the accelerating human
roller coaster.
Those curves are tightly interconnected, in criss-crossing fashion. For example, the
productivity of contemporary agriculture which enables the feeding of hugh urbanised human
populations depends on a very high energy use (in term of energy efficiency, contemporary
high-tech agriculture falls below that of much traditional agriculture). The maintenance of
high populations with supplies of cheap food depends in turn on fossil fuel agriculture.
Because of the intertwining of these phenomena, there is no easy way of getting off the
accelerating roller-coaster.
26
All the graphs exhibited are drawn from Boyden.
25
Nor, as observed, is there much effort devoted to slowing the coaster. For politicians
it would be politically risky and inexpedient to try (for them the rhetoric about an ecologically
sustainable future must remain just that, more rhetoric). For many other power holders and
brokers such ideas are ideologically excluded: growth remains the gospel. So a precarious
position becomes ever more precarious. Humans are in a decidedly chancy position, because
of their population situation and other Malthusian factors; they are becoming very disasterprone.
If humans want an acceptable future for themselves - they have virtually ruled out an
acceptable future for many other creatures, through their predominantly selfish thoughtless
greedy practices - then they will probably have to mend their ways, very considerably and
very soon. But, given the nature of the beast, that itself seems improbable.
Humans, if they seek a more assured future, should make a concerted effort to put
themselves into a less precarious position. That could be achieved by proceeding to reduce
relative risks. These relative risks, sharply reducing prospects for a reliable future, fall into
two classes:• manufactured risk factors, including weaponry such as mega-nuclear devices and elements
of biochemical warfard, and experimental equipment such as very high energy particle
accelerators (which could perhaps tunnel under a metastable state or induce a min-Big-Bang;
see Leslie).
• Accumulated risk factors, such as the hugh relative size of human population, energy
consumption, greenhouse gas production, etc..27
Despite the ideological obstacles, enormous political, religious and economic obstacles
blocking the way of requisite change, major efforts should be put into reducing both these
types of risks. Philosophers could have a significant role in breaking down the ideological
barriers and in clarifying and developing the arguments involved.
5. What ought to be done about Greenhouse?
The general result already reached, that humans collectively should reduce their risk
taking, and in particular reduce their gross numbers, extends to rational Greenhouse decision
and action theory. But that large and difficult challenge is not all that there is to try, that
should rationally be attempted.
While some increase in mean global temperatures, and all that implies, can no longer be
averted, the potentially most damaging effects can be: namely, by curtailing human-induced
27
As before, there are various different reasons why these induce risk, neo-Malthusian and
probabilistic in particular.
26
output of Greenhouse gases. Moreover, there is an approximate upper bound upon
temperature of importance, which can serve to supply a significant limit as output. That
bound - which reduces risk taking by confining encountered situations to those where there
is some past experiential basis - is given by estimated temperatures during Altithermal and
Eemian eras. Those temperatures are estimated to have been between about 1/2 a degree and
1 degree Centigrade above contemporary (pre-1980) temperatures; so the upper bound is
about 1°C.
Not only will a continuation of current emission trends take global temperatures clean
through and way beyond that bound, so also will an alternative set-up where emission rates
are fixed more or less at current rates. The only apparent way to remain rationally within an
experiential domain is to curtail sharply trace gas emissions beginning easily in the 1990s.
That means shifting from the dominant growth paradigm; it means expensive re- and deindustrialisation. It is unlikely.
Final corollary: Humans collectively are not (particularly) rational. But we had already
guessed as much from the latest...... in the long history of human wars.
References
H.W. Bernard, The Greenhouse Effect, Ballinger, Cambridge Mass., 1980.
A. Block, Murphy's Law. Book Two, Magnum, Methuen, ...
S. Boyden, Western Civilization in Biological Perspective, Clarendon, Oxford, 1987.
L.R. Brown and others, State of the World 1989, Norton/Worldwatch, New York, 1989;
referred to as Worldwatch.
R. Carnap, Logical Foundations of Probability, Second edition, University of Chicago
Press, 1962.
R.M. Cyert and M.H. DeGroot, Bayesian Analysis and Uncertainty in Economic Theory,
Rowman & Littfield, New Jersey, 1987.
‘Developing policies for responding to climatic change’, Report of the Beijer Institute,
February 1988.
Keeton,
J. Leslie, ‘Risking and World's End’, Bulletin of the Curiadian Nuclear Society 10(3)
(1989) 1-6; all references to Leslie are to this article unless otherwise indicated.
J. Leslie, ‘Is the end of the world nigh?’, The Philosophical Quarterly, to appear; referred to
as PQ.
J.E. Lovelock, Gaia. A new look at life on Earth, Oxford University Press, 1979.
J. Lovelock, ‘Are we destabilising world climate?’, The Ecologist 15(1985) 52-55.
27
J.Lovelock, ‘Man and Gaia’, The Earth Report Monitoring the Battle for Our Environment,
(ed. E. Goldsmith and N. Hilgard) Mitchell Benzley, London, 1988, 51-64.
R. and V. Routley, ‘Nuclear energy and obligations to the future’, Inquirey 21(1978) 133R. Routley, ‘Ultralogic as universal?’ reprinted as an Appendix in Exploring Meinong's
Jungle, RSSS, Australian National University, 1979.
S. Schneider ‘Not to decide is to decide’, in Greenhouse 1988: Planning for Climate Change
(ed. T. Dendy), Department of Environment and Planning, Adelaide, 1989, 5-10.
R.P. Turco and others, ‘Nuclear winter: Global consequences of multiple nuclear
explosions’, Science 222 (1983) 1283-1292.
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Box 14: Green Projects in Progress
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https://www.antipodean-antinuclearism.org/files/original/25d2a53b15afcd5de40afc43ffff2826.pdf
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---'--A-—
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exrif(paring- mm :
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2073
WAR AND PEACE IV:
TAO AND DEEP-GREEN flAClF/Stf
Taoism and deep-green environmental theory, although closely aligned on very many
issues, diverge over war. For Taoism, by contrast for instance with Buddhism, is not a pacific
doctrine, but is committed to skilful defensive militarism. While it does not espouse a fortress
mentality, Taoism certainly condones limited defensive military operations for specific
purposes, a sort of guerilla warfare. By contrast, deep-green theory, while acknowledging the
role of organised social defence, stands opposed to professional militarism, and thereby to
military defence, and is committed to a principled pacifism. Conveniently a route through
Taoism, philosophically fascinating in its own right, will lead us to problems of pacifism and
towards deep-green theory.
1. Features of a Taoist critique of war and militarism.
War did not receive a favourable press in ancient Chinese philosophy. Generally
aggression and war were to be avoided. Even Confucius imposed very demanding conditions:
for example, ‘when good men have instructed the people [in morals, agriculture, military
tactics] for seven years, they may be allowed to bear arms,’ ‘If a ruler ... does not set himself
right, even his commands will not be obeyed’ (SB p.41, italics added). Mo Tzu went much
further than Confucius, roundly condemning war - on utilitarian grounds, that war yields no
net benefit at any level (SB p.227). What is more, he backed his heavy condemnation
practically (unlike some conspicuous contemporary theoretical utilitarians); ‘he did not hesitate
to walk for ten days and ten nights in an effort to dissuade a ruler from making war’ (SB
p.212). But none, it is said, went as far, in a detailed and sophisticated criticism of war, as Lao
Tzu; ‘none has condemned war more strongly than Lao Tzu’. ‘[T]he opposition of Taoism to
the use of force is well-known, and the most bitter attack on militarism if found in the Lao Tzu'
(Chan, p.154, p.17.)
But, after that splendid build-up, the text is slightly disappointing. Lao Tzu does not
assert outright that war is an abomination, or even roundly condemn it. His critique of war,
militarism, and military technology, is subtle and oblique, and, on the surface, far distanced
from pacifism. For he does not recommend an end to war - in that genuine Taoists, those who
possess Tao, will never participate in them - but expects wars to continue as unavoidable evils.
Worse, he even goes so far as to outline proper attitudes to war and conduct in war, and indeed
to suggest military techniques and strategies, some of which look decidedly devious. Among
the classical works of Taoism, we focus on the Lao Tzu because, by contrast with other works,
a remarkable component of that book is devoted to war and militarism.
The apparent deviousness of the tactics Lao Tzu allocates serves to highlight what has
been seen as ‘the most troublesome element’ in his philosophy (Chan p.17) - not so much
however because they concern military operations, but because they are taken to apply much
�2
dispensation? Why should what is not tolerated more generally be exonerated there? But given
that Taoism has here the virtue of consistency (i.e. uniformity on principles) and of
universalizability, that simply leaves more explaining to be done.
• Puzzles for Taoism, and wars as unavoidable evils
There are two puzzles here in Taoism rather than one. There is the military-practices
paradox, and, varying and generalising on that, there are life-practices paradoxes. The special
paradox is generated by the following incompatible elements: on the one side, ‘the most bitter
attack on militarism’, the well-known opposition of Taoism to the use of force (p. 17) and to the
possession and use of smart military weapons and technology - implying that war is far from
all right - and on the other, advocacy of certain (devious) military tactics, outlines of (deceitful)
conduct in war, and so on - implying that war is all right after all. A straightforward
generalisation of this paradox would look at other morally-sensitive parts of life, where some
practice was strongly condemned yet engaged in (for many examples, see the dilemmas
assembled in MD). But the variation of concern to Chan and the neo-Confucians concerns the
conjunction of upright with devious practices in life, in particular in the life of the sage. For a
Taoist sage is presumed to lead an upright straightforward life, yet appears to engage in devious
and even deceitful practices incompatible with such a life-style. Call this the Taoist-lifestyle
paradox.
Evidently a good deal of explaining is required, as to how Taoism can coherently take the
positions it appears to presume, both on war and peace, and on life more generally. A desirable
preliminary would seem to be a little investigation of what position A taken, especially on war
and militarism. One key pasage runs:
Fine weapons are instruments of evil
They are hated by creatures
Therefore those who possess the Tao turn away from them....
Weapons are instruments of evil, not the instruments of a good ruler.
When he uses them unavoidably, he regards calm restraint as the best
principle
Even when he is victorious, he does not regard it as praiseworthy,
For to praise victory is to delight in the slaughter of men.
He who delights in the slaughter of men will not succeed in the empire. ...
For a victory, let us observe the occasion with funeral-ceremonies
(LT p.154).
Wars, which involve the use of weapons, instruments of evil, are accordingly themselves evil.
They are also evil because they involve the slaughter of men. But they are also sometimes
unavoidable (also p. 152). Therefore such wars are unavoidable evils. Such discourse,
obtained by almost immediate inference from the passage, is within the standard orbit of
dilemma talk. But Taoism lacks, through deliberately eschewing deontic talk, the discourse
which enables direct expression of such dilemmas, or even direct condemnation of wars or of
clever weapons. Instead the points are made by circumlocution, what the possesser of Tao
does, how the good ruler conducts himself, or by analogy, of victory in war with death.
�3
Unavoidable evils are the very stuff of deontic dilemmas (though many theories,
underpinned by shonky logic, lack the resources for representing this stuff properly). Where
something is unavoidably evil, it is both bad, because evil, and also not bad, doing it is
excusable, because it is unavoidable. So, given such an argument (which has its weaknesses),
an unavoidable evil is a genuinely dilemmatic object with inconsistent features. Certain wars
have looked, since ancient times, like such dilemmatic objects.
Revealingly, Chan tries to explain that ‘most troublesome element’ in Taoism, the
military-practice paradox, through the following exercise in lateral thinking:
It can ... be argued that Lao Tzu uses warfare to illustrate his principles of
taking no action and weakness because warfare is among the most dynamic
and critical of human experiences, just as the Indian classic, the Bhagavadgita
chooses fighting as the theme on which to discuss the terrible dilemma
whether one should fulfil his duty, as in the case of a soldier, and kill, or
should fail in his duty and refrain from killing (p. 17).
‘Just as’? The Indian classic prevents a classic moral dilemma, a dilemma represented in
contemporary philosophy (following its rediscovery by Sartre), where there are incompatible
duties: the duty to kill, because of one's role as a soldier, and the duty not to kill, because of
one's human condition, and the supervenient dilemma of failing in and fulfilling one's duties.
These dilemmas for an individual (male, as it then was) are replicated in dilemmas regarding
war for group institutions: at bottom, the obligation to engage in war (for one set of compelling
reasons) as contraposed with the obligation not to engage in war (for another, perhaps
overlapping, set of reasons).
A theory of moral dilemmas (as worked out for example in MD) is crucial for an adequate
treatment of major issues in war and peace, especially (as will become evident) for a viable
strong pacifism. But Taoism, eschewing deontic discourse, lacks the apparatus to state or
develop moral dilemmas. Hence it is logically excluded from giving a full or adequate account
of what is going on conceptually. One of the philosophically fascinating feature of Taoism is
the fashion in which it manages to avoid deontic discourse, and to substitute for direct deontic
discourse or improvise circumlocutions when deontic discourse would otherwise appear
inevitable (cf. UT for examples). But there are costs. One is inability to display the mechanism
of deontic dilemmas, or to show what reasons and argument lie behind Taoist prounouncements
and conclusions (the shortage of Taoism on argument is another philosophically conspicious
feature, also observed in UT). As conceptual apparatus for analysizing moral dilemmas is
missing, most of the machinery involved has to be passed over. Only the outcomes, as Taoism
sees them, are presented, as if from a black box. Taoism blacks out the story on deontic
dilemmas that deep-green theory can tell, as the following diagram tries to show:
Diagrams . Charting the processing of deontic dilemmas that are "resolved”.
�4
Deep-green chart:
dilemma
input
Arguments to
incompatible
prescriptions
->
Processing of dilemma,
directive
situational procedures
output
Corresponding Taoist chart:
Black
directive
Box
output
input
It is evident that Taoism can be extended', information can be put into the Black Box
rendering it less opaque. That extension can be made so as to conform to deep-green theory,
i.e. so that the extended Taoist chart, a neo-Daoist chart, looks like the deep-green one. That is
indeed essentially how neo-Daoism get characterised, in terms of conformity of the extension to
deep ecological theory (see UT).
We are now placed to explain how to dissolve, or at least neutralize, the paradoxes
deriving from repudiation of militarism, an awkwardly qualified repudiation in the case of
Taoism. In a significant sense there is no resolving of genuine deontic dilemmas. The
principles delineating the fix may stand, incompatible, signalling the persisting suboptimality
(or better, sublimenality) of the dilemmatic situation. Where there is a dilemma, involved
parties should try to do well enough in the sublimenal circumstances (for a much fuller account,
see MD). Thus where there is a war, itself a non-Taoist process, engaged or caught up Taoists
will not abandon Taoism. Taoist methods will be applied, Taoist strategies pursued.
So much for theoretical representation and (non-)resolution of life-practices and other
dilemmas, details of which are readily elaborated in deep-green extensions of Taoism. A prior
substantive issue is whether dilemmas always are generated: not whether wars are evil
(typically they are, an issue we shall come to), but whether wars are unavoidable. Analysis of
wars does not bear that familiar claim out decisively. Many wars could have been avoided,
through conciliation, negotiation, restraint, etc., and no worse results apparently obtained,
through sanctions, exchange, trade, etc. Through a typology of wars (coming up) that
conjecture can be given some substance. Consider, for instance, what would be walk-overs.
Then there is little point in making a military response. So war can be avoided. Certainly an
occupation, to be met in a different way, may still occur. And so on, perhaps, for various other
types of war. But, more generally, try this:Every war involves an aggressor, who makes an aggressive move. Such an aggressor
could always avoid that move, taking a different (or a do-nothing) course of action. Therefore,
�5
every war can be avoided. No war is entirely unavoidable.
Setting aside determinism (which renders all actual wars along with all other events
unavoidable), it could be argued that a war sometimes simply boils up, without an aggressor,
an intensification of a conflagatory situation. There are grounds for scepticism regarding such
examples; for such intensification can only occur if provocative military moves are made, for
instance troops are stationed in provocative or risky positions.
The presumption that certain wars are unavoidable typically derives from a one-sided
perspective on war, a defender's perspective. A defender has no option, so it is routinely
averred, but to respond to a determined aggressor. Even if that should be so sometimes, when
there is no running away or going underground, it does not establish that such a war is
unavoidable; for it neglects the role of the aggressor. By a smarter formulation, relevant
features of unavoidability can be captured. Although wars may not be unavoidable, defensive
action in wars that have been initiated may be unavoidable. At least such action may be
unavoidable if unacceptably high costs (death, enslavement, etc.) are not to be avoided.
Thereupon another highly relevant feature emerges: the linkage of avoidability to costs. For
whether an action is unavoidable then depends upon what costs a party is prepared to incur
before and when insisting on action: but this appears entirely unacceptable. How can what is
“unavoidable” cease to be so when some further costs are absorbed? However with basics like
survival, a certain liberty, and so on, we do reach such bounds. An important type of
unavoidability. We also reach scenarios, unavailable to Lao Tzu but kindly brought within
range by modem technology, which may appear to justify aggressive strikes.
State Z, while not an aggressor, is carrying out practices which will impose unacceptably
high costs upon peoples of other states and implacably refuses to desist. It could, for example,
be poisoning air or water flowing to other states. But ,to make the case vivid, let us suppose
that state Z is constructing, for reasons Zeders find convincing (they are committed to a faith
which depicts all humans as incorrigible sinners and unworthy of life), an effective doomsday
machine. Would an (aggressive) preemptory strike designed to disable or destroy the machine
be unavoidable?1 In a sense, No; in another Yes. For different modalities can operate.
Physically outsiders need to do nothing, but watch Zeders go about their zealous work. But
deontically they are under heavy moral pressure, because of the costs of standing by idly: if the
human race is worth anything very substantial, then they are obliged to act, action is deontically
unavoidable. Here is a situation where a proposed reduction of deontic logic proves
illuminating. Obligation is explicated through not implying, or necessitating, the sanction, i.e.
1
Whether it would be justifiable, or just, are separate issues. But it is evident enought that
such scenarios further damage the obsolescent idea of just war. For, according to received
doctrine, a just war is defensive. (How such a war can be fought at all is another matter;
coherence requires relativization to ‘just war for party d’.)
�6
excessive ethical costs such as extermination. Let us explain deontic unavoidability
analogously: an action is so unavoidable if not undertaking it would result in excessive ethical
costs. Then if it can be established that there is no other way than a military strike, an act of
war, to ensure that the Zeders desist (and certainly we can envisage scenarios like that), then
that is deontically unavoidable. It is also dilemmatic for those committed to, or inclined
towards pacifism; and it is, for them at least, but paradoxically justifiable, as the negation is
also justifiable, on pacific grounds.
Scenarios like that sketched, that appear to render certain wars deontically unavoidable
require but little or no elaboration to render them evil. Evil indeed is such a standard feature of
standard wars that at least its great presence call for little supporting evidence. But it has taken
to vast stretch of human history to reach this general point of recognition.
The manifold evils of war Lao Tzu very early recognised and emphasized:
Wherever armies are stationed, briars and thorns grow.
Great wars are always followed by famines (p.152).
And nowadays followed by great tides of refugees. This passage includes not only recognition
of the widely-observed socio-environmental consequences of war, but, more striking, very
early recognition of the severe environmental impact of military forces. That critique is not
however developed in Taoism.2 Only recently has it been pushed substantially further. And
only recently could a new, most significant twist occur, the merging of resource security, long a
military objective, with environmental security.
The appalling idea has recently been floated that the military, in need of new work and
roles with the apparent warming of West-East relations and cooling of the Cold War, should
exchange usual military idleness for meddling in environmental matters: regulation and policing
of environmental resources, ensurance of environmental security of powerful states, and
similar. This is a bit like reassigning those imprisoned for child abuse to managing
kindergartens; for consider the impressive military record of environmental vandalism. What
the military is alleged to offer is a structure appropriate and available for handling such matters.
But, to the contrary, it is precisely the sort of hierarchical, authoritarian expensive structure that
should be wound down and up as soon as the opportunity appears, as (briefly) now, rather than
being retained and shockingly reoriented (as a state-serving “Greenwar”).
2.
On the divergence of deep-green from Taoism.
Having arrived, by better or worse arguments, at the conclusion that wars, though
2
But a bridge to deep-green theory can be made through neo-Daoism, an updating of Taoism in
confirmity with deep ecology (which however is somewhat thin and threadbare on war; for
what there is so far, see Naess p. 160). On neo-Daoism, sec UT.
�7
generally evil, may be sometimes unavoidable, it is evidently important to say something about
how they - those of the theoretical residue - are to be conducted. By appropriate conduct the
damage they do may be reduced; also the conduct should be appropriate to the funereal nature
of wars (to exceed Taoist resources for stating this sort of point). It is at this stage that deep
green theory begins to diverge from Taoism.
In further explaining the Taoist and deep-green critiques of war, and diverting objections
to them, a rough and preliminary typology of wars is important. It is also of passing interest in
its own philosophical right. War, according to English Dictionaries, is a ‘contest carried on by
force of arms, typically between nations or states’. More exactly, war is a game - in the
generous technical sense of game-theory, with players, rules, goals, strategies, and so on carried on in significant part by military means, normally between states or substates. Call the
contestants, (warring) parties. They typically represent of course larger populations. The set
up between parties resembles the arrangements of players in game theory. There are several
analogical extensions of the term war to cover games where one of the parties is an object,
construed as hostile (an enemy of the state), such as Crime, Drugs, Poverty or Nature. These
we can set aside as analogical wars. Of course wars form only a part of military activities.
Military interests and objectives have always stretched significantly further than war, to include
surveillence and security, easily extended to resource security, environmental security and life
style security, and beyond that to political stability and other political matters. Evidently
military ambitions have far over-extended themselves in bagging such democratic concerns.
An anarchist solution to the whole problem of war, which some have seen Taoism as
reaching towards, is immediate: eliminate the source of war, states. Unfortunately it is not
quite that simple (and that's not simple). For wars can also occur between nations, cultures,
races or tribes (which are not such artifices as states, and not always so readily or desirably
abolished), between inhabited regions, and between factions within states (thus civil wars) or,
perhaps by extension, between factions within other social structures (thus, for instance, gang
wars). But undoubtedly eliminating states and aspiring states would abolish most wars and
virtually all the worst wars.
While “nonviolent wars” are excluded by definition, by virtue of ‘force of arms’, token
wars, limited wars, and so on, are not: for instance, wars fought by small armed teams
representing competing sides (cf. medieval and science fiction war games). As wars are
hemmed in by conventions and agreed rules, there is no reason in principle why they should
not be reduced to two person contests, fought under strict rules like boxing or gladiatorial
contests. But in modern times wars have never taken such sensible forms, but have been much
larger affairs, making heavy (though fortunately restricted) use of latest technology. Let us
distinguish such wars as techno-powered, wars. They have, directly or indirectly (for the
technology may be bought or bartered), a heavy research and development support structure
(indeed the bulk of contemporary science is devoted - misdirected - in one way or another to
�8
this effort).
Among wars, an important distinction is that between offensive and defensive wars. An
offensive war is one which ventures off a given party's territory or recognised pad, “invading”
that of another party or parties; correlatively defensive parties, if they have not also invaded.
Force projection typifies offensive practice. Plainly, offensiveness and defensiveness are not
strictly features of a war, but of parties to a war. In a two-party war, while both parties can
easily act offensively, the possibility of both parties proceeding defensively is excluded, unless
they share territory. (Even then issues may arise as to which party, if any, was the aggressor,
which started it, was responsible for starting it, and so on.) Thus mutually defensive wars
between contemporary states are impossible (but would be possible if states shared territory,
e.g. if Eire and Britain shared the territory of Northern Ireland). Tao-accredited wars were
defensive wars, never wars aiming at domination: last-resort wars, in which no pride was taken
(LTp.152).3
The pretence that offensive wars are defensive is widespread, and reflected in the
subterfuge that departments or ministries of war are those of defence, security or whatever. (If
they really were what they purport to be, we should be well on the way to an end to war.)
Offensive practices are rendered defensive ones by shabby redefinitional strategems, such as
redefining ‘defensive’ to include defence of ideals like democracy or liberty, infringed (or
allegedly infringed) on territories abroad, or to include “defence” of a third party or place
(whence every offensive war is “defensive”). In the present war in which part of Arabia is
engulfed (February 1991), one party claims to be defending what really was (or should be) part
of its territory, namely Kuwait, another party to be defending (what Kuwait did not enjoy)
democracy. It is a doubly offensive war presented in this guise as jointly defensive.
Aggressive wars are waged for a variety of reasons, but usually for resources or access to
resources or markets, a matter often disguised by appeal to ideology (thus a war for oil is
represented as a war of liberation). But there are other reasons than narrowly economic ones,
such as religion (as with crusades), power and aggrandisement (as in building an empire), and
so on. Nor are those reasons necessarily far separated; ideologies like Marxism and market
capitalism, for example, exhibit many of the features of religion.
The economic reasons for war appear to have become much more complex with the
3
There is one line in LT that may suggest that attack was sometimes justifiable, namely ‘For
deep love helps one to win in the case of attack’ (p.219). But how can compassion be
appropriate unless this attack is within a defensive setting, a larger context of unavoidability
or such like. A passage shortly below confirms this interpretation:
I dare not take the offensive but I take the defensive:
I dare not advance an inch but I retreat a foot (p.222).
These are advances and attacks within a defensive setting.
�9
advent of an integrated world economy. At the same time many of the independent reasons for
economic wars are now obsolete. For to powerful states accrue the advantages of war without
war. At least most of the former economic advantages of war can be obtained without
expensive wars, through trade, institution of economic dependence, etc. Small medieval wars
were sometimes instituted for the collection of neighbouring riches and booty, a kind of piracy
meeting conditions of war. “Small” contemporary wars can be waged for a remarkable mix of
political-economy ends: to establish a regime favourable to economic penetration and profit
repatriation, to subjugate markets and to remove competition, to boost a sagging weapons
economy by using up old stocks and also testing new equipment, to restart a depressed
economy, and so on. Such wars, along with the economic aims which motivate them, are in
effect heavily castigated by Lao Tzu:
When Tao prevails in the world, galloping horses are turned back to
fertilize (the fields ...).
When Tao does not prevail in the world, war horses thrive in the suburbs.
There is no calamity greater than lavish desires. (LT p. 181).
But it does exceed evidential warrant to claim that Tao is not only sufficient, but necessary, for
cessation of such practices.
The practice of regularly stimulating complex military-saturated economies through war is
reminiscent of older, much ridiculed practices in simpler societies. They now ridicule the
Tsembaga, who proceeded to destroy much of their surplus product by going to war every 5-15
years (cf Rapaport). But they do not similarly ridicule the most powerful nation on the Earth,
the USA, which proceeds to write off a colossal amount of surplus in war every 10-20 years
(the Gulf war liquidated some $1.7 billion per day). Taoists would. For ridicule was a
favoured method, an important rhetorical strategem, and war and its idiocy were favourite
targets.
Some classification of defensive wars is also important, for various reasons: reducing and
abolishing wars, their costs and damage, restructuring societies away from war and military
practices, and, not least, for appreciating Taoism.
A main distinction is between
• conventional defence, maintained by armies of armed soldiers, many of them professionals,
and
• social defence, where there are no such armies or but fragments of them, and defence is
carried out through social networks of a significant part of society.4
It is here that Taoism and deep-green theory part company. Under Taoism, the state will
have a standing army, but a defensive army operating by strange, surprise tactics (p.201). No
4
Details of social defence are presented in Sharp and in Martin.
�10
doubt defensive wars are to remain last resort action. Nonetheless the state will operate in
secrecy, in a way incompatible with decentralised social defence; people will be kept in the dark
about smart weapons of the state; and they too will be surprised, along with presumed enemies
of the state. By contrast, under deep-green theory, there should be no hidden smart weapons
of state; information would flow more freely and not be hidden from the people (who should
retain influence in informed decision making). Under deep-green, standing armies, and more
generally military organisation, will be wound down altogether.
Taoism should have pushed its searching criticism further. For military objectives, easily
acquired by standing armies with time on their hands, are frequently incompatible with Taoism.
For example, Taoism is opposed to domination (LT p.152), whereas military operations
frequently seek or involve domination; and military structure is invariably hierarchical and
authoritarian. Taoism aims for self-regulation, wherever feasible (cf. p.201); so does deep
green theory, which is one reasons why it aims to dispose of standing armies, as an important
preliminary to the withering away of states themselves (military forces being major props of
state control and power, and often maintained primarily for internal state security). Taoism has
no project for ending the era of wars; deep-green theory does. That project involves an
elimination of standing armies, too often poised for fighting or political interference.
A recommended route to end war consists in progressive scaling down: reduction of the
means and manpower. The initial stages are well-known, and include
• elimination of nuclear, biological and chemical weaponry, and
• force reduction. It can hardly be pretended that the Earth's states have managed to proceed
very far on even this complex of stages. The next stage consists in
• contraction to defensive capacities only, and the final stage consists in
• elimination of remaining military defensive forces, and adoption, so far as required, of social
defence practices. The complete route thus involves complete demilitarisation.
Reasons why deep-green aims to proceed the full distance are readily grasped by
considering the environmental shallowness of an otherwise cogent traditional case for the sharp
curtailment of wars and militarism. The traditional Western case against wars has been
primarily along two dimensions: social and moral. Wars are highly disruptive of the social
fabric; wars may be unjust. From these joint features, it was argued that wars should be a
matter of last resort, to be fought to ensure peace. It was argued further that only just wars
should be fought. Just wars were rare objects. But as there was little evidence of the decline
and fall of wars, much effort was expended, more practically and unsuccessfully, upon
endeavouring to improve the calibre of wars, and more theoretically, upon trying to characterize
just war satisfactorily, or rather to bend the notion in an effort to approximate the gory unjust
facts.
Progress was long hindered, furthermore, because there was always a rival positive
perspective on wars, which encouraged the exaltation of wars and military feats. It also
�facilitated the transfer of the favourable image of war to other problem areas, whence the long
and apparently successful war against Nature (but the short-term successes are turning into
long-term problems), the short and unsuccessful war against Poverty, and so on. Behind all
this is the complex idea of war as rejuvenating, even cleansing, like fire; of war as heroic, and
glorious, of war as the supreme testing ground of men. These pictures of war - finally
shattered by the first World War (where even the poets began to tell of horrors and atrocities)
and subsequent technological wars - though no longer in ascendency, have by no means
vanished. The notion of war as rejuvenating a flagging economy persists, along with the
practice of keeping capitalism running smoothly by integrating substantial military components
into the industrial engine.
With the development of highly technological wars — the celebrated development of the
dirty industrial age is substantially military - the traditional negative case has grown in strength.
Wars have become much more damaging, with the potential for much more that is significantly
worse, and the possibility of a just war has correspondingly contracted, virtually to zero. The
opposition to war has likewise grown, but more than correspondingly with the rise of women
in social and political influence. Wars have almost always and everywhere been Men's affairs;
likewise conquest.
Deep-green theory accepts much of the traditional negative case, but would further
strengthen it. For example, the stricture against unjust wars, as out and out immoral, can be
strengthened, through the following syllogism:
All wars should be fully just wars.
Modem wars cannot be fully just wars.
Therefore, there should be no modern wars.
A fully just war is not merely a just war, but a war those just character can be reliably forecast
in advance. A modern war is of course a war that deploys modern technology, at least that
available this century. The evidential basis for the second premiss derives from much
information that collateral damage, damage to innocent bystanders and involved citizens is
always likely and cannot be excluded. Such wars are always liable to violate uncontroversial
requirements for a just war, even if they are purely “conventional” wars, not throwing radiation
or chemical or biological weapons around.
From a contemporary viewpoint the traditional doctrine of a just war, really of a just
defensive v/ax, is seriously out of date. The reasons for this reach wider than the new features
introduced by modem technological wars and the character of modem civilization, with its giant
cities littered with dangerous and vulnerable military targets. They have also to do with the
chauvinism of the justice proposed, which is shallow human justice, not natural or
environmental justice. There is no consideration of justice to other creatures or to the Earth (cf
Naess p.160). Two troubles are really intertwined here: conceptual difficulties with too narrow
a notion of justice, and ideological difficulties with too narrow a vision of what is an object of
�12
value, of what counts.
The deep-green case against war adds to the traditional case a further dimension,
neglected until very recently: the environmental dimension. It has suddenly been seen that wars
are typically environmental atrocities. Earlier, of course, “environments” were simply
backgrounds, backdrops in paintings and plays, to the real drama.
Contemporary technological wars tend to be not merely social tragedies but environmental
ones as well. There is a doctrine of just war, but it is a human chauvinistic affair. There is no
similarly developed doctrine of an ecologically sound war, a deep ecological war. Unless any
such war were literally different from modern wars, that is from contemporary technological
wars, it would overstep permitted bounds. For such wars are characteristically ecological
disasters. Hardened military people, desensitized by a rigorous unethical training, feel even
less compunction about degrading or destroying environments or members of other species
than they do of maiming or killing civilians through “collateral” activity.
Matching the no-just-war syllogism is a no-sound-war syllogism:
All wars should be environmentally sound wars.
Modern wars cannot be environmentally sound.
Therefore, there should be no modern wars.
The argument for the second premiss has of course to be different. It looks to the information
accumulating on what wars do to natural and built environments. The Vietnam and Gulf wars
both inflicted immense damage on natural environments or what was left of them.
The environmental effects of war are not confined to direct and collateral damage. There
are indirect effects also. Thus, for instance, war also supplied the mechanism of, and the
technology for, modern environmental destruction: explosives, bulldozers from tanks, etc. As
well, training for war and engagement in war have much fostered, along with attitudes that
make for social callousness or ruthlessness, those that contribute to environmental insensitivity
and cruelty.
3. Puzzles about Taoist strategy and its critiques of technology and violence
‘It is surprising how much of the Lao Tzu is devoted to military strategy’. Which
strategies? Surprise, above all. But why such strategies? ‘Do they not contradict the Taoists’
strong opposition to the use of force’ (Chan p.222), the implied commitment to quietism?
Briefly, Taoism is not committed to quietism, and while certainly antagonistic to violence, does
not oppose certain uses of force (only really z7/-forcing, as will be explained). Even so, the
emphasis on military strategy remains puzzling.
The strategies, many of them relevant to social defence, include
• seriousness, not ‘making light of the enemy’ (p.222)
• surprise, and nonvisibility (p.201). The defensive strategy involves guerilla tactics:
marching without formation, holding weapons without seeming to have them, confronting
�13
enemies without seeming to meet them (p.222). But even in times of peace, ‘smart weapons of
the state should not be displayed to the people’ (p.164). Such recommendations helped to fuel
the charge of deviousness lodged against Lao Tzu. But look at part of the reason for concealing
smart weapons: ‘The more smart weapons the people have, the more troubled the state will be’
(p.201). Smart weapons are carried in corrupt states, where the rich engage in conspicuous
consumption and the people are suppressed, not where Tao is practiced (LT p.194).
• advance from weakness, flexibility but firmness. Weakness is the principle of life and will
overcome strength (LT p.164, p.233).
• coolness and non-competition (LT p.233, p.164). Like these, most of the general strategies
are standard Taoist practices simply applied to military conduct. For these standard practices
the charge of deviousness looks feeble.
The response applies more generally to other allegedly devious political strategies. For
the strategies are but application of Taoist principles and techniques to warfare, politics and
elsewhere. Nothing excludes application of these techniques to what are accounted, in general,
unnecessary evils (which must sometimes, on other Taoist grounds, be countered). Nor, to
meet the main criticism, need any deceit or deviousness be involved; nor is it. In particular, the
legalist tactic, Tn order to grasp, it is necessary first to give’ (LT p.164), is cited as involving
‘an element of deceit’ ‘undeniably’, and ‘worse’ it is ‘morally questionable’ (Chan p.17). But
in order for me to grasp your hand in a normal handshake, it is necessary first for me to give
my hand. There is no deceit here, nothing morally questionable. All the tactics permit of
benign construals, of a Taoist kind. Consider, for instance, Tn order to contract, it is necessary
first to expand’ (LT p.164). In order to bend a copper pipe to the intended angle, it is better to
bend it first a little further than required. The transformation of water to ice (both favoured
natural items for symbolic purposes: natural processes which may look devious!) neatly
illustrates the Taoist principle (which is however hardly necessary), and shows softness and
weakness turned hardness and strength.
The Taoist critique of militarism is as much a critique of technology as of war. Sharp
weapons, ‘smart weapons’ as we might now say, come in for much critical attention, as we
have already noticed. Only in corrupt and degenerate states are they displayed or flaunted
(p.194, p.164); in deep-green regions smart weapons of state’ would not be retained
unexhibited. The people will not have them for they mean trouble (p.201); for similar reasons
deep-green regions will be free of them. So, it seems, will ideal Taoist regions: ‘Even if there
are arrows and weapons, none will display them’ (LT p.238). Much technology, military and
other, is excluded under the Taoist edict against violence (a further facet of the military-practices
paradox).5
5
Under contemporary technology and technological arrangements, such as the storage of
quantities of oil and nuclear and chemical materials in great cities, wars have assumed new and
�14
The powerful critique of militarism in the Tao-te Ching is coupled with strong opposition
to violence. Some of the linkage is evident enough. Militarism as practised represents an
ultimate form of state (or party) violence. A basic theme is that violent practices will come to an
unnatural end, and accordingly to a non-Taoist end (generalising LT p.176). While force may
occur in spectacular, but satisfactory, natural forms, force is duly distinguished from violence.
To force the growth of life means ill omen.
For the mind to employ the vital force without restraint means violence
(LT p. 197).
One who follows Tao does not apply dominating force, which usually has had results bringing
requital (p.152). Dominating force, like power, is in general castigated, under doctrine of wuwei, no forced actions, no violence. To force natural growth is deviant, destroying harmony.
To stop natural growth is deviant. But there is a significant difference between force and
violence. To intentionally employ destructive force is to do violence. To so force things is
condemned. To remain in harmony with things one does not so force things or practice
violence. There is a non-interference principle at work, which also indicates types of non
interference that are excluded.
However Taoism does not always get the distinction between force and violence quite
right. ‘Vital force without restraint’, intentionally excessive force, is only part of what counts
as violence, which is more generally force which violates, i.e. transgresses, descrecrates,
very destructive dimensions, to the point of being utterly irresponsible.
A different approach to technology, as to war, is now mandatory. These are no longer things
that can in principle be nicely confined and need not touch parties outside the fray. An
important part of ending wars, “winning the war against wars”, is removing the technology of
war, above all from irresponsible state power.
As for which technology to try to jettison and which to try to retain or improve, it is not so
difficult to indicate, provided evaluative terminology is not outlawed. What is wanted is
technology that is good in its place, what should be excluded is technology that is indifferent
or bad or potentially so. Technology to be justified has to do something worthwhile, it has
to address identifiable respectable needs. That is why merely indifferent technology is out;
there is no virtue in technology for technology's sake, as it is a mere means technique. It is
because of the crucial evaluative component in choice of technology that appropriateness,
itself evaluative, comes closer to encapsulating the criterion than other recent efforts. Size,
such as smallness, or intermediateness, are not what matter, though modest and not excessive
technologies are likely to fare better in satisfying appropriateness. In simpler societies, small
technology is of course more appropriate; for that is what is good there. From known criteria
for what is good these other features for locally appropriate technology can be read off:
reliability, esp. in maintenance, functioning well and safely under the expected range of
operating conditions (which may be difficult), ease of repair, capital cheapness and repair
inexpensiveness, environmental benignness, and meeting sound social needs.
�15
profanes, injures, outrages, etc. It is thus a negatively connoted force, an evil force in some
specified intentional respect. There is a tendency for Taoist commentators, not Taoists, to
regard Taoism as condemning all uses, or even occurrences, of force, but this is not so. Rather
intentional ill-forcing is what is castigated, what is deviant. Thus Taoism does not exclude a
range of defensive practices, which make satisfactory use of natural forces, like letting the
machines of war industry stop.
Those who would abolish war and its machinery, substituting for it nonwarlike and
ideally nonviolent methods, technology, and strategies, have been confronted not merely with
much sub-rational abuse but with plenty of criticism and even some paradoxes. Here is a recent
paradox concerning war and nonviolence:
• War must be abolished. One reason is simply economic. We can no longer afford it, and
the opportunity costs are enormous. Along with other extraordinarily wasteful activities, it is an
anachronism.
• Doing so cannot be accomplished without violence, i.e. in effect, given the types of violence
involved, without what amounts to war. According to a fuller version of this premiss, the
process of abolishing a war would only be achieved through a revolution so profound that it
could not succeed without extensive and extreme violence, amounting to (civil) war.
But then war cannot be abolished without war.
Therefore, war which must be abolished cannot be abolished.6
This “paradox” has been compared with the Liar paradox, but the parallel does not persist far.
For this paradox does not involve self-referential features, and is easily broken, as follows. Let
the “last war” be not the last standard war but the revolution abolishing war. Then, given that
the revolution is successful, war will be abolished therewith, i.e. with that last war. There need
be no regress, given again a successful outcome. All the premisses stand intact, but the
conclusion, following the ‘therefore’ is a nonsequitur. However, while the dissolution of the
argument is accordingly logically fine, the route is repugnant. Standard pacifism challenges the
second premiss.
4. Standard and moral pacifism.
6
Brian Medlin, who forcefully propounded this puzzle, set other analogous puzzles alongside it
- designed to reveal deep difficulties in contemporary political, and especially alternative,
thought. Another puzzle, concerning liberty and repression in the context of capitalism,
revolved around the following inconsistent triad:
• capitalism must be removed, but liberty retained.
• capitalism cannot be removed without repression.
• repression is antithetical to liberty.
The puzzle is resolved as with the analogous puzzle of abolishing. Let the “last capitalist”
action before the days of liberty be the repressive but liberating revolution overthrowing
capitalism.
�16
Although Taoism is strongly opposed to war, and much in favour of peace - and
accordingly by prevailing standards a substantially pacific position - it is not (nowhere in the
central texts) committed to pacifism in usual senses, for two different reasons:• It is not, by contrast with pacifism, opposed to all types of warfare, for example smart
defensive wars.
• It eschews deontology in terms of which moral pacifism is commonly stated, for instance
through the watershed thesis
P2.
It is morally wrong to use violence.
By contrast with Taoism, deep environmentalism does not avoid deontic claims, and is
committed in principle to nonviolent technologies and ways and to pacifistic principles.
Moreover, certain forms of deep environmentalism are completely committed to pacifism,
notably European forms. Is deep green?
There is heavy contemporary opposition to pacifism, as there also was to Taoism in the
warring times when Taoism was first being promulgated. Many of the central institutions of
contemporary life are intricated in coercion, violence and war. The most prominent
contemporary institutions, states, are premissed on these elements of damaging force; they
claim entitlement to use them widely, and even claim a certain territorial monopoly on their use.
As a result they are having constantly to engage in them in attempt to maintain that monopoly.
They are certainly the main perpetrators of wars, and of violence. They are indeed inured to
wars, are in constant preparation for wars, yet propound dialectial (and normally dishonest and
cynical) doctrines of peace through war (for a recent example see the appendix).
Unremarkably then, the extensive propagandistic machinery of state has invested heavily
in “justificatory” exercises in favour of controlled use, its own use, of destructive force, and
continues to inveigh against pacifism. Because a routine trick in this sophistical repetoire
consists in conflating pacifism with extreme, naive and inplausible, forms, an inevitable and
important early task commits in unscrambling senses of ‘pacifism’. Semantical skulduggery
can be thwarted in this way.
Pacifism, as explained by English dictionaries, invariably concerns wars and warfare, and
contains two components, negative and, elaborating on that, positive:- The negative component
is, in Amauld's word, anti-War-ism, opposition (in ways to be further specified) to all forms of
warfare (see OED). The positive component supplies alternative ways of settling disputes (what
it is supposed that wars with some semblance of justification involve), such as negotiation,
arbitration,... - and, adding to too narrow dictionary accounts - sanctions, substitutions (e.g.
of sporting events, operatic contests, cooperative ventures),... . In brief standard pacifism is
opposition to all warfare and resolution of potential wars by other nonmilitary means.
Plainly the opposition to warfare, like the sanctions and so on, cannot itself be military
(using soldiers and other devices of war), on pain of some incoherence. But otherwise the
ways of opposition can be many and various: they can certainly be active, as with nonviolent
�17
demonstrations, resistance movements, and so forth, and they may also be devious (e.g.
turning the forces of war upon themselves so they are neutralised). It quickly becomes evident,
then, that some of the dictionaries offer but loaded definitions which, by restricting the negative
components, reduce the initial appeal and plausibility of pacifism. Consider the Concise
English definition of the negative component: ‘the doctrine of non-resistance to hostilities and
of total non-co-operation with any form of warfare’. Thereby excluded are forms of pacifism
which offer active and plausible alternatives to warfare such as social defence. The Concise
English tends to force pacifism into what the Oxford English Dictionary lists as its final item:
‘often, with depreciatory implication, the advocacy of peace at any price’, ‘in any
circumstance’. Pacifism can easily resist being forced into these sorts of circumstances: it has
many resources, as an extensive series of texts on alternatives to war, such as negotiation, non
violent action and social defence, from Taoism to contemporary environmentalism attest.
Academic philosophers have much advanced the semantical strategy of some dictionaries,
of rendering pacifism more difficult from the very outset by narrow and biassed definitions.
They have stretched the term from its restricted setting of warfare, confined to state and
organised gang violence, to cover all forms of violence, from state and interstate to, what is
very different, personal and interpersonal violence. Call the resulting considerably stretched
notion of pacifism, according to which it is morally wrong to use violence, according to which
P2 holds, stretched pacifism.'1 While stretched pacifism certainly includes standard pacifism
(unless the notions of war and warfare are tampered with), the converse is very far from being
the case. A pacifist is in no way committed to stretched pacifism, which is a much more
problematic and difficult position than standard pacifism. There are several, substantially
different reasons for this, which will be picked up seriatim.
Stretched pacifism, also misleadingly called moral pacifism, has looked a very easy
critical target to moral philosophers. Many the effusive philosopher who, upon sighting such a
target, has charged, whooping such rhetoric as “incoherent”, “inconsistent”, “insensitive”,
“fanatical”. However, with improved logical technology now available for accommodating and
treating moral dilemmas, it is no great feat to resist such attacks, in the fashion of previous
investigations (see esp. Al, also MD). A main aim was to demonstrate that stretched pacifism
was not so stupid as it was made out to be or appeared to be to these inured to present dominant
violent ways. So far from being stupid, it is viable. In future gentler times stretched pacifism
could even be realised for whole communities of creatures (as some genuinely Christian sects
envisaged); whence it will finally be seen to be feasible not merely for sages and supermen, and
many ordinary women, but much more extensively.
7
In Al this notion was contrasted with standard pacifism as comprehensive pacifism:
overcomprehensive might have been better.
�18
The method of philosophical accommodation was through moral dilemmas. The sort of
moral dilemma that stretched pacifism can induce derives as follows. On the one side stands
the theme P2, Wv, in convenient symbols, for Wrong V-ing, violencing. Now this implies to
WB, where B presents a case of of violence. On the other side, particular circumstances
develop which lead to W ~B, because ~B would produce in the circumstances considerable
wrong, for instance extensive violence, mass murder, etc. One stock example from the
literature concerns calling off the firing squad about to shoot several captives if the pacifist
shoots one of them (it is elaborated in Al p.13). Interestingly, another stock example from the
literature concerns standard pacifism (it can also be presented in terms of patriotism; for details
of both see MD p.10).
Resolution of intractable moral dilemmas is, where it is required, situational. The agent
decides in the situation, within the fix, what to do. There are many ways in which such
decision making can proceed, less rational, such as those applying chance or involving bad
faith, or more rational, such as those applying consequentialist decision theory (for details see
MD, pp.32-9). A decision theory taking account of all that should be included will not however
be purely consequential. It would also take account of relevant motivation.
This defence and rehabilitation of moral pacifism has been challenged, in particular by
Smith (hereafter JWS). JWS claims the defence offered is a ‘failure because it trivializes
pacifism’ (p. 153 twice). The rehabilitation
trivializes pacifism because it entails that pacifism doesn't substantially differ
from a form of activism which holds that while violence is always wrong
one is sometimes justified on consequentialist grounds for preferring violent
acts, if these acts are lesser evils than any other real alternatives. This is the
commonsense position which most people hold - yet - pacifism after all was
supposed to be radical moral doctrine - (p.153 rearranged).8
Part of the criticism is, then, not so much that pacifism is trivialized - JWS “activism” is
hardly trivial - as that pacifism is popularised, deflated from a radical position to the
commonsense position most people hold (p.154 also). Yet not a shred of evidence is adduced
that JWS activism is such a populist position. Available evidence, for example from peace
movements and oppositional opinion polls, suggests the very opposite: that, for instance, most
people support state-justified conventional wars with the military violence they incur, and
accordingly do not hold that violence is always wrong. From such a commonsense angle,
pacifism with its condemnation of conventional wars and the violence they involve remains a
radical doctrine.
As regards wars and other violence-incurring social authorities, contemporary pacificism
8
JWS now informs me that he has changed his position. Whether the move effects his
criticism, I don't know.
�19
is, as previous explained (e.g. Al p.3), a form of activism. Pacifism does not imply utter
pacifity, but may actively involve social defence, resistance and so on. However a certain level
of misrepresentation enters into the JWS challenge in the details of what forms of activism
pacifism may include. That misrepresentation begins in the second clause concerning what is
said to be sometimes justified. For the situational procedure where dilemmas arise will not
generally be consequential applying a principle of lesser evil. In dilemmatic situations such
principles are suspended, and such a principle is in any case unacceptable to moral pacifists. A
small amount of violence may be less bad in its consequences than verbal offence, but a
principled pacifist will choose the slightly greater evil where other obligations do not exclude it.
A more serious distortion occurs in JWS's effort to force procedures in dilemma
situations into purely consequentialist form. In fact consequential decision theory was
deployed as a model only for how to proceed rationally in a situational setting where deontic
procedures were suspended (see MD p.38). What was said, still misleadingly retrospective
vision reveals, was this: ‘what is done is a very consequentialist thing’ (Al p.13), not ‘one acts
in a consequentialist fashion to do the sufficiently good thing in the circumstances’ (JWS
p.152). Situationally other procedures than those resembling orthodox rational decision
making (modified from maximizing to satisizing objectives) may be adopted (MD p.38).
Further the orthodox consequentialist theory is inadequate because it leaves out, or tries to
reduce to consequences, nonconsequential elements, notably motives. It is not difficult, in
principle (in advance of attempted consequentialization of motives), to design situations where
motives, such as integrity or maintaining faith, enter to yield outcomes upsetting consequential
calculations. More elaborate decision making procedures than those of consequentialism,
sometimes at variance with consequentialism, are thus presupposed.
A further part of JWS's criticism accordingly goes by the board, the alleged appeal ‘to
“second best” consequentialist considerations,... already explicitly condemned’ (p.154). What
was condemned was stock universal consequentialism, ‘that only consequentialist
considerations carry argumentative weight’ (quoted on p. 152), so undercutting other deontic
principles, such as those of pacifism. It was not claimed, what is utterly different, that
consequentialist considerations can nowhere enter into deliberation and decision making. The
conclusion JWS arrives at is therefore substantially astray.
After criticising modern moral philosophy for its reliance upon
consequentialist modes of thought, it is surprising, and inconsistent, to find
... [reliance] upon such modes of thought to escape logical difficulties raised
by moral dilemmas facing ... pacifis[m] (p. 152)
There is no inconsistency. JWS has confused universal with particular. As well he has
wrongly contracted all situational decision making to consequentialist modes.
There is a third part to the criticism, that the defence is too easy; the ‘strategy will allow
too much violence to be (perpetrated and) justified to suit the tastes of any real pacifist’ (p. 153).
This another part of the so-called trivialization, this time however dilution rather than
�20
popularization, weakening the moral stand against violence. This third contention is premissed
on a mistake: that one can ‘justify on consequentialist grounds any number of violent acts,
providing that such acts are lesser evils than other real alternatives facing social agents’ (p.153).
Moral pacifism offers no such licence; allowing such consequentialism to take over was never
part of the position. The slide to such consequentialism is made on the strength of a similarly
erroneous example. The potential victim of an aspiring rapist ‘is supposed to flee or wriggle
free if possible. But it is easy to consequentially justify the use of violence by the woman to
prevent herself from being raped’ (p.153 italics added). In the example so far described there is
no dilemma, and no such easy resort to consequentially ‘justified’ violence.
What allows too much violence is the lesser evil JWS assumes is easily consequentially
justified; for example that the woman is entitled to inflict, and escalate, violence so long as it
remains ‘a lesser evil than the violence of attempted rape’ (p. 153). Since she may thereby
inflict quite unreasonable damage (esp. if she is a Kung Fu expert), the result is inconsistent
with ‘the basic principle of self-defence’ which JWS earlier adduced according to which what is
‘appropriate, in response is only that level of force necessary to defend oneself against the
threat’ (p.150). There is evidence in JWS's work of some enthusiasm for levels of violence
which exceed his ‘basic principle’, his appeal to ‘lesser evil’ generates some instances. The
‘basic principle’, itself fraught with difficulties (cf. the contorted discussion of what weapons
are appropriate in response to what attacks, p. 150), still exceeds what stretched pacifism would
enjoin; for instance, it may not be appropriate to respond with force. But in a technical sense
stretched pacifism is compatible with the ‘basic principle’, since it only imposes the upper
bound on level of force.
As for easiness, moral pacifism is not an easy position to live by, or to justify. Removing
objections to pacifism is one thing; solidifying a positive case for it is quite another, and so far
hardly conclusive (as Al tried to explain, pp 29-31). Stretched pacifism was advanced,
hypothesized to put it more precisely, as a still viable option. It was not presented as a morally
compulsory position, or, for that matter, as one that this defender adhered to or affirmed.
To reiterate, while a cumulative case can be made for stetched pacifism as principled non
violence, that case was not conclusive, and is hard to improve. For, further, some serious
difficulties standing in the way of stretched pacifism were assembled, the most important of
which derives from the extent of violence apparent in transactions within the natural world.
Simply consider the practices of carnivores, essential to their natural way of life. In order to
meet their life needs for sustenance, these creatures do, and are often obliged to, engage
routinely in violent activity. While it can no doubt be argued, as some vegetarians may do, that
the natural order is an immoral order, and that remaining carnivores should be converted to
vegetarianism as rapidly as proves possible (in the way domestic dogs are converted to dog
biscuits), the difficulties with such proposals are immense. The task envisaged is gigantic, and
beyond human capacities - even if it were desirable. For there are millions of species to be
�21
somehow converted to proper vegetarianism. Then there are millions of other species to be
converted to proper and well regulated contraceptive practices, else their numbers will get out of
hand (uncontrollably) with predation removed. Given humans lack of success in limiting their
own excessive numbers, such regulation appears entirely remote. Aside however from the
practical difficulties, is such a fully vegetarian order, with evolution further derailed, a desirable
improvement on the natural order? Is it morally obligatory? It is certainly not obligatory, as
alternative systems of morality in harmony with the prevailing natural order are feasible. Nor is
it desirable, for (to appeal to such alternative value systems) the natural order is more or less in
order as it is. Full vegetarianization would only reduce its value, vastly.
More generally, a defensible ethical framework should not, it would be rightly contended,
be right out of step with the natural order of other creatures, decently depicted. Decent
depiction is important, for some features of the natural order, such as competition, combat and
predation, so far from escaping attention, have been grossly exaggerated and exploited. Thus,
for instance, the ludicrous picture of nature red in truth and claw, so beloved of descendents of
orthodox Victorians and of orthodox economists. However, even under decent depiction, the
“natural order” is often not benign. That appears to be enough to induce a supervenient moral
dilemma for any stretched pacifism which is coupled to a deep ethic (e.g. which does not
separate humans out from the natural order) and which eschews the desperate vegetarian route:
The natural order is not an immoral order
The natural order contains (regular) instances of violence.
Therefore, instances of violence are not immoral in apparent defiance of P2 Moreover, there are too many instances of violence, too regularly
occurring, for them all to be plausibly shunted into the moral dilemma category (and predatory
carnivores face no dilemmas). Raptors that practice violence every week are not immoral
(neither are they clearly moral; the category of morality only significantly extends so far).
The main trouble lies however with P2 (which needs some finer adjustment, as was
alrady indicated in Al). While P2 is alright in context, within a particular, perfectly viable,
ethical framework, designed for the usual human round, the conventional setting for ethical
theories, it stands in need of modification outside that setting. It is time to suggest the sort of
modification envisaged. Evidently P2 was addressed to moral agents. Which agents? Not to
carnivores that supply their own livelihood, nor really to morally degenerate humans, but to
peace-sensitive agents. With that semi-technical form, yet to be characterised, a suitably
P2
MP2. It is morally wrong, for a peace-sensitive agent, to use violence.9
modified
9
results:
The generalization of P2, suggested in Al, to cover also the parallel situation of
environmental vandalism, can be similarly modified. The anti-vandolence principle becomes
MP2°. It is morally wrong, for a peace- and environmentally-sensitive agent, to use
�22
To recover what amounts, in the previous discussive context, to P2, it suffices to add the
proposition that every human agent ought to be peace-sensitive. Much as that proposition has
to recommend it, it appears too ethically advanced for many modern humans; it sets too high a
moral standard to be taken as a serious guide to practice. It seems wise to settle presently for
something less demanding, such as that every advanced moral agent ought to be peace
sensitive. To put essentially the same proposition alternatively:
Stretched pacifism (as modified) is supererogatory. While it is perhaps too late to hope for
much moral progress in humans, it is pleasant to contemplate alternative futures where what is
supererogatory became obligatory, and widely practiced.
Richard Sylvan*
Appendix
I began drafting this essay at the time (January 17, midday Australian time) of the
American attacks upon Iraq. The optly named Prime Minister Hawke of Australia had just
made a statement to the nation-state, announcing (the) war. In this statement there was much
talk of peace. There was even - in what was effectively a declaration of war - reiteration of the
modem quest for ‘a new world order of peace’. Peace through war; so it rings out again and
again, through the centuries. ‘War must be for the sake of peace’ (Aristotle p.220). More than
two thousand years later, we have fought those wars to end all wars. But it is no use, Hawke
solemely pronounced, just talking about peace, and thinking about peace; we must work for
peace, fight for it - through war. Impeccable logic?
President Bush, supreme commander, convinced us with similar logic, speaking too with
many tongues. Of how he ‘preferred to think of peace, not war’. But now ‘only force will
prevail’, as ‘all reasonable efforts to reach a peaceful solution are exhausted’. ‘What must be
done’ must be done, or will be anyway. With God on side with the US offensive (as well as
on the other side), it will go well. As it was said to have, though it achieved comparatively little
that other efforts may not have yielded more satisfactorily, and thought it may now have to
followed with another invasion. Nor have we ever managed to glimpse much of what is now
supposed, when we are no longer engaged, to come ‘out of the horror of war’: a ‘new world
order ... which governs the conflict of nations’; a ‘rule of law’, not war. How the one,
enforcable law, is achieved, unless backed by the the other, is not explained (Medlin's paradox
hits back). Similarly what we now hear from many militarists, as they rush to war, is that
vandolence.
Thank to David Bennett for joint contributions (from UT) and to JWS for opposition (in
JWS)
�23
‘peace is a great good, war a great evil’. But, for the most part, only the rhetoric has shifted;
practice has scarcely changed at all.
REFERENCES
W.-T. Chan, A Source Book on Chinese Philosophy, Princeton University Press, 1963;
referred to as ST.
W.-T. Chan (ed.), The Way of Lao Tzu (Tao-te Ching), Bobbs-Merrill, New York, 1963;
referred to as LT.
B. Martin, Uprooting War, Freedom Press, London, 1984.
A. Naess, Ecology, community and lifestyle, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge UK,
1989.
R.A. Rapaport, Pigs for the Ancestors : ritual in the ecology of a New Guinea People, Yale
University Press, New Haven, 1967.
R. Routley, ‘War and Peace II. On the alleged inconsistency, moral insensitivity and fanaticism
of pacifism’, Discussion papers in environmental philosophy #9, Research School of
Social Science, Australian National University, 1983 (also in. Inquiry ); referred to as AL
R. Routley and V. Plumwood, ‘Moral dilemmas and the logic of deontic notions’, Discussion
papers in environmental philosophy #6, Research School of Social Science, Australian
National University, 1984 (also in Paraconsistent Logic)-, referred to as MD.
R. Routley, ‘War and Peace I. On the ethics of large-scale nuclear war and nuclear-deterrence
and the political fall-out’, Discussion papers in environmental philosophy, #5, Research
School Of Social Science, Australian National University, 1984.
G. Sharp, Social Power and Political Freedom, Porter Sargent, Boston, 1980.
J.W. Smith, The Worms at the Heart of Things , Public Relations Unit, Flinders University,
1989.
R. Sylvan, ‘War and Peace III, Australia's defence philosophy’, Social Philosophy, for Nuclear
Conference, University of Queensland, 1985.
R. Sylvan and D. Bennett, ‘Of Utopias, Tao and Deep Ecology’, Discussion papers in
environmental philosophy #19, Research School of Social Science, Australian National
University, 1990; referred to as UT.
�
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2073
WAR AND PEACE IV:
TAO AND DEEP-GREEN flAClF/Stf
Taoism and deep-green environmental theory, although closely aligned on very many
issues, diverge over war. For Taoism, by contrast for instance with Buddhism, is not a pacific
doctrine, but is committed to skilful defensive militarism. While it does not espouse a fortress
mentality, Taoism certainly condones limited defensive military operations for specific
purposes, a sort of guerilla warfare. By contrast, deep-green theory, while acknowledging the
role of organised social defence, stands opposed to professional militarism, and thereby to
military defence, and is committed to a principled pacifism. Conveniently a route through
Taoism, philosophically fascinating in its own right, will lead us to problems of pacifism and
towards deep-green theory.
1. Features of a Taoist critique of war and militarism.
War did not receive a favourable press in ancient Chinese philosophy. Generally
aggression and war were to be avoided. Even Confucius imposed very demanding conditions:
for example, ‘when good men have instructed the people [in morals, agriculture, military
tactics] for seven years, they may be allowed to bear arms,’ ‘If a ruler ... does not set himself
right, even his commands will not be obeyed’ (SB p.41, italics added). Mo Tzu went much
further than Confucius, roundly condemning war - on utilitarian grounds, that war yields no
net benefit at any level (SB p.227). What is more, he backed his heavy condemnation
practically (unlike some conspicuous contemporary theoretical utilitarians); ‘he did not hesitate
to walk for ten days and ten nights in an effort to dissuade a ruler from making war’ (SB
p.212). But none, it is said, went as far, in a detailed and sophisticated criticism of war, as Lao
Tzu; ‘none has condemned war more strongly than Lao Tzu’. ‘[T]he opposition of Taoism to
the use of force is well-known, and the most bitter attack on militarism if found in the Lao Tzu'
(Chan, p.154, p.17.)
But, after that splendid build-up, the text is slightly disappointing. Lao Tzu does not
assert outright that war is an abomination, or even roundly condemn it. His critique of war,
militarism, and military technology, is subtle and oblique, and, on the surface, far distanced
from pacifism. For he does not recommend an end to war - in that genuine Taoists, those who
possess Tao, will never participate in them - but expects wars to continue as unavoidable evils.
Worse, he even goes so far as to outline proper attitudes to war and conduct in war, and indeed
to suggest military techniques and strategies, some of which look decidedly devious. Among
the classical works of Taoism, we focus on the Lao Tzu because, by contrast with other works,
a remarkable component of that book is devoted to war and militarism.
The apparent deviousness of the tactics Lao Tzu allocates serves to highlight what has
been seen as ‘the most troublesome element’ in his philosophy (Chan p.17) - not so much
however because they concern military operations, but because they are taken to apply much
2
dispensation? Why should what is not tolerated more generally be exonerated there? But given
that Taoism has here the virtue of consistency (i.e. uniformity on principles) and of
universalizability, that simply leaves more explaining to be done.
• Puzzles for Taoism, and wars as unavoidable evils
There are two puzzles here in Taoism rather than one. There is the military-practices
paradox, and, varying and generalising on that, there are life-practices paradoxes. The special
paradox is generated by the following incompatible elements: on the one side, ‘the most bitter
attack on militarism’, the well-known opposition of Taoism to the use of force (p. 17) and to the
possession and use of smart military weapons and technology - implying that war is far from
all right - and on the other, advocacy of certain (devious) military tactics, outlines of (deceitful)
conduct in war, and so on - implying that war is all right after all. A straightforward
generalisation of this paradox would look at other morally-sensitive parts of life, where some
practice was strongly condemned yet engaged in (for many examples, see the dilemmas
assembled in MD). But the variation of concern to Chan and the neo-Confucians concerns the
conjunction of upright with devious practices in life, in particular in the life of the sage. For a
Taoist sage is presumed to lead an upright straightforward life, yet appears to engage in devious
and even deceitful practices incompatible with such a life-style. Call this the Taoist-lifestyle
paradox.
Evidently a good deal of explaining is required, as to how Taoism can coherently take the
positions it appears to presume, both on war and peace, and on life more generally. A desirable
preliminary would seem to be a little investigation of what position A taken, especially on war
and militarism. One key pasage runs:
Fine weapons are instruments of evil
They are hated by creatures
Therefore those who possess the Tao turn away from them....
Weapons are instruments of evil, not the instruments of a good ruler.
When he uses them unavoidably, he regards calm restraint as the best
principle
Even when he is victorious, he does not regard it as praiseworthy,
For to praise victory is to delight in the slaughter of men.
He who delights in the slaughter of men will not succeed in the empire. ...
For a victory, let us observe the occasion with funeral-ceremonies
(LT p.154).
Wars, which involve the use of weapons, instruments of evil, are accordingly themselves evil.
They are also evil because they involve the slaughter of men. But they are also sometimes
unavoidable (also p. 152). Therefore such wars are unavoidable evils. Such discourse,
obtained by almost immediate inference from the passage, is within the standard orbit of
dilemma talk. But Taoism lacks, through deliberately eschewing deontic talk, the discourse
which enables direct expression of such dilemmas, or even direct condemnation of wars or of
clever weapons. Instead the points are made by circumlocution, what the possesser of Tao
does, how the good ruler conducts himself, or by analogy, of victory in war with death.
3
Unavoidable evils are the very stuff of deontic dilemmas (though many theories,
underpinned by shonky logic, lack the resources for representing this stuff properly). Where
something is unavoidably evil, it is both bad, because evil, and also not bad, doing it is
excusable, because it is unavoidable. So, given such an argument (which has its weaknesses),
an unavoidable evil is a genuinely dilemmatic object with inconsistent features. Certain wars
have looked, since ancient times, like such dilemmatic objects.
Revealingly, Chan tries to explain that ‘most troublesome element’ in Taoism, the
military-practice paradox, through the following exercise in lateral thinking:
It can ... be argued that Lao Tzu uses warfare to illustrate his principles of
taking no action and weakness because warfare is among the most dynamic
and critical of human experiences, just as the Indian classic, the Bhagavadgita
chooses fighting as the theme on which to discuss the terrible dilemma
whether one should fulfil his duty, as in the case of a soldier, and kill, or
should fail in his duty and refrain from killing (p. 17).
‘Just as’? The Indian classic prevents a classic moral dilemma, a dilemma represented in
contemporary philosophy (following its rediscovery by Sartre), where there are incompatible
duties: the duty to kill, because of one's role as a soldier, and the duty not to kill, because of
one's human condition, and the supervenient dilemma of failing in and fulfilling one's duties.
These dilemmas for an individual (male, as it then was) are replicated in dilemmas regarding
war for group institutions: at bottom, the obligation to engage in war (for one set of compelling
reasons) as contraposed with the obligation not to engage in war (for another, perhaps
overlapping, set of reasons).
A theory of moral dilemmas (as worked out for example in MD) is crucial for an adequate
treatment of major issues in war and peace, especially (as will become evident) for a viable
strong pacifism. But Taoism, eschewing deontic discourse, lacks the apparatus to state or
develop moral dilemmas. Hence it is logically excluded from giving a full or adequate account
of what is going on conceptually. One of the philosophically fascinating feature of Taoism is
the fashion in which it manages to avoid deontic discourse, and to substitute for direct deontic
discourse or improvise circumlocutions when deontic discourse would otherwise appear
inevitable (cf. UT for examples). But there are costs. One is inability to display the mechanism
of deontic dilemmas, or to show what reasons and argument lie behind Taoist prounouncements
and conclusions (the shortage of Taoism on argument is another philosophically conspicious
feature, also observed in UT). As conceptual apparatus for analysizing moral dilemmas is
missing, most of the machinery involved has to be passed over. Only the outcomes, as Taoism
sees them, are presented, as if from a black box. Taoism blacks out the story on deontic
dilemmas that deep-green theory can tell, as the following diagram tries to show:
Diagrams . Charting the processing of deontic dilemmas that are "resolved”.
4
Deep-green chart:
dilemma
input
Arguments to
incompatible
prescriptions
->
Processing of dilemma,
directive
situational procedures
output
Corresponding Taoist chart:
Black
directive
Box
output
input
It is evident that Taoism can be extended', information can be put into the Black Box
rendering it less opaque. That extension can be made so as to conform to deep-green theory,
i.e. so that the extended Taoist chart, a neo-Daoist chart, looks like the deep-green one. That is
indeed essentially how neo-Daoism get characterised, in terms of conformity of the extension to
deep ecological theory (see UT).
We are now placed to explain how to dissolve, or at least neutralize, the paradoxes
deriving from repudiation of militarism, an awkwardly qualified repudiation in the case of
Taoism. In a significant sense there is no resolving of genuine deontic dilemmas. The
principles delineating the fix may stand, incompatible, signalling the persisting suboptimality
(or better, sublimenality) of the dilemmatic situation. Where there is a dilemma, involved
parties should try to do well enough in the sublimenal circumstances (for a much fuller account,
see MD). Thus where there is a war, itself a non-Taoist process, engaged or caught up Taoists
will not abandon Taoism. Taoist methods will be applied, Taoist strategies pursued.
So much for theoretical representation and (non-)resolution of life-practices and other
dilemmas, details of which are readily elaborated in deep-green extensions of Taoism. A prior
substantive issue is whether dilemmas always are generated: not whether wars are evil
(typically they are, an issue we shall come to), but whether wars are unavoidable. Analysis of
wars does not bear that familiar claim out decisively. Many wars could have been avoided,
through conciliation, negotiation, restraint, etc., and no worse results apparently obtained,
through sanctions, exchange, trade, etc. Through a typology of wars (coming up) that
conjecture can be given some substance. Consider, for instance, what would be walk-overs.
Then there is little point in making a military response. So war can be avoided. Certainly an
occupation, to be met in a different way, may still occur. And so on, perhaps, for various other
types of war. But, more generally, try this:Every war involves an aggressor, who makes an aggressive move. Such an aggressor
could always avoid that move, taking a different (or a do-nothing) course of action. Therefore,
5
every war can be avoided. No war is entirely unavoidable.
Setting aside determinism (which renders all actual wars along with all other events
unavoidable), it could be argued that a war sometimes simply boils up, without an aggressor,
an intensification of a conflagatory situation. There are grounds for scepticism regarding such
examples; for such intensification can only occur if provocative military moves are made, for
instance troops are stationed in provocative or risky positions.
The presumption that certain wars are unavoidable typically derives from a one-sided
perspective on war, a defender's perspective. A defender has no option, so it is routinely
averred, but to respond to a determined aggressor. Even if that should be so sometimes, when
there is no running away or going underground, it does not establish that such a war is
unavoidable; for it neglects the role of the aggressor. By a smarter formulation, relevant
features of unavoidability can be captured. Although wars may not be unavoidable, defensive
action in wars that have been initiated may be unavoidable. At least such action may be
unavoidable if unacceptably high costs (death, enslavement, etc.) are not to be avoided.
Thereupon another highly relevant feature emerges: the linkage of avoidability to costs. For
whether an action is unavoidable then depends upon what costs a party is prepared to incur
before and when insisting on action: but this appears entirely unacceptable. How can what is
“unavoidable” cease to be so when some further costs are absorbed? However with basics like
survival, a certain liberty, and so on, we do reach such bounds. An important type of
unavoidability. We also reach scenarios, unavailable to Lao Tzu but kindly brought within
range by modem technology, which may appear to justify aggressive strikes.
State Z, while not an aggressor, is carrying out practices which will impose unacceptably
high costs upon peoples of other states and implacably refuses to desist. It could, for example,
be poisoning air or water flowing to other states. But ,to make the case vivid, let us suppose
that state Z is constructing, for reasons Zeders find convincing (they are committed to a faith
which depicts all humans as incorrigible sinners and unworthy of life), an effective doomsday
machine. Would an (aggressive) preemptory strike designed to disable or destroy the machine
be unavoidable?1 In a sense, No; in another Yes. For different modalities can operate.
Physically outsiders need to do nothing, but watch Zeders go about their zealous work. But
deontically they are under heavy moral pressure, because of the costs of standing by idly: if the
human race is worth anything very substantial, then they are obliged to act, action is deontically
unavoidable. Here is a situation where a proposed reduction of deontic logic proves
illuminating. Obligation is explicated through not implying, or necessitating, the sanction, i.e.
1
Whether it would be justifiable, or just, are separate issues. But it is evident enought that
such scenarios further damage the obsolescent idea of just war. For, according to received
doctrine, a just war is defensive. (How such a war can be fought at all is another matter;
coherence requires relativization to ‘just war for party d’.)
6
excessive ethical costs such as extermination. Let us explain deontic unavoidability
analogously: an action is so unavoidable if not undertaking it would result in excessive ethical
costs. Then if it can be established that there is no other way than a military strike, an act of
war, to ensure that the Zeders desist (and certainly we can envisage scenarios like that), then
that is deontically unavoidable. It is also dilemmatic for those committed to, or inclined
towards pacifism; and it is, for them at least, but paradoxically justifiable, as the negation is
also justifiable, on pacific grounds.
Scenarios like that sketched, that appear to render certain wars deontically unavoidable
require but little or no elaboration to render them evil. Evil indeed is such a standard feature of
standard wars that at least its great presence call for little supporting evidence. But it has taken
to vast stretch of human history to reach this general point of recognition.
The manifold evils of war Lao Tzu very early recognised and emphasized:
Wherever armies are stationed, briars and thorns grow.
Great wars are always followed by famines (p.152).
And nowadays followed by great tides of refugees. This passage includes not only recognition
of the widely-observed socio-environmental consequences of war, but, more striking, very
early recognition of the severe environmental impact of military forces. That critique is not
however developed in Taoism.2 Only recently has it been pushed substantially further. And
only recently could a new, most significant twist occur, the merging of resource security, long a
military objective, with environmental security.
The appalling idea has recently been floated that the military, in need of new work and
roles with the apparent warming of West-East relations and cooling of the Cold War, should
exchange usual military idleness for meddling in environmental matters: regulation and policing
of environmental resources, ensurance of environmental security of powerful states, and
similar. This is a bit like reassigning those imprisoned for child abuse to managing
kindergartens; for consider the impressive military record of environmental vandalism. What
the military is alleged to offer is a structure appropriate and available for handling such matters.
But, to the contrary, it is precisely the sort of hierarchical, authoritarian expensive structure that
should be wound down and up as soon as the opportunity appears, as (briefly) now, rather than
being retained and shockingly reoriented (as a state-serving “Greenwar”).
2.
On the divergence of deep-green from Taoism.
Having arrived, by better or worse arguments, at the conclusion that wars, though
2
But a bridge to deep-green theory can be made through neo-Daoism, an updating of Taoism in
confirmity with deep ecology (which however is somewhat thin and threadbare on war; for
what there is so far, see Naess p. 160). On neo-Daoism, sec UT.
7
generally evil, may be sometimes unavoidable, it is evidently important to say something about
how they - those of the theoretical residue - are to be conducted. By appropriate conduct the
damage they do may be reduced; also the conduct should be appropriate to the funereal nature
of wars (to exceed Taoist resources for stating this sort of point). It is at this stage that deep
green theory begins to diverge from Taoism.
In further explaining the Taoist and deep-green critiques of war, and diverting objections
to them, a rough and preliminary typology of wars is important. It is also of passing interest in
its own philosophical right. War, according to English Dictionaries, is a ‘contest carried on by
force of arms, typically between nations or states’. More exactly, war is a game - in the
generous technical sense of game-theory, with players, rules, goals, strategies, and so on carried on in significant part by military means, normally between states or substates. Call the
contestants, (warring) parties. They typically represent of course larger populations. The set
up between parties resembles the arrangements of players in game theory. There are several
analogical extensions of the term war to cover games where one of the parties is an object,
construed as hostile (an enemy of the state), such as Crime, Drugs, Poverty or Nature. These
we can set aside as analogical wars. Of course wars form only a part of military activities.
Military interests and objectives have always stretched significantly further than war, to include
surveillence and security, easily extended to resource security, environmental security and life
style security, and beyond that to political stability and other political matters. Evidently
military ambitions have far over-extended themselves in bagging such democratic concerns.
An anarchist solution to the whole problem of war, which some have seen Taoism as
reaching towards, is immediate: eliminate the source of war, states. Unfortunately it is not
quite that simple (and that's not simple). For wars can also occur between nations, cultures,
races or tribes (which are not such artifices as states, and not always so readily or desirably
abolished), between inhabited regions, and between factions within states (thus civil wars) or,
perhaps by extension, between factions within other social structures (thus, for instance, gang
wars). But undoubtedly eliminating states and aspiring states would abolish most wars and
virtually all the worst wars.
While “nonviolent wars” are excluded by definition, by virtue of ‘force of arms’, token
wars, limited wars, and so on, are not: for instance, wars fought by small armed teams
representing competing sides (cf. medieval and science fiction war games). As wars are
hemmed in by conventions and agreed rules, there is no reason in principle why they should
not be reduced to two person contests, fought under strict rules like boxing or gladiatorial
contests. But in modern times wars have never taken such sensible forms, but have been much
larger affairs, making heavy (though fortunately restricted) use of latest technology. Let us
distinguish such wars as techno-powered, wars. They have, directly or indirectly (for the
technology may be bought or bartered), a heavy research and development support structure
(indeed the bulk of contemporary science is devoted - misdirected - in one way or another to
8
this effort).
Among wars, an important distinction is that between offensive and defensive wars. An
offensive war is one which ventures off a given party's territory or recognised pad, “invading”
that of another party or parties; correlatively defensive parties, if they have not also invaded.
Force projection typifies offensive practice. Plainly, offensiveness and defensiveness are not
strictly features of a war, but of parties to a war. In a two-party war, while both parties can
easily act offensively, the possibility of both parties proceeding defensively is excluded, unless
they share territory. (Even then issues may arise as to which party, if any, was the aggressor,
which started it, was responsible for starting it, and so on.) Thus mutually defensive wars
between contemporary states are impossible (but would be possible if states shared territory,
e.g. if Eire and Britain shared the territory of Northern Ireland). Tao-accredited wars were
defensive wars, never wars aiming at domination: last-resort wars, in which no pride was taken
(LTp.152).3
The pretence that offensive wars are defensive is widespread, and reflected in the
subterfuge that departments or ministries of war are those of defence, security or whatever. (If
they really were what they purport to be, we should be well on the way to an end to war.)
Offensive practices are rendered defensive ones by shabby redefinitional strategems, such as
redefining ‘defensive’ to include defence of ideals like democracy or liberty, infringed (or
allegedly infringed) on territories abroad, or to include “defence” of a third party or place
(whence every offensive war is “defensive”). In the present war in which part of Arabia is
engulfed (February 1991), one party claims to be defending what really was (or should be) part
of its territory, namely Kuwait, another party to be defending (what Kuwait did not enjoy)
democracy. It is a doubly offensive war presented in this guise as jointly defensive.
Aggressive wars are waged for a variety of reasons, but usually for resources or access to
resources or markets, a matter often disguised by appeal to ideology (thus a war for oil is
represented as a war of liberation). But there are other reasons than narrowly economic ones,
such as religion (as with crusades), power and aggrandisement (as in building an empire), and
so on. Nor are those reasons necessarily far separated; ideologies like Marxism and market
capitalism, for example, exhibit many of the features of religion.
The economic reasons for war appear to have become much more complex with the
3
There is one line in LT that may suggest that attack was sometimes justifiable, namely ‘For
deep love helps one to win in the case of attack’ (p.219). But how can compassion be
appropriate unless this attack is within a defensive setting, a larger context of unavoidability
or such like. A passage shortly below confirms this interpretation:
I dare not take the offensive but I take the defensive:
I dare not advance an inch but I retreat a foot (p.222).
These are advances and attacks within a defensive setting.
9
advent of an integrated world economy. At the same time many of the independent reasons for
economic wars are now obsolete. For to powerful states accrue the advantages of war without
war. At least most of the former economic advantages of war can be obtained without
expensive wars, through trade, institution of economic dependence, etc. Small medieval wars
were sometimes instituted for the collection of neighbouring riches and booty, a kind of piracy
meeting conditions of war. “Small” contemporary wars can be waged for a remarkable mix of
political-economy ends: to establish a regime favourable to economic penetration and profit
repatriation, to subjugate markets and to remove competition, to boost a sagging weapons
economy by using up old stocks and also testing new equipment, to restart a depressed
economy, and so on. Such wars, along with the economic aims which motivate them, are in
effect heavily castigated by Lao Tzu:
When Tao prevails in the world, galloping horses are turned back to
fertilize (the fields ...).
When Tao does not prevail in the world, war horses thrive in the suburbs.
There is no calamity greater than lavish desires. (LT p. 181).
But it does exceed evidential warrant to claim that Tao is not only sufficient, but necessary, for
cessation of such practices.
The practice of regularly stimulating complex military-saturated economies through war is
reminiscent of older, much ridiculed practices in simpler societies. They now ridicule the
Tsembaga, who proceeded to destroy much of their surplus product by going to war every 5-15
years (cf Rapaport). But they do not similarly ridicule the most powerful nation on the Earth,
the USA, which proceeds to write off a colossal amount of surplus in war every 10-20 years
(the Gulf war liquidated some $1.7 billion per day). Taoists would. For ridicule was a
favoured method, an important rhetorical strategem, and war and its idiocy were favourite
targets.
Some classification of defensive wars is also important, for various reasons: reducing and
abolishing wars, their costs and damage, restructuring societies away from war and military
practices, and, not least, for appreciating Taoism.
A main distinction is between
• conventional defence, maintained by armies of armed soldiers, many of them professionals,
and
• social defence, where there are no such armies or but fragments of them, and defence is
carried out through social networks of a significant part of society.4
It is here that Taoism and deep-green theory part company. Under Taoism, the state will
have a standing army, but a defensive army operating by strange, surprise tactics (p.201). No
4
Details of social defence are presented in Sharp and in Martin.
10
doubt defensive wars are to remain last resort action. Nonetheless the state will operate in
secrecy, in a way incompatible with decentralised social defence; people will be kept in the dark
about smart weapons of the state; and they too will be surprised, along with presumed enemies
of the state. By contrast, under deep-green theory, there should be no hidden smart weapons
of state; information would flow more freely and not be hidden from the people (who should
retain influence in informed decision making). Under deep-green, standing armies, and more
generally military organisation, will be wound down altogether.
Taoism should have pushed its searching criticism further. For military objectives, easily
acquired by standing armies with time on their hands, are frequently incompatible with Taoism.
For example, Taoism is opposed to domination (LT p.152), whereas military operations
frequently seek or involve domination; and military structure is invariably hierarchical and
authoritarian. Taoism aims for self-regulation, wherever feasible (cf. p.201); so does deep
green theory, which is one reasons why it aims to dispose of standing armies, as an important
preliminary to the withering away of states themselves (military forces being major props of
state control and power, and often maintained primarily for internal state security). Taoism has
no project for ending the era of wars; deep-green theory does. That project involves an
elimination of standing armies, too often poised for fighting or political interference.
A recommended route to end war consists in progressive scaling down: reduction of the
means and manpower. The initial stages are well-known, and include
• elimination of nuclear, biological and chemical weaponry, and
• force reduction. It can hardly be pretended that the Earth's states have managed to proceed
very far on even this complex of stages. The next stage consists in
• contraction to defensive capacities only, and the final stage consists in
• elimination of remaining military defensive forces, and adoption, so far as required, of social
defence practices. The complete route thus involves complete demilitarisation.
Reasons why deep-green aims to proceed the full distance are readily grasped by
considering the environmental shallowness of an otherwise cogent traditional case for the sharp
curtailment of wars and militarism. The traditional Western case against wars has been
primarily along two dimensions: social and moral. Wars are highly disruptive of the social
fabric; wars may be unjust. From these joint features, it was argued that wars should be a
matter of last resort, to be fought to ensure peace. It was argued further that only just wars
should be fought. Just wars were rare objects. But as there was little evidence of the decline
and fall of wars, much effort was expended, more practically and unsuccessfully, upon
endeavouring to improve the calibre of wars, and more theoretically, upon trying to characterize
just war satisfactorily, or rather to bend the notion in an effort to approximate the gory unjust
facts.
Progress was long hindered, furthermore, because there was always a rival positive
perspective on wars, which encouraged the exaltation of wars and military feats. It also
facilitated the transfer of the favourable image of war to other problem areas, whence the long
and apparently successful war against Nature (but the short-term successes are turning into
long-term problems), the short and unsuccessful war against Poverty, and so on. Behind all
this is the complex idea of war as rejuvenating, even cleansing, like fire; of war as heroic, and
glorious, of war as the supreme testing ground of men. These pictures of war - finally
shattered by the first World War (where even the poets began to tell of horrors and atrocities)
and subsequent technological wars - though no longer in ascendency, have by no means
vanished. The notion of war as rejuvenating a flagging economy persists, along with the
practice of keeping capitalism running smoothly by integrating substantial military components
into the industrial engine.
With the development of highly technological wars — the celebrated development of the
dirty industrial age is substantially military - the traditional negative case has grown in strength.
Wars have become much more damaging, with the potential for much more that is significantly
worse, and the possibility of a just war has correspondingly contracted, virtually to zero. The
opposition to war has likewise grown, but more than correspondingly with the rise of women
in social and political influence. Wars have almost always and everywhere been Men's affairs;
likewise conquest.
Deep-green theory accepts much of the traditional negative case, but would further
strengthen it. For example, the stricture against unjust wars, as out and out immoral, can be
strengthened, through the following syllogism:
All wars should be fully just wars.
Modem wars cannot be fully just wars.
Therefore, there should be no modern wars.
A fully just war is not merely a just war, but a war those just character can be reliably forecast
in advance. A modern war is of course a war that deploys modern technology, at least that
available this century. The evidential basis for the second premiss derives from much
information that collateral damage, damage to innocent bystanders and involved citizens is
always likely and cannot be excluded. Such wars are always liable to violate uncontroversial
requirements for a just war, even if they are purely “conventional” wars, not throwing radiation
or chemical or biological weapons around.
From a contemporary viewpoint the traditional doctrine of a just war, really of a just
defensive v/ax, is seriously out of date. The reasons for this reach wider than the new features
introduced by modem technological wars and the character of modem civilization, with its giant
cities littered with dangerous and vulnerable military targets. They have also to do with the
chauvinism of the justice proposed, which is shallow human justice, not natural or
environmental justice. There is no consideration of justice to other creatures or to the Earth (cf
Naess p.160). Two troubles are really intertwined here: conceptual difficulties with too narrow
a notion of justice, and ideological difficulties with too narrow a vision of what is an object of
12
value, of what counts.
The deep-green case against war adds to the traditional case a further dimension,
neglected until very recently: the environmental dimension. It has suddenly been seen that wars
are typically environmental atrocities. Earlier, of course, “environments” were simply
backgrounds, backdrops in paintings and plays, to the real drama.
Contemporary technological wars tend to be not merely social tragedies but environmental
ones as well. There is a doctrine of just war, but it is a human chauvinistic affair. There is no
similarly developed doctrine of an ecologically sound war, a deep ecological war. Unless any
such war were literally different from modern wars, that is from contemporary technological
wars, it would overstep permitted bounds. For such wars are characteristically ecological
disasters. Hardened military people, desensitized by a rigorous unethical training, feel even
less compunction about degrading or destroying environments or members of other species
than they do of maiming or killing civilians through “collateral” activity.
Matching the no-just-war syllogism is a no-sound-war syllogism:
All wars should be environmentally sound wars.
Modern wars cannot be environmentally sound.
Therefore, there should be no modern wars.
The argument for the second premiss has of course to be different. It looks to the information
accumulating on what wars do to natural and built environments. The Vietnam and Gulf wars
both inflicted immense damage on natural environments or what was left of them.
The environmental effects of war are not confined to direct and collateral damage. There
are indirect effects also. Thus, for instance, war also supplied the mechanism of, and the
technology for, modern environmental destruction: explosives, bulldozers from tanks, etc. As
well, training for war and engagement in war have much fostered, along with attitudes that
make for social callousness or ruthlessness, those that contribute to environmental insensitivity
and cruelty.
3. Puzzles about Taoist strategy and its critiques of technology and violence
‘It is surprising how much of the Lao Tzu is devoted to military strategy’. Which
strategies? Surprise, above all. But why such strategies? ‘Do they not contradict the Taoists’
strong opposition to the use of force’ (Chan p.222), the implied commitment to quietism?
Briefly, Taoism is not committed to quietism, and while certainly antagonistic to violence, does
not oppose certain uses of force (only really z7/-forcing, as will be explained). Even so, the
emphasis on military strategy remains puzzling.
The strategies, many of them relevant to social defence, include
• seriousness, not ‘making light of the enemy’ (p.222)
• surprise, and nonvisibility (p.201). The defensive strategy involves guerilla tactics:
marching without formation, holding weapons without seeming to have them, confronting
13
enemies without seeming to meet them (p.222). But even in times of peace, ‘smart weapons of
the state should not be displayed to the people’ (p.164). Such recommendations helped to fuel
the charge of deviousness lodged against Lao Tzu. But look at part of the reason for concealing
smart weapons: ‘The more smart weapons the people have, the more troubled the state will be’
(p.201). Smart weapons are carried in corrupt states, where the rich engage in conspicuous
consumption and the people are suppressed, not where Tao is practiced (LT p.194).
• advance from weakness, flexibility but firmness. Weakness is the principle of life and will
overcome strength (LT p.164, p.233).
• coolness and non-competition (LT p.233, p.164). Like these, most of the general strategies
are standard Taoist practices simply applied to military conduct. For these standard practices
the charge of deviousness looks feeble.
The response applies more generally to other allegedly devious political strategies. For
the strategies are but application of Taoist principles and techniques to warfare, politics and
elsewhere. Nothing excludes application of these techniques to what are accounted, in general,
unnecessary evils (which must sometimes, on other Taoist grounds, be countered). Nor, to
meet the main criticism, need any deceit or deviousness be involved; nor is it. In particular, the
legalist tactic, Tn order to grasp, it is necessary first to give’ (LT p.164), is cited as involving
‘an element of deceit’ ‘undeniably’, and ‘worse’ it is ‘morally questionable’ (Chan p.17). But
in order for me to grasp your hand in a normal handshake, it is necessary first for me to give
my hand. There is no deceit here, nothing morally questionable. All the tactics permit of
benign construals, of a Taoist kind. Consider, for instance, Tn order to contract, it is necessary
first to expand’ (LT p.164). In order to bend a copper pipe to the intended angle, it is better to
bend it first a little further than required. The transformation of water to ice (both favoured
natural items for symbolic purposes: natural processes which may look devious!) neatly
illustrates the Taoist principle (which is however hardly necessary), and shows softness and
weakness turned hardness and strength.
The Taoist critique of militarism is as much a critique of technology as of war. Sharp
weapons, ‘smart weapons’ as we might now say, come in for much critical attention, as we
have already noticed. Only in corrupt and degenerate states are they displayed or flaunted
(p.194, p.164); in deep-green regions smart weapons of state’ would not be retained
unexhibited. The people will not have them for they mean trouble (p.201); for similar reasons
deep-green regions will be free of them. So, it seems, will ideal Taoist regions: ‘Even if there
are arrows and weapons, none will display them’ (LT p.238). Much technology, military and
other, is excluded under the Taoist edict against violence (a further facet of the military-practices
paradox).5
5
Under contemporary technology and technological arrangements, such as the storage of
quantities of oil and nuclear and chemical materials in great cities, wars have assumed new and
14
The powerful critique of militarism in the Tao-te Ching is coupled with strong opposition
to violence. Some of the linkage is evident enough. Militarism as practised represents an
ultimate form of state (or party) violence. A basic theme is that violent practices will come to an
unnatural end, and accordingly to a non-Taoist end (generalising LT p.176). While force may
occur in spectacular, but satisfactory, natural forms, force is duly distinguished from violence.
To force the growth of life means ill omen.
For the mind to employ the vital force without restraint means violence
(LT p. 197).
One who follows Tao does not apply dominating force, which usually has had results bringing
requital (p.152). Dominating force, like power, is in general castigated, under doctrine of wuwei, no forced actions, no violence. To force natural growth is deviant, destroying harmony.
To stop natural growth is deviant. But there is a significant difference between force and
violence. To intentionally employ destructive force is to do violence. To so force things is
condemned. To remain in harmony with things one does not so force things or practice
violence. There is a non-interference principle at work, which also indicates types of non
interference that are excluded.
However Taoism does not always get the distinction between force and violence quite
right. ‘Vital force without restraint’, intentionally excessive force, is only part of what counts
as violence, which is more generally force which violates, i.e. transgresses, descrecrates,
very destructive dimensions, to the point of being utterly irresponsible.
A different approach to technology, as to war, is now mandatory. These are no longer things
that can in principle be nicely confined and need not touch parties outside the fray. An
important part of ending wars, “winning the war against wars”, is removing the technology of
war, above all from irresponsible state power.
As for which technology to try to jettison and which to try to retain or improve, it is not so
difficult to indicate, provided evaluative terminology is not outlawed. What is wanted is
technology that is good in its place, what should be excluded is technology that is indifferent
or bad or potentially so. Technology to be justified has to do something worthwhile, it has
to address identifiable respectable needs. That is why merely indifferent technology is out;
there is no virtue in technology for technology's sake, as it is a mere means technique. It is
because of the crucial evaluative component in choice of technology that appropriateness,
itself evaluative, comes closer to encapsulating the criterion than other recent efforts. Size,
such as smallness, or intermediateness, are not what matter, though modest and not excessive
technologies are likely to fare better in satisfying appropriateness. In simpler societies, small
technology is of course more appropriate; for that is what is good there. From known criteria
for what is good these other features for locally appropriate technology can be read off:
reliability, esp. in maintenance, functioning well and safely under the expected range of
operating conditions (which may be difficult), ease of repair, capital cheapness and repair
inexpensiveness, environmental benignness, and meeting sound social needs.
15
profanes, injures, outrages, etc. It is thus a negatively connoted force, an evil force in some
specified intentional respect. There is a tendency for Taoist commentators, not Taoists, to
regard Taoism as condemning all uses, or even occurrences, of force, but this is not so. Rather
intentional ill-forcing is what is castigated, what is deviant. Thus Taoism does not exclude a
range of defensive practices, which make satisfactory use of natural forces, like letting the
machines of war industry stop.
Those who would abolish war and its machinery, substituting for it nonwarlike and
ideally nonviolent methods, technology, and strategies, have been confronted not merely with
much sub-rational abuse but with plenty of criticism and even some paradoxes. Here is a recent
paradox concerning war and nonviolence:
• War must be abolished. One reason is simply economic. We can no longer afford it, and
the opportunity costs are enormous. Along with other extraordinarily wasteful activities, it is an
anachronism.
• Doing so cannot be accomplished without violence, i.e. in effect, given the types of violence
involved, without what amounts to war. According to a fuller version of this premiss, the
process of abolishing a war would only be achieved through a revolution so profound that it
could not succeed without extensive and extreme violence, amounting to (civil) war.
But then war cannot be abolished without war.
Therefore, war which must be abolished cannot be abolished.6
This “paradox” has been compared with the Liar paradox, but the parallel does not persist far.
For this paradox does not involve self-referential features, and is easily broken, as follows. Let
the “last war” be not the last standard war but the revolution abolishing war. Then, given that
the revolution is successful, war will be abolished therewith, i.e. with that last war. There need
be no regress, given again a successful outcome. All the premisses stand intact, but the
conclusion, following the ‘therefore’ is a nonsequitur. However, while the dissolution of the
argument is accordingly logically fine, the route is repugnant. Standard pacifism challenges the
second premiss.
4. Standard and moral pacifism.
6
Brian Medlin, who forcefully propounded this puzzle, set other analogous puzzles alongside it
- designed to reveal deep difficulties in contemporary political, and especially alternative,
thought. Another puzzle, concerning liberty and repression in the context of capitalism,
revolved around the following inconsistent triad:
• capitalism must be removed, but liberty retained.
• capitalism cannot be removed without repression.
• repression is antithetical to liberty.
The puzzle is resolved as with the analogous puzzle of abolishing. Let the “last capitalist”
action before the days of liberty be the repressive but liberating revolution overthrowing
capitalism.
16
Although Taoism is strongly opposed to war, and much in favour of peace - and
accordingly by prevailing standards a substantially pacific position - it is not (nowhere in the
central texts) committed to pacifism in usual senses, for two different reasons:• It is not, by contrast with pacifism, opposed to all types of warfare, for example smart
defensive wars.
• It eschews deontology in terms of which moral pacifism is commonly stated, for instance
through the watershed thesis
P2.
It is morally wrong to use violence.
By contrast with Taoism, deep environmentalism does not avoid deontic claims, and is
committed in principle to nonviolent technologies and ways and to pacifistic principles.
Moreover, certain forms of deep environmentalism are completely committed to pacifism,
notably European forms. Is deep green?
There is heavy contemporary opposition to pacifism, as there also was to Taoism in the
warring times when Taoism was first being promulgated. Many of the central institutions of
contemporary life are intricated in coercion, violence and war. The most prominent
contemporary institutions, states, are premissed on these elements of damaging force; they
claim entitlement to use them widely, and even claim a certain territorial monopoly on their use.
As a result they are having constantly to engage in them in attempt to maintain that monopoly.
They are certainly the main perpetrators of wars, and of violence. They are indeed inured to
wars, are in constant preparation for wars, yet propound dialectial (and normally dishonest and
cynical) doctrines of peace through war (for a recent example see the appendix).
Unremarkably then, the extensive propagandistic machinery of state has invested heavily
in “justificatory” exercises in favour of controlled use, its own use, of destructive force, and
continues to inveigh against pacifism. Because a routine trick in this sophistical repetoire
consists in conflating pacifism with extreme, naive and inplausible, forms, an inevitable and
important early task commits in unscrambling senses of ‘pacifism’. Semantical skulduggery
can be thwarted in this way.
Pacifism, as explained by English dictionaries, invariably concerns wars and warfare, and
contains two components, negative and, elaborating on that, positive:- The negative component
is, in Amauld's word, anti-War-ism, opposition (in ways to be further specified) to all forms of
warfare (see OED). The positive component supplies alternative ways of settling disputes (what
it is supposed that wars with some semblance of justification involve), such as negotiation,
arbitration,... - and, adding to too narrow dictionary accounts - sanctions, substitutions (e.g.
of sporting events, operatic contests, cooperative ventures),... . In brief standard pacifism is
opposition to all warfare and resolution of potential wars by other nonmilitary means.
Plainly the opposition to warfare, like the sanctions and so on, cannot itself be military
(using soldiers and other devices of war), on pain of some incoherence. But otherwise the
ways of opposition can be many and various: they can certainly be active, as with nonviolent
17
demonstrations, resistance movements, and so forth, and they may also be devious (e.g.
turning the forces of war upon themselves so they are neutralised). It quickly becomes evident,
then, that some of the dictionaries offer but loaded definitions which, by restricting the negative
components, reduce the initial appeal and plausibility of pacifism. Consider the Concise
English definition of the negative component: ‘the doctrine of non-resistance to hostilities and
of total non-co-operation with any form of warfare’. Thereby excluded are forms of pacifism
which offer active and plausible alternatives to warfare such as social defence. The Concise
English tends to force pacifism into what the Oxford English Dictionary lists as its final item:
‘often, with depreciatory implication, the advocacy of peace at any price’, ‘in any
circumstance’. Pacifism can easily resist being forced into these sorts of circumstances: it has
many resources, as an extensive series of texts on alternatives to war, such as negotiation, non
violent action and social defence, from Taoism to contemporary environmentalism attest.
Academic philosophers have much advanced the semantical strategy of some dictionaries,
of rendering pacifism more difficult from the very outset by narrow and biassed definitions.
They have stretched the term from its restricted setting of warfare, confined to state and
organised gang violence, to cover all forms of violence, from state and interstate to, what is
very different, personal and interpersonal violence. Call the resulting considerably stretched
notion of pacifism, according to which it is morally wrong to use violence, according to which
P2 holds, stretched pacifism.'1 While stretched pacifism certainly includes standard pacifism
(unless the notions of war and warfare are tampered with), the converse is very far from being
the case. A pacifist is in no way committed to stretched pacifism, which is a much more
problematic and difficult position than standard pacifism. There are several, substantially
different reasons for this, which will be picked up seriatim.
Stretched pacifism, also misleadingly called moral pacifism, has looked a very easy
critical target to moral philosophers. Many the effusive philosopher who, upon sighting such a
target, has charged, whooping such rhetoric as “incoherent”, “inconsistent”, “insensitive”,
“fanatical”. However, with improved logical technology now available for accommodating and
treating moral dilemmas, it is no great feat to resist such attacks, in the fashion of previous
investigations (see esp. Al, also MD). A main aim was to demonstrate that stretched pacifism
was not so stupid as it was made out to be or appeared to be to these inured to present dominant
violent ways. So far from being stupid, it is viable. In future gentler times stretched pacifism
could even be realised for whole communities of creatures (as some genuinely Christian sects
envisaged); whence it will finally be seen to be feasible not merely for sages and supermen, and
many ordinary women, but much more extensively.
7
In Al this notion was contrasted with standard pacifism as comprehensive pacifism:
overcomprehensive might have been better.
18
The method of philosophical accommodation was through moral dilemmas. The sort of
moral dilemma that stretched pacifism can induce derives as follows. On the one side stands
the theme P2, Wv, in convenient symbols, for Wrong V-ing, violencing. Now this implies to
WB, where B presents a case of of violence. On the other side, particular circumstances
develop which lead to W ~B, because ~B would produce in the circumstances considerable
wrong, for instance extensive violence, mass murder, etc. One stock example from the
literature concerns calling off the firing squad about to shoot several captives if the pacifist
shoots one of them (it is elaborated in Al p.13). Interestingly, another stock example from the
literature concerns standard pacifism (it can also be presented in terms of patriotism; for details
of both see MD p.10).
Resolution of intractable moral dilemmas is, where it is required, situational. The agent
decides in the situation, within the fix, what to do. There are many ways in which such
decision making can proceed, less rational, such as those applying chance or involving bad
faith, or more rational, such as those applying consequentialist decision theory (for details see
MD, pp.32-9). A decision theory taking account of all that should be included will not however
be purely consequential. It would also take account of relevant motivation.
This defence and rehabilitation of moral pacifism has been challenged, in particular by
Smith (hereafter JWS). JWS claims the defence offered is a ‘failure because it trivializes
pacifism’ (p. 153 twice). The rehabilitation
trivializes pacifism because it entails that pacifism doesn't substantially differ
from a form of activism which holds that while violence is always wrong
one is sometimes justified on consequentialist grounds for preferring violent
acts, if these acts are lesser evils than any other real alternatives. This is the
commonsense position which most people hold - yet - pacifism after all was
supposed to be radical moral doctrine - (p.153 rearranged).8
Part of the criticism is, then, not so much that pacifism is trivialized - JWS “activism” is
hardly trivial - as that pacifism is popularised, deflated from a radical position to the
commonsense position most people hold (p.154 also). Yet not a shred of evidence is adduced
that JWS activism is such a populist position. Available evidence, for example from peace
movements and oppositional opinion polls, suggests the very opposite: that, for instance, most
people support state-justified conventional wars with the military violence they incur, and
accordingly do not hold that violence is always wrong. From such a commonsense angle,
pacifism with its condemnation of conventional wars and the violence they involve remains a
radical doctrine.
As regards wars and other violence-incurring social authorities, contemporary pacificism
8
JWS now informs me that he has changed his position. Whether the move effects his
criticism, I don't know.
19
is, as previous explained (e.g. Al p.3), a form of activism. Pacifism does not imply utter
pacifity, but may actively involve social defence, resistance and so on. However a certain level
of misrepresentation enters into the JWS challenge in the details of what forms of activism
pacifism may include. That misrepresentation begins in the second clause concerning what is
said to be sometimes justified. For the situational procedure where dilemmas arise will not
generally be consequential applying a principle of lesser evil. In dilemmatic situations such
principles are suspended, and such a principle is in any case unacceptable to moral pacifists. A
small amount of violence may be less bad in its consequences than verbal offence, but a
principled pacifist will choose the slightly greater evil where other obligations do not exclude it.
A more serious distortion occurs in JWS's effort to force procedures in dilemma
situations into purely consequentialist form. In fact consequential decision theory was
deployed as a model only for how to proceed rationally in a situational setting where deontic
procedures were suspended (see MD p.38). What was said, still misleadingly retrospective
vision reveals, was this: ‘what is done is a very consequentialist thing’ (Al p.13), not ‘one acts
in a consequentialist fashion to do the sufficiently good thing in the circumstances’ (JWS
p.152). Situationally other procedures than those resembling orthodox rational decision
making (modified from maximizing to satisizing objectives) may be adopted (MD p.38).
Further the orthodox consequentialist theory is inadequate because it leaves out, or tries to
reduce to consequences, nonconsequential elements, notably motives. It is not difficult, in
principle (in advance of attempted consequentialization of motives), to design situations where
motives, such as integrity or maintaining faith, enter to yield outcomes upsetting consequential
calculations. More elaborate decision making procedures than those of consequentialism,
sometimes at variance with consequentialism, are thus presupposed.
A further part of JWS's criticism accordingly goes by the board, the alleged appeal ‘to
“second best” consequentialist considerations,... already explicitly condemned’ (p.154). What
was condemned was stock universal consequentialism, ‘that only consequentialist
considerations carry argumentative weight’ (quoted on p. 152), so undercutting other deontic
principles, such as those of pacifism. It was not claimed, what is utterly different, that
consequentialist considerations can nowhere enter into deliberation and decision making. The
conclusion JWS arrives at is therefore substantially astray.
After criticising modern moral philosophy for its reliance upon
consequentialist modes of thought, it is surprising, and inconsistent, to find
... [reliance] upon such modes of thought to escape logical difficulties raised
by moral dilemmas facing ... pacifis[m] (p. 152)
There is no inconsistency. JWS has confused universal with particular. As well he has
wrongly contracted all situational decision making to consequentialist modes.
There is a third part to the criticism, that the defence is too easy; the ‘strategy will allow
too much violence to be (perpetrated and) justified to suit the tastes of any real pacifist’ (p. 153).
This another part of the so-called trivialization, this time however dilution rather than
20
popularization, weakening the moral stand against violence. This third contention is premissed
on a mistake: that one can ‘justify on consequentialist grounds any number of violent acts,
providing that such acts are lesser evils than other real alternatives facing social agents’ (p.153).
Moral pacifism offers no such licence; allowing such consequentialism to take over was never
part of the position. The slide to such consequentialism is made on the strength of a similarly
erroneous example. The potential victim of an aspiring rapist ‘is supposed to flee or wriggle
free if possible. But it is easy to consequentially justify the use of violence by the woman to
prevent herself from being raped’ (p.153 italics added). In the example so far described there is
no dilemma, and no such easy resort to consequentially ‘justified’ violence.
What allows too much violence is the lesser evil JWS assumes is easily consequentially
justified; for example that the woman is entitled to inflict, and escalate, violence so long as it
remains ‘a lesser evil than the violence of attempted rape’ (p. 153). Since she may thereby
inflict quite unreasonable damage (esp. if she is a Kung Fu expert), the result is inconsistent
with ‘the basic principle of self-defence’ which JWS earlier adduced according to which what is
‘appropriate, in response is only that level of force necessary to defend oneself against the
threat’ (p.150). There is evidence in JWS's work of some enthusiasm for levels of violence
which exceed his ‘basic principle’, his appeal to ‘lesser evil’ generates some instances. The
‘basic principle’, itself fraught with difficulties (cf. the contorted discussion of what weapons
are appropriate in response to what attacks, p. 150), still exceeds what stretched pacifism would
enjoin; for instance, it may not be appropriate to respond with force. But in a technical sense
stretched pacifism is compatible with the ‘basic principle’, since it only imposes the upper
bound on level of force.
As for easiness, moral pacifism is not an easy position to live by, or to justify. Removing
objections to pacifism is one thing; solidifying a positive case for it is quite another, and so far
hardly conclusive (as Al tried to explain, pp 29-31). Stretched pacifism was advanced,
hypothesized to put it more precisely, as a still viable option. It was not presented as a morally
compulsory position, or, for that matter, as one that this defender adhered to or affirmed.
To reiterate, while a cumulative case can be made for stetched pacifism as principled non
violence, that case was not conclusive, and is hard to improve. For, further, some serious
difficulties standing in the way of stretched pacifism were assembled, the most important of
which derives from the extent of violence apparent in transactions within the natural world.
Simply consider the practices of carnivores, essential to their natural way of life. In order to
meet their life needs for sustenance, these creatures do, and are often obliged to, engage
routinely in violent activity. While it can no doubt be argued, as some vegetarians may do, that
the natural order is an immoral order, and that remaining carnivores should be converted to
vegetarianism as rapidly as proves possible (in the way domestic dogs are converted to dog
biscuits), the difficulties with such proposals are immense. The task envisaged is gigantic, and
beyond human capacities - even if it were desirable. For there are millions of species to be
21
somehow converted to proper vegetarianism. Then there are millions of other species to be
converted to proper and well regulated contraceptive practices, else their numbers will get out of
hand (uncontrollably) with predation removed. Given humans lack of success in limiting their
own excessive numbers, such regulation appears entirely remote. Aside however from the
practical difficulties, is such a fully vegetarian order, with evolution further derailed, a desirable
improvement on the natural order? Is it morally obligatory? It is certainly not obligatory, as
alternative systems of morality in harmony with the prevailing natural order are feasible. Nor is
it desirable, for (to appeal to such alternative value systems) the natural order is more or less in
order as it is. Full vegetarianization would only reduce its value, vastly.
More generally, a defensible ethical framework should not, it would be rightly contended,
be right out of step with the natural order of other creatures, decently depicted. Decent
depiction is important, for some features of the natural order, such as competition, combat and
predation, so far from escaping attention, have been grossly exaggerated and exploited. Thus,
for instance, the ludicrous picture of nature red in truth and claw, so beloved of descendents of
orthodox Victorians and of orthodox economists. However, even under decent depiction, the
“natural order” is often not benign. That appears to be enough to induce a supervenient moral
dilemma for any stretched pacifism which is coupled to a deep ethic (e.g. which does not
separate humans out from the natural order) and which eschews the desperate vegetarian route:
The natural order is not an immoral order
The natural order contains (regular) instances of violence.
Therefore, instances of violence are not immoral in apparent defiance of P2 Moreover, there are too many instances of violence, too regularly
occurring, for them all to be plausibly shunted into the moral dilemma category (and predatory
carnivores face no dilemmas). Raptors that practice violence every week are not immoral
(neither are they clearly moral; the category of morality only significantly extends so far).
The main trouble lies however with P2 (which needs some finer adjustment, as was
alrady indicated in Al). While P2 is alright in context, within a particular, perfectly viable,
ethical framework, designed for the usual human round, the conventional setting for ethical
theories, it stands in need of modification outside that setting. It is time to suggest the sort of
modification envisaged. Evidently P2 was addressed to moral agents. Which agents? Not to
carnivores that supply their own livelihood, nor really to morally degenerate humans, but to
peace-sensitive agents. With that semi-technical form, yet to be characterised, a suitably
P2
MP2. It is morally wrong, for a peace-sensitive agent, to use violence.9
modified
9
results:
The generalization of P2, suggested in Al, to cover also the parallel situation of
environmental vandalism, can be similarly modified. The anti-vandolence principle becomes
MP2°. It is morally wrong, for a peace- and environmentally-sensitive agent, to use
22
To recover what amounts, in the previous discussive context, to P2, it suffices to add the
proposition that every human agent ought to be peace-sensitive. Much as that proposition has
to recommend it, it appears too ethically advanced for many modern humans; it sets too high a
moral standard to be taken as a serious guide to practice. It seems wise to settle presently for
something less demanding, such as that every advanced moral agent ought to be peace
sensitive. To put essentially the same proposition alternatively:
Stretched pacifism (as modified) is supererogatory. While it is perhaps too late to hope for
much moral progress in humans, it is pleasant to contemplate alternative futures where what is
supererogatory became obligatory, and widely practiced.
Richard Sylvan*
Appendix
I began drafting this essay at the time (January 17, midday Australian time) of the
American attacks upon Iraq. The optly named Prime Minister Hawke of Australia had just
made a statement to the nation-state, announcing (the) war. In this statement there was much
talk of peace. There was even - in what was effectively a declaration of war - reiteration of the
modem quest for ‘a new world order of peace’. Peace through war; so it rings out again and
again, through the centuries. ‘War must be for the sake of peace’ (Aristotle p.220). More than
two thousand years later, we have fought those wars to end all wars. But it is no use, Hawke
solemely pronounced, just talking about peace, and thinking about peace; we must work for
peace, fight for it - through war. Impeccable logic?
President Bush, supreme commander, convinced us with similar logic, speaking too with
many tongues. Of how he ‘preferred to think of peace, not war’. But now ‘only force will
prevail’, as ‘all reasonable efforts to reach a peaceful solution are exhausted’. ‘What must be
done’ must be done, or will be anyway. With God on side with the US offensive (as well as
on the other side), it will go well. As it was said to have, though it achieved comparatively little
that other efforts may not have yielded more satisfactorily, and thought it may now have to
followed with another invasion. Nor have we ever managed to glimpse much of what is now
supposed, when we are no longer engaged, to come ‘out of the horror of war’: a ‘new world
order ... which governs the conflict of nations’; a ‘rule of law’, not war. How the one,
enforcable law, is achieved, unless backed by the the other, is not explained (Medlin's paradox
hits back). Similarly what we now hear from many militarists, as they rush to war, is that
vandolence.
Thank to David Bennett for joint contributions (from UT) and to JWS for opposition (in
JWS)
23
‘peace is a great good, war a great evil’. But, for the most part, only the rhetoric has shifted;
practice has scarcely changed at all.
REFERENCES
W.-T. Chan, A Source Book on Chinese Philosophy, Princeton University Press, 1963;
referred to as ST.
W.-T. Chan (ed.), The Way of Lao Tzu (Tao-te Ching), Bobbs-Merrill, New York, 1963;
referred to as LT.
B. Martin, Uprooting War, Freedom Press, London, 1984.
A. Naess, Ecology, community and lifestyle, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge UK,
1989.
R.A. Rapaport, Pigs for the Ancestors : ritual in the ecology of a New Guinea People, Yale
University Press, New Haven, 1967.
R. Routley, ‘War and Peace II. On the alleged inconsistency, moral insensitivity and fanaticism
of pacifism’, Discussion papers in environmental philosophy #9, Research School of
Social Science, Australian National University, 1983 (also in. Inquiry ); referred to as AL
R. Routley and V. Plumwood, ‘Moral dilemmas and the logic of deontic notions’, Discussion
papers in environmental philosophy #6, Research School of Social Science, Australian
National University, 1984 (also in Paraconsistent Logic)-, referred to as MD.
R. Routley, ‘War and Peace I. On the ethics of large-scale nuclear war and nuclear-deterrence
and the political fall-out’, Discussion papers in environmental philosophy, #5, Research
School Of Social Science, Australian National University, 1984.
G. Sharp, Social Power and Political Freedom, Porter Sargent, Boston, 1980.
J.W. Smith, The Worms at the Heart of Things , Public Relations Unit, Flinders University,
1989.
R. Sylvan, ‘War and Peace III, Australia's defence philosophy’, Social Philosophy, for Nuclear
Conference, University of Queensland, 1985.
R. Sylvan and D. Bennett, ‘Of Utopias, Tao and Deep Ecology’, Discussion papers in
environmental philosophy #19, Research School of Social Science, Australian National
University, 1990; referred to as UT.
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Box 14: Green Projects in Progress
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MORAL DILEMMAS AND THE LOGIC OF DEONTIC NOTIONS
Richard Routley and Vai Plumwood^
The
§1.
paradoxes
of
deontic
logic
consistency and
the
and
modal requirements.
Especially since mid-century many systems of deontic logic have been advanced, which
logic of such deontic
attempt to explore the
prohibition,
and wrong.
right
all
Almost
which treat deontic notions as modal,
notions as obligation, permission and
modal
not
demand
functors,
All such systems are mistaken m a
For deontic functors such as obligation and prohibition are
but
are
more highly
of
degree
greater
a
systems,
i.e. as if strict or provable equivalents are
intersubstitutable within them preserving truth.
quite fundamental way.
systems have been modal
these
intensional than
propositional
modal
modal
than
discrimination
and so
functors,
logics
can
provide.
The damage caused by the mistaken treatment of deontic notions as modal shows up
in
various ways,
but we
shall be
primarily concerned with only one of these, the
consistency requirements and the exclusion thereby of moral dilemmas.
which the modal damage
appears is through a
Another way in
series of related paradoxes,
such as,
directly, the paradoxes of derived obligation, and, less directly, the paradoxes of
the Robber and the Good Samaritan.
The consistency requirements come out in two ways in mainstream deontic systems.
consistency
Firstly,
a
negation
are
requirement,
-
obligatory
in
the
that
usual
no
claim
such
is
symbolism,
Op
that
~0~p,
both it
i.e.
and its
~(0p
&
0~p)
— appears as a principle, frequently a postulate, in all mainstream absolute
systems.21 Such absolute systems, which are variants on alethic modal systems, are
characteristically obtained from corresponding alethic systems by replacing the modal
axiom,
that’ or
’it ought to be the case that’, or
the functor ’□ ’,
modal
(such as
logics
system demands
world
is
’it is obligatory
’it ought to be seen to that', replaces
’it is necessary that', of alethic systems. We know of course that
consistency requirement;
some
~0~p - where ’O’, read
Op D p, by the deontic axiom, Op
the doxastic
systems)
the standard
but it appears that the intended interpretation of deontic
the consistency
requirement.
or
encapsulates
acceptable
subsequently introduced,
can be designed without
For
its semantical equivalent
what
is
permitted
(i.e.
is that
in
symbols
(Px)STx) which is surely true (for let world x be determined
precisely by what is so permitted).
Moreover,
the
second
related
way
in
which
consistency
escaped by a modal formulation of deontic (or doxastic) logics.
figures
cannot
be so
For it seems clear,
�2
and is widely agreed, that 0 satisfies the following distribution principle:
(1)
Op&OqiffO(p&q).
Since however 0 is modal, and p & ~p & q
p&~p (i.e.
-
the sides are strictly
equivalent),
0(p & ~p) iff 0(p & ~p & q)
Thence,
Op & 0~p implies 0(p & ~p), which implies 0(p & ~p & q),
and (2),
by (1)
which implies Oq;
(2)
if there are cases of moral dilemmas where Op and also 0~p,
i.e.
then obligation spreads so that any claim is obligatory.
This argument tells against all mainstream deontic logics;
rock-bottom system, minimal deontic logic.
for it holds in the
This logic MDS, presented by von Wright
and others (see e.g. Hilpinen 81, p.3 and p.5), adds to classical sentential logic CL
(with rules of Material Detachment and Substitutivity duly extended)
the one-place
connective P, of permissibility, subject to just the conditions
P(A v B)
e
(1’)
PA v PB
and
Intersubstitutivity of provably equivalent CL (i.e. truth functional) wff
Now
define
a
connective
-
in
fact
the
standard
obligation
Then, where A and B are any CL wff, 0(A & B)
OA =£j£~P~A.
negation and
It then follows,
given
that
(extensional)
principles to
De Morgan
= ~(~P~A & ~P~B).
follows),
0
moral
claim
is
dilemmas
obligatory,
the
consequence
as above
of
the
nothing
functor
)
*
(2
-
thus:
OA & OB, upon applying
of (1
)
*
that P~(—A & —B)
(or by variants thereupon that which
form
OA
&
0~A,
(extensional)
i.e.
any
permissible.
The
that
is
OB,
revealing variant argument applies the provable CL-equivalence A & -A = B & ~B to get
0(A & ~A) = 0(B & ~B).
d
OB & 0~B => OB.
Then (in condensed notation) OA & 0~A => 0(A & ~A) => 0(B & ~B)
That is, if there are any deontic moral dilemmas (of such forms as
OA & 0~A) then everything is obligatory.
other
forms;
But there are moral dilemmas, of this and
and not everything is obligatory.
incorrect. So too are all its extensions, and
Therefore minimum deontic
logic is
thereby all mainstream systems.
For
'most systems of deontic logic include the system’ of von Wright 'as a subsystem' (F
& H, p.13).
There is little appreciation of the
involve in the ethical
Hare,
having
set
up
a
force of these arguments or of what they
literature. But one prominent example will
dilemma,
and
rejected
one
logical
have to suffice.
route out,
proceeds to
pronounce that 'it is not very helpful to try to sort out these difficulties by some
relatively minor tinkering with the calculus of deontic logic.
The linguistic and
logical intuitions which give rise to them are all right so far as they go' (82,
�3
intuitions behind the mainstream systems are not alright, but lead to
The
p.28).
deontic collapse and to a heap of paradoxes; and a bit of '’tinkering" is enough to
remove the worst difficulties.5
(2’) and
The trouble lies we shall argue, just with the modal requirement (i.e.
its usual extension to all wff).
that not everything is obligatory,
evident
For while it is
This leaves much to be defended.
on no more than the strength of a few
examples (such as that it is not obligatory that everyone visit the tallest eucalypt
every day), none of the other assertions is so uncontroversial.
Given that there are such moral dilemmas, as will be argued at length, and given
that sentential logic CL is admissible when applied to consistent situations (which
are all
that are
elsewhere
(in
arguments:
required
RLR
in
especially),
modal
the
namely,
the arguments
there
are
a claim that has been argued
above),
two
only
and
requirement,
one
fault the
which to
points
at
half
of
the
distributivity
principle, specifically
r
(O-adjunction).
OA & OB -> 0(A & B)
But it is bizarre to have to fail O-adjunction in order
OA & 0~A =5 B has
quite
especially when
OB to stand,
0(A & ~A)
to be
correctly
foundation.
And
obligation.
For,
not
it
contemplated
among
in
the
things,
is a
irrelevant mates
7
desperate measure ,
systems
since
it
intended
role
and
mainstream
against
entirely
other
is conceded that its
Faulting O-adjunction
rejected.
goes
it
to allow the paradox
O-adjunction
can
be
argued
is
without
meaning
for
from
of
the
semantics of 0, along these lines:- Roughly OA is true iff A holds in all acceptable
situations.
But if A holds in all such situations and B does also then so does A &
B, validating O-adjunction.
Accordingly, the trouble must be located in the modality
requirements.
This can
be
seen
from another
angle also.
obligation, which also underlies O-adjunction,
An
important logical
feature of
is its transmissibility, that what is
tightly entailed by what is obligatory is also obligatory; in symbolic form,
A ■+ B -o OA -> OB
But now,
(0-transmission).
if entailment is erroneously construed as strict implication, which is what
the modal requirement would have us do, then 0(A & ~A) -> OB, since by a paradox of
strict implication A & ~A
B. If there are moral dilemmas of the form 0(A & ~A), as
will be contended, then this result is sufficiently damaging on its own, and focusses
the trouble on the modal requirement.
properly maligned OA & 0~A ->0B.
Otherwise apply O-adjunction,
to obtain the
�4
the
Both
and
consistency
requirements should
modality
be challenged
then by
anyone who claims that, for some p, both Op and 0~p (and that such judgements are not
merely prima facie, vanishing upon further reflection).
Many have argued that such
cases do occur, indeed are central examples of value conflict, and are of fundamental
importance in ethics.$ We want to go even further and claim, firstly, that such cases
occur quite frequently, as cases of conflicting obligations, conflicting rights, and
genuine moral dilemmas - so in particular there are many cases where both p and ~p
ought to be the case - and secondly, that adequate logical treatment of such cases
requires an underlying logic of a distinctively paraconsistent kind.
we shall
cases has,
argue,
with many important arguments and cases.
many of
logic
rendered deontic
Neglecting such
incapable of dealing adequately
The matter is particularly serious since
fiercely debated moral cases are cases of moral dilemmas,
lthe most
e.g.
limited resources, nuclear war, permissible war tactics. While our initial argument
will overlap previous work,9 it goes beyond it by adding a semantical treatment and
moral
of
explanation
semantical
dilemmas,
and
in
setting adequate
deontic logics
within the framework of paraconsistent logic.
simple
The
§2.
resolution
relevant
epicycling.
classical
versus
The
relevant
It has already been indicated.
solution to the base problem is disarmingly simple.
Abandon the modal assumption, that obligation, permissibility, and so on, are modal
This blocks
logical equivalents.
functors allowing replacement of modal
from OCA & ~A), or from OA & 0~A, to 0(B & ~B) and thence to OB.
giving
up
intersubstitutivity
are
replacement
coentailment,
not
simply
just
more
in
contexts;
deontic
rigorous
than
lax
strict equivalence.
intimately
- the Spread
with
What
ones.
is
permitting
required
is
While A & ~A and B & ~B are strictly
equivalent, they do not coentail one another.
connected
modal
It does not involve
conditions
the
the move
law,
That is as much of a fallacy as - one
A
that would have that a
& ~A -> B,
contradiction such as A & ~A entails any statement whatsoever.
An
alternative
satisfactory
distinctive
implciation
deontic
way
then
logic
of
should
explaining
be
in
particular
of
relevant
paraconsistent,
feature of relevant logics, their
and
the
is
solution,
simply
and
through
why
the
a
most
rejection of the paradoxes of strict
Spread.
For,
as
remarked,
one
logical
characteristic of deontic notions such as obligation is their transmissibility; i.e.
where A
entails B then OA is logically sufficient for OB.10 Then were entailment
strict implication it would follow at once by Spread that 0(A & ~A) -> OB, whence by
O-adjunction, OA & 0~A -> OB.
basis
of
interpretations
straightforwardly on
RLR II).
of
Transmissibility may be independently argued for on the
entailment
(e.g.
as
content
inclusion),
and
follows
the semantical analysis of obligation to be advanced (cf. also
�5
A good deal
of effort has already been expended in trying to save mainstream
deontic theory from the worst of the difficulties
and consistency
requirements.
Most of
through its modal
it encounters,
the repairs
however
attempted amount
to
epicycling: trying to tack theory-saving devices onto the initial theory, rather than
questioning any fundamental features of it.
Intractable
exposed.
problems
is called
What
the
with
so-called
minimal
the standard system of deontic
system
already
have
been
logic is in an even worse
position than the minimal system, because it adds to the minimal system as an axiom
12
Then any standard system including a moral dilemma, 0(p^ & ~p ), is
13
o
o
simply inconsistent. For Op => Pp,
hence Pp^ & ~Pp-j where p1 is pQ & ~pQ.
~p(p & ~p).
Main marketed deontic logics are epicyclic variations on
(i)
standard deontic
logic,
being modal attempts
to repair
defects in earlier
prototypes.
They include
(ii)
reductions of
systems of
type
(i)
to alethic logics by introduction of a
constant ’o’ read, for example, ’the world will be worse off’ or 'punishment ought to
cr is the moral sanction or some bad state of affairs.
follow’:
is defined
Then *0'
EK-A^cr); i.e. A is obligatory iff the negation of A (non-fulfilment of A, it
OA
is said) necessitates the sanction.
It is usually postulated: -0^.
Such reductive
frameworks, since they include minimal deontic logic, repeat its defects.
(iii)
relativistic
systems
which
attempt
axiomatise
to
circumstances,
c',
conditional
of
reads ’p is obligatory given, or
permission and conditional obligation; thus ’0(p/c)
*
in
notions
underlying model being that of conditional
the
probability.
These systems were designed chiefly to avoid the paradoxes of derived obligation to
which systems of type
really
in
(as
and
(i)
probability
(ii)
theory)
lead.
to
But
the new operator, /,
compensate
for
implicational connective in the modal framework assumed.
so-called
"logics
of
conditional
e.g., van Fraassen, p.438
’...
obligation"
still
lack
the
is introduced
of
an
adequate
So, not surprisingly, these
exclude
moral
dilemmas
(thus,
it would be more apt to say that we have here a logic
of obligation that remains after obligational conflicts are resolved').
(iv)
systems which
conditional
d,
such
include a modal conditional functor superior to the material
as
a
Stalnaker-Lewis-style
conditional,
conditional deontic notions like those of (iii) can be defined.
in
terms
of
which
But these systems,
since modal, do not escape modal limitations and problems (see further RLR).
(v)
systems based
on a
logic of change or action. These systems turn out to be
reducible to a combination of absolute systems with tense logics, i.e.
14
to multiply modal systems and so repeat the problems of modal systems.
None of
these modal
types are satisfactory,
none can be made
so,
they amount
because of
�6
What is at
modal assumptions, like consistency requirements, that they all involve.
fault is not merely types of systems of this sort, which confine the framework to a
worlds
possible
defect enough,
one
thereby
and
but the
write
in
conditions,
consistency
that is
though
sweeping consistency interpretation of deontic
more
logic,
that ’principles of deontic logics are conditions of consistency for normative
systems’.^ The consistency interpretation - which is deeply entrenched in much
ethical
theory
(especially
making no adequate allowance
from Kant)
deriving
that
for what is essential
fundamentally mistaken,
- is
moral dilemmas and
to morality,
the familiar inconsistency of normative systems.
Documenting moral dilemmas. Cases of moral dilemmas are, perhaps unfortunately,
§3.
both familiar and inevitable.
perhaps not,
and
logic
theory
deontic
(including
is unfortunate
It
such
for standard deontic
approximations
rough
as
utilitarianism)
since they have ultimately to be dismissed as inadequate to account for the data.
is
also
often
extremely
On the other
dilemmas.
awkward
who
those
for
such dilemmas
hand,
probity, and are a main source of moral change.
A moral dilemma occurs when
considerations,
for
instance
cannot
T
situation
in
act
(where
such
a
of
which
shape
cannot, or
precisely
as
way
afford real tests of moral worth and
16
is confronted with moral
perhaps not directly inconsistent,
factual
the
probably cannot,
facts
satisfy
to
principles,
binding
obtain);
principles
that
is,
one
so
as
to
or
although
be satisfied
Then the situation T cannot but induce a moral fix.
considerations.
in moral
(but not only when) one
the
in
themselves enmeshed
find
It
in the
(probably)
meet
moral
This can come
about in two ways, either because of the logical limitations supposedly satisfied by
T,
in particular its consistency feature (that, whatever p,
does
not)
or
through
certain
contingent features
if p holds in T then ~p
of T. In
what
follows
we shall
concentrate on a major subclass of what are commonly accounted moral dilemmas, those
of (paraconsistent) logical interest where what is given or derived are pairs such as
OA and OB, WA and WB (i.e. A is wrong and so is B), or the like, where A and B are
And
incompatible.
of
particular
logical
importance
are
cases
where
deontically
incompatible pairs such as Op and 0~p, Wp and W~p, or the like are guaranteed.
The examples of moral dilemmas we consider provide only a small selection from
the
rich
variety
of
such
dilemmas,
but
hopefully
they
illustrate
that
variety.
Several of the examples involve more than one moral principle: however some commonly-
adopted moral principles generate dilemmas, of one sort or another,
their own.
pretty much on
Consider for instance first principles of the following type: Situations
involving the
(indiscriminate)
killing of numbers of (uninvolved) people should be
avoided, should not happen, are wrong - principle at very first approximation of the
form (p)(p satisfies condition C + Wp).
Applying such a principle, a dilemma results
�7
where
and
occurs a large number of people will be killed,
if p obtains or
if ~p
obtains a large number of people will also be killed.
War situations provide obvious examples, with the V(ietnam) dilemma typical.
17
For example, people have described the situation in Vietnam as follows (not that it
really is this way):
If the Americans withdraw from Vietnam, a large number of people
If the Americans stay in (do not withdraw from) Vietnam,
will be killed.
number of people will
withdraw
from
C. Hence
under
be killed.
Vietnam',
Hence,
condition
satisfies
p
where p is
C
'the Americans withdraw from
~p
and
the principle both p and ~p are wrong,
similar is the company commander's dilemma.
of his troops will be killed.
a large
also
i.e.
satisfies condition
18
Wp and W~p.
Rather
If he invades the hamlet, a large number
If he does not invade the hamlet the prisoners held
Taking p as 'he invades the hamlet', p satisfies C and
therein will be killed, etc.
~p satisfies C. Therefore, Wp & W~p.
Both p and-not p are wrong; neither would occur
The killing does not however have to be of large numbers
in an acceptable situation.
of people to induce moral dilemmas.
variants on the commander's dilemma
Favourite
regularly wheeled out concern murdering a potential murderer to prevent him killing
several other
presented
people and
with
the
related constrained
option
killing
of
some
choice situations
smaller
special
person is
where a
group
of
people
(or
creatures) in order to avoid the certain killing of a larger or less favoured group
1Q
of creatures. 7
The pacifist's (or differently seen, patriot's) dilemma, which Lemmon draws from
on
Sartre, concerns the proposition p^: Z goes to war.
If Z does not go to war, he
help his friends and
fails to
fellow countrymen when they are in desperate need.
Thus ~p-j is wrong, W-p-j , on the principle that so failing to help one's friends and
fellow countrymen is wrong.
If Z goes to war, he will be involved in killing people
he has nothing morally or otherwise against; whence Wp^, on the principle that things
which involve such killing are wrong.
Therefore again Wp^ and W~pp
A different sort of example, again however involving the taking of life in one
way or another is the abortion dilemma (as conceived by Anglicans, say).
presented as a clash between conflicting rights.
to life
(i.e.
(on
that
the
one
part of the
should
not
foetus);
have one's
In one corner, there is the right
in the other, the right to bodily integrity
body used
against one's
detriment for someone else’s benefit) on the part of the mother.
where
a
particular
state
of
affairs
is
an
instance
of
both
so
(~p)
and
will
principles.
Hence Wp.
would deny the mother's right to bodily integrity.
Whence adjoining, Wp & W~p.
to one's
A dilemma results
performance of an abortion (p) would deny the foetal right to life.
not doing
This can be
The
But
Hence W~p.
�8
Not so far removed from these examples, particularly when omission is conflated
with commission,
are environmentally-oriented
examples involving
sacrifice (broadly
construed),
for
resources.
Suppose that we have a duly qualified principle to the effect that things
which lead
to the feeding of starving people should happen.
example the
is a dilemma of limited
three cases:- First
following
Suppose also that we
have limited resources, and have decided to distribute these as follows: If the coin
comes down heads (p), then group A of starving people will be fed.
But if the coin
does not come down heads (~p) then group B of starving people will be fed.
Plainly
in an ideal situation both p and ~p will occur, that is the coin will come down heads
and it will not come down heads, so that both groups of people will be fed.
And if
the moral principle cited is correctly applied then a case of Op and 0~p results.
course minor
Of
involved leads to conclusions of the form
adjustment of the principle
W~p and W—p, whence Wp.
For an analogous conservationist * s (or humanitarian * s) dilemma consider the case
forest
where it ought to happen that the
is chopped down,
the benefit of the
for
presently starving (or etc.), and it ought to happen that the forest is preserved by
positive action
and
Op
dilemma
for the benefit of coming generations (or etc.).
0~p
emerges
the
from
of
application
distinct
In this case the
The
principles.
society dilemma, concerns the reform of primitive societies so that they
primitive
Consider the dilemma of a feminist environmentalist as
conform to outside standards.
regards Aboriginal
On the
women.
other
hand,
suppression of women in Aboriginal
society should be opposed; on the other hand major western interference in Aboriginal
affairs should be avoided; but changing the position of women would constitute major
interference.
Different examples involving
public
institution)
dilemma,
which
following:- On the one hand,
the
be restricted and the
funds will
principle
being
the
concerns
preposition
p2:
the
University
The Vice-Chancellor, or rather his advisor on logic, argues
opposes the government.
both
separate principles are the Vice-Chancellor * s (or
formulated
Wp2,
p2 is wrong,
students and
accordingly).
On
because the University’s
learning in general will suffer
the
other
hand,
W~p2,
~p2
(the
is wrong
because #p# will strengthen the present iniquitous status quo (the principle being
states
that
of
affairs
which
strengthen
the
present
status
quo
be
philosophers,
is
iniquitous
avoided). Therefore, conjoining Wp2 & W~p2»
A
signifi ant
source
of
moral
dilemmas,
long
observed
by
afforded by a relatively unrestricted institution of promising, and more generally by
parallel
institutional
arrangements
for
entering
perhaps worth distinguishing two classes of cases.
situations,
Z
is under
an obligation
into
(moral)
Firstly,
contracts.
It
is
in purely contractual
p, because of a contract or promise, and also
�9
under an obligation q, because of a (likely different) contract, where q entails or
In the second sort of case, Z has promised to do ~p, and hence
commits one to ~p.
But p also satisfies conditions C,
0~p.
it emerges, and Z adheres to the principle
(q)(Cq ->0q), whence Op.
As an example of the
second type consider Lemmon’s simple and dated example,
adapted from Plato:
A friend leaves me with his gun saying he will be back for it in the evening,
and I promise to return it when he calls.
He arrives in a distraught
condition, demands his gun, and announces he is going to shoot his wife
because she has been unfaithful. I ought to return the gun, since I promised
to do so - a case of obligation.
And yet I ought not to do so, since to do
so would be to be indirectly responsible for a murder, and my moral
principles are such that I regard this as wrong.
I am in an extremely
straightforward moral dilemma, evidently resolved by not returning the gun
(62, p.148).
According to Lemmon the outcome is both Op, where p is ’I return the gun’, and also
The
0~p.
namely,
for
first
an
inference
concerning
promise-keeping;
every q, that q is a genuine promise entails Oq (for
genuine promises
follows
engender obligations),
from
and p
is a
immediate
genuine
promise.
inference of the following sort: for every q,
The
second
follows
that q really contributes to a murder
implies Wq, and that p really contributes to a murder; and moreover,
-> 0~q.
using an
for every q, Wq
Even if this last principle is repudiated a dilemma remains: for both Op and
Wp, i.e. I ought to return the gun and it is wrong that I return the gun.
that the initial principle sustains the conclusion 0~q as well.
(It may be
In any case,
it is
not difficult to amend Lemmon’s example so that it does, or more important, so as to
render the ensuing dilemma more convincing.)
Other dilemmas recur in variant form with contracts and promises.
For instance,
limited resources dilemmas reappear as follows: we promise all our surplus to a group
of poor only to have even poorer people turn up.
where
one's
deception,
employment calls
or
participation in
for
activities
Similarly work and role dilemmas,
which are
the production of nuclear
morally repugnant
(such as
or chemical weapons), may
arise either contractually, e.g. one signed up for the position, or from duty, e.g.
to provide for one's family.
Some of the moral dilemmas we have made look more determinate than perhaps they
should, or than they would be if the circumstances were filled out, or got filled out
slightly differently.
Then we should find that some of the dilemmas take the form of
Lemmon's more complex class, namely those where rather than OA and 0~A, what one has
is Prob OA and Prob 0~A, where Prob is the probability functor ’it is probable that'.
Lemmon describes
this class of "fully dilemmatic situations" in these terms:
’there
�10
is some,
but not conclusive, evidence
that one ought to do something, and there is
some, but not conclusive, evidence that one ought not to do that thing’ (pp.152-3).
sort of dilemma is again drawn from Sartre: in
A real-life working example of this
brief, Sartre’s pupil is under some (sort of) obligation to stay with his mother, but
he
also probably under
is
an obligation,
felt only ambiguously,
to join the Free
French in England (for a fuller description see Lemmon, pp.153-4).
Lemmon suggests
that this class of dilemmas is, and perhaps should stay beyond deontic formalisation:
however the dilemmas are now within the scope of formalisation of a sort by multiple
functor intensional logics of a type not different
represent such principles as ’’ought implies can”.22
those already
from
needed to
Though we have presented a wide variety of dilemmas, some of them in some detail
- to
the
dispel
that dilemmas
common prejudice
are a rare
phenomena that can be
safely set aside or that need not be taken seriously in an ethical theory - we have
by no means exhausted the range and wealth of such dilemmas.
the
extent
of
analogues
practical
of
these
Nor have we indicated
the
dilemmas;
fact
is
that
similar
dilemmas are frequent in economics, over budgeting, devaluation (we ought to devalue
because ... and we ought not to devalue because ...), and so on.
Nor have we brought
out the political significance of the dilemmas; but the fact also is that some of the
deeper problems in moral and political theory revolve around dilemmas.
Familiar
examples
are
issues
of
(permitting
permissiveness
interests possibly harming or
licence
individuals
to
pursue
offending others) and freedom (restricting freedom as
regards actions which infringe others
*
freedom), of paternalism and state authority
versus civil liberties, and of democracy as against minority interests.
A
assortment
varied
accounts of the
where sources
of
examples
is
source of moral dilemmas,
for moral claims conflict,
contractual obligations.
Lemmon
also
in particular
and
promises,
is attracted
principles
as
those
morally
simplistic
that they generally arise
greatest
(p.150).
But he
fact that one and the same
conflicting directives
requiring
type,
since principle may conflict with
or duties, may conflict with one another
principle can deliver
such
removing
by an account of this latter
underestimates the extent of conflict, and neglects the
contract or
in
e.g. duty with principles, principles with
while realising that it will not always suffice,
principle
important
(e.g.
double maximization
happiness
of
the
greatest
number).
As well
a sufficient variety of tough examples helps remove the illusion that
moral dilemmas can one and all be escaped.
Admittedly, fortunately, there are ways
around some of the dilemmas we have outlined, especially those we have borrowed.
with
perhaps
further
around the dilemmas),
artifice
in
setting up
the cases
(to exclude
But
lateral moves
some of the dilemmas stand: from them (as is further argued in
�11
residue
’To insist that there is in every case a solution without
is no escape.
§ 6) there
false
is
the
to
moral
facts’
p.132),
Marcus
(Barcan
a
theme
she
well
illustrates with the abortion dilemma.
§4.
deontic
Paraconsistent
logic
cannot be modal
makes
it
modal
treatment
the relevant development.
logic:
An adequate deontic
have to be paraconsistent.
but will
For
a modal treatment
to accommodate moral dilemmas - which are hard data
impossible
it
makes
as dilemmas
treat dilemmas
impossible to
(§3)•
A
without
proper
catastrophic collapse (as shown in §1).
The
of
principles
standard
deontic
logic
are,
however,
as
added to
readily
various paraconsistent logics as they are to modal or classical logic - at least this
(e.g.
OP),
in
(da Costa
negation-weakened
namely
logic and now distinguished
style)
logic
paraconsistent
and
For Jaskowski-style discussive logics there are some difficulties;
relevant logics.
in
styles of paraconsistent
two of the main
for
is true
particular,
the
given
of
rejection
can
principles,
adjunction
such
logics
satisfactorily include O-adjunction, OA & OB -> 0(A & B), which reflects adjunction in
for the possible-worlds sentential framework
It would seem not;
acceptable worlds?
logic offers no way of handling
of Jaskowski-style
the form 0(C & ~C) that result by O-adjunction.
properly accommodate dilemmas,
for
dilemmas concerning obligation, where
such as moral
clearly
principles
difficulties;
For these require impossible worlds
Generally, Jaskowski-style logics are in deep trouble trying to
where C & ~C holds.
adjunctive
full-strength moral dilemmas of
logics
Negation—weakened
hold.
they cannot deliver
expected deontic
also
are
interconnections, e.g.
in
the
deontic ’’square of opposition”, presented shortly, which depends crucially on normal
principles.
negation
In
difficulties.
Relevant
brief,
deontic
the reasons
types of paraconsistent logics
logics
can
both
avoid
choosing relevant logics over
for
(the substantial
sets
these
of
other main
reasons for which are given in OP)
are accentuated still farther as soon as applications, such as to deontic logic, are
Accordingly we will assume a relevant logical base, and a relevant semantical
made.
in what follows.
framework,
Even so, much of what we say and do can be adapted to
other logical bases, e.g. negation-weakened or positive-plus bases.
Often
a
combined
syntactical-semantical
is
approach
more
fruitful
and
illuminating than either a syntactical-axiomatic or a semantical approach carried out
separately. Each enriches and controls the other.23 Such is the case with relevant
logical theory,
logic.
Even
analogue
of
and so it is with relevant deontic logic, which builds on relevant
so,
a
standard
syntactical
deontic
standard superstructure,
relevant logic.
beginning
logic
we
normally added
can
is
easier.
simply
add
For
an
to
obtain
exact
a
analogue
relevant
of
the
to classical logic, to (what supersedes CL)
�12
For minimal relevant deontic logic, MD, the one-place functor 0 - of obligation,
as usual
read
(e.g.
’It ought
suitable
some
to be
extending
system
that’ - is added
(the case)
B
system
basic
the
to some relevant logic
of
RLR
conforms to the usual formation rule: where A is a wff so is OA.
however
are
options
at
Functor, F read
’It is forbidden that’, is defined thus:
’It is permissible that’, is defined : PA =Df~FA.
FA =Df 0~A (cf. OED); and P, read
There
this
stage
(as
at
e.g.
stages),
can
morality,
be
argued,
from
directions
several
other
F
could
oh
introduced independently. But this leads to complications that are unnecessary.
It
0
The other familiar
functors of deontic logic, F and P, are defined in the usual way.
’It is wrong that’ or, less satisfactorily,
Functor
I).
(e.g.
from
the
rationality
be
of
from the meaning or semantics of obligation, from the idea of commitment),
that 0 satisfies at least the following requirements:[RM] A -> B -> OA -> OB,
i.e. where A + B is a theorem so is OA -> OB.
That is to say,
where A entails B is provable so is OA entails OB, obligation transmits over provable
entailment.
Hence
the claim that this principle (R7 of RLR II) is a transmission
principle.
[K]
OA
& OB
regards
the
i.e.
-> 0(A & B),
conjunction;
or,
a conjunction of obligations entails obligation as
to
adjunction (principle G of RLR II).
These two important
it
put
25
principles,
entailment and adjunction, make 0 a
a
little
differently
0
is
closed
which ensure that 0 is closed under
under
provable
systemic functor (in the sense of RLR II), and
ensure that it has a relational (i.e. first order) semantical analysis.
The postulates which correspondingly minimally characterise deontic functions F
and
P
now
follow
by
relevant
logic
upon applying
the definitions.
They
are as
follows:For wrongness:
A
For permissibility :
With
the
A + B -*>
functor
further
B —f> FByFA
Q,
FA & FB
P(A v BH, PAv
PA + PB
defined
F(A v B)
QA =Df ~0A,
a
reduced
pb
deontic
square
of
opposition follows:
0Ax ...............FA
PA^ .............. .QA
The opposites are
dotted peripheral
opposed,
as modally,
relations of the modal
in
the way the solid lines show.
But the
square are bound to be the lost given the
�13
the modal
(on
fact of deontic dilemmas
square
Prior 62 p.220).
see
is worth
It
observing, however, that the peripheral relations can be reinstated through adoption
of the so-called consistency scheme
OA -> ~FA, i.e. OA + ~0~A;
[D]
and that the relevant deontic logic that results still excludes the rubbish brought
in
along
deontic
standard
necessary truths,
Nordamericano
of
that
course
not
(though
paradoxes,
essentially because paradoxical
etc.),
deontic
obligatoriness
the
of
spread principles are not
whereas
triviality),
incorporate dilemmas.
the
as
degenerate
dilemma-permitting
The problem with deontic logics which include [D]
also
cannot
they
well
as
logic,
Antipodean form we are advocating.
is
deontic
In short, relevant theory can deliver a clean-cut, clean-living, dilemma-
available.
free
(e.g.
logic
include
relevant
moral
dilemmas
systems
without
without
can
[D]
inconsistency
consistently
These various logical claims, as to the modal rubbish that is
not brought along, can all be made good by application of the semantical theory. The
semantics shows what does not hold, as well as further explaining why the principles
that hold do.
Semantics for MD result upon adding to modellings for relevant logic a two-place
relation S, on worlds, which is subject to the following condition
W.
b and Sbc then Sac,
Where a
i.e. where world a precedes b (indeed canonically a is contained in b) and world c is
accepted vis-a-vis b then c is accepted vis-a-vis a. Given that a is a subworld of b
this is evident enough.
Distinctive features of the underlying semantical modellings
for relevant logic - consisting of structures of the form <T, K, 0, R, *,
be
sufficiently
and,
well-known
any
in
are
case,
explained
v> - should
elsewhere.
These
structures differ from the best of those for modal logics, the nonnormal structures
<T, K,
N, R, v> for the Lewis systems S2 and S3,
in the following ways:- The class K
of worlds, to which the factual (base) world T belongs, is expanded to include a much
more comprehensive class of inconsistent and incomplete worlds; the class N of normal
worlds
K is
in
adjusted
theorems hold; relation R,
to
a
three-place
the class
to
v(p,
sentential
a)
relation
=
parameter
1)
regular worlds,
i.e.
worlds;
on
then
and
wff.
I(A, b)
=
1,
where all
on
is
subject
to
a
constraint
where I
is the
so
that
Specifically, where a < b and p holds in a
p holds in b,
p. Conditions
v
for every world a and b
modelling
structures
are
hereditariness condition extends to all wff; i.e. in symbols, where a
1 then
those
used in modelling implication, is relaxed from a two-place
inclusion of worlds is duly reflected.
(written
0 of
in K and every
such
that
this
b & I(A, a) =
interpretation function which extends v to all
Inclusion, <, can be added as an extra component of the model structures, but
in fact it can be defined thus:
a < b =Df (Px 0)Rxab.
Finally relevant modellings
�14
add to modal modellings a new function, *,
in terms of which negation is evaluated,
27
which facilitates the inclusion of inconsistent and incomplete worlds.
same role and interpretation as in standard
relation S has the
The semantical
It is employed in the semantical evaluation of obligation functor 0,
deontic theory.
which is given by the following rule:
I(0a, a) = 1 iff, for every world b such
that Sab, I(A, b) = 1, i.e. OA holds at world a iff, for each world b accepted vis-avis a, A holds at b.28 The rule is a world relativisation of the idea that what is
obligatory is
what holds
in all
accepted worlds.
(morally)
It
is thus an evident
adaption of Leibnitzian prescriptions, given the linkages between obligation or moral
binding and moral "musts” or imperatives, on the one side, and morally possible and
or
acceptable
accepted
worlds,
the
on
other.
The
for
motivation
unrelativised
connections can be forged at base world T; for there
A is (morally) required, I(0A, T) = 1, iff for every b for which Mb
I(A, b) = 1 (where Mb =Df STb), i.e.
That is, what is required is
iff A holds in every (morally) accepted world.
what holds in all accepted or received worlds.
Other construals of the semantical apparatus are of course open.
tempting
ideal,
temptation
(a
succumbed
to
initially)
regard
the
accepted
worlds as
and Sab as ’b is ideal as seen from c’.
to read Mb as 'b is ideal’
i.e.
to
It is a little
But
that is like requiring supererogation in cases where the meeting of commitments or
obligations is enough: the worlds do not need to be that good but simply to pass, to
meet required standards.
is
worlds.
acceptable
through
A perhaps easier construal than by way of accepted worlds
construal
That
is
alright
provided
the
term
’’acceptable” is deployed, as it often is, nonevaluatively : for it is important in the
semantical assessment to
prescriptions
for
be able to make an evaluative step—down, to give meaning
evaluative
expressions
nonevaluative terms.
in
Naturally this
does not imply that evaluative notions are naturalistically eliminated, any more than
familiar
terms,
extensional
reductions,
semantical
extensional
analysis
of
intensional
implies that intensionality is removed: both are merely pushed down into the
not-further-explained apparatus of worlds.
Obligation is construed by way of what goes on in acceptable or accepted worlds,
not
what
happens
in
permissible
or
permitted
directly with the construal of permissibility.
one another,
but in
worlds,
because
this
latter
Given modal muddles the two reduce to
the more subtle relevant setting star shift is involved in the
transfer from accepted to permitted worlds.
The (derived)
semantical rule for P is
this:
KPA,
a) =
ties
1 iff for some b such
that Uab
I(A, b)
= 1,
where Uab
.
b
*
Sa
�15
at base
Thus,
A is permissible,
world T,
i.e.
I(PA,
=
1)
iff A holds at some
1,
permitted world b; what is permissible is worldwise what is somewhere permitted.
modal equation of relations U and S
further
axioms,
deontic
the
(where
namely
if Sab
(in effect,
condition
then Sa
)
b
*
(Pb)Sab
The
corresponds to
e.g.
guaranteed,
is
modally by ~0(P & ~p)) by the scheme OA ^PA.
Now modal-strength deontic logics typically do include an axiom scheme of the
form
[D’J
OA
-> ~PA,
i.e.
from
(alethic)
is obligatory
is not
that
permissible,
under modal
is,
Indeed this used to be considered what distinguished deontic
~0~A.
assumptions, OA
logics
what
modal
on
logics
the
one
side,
which
include
a
stronger
principle analogous to OA -*■ A, and epistemic logics on the other, which were weaker
in
that
[D’J
failed.
However
[D’J, like
[D], is deontically incorrect
because it
rules out consistent inclusion of moral dilemmas; or, to turn matters around, cases
where OA & 0~A,
[D’]»
which
or OA & FA, hold counterexample [D].
may
seem
a
little
more
plausible
transform of it on usual deontic definitions.
than
Similarly these cases refute
[D],
but
is
a
definitional
For what is obligatory is not ipso
facto permissible where the obligatory item is also wrong, as in dilemmatic cases.
To distance relevant deontic logic from modal analogues, while at the same time
demonstrating that relevant theory can encompass moral dilemmas unproblematically , we
next assume that some moral dilemmas hold, that is that for some p, both Op and Fp.
Since however
propositional quantifiers much complicate the semantical apparatus we
shall introduce constants into the syntax, and let p^ be the first constant for which
a dilemma ensues. That is, a new axiom, extending the logic, is
[DD] 0p1 & Fpp i.e. p1 is dilemmatic.3°
The modelling condition for [DD], is
wd.
For each a in 0, for some world x, Sax and v(ppx) = 1= v(ppX
).
*
This condition, which does not involve T, does not impose nonclassical conditions on
normal worlds.
Accordingly [DD] is only a weakly paraconsistent requirement; it does
not imply that inconsistency protrudes into the factual
or regular
worlds.
Indeed
one advantage of the semantics is that it enable proof that dilemmatic judgements can
be included without inconsistency.
By contrast, modal theories cannot include
even one half of [DD]
do) without automatically excluding dilemmatic judgements.
consideration has a thesis 0p2 for some
(either will
Suppose the logic under
Then for every x in 0 there is some y
such that Sxy with p2 set to hold at y. But modally this is enough to guarantee that
[D] holds materially,
More
explicitly,
so ~(0A & 0~A) generally,
suppose
otherwise
that
in
i.e. there can be no such dilemmas.
some
model
the
material
form
of
[D]
�failed;
I(OA,
then
=
T)
1
=
I(A~O,
T),
which
impossibility at y since I(A, y) = 1 i I(A, y).
syntactical
problems
earlier in
1).
even
for
Although [DD] implies Op^,
very weak
obligatory is
conjured
from the fact
some
for
STy
yields
y
This is a semantical analogue of the
deontic logics
(considered
type
of modal
it does not say, nor does it follow, that OT for any
Such modal stupidity as that every necessary
and every tautology T (e.g. C v ~C).
truth is
since
automatically removed
that relevant
in the
relevant wash.
can be
This
theory removes such paradoxes as p1
from which 0(A v ~A) would follow modally by 0—distribution (i.e.
A v ~A,
Again the
[RM]).
semantics can be applied to establish the point in proper detail.
primitive principles of minimal relevant logic are open to challenge,
Both the
and
[K]
*
Jennings
has
been
disputed
by
Schotch
(in
Jennings
and
81).
The
main
Schotch-
arguments against [K] — which induces what they call ’paradoxes of complete
*
aggregation
essentially
turn
—
automatically avoided
on
modal
deontic
by relevant
and
assumptions,
Their
theory.
accordingly
are
(p.152,
also
main point
p.154) is that [K] obliterates the distinction between [D] (i.e. Op
~0~p) and
[Con] ~0 , i.e. in effect ~0(r & ~r).
Their argument depends on construing implication in [D] as material-implication and
on strict replacement.
~0~p iff ~(0p & 0~p), i.e. iff ~0(p & ~p) using [K]
Then Op
and its provable converse,
i.e.
iff ~0(r & ~r) using p & ~p
- .
r & ~r and strict
According to the relevant approach the trouble is not with [K] but with
replacement.
the modal assumptions, which are independently objectionable (see
1).
Their further
argument begins from the premiss that ’we should certainly want to include among our
deontic principles the law of moral consistency [Con]
across
cuts
all
different things.
moral
theories’
(pp.153-6).
The
...
because that principle
premiss
appears
to
conflate
What cuts across all moral theories is the theme that some things,
such as a sufficiently evil state of affairs, are not obligatory, whence ~0s.
does cut across all
theories is the assumption that there are no moral dilemmas of
the form 0(A & ~A), which is what [Con], with
not
just
that
there
What
are
theories
like
properly defined, would imply.
those
of Lemmon
and Sartre
It is
which include
contradictory obligations; it is also that some theorists would want to insist that
there is something logically wrong with principles like [Con], e.g. that it doesn’t
make sense to talk of the nonobligatoriness of absurdity.
Schotch and Jennings do contend that we should allow for moral conflict of the
form OA & OB where A and B are inconsistent.
their
assumptions
there
[K]
stops
rejection
of
are
moral dilemmas
that
yielding
Since then B -> ~A,
of the
0(A & -A).
it follows that on
form OA & 0~A.
Yet
as
they
Certainly only
themselves
have
reported, the consensus view is that there are (in the end) no dilemmas of the form
�OA & O~A: insofar,
all theories’,
’cuts across
then, rejection of dilemmas of the form 0(A & ~[~]A)
so, near enough, does rejection of those of the form OA & 0~A.
What
certainly does not emerge is that
there can
[K].
The
be no deontic logic which takes as a primitive law the principle
be
can
that
best
if
done,
subscribe to [K],
we
is to
formalise
ethical theories - namely those which do not allow moral
certain particular
conflicts (p. 156).
logics provide decisive counterexamples to this contention.
Relevant deontic
They
can take [K] as primitive: they allow for moral conflict; but they do so by allowing,
like Lemmon, for moral inconsistency.31
disconcerting
More
from
flowing
the
than
fundamental
difficulties
deriving
principles,
transmission
[K]
from
are
allegedly
those
difficulties
include
which
well-advertised paradoxes of deontic logic.
§ 5.
Resultant
on
impact
other
relevant paraconsistent shift.
and
puzzles
of
paradoxes
deontic
theory
of
the
Often cleaning up one logical puzzle in due technical
detail has a beneficial effect on surrounding puzzles and on associated problems in
the area.
Light is cast on, and
So it turns out also in the case of moral dilemmas.
Among them
sometimes solutions are delivered for, a number of other linked problems.
are the following puzzles generated by theorems of (relevant) deontic logic.
are,
the ’’paradoxes of commitment”. Where material implciation => is
in first place,
defined as usual, e.g.
T1.
There
~A v ~B, it is a theorem that
A ° B
0(B => A), whence if OA then 0(B 25 A),
OA
sometimes
read:
A
if
is
then
obligatory
anything
one
commits
to
A,
or:
’Doing
anything commits us to doing what is obligatory’;
T2.
FA
OCA => B), if 0~A then 0(A = B),
sometimes read: if A is forbidden then doing A commits one to doing anything at all,
or:
’Doing what is not permitted commits us to doing anything whatever’
readings are
proceed
from Prior
from
there
interpretation of
paradoxes
symbols,
the
The claims read off are paradoxical.
62, p.224).
to
little justification - reading ’0(A
commits one to doing B’.
the
in
and
(the quoted
in
logic
this case
B)’
as
depends,
always,
depends crucially
on -
But to
on
the
what has
as a commitment relation, e.g. as ’doing A
Such a reading which presupposes that material implication
is a satisfactory conditional can in no way be sustained (see RLR), and that is the
end of the problem.
that
A
then
paradoxical
guises;
and
it
If,
ought
to
for example, T1
be
features disappear.
these
commitment
the
case
is simply read: if it ought to be the case
that
either not
B or
A,
then
the alleged
However puzzles have a tendency to reappear in new
puzzles
are
no
exception.
Even
with
conditional
�18
terms of obligation applied to a
properly defined in
obligation
conditional,
the
puzzles
in
reemerge
new
forms,
example,
for
genuine (relevant)
in
is
what
called
’’Ross’s paradox”, and in related transmission problems.
It has been claimed that the principle,
OA -> 0(A v B), yielding if OA then 0(A v B)
T3.
is
which
T1,
to
equivalent
is
Ross paradox principle),
-
paradoxical
to do either A or B,
it
may
be
More generally, given OA,
obligatory to read a letter but not to read or burn it.
there is an obligation
example,
for
because,
where the content of B may be totally
do
to
established.
(The comment goes beyond what T3 supplies, but that is not material).
the
in
circumstance
which
obligation
the
to
is
set
inappropriate
A
or
A similar objection is made to the analogous permissibility principle
PA ■> P(A v B),
T4.
Ross’s paradox,
on the alleged grounds that there are examples where A is permissible but A
For example,
be.
not
the following
it is permissible
that
to post a
takes
based
on
some
one
application of T4 is said to the paradoxical:
letter
false proposition
the
distance
implies that
it is permissible to post a
The assumption that there is some sort of paradox here is
letter or kill one’s aunt.
however
B may
the
towards
that the
permissibility of
of
permissibility
killing
the consequent
one’s
The
aunt.
proposition itself seems to be based on an application, never articulated and quite
inadmissible,
of Disjunctive Syllogism,
distribution,
P(~A &. A
For
PB.
(A v b) ■+ B, and what results from P-
it may certainly be permissible not to post
However it is assuming more than standard deontic logics will grant to
the letter.
go on
)
~A &
to the permissibility of not posting the letter and
letter
or
killing
disjunction.
one’s
aunt,
especially
given
the
also either
derivation
of
posting the
latter
the
Still going on remains tempting (and would presumably be warranted by a
Lukasiewicz deontic logic analogous to his 4-valued modal logic).
But so going on is
to no avail in a duly relevant setting, where Disjunctive Syllogism fails: there is
no
admissible
route
here
to
the
permissibility
of
killing
aunt,
one’s
however
desirable the act might otherwise be.
main
The
transmission
conditional obligation,
strict
implication,
as
problems
in
found
also modally derived.
an
adequate
deontic
logic
are,
like
those
of
They come from reliance on material or
representation
of
implication.
The
worst
manifestation of this is that already discussed, deontic trivialisation leading from
Op^ and 0~p.| to OB,
for
any B,
in virtue of the provability of p^ & ~p^ => B.
But
there are variety of lesser manifestations of the same underlying problem, of which
the following example (adapted from recent discussion) is just one sort:
p4.
We have an obligation to feed the starving poor D. There exist starving poor.
Therefore,
since
starving poor,
it ought to be
by O-transmission,
the case
it ought
that we meet our obligation to feed the
to be that there exist starving poor, a
�19
that
is
far
from obviously true.
deontic logic,
for
the
simple reason
presupposition
relation,
conclusion
of
transmission problems of modal
the
that the
cannot
p4
Such analyses do not
entailment.
an
to
rather
or
implication,
(material-)
upgraded
be
plague relevant
The
many
systems all enamate from excessive O-distribution on
basis of implications will
not
them,
support
in the
as
following transmission
principles typical of orthodox deontic logics, all of which should be rejected:
OCA D B) D. OA 3 OB
A D B -> OA 3 OB
A => B =>. OA => OB.
With their rejection a thorny tangle of modally-derived paradoxes is also rejected.
There appears however to be an immense temptation to try to impose excessively
strong transmission principles; and the same phenomenon to be seen at work in modal
contexts can also be observed when a proper entailment is introduced.3^ This occurs,
particular,
in
attempts
in
to
’’normalise”
[RM],
to
strengthen
it
a
from
rule
connection to an entailment, for instance, to (the characteristic S3 form)
[OT] A + B +. OA + OB;
it occurs with analogous changes thereon,
and
e.g.
A-> B.
PA
PB and A
FB + FA, as well with as imported forms of these principles, e.g. OA & (A
and (A -> B) & FB
As an example of the
FA.
B
B)
OB
type of puzzles that [OT] produces
consider
p5.
Grannie killed the vicar.
Grannie repented for having killed the vicar
The
problem with putative
entailments such as p5
is that,
while we are ordinarily
(with the context duly flashed out) inclined to agree that Grannie ought to repent,
we
don’t want to agree
to have killed the vicar.
that Grannie ought
The problem
turns essentially however on the availability of [OT] in place of [RM], for p5 is not
a provable entailment of the underlying logical theory (and there is little case for
it one),
trying to make
sc
[RM]
does not apply to p5,
in contrast with
awkwardness [OT] appears to require, of having somehow
entailment, is thereby straightforwardly avoided.33
Most
the
of
paradoxes
falling
paradoxes and Robber paradoxes can be
paradoxes and usual
forms of these
resolution.
one’s
According
helping
a
man
under
such
to
deny
descriptions
as
similarly resolved or avoided.
variations
upon
[OT]. The
is
that
p5
Good
Samaritan
an
The original
them certainly succumb to such
to the Robber’s paradox if robbing a man is
forbidden then
The
Good Samaritan
whom
one has
robbed
is
also
forbidden.
paradox is a further turn on this paradox: not only the robber’s helping a man he has
robbed
is wrong,
so is someone else’s, a
good Samaritan’s,
helping the
robbed man
(see Prior 58).
-
be
It is undoubtedly paradoxical that it should - especially as a matter of logic
wrong to help a man who has been robbed: but do any fundamental deontic
�20
principles commit us to such a thing, for appropriate substitutions on variables? No,
These puzzles all take the following form: B, which describes something
they do not.
admittedly wrong, gets in or implied as part of the description of something larger,
A, arising as a result of the situation in B; however A is not wrong but perhaps even
Nothing
required.
theory;
and
in
none of
shows
this
the
however
that
A
B
literature can
examples in the
the
provable in
is
it
There
be.
logical
is another
important feature, commonly neglected however, which is that A does not assert B. If
it did,
then A,
since amounting
to A & B, would appear to be wrong also, as B is.
This points to a difficulty also for the usual assumption that A entails B; for then
A (certainly modally) coentails A & B, whence the wrongness of A coincides with that
of A & B, the wrongness of which would seem to be guaranteed by B. If however A only
involves B in a weaker sense, [OT] is exonerated.3^
The paradoxes can be pushed another way, to contest this data, and bear against
systems as minimal as MD. For MD yields theorems like the following:
T5.
FB
T6.
0(
F(A & B), whence if FB then F(A & B).
OB, whence if 0(A & B) then OB.
&B)
theses,
Such minimal
it
is now suggested,
are
paradoxical
in
the
same way as the
Robber. This is not so: only gross confusion of decidedly distinct syntactical forms
- a practice formalisation can unfortunately encourage - could support such a
suggestion. If it is wrong to rob a man then it is wrong to rob him and help him;35
but it is not thereby wrong to help him, indeed to help him who has been robbed.
But
the relative and the tense shift are both important; and the whole relative clause in
no way reduces to a conjunction conjoining robbing the man.
The positivistic objection that the paradoxes of deontic logic show that there
is really no ’’logic of norms” has come even from a modern founder of deontic logic,
von Wright.
This he now contends that
There is no such thing as an "entailment” between a norm Op and a norm 0(p q)
- and Ross’s paradox makes us aware of the absurdity of talking as though it
existed. ... Ross was right when he offered his paradox as a proof that,
properly understood, there could not be such a thing as a logic of norms (82,
p.15, rearranged, emphasis suggested in text).
And
he
’essentially
(p.14).
(also
also
But
mistakenly)
of
variations
given
that
one
regards
and
the
von Wright
contains such normative tautologies Op
are
inevitable.
Thus
while
’’paradoxes’*
the
same,
viz.
wants also
the
of
deontic
so-called
to supply
logic
as
Ross’s Paradox’
a deontic
logic,
which
0(p q), some subtle and dubious distinctions
Op & ~0(p q)
is
normatively
inconsistent,
inconsistent; while Op can be thus said to ’’normatively entail” 0(p q)
it
is not
it does not;
and while Op comes rational commitment to Op, it does not carry logical commitment to
�it.
the
Unlike
said
are
connections
associated
to
and
entailment
(p.15).
no paradoxes
induce
other
But
normative
these
relations,
what is
said
go
to
for
normative entailment can be said as well as regards entailment, that one (e.g. a law
giver)
is
Op
adopts
who
rationally
to
0(p q)
going on to endorse the entailment of 0(p q) by Op.
for
a oitrary
addition
away there is no puzzle in
associations are cleared
once mistaken modal
q. Indeed
committed
The ’’paradoxes” of deontic logic
are not a reflection of the illusory notion of a logic of norms but rather a product
of a modal logic of norm.
However von Wright has other significant reasons for insisting that (in a sense)
’norms have no logic or that normative discourse is ’’alogical”’
from
noncognitivism,
that
symbolising norms,
formulas’,
’prescriptive
standard
a
on
One derives
(p.4).
interpretation
deontic
’do not express true and false propositions.
It makes
no sense to speak of relations of contradiction or entailment between formulas when
thus interpreted ’
hold
nontruthvalued
regards
as
semantical
This is not so:
(p.4).
theory
relevant
as
such
discourse,
for
sketched
logical relations such as inconsistency
logic
deontic
carries
no
commitment to the position that normative discourse is truthvalued.
0 interpreted
In
imperatives.
fact
ineradicable
The values 1 and
by way of holding are not intended to be tied to truth and falsity,
except at the factual world T (see RLR1); and that exception is readily removed.
judgements,
instead normative
received,
logic
the
both
(the point
requirements
e.g.
Otherwise the
etc.).
adjustments
the
and
of the
form Fp,
semantical
can be said to be in
theory
its ’’semantical”
is developed,
For
force (or
is as before.
With such minor
theory conform
to noncognitivist
to meet von Wright’s argument,
in Morscher,
pp.97-8).
Von Wright’s other reason for coming out against a logic of norms is but grist
It is that ’there cannot be a logic of norms because a
for the paraconsistent nill.
could enjoin contradictory
legislator
(at
’’relative
least
serves"
Morscher,
...)
dilemmas.
it
but
p.98).
to
the
is
normal
not
states of affairs.
This might be irrational
purpose which the institution of giving orders
logically
excluded,
it
is
not
alogical’
(cited
in
That is, a legislator can set up (usually unintentionally) deontic
This is
certainly not
triviality,
by
modal-strength
indictment,
not
of deontic
deontic
logic,
It
impossible.
but
logics.
of a
is simply excluded,
Once
again
the
on
criticism
certain modally-dominated
pain of
is
an
approach to
it.36
§6.
Upsetting the moral consensus: unrealisable obligations, and inevitable wrongs.
The theme that there are moral dilemmas, like those cited, which stand, which do not
dissolve upon
rational reflection,
philosophers, 3? and
apparently runs agains the consensus among moral
certainly upsets dominant positions
in ethical
theory, notably
�22
broadly Kantian positions (built into much contemporary British moral philosophy) and
utilitarian
positions
(which
pervade
Anglo-American
and
theory
value
thinking,
especially outside narrowly philosophical circles).
Kantian positions suppose that morality is above all a rational procedure of a
certain sort (which we tentatively grant), and that rationality requires consistency.
Or put differently, but
for instance, must be consistent.
Thus what is obligatory,
equivalent given modal assumptions, ought implies can, OA -> OA, for every A and some
Wherever an agent appears to be in a moral dilemma
suitable possibility functor 0.
this is a matter of appearance only, a moral illusion which will (and must) vanish on
further rational reflection.^ This Kantian assumption should be rejected:
moral
dilemmas are part of the data and no illusion, and no amount of reflection need budge
them.
By insistence upon consistency requirements, and through failure, consequently,
to recognise intractable moral dilemmas, deontological theories have been forced to
jump through a variety of different hoops and to weaken considerably their positions.
In particular,
temporary and
moral
firm principles are almost invariably weakened to something much more
provisional.
is
experience
While
important,
some revisability of principles
in the light of
such wholesale weakening of principles is decidedly
There is a point then in trying to
undesirable, on both logical and moral grounds.
expose some of the tangled assumptions on which the weakening is based, and to loosen
their grip. The assumptions involved on a Kantian approach include these:
H1.
Moral principles - in
those concerning
justice,
particular more
fairness and the
basic principles of obligation, such as
like - are to be explained at bottom as
principles of rationality, or rational behaviour for persons.
H2.
Rationality is a matter of consistency; certainly it implies it.
H3.
Consistency reduces to, or can be accounted for, through possibility.
Put together these assumptions yield the theme
H4.
What is obligatory must be possible - ought-implies-can , for short.
So if that gives,
so do some of the assumptions.
but on
moral dilemmas,
It does give, not just because of
So also then
independent grounds.
should the assumptions
give; and they fail not just on the grounds that they lead to themes like H4.
The deeper trouble is that they are based on a super-modal view of things which
combines
modal
assumptions
with
rational
strong
The
assumptions.
combination
is
important, for once the modal assumptions are rejected, it becomes fairly transparent
that
the
rationality assumptions,
whatever
their
merit,
cannot
such things as moral framework or system or course of action.
rational
case,
systems:
removing
much more
modal
is required
assumptions
-
a
than rationality
main
present
uniquely determine
Rather there are rival
for
uniqueness.
exercise
-
In any
destroys
such
�rationality route to ought-implies-can.
Finally consistency is neither necessary nor
That it is not sufficient is indicated by a variety of
sufficient for rationality.
consistent worlds which do not conform to minimal rationality requirements.
is
converse
relevant
refuted
which conform
inconsistent worlds
by
meet rationality requirements (see further RLR and OP).
H3
fails,
paradoxes
induces
~0A -> ~(A ° B),
generally
is
not
just
that
the
Modality
removed.
of
paradoxes
with
entailment,
e.g.
anything
all.
from isolated
transmitted
to
are
inconsistent
is
arguments
Not only H2 (as a necessary
assumptions
parallelling
proposition
impossible
inconsistency
It
modal
when
consistency
of
an
fails,
also
is not
40
this indiscriminate way.
However
to rationality
to sufficient reason and the like), and by dialethic theories which
standards (e.g.
condition)
The more
impossibility in
collapse;
ought-implies-can
at
there are
distinct from those supplied by moral dilemmas.
counterexamples to the theme,
The
counterexamples concern obligations (or oughts) which are impossible, in some sense,
to realise,
counterexamples
Op & ~0p)
But
wrongdoings.
most
the
of
possibility
Derivatively then (substituting ~p for
unrealisable obligations.
that
wrongs
are
inescapable,
there are many determinates of possibility
examples
than
concern
also
mere
involve,
in their
logical
possibility
necessitated
(and necessity),
and
less anemic
notions of
correspondingly broader
notions of
original
(and
p in
setting,
necessity than a narrow logical
necessity).
perhaps strained, adaption, and,
in any case, they serve to undermine the point and
Nonetheless they sometimes admit of,
force of the ought-implies-can dictum (which is to link obligation to freedom to do
otherwise),
and
These examples all arise
nature,
circumstances,
its effective use against moral dilemmas.
seriously weaken
thereby
because agents are constrained in one way or another - by
fate,
the
Gods,
their
past
actions -
but
are
not
thereby
released from their obligations or exonerated from wrong-doing.
Consider first very down-to-earth types of counterexample to ought-implies-can,
before turning to more high-flown but not altogether dissimilar examples from our
barbaric past.
’Suppose that I say "I ought to go and see him, but I can’t because I
don’t know where he is”.
There need be nothing inconsistent in such a remark; and,
yet there would be if "ought” always implied ’’can'” (Hare 63, p.52).
same
with
situation
”’I
where
ought
I've
to
return
driven
the
this
car
I’ve
car
so
far
borrowed,
away
that
returning it in time to keep a promise’ (Thomason, p.175).
but I
It is much the
can’t”,
there is
said
no chance
in a
of my
Likewise the claim of the
person who cannot swim that she ought to rescue the child caught in the current but
can't.
One traditionally important class of counterexamples derives from the Catholic
doctrine of perplexity secundum quid.^ Donegan, in defending what he calls 'the
24
�Hebrew-Christian tradition’, contends that once one has sinned one May be faced with
situations from which one cannot escape without further wrong-doing (77, p.152). That
♦
is, one may be so placed (through one’s own fault) that one ought not to perform any
of the available actions though one cannot do otherwise. So it is necessary that one
act in a way that is forbidden.
Protestant thinkers, particular Luther, appear to have considered the human race
involved in one grand secundum quid on account of original sin.
’God
punished
justly
sinners
who
not
could
otherwise
do
Luther believed that
than
sin’
that God
and
’provided men with a law they were unable to keep and then righteously damned them
for failing to keep it’. 242 The Calvinists also were committed - but through their
doctrine
of
predestination
predestined
to sin,
unpalatable
conclusion
-
to
rather
they cannot but
by suggesting
Because
conclusions.
similar
humans are
However Calvin attempted to escape this
sin.
that in
some suitable
sense
are not
sinners
compelled, that it is somehow possible for them to do otherwise than they do. J Given
however the theme of predestination this attempt to escape looks unconvincing.
Any stronger determinism that does not also obliterate morality is in a similar
Creatures will have obligations which they cannot fulfil because they
predicament.
are determined
and will
to do otherwise,
sometimes be
bound to do wrong.
Plainly
where this becomes a general and automatic matter, a serious erosion of moral notions
such as responsibility, normally linked to obligation, is bound to set in.
However isolated cases analogous to those of determinism can occur without such
erosion
of
moral
notions
(as
indeed
with
moral
dilemmas
themselves).
rigidifying personality and ossifying character are of this
gets older
Cases
of
A person as she
sort.
may build up a personality so rigid that she cannot escape from it.
At
some point it becomes impossible (at least psychologically) for her to act other than
she does,
yet on
some occasions
she
ought not
to act
in the way she does.
outcome resembles that with original sin though the route taken
Yet even
if we
grant
that the
person ought not to have got
still we are entitled to our moral judgements;
modern morality
*
The
is very different.
into such a position,
as Pigden puts it,
’an enlightened
can allow such violations of ought-implies-can.
Classical Greek morality certainly seems to have allowed for
such violations.
In Homeric ethics a man could be blamed for failings he could not avoid,
unavoidable wrong-doing.
and so for
Subsequently it was taken for granted that impossible moral
requirements could be placed upon a hero, yet he could be blamed for failing to meet
them. Thus the situation of Agamemnon and of Oedipus, both despite their struggles,
despite their awareness of their predicaments and their anguish, were bound, indeed,
fated, to act wrongly, and were duly blamed for their wrong-doing.
25
�There have been various attempts to salvage the ought-implies-can theme, through
a residual Kantianism.
presupposes-can
Thus Hare proposes, but does not really work out, an ought-
a
with
theme
weaker
relation
presupposition
logical
replacing
implication (53, p.54); and both Barcan Marcus and Morscher suggest a model theoretic
connection: essentially that for OA to hold true A must be satisfiable in some world,
and so, modally, A is consistent. But within a relevant setting, the satisfiability
is hardly a
requirement
and does not ensure consistency.
constraint,
Once again,
consistency is only obtained at the cost of other more important connections, such as
Nor does Hare’s comparison with presupposition (on p.54) succeed.
O-adjunction.
the
analogy
such
situations
the
worked
implies-can.
as
practical
question
those
and
dilemmas
moral
But (pace Hare, p.55)
as
to
what
to
do
not
would
counterexamples
affording
If
arise
in
ought-
to
the question most certainly does arise in many
cases.
§7.
Resolving
proceed,
in
moral
any
dilemmas,
dilemma
so far
situation
be.
as can
easily
are
Recipes for
what
provided,
enough
decidedly poor recipes have been much canvassed in the literature.
how to
to,
indeed
several
Among these are
deontic ranking recipes, which would have us impose some type of priority ordering on
deontic principles, so that consistency is maintained and in every situation there is
a dominant rule; defeasibility recipes, which would have us weaken all deontic rules
to merely prima facie or other-things-being—equal principles and operate, when things
look
would
going
like
have
wrong,
utilitarian
by
and
assessment;
pure-chance
recipes,
which
situationally but arbitrarily by such methods as
us determine outcomes
coin toss.
Such recipes fail to meet important conditions of adequacy upon any account of
the way resolution is effected, if and when it can be, namely:
A1.
The account
should
sufficiently resemble what rational
choosers do when they
find themselves in a moral dilemma.
Many human choosers have moral principles,
have
not
rigorously ordered
in
such
which, as against ranking recipes,
a way
as
to
exclude dilemma
they
situations,
and
which, as against thorough-going defeasibility recipes, they are not prepared to give
Thus, in addition,
away or modify when they encounter snags.
A2.
The
principles
induce
which
moral
dilemmas
are
not
generally
abandoned
or
qualified, but very often stand.
Naturally
sometimes
moral
dilemmas,
especially
development and revision of principles.
if
they
recur,
do
lead
to
moral
But the logic of dilemma situations does not
force changes or adjustment and none may be made; and typically none will be made,
where dilemmas are resolved,
resolve dilemmas
which they may not be.
The assumption that we must
is probably a hangover from consistency assumptions,
that deontic
inconsistency must be removed - whereas all we have to do is act, or do nothing, in
26
�the face of them.
Part of what is wrong with the idea of a predetermined ordering of principles,
the conflict, and also the
they remove
is that
as with utilitarianism procedures,
felt tension, and often anguish, that goes with it.
Even if the appeal to priority
succeed in some cases, it does not in fact work, and
45
general.
For with Lemmon’s complex dilemmas where
ordering of principles does
not
could
succeed,
in
uncertainties enter
be
can
there
preassigned
no
solution
moral
to
the
in
dilemma
virtue
of
higher-order principles or a given ordering of one’s duties and obligations
and the like, because part of the very dilemma is just one’s uncertainty as
to one’s actual situation (p.153).
In any event dilemmas do not go away as they should if the conflicting obligations
were merely prima facie.
Very often someone in a moral dilemma is in a fix and feels
it^^; and doesn’t say ”My God there isn’t a problem, I must simply look up the book
principles are ranked and what’s to be done’,
to see how these
not having been so
prepared.
in which we, as it were, merely
.... dilemmas in which we morally prepared,
have to look up the solution in our private ethical code, are rare ... and in
case
any
of
little
practical
Of
interest.
are those
importance
greater
dilemmas in this class where some decision of a moral character is required
Our predicament is here so described that, whatever we do, even if we do
...
nothing at
that might mean), we are doing
all (whatever
something which we
ought not to do, and so can be called upon to justify either our activity or
our inactivity (Lemmon, p.151).
The
usual
deontological
positions,
which
deontic
weaken
principles
to
provisional or prima facie principles to avoid problems with dilemmas, also play into
utilitarian hands.
reflecting
things
that
of
in
often
is
which
only
are
to act
overriding requirement
character
utilitarians want
For
the
for
such
to represent
most
a way
disguised
(a
sc
part
as to
of
obligation
statements
concerning
distributed, e.g.
are
the
taken
coherent
way
as
derivative;
net
utilities
position
from
would
their
own
the deontic
make
this
Deontic principles such as
reduce
somehow
distributed
type of action which tends to maximize utility.
accounts typically rule out moral dilemmas:
both
apart
or
to
tend
complex
to
be
an action is obligatory when it maximizes (expected) utility and it
is of a recognised
cannot
they
ar .
-
principles as
deontic
maximize utility,
maximisation principle so only for the most part also).
those
all
maximise
utility,
and
indeed
27
Such reductive
for example, an action and its opposite
if an action increases utility then its
�opposite characteristically diminishes it.
if all moral injunctions
More generally,
answer back ultimately to just one standard, maximum utility, then there can be no
real conflict
(but
etc.).
for these
It is
apparent conflict through failure to calculate correctly,
sorts of reasons that
the considerable data now accumulated regarding moral
try to explain away,
to
utilitarians deny that there can be
So they are in the awkward position of having to dispute,
dilemmas.
genuine moral
and
only
dilemmas.
But how, when stuck in moral dilemmas, do we proceed to reach a decision? For a
47
decision is called for: those in dilemma situations still often have to act.
The
intuitive procedure in such dilemma situations is not difficult to grasp.
terminology is regularly employed, and is instructive.
to
those
the
in
-
dilemmas
weighed
assessed,
are
The same
Alternatives - outcomes open
up,
the balance.
put in
The
familiar scales picture, with the scale sensitive to evaluative weights, is helpful
- except
it
that
can
suggest,
weighed against another,
whereas there may be
as with
of justice
where one
thing is
two competing principles or
just
that there are
several.
scales
the
options,
In the light of such a weighing up of alternatives,
those in dilemmas then determine what they should do, what is best, or satisfactory,
’If ... we are to act here in good faith,we shall recognise
in the circumstances .
that the dilemma is what it is and make the best decision we can
*
There
is
an
attempt
to
then
intuitive
apply
(Lemmon 62, p.151).
methods,
decision
consist
which
in
assessing and weighing the alternative outcomes open, and maximizing or satisizing on
these
This
outcomes.
already
very
looks
consequentialist decision theory, which is what,
a
like
preanalytic
account
of
in a qualified way, we shall reach
It is in a qualified way for several reasons; not only may no best (or even
towards.
sufficiently good) outcome be determinable - there is nothing approaching a decision
procedure here - but the further decision theory methods apply within moral dilemmas,
so
they
supply,
at best,
a
second
best
resolution,
a
first best result requiring
removal of moral dilemma constraints and so being ruled out.
Those
in dilemma
unworkable
(and
situations usually do not resort to anything as
mostly arbitrary
and often
ineffective)
utilitarian
as
complex and
assessment
procedures. Nor do they surrender to pure chance procedures.
A3.
The account should not give way to irrationalism, but should adhere to rational
decision procedures, which are not necessarily, however, effective.
This requirement rules out pure chance methods, which are only appropriate where it
is a matter
of indifference which way the decision,
if any,
Even where some resort to
methods can give a worse outcome than might be obtained.
tie-breaking
devices
is
appropriate,
that
may
dilemma, but rather to some component of the
not
be
situation.
Otherwise such
goes.
to
the
final
Envisage,
outcome
of a
for instance, a
decision-tree for an issue where a tie-breaking device such as a coin toss is applied
to a high branch and that proves sufficient for rational decision methods to resolve
28
�Then it would be irrational to try to resolve the whole issue
the issue concerned.
by coin toss.
Nonetheless
A4. The account should be appropriately situational.
That is, the account should be applicable to each situation on its own merits, taking
It should not simply be a rule
detailed account of the features of that situation.
for in dilemma cases the rules have ceased to yield a resolution and
based account,
into a
are locked
be
will
fix position.
situational,
it will not
that of situational
be
involve resort to pure—chance methods.
by situation,
situational
most part,
by example)
or example
by virtue of A3 and A4, though the account
Thus,
procedures
ethics where
such ethics
Nor is a situational ethics (ethics situation
For the
of a broader type being recommended.
into operation where a moral
only go
dilemma is
reached; in general, deontic rule-based procedures apply.
The broad outlines of a satisfactory account are beginning to emerge.
Before we consider
apply rational decision methods to each given dilemma situation.
is
how this
to
be
so as
account,
to be said about the
needs
For
to meet apparent objections.
insensitive
those
accomplished more
to
in
switches
language,
both FA and
A,
some
options, and
yet that,
also F~A,
that
it
ought
also
be
that
so
B,
very
idea
of
it should be that B, where B entails
We do not however go on to
one of A and -A, so that not both A and ~A are ruled out.
claim
the
is both A and ~A are ruled out as moral
that
situations,
in certain
in
For are we not only claiming that
decision-theoretic resolution of moral dilemmas.
for
structure of the
things, there is, to
among other
contradiction
a
It should
that
not
both
A
and
~A
ruled
are
out
morally.49 What is being claimed that B, or an adequate thing, is the best thing to
do in the constrained circumstances, that B should be done in that sense, net that B
is
lifted
to
status
obligation
enough in the circumstances,
by
looking
at
you
does not
the
can
B is
In brief, <»B,
"second-best obligation").
determined
(though
imply OB.
acceptable
worlds
worlds where B holds which fail to be acceptable.
say,
if
you like,
that it
is a
the best that can be done or good
is not going to be
When <£>B holds
where B
When
holds,
because
there are
holds is not going to be
settled in general by falling back on deontic rules, because in the interesting cases
the
rules
are
jammed.
But
such deontic rules dees not
being beyond
imply being
beyond rational procedures, indeed procedures that may be represented by way of rules
(though not controlled by deontic rules).
The rational
procedures in
question
are essentially those of decision theory.
What is required is a decision as to what can be done in the circumstances; and this
can
be
determined
by
relevant alternatives.
be
of
something
weighing
up
the
expected
outcomes
and
selecting
among
The selectiin may be of the best in the circumstance;
satisfactory
in
the
circumstances.
The
approach adopted
pluralistic, allowing for both maximizing and satisizing procedures.
29
the
it may
can be
Maximizers will
�of course argue that it would be irrational to select anything but the best among the
alternatives (given that it was conceded to be the best); But satisizers will resist
arguments.what
such
elaborates
is
what
upon
we
a
under
do
decision
done
normally
this:- Set out the relevant alternatives,
action
courses of
alternative.
to us
open
Select
a best,
i.e.
way
-
is
-
merely
which
in
outline
the results that the different
list
to.
analysis
intuitive
more
i.e.
lead
will
a
in
theory
Determine
the
of each
likely value
with maximum likely value,
an alternative
or
a
The basic procedure is childishly simple, but filling
sufficiently good alternative.
out the details may be extremely difficult or even impossible in a satisfactory way.
The
in
problems,
normally
order
increasing
alternatives open, establishing their probability,
rankings to them.
things
these
cases,
favourable
more
delineating
the
assigning values or desirability
techniques from decision theory however for doing all
There are
in
are:
difficulty,
of
and
in
less
circumstances
favourable
guestimates can be made or resort had to fuzzy methods.
To descend to concrete applications (where procedures may be clearer than at the
theoretical level), consider again the Platonic dilemma discussed by Lemmon, where I
ought to return my friend’s gun and also ought not to do so.
The alternatives are to
return the gun and have the wife shot, or to return the gun avoiding a shooting but
thereby breaking an undertaking.
the
alternative
first
wife
It is certain, in the circumstances, that under the
will
be
shot,
highly
a
undesirable
outweighing the lesser undesirability of the second alternative.
the
value of
second
Since the expected
first,
exceeds that of the
alternative considerably
much
outcome,
the
best
thing in the circumstances is to return the gun.
However
undertaking
goes
Lemmon
to
seriously
the
return
’to
gun
suggesting that one sacrifices one’s
astray in
utilitarian considerations’
No doubt
(p.152).
utilitarian considerations would bring out (could be massaged to bring out, rather) a
But the fact is that no consideration (or interpersonal comparisons)
similar result.
of
the
utilities
pleasures
and
pains
contemplated.
’’critical
involves
an
(whoever
Lemmon
utilitarian ones.
the
everybody
of
(involved
they
confuses
are),
the
in
is
made,
consequentialist
universe,
or
or
even
needs
whatever),
to
considerations with
be
their
remotely
much narrower
Similarly the recipe Hare suggests for resolving moral dilemmas at
level”,
namely
illegitimate
resort
to
assimilation
act-utilitarianism
of
(see,
consequentialist
e.g.
82,
considerations
p.43),
under
utilitarianisms.
In certain respects Lemmon’s Platonic dilemma is not a good example of a moral
dilemma;
tougher
in particular,
dilemmas,
the
it is too easily resolved, and so characteristic features of
pain,
emerge, moral dilemmas can
anguish,
indecision,
get omitted.
As
thus begins to
be divided roughly into two types, easy and hard.
30
Easy
�dilemmas are those that are comparatively easy to find a way through eventually, and
But hard ones are those that leave people caught in the dilemma
so are resolvable.
at
least
uncomfortable
irresolvable.
they
whatever
to
choose
and
do,
are
so
in
a
good
sense
Though a way-through or a way-out may be charted by decision methods,
it is a way that leaves those involved morally uneasy, dissatisfied, or worse.
For
at the far hard end of the spectrum lie those dilemmas of tragic dimensions.
Although
consequential
decision
rationally within moral dilemma
theory
provides
a
for
model
how
proceed
to
situations, by no means everyone confronted
with a
moral dilemma will apply such procedures in an intuitive way, even though many will.
For
one
thing,
there is plenty of scope for
bad faith,
irrationality and
and more
generally, for non-rational procedures; and severe moral dilemmas often enough induce
non-rational and even paralytic or self-destructive modes in those who are caught in
them.
another,
For
there
are
indirect ways of obtaining the effects of decision
theory, analogue decision theory so to say.
Counselling, whether through a friend or
a professional counsellor, is an important analogue: there the discussive mode helps
to
bring
out
eludicating
of
and
assemble
alternatives,
undesirability of each.
the
and
elements
the
of
the
advantages
decision
and
approach,
the
desirability
and
theory
drawbacks,
Alternatively, or as well, these elements may be bought out
by reflecting on a range of similar situations and experience there using these cases
as
some
sort
of
precedent,
in
particular,
for
determining
value
rankings
of
alternatives open.
Moral dilemmas have corollaries for moral ways of doing things.
is that perfectibility of the moral scheme of things is impossible.
One corollary
Any sufficiently
rich set of rules risks inconsistency, and will be inconsistent if completed.
dilemmas are thus inevitable
be;
in the larger scheme of things.
Moral
This is as it should
for it is in this way especially that moral development occurs and moral stature
is obtained.
31
�^A much earlier version of this paper was presented by the second author at the
Australian National University in 1975. Subsequently much of the paper was lost; what
survived is largely incorporated in the first three sections, especially §3. However
the new version takes over the leading ideas of the initial version. The authors are
much indebted for comments and criticism to C. Pigden, R. Goodin and G. Priest.
was
^This
even
true
Maliy’s
of
pioneering
system
of
1926
which
permitted
replacement of logical equivalents within the scope of obligation function 0 (see F &
Von Wright’s seminal work
H p.3).
(in 51),
which
set the pattern
for mainstream
deontic logic, was explicitly based on the modal comparison of deontic functors with
modal
functors,
and built modal
that break the modal
systems,
exceptional
assumptions
in
at the bottom of the
theory.
The
connection, are deontic systems based on
relevant logics on such systems see RLR, chapter 8.
^These paradoxes are explained,
obligation,
paradoxes of derived
and their
see
modal bases exposed,
On the
for some of the
p.224; and
Prior 62,
further
in §5.
considerable literature on paradoxes like those of the Robber and Good Samaritan, see
anthologies and
the Hilpinen
A detailed uniform treatment of
especially Vermazen.
all these and other deontic paradoxes in the framework of relevant logic is given in
RLR II.
4In its equivalent form, Op => ~Fp,
i.e. what is obligatory is not forbidden, it
is the dubbed ’’Bentham’s Law” by von Wright 81, p.2.
5In
a
way,
furthermore,
avoids
that
the
,
problems Hare’s
and
complexities
attempt to transfer a levels-resolution to deontic paradoxes would lead to if worked
out
paradoxes.
the
compare
properly:
any
In
counterintuitively,
case,
that
problems
of
semantical
if
we
were
even
’ought’
is
ambiguous
levels
say,
to
as to
Hare
as
levels,
avoid
to
some
semantical
proposes,
but
tinkering would
still be required to fix up a deontic calculus at each level.
Moreover, there are good grounds for doubting that the so far ill-characterised and
artificial distinction of levels that Hare wants to impose can be satisfactorily made
out.
For
one
thing,
critical hardly
the
holds up;
level
for
separation
intuitive
of the
paradoxes
intuitive
are
from the
typical of
rational or
act utilitarian
assessments at the upper level, and we can be rational and critical, and ask for why-
explanations, at both levels.
^There are various different
form, OA, OB ->
^It
is
this principle can take,
e.g. also a rule
0(A & B), and a rather useless material form, OA & OB =>. 0(A & B).
tried
criticised below.
forms
however
by
Schotch
and
Jennings,
p.152;
their
argument
is
It is also suggested by Barcan Marcus, p.134., and toyed with by
32
�Williams
o
In particular Lemmon, taking off from Sartre, has argued this in two important
papers, neglected in mere recent philosophical literature on moral dilemmas and moral
conflict.
earlier
Recent British
work,
in
literature
that
it could
logical
further the next note).
on conflict of values has
particular,
profitably have
taken
into
ignored
account
(see
Such an uninformed approach is however not uncharacteristic
of British philosophy.
^Especially Lemmon’s work 62 and 65.
But although Lemmon suggests (in 62, e.g.
p.150) that there are no logical problems in accommodating moral dilemmas, including
those of the form 0(A & ~A), none of the systems of deontic logic he presents (e.g.
in 65), not even the very weak systems, can do so without trivialising.
The reasons
for collapse are the modal ones already explained.
Apart from the work of Lemmon and a few who follow him, work which at least suggests
the need
for a bridge even if it does not offer so much as good working plans for
one, the literature on moral dilemmas tends to bifurcate - into purely philosophical
material which
does not
address the
logical
issues,
and
largely
logical material
which characteristically avoids the crucial moral issue of dilemmas, which the logics
espoused cannot handle (and maybe because of that: otherwise the logical literature
On the regrettable lack of interaction between deontic logicians
disputes the data).
and ethicists, the latter being the worse offenders, see also Thomason’s notes.
10
In
fact
the latter
implication of O-transmission could be much weakened for
the purpose of the arguments, e.g. the form A
B - > OA D OB would serve to make the
point.
11
Gumanski 80 affords a good example of the complication resulting, complication
readily removed by relevant logic relocation.
12
The argument
thoroughtly
for this
fallacious.
’principle of deontic contingency’
Either
an
in F & H, p.13, is
illegitimate quantificational
conversion
(from
some to all) or a modal confusion (from p & ~p to q & ~q) is used to get from P(p &
~p) for some p - which is all the denial of deontic contingency gives - to Pq, that
is, to ’everything is permitted’.
1^For see axiom, (D1) Op =>~0~p, of the standard systems as formulated in F & H,
p.13, and use the interdefinability of P and 0, e.g. PB
4
1
~0~B.
There would
be little point in presenting features of the epicycling systems
of types (iii)-(v)
in any detail since all will be quickly dismissed. In any event,
details can be found
in the Hilpinen surveys
33
(71 and 81),
texts which are ir
fact
�restricted to
epicycling positions
within
the dominant modal paradigm for
deontic
Even Schotch and Jennings, who do question some minimal principles, remain
logics.
staunchly
the
within
modal
sphere,
their
as
possible
worlds
and
semantics
their
substitutivity principles reveal.
15
F & H, p.8,
in
support
p.16. This consistency interpretation appears to have extensive
Scandinavia.
Of
course
if
consistency were meant
in a different
sense
(that of regularity), it would be different. But it is not: see the development in F
& H, p.l6ff.
16
Cf.
Lemmon:
philosophers
that
’It
...
does
the
not
to
seem
adoption
of
have
been
new morality
a
associated with the confrontation of a moral dilemma.
much
by
observed
an agent
ethical
by
is
frequently
Indeed, it is hard to see what
else would be likely to bring about a change of moral outlook other than having to
make a difficult moral
decision’
(62,
p155).
not
settled
without
so to speak
Similarly Barcan Marcus (p.12): ’although
idealistically, a source of moral motion.
dilemmas are
is,
Moral inconsistency
residue,
the recognition of their
reality has a
dynamic force.
17
In 1975 when the paper was first drafted and presented this example was still
topical.
However at most times in modern human history there are many candidates to
substitute for variable V.
18
In the narrow scheme of standard deontic logic, these would be recast in terms
of the forbidden functor F, defined as 0~.
However in relevant logic settings, it is
a further question, not settled by the framework whether W reduces to 0~.
*
^Williams
20
are
Jim-Pedro example (in 81) is of this type.
As there are other war dilemmas, and especially nuclear war dilemmas, so there
other
violence.
pacifist
dilemmas,
e.g.
the
problem
of
violence
to
prevent
greater
On nuclear war dilemmas, and on the main pacifist dilemma, see the War and
Peace series.
21
For many
of the
contractual arrangements,
isomorphism,
known
moral
dilemmas
we consider,
especially those
there are analogous legal dilemmas.
preserving
very many
important
logical
generated by
For there is a wellfeatures
between
moral
obligations and rights and wrongs and corresponding legal obligations and rights and
wrongs.
The complexity of legal
frameworks, the relatively independent design of using
�parts and
divine
numerous
lack of design control
legal
of
likelihood
the
dilemmas
and
sources
decidedly
complexity
to
high.
analogous
An
is
dilemmas
moral
for consistency,
or checks
argument
considered
in
render the
fjrom
the
McConnell,
p.275ff.
pp
Lemmon’s final
treatment,
but
(fifth) type of ’’moral dilemma” does so far resist more formal
is
that
the
mainly because
class concerned
description and lacks even clear working examples.
so far
These are,
defies adequate
roughly, situations
‘in which an agent has to make a decision of a recognisably moral character though he
is completely unprepared ... by his present moral outlook’ and has somehow to fashion
a
new
moral
outlook.
is
There
so
far
of
here
nothing
especial
paraconsistent
concern.
By no means all the types of situations falling under Lemmon’s ’classification
of moral
dilemmas’
(62,
classifying types of
first class and
p.156)
are dilemmas.
situation’,
‘moral
the classification
starts out
is nothing dilemmatic about
there
and
which Lemmon
about the second,
little
Indeed
the
‘does not wish to call ...
moral dilemmas, because [as with the first] in all the cases our moral situation is
perfectly clear’
(p.143). The main types of moral dilemmas Lemmon discerns, the third
and fourth classes, are precisely those treated in the text.
The concurrence even of several different,
23()f course the control is limited.
perhaps apparently independent, logical approaches is no sure guide to correctness of
an
explication or
has to answer back satisfactorily to
The matter still
account.
preanalytic principles.
22*
In
dilemmas,
the initial
version of this paper
three
into
types
(0,
0~;
complication was based on a mistake,
collapse.
are
F,
a
rather
F~;
and
artificial classification of
0,F)
was
proposed.
But
this
that equation of 0~A and FA would lead to modal
And, apparently a more natural and simpler theory does emerge if 0~ and F
equated.
Naturally definitional
than coentailment.
More
highly
equation
intensional
in this context does not
differences
between
the
imply more
notions,
which
there are, remain unaffected.
What holds
for F does not automatically transfer
independently.
^The labels
and Jennings.
[RM] and
[K], convenient
to P. Perhaps P should be treated
in what
follows, are
taken from Schotch
Note that although symbolically virtually the same as the originals,
they symbolize different determinate principles.
^See as well as RLR I, Routley 72, Routley and Meyer 73 and OP.
35
�the
2?Under
four-valued American plan
for
relevant logic
* can be
semantics,
avoided. But here the superior two-valued Australian plan is followed.
2&Though here we simply take the rule over from standard deontic semantics, it
can be argued in several ways, explained (though usually for the analogous necessity
functor) as
in RLR.
class of such A,
b
One way is this:- in situation a, where OA holds, consider the
i.e.
{C:
I(OC, a) = 1}.
This gives an initially acceptable set up
with respect to a; and indeed would yield the sought rule (with S improved to a
but for
1-1 relation)
fail,
conditions
the fact that bo may not be a world because required closure
conspicuously
We
primeness.
can
however
extend
though not
ba,
uniquely, so that world requirements are met. The picture looks like this:
S is the composition of the function (from a to b ) and the extension (to the b-’s).
The b.’s are the accepted worlds vis-a-vis a.
^The point and role of evaluative step-down is explained in Routley 83.
3°The
strategy
resembles
that
earlier
in
Routley
and
Meyer
75
in
Plainly there is room for other postulates,
formulating explicitly dialethic logic.
e.g.
exploited
In virtue of the model theorem Ot, where
0p2 where p2 is not dilemmatic, etc.
t is any tautology, such a postulate is guaranteed in standard deontic logic, but it
is rightly left as an option in relevant deontic logic, and also in Barcan Marcus.
third
31A
type
of
argument
for
rejecting
[KJ
is
implicit
in
Schotch
and
and also in Barcan Marcus, namely that without [K] both moral conflict and
Jennings,
the Kantian ought-implies-can principle
can be
retained.
That
supposes of course
that the Kantian principle is a desirable one, worth going considerably out of one’s
logical
way
disaster
to
retain.
[KJ
But
the
is not
from the combination of Kantian
only
in
principle involved
theory with moral dilemmas:
reaching
other equally
solid and respectable principles than [KJ could be considered for rejection.
^2At this
logic
and
point we
do detour
analyses of moral
beyond our
dilemmas,
to look
critique of modalisation of deontic
at some
separate puzzles
in deontic
logic - which have also been used against the idea of a formal treatment of ethics.
And
the
approach
we
take
to
these
further
36
puzzles
-
by
limiting
transmission
�in the fashion of weaker, and deeper logics - is largely independent of
principles,
the reaminder
IN short, we could have taken a different approach to
paper.
of the
these transmission puzzles, without varying the rest of the paper.
33
Of course it can be argued that one is storing up problems for (much) later on
when the
logical theory
repenting have
fuller
a
better developed,
is much more fully developed, and predicates like those of
logical role.
so also will be
presumably when
But
the
logical
theory is
the distinctions between types of predicates and
those sustaining transmission.
34
It is common practice indict deontic logic by so stating the deontic ’'paradox"
that they smuggle in much more than a satisfactory entailment relation could warrant
and more even than a modal relation would grant.
paradoxes
will
be
presented
as
arguments
Here is an example. These [deontic]
against
Consider the Good Samaritan paradoxes formulated
the
"standard"
as follows:
deontic
logics.
1) A is obligated to
help an injured criminal
2) If A is obligated to do B then A is obligated to do whatever B entails.
(This is
a principle of the standard deontic logics.)
3) There could not be an injured criminal if someone did not commit a crime.
So 4) A
is obligated to bring it about that someone commit a crime. (From 1- 3 by the
standard deontic logics.)
The
So 5)
logics are
standard deontic
(For
flawed.
4)
is outrageous,
though its
premisses are not.)
Entailment principles do not justify the importing of 'bringing about' in clause 4).
35
And wrong to rob him and not rob him, and so on.
Conjunction is not here
connexive with one conjunct undercutting another - though connexive deontic logic is
what some seem to be seeking.
^Accordingly Morscher's retreat to "rational norms" and "rational legislating"
is
But
unnecessary.
presupposed
again
that a deontic
Morscher
the
grasps
key
point,
that
von
Wright
has
logic must contain certain consistency-type principles,
and that 'this presupposition need not be fulfilled' (p.98).
37
Schotch and Jennings,
community of moral
philosophers'
philosophy,
analysis.
where
claim 'widespread support for (a) among the
(a)
is the theme 'that cases of real moral
Most likely this claim, like most such sociological claims
conflict cannot occur'.
in
(pp.152-3)
is merely
impressionistic,
and
not based on
any sort of survey or
But we expect further investigation would tend to confirm it.
no
J Thus, to take just one example:
there appears
to
be
a
conflict
'One may be in a situation of course in which
of principles each of which appears categorically
37
�binding - but natural reflection will ultimately show that one or other must prevail’
Benn (p.5). But examples abound.
The reason reflection removes inconsistency is that obligations do not collide.
We have it from Kant himself
Because however duty and obligation are in general concepts that express the
objective practical necessity of certian actions, ... it follows that a
conflict of duties and obligations is inconceivable (obligationes non
colliduntor).
(Metaphysis of Morals, cited in Barcan Marcus, p.323.)
But
does
it
world
the
(merely)
practical
follow
not
of
without
action
However
necessity.
sweeping
a
but
the worlds
concering
consistency
assumption
picked out
by function
not
of objective
these worlds are, moral dilemmas certainly appear to
show, sometimes inconcistent.
There are
depending what is
the explanation can go,
various different ways
and
contractual
arrangements a route like that of Hobbes through Rawls will be followed.
Given less,
taken
e.g.
granted.
for
only
grounded
example,
For
or
preferences
given
choice
individual
behaviour,
interests
a
semantical
route
might be
And so on.
tried.
110 The
inadequacy of modal
accounts of inconsistency is explained in detail in
RLR, chapter 5.
ji -1
These examples and most of those that follow were suggested by C. Pigden, who
also supplied the references.
HO
The
first quote
is
from Kenny,
p.75, the
second from Skinner,
p.7,
both of
which furnish additional details.
4^Cf. Kenny, p.78.
24/4 According
to
MacIntyre
66.
The
situation
of
Agamemnon
and
Oedipus
are
remarked upon in Williams 81, p.80.
There
there
are
is
not
a substantial
and
cannot
literature
be general
arguing,
not entirely
universally applicable
principles in all circumstances of their application.
conclusively,
rules
for
that
ranking of
Thus, for example, Ross, p.41,
also discussed in Barcan Marcus, p.124, Barcan Marcus, p.135, Hare 82,
pp.32-4.
It
seems that such a result would be proved, as regards effective rules, by methods of
reversion theory.
38
�^The
relevant;
points
Hare
makes
concerning
anguish
remorse
and
(82,
pp.29-30)
are
they apply also against his own proposal to treat all principles as prima
facie.
But points concerning anguish and guilt are not decisive;
account
of
how
these
attitudes
arise
can
be
given
from
for one thing, an
modal
a
angle
(cf.
the
discussion in Barcan Marcus, p.127).
^By no means all dilemmas require resolution, e.g. those of no practical import
such
as
purely
theoretical
dilemmas
of
freedom,
etc.
liberty,
These
can,
in
principle, just stand.
48 As Lemmon
explains
(in
62),
really
following Sartre,
there
is considerable
scope for bad faith and opting out of our responsibilities here, e.g. pretending that
no decision is called
for, or
that another has preempted the decision, or that the
decision is otherwise determined or out of our own control.
49No doubt we could tough it out dialectically, but the basis for doing so is
Any
lacking.
adherence
contradictions
to
calles
for
especially
rigorous
justification
500n
satisizing
decision
theory,
and
the
dialectic
between
maximizers
and
satisizers, see MS.
Fuzzy decision theory is however only in the initial stages of development at
present.
5^This is just one of several reasons why Hare’s grand synthesis (in 82) of Kant
and the utilitarians,
initially appealing in its two level tidiness and simplicity,
goes down the philosophical drain. A main reason is that the synthesis is built upon,
and
incorporates,
consistency and
modal
assumptions,
and
so
is inadequate
moral data to be accounted for theoretically (see further War and Peace II).
to the
�REFERENCES
R. Barcan Marcus,
121-136.
Journal of Philospohy 77 (1980)
’Moral dilemmas and consistency
,
*
S. I. Benn, ’Public and private morality: clean living and dirty hands’ in Public and
Private in Social Life (ed. S.I. Benn and G.F. Gaus), Croom Helm, London &
Canberra, 1983, 155-182.
A. Donegan, The Theory of Morality, Chigago University Press, Chicago, 1977.
D. Follesdal and R. Hilpinen, ’Deontic
pp.1-35; referred to as F & H.
B. C.
logic:
van Fraassen, ’The logic of conditional
Logic 1 (1972) 417-38.
an
introduction’
Hilpinen
in
obligation’. Journal
1971,
of Philospohical
L. Gumanski, ’On deontic logic’, Studia Logica 39 (1980) 63-75.
S. Hampshire (ed), Public and Private Morality, Cambridge University Press, 1978.
R.M. Hare, Freedom and Reason, Clarendon, Oxford, 1963.
R.M. Hare, Moral Thinking,
Conflicts’).
Clarendon, Oxford,
1982 (see especially chapter 2 ’Moral
R. Harrison, Rational Action, Cambridge University Press, 1979.
R. Hilpinen (ed). Deontic
Dordrecht, 1971.
Logic:
Introductory
and
Systematic
Readings,
Reide1,
R. Hilpinen (ed), New Studies in Deontic Logic, Reidel, Dordrecht, 1981.
A. Kenny, The God of the Philosophers, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1979.
E.J. Lemmon, ’Moral dilemmas’, Philosophical Review 71 (1962) 139-58.
E.J.
Lemmon,’ Deontic
(1965) 39-71.
Logic
and
the
T. McConnell,
’Moral dilemmas and
Philosophy 8 (1978) 269-87.
logic
of imperatives’,
consistency
in
ethics’,
Logique
et
Canadian
Analyse 8
Journal
A. MacIntyre, A Short History of Ethics, Routledge & Kegan Paul, London, 1966.
of
�39
A. A.
Martino (ed.), Deotnic Logic, Computational
Systems, North Holland, Amsterdam, 1982.
Linguistics and Legal Information
E. Morscher, ’Antinomies and incompatibilities within normative languages’ in Martino
82, pp.83-102.
Oxford English Dictionary, Oxford University Press, 1971; hereafter OED.
G. Priest and R. Routley, On Paraconsistency, Research
Australian National University, 1983; hereafter OP.
in
Papers
Logic,
#13,
A.N. Prior, Formal Logic, Second edition, Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1962.
A.N. Prior, ’Escapism: the logical basis of ethics'
(ed. A.I. Melden), Seattle, 1958.
in Essays in Moral Philosophy,
W.D. Ross, The Right and the Good, Oxford University Press, New York, 1930.
R. Routley, ’War and Peace I. On the ethics of large-scale nuclear war and war
deterrence, and the political fall-out’, Discussion Papers in Environmental
Philosophy,
#5, Research School of Social Sciences,
Australian National
University, 1983.
R. Routley, ’On the alleged inconsistency and moral insensitivity and fanaticism of
pacifism’, Inquiry 26 (1984)
,
; also War and Peace II.
R. Routley, ’Maximizing, satisficing, satisizing: the difference in real and rational
behaviour under rival paradigms’, Discussion Papers in Environmental Philosophy,
#10, Research School of Social Sciences, Australian National University, 1984;
hereafter MS.
R. and V. Routley,
’The semantics of first degree entailment’, Nous 6 (1972) 335-59.
R. and V. Routley, ’Semantical foundations of value theory’, Nous (1983) 441—56.
R. Routley and R.k. Meyer, ’The semantics of entailment I’, in Truth, Syntax, and
Modality (ed. H. Leblanc) North-Holland, Amsterdam, 1973» pp.199-243.
R. Routley and R.K. Meyer, ’Dialectical logic, classical logic, and the consistency
of the world’, Studies in Soviet Thought 16 (1976) 1-25.
R. Routley and others, Relevant Logics and Their Rivals, Ridgeview, California, Part
I (1982) and Part II (1984); referred to as RLR I and RLR II respectively.
A. Ryan, The Idea of Freedom, Oxford, 1970.
P. Schotch and
pp.149-62.
R.E.
Jennings,
’Non-Kripkean
deontic
logic’,
in
Hilpinen
81,
�40
Q. Skinner, The Foundations of Modern
University Press, Cambridge, 1978.
Political
Thought,
Volume
11,
Cambridge
R. M. Thomason, ’Deontic logic as founded on tense logic’, in Hilpinen 81, pp.165-175.
B. Vermazen, 'The
(1977) 1-71.
logic
of
practical
'ought’-sentences’,
Philosophical
Studies 32
B. Williams, Moral Luck, Cambridge United Press, 1981.
B. Williams, 'Conflict of values' in Williams 81, pp.71-82; also in Ryan 79.
G.H. von Wright, An Essay in Modal Logic, North Holland, Amsterdam, 1951.
G.H. von Wright, ’On the logic of norms/ and actions’, M. Hilpinen 81, pp.3-35.
G.H. ven Wright, ’Norms, truth and logic’ in Martino 82, pp.3-20.
�TYRANT
MOPE ON NOPAL DILEMMAS
1.
ethics.
2.
Revolutionising
Possible heading, why the failure to comprehend moral dilemmas.
All these Reading force^'^^e off in other directions.
Undoubtedly a great deal of ethics has been messed up by a failure to understand
moral dilemmas.
' ...
The failure is often reported; for instance
human
since
justifiable claims ...
and
are
rights
claims,
they
be
outweighed
by
other
As in all conflicts of moral principles, human rights
reasons must be weighed
other moral
can
against
one another by an as yet
poorly understood and ill-defined process' (Rajfles, p.42).
The failure shows up on the apparent clash between doing ethics by way of principles
and
doing
ethics
consistency reasons,
principles.
vor principles break down,
through examples.
or dilemmatic
And
examples.
examples
it is
thought for
air^. thought
to
refute
A proper approach to dilemmas removes the tension between examples and
principles and allows a synthesis to be achieved.
3.
Moral
rectitude.
Now
is
notion
this
to
be unpacked0
mhere
are
competing
explanations, e.g.
1) in terms of obligation and deontics;
2)
by
way
of
consequentialist
rectitude decisive.
assessment.
Pettit
to
make
moral
mhen it requires assessment thus
3) Method 1) unless dilemma; otherwise method 2\
rectitude so it is absolute in terms of O.
4.
wants
This is impossible.
Mcjlly's system has no moral dilemmas, since ~fu
For it proves trivial deontically.
But he also wants to run
0~u^ - at least intentionally.
Aquinas denies certain moral dilemmas, e.g. Np &
F~p, in the doctrine concerning perplexus simpliciter F & N p.12.
5.
Investigate further the connection of permitted and accepted worlds,
and
commission?
This
'possibly permitted'
does
not
involve
discussed in NNL.
the
fallacy
of reducing
permission
*
'permissible
to
It does tie with the suggested connection of
commission and omission through the * function.
��2
6.
Is problem of the individual in society, of a person in politics, an organisation
or a company of this type i.e.
dilemma
of
freedom?
Of.
a dilemma that can just stand, like the theoretical
also
Machiavellian
a
problem:
person
in
public
must
(morally?) act evilly sometimes.
7.
of PUBLIC
distinction
The
moralities.
VS
MORALITIES
PRIVATE
implies
that
there
are
two
The BASE ARGUMENT against is this:
But there are not two.
if we acknowledge this conception of morality as requiring some action as the
thing to do, how, logically speaking, could there be two moralities0
the thing to do when they conflict?
overriding reason for action?^
How could
morality then
What is
provide an
Similarly &n utilitarianism single maximisation recipe and results.
(/? DOEBN'01
REQUIRE KANTIANISM.)
However A can
to
be subject
conflicting
public
and
private claims.
Seen
this way
^public vs private just generates.heap of further moral dilemmas, and the 2 moralities
^is just
shoddy attempt
to escape
these dilemmas,
expedient (i.e.
would become n
shoves morality out
as in the Hinduism
resolution
dilemmas.
of
often in a way that’s politically
of the way for expediency'1.
The 2 moralities
* int
if
pursued this distinction-making attempt at
/
Something special about public/private case0
Or
differently, why are arguments from expedience
so much more acceptable in public sphere0
Be^n gives
r
interest
some reasons, but these oughtn't to justify a difference. | public interest
DIRTY HANDS PROBLEM
(PARADOX) is like GOOD SAM?
behalf of the statecommitting murder.
Sometimes it
is right
get one's hands dirty.
E.g. Doing such and
such on
OR just a straight dilemma?
to try to succeed,
and then it must also be right to
But one's hands get dirty from doing what it is wrong
to do.
And how can it be wrong to do what is right? Or how can we get our
hands dirty by doing what we ought to do9 Z M. Walzer, Philosophy and Public
Affairs,
moral
2,
10°^,
dilemma.
164.
Op
Walzer sees this as a tragic dilemma:
p-> q
Oq,
but
0~q.
Example:
but really a
torturing
captured
terrorist to extract information to save innocent lives.
The problems start from questions of relations between two different moralities.
�Conclusion:
8.
Conflict
conscience 'that,
the
public
to
at its most liberal,
loyalty,
overriding moral
liberalism
in
end.
to a
On
between
will stand
the
individual,
tried
committed concern for its collective interest,
the
one hand
the
individual
as a
relate
this
ambiguous model
of the
a
individual and
as an
autonomous,
citadel,
on the other, the
overriding perverse, wilful obstacles in the way of the general will.
to
with
no gainsaying, and the claims of
possessed of liberties that only he himself can waive, by consent;
State,
equipped
society,
not
T have
only to
liberal conceptions of what belongs to the private and what to the public, but also
to the tension between a morality of principles and one of valued outcomes, which, in
my view, is very closely connected with the ambiguity of the model
.
*
("Renn?
9.
Argument for weak paraconsistent position.
Morality is a guide to action.
Action is consistent.
So have to r?l consistencize.
^Inconclusive"1.
Like law one
consistencizes (e.g.
for action^ alright.
But that confirms that it is inconsistent
in the first place.
10.
The
difference.
fought distinction
is,
it
It hands the opposition its case.
is objected,
a
Simply not so.
distinction
without a
�The following have been redacted from access file (PDF) due to copyright restrictions.
•
•
•
•
•
Letter, unidentified author to Richard, 27 Jul 1984 re Moral dilemmas. (2 pages (1 leaf))
Reference card and handwritten paper, ? Alchourron and Bulygin (1 reference card + 5
leaves)
Letter, Charles to Richard, undated re New Studies in Deontic Logic and Castañeda's
proposed deontic logic. (2 pages)
Cuttings from unidentified publication, The paradoxes of deontic by Hector-Neri
Castañeda (page 46-47), and Some main problems of deontic by Jaakko Hintikka 9page
94-96. (2 leaves)
Letter, unidentified author to Richard, with annotations by Sylvan?, undated, re Moral
dilemmas. (7 leaves)
�Ml
Although the sorts of examples we have described seem familiar
enough,
it might well be disputed that they are correctly described
as cases of Op and 0~p, or in the alternative representation as
cases of Fp & F~p.
The main ground for this is the belief that
�19.
in any such case one of the parties to the conflict is less wrong,
and that this one can be claimed to be not really wrong at all.
There are however several objections to this move to neutralise
the dilemmas
(1)
First,
wrong party.
there is no guarantee that there always is a less
Both parties may be equally wrong,
no way of deciding which is less wrong.
Vietnam example;
To take
and there may be
our hypothetical
if we withdraw half a million people will die;
but if we do not withdraw the war will continue and half a million
people will die; clearly the example may be elaborated.
There
may be no grounds for choice.
(2) The fact that one party is less wrong than the alternative
is no grounds for saying that it is not wrong at all.
In fact
the case would normally be described as one of choice between " two
evils",
two wrong aciwsese©;
if one chooses the lesser of two evils,
then one still chooses an evil.
ing
One is simply not justified in claim1
that, where p involves killing 10 people, p is not wrong
simply on the grounds that ~p involves killing 15 people,
any more
than one is in the case of preference theory justified in saying
that p, which brings a gift of $10,
is not a good thing simply on
the grounds that ~p brings a gift of $11.
things;
(3)
They are both good
and in our moral case, both are wrong.
If we do say this, plainly it will be very difficult to find
any moral principles which can be asserted with any confidence
universally.
In fact it will probably
be possible to find
hypothetical counterexamples to any statement of the form "All
actions of type x are wrong",
just by producing a case where p is
an action of type x, but ~p is an even worse action.
that p,
although an action of type x,
is not wrong,
It will follow
so we will have
�However,
a counterexample.
it seems to be important that we
should be able to assert such general principles, and doing so
gives us an essential way of assessing, morally,
(4)
Finally,
types of actions.
the proposed redescription of the case as involving
only one wrong element,
the one which is more wrong,
leaves out
an essential feature of such a case,
that it is a dilemma,
case where one cannot but act wrongly.
If we omit this element
the case is not properly described,
it is falsified;
a
we may as
a result find ourselves unable to explain many resulting features
of the situation which result from the conflict,
e.g. human
behavioural features >n such a situation involving hesitation,
doubt,
inaction,
perhaps anguish and guilt.
All these will appear
quite irrational.
(5)
Assigning a priority to our moral rules itself does
nothing to resolve the logical problem raised by the dilemmas,
(although it may solve the practical problem of how best to act).
%
For this logical problem iX
the problem of how to arrange our
logic so as to be able to describe such cases adequately and without
falsification or incon-sisteney.
Arranging a priority, so that
A
one alternative can be claimed to be less wrong, does not solve
the logical problem, which is that
whatever happens will be wrong,
that T cannot be identical with I.
The consequence that whatever
happens is wrong cannot be removed unless as well as a priority
assignment one also adopts the principle that what is less wrong
is not wrong at all.
But this principle leads to inconsistency
for then the less wrong action is both wrong and not wrong.
To
be consistent this method must introduce a new concept of wrong
in addition to the old one,
say "wrong2" , and the less wrong action
can be said to be not "wrong2".
But now the original problem is
�21.
still not eliminated, because the problem was not that whatever
be
is
.
happened would /'wrong2" (although this/now false), but that
whatever happened would be wrong, which is still true.
sort of priority - dominated concept cannot replace,
may supplement,
the original concept.
And this
although it
�Sf-
The problem of classifying these dilemmas.
z
mainly using the term ’wrong’.
We have stated our dilemmas
However, it may seem that this is ambiguous,
and that it is possible, or desirable, to make a further distinction, between
pi inciples which are obligatory and principles which are prohibitory.
For
wrongs can be due to two very different causes - om^iission or commission.
The distinction between obligation and prohibition principles can be
explained initially as follows:
an obligation principle of the form Op
read ’it ought to be the case that p’,Qt
is
�f ?
L ' r
jT
f'.Jlz.f:? /t/tjyJ
/4-<
'it ought to come about that p'.
This says that something, p, ought to
should happen that p'A,
r,
happen,
an
ideal situation I.
that is^ that it is a member of
&
A situation^satisfies Op,
Op if p is not in it
then, if p is In it
( p eaJ;and violates
p's presence satisfies Op, whereas
(pZ S?) •
£ ["Obligation"
Z7 —:----- is
’
being used here
its omission or absence violates it.
in a somewhat unusual sense,
4
for Lemmon seems to be right in
urging that obligations are usually contractual in nature.
and contracts may be contracts to do something or to refrain from
However, we
doing something - hence both positive and negative.
must press
'obligation'
and
'obligatory'
and adjective corresponding to
it
*
into service as a noun
ought to be the case that'
in
order to avoid clumsiness and for lack of any other suitable words.
The other class of principles,
hand, we shall write
prohibitive principles, on the other
'Ep' and read
'it is forbidden that p'.
These principles claim that p is the sort of action which should
p is not a member of the ideal situation I.
be avoided
satisfies Fp,
situation a such that p Z
such that pea violates it.
a situation a
whereas
p's omission or absence satisfies
Fp, whereas pSoccurrence or presence violates it.
is paralleled on the
obligations)
The distinction
action level by the distinction between action
and by that between
and inaction,
A
'sins of omission'
and 'sins of commision'
A
(which violate
(which violate
prohibitions).
'I have done those things which I ought not to have done'
violating a prohibition but also,
and not equivalently,
not done those things which I ought to have done',
thus
'I have
thus violating
An obligation is satisfied by doing something,
an obligation.
a
prohibition by failing to do something, by avoiding something.
It is important not to confuse 0~p, which says that
should happen'
or
'that ~p
'It is wrong that p', with Fp which says ’that
p should not happen', or
it
*
should not
happen that p'.
This
�distinction is clear, as a scope distinction,
in the English reading
However the two are continually confused in modal treatments of
But
deontic logic, since given Modal Muddle p / I = ~p g I.
that
to say/p should happen is not to say anything about what should not
happen
but leaves the issue as to whether ~p should or should
And to say that p should not happen is not say
and
0~p tells
anything about ~p,/whether it should happen or not.
not happen open.
aj
us that ~p is a member of I, where.Fp tells us that p is not a
member of 1.^
Dilemmas then seem to fall into three classes depending upon
whether the principles which lead to them are obligation or
prohibition principles^or both.
Fp and F~p,
Thus we obtain Op and 0~p,
and Op and Fp from our examples depending upon how the
principles involved are construed^
a<Tprohibitory or obligatory.
(A): Dilemmas obtained from prohibition principles,
Fp, % F~p1.
i.e.
cases of
We obtain cases of this sort given principles of the
*
form.
—
(1) Whenever P satisfies condition C,
(Action form:
(2)
it shouldn't happen that p.
action of type x are wrong)
it shouldn't happen that p.
A
Whenever p satisfies condition C',
The dilemma is
obtained where p satisfies condition C,
~p satisfies condition C'.
Jo O
F
and
-
■L Give the semantical reading of 0 and F?and the examples with
'wrong' .
Then mention the necessity for distinction between 0~p and Fp.
(1)
Wrongs divide into sins of omission and sins of commission.
(2)
These are semantically different.
(3)
Unless one distinguishes these concepts semantically
have the consistency assumption again.
Give the readings.
one will
�10.
Examples can also be obtained from two distinct prohibitory
These are cases where the state of affairs described
principles.
(for reasons given by the first
by p is really indescribable
principle)
(for different reasons given by the second principle).
able,
*
(tndesir
For/(B)
and the state of affairs described by ~p is m^-ally
The second category of dilemmas are dilemmas obtained from
obligation principles i.e. cases of Op & O~p,
for some p.
We
obtain cases of this sort given principles of the form:(1)
Whenever p satisfies condition C,
(2)
Whenever p satisfies condition C',
it should happen that p
it should happen that p.
The dilemma is obtained when for a given p, p satisfies
condition C and ~p satisfies condition C':
(C)
Finally,
so Op and O~p.
examples derived from conflicting but not inconsistent
moral principles, which urge both that p should occur and that it
should not occur i.e.
and prohibited.
cases of Op and Fp, where p is both enjoined
These cases
come about where are principles of
the following sort:
(1)
Whenever p satisfies condition C, p should happen.
(2)
Whenever p satisfies condition C', p should not happen.
The dilemma results because one can find cases
one and the same state of affairs
C and condition C'?
e.g.
(p)
(in T)
where
satisfies both condition
as^our example derived from Lemmon's
uAcrw-tt
bolew, x gives back the gun
and helping a murderer.
(p)
is a case both of keeping a promise
But promises must be kept,
so Op holds.
However actions which help murderers are forbidden and should
not occur;
examples,
hence Fp also holds.
unlike the previous kind,
It seems that these sorts of
cannot be generated by a
single moral principle, but requires two principles which come into
conflict.
�With a certain degree of artifice we can arrange our
examples into these categories, with f A) groups being prohibitions
the (fe)groups obligations,
and the
(C)
groups mixed.
�It is necessary then to avoid the modal treatment and to
But though 0 principles and F principles
distinguish 0~ and F.
are
distinct, 0 and F provide alternatives bases for
(semantically)
The O-principles correspond semantically to
deontic system.
inclusion principles,the F formulated principles to exclusion
Thus e.g.
principles.
TRfH
5® where
iff
iff TROH
*
,
(UH) (TRfH oX(p,H)
= f)
In contrast,
I(Fp,T)
= t
iff
(UH)
TROH
d
Kp,H)
Thus the modellingswill mirror
f)
.
one another, with R
Rf
For the representation of principles then we can work
satisfactorily with an O-basis, or with an F-basis, but not with
a
mixed basis which uses both 0 and F principles.
Failure to
distinguish 0~p and Fp will provide a ground for the mistaken
consistency assumption:
iff p i H.
for it will follow from evaluation rules
�12.
The cases described satisfy the characterisation
of moral
For the principles involved are not inconsistent, yet
dilemmas.
they are not satisfiable in T.
In the case of the first set of
leading to Fp and F~p,
dilemmas,
the principles could not be
satisfied unless neither p nor ~p occurred.
necessarily complete,
But since T is
they cannot be satisfied in T.
of the second set of examples,
Op and 0~p,
In the case
the principles could
only be satisfied if both p and ~p occur, hence since T is con
sistent,
they cannot be satisfied in T.
different.
The third case is very
Here it cannot be satisfied because one and the same
proposition satisfies both conditions for occurring and conditions
for not occurring?
this proposition,
hence our principles direct, with respect to
that it should occur and that it should not occur.
This also cannot be satisfied in T,
since p is either a member of
T, or not a member of T.
The principles involved are not however inconsistent ones;
for
in each case a finite proposition modelling of the principles can
be provided.
In the third case,
directives,
despite the fact there are inconsistent
given a contingent proposition p^, which satisfies the
antecedent conditions, no inconsistency need result because such a
proposition p^ may not occur.
In other words,
though the principles
together with p^ form an inconsistent set, p-^ is essential and can
be deleted from the set since contingent;
and the set without p1
as the principles on their own are satisfactory
is consistent,
where no antecedents satisfy both,
a po£S»4ta-
case.
■ v
r
•
The principles
**
(a.
though inconsistent in application are not inconsistent^
i
In the
first two cases(they are T consistent?) also it is a contingent matter
that the principles come
i
...
into^ cannot be satisfied in T;
r;
for
detachment of a contingent truth is made, viz that the given
?
proposition satisfies the conditions.
�13.
since they constantly arise““without sacrificing the generality
of moral principles.
For unless carefully treated dilemmas will/
as we shall see, provide counterexamples to moral principles.
Our moral dilemmas result from judgements which cannot be
satisfied in T,
so that whatever happens will be wrong.
Howe
is
there/still quite a crucial difference between the first two
classes and the third class of dilemma.
In the third case the
result of the dilemma on detachment of a contingent premiss that
p satisfies c and c'
simultaneously is an inconsistency,
cannot both belong and not belong to the ideal set-up I.
since p
Although
the principles upon which the judgement Op and Fp was based were not
themselves mutually inconsistent,
moral judgerent
they do result in a inconsistent
that p both ought to happen and ought not to happen
is prohibited from happening.
Given that p has both properties,
the moral principles concerned are in conflict.
This is brought
out by the fact that if p does satisfy these conditions,
cannot be any situation, T-like or not,
there
in which the principles are
satisfied.
Furthermore here we have a case where each moral judgement
provides a counterexample to the other.
If Op and Fp both
obtained, both the principles from which they were derived would
be false;
principle
for Op would provide a counterexample to the prohibitory
(p)
(if p satisfies c’
then Fp)
since Op
~Fp;
while
Fp would provide a counterexample to the obligatory principle
(if p satisfies c then Op).
(p)
�J
\
14.
In view of these points it seems that a moral code which
resulted in this sort of conflicting judgement is defective;
the
principles involved should either be restricted by tightening one
or other of conditionsc and c', or else restated by reformulating
one or other of the principles,
(p) (Cp => F~p)
replaced by
(p) (C'p => 0~p) .
or
i.e.
either
(p) (C'p => Fp)
(p) (Cp => Op)
is
is replaced by
the case is reduced to one of the first
In short,
two cases.
In this case the dilemma arises because the principles
In the first two cases however
involved come into conflict.
the difficulty does not arise from conflicting principles, but is
simply a case where our
not
v/
judgements cannot both be satisfied in T,
because they are conflicting, but because of the peculiar
Where Op and 0~p both hold,
nature of T.
(or Fp and F~p)
what-
ever happens will be wrong, because p & ~p cannot both hold in T,
The dilemma is however simply explained
nor p & ~p fail to hold.
and the judg.ements accepted once it is understood that I,
situation,
action,
is not T-like.
The dilemma may produce a conflict in
because given the logical structure of T and the limitations
it imposes upon action,
both judgements.
it is impossible to act in accordance with
But this does not effect the judgements themselves;
as moral judgenents, assessments of the moral worth of p
of affairs)
conflict.
(a
state
of ~p^jthey are quite compatible and there is no
To say that p is wrong and that ~p is also wrong is
in no way to be inconsistent,
true.
the ideal
and both judgements may very well be
The absence of conflict also explains
the fact that such
cases can be produced from single moral principles,
such as
'Killing is wrong', which in no way inhibit internal conflict.
�15.
Judgements such as
'p is wrong
of action or states of affairs;
as to how to act in T.
alternative in T,
Hence Op does not compare p with its
~p.
Such judgements are implicitly comparative,
not to ~p's worth, but to the
Thus if we reach situations as to moral
worth of its absence.
(using moral criteria for selection),
if for every situation H, H+p is worse than H-p.
in a situation
assess types
and do not simply give directions
but p's worth is assessed relative,
desirability
& ~p is wrong'
p is wrong
If p's
presence
makes the situation morally worse than it would be
if p were absent,
then p is wrong.
But now it is a straightforward
matter to claim that p is wrong and that ~p is also wrong;
one is
aHL
simply claiming that situations without p^orally preferable to
the
that
(should be chosen^etc.);
same situations with p
*
and also
situations without ~p are morally preferable to that same
situation with ~p in it.
These judgements in no way conflict,
and if we were in a position to choose a situation with neither of
them in, we could satisfy both judgements simultaneously.
is the choice must be regarded as a hypothetical one,
As it
and the
judgements as representing a kind of thought experiment, rather
than in giving directions as to how to behave in T.
The choice
embodied in such a judgement is one between two hypothetical situations
and not between alternative versions of T.
It is just for this reason that this type of moral judgement
is adequate for assessing morally different types of actions or
sorts of states of affairs.
Because we are concerned with choosing
between hypothetical situations, we can opine that all actions of
a certain specifiable
type and states of affairs satisfying a
certain condition are wrong
(not wrongyetc.), without risking
* In the case of Op & 0~p.
In the case of Fp & F~p one ismaking
a slightly different claim, that a situation from which p's
absent is morally better than some in which it is present.
Note
that the difference between 0 and F can be
to the difference
in directionthe rankings.
�16.
falsification because of the contingent features of T.
Finally,
in such a judgement one is concerned with assessing the action
or state of affairs in itself rather than passing judgement about
the best way to act in a particular situation.
Dilemmas of this sort then, as opposed to dilemmas of the
conflict sort first discussed,
are not the result of defective
moral codes or principles and do not require any readjustment or
resolution
(beyond psychological acceptance of the fact that it is
sometimes inevitable that what happens is wrong and that perfectibility
is impossible).
They do not provide counterexamples to general
In contrast
moral principles based on contingent features of T.
codes containing the conflict type of dilemma are defective.
Any
code containing two principles of the form 'wherever p satisfies
Cl, Op'
and ’Whenever p satisfies C2, Fp’
where C1
and C2 are not
inconsistent, will be defective because there is a possible situation
(a hypothetical case)
with a p^ which satisfies both C1
Whence the inconsistent pair Fp,
potentially inconsistent.
& Op,.
and C2.
Any such code is at least
This sort of defectiveness of a moral
code might be excusable if it were inevitable.
But it is not.
can be avoided if we adopt either 0 or F as primitive,
and state
our judgements in terms of one or other of them, but not both.
alternative,
terms,
conflicting
is intolerable.
moral
It
The
principles stated in
No principle could be asserted with any
confidence, because they would hold or fail just according to whether
or not a suitable proposition with conflicting properties appeared
in T and provided a counterexample.
And since this is contingent
whether such principles hold or not would be entirely a matter of
good or bad luck.
Moral judgements on the other hand ought to
apply beyond T to possible situations, ought to be non-empirical
and apply to hypothetical cases,
matter of accident.
and ought not to hold just as a
�4
C ‘S’ -X
f *
�univeralisa'blemoral principle was a judgement
The general
‘
7^'
about types of action or states of affairs and compared p's presence
in a situation with its absence from the same situation on a scale
of moral desirability.
This concept of wrongness is essential to
be able to state general moral judgements.
But as well as this
concept we can distinguish another important concept which is
designed to assess not types of action but what is the best course
of action in a given situation.
This is obtained by comparing
p's presence in a situation not with its absence but with the presence
of its rivals in a given situation,
e.g. ~p in the case of T.
p will be said to be ’the best course of action'
~p are both wrong)
if a situation
Thus
(even where p and
(usually T), with p in, ranks
higher morally then the same one with ~p in.
A more practical
- concept still can be obtained by comparing p and its practical rivals,
say
will be the best course of action
practical alternative q)
f
Y
r
if a situation
(as compared with its
(usually T)
(morally) when p is in it than when q is in it.
between alternative ways of
extending
will rank higher
One chooses
T.
It is important as Lemmon points out to distinguish this
concept clearly from the more general concept earlier explained.
Lemmon is wrong in suggesting that this is not a moral concept at
all and does not give rise to moral judgements but to judgements
of expedience.
The judgements involved in this case are still
moral in the sense that the criteria for ranking situations are
�22
specifically moral ones and not based simply,
say, on aesthetic
considerations or desirability considerations.
clear that this distinction
Yet
it is
(which we shall call the distinction
between differential obligation and intrinsic obligation)
must be
ignored and eliminated if obligation is treated as a modal functor
For give/} the principle of Modal Muddle
(H) (p e H = ~p e H)
semantical recipes we have given will be identical.
p's presence in H with p's absence
(p / H)
comparing p in H with ~p's being in H.
the
To compare
will be the same as
It is essential however
to distinguish this notion of 'best course of action' (differential
basic notion we have discussed, because it has quite different
properties.
*
It cannot replace although it can supplement,
The reasons are as follows
other notion.
02 does not allow for
(1)
the
moral dilemmas.
p with its practical alternative in T, e.g.
For since we compare
~p,
to say that Op &
0~p is to say that a situation H such p e H is morally better than
a situation H such that ~p e H, and also to say that a situation H
such that ~p e H is better than one such that p e H.
This is a
(Similar results will ensue when F is taken as a
contradiction.
basis).
(2)
02 cannot allow for general moral judgements of the form "All
actions
(states of affairs)
counterexample.
of type x are wrong" without fear of
For no matter how compelling our principle and
how repugnant the type of action described, we can almost always
find a case where the only alternative action is worse.
however repugnant p may be,
Hence,
it will not in this case be wrong,
a counterexample to one general judgement will be provided.
new notion then cannot do the same job as the old;
—-----------------------------------------
.
and
Our
it should be
,
We u^e such
as 'the best thing in the circumstances'
'the right thing', 'the correct course all
in all'
to capture
differential obligations .
�23.
regarded as parasitic,
because it can be alternatively represented
as admitting the wrongness of the alternatives,
but going on to
weigh up the alternatives to obtain a recipe for practical action.
(3)
implies can" slogan
It is to this notion that the "ought
applies.
O2P o locjically possible p, because one has selected
p as the best course of action from logically possible alternatives
in T.
Indeed
’02p’
can be made to imply
‘p is physically possible'
(or even physically possible to the person being exhorted)
by
comparing p with its physically possible alternatives in ranked
situations.
In a similar way,
the concept of blame attaches to
failure to follow the best course of action,i.e.
if p is better as a course of action than its
and one fails to do it.
action.*
(practical)
alternatives,
One is not blameworthy for doing p merely
only as good as,
because p is no better than, i.e.
alternatives,
one is blameworthy
its remaining
it has to be worse than some alternative course of
It is important to note that blame attaches to this
second differential concept of obligation, rather than the first
intrinsic notion,
for the possibility and obvious unfairness of
someone's being blamed for doing wrong where both Op and 0~p
hold and he has no alternative which is not wrong would otherwise
be a powerful objection to cases of moral dilemmas.
(5)
Finally,
differential obligation makes a basically different
type of judgement from the intrinsic notion.
not of a type of action or state
It is an assessment
or
of affairs, the action/state of
affairs in itself, but of the situation in which it occurs,
action in this situation.
This is reflected in such phrases as
"the best thing in the circumstances"
"the right thing to do
the conditions obtained at the time)", etc.
* Oh well, you cannot be blamed.
circumstances .
the
(given
Hence it is not
You did the best thing in the
�universalisable , and does not try to be.
It
“results in a recipe
for action, and is closely allied to advice or exhortation/orders ,
persuasion,
recommendation or other directed activities.
Intrinsic
obligation however/ frafc^s no account of possible action and does not
need to;
it assesses action-types regardless of how they occur in
a given situation.
This last point is important in connection with argument
about moral dilemmas.
For the confusion between our two concepts
has a disastrous effect on argument, particularly those hotly
disputed arguments which occur in the case of moral dilemmas.
The
following sort of argument, due to confusion between Oi and O2
is
all too common in such cases.
Actions of type x are wrong
(1')
(if p satisfies c then Oi~p).
(p)
This must be Oj because
it represents a general and exceptionless
(2)
p
is an action
(3)
~
02
i.e.
~p:
(state of affairs)
judgement about a type.
of type x.
p should not be done.
Therefore do not do p.
The argument is plainly unsatisfactory because the fact that
Oi~p
holds is not sufficient to establish that 02~p
To
holds.
do this one would have to show that the alternative, p, was not worse
or even just as good.
not be so.
And in cases of dilemmas this may very well
To establish 02~p
one needs to show not merely that p
is wrong but that there is some better
course of action.
The
fallacy derives from trying to base a recipe for action on the
intrinsic obligation notion, Oi.
�s
25.
A closely related confusion holds that it is inconsistent to
claim that p is a wrong type of action,
that it should be done nonetheless
the best course of action.
August 6 197 x
(e.g.
is repugnant etc.,
but
- because it is nevertheless
Canberra Times Editorial,
on abortion reads as follows:
"It is significant,
and inconsistent with its official stand that the s ynod should
have qualified its recommendation to family doctors with the words
"however regrettable we feel this to be"."
to be inconsistentthen,
one states to be
What is being claimed
is that one should recommend a course of action
(morally)
there is no inconsistency.
regrettable or repugnant.
But of course
One is simply saying that ~p is wrong,
"Oi-p", but that it is nevertheless the best thing to do given the
circumstances because the alternatives are worse?i.e.
"O2P"•
The distinction between differential and intrinsic obligation,
then,
seems to be an important factor in assessing the validity of
argument where moral dilemmas are concerned.
�/,
�2
�ft
I
z^z/ /
rt&jZy
7-,
I
�
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MORAL DILEMMAS AND THE LOGIC OF DEONTIC NOTIONS
Richard Routley and Vai Plumwood^
The
§1.
paradoxes
of
deontic
logic
consistency and
the
and
modal requirements.
Especially since mid-century many systems of deontic logic have been advanced, which
logic of such deontic
attempt to explore the
prohibition,
and wrong.
right
all
Almost
which treat deontic notions as modal,
notions as obligation, permission and
modal
not
demand
functors,
All such systems are mistaken m a
For deontic functors such as obligation and prohibition are
but
are
more highly
of
degree
greater
a
systems,
i.e. as if strict or provable equivalents are
intersubstitutable within them preserving truth.
quite fundamental way.
systems have been modal
these
intensional than
propositional
modal
modal
than
discrimination
and so
functors,
logics
can
provide.
The damage caused by the mistaken treatment of deontic notions as modal shows up
in
various ways,
but we
shall be
primarily concerned with only one of these, the
consistency requirements and the exclusion thereby of moral dilemmas.
which the modal damage
appears is through a
Another way in
series of related paradoxes,
such as,
directly, the paradoxes of derived obligation, and, less directly, the paradoxes of
the Robber and the Good Samaritan.
The consistency requirements come out in two ways in mainstream deontic systems.
consistency
Firstly,
a
negation
are
requirement,
-
obligatory
in
the
that
usual
no
claim
such
is
symbolism,
Op
that
~0~p,
both it
i.e.
and its
~(0p
&
0~p)
— appears as a principle, frequently a postulate, in all mainstream absolute
systems.21 Such absolute systems, which are variants on alethic modal systems, are
characteristically obtained from corresponding alethic systems by replacing the modal
axiom,
that’ or
’it ought to be the case that’, or
the functor ’□ ’,
modal
(such as
logics
system demands
world
is
’it is obligatory
’it ought to be seen to that', replaces
’it is necessary that', of alethic systems. We know of course that
consistency requirement;
some
~0~p - where ’O’, read
Op D p, by the deontic axiom, Op
the doxastic
systems)
the standard
but it appears that the intended interpretation of deontic
the consistency
requirement.
or
encapsulates
acceptable
subsequently introduced,
can be designed without
For
its semantical equivalent
what
is
permitted
(i.e.
is that
in
symbols
(Px)STx) which is surely true (for let world x be determined
precisely by what is so permitted).
Moreover,
the
second
related
way
in
which
consistency
escaped by a modal formulation of deontic (or doxastic) logics.
figures
cannot
be so
For it seems clear,
2
and is widely agreed, that 0 satisfies the following distribution principle:
(1)
Op&OqiffO(p&q).
Since however 0 is modal, and p & ~p & q
p&~p (i.e.
-
the sides are strictly
equivalent),
0(p & ~p) iff 0(p & ~p & q)
Thence,
Op & 0~p implies 0(p & ~p), which implies 0(p & ~p & q),
and (2),
by (1)
which implies Oq;
(2)
if there are cases of moral dilemmas where Op and also 0~p,
i.e.
then obligation spreads so that any claim is obligatory.
This argument tells against all mainstream deontic logics;
rock-bottom system, minimal deontic logic.
for it holds in the
This logic MDS, presented by von Wright
and others (see e.g. Hilpinen 81, p.3 and p.5), adds to classical sentential logic CL
(with rules of Material Detachment and Substitutivity duly extended)
the one-place
connective P, of permissibility, subject to just the conditions
P(A v B)
e
(1’)
PA v PB
and
Intersubstitutivity of provably equivalent CL (i.e. truth functional) wff
Now
define
a
connective
-
in
fact
the
standard
obligation
Then, where A and B are any CL wff, 0(A & B)
OA =£j£~P~A.
negation and
It then follows,
given
that
(extensional)
principles to
De Morgan
= ~(~P~A & ~P~B).
follows),
0
moral
claim
is
dilemmas
obligatory,
the
consequence
as above
of
the
nothing
functor
)
*
(2
-
thus:
OA & OB, upon applying
of (1
)
*
that P~(—A & —B)
(or by variants thereupon that which
form
OA
&
0~A,
(extensional)
i.e.
any
permissible.
The
that
is
OB,
revealing variant argument applies the provable CL-equivalence A & -A = B & ~B to get
0(A & ~A) = 0(B & ~B).
d
OB & 0~B => OB.
Then (in condensed notation) OA & 0~A => 0(A & ~A) => 0(B & ~B)
That is, if there are any deontic moral dilemmas (of such forms as
OA & 0~A) then everything is obligatory.
other
forms;
But there are moral dilemmas, of this and
and not everything is obligatory.
incorrect. So too are all its extensions, and
Therefore minimum deontic
logic is
thereby all mainstream systems.
For
'most systems of deontic logic include the system’ of von Wright 'as a subsystem' (F
& H, p.13).
There is little appreciation of the
involve in the ethical
Hare,
having
set
up
a
force of these arguments or of what they
literature. But one prominent example will
dilemma,
and
rejected
one
logical
have to suffice.
route out,
proceeds to
pronounce that 'it is not very helpful to try to sort out these difficulties by some
relatively minor tinkering with the calculus of deontic logic.
The linguistic and
logical intuitions which give rise to them are all right so far as they go' (82,
3
intuitions behind the mainstream systems are not alright, but lead to
The
p.28).
deontic collapse and to a heap of paradoxes; and a bit of '’tinkering" is enough to
remove the worst difficulties.5
(2’) and
The trouble lies we shall argue, just with the modal requirement (i.e.
its usual extension to all wff).
that not everything is obligatory,
evident
For while it is
This leaves much to be defended.
on no more than the strength of a few
examples (such as that it is not obligatory that everyone visit the tallest eucalypt
every day), none of the other assertions is so uncontroversial.
Given that there are such moral dilemmas, as will be argued at length, and given
that sentential logic CL is admissible when applied to consistent situations (which
are all
that are
elsewhere
(in
arguments:
required
RLR
in
especially),
modal
the
namely,
the arguments
there
are
a claim that has been argued
above),
two
only
and
requirement,
one
fault the
which to
points
at
half
of
the
distributivity
principle, specifically
r
(O-adjunction).
OA & OB -> 0(A & B)
But it is bizarre to have to fail O-adjunction in order
OA & 0~A =5 B has
quite
especially when
OB to stand,
0(A & ~A)
to be
correctly
foundation.
And
obligation.
For,
not
it
contemplated
among
in
the
things,
is a
irrelevant mates
7
desperate measure ,
systems
since
it
intended
role
and
mainstream
against
entirely
other
is conceded that its
Faulting O-adjunction
rejected.
goes
it
to allow the paradox
O-adjunction
can
be
argued
is
without
meaning
for
from
of
the
semantics of 0, along these lines:- Roughly OA is true iff A holds in all acceptable
situations.
But if A holds in all such situations and B does also then so does A &
B, validating O-adjunction.
Accordingly, the trouble must be located in the modality
requirements.
This can
be
seen
from another
angle also.
obligation, which also underlies O-adjunction,
An
important logical
feature of
is its transmissibility, that what is
tightly entailed by what is obligatory is also obligatory; in symbolic form,
A ■+ B -o OA -> OB
But now,
(0-transmission).
if entailment is erroneously construed as strict implication, which is what
the modal requirement would have us do, then 0(A & ~A) -> OB, since by a paradox of
strict implication A & ~A
B. If there are moral dilemmas of the form 0(A & ~A), as
will be contended, then this result is sufficiently damaging on its own, and focusses
the trouble on the modal requirement.
properly maligned OA & 0~A ->0B.
Otherwise apply O-adjunction,
to obtain the
4
the
Both
and
consistency
requirements should
modality
be challenged
then by
anyone who claims that, for some p, both Op and 0~p (and that such judgements are not
merely prima facie, vanishing upon further reflection).
Many have argued that such
cases do occur, indeed are central examples of value conflict, and are of fundamental
importance in ethics.$ We want to go even further and claim, firstly, that such cases
occur quite frequently, as cases of conflicting obligations, conflicting rights, and
genuine moral dilemmas - so in particular there are many cases where both p and ~p
ought to be the case - and secondly, that adequate logical treatment of such cases
requires an underlying logic of a distinctively paraconsistent kind.
we shall
cases has,
argue,
with many important arguments and cases.
many of
logic
rendered deontic
Neglecting such
incapable of dealing adequately
The matter is particularly serious since
fiercely debated moral cases are cases of moral dilemmas,
lthe most
e.g.
limited resources, nuclear war, permissible war tactics. While our initial argument
will overlap previous work,9 it goes beyond it by adding a semantical treatment and
moral
of
explanation
semantical
dilemmas,
and
in
setting adequate
deontic logics
within the framework of paraconsistent logic.
simple
The
§2.
resolution
relevant
epicycling.
classical
versus
The
relevant
It has already been indicated.
solution to the base problem is disarmingly simple.
Abandon the modal assumption, that obligation, permissibility, and so on, are modal
This blocks
logical equivalents.
functors allowing replacement of modal
from OCA & ~A), or from OA & 0~A, to 0(B & ~B) and thence to OB.
giving
up
intersubstitutivity
are
replacement
coentailment,
not
simply
just
more
in
contexts;
deontic
rigorous
than
lax
strict equivalence.
intimately
- the Spread
with
What
ones.
is
permitting
required
is
While A & ~A and B & ~B are strictly
equivalent, they do not coentail one another.
connected
modal
It does not involve
conditions
the
the move
law,
That is as much of a fallacy as - one
A
that would have that a
& ~A -> B,
contradiction such as A & ~A entails any statement whatsoever.
An
alternative
satisfactory
distinctive
implciation
deontic
way
then
logic
of
should
explaining
be
in
particular
of
relevant
paraconsistent,
feature of relevant logics, their
and
the
is
solution,
simply
and
through
why
the
a
most
rejection of the paradoxes of strict
Spread.
For,
as
remarked,
one
logical
characteristic of deontic notions such as obligation is their transmissibility; i.e.
where A
entails B then OA is logically sufficient for OB.10 Then were entailment
strict implication it would follow at once by Spread that 0(A & ~A) -> OB, whence by
O-adjunction, OA & 0~A -> OB.
basis
of
interpretations
straightforwardly on
RLR II).
of
Transmissibility may be independently argued for on the
entailment
(e.g.
as
content
inclusion),
and
follows
the semantical analysis of obligation to be advanced (cf. also
5
A good deal
of effort has already been expended in trying to save mainstream
deontic theory from the worst of the difficulties
and consistency
requirements.
Most of
through its modal
it encounters,
the repairs
however
attempted amount
to
epicycling: trying to tack theory-saving devices onto the initial theory, rather than
questioning any fundamental features of it.
Intractable
exposed.
problems
is called
What
the
with
so-called
minimal
the standard system of deontic
system
already
have
been
logic is in an even worse
position than the minimal system, because it adds to the minimal system as an axiom
12
Then any standard system including a moral dilemma, 0(p^ & ~p ), is
13
o
o
simply inconsistent. For Op => Pp,
hence Pp^ & ~Pp-j where p1 is pQ & ~pQ.
~p(p & ~p).
Main marketed deontic logics are epicyclic variations on
(i)
standard deontic
logic,
being modal attempts
to repair
defects in earlier
prototypes.
They include
(ii)
reductions of
systems of
type
(i)
to alethic logics by introduction of a
constant ’o’ read, for example, ’the world will be worse off’ or 'punishment ought to
cr is the moral sanction or some bad state of affairs.
follow’:
is defined
Then *0'
EK-A^cr); i.e. A is obligatory iff the negation of A (non-fulfilment of A, it
OA
is said) necessitates the sanction.
It is usually postulated: -0^.
Such reductive
frameworks, since they include minimal deontic logic, repeat its defects.
(iii)
relativistic
systems
which
attempt
axiomatise
to
circumstances,
c',
conditional
of
reads ’p is obligatory given, or
permission and conditional obligation; thus ’0(p/c)
*
in
notions
underlying model being that of conditional
the
probability.
These systems were designed chiefly to avoid the paradoxes of derived obligation to
which systems of type
really
in
(as
and
(i)
probability
(ii)
theory)
lead.
to
But
the new operator, /,
compensate
for
implicational connective in the modal framework assumed.
so-called
"logics
of
conditional
e.g., van Fraassen, p.438
’...
obligation"
still
lack
the
is introduced
of
an
adequate
So, not surprisingly, these
exclude
moral
dilemmas
(thus,
it would be more apt to say that we have here a logic
of obligation that remains after obligational conflicts are resolved').
(iv)
systems which
conditional
d,
such
include a modal conditional functor superior to the material
as
a
Stalnaker-Lewis-style
conditional,
conditional deontic notions like those of (iii) can be defined.
in
terms
of
which
But these systems,
since modal, do not escape modal limitations and problems (see further RLR).
(v)
systems based
on a
logic of change or action. These systems turn out to be
reducible to a combination of absolute systems with tense logics, i.e.
14
to multiply modal systems and so repeat the problems of modal systems.
None of
these modal
types are satisfactory,
none can be made
so,
they amount
because of
6
What is at
modal assumptions, like consistency requirements, that they all involve.
fault is not merely types of systems of this sort, which confine the framework to a
worlds
possible
defect enough,
one
thereby
and
but the
write
in
conditions,
consistency
that is
though
sweeping consistency interpretation of deontic
more
logic,
that ’principles of deontic logics are conditions of consistency for normative
systems’.^ The consistency interpretation - which is deeply entrenched in much
ethical
theory
(especially
making no adequate allowance
from Kant)
deriving
that
for what is essential
fundamentally mistaken,
- is
moral dilemmas and
to morality,
the familiar inconsistency of normative systems.
Documenting moral dilemmas. Cases of moral dilemmas are, perhaps unfortunately,
§3.
both familiar and inevitable.
perhaps not,
and
logic
theory
deontic
(including
is unfortunate
It
such
for standard deontic
approximations
rough
as
utilitarianism)
since they have ultimately to be dismissed as inadequate to account for the data.
is
also
often
extremely
On the other
dilemmas.
awkward
who
those
for
such dilemmas
hand,
probity, and are a main source of moral change.
A moral dilemma occurs when
considerations,
for
instance
cannot
T
situation
in
act
(where
such
a
of
which
shape
cannot, or
precisely
as
way
afford real tests of moral worth and
16
is confronted with moral
perhaps not directly inconsistent,
factual
the
probably cannot,
facts
satisfy
to
principles,
binding
obtain);
principles
that
is,
one
so
as
to
or
although
be satisfied
Then the situation T cannot but induce a moral fix.
considerations.
in moral
(but not only when) one
the
in
themselves enmeshed
find
It
in the
(probably)
meet
moral
This can come
about in two ways, either because of the logical limitations supposedly satisfied by
T,
in particular its consistency feature (that, whatever p,
does
not)
or
through
certain
contingent features
if p holds in T then ~p
of T. In
what
follows
we shall
concentrate on a major subclass of what are commonly accounted moral dilemmas, those
of (paraconsistent) logical interest where what is given or derived are pairs such as
OA and OB, WA and WB (i.e. A is wrong and so is B), or the like, where A and B are
And
incompatible.
of
particular
logical
importance
are
cases
where
deontically
incompatible pairs such as Op and 0~p, Wp and W~p, or the like are guaranteed.
The examples of moral dilemmas we consider provide only a small selection from
the
rich
variety
of
such
dilemmas,
but
hopefully
they
illustrate
that
variety.
Several of the examples involve more than one moral principle: however some commonly-
adopted moral principles generate dilemmas, of one sort or another,
their own.
pretty much on
Consider for instance first principles of the following type: Situations
involving the
(indiscriminate)
killing of numbers of (uninvolved) people should be
avoided, should not happen, are wrong - principle at very first approximation of the
form (p)(p satisfies condition C + Wp).
Applying such a principle, a dilemma results
7
where
and
occurs a large number of people will be killed,
if p obtains or
if ~p
obtains a large number of people will also be killed.
War situations provide obvious examples, with the V(ietnam) dilemma typical.
17
For example, people have described the situation in Vietnam as follows (not that it
really is this way):
If the Americans withdraw from Vietnam, a large number of people
If the Americans stay in (do not withdraw from) Vietnam,
will be killed.
number of people will
withdraw
from
C. Hence
under
be killed.
Vietnam',
Hence,
condition
satisfies
p
where p is
C
'the Americans withdraw from
~p
and
the principle both p and ~p are wrong,
similar is the company commander's dilemma.
of his troops will be killed.
a large
also
i.e.
satisfies condition
18
Wp and W~p.
Rather
If he invades the hamlet, a large number
If he does not invade the hamlet the prisoners held
Taking p as 'he invades the hamlet', p satisfies C and
therein will be killed, etc.
~p satisfies C. Therefore, Wp & W~p.
Both p and-not p are wrong; neither would occur
The killing does not however have to be of large numbers
in an acceptable situation.
of people to induce moral dilemmas.
variants on the commander's dilemma
Favourite
regularly wheeled out concern murdering a potential murderer to prevent him killing
several other
presented
people and
with
the
related constrained
option
killing
of
some
choice situations
smaller
special
person is
where a
group
of
people
(or
creatures) in order to avoid the certain killing of a larger or less favoured group
1Q
of creatures. 7
The pacifist's (or differently seen, patriot's) dilemma, which Lemmon draws from
on
Sartre, concerns the proposition p^: Z goes to war.
If Z does not go to war, he
help his friends and
fails to
fellow countrymen when they are in desperate need.
Thus ~p-j is wrong, W-p-j , on the principle that so failing to help one's friends and
fellow countrymen is wrong.
If Z goes to war, he will be involved in killing people
he has nothing morally or otherwise against; whence Wp^, on the principle that things
which involve such killing are wrong.
Therefore again Wp^ and W~pp
A different sort of example, again however involving the taking of life in one
way or another is the abortion dilemma (as conceived by Anglicans, say).
presented as a clash between conflicting rights.
to life
(i.e.
(on
that
the
one
part of the
should
not
foetus);
have one's
In one corner, there is the right
in the other, the right to bodily integrity
body used
against one's
detriment for someone else’s benefit) on the part of the mother.
where
a
particular
state
of
affairs
is
an
instance
of
both
so
(~p)
and
will
principles.
Hence Wp.
would deny the mother's right to bodily integrity.
Whence adjoining, Wp & W~p.
to one's
A dilemma results
performance of an abortion (p) would deny the foetal right to life.
not doing
This can be
The
But
Hence W~p.
8
Not so far removed from these examples, particularly when omission is conflated
with commission,
are environmentally-oriented
examples involving
sacrifice (broadly
construed),
for
resources.
Suppose that we have a duly qualified principle to the effect that things
which lead
to the feeding of starving people should happen.
example the
is a dilemma of limited
three cases:- First
following
Suppose also that we
have limited resources, and have decided to distribute these as follows: If the coin
comes down heads (p), then group A of starving people will be fed.
But if the coin
does not come down heads (~p) then group B of starving people will be fed.
Plainly
in an ideal situation both p and ~p will occur, that is the coin will come down heads
and it will not come down heads, so that both groups of people will be fed.
And if
the moral principle cited is correctly applied then a case of Op and 0~p results.
course minor
Of
involved leads to conclusions of the form
adjustment of the principle
W~p and W—p, whence Wp.
For an analogous conservationist * s (or humanitarian * s) dilemma consider the case
forest
where it ought to happen that the
is chopped down,
the benefit of the
for
presently starving (or etc.), and it ought to happen that the forest is preserved by
positive action
and
Op
dilemma
for the benefit of coming generations (or etc.).
0~p
emerges
the
from
of
application
distinct
In this case the
The
principles.
society dilemma, concerns the reform of primitive societies so that they
primitive
Consider the dilemma of a feminist environmentalist as
conform to outside standards.
regards Aboriginal
On the
women.
other
hand,
suppression of women in Aboriginal
society should be opposed; on the other hand major western interference in Aboriginal
affairs should be avoided; but changing the position of women would constitute major
interference.
Different examples involving
public
institution)
dilemma,
which
following:- On the one hand,
the
be restricted and the
funds will
principle
being
the
concerns
preposition
p2:
the
University
The Vice-Chancellor, or rather his advisor on logic, argues
opposes the government.
both
separate principles are the Vice-Chancellor * s (or
formulated
Wp2,
p2 is wrong,
students and
accordingly).
On
because the University’s
learning in general will suffer
the
other
hand,
W~p2,
~p2
(the
is wrong
because #p# will strengthen the present iniquitous status quo (the principle being
states
that
of
affairs
which
strengthen
the
present
status
quo
be
philosophers,
is
iniquitous
avoided). Therefore, conjoining Wp2 & W~p2»
A
signifi ant
source
of
moral
dilemmas,
long
observed
by
afforded by a relatively unrestricted institution of promising, and more generally by
parallel
institutional
arrangements
for
entering
perhaps worth distinguishing two classes of cases.
situations,
Z
is under
an obligation
into
(moral)
Firstly,
contracts.
It
is
in purely contractual
p, because of a contract or promise, and also
9
under an obligation q, because of a (likely different) contract, where q entails or
In the second sort of case, Z has promised to do ~p, and hence
commits one to ~p.
But p also satisfies conditions C,
0~p.
it emerges, and Z adheres to the principle
(q)(Cq ->0q), whence Op.
As an example of the
second type consider Lemmon’s simple and dated example,
adapted from Plato:
A friend leaves me with his gun saying he will be back for it in the evening,
and I promise to return it when he calls.
He arrives in a distraught
condition, demands his gun, and announces he is going to shoot his wife
because she has been unfaithful. I ought to return the gun, since I promised
to do so - a case of obligation.
And yet I ought not to do so, since to do
so would be to be indirectly responsible for a murder, and my moral
principles are such that I regard this as wrong.
I am in an extremely
straightforward moral dilemma, evidently resolved by not returning the gun
(62, p.148).
According to Lemmon the outcome is both Op, where p is ’I return the gun’, and also
The
0~p.
namely,
for
first
an
inference
concerning
promise-keeping;
every q, that q is a genuine promise entails Oq (for
genuine promises
follows
engender obligations),
from
and p
is a
immediate
genuine
promise.
inference of the following sort: for every q,
The
second
follows
that q really contributes to a murder
implies Wq, and that p really contributes to a murder; and moreover,
-> 0~q.
using an
for every q, Wq
Even if this last principle is repudiated a dilemma remains: for both Op and
Wp, i.e. I ought to return the gun and it is wrong that I return the gun.
that the initial principle sustains the conclusion 0~q as well.
(It may be
In any case,
it is
not difficult to amend Lemmon’s example so that it does, or more important, so as to
render the ensuing dilemma more convincing.)
Other dilemmas recur in variant form with contracts and promises.
For instance,
limited resources dilemmas reappear as follows: we promise all our surplus to a group
of poor only to have even poorer people turn up.
where
one's
deception,
employment calls
or
participation in
for
activities
Similarly work and role dilemmas,
which are
the production of nuclear
morally repugnant
(such as
or chemical weapons), may
arise either contractually, e.g. one signed up for the position, or from duty, e.g.
to provide for one's family.
Some of the moral dilemmas we have made look more determinate than perhaps they
should, or than they would be if the circumstances were filled out, or got filled out
slightly differently.
Then we should find that some of the dilemmas take the form of
Lemmon's more complex class, namely those where rather than OA and 0~A, what one has
is Prob OA and Prob 0~A, where Prob is the probability functor ’it is probable that'.
Lemmon describes
this class of "fully dilemmatic situations" in these terms:
’there
10
is some,
but not conclusive, evidence
that one ought to do something, and there is
some, but not conclusive, evidence that one ought not to do that thing’ (pp.152-3).
sort of dilemma is again drawn from Sartre: in
A real-life working example of this
brief, Sartre’s pupil is under some (sort of) obligation to stay with his mother, but
he
also probably under
is
an obligation,
felt only ambiguously,
to join the Free
French in England (for a fuller description see Lemmon, pp.153-4).
Lemmon suggests
that this class of dilemmas is, and perhaps should stay beyond deontic formalisation:
however the dilemmas are now within the scope of formalisation of a sort by multiple
functor intensional logics of a type not different
represent such principles as ’’ought implies can”.22
those already
from
needed to
Though we have presented a wide variety of dilemmas, some of them in some detail
- to
the
dispel
that dilemmas
common prejudice
are a rare
phenomena that can be
safely set aside or that need not be taken seriously in an ethical theory - we have
by no means exhausted the range and wealth of such dilemmas.
the
extent
of
analogues
practical
of
these
Nor have we indicated
the
dilemmas;
fact
is
that
similar
dilemmas are frequent in economics, over budgeting, devaluation (we ought to devalue
because ... and we ought not to devalue because ...), and so on.
Nor have we brought
out the political significance of the dilemmas; but the fact also is that some of the
deeper problems in moral and political theory revolve around dilemmas.
Familiar
examples
are
issues
of
(permitting
permissiveness
interests possibly harming or
licence
individuals
to
pursue
offending others) and freedom (restricting freedom as
regards actions which infringe others
*
freedom), of paternalism and state authority
versus civil liberties, and of democracy as against minority interests.
A
assortment
varied
accounts of the
where sources
of
examples
is
source of moral dilemmas,
for moral claims conflict,
contractual obligations.
Lemmon
also
in particular
and
promises,
is attracted
principles
as
those
morally
simplistic
that they generally arise
greatest
(p.150).
But he
fact that one and the same
conflicting directives
requiring
type,
since principle may conflict with
or duties, may conflict with one another
principle can deliver
such
removing
by an account of this latter
underestimates the extent of conflict, and neglects the
contract or
in
e.g. duty with principles, principles with
while realising that it will not always suffice,
principle
important
(e.g.
double maximization
happiness
of
the
greatest
number).
As well
a sufficient variety of tough examples helps remove the illusion that
moral dilemmas can one and all be escaped.
Admittedly, fortunately, there are ways
around some of the dilemmas we have outlined, especially those we have borrowed.
with
perhaps
further
around the dilemmas),
artifice
in
setting up
the cases
(to exclude
But
lateral moves
some of the dilemmas stand: from them (as is further argued in
11
residue
’To insist that there is in every case a solution without
is no escape.
§ 6) there
false
is
the
to
moral
facts’
p.132),
Marcus
(Barcan
a
theme
she
well
illustrates with the abortion dilemma.
§4.
deontic
Paraconsistent
logic
cannot be modal
makes
it
modal
treatment
the relevant development.
logic:
An adequate deontic
have to be paraconsistent.
but will
For
a modal treatment
to accommodate moral dilemmas - which are hard data
impossible
it
makes
as dilemmas
treat dilemmas
impossible to
(§3)•
A
without
proper
catastrophic collapse (as shown in §1).
The
of
principles
standard
deontic
logic
are,
however,
as
added to
readily
various paraconsistent logics as they are to modal or classical logic - at least this
(e.g.
OP),
in
(da Costa
negation-weakened
namely
logic and now distinguished
style)
logic
paraconsistent
and
For Jaskowski-style discussive logics there are some difficulties;
relevant logics.
in
styles of paraconsistent
two of the main
for
is true
particular,
the
given
of
rejection
can
principles,
adjunction
such
logics
satisfactorily include O-adjunction, OA & OB -> 0(A & B), which reflects adjunction in
for the possible-worlds sentential framework
It would seem not;
acceptable worlds?
logic offers no way of handling
of Jaskowski-style
the form 0(C & ~C) that result by O-adjunction.
properly accommodate dilemmas,
for
dilemmas concerning obligation, where
such as moral
clearly
principles
difficulties;
For these require impossible worlds
Generally, Jaskowski-style logics are in deep trouble trying to
where C & ~C holds.
adjunctive
full-strength moral dilemmas of
logics
Negation—weakened
hold.
they cannot deliver
expected deontic
also
are
interconnections, e.g.
in
the
deontic ’’square of opposition”, presented shortly, which depends crucially on normal
principles.
negation
In
difficulties.
Relevant
brief,
deontic
the reasons
types of paraconsistent logics
logics
can
both
avoid
choosing relevant logics over
for
(the substantial
sets
these
of
other main
reasons for which are given in OP)
are accentuated still farther as soon as applications, such as to deontic logic, are
Accordingly we will assume a relevant logical base, and a relevant semantical
made.
in what follows.
framework,
Even so, much of what we say and do can be adapted to
other logical bases, e.g. negation-weakened or positive-plus bases.
Often
a
combined
syntactical-semantical
is
approach
more
fruitful
and
illuminating than either a syntactical-axiomatic or a semantical approach carried out
separately. Each enriches and controls the other.23 Such is the case with relevant
logical theory,
logic.
Even
analogue
of
and so it is with relevant deontic logic, which builds on relevant
so,
a
standard
syntactical
deontic
standard superstructure,
relevant logic.
beginning
logic
we
normally added
can
is
easier.
simply
add
For
an
to
obtain
exact
a
analogue
relevant
of
the
to classical logic, to (what supersedes CL)
12
For minimal relevant deontic logic, MD, the one-place functor 0 - of obligation,
as usual
read
(e.g.
’It ought
suitable
some
to be
extending
system
that’ - is added
(the case)
B
system
basic
the
to some relevant logic
of
RLR
conforms to the usual formation rule: where A is a wff so is OA.
however
are
options
at
Functor, F read
’It is forbidden that’, is defined thus:
’It is permissible that’, is defined : PA =Df~FA.
FA =Df 0~A (cf. OED); and P, read
There
this
stage
(as
at
e.g.
stages),
can
morality,
be
argued,
from
directions
several
other
F
could
oh
introduced independently. But this leads to complications that are unnecessary.
It
0
The other familiar
functors of deontic logic, F and P, are defined in the usual way.
’It is wrong that’ or, less satisfactorily,
Functor
I).
(e.g.
from
the
rationality
be
of
from the meaning or semantics of obligation, from the idea of commitment),
that 0 satisfies at least the following requirements:[RM] A -> B -> OA -> OB,
i.e. where A + B is a theorem so is OA -> OB.
That is to say,
where A entails B is provable so is OA entails OB, obligation transmits over provable
entailment.
Hence
the claim that this principle (R7 of RLR II) is a transmission
principle.
[K]
OA
& OB
regards
the
i.e.
-> 0(A & B),
conjunction;
or,
a conjunction of obligations entails obligation as
to
adjunction (principle G of RLR II).
These two important
it
put
25
principles,
entailment and adjunction, make 0 a
a
little
differently
0
is
closed
which ensure that 0 is closed under
under
provable
systemic functor (in the sense of RLR II), and
ensure that it has a relational (i.e. first order) semantical analysis.
The postulates which correspondingly minimally characterise deontic functions F
and
P
now
follow
by
relevant
logic
upon applying
the definitions.
They
are as
follows:For wrongness:
A
For permissibility :
With
the
A + B -*>
functor
further
B —f> FByFA
Q,
FA & FB
P(A v BH, PAv
PA + PB
defined
F(A v B)
QA =Df ~0A,
a
reduced
pb
deontic
square
of
opposition follows:
0Ax ...............FA
PA^ .............. .QA
The opposites are
dotted peripheral
opposed,
as modally,
relations of the modal
in
the way the solid lines show.
But the
square are bound to be the lost given the
13
the modal
(on
fact of deontic dilemmas
square
Prior 62 p.220).
see
is worth
It
observing, however, that the peripheral relations can be reinstated through adoption
of the so-called consistency scheme
OA -> ~FA, i.e. OA + ~0~A;
[D]
and that the relevant deontic logic that results still excludes the rubbish brought
in
along
deontic
standard
necessary truths,
Nordamericano
of
that
course
not
(though
paradoxes,
essentially because paradoxical
etc.),
deontic
obligatoriness
the
of
spread principles are not
whereas
triviality),
incorporate dilemmas.
the
as
degenerate
dilemma-permitting
The problem with deontic logics which include [D]
also
cannot
they
well
as
logic,
Antipodean form we are advocating.
is
deontic
In short, relevant theory can deliver a clean-cut, clean-living, dilemma-
available.
free
(e.g.
logic
include
relevant
moral
dilemmas
systems
without
without
can
[D]
inconsistency
consistently
These various logical claims, as to the modal rubbish that is
not brought along, can all be made good by application of the semantical theory. The
semantics shows what does not hold, as well as further explaining why the principles
that hold do.
Semantics for MD result upon adding to modellings for relevant logic a two-place
relation S, on worlds, which is subject to the following condition
W.
b and Sbc then Sac,
Where a
i.e. where world a precedes b (indeed canonically a is contained in b) and world c is
accepted vis-a-vis b then c is accepted vis-a-vis a. Given that a is a subworld of b
this is evident enough.
Distinctive features of the underlying semantical modellings
for relevant logic - consisting of structures of the form <T, K, 0, R, *,
be
sufficiently
and,
well-known
any
in
are
case,
explained
v> - should
elsewhere.
These
structures differ from the best of those for modal logics, the nonnormal structures
<T, K,
N, R, v> for the Lewis systems S2 and S3,
in the following ways:- The class K
of worlds, to which the factual (base) world T belongs, is expanded to include a much
more comprehensive class of inconsistent and incomplete worlds; the class N of normal
worlds
K is
in
adjusted
theorems hold; relation R,
to
a
three-place
the class
to
v(p,
sentential
a)
relation
=
parameter
1)
regular worlds,
i.e.
worlds;
on
then
and
wff.
I(A, b)
=
1,
where all
on
is
subject
to
a
constraint
where I
is the
so
that
Specifically, where a < b and p holds in a
p holds in b,
p. Conditions
v
for every world a and b
modelling
structures
are
hereditariness condition extends to all wff; i.e. in symbols, where a
1 then
those
used in modelling implication, is relaxed from a two-place
inclusion of worlds is duly reflected.
(written
0 of
in K and every
such
that
this
b & I(A, a) =
interpretation function which extends v to all
Inclusion, <, can be added as an extra component of the model structures, but
in fact it can be defined thus:
a < b =Df (Px 0)Rxab.
Finally relevant modellings
14
add to modal modellings a new function, *,
in terms of which negation is evaluated,
27
which facilitates the inclusion of inconsistent and incomplete worlds.
same role and interpretation as in standard
relation S has the
The semantical
It is employed in the semantical evaluation of obligation functor 0,
deontic theory.
which is given by the following rule:
I(0a, a) = 1 iff, for every world b such
that Sab, I(A, b) = 1, i.e. OA holds at world a iff, for each world b accepted vis-avis a, A holds at b.28 The rule is a world relativisation of the idea that what is
obligatory is
what holds
in all
accepted worlds.
(morally)
It
is thus an evident
adaption of Leibnitzian prescriptions, given the linkages between obligation or moral
binding and moral "musts” or imperatives, on the one side, and morally possible and
or
acceptable
accepted
worlds,
the
on
other.
The
for
motivation
unrelativised
connections can be forged at base world T; for there
A is (morally) required, I(0A, T) = 1, iff for every b for which Mb
I(A, b) = 1 (where Mb =Df STb), i.e.
That is, what is required is
iff A holds in every (morally) accepted world.
what holds in all accepted or received worlds.
Other construals of the semantical apparatus are of course open.
tempting
ideal,
temptation
(a
succumbed
to
initially)
regard
the
accepted
worlds as
and Sab as ’b is ideal as seen from c’.
to read Mb as 'b is ideal’
i.e.
to
It is a little
But
that is like requiring supererogation in cases where the meeting of commitments or
obligations is enough: the worlds do not need to be that good but simply to pass, to
meet required standards.
is
worlds.
acceptable
through
A perhaps easier construal than by way of accepted worlds
construal
That
is
alright
provided
the
term
’’acceptable” is deployed, as it often is, nonevaluatively : for it is important in the
semantical assessment to
prescriptions
for
be able to make an evaluative step—down, to give meaning
evaluative
expressions
nonevaluative terms.
in
Naturally this
does not imply that evaluative notions are naturalistically eliminated, any more than
familiar
terms,
extensional
reductions,
semantical
extensional
analysis
of
intensional
implies that intensionality is removed: both are merely pushed down into the
not-further-explained apparatus of worlds.
Obligation is construed by way of what goes on in acceptable or accepted worlds,
not
what
happens
in
permissible
or
permitted
directly with the construal of permissibility.
one another,
but in
worlds,
because
this
latter
Given modal muddles the two reduce to
the more subtle relevant setting star shift is involved in the
transfer from accepted to permitted worlds.
The (derived)
semantical rule for P is
this:
KPA,
a) =
ties
1 iff for some b such
that Uab
I(A, b)
= 1,
where Uab
.
b
*
Sa
15
at base
Thus,
A is permissible,
world T,
i.e.
I(PA,
=
1)
iff A holds at some
1,
permitted world b; what is permissible is worldwise what is somewhere permitted.
modal equation of relations U and S
further
axioms,
deontic
the
(where
namely
if Sab
(in effect,
condition
then Sa
)
b
*
(Pb)Sab
The
corresponds to
e.g.
guaranteed,
is
modally by ~0(P & ~p)) by the scheme OA ^PA.
Now modal-strength deontic logics typically do include an axiom scheme of the
form
[D’J
OA
-> ~PA,
i.e.
from
(alethic)
is obligatory
is not
that
permissible,
under modal
is,
Indeed this used to be considered what distinguished deontic
~0~A.
assumptions, OA
logics
what
modal
on
logics
the
one
side,
which
include
a
stronger
principle analogous to OA -*■ A, and epistemic logics on the other, which were weaker
in
that
[D’J
failed.
However
[D’J, like
[D], is deontically incorrect
because it
rules out consistent inclusion of moral dilemmas; or, to turn matters around, cases
where OA & 0~A,
[D’]»
which
or OA & FA, hold counterexample [D].
may
seem
a
little
more
plausible
transform of it on usual deontic definitions.
than
Similarly these cases refute
[D],
but
is
a
definitional
For what is obligatory is not ipso
facto permissible where the obligatory item is also wrong, as in dilemmatic cases.
To distance relevant deontic logic from modal analogues, while at the same time
demonstrating that relevant theory can encompass moral dilemmas unproblematically , we
next assume that some moral dilemmas hold, that is that for some p, both Op and Fp.
Since however
propositional quantifiers much complicate the semantical apparatus we
shall introduce constants into the syntax, and let p^ be the first constant for which
a dilemma ensues. That is, a new axiom, extending the logic, is
[DD] 0p1 & Fpp i.e. p1 is dilemmatic.3°
The modelling condition for [DD], is
wd.
For each a in 0, for some world x, Sax and v(ppx) = 1= v(ppX
).
*
This condition, which does not involve T, does not impose nonclassical conditions on
normal worlds.
Accordingly [DD] is only a weakly paraconsistent requirement; it does
not imply that inconsistency protrudes into the factual
or regular
worlds.
Indeed
one advantage of the semantics is that it enable proof that dilemmatic judgements can
be included without inconsistency.
By contrast, modal theories cannot include
even one half of [DD]
do) without automatically excluding dilemmatic judgements.
consideration has a thesis 0p2 for some
(either will
Suppose the logic under
Then for every x in 0 there is some y
such that Sxy with p2 set to hold at y. But modally this is enough to guarantee that
[D] holds materially,
More
explicitly,
so ~(0A & 0~A) generally,
suppose
otherwise
that
in
i.e. there can be no such dilemmas.
some
model
the
material
form
of
[D]
failed;
I(OA,
then
=
T)
1
=
I(A~O,
T),
which
impossibility at y since I(A, y) = 1 i I(A, y).
syntactical
problems
earlier in
1).
even
for
Although [DD] implies Op^,
very weak
obligatory is
conjured
from the fact
some
for
STy
yields
y
This is a semantical analogue of the
deontic logics
(considered
type
of modal
it does not say, nor does it follow, that OT for any
Such modal stupidity as that every necessary
and every tautology T (e.g. C v ~C).
truth is
since
automatically removed
that relevant
in the
relevant wash.
can be
This
theory removes such paradoxes as p1
from which 0(A v ~A) would follow modally by 0—distribution (i.e.
A v ~A,
Again the
[RM]).
semantics can be applied to establish the point in proper detail.
primitive principles of minimal relevant logic are open to challenge,
Both the
and
[K]
*
Jennings
has
been
disputed
by
Schotch
(in
Jennings
and
81).
The
main
Schotch-
arguments against [K] — which induces what they call ’paradoxes of complete
*
aggregation
essentially
turn
—
automatically avoided
on
modal
deontic
by relevant
and
assumptions,
Their
theory.
accordingly
are
(p.152,
also
main point
p.154) is that [K] obliterates the distinction between [D] (i.e. Op
~0~p) and
[Con] ~0 , i.e. in effect ~0(r & ~r).
Their argument depends on construing implication in [D] as material-implication and
on strict replacement.
~0~p iff ~(0p & 0~p), i.e. iff ~0(p & ~p) using [K]
Then Op
and its provable converse,
i.e.
iff ~0(r & ~r) using p & ~p
- .
r & ~r and strict
According to the relevant approach the trouble is not with [K] but with
replacement.
the modal assumptions, which are independently objectionable (see
1).
Their further
argument begins from the premiss that ’we should certainly want to include among our
deontic principles the law of moral consistency [Con]
across
cuts
all
different things.
moral
theories’
(pp.153-6).
The
...
because that principle
premiss
appears
to
conflate
What cuts across all moral theories is the theme that some things,
such as a sufficiently evil state of affairs, are not obligatory, whence ~0s.
does cut across all
theories is the assumption that there are no moral dilemmas of
the form 0(A & ~A), which is what [Con], with
not
just
that
there
What
are
theories
like
properly defined, would imply.
those
of Lemmon
and Sartre
It is
which include
contradictory obligations; it is also that some theorists would want to insist that
there is something logically wrong with principles like [Con], e.g. that it doesn’t
make sense to talk of the nonobligatoriness of absurdity.
Schotch and Jennings do contend that we should allow for moral conflict of the
form OA & OB where A and B are inconsistent.
their
assumptions
there
[K]
stops
rejection
of
are
moral dilemmas
that
yielding
Since then B -> ~A,
of the
0(A & -A).
it follows that on
form OA & 0~A.
Yet
as
they
Certainly only
themselves
have
reported, the consensus view is that there are (in the end) no dilemmas of the form
OA & O~A: insofar,
all theories’,
’cuts across
then, rejection of dilemmas of the form 0(A & ~[~]A)
so, near enough, does rejection of those of the form OA & 0~A.
What
certainly does not emerge is that
there can
[K].
The
be no deontic logic which takes as a primitive law the principle
be
can
that
best
if
done,
subscribe to [K],
we
is to
formalise
ethical theories - namely those which do not allow moral
certain particular
conflicts (p. 156).
logics provide decisive counterexamples to this contention.
Relevant deontic
They
can take [K] as primitive: they allow for moral conflict; but they do so by allowing,
like Lemmon, for moral inconsistency.31
disconcerting
More
from
flowing
the
than
fundamental
difficulties
deriving
principles,
transmission
[K]
from
are
allegedly
those
difficulties
include
which
well-advertised paradoxes of deontic logic.
§ 5.
Resultant
on
impact
other
relevant paraconsistent shift.
and
puzzles
of
paradoxes
deontic
theory
of
the
Often cleaning up one logical puzzle in due technical
detail has a beneficial effect on surrounding puzzles and on associated problems in
the area.
Light is cast on, and
So it turns out also in the case of moral dilemmas.
Among them
sometimes solutions are delivered for, a number of other linked problems.
are the following puzzles generated by theorems of (relevant) deontic logic.
are,
the ’’paradoxes of commitment”. Where material implciation => is
in first place,
defined as usual, e.g.
T1.
There
~A v ~B, it is a theorem that
A ° B
0(B => A), whence if OA then 0(B 25 A),
OA
sometimes
read:
A
if
is
then
obligatory
anything
one
commits
to
A,
or:
’Doing
anything commits us to doing what is obligatory’;
T2.
FA
OCA => B), if 0~A then 0(A = B),
sometimes read: if A is forbidden then doing A commits one to doing anything at all,
or:
’Doing what is not permitted commits us to doing anything whatever’
readings are
proceed
from Prior
from
there
interpretation of
paradoxes
symbols,
the
The claims read off are paradoxical.
62, p.224).
to
little justification - reading ’0(A
commits one to doing B’.
the
in
and
(the quoted
in
logic
this case
B)’
as
depends,
always,
depends crucially
on -
But to
on
the
what has
as a commitment relation, e.g. as ’doing A
Such a reading which presupposes that material implication
is a satisfactory conditional can in no way be sustained (see RLR), and that is the
end of the problem.
that
A
then
paradoxical
guises;
and
it
If,
ought
to
for example, T1
be
features disappear.
these
commitment
the
case
is simply read: if it ought to be the case
that
either not
B or
A,
then
the alleged
However puzzles have a tendency to reappear in new
puzzles
are
no
exception.
Even
with
conditional
18
terms of obligation applied to a
properly defined in
obligation
conditional,
the
puzzles
in
reemerge
new
forms,
example,
for
genuine (relevant)
in
is
what
called
’’Ross’s paradox”, and in related transmission problems.
It has been claimed that the principle,
OA -> 0(A v B), yielding if OA then 0(A v B)
T3.
is
which
T1,
to
equivalent
is
Ross paradox principle),
-
paradoxical
to do either A or B,
it
may
be
More generally, given OA,
obligatory to read a letter but not to read or burn it.
there is an obligation
example,
for
because,
where the content of B may be totally
do
to
established.
(The comment goes beyond what T3 supplies, but that is not material).
the
in
circumstance
which
obligation
the
to
is
set
inappropriate
A
or
A similar objection is made to the analogous permissibility principle
PA ■> P(A v B),
T4.
Ross’s paradox,
on the alleged grounds that there are examples where A is permissible but A
For example,
be.
not
the following
it is permissible
that
to post a
takes
based
on
some
one
application of T4 is said to the paradoxical:
letter
false proposition
the
distance
implies that
it is permissible to post a
The assumption that there is some sort of paradox here is
letter or kill one’s aunt.
however
B may
the
towards
that the
permissibility of
of
permissibility
killing
the consequent
one’s
The
aunt.
proposition itself seems to be based on an application, never articulated and quite
inadmissible,
of Disjunctive Syllogism,
distribution,
P(~A &. A
For
PB.
(A v b) ■+ B, and what results from P-
it may certainly be permissible not to post
However it is assuming more than standard deontic logics will grant to
the letter.
go on
)
~A &
to the permissibility of not posting the letter and
letter
or
killing
disjunction.
one’s
aunt,
especially
given
the
also either
derivation
of
posting the
latter
the
Still going on remains tempting (and would presumably be warranted by a
Lukasiewicz deontic logic analogous to his 4-valued modal logic).
But so going on is
to no avail in a duly relevant setting, where Disjunctive Syllogism fails: there is
no
admissible
route
here
to
the
permissibility
of
killing
aunt,
one’s
however
desirable the act might otherwise be.
main
The
transmission
conditional obligation,
strict
implication,
as
problems
in
found
also modally derived.
an
adequate
deontic
logic
are,
like
those
of
They come from reliance on material or
representation
of
implication.
The
worst
manifestation of this is that already discussed, deontic trivialisation leading from
Op^ and 0~p.| to OB,
for
any B,
in virtue of the provability of p^ & ~p^ => B.
But
there are variety of lesser manifestations of the same underlying problem, of which
the following example (adapted from recent discussion) is just one sort:
p4.
We have an obligation to feed the starving poor D. There exist starving poor.
Therefore,
since
starving poor,
it ought to be
by O-transmission,
the case
it ought
that we meet our obligation to feed the
to be that there exist starving poor, a
19
that
is
far
from obviously true.
deontic logic,
for
the
simple reason
presupposition
relation,
conclusion
of
transmission problems of modal
the
that the
cannot
p4
Such analyses do not
entailment.
an
to
rather
or
implication,
(material-)
upgraded
be
plague relevant
The
many
systems all enamate from excessive O-distribution on
basis of implications will
not
them,
support
in the
as
following transmission
principles typical of orthodox deontic logics, all of which should be rejected:
OCA D B) D. OA 3 OB
A D B -> OA 3 OB
A => B =>. OA => OB.
With their rejection a thorny tangle of modally-derived paradoxes is also rejected.
There appears however to be an immense temptation to try to impose excessively
strong transmission principles; and the same phenomenon to be seen at work in modal
contexts can also be observed when a proper entailment is introduced.3^ This occurs,
particular,
in
attempts
in
to
’’normalise”
[RM],
to
strengthen
it
a
from
rule
connection to an entailment, for instance, to (the characteristic S3 form)
[OT] A + B +. OA + OB;
it occurs with analogous changes thereon,
and
e.g.
A-> B.
PA
PB and A
FB + FA, as well with as imported forms of these principles, e.g. OA & (A
and (A -> B) & FB
As an example of the
FA.
B
B)
OB
type of puzzles that [OT] produces
consider
p5.
Grannie killed the vicar.
Grannie repented for having killed the vicar
The
problem with putative
entailments such as p5
is that,
while we are ordinarily
(with the context duly flashed out) inclined to agree that Grannie ought to repent,
we
don’t want to agree
to have killed the vicar.
that Grannie ought
The problem
turns essentially however on the availability of [OT] in place of [RM], for p5 is not
a provable entailment of the underlying logical theory (and there is little case for
it one),
trying to make
sc
[RM]
does not apply to p5,
in contrast with
awkwardness [OT] appears to require, of having somehow
entailment, is thereby straightforwardly avoided.33
Most
the
of
paradoxes
falling
paradoxes and Robber paradoxes can be
paradoxes and usual
forms of these
resolution.
one’s
According
helping
a
man
under
such
to
deny
descriptions
as
similarly resolved or avoided.
variations
upon
[OT]. The
is
that
p5
Good
Samaritan
an
The original
them certainly succumb to such
to the Robber’s paradox if robbing a man is
forbidden then
The
Good Samaritan
whom
one has
robbed
is
also
forbidden.
paradox is a further turn on this paradox: not only the robber’s helping a man he has
robbed
is wrong,
so is someone else’s, a
good Samaritan’s,
helping the
robbed man
(see Prior 58).
-
be
It is undoubtedly paradoxical that it should - especially as a matter of logic
wrong to help a man who has been robbed: but do any fundamental deontic
20
principles commit us to such a thing, for appropriate substitutions on variables? No,
These puzzles all take the following form: B, which describes something
they do not.
admittedly wrong, gets in or implied as part of the description of something larger,
A, arising as a result of the situation in B; however A is not wrong but perhaps even
Nothing
required.
theory;
and
in
none of
shows
this
the
however
that
A
B
literature can
examples in the
the
provable in
is
it
There
be.
logical
is another
important feature, commonly neglected however, which is that A does not assert B. If
it did,
then A,
since amounting
to A & B, would appear to be wrong also, as B is.
This points to a difficulty also for the usual assumption that A entails B; for then
A (certainly modally) coentails A & B, whence the wrongness of A coincides with that
of A & B, the wrongness of which would seem to be guaranteed by B. If however A only
involves B in a weaker sense, [OT] is exonerated.3^
The paradoxes can be pushed another way, to contest this data, and bear against
systems as minimal as MD. For MD yields theorems like the following:
T5.
FB
T6.
0(
F(A & B), whence if FB then F(A & B).
OB, whence if 0(A & B) then OB.
&B)
theses,
Such minimal
it
is now suggested,
are
paradoxical
in
the
same way as the
Robber. This is not so: only gross confusion of decidedly distinct syntactical forms
- a practice formalisation can unfortunately encourage - could support such a
suggestion. If it is wrong to rob a man then it is wrong to rob him and help him;35
but it is not thereby wrong to help him, indeed to help him who has been robbed.
But
the relative and the tense shift are both important; and the whole relative clause in
no way reduces to a conjunction conjoining robbing the man.
The positivistic objection that the paradoxes of deontic logic show that there
is really no ’’logic of norms” has come even from a modern founder of deontic logic,
von Wright.
This he now contends that
There is no such thing as an "entailment” between a norm Op and a norm 0(p q)
- and Ross’s paradox makes us aware of the absurdity of talking as though it
existed. ... Ross was right when he offered his paradox as a proof that,
properly understood, there could not be such a thing as a logic of norms (82,
p.15, rearranged, emphasis suggested in text).
And
he
’essentially
(p.14).
(also
also
But
mistakenly)
of
variations
given
that
one
regards
and
the
von Wright
contains such normative tautologies Op
are
inevitable.
Thus
while
’’paradoxes’*
the
same,
viz.
wants also
the
of
deontic
so-called
to supply
logic
as
Ross’s Paradox’
a deontic
logic,
which
0(p q), some subtle and dubious distinctions
Op & ~0(p q)
is
normatively
inconsistent,
inconsistent; while Op can be thus said to ’’normatively entail” 0(p q)
it
is not
it does not;
and while Op comes rational commitment to Op, it does not carry logical commitment to
it.
the
Unlike
said
are
connections
associated
to
and
entailment
(p.15).
no paradoxes
induce
other
But
normative
these
relations,
what is
said
go
to
for
normative entailment can be said as well as regards entailment, that one (e.g. a law
giver)
is
Op
adopts
who
rationally
to
0(p q)
going on to endorse the entailment of 0(p q) by Op.
for
a oitrary
addition
away there is no puzzle in
associations are cleared
once mistaken modal
q. Indeed
committed
The ’’paradoxes” of deontic logic
are not a reflection of the illusory notion of a logic of norms but rather a product
of a modal logic of norm.
However von Wright has other significant reasons for insisting that (in a sense)
’norms have no logic or that normative discourse is ’’alogical”’
from
noncognitivism,
that
symbolising norms,
formulas’,
’prescriptive
standard
a
on
One derives
(p.4).
interpretation
deontic
’do not express true and false propositions.
It makes
no sense to speak of relations of contradiction or entailment between formulas when
thus interpreted ’
hold
nontruthvalued
regards
as
semantical
This is not so:
(p.4).
theory
relevant
as
such
discourse,
for
sketched
logical relations such as inconsistency
logic
deontic
carries
no
commitment to the position that normative discourse is truthvalued.
0 interpreted
In
imperatives.
fact
ineradicable
The values 1 and
by way of holding are not intended to be tied to truth and falsity,
except at the factual world T (see RLR1); and that exception is readily removed.
judgements,
instead normative
received,
logic
the
both
(the point
requirements
e.g.
Otherwise the
etc.).
adjustments
the
and
of the
form Fp,
semantical
can be said to be in
theory
its ’’semantical”
is developed,
For
force (or
is as before.
With such minor
theory conform
to noncognitivist
to meet von Wright’s argument,
in Morscher,
pp.97-8).
Von Wright’s other reason for coming out against a logic of norms is but grist
It is that ’there cannot be a logic of norms because a
for the paraconsistent nill.
could enjoin contradictory
legislator
(at
’’relative
least
serves"
Morscher,
...)
dilemmas.
it
but
p.98).
to
the
is
normal
not
states of affairs.
This might be irrational
purpose which the institution of giving orders
logically
excluded,
it
is
not
alogical’
(cited
in
That is, a legislator can set up (usually unintentionally) deontic
This is
certainly not
triviality,
by
modal-strength
indictment,
not
of deontic
deontic
logic,
It
impossible.
but
logics.
of a
is simply excluded,
Once
again
the
on
criticism
certain modally-dominated
pain of
is
an
approach to
it.36
§6.
Upsetting the moral consensus: unrealisable obligations, and inevitable wrongs.
The theme that there are moral dilemmas, like those cited, which stand, which do not
dissolve upon
rational reflection,
philosophers, 3? and
apparently runs agains the consensus among moral
certainly upsets dominant positions
in ethical
theory, notably
22
broadly Kantian positions (built into much contemporary British moral philosophy) and
utilitarian
positions
(which
pervade
Anglo-American
and
theory
value
thinking,
especially outside narrowly philosophical circles).
Kantian positions suppose that morality is above all a rational procedure of a
certain sort (which we tentatively grant), and that rationality requires consistency.
Or put differently, but
for instance, must be consistent.
Thus what is obligatory,
equivalent given modal assumptions, ought implies can, OA -> OA, for every A and some
Wherever an agent appears to be in a moral dilemma
suitable possibility functor 0.
this is a matter of appearance only, a moral illusion which will (and must) vanish on
further rational reflection.^ This Kantian assumption should be rejected:
moral
dilemmas are part of the data and no illusion, and no amount of reflection need budge
them.
By insistence upon consistency requirements, and through failure, consequently,
to recognise intractable moral dilemmas, deontological theories have been forced to
jump through a variety of different hoops and to weaken considerably their positions.
In particular,
temporary and
moral
firm principles are almost invariably weakened to something much more
provisional.
is
experience
While
important,
some revisability of principles
in the light of
such wholesale weakening of principles is decidedly
There is a point then in trying to
undesirable, on both logical and moral grounds.
expose some of the tangled assumptions on which the weakening is based, and to loosen
their grip. The assumptions involved on a Kantian approach include these:
H1.
Moral principles - in
those concerning
justice,
particular more
fairness and the
basic principles of obligation, such as
like - are to be explained at bottom as
principles of rationality, or rational behaviour for persons.
H2.
Rationality is a matter of consistency; certainly it implies it.
H3.
Consistency reduces to, or can be accounted for, through possibility.
Put together these assumptions yield the theme
H4.
What is obligatory must be possible - ought-implies-can , for short.
So if that gives,
so do some of the assumptions.
but on
moral dilemmas,
It does give, not just because of
So also then
independent grounds.
should the assumptions
give; and they fail not just on the grounds that they lead to themes like H4.
The deeper trouble is that they are based on a super-modal view of things which
combines
modal
assumptions
with
rational
strong
The
assumptions.
combination
is
important, for once the modal assumptions are rejected, it becomes fairly transparent
that
the
rationality assumptions,
whatever
their
merit,
cannot
such things as moral framework or system or course of action.
rational
case,
systems:
removing
much more
modal
is required
assumptions
-
a
than rationality
main
present
uniquely determine
Rather there are rival
for
uniqueness.
exercise
-
In any
destroys
such
rationality route to ought-implies-can.
Finally consistency is neither necessary nor
That it is not sufficient is indicated by a variety of
sufficient for rationality.
consistent worlds which do not conform to minimal rationality requirements.
is
converse
relevant
refuted
which conform
inconsistent worlds
by
meet rationality requirements (see further RLR and OP).
H3
fails,
paradoxes
induces
~0A -> ~(A ° B),
generally
is
not
just
that
the
Modality
removed.
of
paradoxes
with
entailment,
e.g.
anything
all.
from isolated
transmitted
to
are
inconsistent
is
arguments
Not only H2 (as a necessary
assumptions
parallelling
proposition
impossible
inconsistency
It
modal
when
consistency
of
an
fails,
also
is not
40
this indiscriminate way.
However
to rationality
to sufficient reason and the like), and by dialethic theories which
standards (e.g.
condition)
The more
impossibility in
collapse;
ought-implies-can
at
there are
distinct from those supplied by moral dilemmas.
counterexamples to the theme,
The
counterexamples concern obligations (or oughts) which are impossible, in some sense,
to realise,
counterexamples
Op & ~0p)
But
wrongdoings.
most
the
of
possibility
Derivatively then (substituting ~p for
unrealisable obligations.
that
wrongs
are
inescapable,
there are many determinates of possibility
examples
than
concern
also
mere
involve,
in their
logical
possibility
necessitated
(and necessity),
and
less anemic
notions of
correspondingly broader
notions of
original
(and
p in
setting,
necessity than a narrow logical
necessity).
perhaps strained, adaption, and,
in any case, they serve to undermine the point and
Nonetheless they sometimes admit of,
force of the ought-implies-can dictum (which is to link obligation to freedom to do
otherwise),
and
These examples all arise
nature,
circumstances,
its effective use against moral dilemmas.
seriously weaken
thereby
because agents are constrained in one way or another - by
fate,
the
Gods,
their
past
actions -
but
are
not
thereby
released from their obligations or exonerated from wrong-doing.
Consider first very down-to-earth types of counterexample to ought-implies-can,
before turning to more high-flown but not altogether dissimilar examples from our
barbaric past.
’Suppose that I say "I ought to go and see him, but I can’t because I
don’t know where he is”.
There need be nothing inconsistent in such a remark; and,
yet there would be if "ought” always implied ’’can'” (Hare 63, p.52).
same
with
situation
”’I
where
ought
I've
to
return
driven
the
this
car
I’ve
car
so
far
borrowed,
away
that
returning it in time to keep a promise’ (Thomason, p.175).
but I
It is much the
can’t”,
there is
said
no chance
in a
of my
Likewise the claim of the
person who cannot swim that she ought to rescue the child caught in the current but
can't.
One traditionally important class of counterexamples derives from the Catholic
doctrine of perplexity secundum quid.^ Donegan, in defending what he calls 'the
24
Hebrew-Christian tradition’, contends that once one has sinned one May be faced with
situations from which one cannot escape without further wrong-doing (77, p.152). That
♦
is, one may be so placed (through one’s own fault) that one ought not to perform any
of the available actions though one cannot do otherwise. So it is necessary that one
act in a way that is forbidden.
Protestant thinkers, particular Luther, appear to have considered the human race
involved in one grand secundum quid on account of original sin.
’God
punished
justly
sinners
who
not
could
otherwise
do
Luther believed that
than
sin’
that God
and
’provided men with a law they were unable to keep and then righteously damned them
for failing to keep it’. 242 The Calvinists also were committed - but through their
doctrine
of
predestination
predestined
to sin,
unpalatable
conclusion
-
to
rather
they cannot but
by suggesting
Because
conclusions.
similar
humans are
However Calvin attempted to escape this
sin.
that in
some suitable
sense
are not
sinners
compelled, that it is somehow possible for them to do otherwise than they do. J Given
however the theme of predestination this attempt to escape looks unconvincing.
Any stronger determinism that does not also obliterate morality is in a similar
Creatures will have obligations which they cannot fulfil because they
predicament.
are determined
and will
to do otherwise,
sometimes be
bound to do wrong.
Plainly
where this becomes a general and automatic matter, a serious erosion of moral notions
such as responsibility, normally linked to obligation, is bound to set in.
However isolated cases analogous to those of determinism can occur without such
erosion
of
moral
notions
(as
indeed
with
moral
dilemmas
themselves).
rigidifying personality and ossifying character are of this
gets older
Cases
of
A person as she
sort.
may build up a personality so rigid that she cannot escape from it.
At
some point it becomes impossible (at least psychologically) for her to act other than
she does,
yet on
some occasions
she
ought not
to act
in the way she does.
outcome resembles that with original sin though the route taken
Yet even
if we
grant
that the
person ought not to have got
still we are entitled to our moral judgements;
modern morality
*
The
is very different.
into such a position,
as Pigden puts it,
’an enlightened
can allow such violations of ought-implies-can.
Classical Greek morality certainly seems to have allowed for
such violations.
In Homeric ethics a man could be blamed for failings he could not avoid,
unavoidable wrong-doing.
and so for
Subsequently it was taken for granted that impossible moral
requirements could be placed upon a hero, yet he could be blamed for failing to meet
them. Thus the situation of Agamemnon and of Oedipus, both despite their struggles,
despite their awareness of their predicaments and their anguish, were bound, indeed,
fated, to act wrongly, and were duly blamed for their wrong-doing.
25
There have been various attempts to salvage the ought-implies-can theme, through
a residual Kantianism.
presupposes-can
Thus Hare proposes, but does not really work out, an ought-
a
with
theme
weaker
relation
presupposition
logical
replacing
implication (53, p.54); and both Barcan Marcus and Morscher suggest a model theoretic
connection: essentially that for OA to hold true A must be satisfiable in some world,
and so, modally, A is consistent. But within a relevant setting, the satisfiability
is hardly a
requirement
and does not ensure consistency.
constraint,
Once again,
consistency is only obtained at the cost of other more important connections, such as
Nor does Hare’s comparison with presupposition (on p.54) succeed.
O-adjunction.
the
analogy
such
situations
the
worked
implies-can.
as
practical
question
those
and
dilemmas
moral
But (pace Hare, p.55)
as
to
what
to
do
not
would
counterexamples
affording
If
arise
in
ought-
to
the question most certainly does arise in many
cases.
§7.
Resolving
proceed,
in
moral
any
dilemmas,
dilemma
so far
situation
be.
as can
easily
are
Recipes for
what
provided,
enough
decidedly poor recipes have been much canvassed in the literature.
how to
to,
indeed
several
Among these are
deontic ranking recipes, which would have us impose some type of priority ordering on
deontic principles, so that consistency is maintained and in every situation there is
a dominant rule; defeasibility recipes, which would have us weaken all deontic rules
to merely prima facie or other-things-being—equal principles and operate, when things
look
would
going
like
have
wrong,
utilitarian
by
and
assessment;
pure-chance
recipes,
which
situationally but arbitrarily by such methods as
us determine outcomes
coin toss.
Such recipes fail to meet important conditions of adequacy upon any account of
the way resolution is effected, if and when it can be, namely:
A1.
The account
should
sufficiently resemble what rational
choosers do when they
find themselves in a moral dilemma.
Many human choosers have moral principles,
have
not
rigorously ordered
in
such
which, as against ranking recipes,
a way
as
to
exclude dilemma
they
situations,
and
which, as against thorough-going defeasibility recipes, they are not prepared to give
Thus, in addition,
away or modify when they encounter snags.
A2.
The
principles
induce
which
moral
dilemmas
are
not
generally
abandoned
or
qualified, but very often stand.
Naturally
sometimes
moral
dilemmas,
especially
development and revision of principles.
if
they
recur,
do
lead
to
moral
But the logic of dilemma situations does not
force changes or adjustment and none may be made; and typically none will be made,
where dilemmas are resolved,
resolve dilemmas
which they may not be.
The assumption that we must
is probably a hangover from consistency assumptions,
that deontic
inconsistency must be removed - whereas all we have to do is act, or do nothing, in
26
the face of them.
Part of what is wrong with the idea of a predetermined ordering of principles,
the conflict, and also the
they remove
is that
as with utilitarianism procedures,
felt tension, and often anguish, that goes with it.
Even if the appeal to priority
succeed in some cases, it does not in fact work, and
45
general.
For with Lemmon’s complex dilemmas where
ordering of principles does
not
could
succeed,
in
uncertainties enter
be
can
there
preassigned
no
solution
moral
to
the
in
dilemma
virtue
of
higher-order principles or a given ordering of one’s duties and obligations
and the like, because part of the very dilemma is just one’s uncertainty as
to one’s actual situation (p.153).
In any event dilemmas do not go away as they should if the conflicting obligations
were merely prima facie.
Very often someone in a moral dilemma is in a fix and feels
it^^; and doesn’t say ”My God there isn’t a problem, I must simply look up the book
principles are ranked and what’s to be done’,
to see how these
not having been so
prepared.
in which we, as it were, merely
.... dilemmas in which we morally prepared,
have to look up the solution in our private ethical code, are rare ... and in
case
any
of
little
practical
Of
interest.
are those
importance
greater
dilemmas in this class where some decision of a moral character is required
Our predicament is here so described that, whatever we do, even if we do
...
nothing at
that might mean), we are doing
all (whatever
something which we
ought not to do, and so can be called upon to justify either our activity or
our inactivity (Lemmon, p.151).
The
usual
deontological
positions,
which
deontic
weaken
principles
to
provisional or prima facie principles to avoid problems with dilemmas, also play into
utilitarian hands.
reflecting
things
that
of
in
often
is
which
only
are
to act
overriding requirement
character
utilitarians want
For
the
for
such
to represent
most
a way
disguised
(a
sc
part
as to
of
obligation
statements
concerning
distributed, e.g.
are
the
taken
coherent
way
as
derivative;
net
utilities
position
from
would
their
own
the deontic
make
this
Deontic principles such as
reduce
somehow
distributed
type of action which tends to maximize utility.
accounts typically rule out moral dilemmas:
both
apart
or
to
tend
complex
to
be
an action is obligatory when it maximizes (expected) utility and it
is of a recognised
cannot
they
ar .
-
principles as
deontic
maximize utility,
maximisation principle so only for the most part also).
those
all
maximise
utility,
and
indeed
27
Such reductive
for example, an action and its opposite
if an action increases utility then its
opposite characteristically diminishes it.
if all moral injunctions
More generally,
answer back ultimately to just one standard, maximum utility, then there can be no
real conflict
(but
etc.).
for these
It is
apparent conflict through failure to calculate correctly,
sorts of reasons that
the considerable data now accumulated regarding moral
try to explain away,
to
utilitarians deny that there can be
So they are in the awkward position of having to dispute,
dilemmas.
genuine moral
and
only
dilemmas.
But how, when stuck in moral dilemmas, do we proceed to reach a decision? For a
47
decision is called for: those in dilemma situations still often have to act.
The
intuitive procedure in such dilemma situations is not difficult to grasp.
terminology is regularly employed, and is instructive.
to
those
the
in
-
dilemmas
weighed
assessed,
are
The same
Alternatives - outcomes open
up,
the balance.
put in
The
familiar scales picture, with the scale sensitive to evaluative weights, is helpful
- except
it
that
can
suggest,
weighed against another,
whereas there may be
as with
of justice
where one
thing is
two competing principles or
just
that there are
several.
scales
the
options,
In the light of such a weighing up of alternatives,
those in dilemmas then determine what they should do, what is best, or satisfactory,
’If ... we are to act here in good faith,we shall recognise
in the circumstances .
that the dilemma is what it is and make the best decision we can
*
There
is
an
attempt
to
then
intuitive
apply
(Lemmon 62, p.151).
methods,
decision
consist
which
in
assessing and weighing the alternative outcomes open, and maximizing or satisizing on
these
This
outcomes.
already
very
looks
consequentialist decision theory, which is what,
a
like
preanalytic
account
of
in a qualified way, we shall reach
It is in a qualified way for several reasons; not only may no best (or even
towards.
sufficiently good) outcome be determinable - there is nothing approaching a decision
procedure here - but the further decision theory methods apply within moral dilemmas,
so
they
supply,
at best,
a
second
best
resolution,
a
first best result requiring
removal of moral dilemma constraints and so being ruled out.
Those
in dilemma
unworkable
(and
situations usually do not resort to anything as
mostly arbitrary
and often
ineffective)
utilitarian
as
complex and
assessment
procedures. Nor do they surrender to pure chance procedures.
A3.
The account should not give way to irrationalism, but should adhere to rational
decision procedures, which are not necessarily, however, effective.
This requirement rules out pure chance methods, which are only appropriate where it
is a matter
of indifference which way the decision,
if any,
Even where some resort to
methods can give a worse outcome than might be obtained.
tie-breaking
devices
is
appropriate,
that
may
dilemma, but rather to some component of the
not
be
situation.
Otherwise such
goes.
to
the
final
Envisage,
outcome
of a
for instance, a
decision-tree for an issue where a tie-breaking device such as a coin toss is applied
to a high branch and that proves sufficient for rational decision methods to resolve
28
Then it would be irrational to try to resolve the whole issue
the issue concerned.
by coin toss.
Nonetheless
A4. The account should be appropriately situational.
That is, the account should be applicable to each situation on its own merits, taking
It should not simply be a rule
detailed account of the features of that situation.
for in dilemma cases the rules have ceased to yield a resolution and
based account,
into a
are locked
be
will
fix position.
situational,
it will not
that of situational
be
involve resort to pure—chance methods.
by situation,
situational
most part,
by example)
or example
by virtue of A3 and A4, though the account
Thus,
procedures
ethics where
such ethics
Nor is a situational ethics (ethics situation
For the
of a broader type being recommended.
into operation where a moral
only go
dilemma is
reached; in general, deontic rule-based procedures apply.
The broad outlines of a satisfactory account are beginning to emerge.
Before we consider
apply rational decision methods to each given dilemma situation.
is
how this
to
be
so as
account,
to be said about the
needs
For
to meet apparent objections.
insensitive
those
accomplished more
to
in
switches
language,
both FA and
A,
some
options, and
yet that,
also F~A,
that
it
ought
also
be
that
so
B,
very
idea
of
it should be that B, where B entails
We do not however go on to
one of A and -A, so that not both A and ~A are ruled out.
claim
the
is both A and ~A are ruled out as moral
that
situations,
in certain
in
For are we not only claiming that
decision-theoretic resolution of moral dilemmas.
for
structure of the
things, there is, to
among other
contradiction
a
It should
that
not
both
A
and
~A
ruled
are
out
morally.49 What is being claimed that B, or an adequate thing, is the best thing to
do in the constrained circumstances, that B should be done in that sense, net that B
is
lifted
to
status
obligation
enough in the circumstances,
by
looking
at
you
does not
the
can
B is
In brief, <»B,
"second-best obligation").
determined
(though
imply OB.
acceptable
worlds
worlds where B holds which fail to be acceptable.
say,
if
you like,
that it
is a
the best that can be done or good
is not going to be
When <£>B holds
where B
When
holds,
because
there are
holds is not going to be
settled in general by falling back on deontic rules, because in the interesting cases
the
rules
are
jammed.
But
such deontic rules dees not
being beyond
imply being
beyond rational procedures, indeed procedures that may be represented by way of rules
(though not controlled by deontic rules).
The rational
procedures in
question
are essentially those of decision theory.
What is required is a decision as to what can be done in the circumstances; and this
can
be
determined
by
relevant alternatives.
be
of
something
weighing
up
the
expected
outcomes
and
selecting
among
The selectiin may be of the best in the circumstance;
satisfactory
in
the
circumstances.
The
approach adopted
pluralistic, allowing for both maximizing and satisizing procedures.
29
the
it may
can be
Maximizers will
of course argue that it would be irrational to select anything but the best among the
alternatives (given that it was conceded to be the best); But satisizers will resist
arguments.what
such
elaborates
is
what
upon
we
a
under
do
decision
done
normally
this:- Set out the relevant alternatives,
action
courses of
alternative.
to us
open
Select
a best,
i.e.
way
-
is
-
merely
which
in
outline
the results that the different
list
to.
analysis
intuitive
more
i.e.
lead
will
a
in
theory
Determine
the
of each
likely value
with maximum likely value,
an alternative
or
a
The basic procedure is childishly simple, but filling
sufficiently good alternative.
out the details may be extremely difficult or even impossible in a satisfactory way.
The
in
problems,
normally
order
increasing
alternatives open, establishing their probability,
rankings to them.
things
these
cases,
favourable
more
delineating
the
assigning values or desirability
techniques from decision theory however for doing all
There are
in
are:
difficulty,
of
and
in
less
circumstances
favourable
guestimates can be made or resort had to fuzzy methods.
To descend to concrete applications (where procedures may be clearer than at the
theoretical level), consider again the Platonic dilemma discussed by Lemmon, where I
ought to return my friend’s gun and also ought not to do so.
The alternatives are to
return the gun and have the wife shot, or to return the gun avoiding a shooting but
thereby breaking an undertaking.
the
alternative
first
wife
It is certain, in the circumstances, that under the
will
be
shot,
highly
a
undesirable
outweighing the lesser undesirability of the second alternative.
the
value of
second
Since the expected
first,
exceeds that of the
alternative considerably
much
outcome,
the
best
thing in the circumstances is to return the gun.
However
undertaking
goes
Lemmon
to
seriously
the
return
’to
gun
suggesting that one sacrifices one’s
astray in
utilitarian considerations’
No doubt
(p.152).
utilitarian considerations would bring out (could be massaged to bring out, rather) a
But the fact is that no consideration (or interpersonal comparisons)
similar result.
of
the
utilities
pleasures
and
pains
contemplated.
’’critical
involves
an
(whoever
Lemmon
utilitarian ones.
the
everybody
of
(involved
they
confuses
are),
the
in
is
made,
consequentialist
universe,
or
or
even
needs
whatever),
to
considerations with
be
their
remotely
much narrower
Similarly the recipe Hare suggests for resolving moral dilemmas at
level”,
namely
illegitimate
resort
to
assimilation
act-utilitarianism
of
(see,
consequentialist
e.g.
82,
considerations
p.43),
under
utilitarianisms.
In certain respects Lemmon’s Platonic dilemma is not a good example of a moral
dilemma;
tougher
in particular,
dilemmas,
the
it is too easily resolved, and so characteristic features of
pain,
emerge, moral dilemmas can
anguish,
indecision,
get omitted.
As
thus begins to
be divided roughly into two types, easy and hard.
30
Easy
dilemmas are those that are comparatively easy to find a way through eventually, and
But hard ones are those that leave people caught in the dilemma
so are resolvable.
at
least
uncomfortable
irresolvable.
they
whatever
to
choose
and
do,
are
so
in
a
good
sense
Though a way-through or a way-out may be charted by decision methods,
it is a way that leaves those involved morally uneasy, dissatisfied, or worse.
For
at the far hard end of the spectrum lie those dilemmas of tragic dimensions.
Although
consequential
decision
rationally within moral dilemma
theory
provides
a
for
model
how
proceed
to
situations, by no means everyone confronted
with a
moral dilemma will apply such procedures in an intuitive way, even though many will.
For
one
thing,
there is plenty of scope for
bad faith,
irrationality and
and more
generally, for non-rational procedures; and severe moral dilemmas often enough induce
non-rational and even paralytic or self-destructive modes in those who are caught in
them.
another,
For
there
are
indirect ways of obtaining the effects of decision
theory, analogue decision theory so to say.
Counselling, whether through a friend or
a professional counsellor, is an important analogue: there the discussive mode helps
to
bring
out
eludicating
of
and
assemble
alternatives,
undesirability of each.
the
and
elements
the
of
the
advantages
decision
and
approach,
the
desirability
and
theory
drawbacks,
Alternatively, or as well, these elements may be bought out
by reflecting on a range of similar situations and experience there using these cases
as
some
sort
of
precedent,
in
particular,
for
determining
value
rankings
of
alternatives open.
Moral dilemmas have corollaries for moral ways of doing things.
is that perfectibility of the moral scheme of things is impossible.
One corollary
Any sufficiently
rich set of rules risks inconsistency, and will be inconsistent if completed.
dilemmas are thus inevitable
be;
in the larger scheme of things.
Moral
This is as it should
for it is in this way especially that moral development occurs and moral stature
is obtained.
31
^A much earlier version of this paper was presented by the second author at the
Australian National University in 1975. Subsequently much of the paper was lost; what
survived is largely incorporated in the first three sections, especially §3. However
the new version takes over the leading ideas of the initial version. The authors are
much indebted for comments and criticism to C. Pigden, R. Goodin and G. Priest.
was
^This
even
true
Maliy’s
of
pioneering
system
of
1926
which
permitted
replacement of logical equivalents within the scope of obligation function 0 (see F &
Von Wright’s seminal work
H p.3).
(in 51),
which
set the pattern
for mainstream
deontic logic, was explicitly based on the modal comparison of deontic functors with
modal
functors,
and built modal
that break the modal
systems,
exceptional
assumptions
in
at the bottom of the
theory.
The
connection, are deontic systems based on
relevant logics on such systems see RLR, chapter 8.
^These paradoxes are explained,
obligation,
paradoxes of derived
and their
see
modal bases exposed,
On the
for some of the
p.224; and
Prior 62,
further
in §5.
considerable literature on paradoxes like those of the Robber and Good Samaritan, see
anthologies and
the Hilpinen
A detailed uniform treatment of
especially Vermazen.
all these and other deontic paradoxes in the framework of relevant logic is given in
RLR II.
4In its equivalent form, Op => ~Fp,
i.e. what is obligatory is not forbidden, it
is the dubbed ’’Bentham’s Law” by von Wright 81, p.2.
5In
a
way,
furthermore,
avoids
that
the
,
problems Hare’s
and
complexities
attempt to transfer a levels-resolution to deontic paradoxes would lead to if worked
out
paradoxes.
the
compare
properly:
any
In
counterintuitively,
case,
that
problems
of
semantical
if
we
were
even
’ought’
is
ambiguous
levels
say,
to
as to
Hare
as
levels,
avoid
to
some
semantical
proposes,
but
tinkering would
still be required to fix up a deontic calculus at each level.
Moreover, there are good grounds for doubting that the so far ill-characterised and
artificial distinction of levels that Hare wants to impose can be satisfactorily made
out.
For
one
thing,
critical hardly
the
holds up;
level
for
separation
intuitive
of the
paradoxes
intuitive
are
from the
typical of
rational or
act utilitarian
assessments at the upper level, and we can be rational and critical, and ask for why-
explanations, at both levels.
^There are various different
form, OA, OB ->
^It
is
this principle can take,
e.g. also a rule
0(A & B), and a rather useless material form, OA & OB =>. 0(A & B).
tried
criticised below.
forms
however
by
Schotch
and
Jennings,
p.152;
their
argument
is
It is also suggested by Barcan Marcus, p.134., and toyed with by
32
Williams
o
In particular Lemmon, taking off from Sartre, has argued this in two important
papers, neglected in mere recent philosophical literature on moral dilemmas and moral
conflict.
earlier
Recent British
work,
in
literature
that
it could
logical
further the next note).
on conflict of values has
particular,
profitably have
taken
into
ignored
account
(see
Such an uninformed approach is however not uncharacteristic
of British philosophy.
^Especially Lemmon’s work 62 and 65.
But although Lemmon suggests (in 62, e.g.
p.150) that there are no logical problems in accommodating moral dilemmas, including
those of the form 0(A & ~A), none of the systems of deontic logic he presents (e.g.
in 65), not even the very weak systems, can do so without trivialising.
The reasons
for collapse are the modal ones already explained.
Apart from the work of Lemmon and a few who follow him, work which at least suggests
the need
for a bridge even if it does not offer so much as good working plans for
one, the literature on moral dilemmas tends to bifurcate - into purely philosophical
material which
does not
address the
logical
issues,
and
largely
logical material
which characteristically avoids the crucial moral issue of dilemmas, which the logics
espoused cannot handle (and maybe because of that: otherwise the logical literature
On the regrettable lack of interaction between deontic logicians
disputes the data).
and ethicists, the latter being the worse offenders, see also Thomason’s notes.
10
In
fact
the latter
implication of O-transmission could be much weakened for
the purpose of the arguments, e.g. the form A
B - > OA D OB would serve to make the
point.
11
Gumanski 80 affords a good example of the complication resulting, complication
readily removed by relevant logic relocation.
12
The argument
thoroughtly
for this
fallacious.
’principle of deontic contingency’
Either
an
in F & H, p.13, is
illegitimate quantificational
conversion
(from
some to all) or a modal confusion (from p & ~p to q & ~q) is used to get from P(p &
~p) for some p - which is all the denial of deontic contingency gives - to Pq, that
is, to ’everything is permitted’.
1^For see axiom, (D1) Op =>~0~p, of the standard systems as formulated in F & H,
p.13, and use the interdefinability of P and 0, e.g. PB
4
1
~0~B.
There would
be little point in presenting features of the epicycling systems
of types (iii)-(v)
in any detail since all will be quickly dismissed. In any event,
details can be found
in the Hilpinen surveys
33
(71 and 81),
texts which are ir
fact
restricted to
epicycling positions
within
the dominant modal paradigm for
deontic
Even Schotch and Jennings, who do question some minimal principles, remain
logics.
staunchly
the
within
modal
sphere,
their
as
possible
worlds
and
semantics
their
substitutivity principles reveal.
15
F & H, p.8,
in
support
p.16. This consistency interpretation appears to have extensive
Scandinavia.
Of
course
if
consistency were meant
in a different
sense
(that of regularity), it would be different. But it is not: see the development in F
& H, p.l6ff.
16
Cf.
Lemmon:
philosophers
that
’It
...
does
the
not
to
seem
adoption
of
have
been
new morality
a
associated with the confrontation of a moral dilemma.
much
by
observed
an agent
ethical
by
is
frequently
Indeed, it is hard to see what
else would be likely to bring about a change of moral outlook other than having to
make a difficult moral
decision’
(62,
p155).
not
settled
without
so to speak
Similarly Barcan Marcus (p.12): ’although
idealistically, a source of moral motion.
dilemmas are
is,
Moral inconsistency
residue,
the recognition of their
reality has a
dynamic force.
17
In 1975 when the paper was first drafted and presented this example was still
topical.
However at most times in modern human history there are many candidates to
substitute for variable V.
18
In the narrow scheme of standard deontic logic, these would be recast in terms
of the forbidden functor F, defined as 0~.
However in relevant logic settings, it is
a further question, not settled by the framework whether W reduces to 0~.
*
^Williams
20
are
Jim-Pedro example (in 81) is of this type.
As there are other war dilemmas, and especially nuclear war dilemmas, so there
other
violence.
pacifist
dilemmas,
e.g.
the
problem
of
violence
to
prevent
greater
On nuclear war dilemmas, and on the main pacifist dilemma, see the War and
Peace series.
21
For many
of the
contractual arrangements,
isomorphism,
known
moral
dilemmas
we consider,
especially those
there are analogous legal dilemmas.
preserving
very many
important
logical
generated by
For there is a wellfeatures
between
moral
obligations and rights and wrongs and corresponding legal obligations and rights and
wrongs.
The complexity of legal
frameworks, the relatively independent design of using
parts and
divine
numerous
lack of design control
legal
of
likelihood
the
dilemmas
and
sources
decidedly
complexity
to
high.
analogous
An
is
dilemmas
moral
for consistency,
or checks
argument
considered
in
render the
fjrom
the
McConnell,
p.275ff.
pp
Lemmon’s final
treatment,
but
(fifth) type of ’’moral dilemma” does so far resist more formal
is
that
the
mainly because
class concerned
description and lacks even clear working examples.
so far
These are,
defies adequate
roughly, situations
‘in which an agent has to make a decision of a recognisably moral character though he
is completely unprepared ... by his present moral outlook’ and has somehow to fashion
a
new
moral
outlook.
is
There
so
far
of
here
nothing
especial
paraconsistent
concern.
By no means all the types of situations falling under Lemmon’s ’classification
of moral
dilemmas’
(62,
classifying types of
first class and
p.156)
are dilemmas.
situation’,
‘moral
the classification
starts out
is nothing dilemmatic about
there
and
which Lemmon
about the second,
little
Indeed
the
‘does not wish to call ...
moral dilemmas, because [as with the first] in all the cases our moral situation is
perfectly clear’
(p.143). The main types of moral dilemmas Lemmon discerns, the third
and fourth classes, are precisely those treated in the text.
The concurrence even of several different,
23()f course the control is limited.
perhaps apparently independent, logical approaches is no sure guide to correctness of
an
explication or
has to answer back satisfactorily to
The matter still
account.
preanalytic principles.
22*
In
dilemmas,
the initial
version of this paper
three
into
types
(0,
0~;
complication was based on a mistake,
collapse.
are
F,
a
rather
F~;
and
artificial classification of
0,F)
was
proposed.
But
this
that equation of 0~A and FA would lead to modal
And, apparently a more natural and simpler theory does emerge if 0~ and F
equated.
Naturally definitional
than coentailment.
More
highly
equation
intensional
in this context does not
differences
between
the
imply more
notions,
which
there are, remain unaffected.
What holds
for F does not automatically transfer
independently.
^The labels
and Jennings.
[RM] and
[K], convenient
to P. Perhaps P should be treated
in what
follows, are
taken from Schotch
Note that although symbolically virtually the same as the originals,
they symbolize different determinate principles.
^See as well as RLR I, Routley 72, Routley and Meyer 73 and OP.
35
the
2?Under
four-valued American plan
for
relevant logic
* can be
semantics,
avoided. But here the superior two-valued Australian plan is followed.
2&Though here we simply take the rule over from standard deontic semantics, it
can be argued in several ways, explained (though usually for the analogous necessity
functor) as
in RLR.
class of such A,
b
One way is this:- in situation a, where OA holds, consider the
i.e.
{C:
I(OC, a) = 1}.
This gives an initially acceptable set up
with respect to a; and indeed would yield the sought rule (with S improved to a
but for
1-1 relation)
fail,
conditions
the fact that bo may not be a world because required closure
conspicuously
We
primeness.
can
however
extend
though not
ba,
uniquely, so that world requirements are met. The picture looks like this:
S is the composition of the function (from a to b ) and the extension (to the b-’s).
The b.’s are the accepted worlds vis-a-vis a.
^The point and role of evaluative step-down is explained in Routley 83.
3°The
strategy
resembles
that
earlier
in
Routley
and
Meyer
75
in
Plainly there is room for other postulates,
formulating explicitly dialethic logic.
e.g.
exploited
In virtue of the model theorem Ot, where
0p2 where p2 is not dilemmatic, etc.
t is any tautology, such a postulate is guaranteed in standard deontic logic, but it
is rightly left as an option in relevant deontic logic, and also in Barcan Marcus.
third
31A
type
of
argument
for
rejecting
[KJ
is
implicit
in
Schotch
and
and also in Barcan Marcus, namely that without [K] both moral conflict and
Jennings,
the Kantian ought-implies-can principle
can be
retained.
That
supposes of course
that the Kantian principle is a desirable one, worth going considerably out of one’s
logical
way
disaster
to
retain.
[KJ
But
the
is not
from the combination of Kantian
only
in
principle involved
theory with moral dilemmas:
reaching
other equally
solid and respectable principles than [KJ could be considered for rejection.
^2At this
logic
and
point we
do detour
analyses of moral
beyond our
dilemmas,
to look
critique of modalisation of deontic
at some
separate puzzles
in deontic
logic - which have also been used against the idea of a formal treatment of ethics.
And
the
approach
we
take
to
these
further
36
puzzles
-
by
limiting
transmission
in the fashion of weaker, and deeper logics - is largely independent of
principles,
the reaminder
IN short, we could have taken a different approach to
paper.
of the
these transmission puzzles, without varying the rest of the paper.
33
Of course it can be argued that one is storing up problems for (much) later on
when the
logical theory
repenting have
fuller
a
better developed,
is much more fully developed, and predicates like those of
logical role.
so also will be
presumably when
But
the
logical
theory is
the distinctions between types of predicates and
those sustaining transmission.
34
It is common practice indict deontic logic by so stating the deontic ’'paradox"
that they smuggle in much more than a satisfactory entailment relation could warrant
and more even than a modal relation would grant.
paradoxes
will
be
presented
as
arguments
Here is an example. These [deontic]
against
Consider the Good Samaritan paradoxes formulated
the
"standard"
as follows:
deontic
logics.
1) A is obligated to
help an injured criminal
2) If A is obligated to do B then A is obligated to do whatever B entails.
(This is
a principle of the standard deontic logics.)
3) There could not be an injured criminal if someone did not commit a crime.
So 4) A
is obligated to bring it about that someone commit a crime. (From 1- 3 by the
standard deontic logics.)
The
So 5)
logics are
standard deontic
(For
flawed.
4)
is outrageous,
though its
premisses are not.)
Entailment principles do not justify the importing of 'bringing about' in clause 4).
35
And wrong to rob him and not rob him, and so on.
Conjunction is not here
connexive with one conjunct undercutting another - though connexive deontic logic is
what some seem to be seeking.
^Accordingly Morscher's retreat to "rational norms" and "rational legislating"
is
But
unnecessary.
presupposed
again
that a deontic
Morscher
the
grasps
key
point,
that
von
Wright
has
logic must contain certain consistency-type principles,
and that 'this presupposition need not be fulfilled' (p.98).
37
Schotch and Jennings,
community of moral
philosophers'
philosophy,
analysis.
where
claim 'widespread support for (a) among the
(a)
is the theme 'that cases of real moral
Most likely this claim, like most such sociological claims
conflict cannot occur'.
in
(pp.152-3)
is merely
impressionistic,
and
not based on
any sort of survey or
But we expect further investigation would tend to confirm it.
no
J Thus, to take just one example:
there appears
to
be
a
conflict
'One may be in a situation of course in which
of principles each of which appears categorically
37
binding - but natural reflection will ultimately show that one or other must prevail’
Benn (p.5). But examples abound.
The reason reflection removes inconsistency is that obligations do not collide.
We have it from Kant himself
Because however duty and obligation are in general concepts that express the
objective practical necessity of certian actions, ... it follows that a
conflict of duties and obligations is inconceivable (obligationes non
colliduntor).
(Metaphysis of Morals, cited in Barcan Marcus, p.323.)
But
does
it
world
the
(merely)
practical
follow
not
of
without
action
However
necessity.
sweeping
a
but
the worlds
concering
consistency
assumption
picked out
by function
not
of objective
these worlds are, moral dilemmas certainly appear to
show, sometimes inconcistent.
There are
depending what is
the explanation can go,
various different ways
and
contractual
arrangements a route like that of Hobbes through Rawls will be followed.
Given less,
taken
e.g.
granted.
for
only
grounded
example,
For
or
preferences
given
choice
individual
behaviour,
interests
a
semantical
route
might be
And so on.
tried.
110 The
inadequacy of modal
accounts of inconsistency is explained in detail in
RLR, chapter 5.
ji -1
These examples and most of those that follow were suggested by C. Pigden, who
also supplied the references.
HO
The
first quote
is
from Kenny,
p.75, the
second from Skinner,
p.7,
both of
which furnish additional details.
4^Cf. Kenny, p.78.
24/4 According
to
MacIntyre
66.
The
situation
of
Agamemnon
and
Oedipus
are
remarked upon in Williams 81, p.80.
There
there
are
is
not
a substantial
and
cannot
literature
be general
arguing,
not entirely
universally applicable
principles in all circumstances of their application.
conclusively,
rules
for
that
ranking of
Thus, for example, Ross, p.41,
also discussed in Barcan Marcus, p.124, Barcan Marcus, p.135, Hare 82,
pp.32-4.
It
seems that such a result would be proved, as regards effective rules, by methods of
reversion theory.
38
^The
relevant;
points
Hare
makes
concerning
anguish
remorse
and
(82,
pp.29-30)
are
they apply also against his own proposal to treat all principles as prima
facie.
But points concerning anguish and guilt are not decisive;
account
of
how
these
attitudes
arise
can
be
given
from
for one thing, an
modal
a
angle
(cf.
the
discussion in Barcan Marcus, p.127).
^By no means all dilemmas require resolution, e.g. those of no practical import
such
as
purely
theoretical
dilemmas
of
freedom,
etc.
liberty,
These
can,
in
principle, just stand.
48 As Lemmon
explains
(in
62),
really
following Sartre,
there
is considerable
scope for bad faith and opting out of our responsibilities here, e.g. pretending that
no decision is called
for, or
that another has preempted the decision, or that the
decision is otherwise determined or out of our own control.
49No doubt we could tough it out dialectically, but the basis for doing so is
Any
lacking.
adherence
contradictions
to
calles
for
especially
rigorous
justification
500n
satisizing
decision
theory,
and
the
dialectic
between
maximizers
and
satisizers, see MS.
Fuzzy decision theory is however only in the initial stages of development at
present.
5^This is just one of several reasons why Hare’s grand synthesis (in 82) of Kant
and the utilitarians,
initially appealing in its two level tidiness and simplicity,
goes down the philosophical drain. A main reason is that the synthesis is built upon,
and
incorporates,
consistency and
modal
assumptions,
and
so
is inadequate
moral data to be accounted for theoretically (see further War and Peace II).
to the
REFERENCES
R. Barcan Marcus,
121-136.
Journal of Philospohy 77 (1980)
’Moral dilemmas and consistency
,
*
S. I. Benn, ’Public and private morality: clean living and dirty hands’ in Public and
Private in Social Life (ed. S.I. Benn and G.F. Gaus), Croom Helm, London &
Canberra, 1983, 155-182.
A. Donegan, The Theory of Morality, Chigago University Press, Chicago, 1977.
D. Follesdal and R. Hilpinen, ’Deontic
pp.1-35; referred to as F & H.
B. C.
logic:
van Fraassen, ’The logic of conditional
Logic 1 (1972) 417-38.
an
introduction’
Hilpinen
in
obligation’. Journal
1971,
of Philospohical
L. Gumanski, ’On deontic logic’, Studia Logica 39 (1980) 63-75.
S. Hampshire (ed), Public and Private Morality, Cambridge University Press, 1978.
R.M. Hare, Freedom and Reason, Clarendon, Oxford, 1963.
R.M. Hare, Moral Thinking,
Conflicts’).
Clarendon, Oxford,
1982 (see especially chapter 2 ’Moral
R. Harrison, Rational Action, Cambridge University Press, 1979.
R. Hilpinen (ed). Deontic
Dordrecht, 1971.
Logic:
Introductory
and
Systematic
Readings,
Reide1,
R. Hilpinen (ed), New Studies in Deontic Logic, Reidel, Dordrecht, 1981.
A. Kenny, The God of the Philosophers, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1979.
E.J. Lemmon, ’Moral dilemmas’, Philosophical Review 71 (1962) 139-58.
E.J.
Lemmon,’ Deontic
(1965) 39-71.
Logic
and
the
T. McConnell,
’Moral dilemmas and
Philosophy 8 (1978) 269-87.
logic
of imperatives’,
consistency
in
ethics’,
Logique
et
Canadian
Analyse 8
Journal
A. MacIntyre, A Short History of Ethics, Routledge & Kegan Paul, London, 1966.
of
39
A. A.
Martino (ed.), Deotnic Logic, Computational
Systems, North Holland, Amsterdam, 1982.
Linguistics and Legal Information
E. Morscher, ’Antinomies and incompatibilities within normative languages’ in Martino
82, pp.83-102.
Oxford English Dictionary, Oxford University Press, 1971; hereafter OED.
G. Priest and R. Routley, On Paraconsistency, Research
Australian National University, 1983; hereafter OP.
in
Papers
Logic,
#13,
A.N. Prior, Formal Logic, Second edition, Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1962.
A.N. Prior, ’Escapism: the logical basis of ethics'
(ed. A.I. Melden), Seattle, 1958.
in Essays in Moral Philosophy,
W.D. Ross, The Right and the Good, Oxford University Press, New York, 1930.
R. Routley, ’War and Peace I. On the ethics of large-scale nuclear war and war
deterrence, and the political fall-out’, Discussion Papers in Environmental
Philosophy,
#5, Research School of Social Sciences,
Australian National
University, 1983.
R. Routley, ’On the alleged inconsistency and moral insensitivity and fanaticism of
pacifism’, Inquiry 26 (1984)
,
; also War and Peace II.
R. Routley, ’Maximizing, satisficing, satisizing: the difference in real and rational
behaviour under rival paradigms’, Discussion Papers in Environmental Philosophy,
#10, Research School of Social Sciences, Australian National University, 1984;
hereafter MS.
R. and V. Routley,
’The semantics of first degree entailment’, Nous 6 (1972) 335-59.
R. and V. Routley, ’Semantical foundations of value theory’, Nous (1983) 441—56.
R. Routley and R.k. Meyer, ’The semantics of entailment I’, in Truth, Syntax, and
Modality (ed. H. Leblanc) North-Holland, Amsterdam, 1973» pp.199-243.
R. Routley and R.K. Meyer, ’Dialectical logic, classical logic, and the consistency
of the world’, Studies in Soviet Thought 16 (1976) 1-25.
R. Routley and others, Relevant Logics and Their Rivals, Ridgeview, California, Part
I (1982) and Part II (1984); referred to as RLR I and RLR II respectively.
A. Ryan, The Idea of Freedom, Oxford, 1970.
P. Schotch and
pp.149-62.
R.E.
Jennings,
’Non-Kripkean
deontic
logic’,
in
Hilpinen
81,
40
Q. Skinner, The Foundations of Modern
University Press, Cambridge, 1978.
Political
Thought,
Volume
11,
Cambridge
R. M. Thomason, ’Deontic logic as founded on tense logic’, in Hilpinen 81, pp.165-175.
B. Vermazen, 'The
(1977) 1-71.
logic
of
practical
'ought’-sentences’,
Philosophical
Studies 32
B. Williams, Moral Luck, Cambridge United Press, 1981.
B. Williams, 'Conflict of values' in Williams 81, pp.71-82; also in Ryan 79.
G.H. von Wright, An Essay in Modal Logic, North Holland, Amsterdam, 1951.
G.H. von Wright, ’On the logic of norms/ and actions’, M. Hilpinen 81, pp.3-35.
G.H. ven Wright, ’Norms, truth and logic’ in Martino 82, pp.3-20.
TYRANT
MOPE ON NOPAL DILEMMAS
1.
ethics.
2.
Revolutionising
Possible heading, why the failure to comprehend moral dilemmas.
All these Reading force^'^^e off in other directions.
Undoubtedly a great deal of ethics has been messed up by a failure to understand
moral dilemmas.
' ...
The failure is often reported; for instance
human
since
justifiable claims ...
and
are
rights
claims,
they
be
outweighed
by
other
As in all conflicts of moral principles, human rights
reasons must be weighed
other moral
can
against
one another by an as yet
poorly understood and ill-defined process' (Rajfles, p.42).
The failure shows up on the apparent clash between doing ethics by way of principles
and
doing
ethics
consistency reasons,
principles.
vor principles break down,
through examples.
or dilemmatic
And
examples.
examples
it is
thought for
air^. thought
to
refute
A proper approach to dilemmas removes the tension between examples and
principles and allows a synthesis to be achieved.
3.
Moral
rectitude.
Now
is
notion
this
to
be unpacked0
mhere
are
competing
explanations, e.g.
1) in terms of obligation and deontics;
2)
by
way
of
consequentialist
rectitude decisive.
assessment.
Pettit
to
make
moral
mhen it requires assessment thus
3) Method 1) unless dilemma; otherwise method 2\
rectitude so it is absolute in terms of O.
4.
wants
This is impossible.
Mcjlly's system has no moral dilemmas, since ~fu
For it proves trivial deontically.
But he also wants to run
0~u^ - at least intentionally.
Aquinas denies certain moral dilemmas, e.g. Np &
F~p, in the doctrine concerning perplexus simpliciter F & N p.12.
5.
Investigate further the connection of permitted and accepted worlds,
and
commission?
This
'possibly permitted'
does
not
involve
discussed in NNL.
the
fallacy
of reducing
permission
*
'permissible
to
It does tie with the suggested connection of
commission and omission through the * function.
2
6.
Is problem of the individual in society, of a person in politics, an organisation
or a company of this type i.e.
dilemma
of
freedom?
Of.
a dilemma that can just stand, like the theoretical
also
Machiavellian
a
problem:
person
in
public
must
(morally?) act evilly sometimes.
7.
of PUBLIC
distinction
The
moralities.
VS
MORALITIES
PRIVATE
implies
that
there
are
two
The BASE ARGUMENT against is this:
But there are not two.
if we acknowledge this conception of morality as requiring some action as the
thing to do, how, logically speaking, could there be two moralities0
the thing to do when they conflict?
overriding reason for action?^
How could
morality then
What is
provide an
Similarly &n utilitarianism single maximisation recipe and results.
(/? DOEBN'01
REQUIRE KANTIANISM.)
However A can
to
be subject
conflicting
public
and
private claims.
Seen
this way
^public vs private just generates.heap of further moral dilemmas, and the 2 moralities
^is just
shoddy attempt
to escape
these dilemmas,
expedient (i.e.
would become n
shoves morality out
as in the Hinduism
resolution
dilemmas.
of
often in a way that’s politically
of the way for expediency'1.
The 2 moralities
* int
if
pursued this distinction-making attempt at
/
Something special about public/private case0
Or
differently, why are arguments from expedience
so much more acceptable in public sphere0
Be^n gives
r
interest
some reasons, but these oughtn't to justify a difference. | public interest
DIRTY HANDS PROBLEM
(PARADOX) is like GOOD SAM?
behalf of the statecommitting murder.
Sometimes it
is right
get one's hands dirty.
E.g. Doing such and
such on
OR just a straight dilemma?
to try to succeed,
and then it must also be right to
But one's hands get dirty from doing what it is wrong
to do.
And how can it be wrong to do what is right? Or how can we get our
hands dirty by doing what we ought to do9 Z M. Walzer, Philosophy and Public
Affairs,
moral
2,
10°^,
dilemma.
164.
Op
Walzer sees this as a tragic dilemma:
p-> q
Oq,
but
0~q.
Example:
but really a
torturing
captured
terrorist to extract information to save innocent lives.
The problems start from questions of relations between two different moralities.
Conclusion:
8.
Conflict
conscience 'that,
the
public
to
at its most liberal,
loyalty,
overriding moral
liberalism
in
end.
to a
On
between
will stand
the
individual,
tried
committed concern for its collective interest,
the
one hand
the
individual
as a
relate
this
ambiguous model
of the
a
individual and
as an
autonomous,
citadel,
on the other, the
overriding perverse, wilful obstacles in the way of the general will.
to
with
no gainsaying, and the claims of
possessed of liberties that only he himself can waive, by consent;
State,
equipped
society,
not
T have
only to
liberal conceptions of what belongs to the private and what to the public, but also
to the tension between a morality of principles and one of valued outcomes, which, in
my view, is very closely connected with the ambiguity of the model
.
*
("Renn?
9.
Argument for weak paraconsistent position.
Morality is a guide to action.
Action is consistent.
So have to r?l consistencize.
^Inconclusive"1.
Like law one
consistencizes (e.g.
for action^ alright.
But that confirms that it is inconsistent
in the first place.
10.
The
difference.
fought distinction
is,
it
It hands the opposition its case.
is objected,
a
Simply not so.
distinction
without a
The following have been redacted from access file (PDF) due to copyright restrictions.
•
•
•
•
•
Letter, unidentified author to Richard, 27 Jul 1984 re Moral dilemmas. (2 pages (1 leaf))
Reference card and handwritten paper, ? Alchourron and Bulygin (1 reference card + 5
leaves)
Letter, Charles to Richard, undated re New Studies in Deontic Logic and Castañeda's
proposed deontic logic. (2 pages)
Cuttings from unidentified publication, The paradoxes of deontic by Hector-Neri
Castañeda (page 46-47), and Some main problems of deontic by Jaakko Hintikka 9page
94-96. (2 leaves)
Letter, unidentified author to Richard, with annotations by Sylvan?, undated, re Moral
dilemmas. (7 leaves)
Ml
Although the sorts of examples we have described seem familiar
enough,
it might well be disputed that they are correctly described
as cases of Op and 0~p, or in the alternative representation as
cases of Fp & F~p.
The main ground for this is the belief that
19.
in any such case one of the parties to the conflict is less wrong,
and that this one can be claimed to be not really wrong at all.
There are however several objections to this move to neutralise
the dilemmas
(1)
First,
wrong party.
there is no guarantee that there always is a less
Both parties may be equally wrong,
no way of deciding which is less wrong.
Vietnam example;
To take
and there may be
our hypothetical
if we withdraw half a million people will die;
but if we do not withdraw the war will continue and half a million
people will die; clearly the example may be elaborated.
There
may be no grounds for choice.
(2) The fact that one party is less wrong than the alternative
is no grounds for saying that it is not wrong at all.
In fact
the case would normally be described as one of choice between " two
evils",
two wrong aciwsese©;
if one chooses the lesser of two evils,
then one still chooses an evil.
ing
One is simply not justified in claim1
that, where p involves killing 10 people, p is not wrong
simply on the grounds that ~p involves killing 15 people,
any more
than one is in the case of preference theory justified in saying
that p, which brings a gift of $10,
is not a good thing simply on
the grounds that ~p brings a gift of $11.
things;
(3)
They are both good
and in our moral case, both are wrong.
If we do say this, plainly it will be very difficult to find
any moral principles which can be asserted with any confidence
universally.
In fact it will probably
be possible to find
hypothetical counterexamples to any statement of the form "All
actions of type x are wrong",
just by producing a case where p is
an action of type x, but ~p is an even worse action.
that p,
although an action of type x,
is not wrong,
It will follow
so we will have
However,
a counterexample.
it seems to be important that we
should be able to assert such general principles, and doing so
gives us an essential way of assessing, morally,
(4)
Finally,
types of actions.
the proposed redescription of the case as involving
only one wrong element,
the one which is more wrong,
leaves out
an essential feature of such a case,
that it is a dilemma,
case where one cannot but act wrongly.
If we omit this element
the case is not properly described,
it is falsified;
a
we may as
a result find ourselves unable to explain many resulting features
of the situation which result from the conflict,
e.g. human
behavioural features >n such a situation involving hesitation,
doubt,
inaction,
perhaps anguish and guilt.
All these will appear
quite irrational.
(5)
Assigning a priority to our moral rules itself does
nothing to resolve the logical problem raised by the dilemmas,
(although it may solve the practical problem of how best to act).
%
For this logical problem iX
the problem of how to arrange our
logic so as to be able to describe such cases adequately and without
falsification or incon-sisteney.
Arranging a priority, so that
A
one alternative can be claimed to be less wrong, does not solve
the logical problem, which is that
whatever happens will be wrong,
that T cannot be identical with I.
The consequence that whatever
happens is wrong cannot be removed unless as well as a priority
assignment one also adopts the principle that what is less wrong
is not wrong at all.
But this principle leads to inconsistency
for then the less wrong action is both wrong and not wrong.
To
be consistent this method must introduce a new concept of wrong
in addition to the old one,
say "wrong2" , and the less wrong action
can be said to be not "wrong2".
But now the original problem is
21.
still not eliminated, because the problem was not that whatever
be
is
.
happened would /'wrong2" (although this/now false), but that
whatever happened would be wrong, which is still true.
sort of priority - dominated concept cannot replace,
may supplement,
the original concept.
And this
although it
Sf-
The problem of classifying these dilemmas.
z
mainly using the term ’wrong’.
We have stated our dilemmas
However, it may seem that this is ambiguous,
and that it is possible, or desirable, to make a further distinction, between
pi inciples which are obligatory and principles which are prohibitory.
For
wrongs can be due to two very different causes - om^iission or commission.
The distinction between obligation and prohibition principles can be
explained initially as follows:
an obligation principle of the form Op
read ’it ought to be the case that p’,Qt
is
f ?
L ' r
jT
f'.Jlz.f:? /t/tjyJ
/4-<
'it ought to come about that p'.
This says that something, p, ought to
should happen that p'A,
r,
happen,
an
ideal situation I.
that is^ that it is a member of
&
A situation^satisfies Op,
Op if p is not in it
then, if p is In it
( p eaJ;and violates
p's presence satisfies Op, whereas
(pZ S?) •
£ ["Obligation"
Z7 —:----- is
’
being used here
its omission or absence violates it.
in a somewhat unusual sense,
4
for Lemmon seems to be right in
urging that obligations are usually contractual in nature.
and contracts may be contracts to do something or to refrain from
However, we
doing something - hence both positive and negative.
must press
'obligation'
and
'obligatory'
and adjective corresponding to
it
*
into service as a noun
ought to be the case that'
in
order to avoid clumsiness and for lack of any other suitable words.
The other class of principles,
hand, we shall write
prohibitive principles, on the other
'Ep' and read
'it is forbidden that p'.
These principles claim that p is the sort of action which should
p is not a member of the ideal situation I.
be avoided
satisfies Fp,
situation a such that p Z
such that pea violates it.
a situation a
whereas
p's omission or absence satisfies
Fp, whereas pSoccurrence or presence violates it.
is paralleled on the
obligations)
The distinction
action level by the distinction between action
and by that between
and inaction,
A
'sins of omission'
and 'sins of commision'
A
(which violate
(which violate
prohibitions).
'I have done those things which I ought not to have done'
violating a prohibition but also,
and not equivalently,
not done those things which I ought to have done',
thus
'I have
thus violating
An obligation is satisfied by doing something,
an obligation.
a
prohibition by failing to do something, by avoiding something.
It is important not to confuse 0~p, which says that
should happen'
or
'that ~p
'It is wrong that p', with Fp which says ’that
p should not happen', or
it
*
should not
happen that p'.
This
distinction is clear, as a scope distinction,
in the English reading
However the two are continually confused in modal treatments of
But
deontic logic, since given Modal Muddle p / I = ~p g I.
that
to say/p should happen is not to say anything about what should not
happen
but leaves the issue as to whether ~p should or should
And to say that p should not happen is not say
and
0~p tells
anything about ~p,/whether it should happen or not.
not happen open.
aj
us that ~p is a member of I, where.Fp tells us that p is not a
member of 1.^
Dilemmas then seem to fall into three classes depending upon
whether the principles which lead to them are obligation or
prohibition principles^or both.
Fp and F~p,
Thus we obtain Op and 0~p,
and Op and Fp from our examples depending upon how the
principles involved are construed^
a<Tprohibitory or obligatory.
(A): Dilemmas obtained from prohibition principles,
Fp, % F~p1.
i.e.
cases of
We obtain cases of this sort given principles of the
*
form.
—
(1) Whenever P satisfies condition C,
(Action form:
(2)
it shouldn't happen that p.
action of type x are wrong)
it shouldn't happen that p.
A
Whenever p satisfies condition C',
The dilemma is
obtained where p satisfies condition C,
~p satisfies condition C'.
Jo O
F
and
-
■L Give the semantical reading of 0 and F?and the examples with
'wrong' .
Then mention the necessity for distinction between 0~p and Fp.
(1)
Wrongs divide into sins of omission and sins of commission.
(2)
These are semantically different.
(3)
Unless one distinguishes these concepts semantically
have the consistency assumption again.
Give the readings.
one will
10.
Examples can also be obtained from two distinct prohibitory
These are cases where the state of affairs described
principles.
(for reasons given by the first
by p is really indescribable
principle)
(for different reasons given by the second principle).
able,
*
(tndesir
For/(B)
and the state of affairs described by ~p is m^-ally
The second category of dilemmas are dilemmas obtained from
obligation principles i.e. cases of Op & O~p,
for some p.
We
obtain cases of this sort given principles of the form:(1)
Whenever p satisfies condition C,
(2)
Whenever p satisfies condition C',
it should happen that p
it should happen that p.
The dilemma is obtained when for a given p, p satisfies
condition C and ~p satisfies condition C':
(C)
Finally,
so Op and O~p.
examples derived from conflicting but not inconsistent
moral principles, which urge both that p should occur and that it
should not occur i.e.
and prohibited.
cases of Op and Fp, where p is both enjoined
These cases
come about where are principles of
the following sort:
(1)
Whenever p satisfies condition C, p should happen.
(2)
Whenever p satisfies condition C', p should not happen.
The dilemma results because one can find cases
one and the same state of affairs
C and condition C'?
e.g.
(p)
(in T)
where
satisfies both condition
as^our example derived from Lemmon's
uAcrw-tt
bolew, x gives back the gun
and helping a murderer.
(p)
is a case both of keeping a promise
But promises must be kept,
so Op holds.
However actions which help murderers are forbidden and should
not occur;
examples,
hence Fp also holds.
unlike the previous kind,
It seems that these sorts of
cannot be generated by a
single moral principle, but requires two principles which come into
conflict.
With a certain degree of artifice we can arrange our
examples into these categories, with f A) groups being prohibitions
the (fe)groups obligations,
and the
(C)
groups mixed.
It is necessary then to avoid the modal treatment and to
But though 0 principles and F principles
distinguish 0~ and F.
are
distinct, 0 and F provide alternatives bases for
(semantically)
The O-principles correspond semantically to
deontic system.
inclusion principles,the F formulated principles to exclusion
Thus e.g.
principles.
TRfH
5® where
iff
iff TROH
*
,
(UH) (TRfH oX(p,H)
= f)
In contrast,
I(Fp,T)
= t
iff
(UH)
TROH
d
Kp,H)
Thus the modellingswill mirror
f)
.
one another, with R
Rf
For the representation of principles then we can work
satisfactorily with an O-basis, or with an F-basis, but not with
a
mixed basis which uses both 0 and F principles.
Failure to
distinguish 0~p and Fp will provide a ground for the mistaken
consistency assumption:
iff p i H.
for it will follow from evaluation rules
12.
The cases described satisfy the characterisation
of moral
For the principles involved are not inconsistent, yet
dilemmas.
they are not satisfiable in T.
In the case of the first set of
leading to Fp and F~p,
dilemmas,
the principles could not be
satisfied unless neither p nor ~p occurred.
necessarily complete,
But since T is
they cannot be satisfied in T.
of the second set of examples,
Op and 0~p,
In the case
the principles could
only be satisfied if both p and ~p occur, hence since T is con
sistent,
they cannot be satisfied in T.
different.
The third case is very
Here it cannot be satisfied because one and the same
proposition satisfies both conditions for occurring and conditions
for not occurring?
this proposition,
hence our principles direct, with respect to
that it should occur and that it should not occur.
This also cannot be satisfied in T,
since p is either a member of
T, or not a member of T.
The principles involved are not however inconsistent ones;
for
in each case a finite proposition modelling of the principles can
be provided.
In the third case,
directives,
despite the fact there are inconsistent
given a contingent proposition p^, which satisfies the
antecedent conditions, no inconsistency need result because such a
proposition p^ may not occur.
In other words,
though the principles
together with p^ form an inconsistent set, p-^ is essential and can
be deleted from the set since contingent;
and the set without p1
as the principles on their own are satisfactory
is consistent,
where no antecedents satisfy both,
a po£S»4ta-
case.
■ v
r
•
The principles
**
(a.
though inconsistent in application are not inconsistent^
i
In the
first two cases(they are T consistent?) also it is a contingent matter
that the principles come
i
...
into^ cannot be satisfied in T;
r;
for
detachment of a contingent truth is made, viz that the given
?
proposition satisfies the conditions.
13.
since they constantly arise““without sacrificing the generality
of moral principles.
For unless carefully treated dilemmas will/
as we shall see, provide counterexamples to moral principles.
Our moral dilemmas result from judgements which cannot be
satisfied in T,
so that whatever happens will be wrong.
Howe
is
there/still quite a crucial difference between the first two
classes and the third class of dilemma.
In the third case the
result of the dilemma on detachment of a contingent premiss that
p satisfies c and c'
simultaneously is an inconsistency,
cannot both belong and not belong to the ideal set-up I.
since p
Although
the principles upon which the judgement Op and Fp was based were not
themselves mutually inconsistent,
moral judgerent
they do result in a inconsistent
that p both ought to happen and ought not to happen
is prohibited from happening.
Given that p has both properties,
the moral principles concerned are in conflict.
This is brought
out by the fact that if p does satisfy these conditions,
cannot be any situation, T-like or not,
there
in which the principles are
satisfied.
Furthermore here we have a case where each moral judgement
provides a counterexample to the other.
If Op and Fp both
obtained, both the principles from which they were derived would
be false;
principle
for Op would provide a counterexample to the prohibitory
(p)
(if p satisfies c’
then Fp)
since Op
~Fp;
while
Fp would provide a counterexample to the obligatory principle
(if p satisfies c then Op).
(p)
J
\
14.
In view of these points it seems that a moral code which
resulted in this sort of conflicting judgement is defective;
the
principles involved should either be restricted by tightening one
or other of conditionsc and c', or else restated by reformulating
one or other of the principles,
(p) (Cp => F~p)
replaced by
(p) (C'p => 0~p) .
or
i.e.
either
(p) (C'p => Fp)
(p) (Cp => Op)
is
is replaced by
the case is reduced to one of the first
In short,
two cases.
In this case the dilemma arises because the principles
In the first two cases however
involved come into conflict.
the difficulty does not arise from conflicting principles, but is
simply a case where our
not
v/
judgements cannot both be satisfied in T,
because they are conflicting, but because of the peculiar
Where Op and 0~p both hold,
nature of T.
(or Fp and F~p)
what-
ever happens will be wrong, because p & ~p cannot both hold in T,
The dilemma is however simply explained
nor p & ~p fail to hold.
and the judg.ements accepted once it is understood that I,
situation,
action,
is not T-like.
The dilemma may produce a conflict in
because given the logical structure of T and the limitations
it imposes upon action,
both judgements.
it is impossible to act in accordance with
But this does not effect the judgements themselves;
as moral judgenents, assessments of the moral worth of p
of affairs)
conflict.
(a
state
of ~p^jthey are quite compatible and there is no
To say that p is wrong and that ~p is also wrong is
in no way to be inconsistent,
true.
the ideal
and both judgements may very well be
The absence of conflict also explains
the fact that such
cases can be produced from single moral principles,
such as
'Killing is wrong', which in no way inhibit internal conflict.
15.
Judgements such as
'p is wrong
of action or states of affairs;
as to how to act in T.
alternative in T,
Hence Op does not compare p with its
~p.
Such judgements are implicitly comparative,
not to ~p's worth, but to the
Thus if we reach situations as to moral
worth of its absence.
(using moral criteria for selection),
if for every situation H, H+p is worse than H-p.
in a situation
assess types
and do not simply give directions
but p's worth is assessed relative,
desirability
& ~p is wrong'
p is wrong
If p's
presence
makes the situation morally worse than it would be
if p were absent,
then p is wrong.
But now it is a straightforward
matter to claim that p is wrong and that ~p is also wrong;
one is
aHL
simply claiming that situations without p^orally preferable to
the
that
(should be chosen^etc.);
same situations with p
*
and also
situations without ~p are morally preferable to that same
situation with ~p in it.
These judgements in no way conflict,
and if we were in a position to choose a situation with neither of
them in, we could satisfy both judgements simultaneously.
is the choice must be regarded as a hypothetical one,
As it
and the
judgements as representing a kind of thought experiment, rather
than in giving directions as to how to behave in T.
The choice
embodied in such a judgement is one between two hypothetical situations
and not between alternative versions of T.
It is just for this reason that this type of moral judgement
is adequate for assessing morally different types of actions or
sorts of states of affairs.
Because we are concerned with choosing
between hypothetical situations, we can opine that all actions of
a certain specifiable
type and states of affairs satisfying a
certain condition are wrong
(not wrongyetc.), without risking
* In the case of Op & 0~p.
In the case of Fp & F~p one ismaking
a slightly different claim, that a situation from which p's
absent is morally better than some in which it is present.
Note
that the difference between 0 and F can be
to the difference
in directionthe rankings.
16.
falsification because of the contingent features of T.
Finally,
in such a judgement one is concerned with assessing the action
or state of affairs in itself rather than passing judgement about
the best way to act in a particular situation.
Dilemmas of this sort then, as opposed to dilemmas of the
conflict sort first discussed,
are not the result of defective
moral codes or principles and do not require any readjustment or
resolution
(beyond psychological acceptance of the fact that it is
sometimes inevitable that what happens is wrong and that perfectibility
is impossible).
They do not provide counterexamples to general
In contrast
moral principles based on contingent features of T.
codes containing the conflict type of dilemma are defective.
Any
code containing two principles of the form 'wherever p satisfies
Cl, Op'
and ’Whenever p satisfies C2, Fp’
where C1
and C2 are not
inconsistent, will be defective because there is a possible situation
(a hypothetical case)
with a p^ which satisfies both C1
Whence the inconsistent pair Fp,
potentially inconsistent.
& Op,.
and C2.
Any such code is at least
This sort of defectiveness of a moral
code might be excusable if it were inevitable.
But it is not.
can be avoided if we adopt either 0 or F as primitive,
and state
our judgements in terms of one or other of them, but not both.
alternative,
terms,
conflicting
is intolerable.
moral
It
The
principles stated in
No principle could be asserted with any
confidence, because they would hold or fail just according to whether
or not a suitable proposition with conflicting properties appeared
in T and provided a counterexample.
And since this is contingent
whether such principles hold or not would be entirely a matter of
good or bad luck.
Moral judgements on the other hand ought to
apply beyond T to possible situations, ought to be non-empirical
and apply to hypothetical cases,
matter of accident.
and ought not to hold just as a
4
C ‘S’ -X
f *
univeralisa'blemoral principle was a judgement
The general
‘
7^'
about types of action or states of affairs and compared p's presence
in a situation with its absence from the same situation on a scale
of moral desirability.
This concept of wrongness is essential to
be able to state general moral judgements.
But as well as this
concept we can distinguish another important concept which is
designed to assess not types of action but what is the best course
of action in a given situation.
This is obtained by comparing
p's presence in a situation not with its absence but with the presence
of its rivals in a given situation,
e.g. ~p in the case of T.
p will be said to be ’the best course of action'
~p are both wrong)
if a situation
Thus
(even where p and
(usually T), with p in, ranks
higher morally then the same one with ~p in.
A more practical
- concept still can be obtained by comparing p and its practical rivals,
say
will be the best course of action
practical alternative q)
f
Y
r
if a situation
(as compared with its
(usually T)
(morally) when p is in it than when q is in it.
between alternative ways of
extending
will rank higher
One chooses
T.
It is important as Lemmon points out to distinguish this
concept clearly from the more general concept earlier explained.
Lemmon is wrong in suggesting that this is not a moral concept at
all and does not give rise to moral judgements but to judgements
of expedience.
The judgements involved in this case are still
moral in the sense that the criteria for ranking situations are
22
specifically moral ones and not based simply,
say, on aesthetic
considerations or desirability considerations.
clear that this distinction
Yet
it is
(which we shall call the distinction
between differential obligation and intrinsic obligation)
must be
ignored and eliminated if obligation is treated as a modal functor
For give/} the principle of Modal Muddle
(H) (p e H = ~p e H)
semantical recipes we have given will be identical.
p's presence in H with p's absence
(p / H)
comparing p in H with ~p's being in H.
the
To compare
will be the same as
It is essential however
to distinguish this notion of 'best course of action' (differential
basic notion we have discussed, because it has quite different
properties.
*
It cannot replace although it can supplement,
The reasons are as follows
other notion.
02 does not allow for
(1)
the
moral dilemmas.
p with its practical alternative in T, e.g.
For since we compare
~p,
to say that Op &
0~p is to say that a situation H such p e H is morally better than
a situation H such that ~p e H, and also to say that a situation H
such that ~p e H is better than one such that p e H.
This is a
(Similar results will ensue when F is taken as a
contradiction.
basis).
(2)
02 cannot allow for general moral judgements of the form "All
actions
(states of affairs)
counterexample.
of type x are wrong" without fear of
For no matter how compelling our principle and
how repugnant the type of action described, we can almost always
find a case where the only alternative action is worse.
however repugnant p may be,
Hence,
it will not in this case be wrong,
a counterexample to one general judgement will be provided.
new notion then cannot do the same job as the old;
—-----------------------------------------
.
and
Our
it should be
,
We u^e such
as 'the best thing in the circumstances'
'the right thing', 'the correct course all
in all'
to capture
differential obligations .
23.
regarded as parasitic,
because it can be alternatively represented
as admitting the wrongness of the alternatives,
but going on to
weigh up the alternatives to obtain a recipe for practical action.
(3)
implies can" slogan
It is to this notion that the "ought
applies.
O2P o locjically possible p, because one has selected
p as the best course of action from logically possible alternatives
in T.
Indeed
’02p’
can be made to imply
‘p is physically possible'
(or even physically possible to the person being exhorted)
by
comparing p with its physically possible alternatives in ranked
situations.
In a similar way,
the concept of blame attaches to
failure to follow the best course of action,i.e.
if p is better as a course of action than its
and one fails to do it.
action.*
(practical)
alternatives,
One is not blameworthy for doing p merely
only as good as,
because p is no better than, i.e.
alternatives,
one is blameworthy
its remaining
it has to be worse than some alternative course of
It is important to note that blame attaches to this
second differential concept of obligation, rather than the first
intrinsic notion,
for the possibility and obvious unfairness of
someone's being blamed for doing wrong where both Op and 0~p
hold and he has no alternative which is not wrong would otherwise
be a powerful objection to cases of moral dilemmas.
(5)
Finally,
differential obligation makes a basically different
type of judgement from the intrinsic notion.
not of a type of action or state
It is an assessment
or
of affairs, the action/state of
affairs in itself, but of the situation in which it occurs,
action in this situation.
This is reflected in such phrases as
"the best thing in the circumstances"
"the right thing to do
the conditions obtained at the time)", etc.
* Oh well, you cannot be blamed.
circumstances .
the
(given
Hence it is not
You did the best thing in the
universalisable , and does not try to be.
It
“results in a recipe
for action, and is closely allied to advice or exhortation/orders ,
persuasion,
recommendation or other directed activities.
Intrinsic
obligation however/ frafc^s no account of possible action and does not
need to;
it assesses action-types regardless of how they occur in
a given situation.
This last point is important in connection with argument
about moral dilemmas.
For the confusion between our two concepts
has a disastrous effect on argument, particularly those hotly
disputed arguments which occur in the case of moral dilemmas.
The
following sort of argument, due to confusion between Oi and O2
is
all too common in such cases.
Actions of type x are wrong
(1')
(if p satisfies c then Oi~p).
(p)
This must be Oj because
it represents a general and exceptionless
(2)
p
is an action
(3)
~
02
i.e.
~p:
(state of affairs)
judgement about a type.
of type x.
p should not be done.
Therefore do not do p.
The argument is plainly unsatisfactory because the fact that
Oi~p
holds is not sufficient to establish that 02~p
To
holds.
do this one would have to show that the alternative, p, was not worse
or even just as good.
not be so.
And in cases of dilemmas this may very well
To establish 02~p
one needs to show not merely that p
is wrong but that there is some better
course of action.
The
fallacy derives from trying to base a recipe for action on the
intrinsic obligation notion, Oi.
s
25.
A closely related confusion holds that it is inconsistent to
claim that p is a wrong type of action,
that it should be done nonetheless
the best course of action.
August 6 197 x
(e.g.
is repugnant etc.,
but
- because it is nevertheless
Canberra Times Editorial,
on abortion reads as follows:
"It is significant,
and inconsistent with its official stand that the s ynod should
have qualified its recommendation to family doctors with the words
"however regrettable we feel this to be"."
to be inconsistentthen,
one states to be
What is being claimed
is that one should recommend a course of action
(morally)
there is no inconsistency.
regrettable or repugnant.
But of course
One is simply saying that ~p is wrong,
"Oi-p", but that it is nevertheless the best thing to do given the
circumstances because the alternatives are worse?i.e.
"O2P"•
The distinction between differential and intrinsic obligation,
then,
seems to be an important factor in assessing the validity of
argument where moral dilemmas are concerned.
/,
2
ft
I
z^z/ /
rt&jZy
7-,
I
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Box 140, Item 1: Draft of Moral dilemmas and the logic of deontic notions ; Draft of Moral dilemmas ; Notes, correspondence and cutting on moral dilemmas and deontic logic
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Typescript of drafts of two papers, undated. Second paper with handwritten emendations, and first paper published, Routley R and Plumwood V (1984) 'Moral dilemmas and the logic of deontic notions', Discussion papers in environmental philosophy, 6. Dept. of Philosophy, Australian National University. Includes three letters addressed to Richard: 27 July 1984 (handwritten, 1 leaf (2 pages)), author unidentified re Moral dilemmas; Undated (handwritten, 2 pages), from Charles re New Studies in Deontic Logic and Castaneda's proposed deontic logic; Undated (handwritten, 7 leaves with annotations by Sylvan?), author unidentified re Moral dilemmas; and one letter from Richard Sylvan? to Philip, undated (handwritten (photocopy), 3 pages), re feedback on a paper. Includes incomplete draft paper, Other attempts to neutralise moral dilemmas (21 leaves), with handwritten emendations, undated.
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Letters and cuttings redacted from access file (PDF) due to copyright restrictions. Unnumbered paper from collection, item number assigned by library staff.
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Antipodean Antinuclearism: (Re)constructing Richard Routley/Sylvan's Nuclear Philosophy
Box 140: File Cabinet 1 Draw 2
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https://www.antipodean-antinuclearism.org/files/original/6b77012c0a66d38b0416c8154df0b2c9.pdf
76b38d3523658bc16adbace6e129781e
PDF Text
Text
<*
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).
�Tbe 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
2
hasn't at all - the no-abandonment-of-nuclear-power conclusion in no way fellows.
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.
Por 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
ot the extravagant energy use of only 5 generations or so.
Like the consigner in
the bus example, contemporary industrial society proposes, in extricating itself
^rom 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
What makes matters worse is that present industrial
action morally unacceptable.
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 simply 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 timej-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, intuitionisti
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;
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:
in the nuclear development case
this necessary condition is not satisfied.14oral 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.
�7.
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 enormous
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
�8.
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
Such an option would also fail, it seems, to satisfy the
consumption figures.
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
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 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.5
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 future;
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
y
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.
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-bodv
(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.
-1*
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.
Et 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.
�w
REFERENCES
B.L. Cohen, 'The disposal of radioactive wastes from fission reactors',
Sg-Zg^tf^a Amgr-faa^ 236 (June 1977) 22-31.
Flowers Report: Fz^aZgar Pazjgr a?zJ ^Fg FwPra^g??^. Sixth Report of
the British Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution, London, 1976.
Fox Report.: Fa??pgr Pra??7'zw Pw-Zra?w?g7ztaZ
F-frst Report,
Australian Government Publishing Service, Canberra, 19/7.
J.R. Hallam,
'Synroc or C#nroc?', F/za*Z?n Pgaat^azz 4 (2-3) (1979)
4-5.
A. Lovins, 'Energy strategy: the road not taken:', Forgan Aj^a-frs
55 (1) (October 1976) 65-96.
A. Lovins, Soft F%grgrp Pa^As, Friends of the Earth, San Francisco, 1977
B. Martin, 'Is alternative technology enough?', 6%a-f% Pgaat-Zaz?
3 (2) (1977) 17-21.
B. Martin, 'Call for research into Synroc', 7%g Fan&grua Tvxgs,
December 6, 1978, p.15.
G.T. Prance and T.S. Elias (editors),
Botanic Garden, 1977.
-fs Fcrgpgr, New York
A.E. Ringwood, Safa PZspasaZ a/
Pgz?gZ F^aZgar Fgaa^a?^ fVasZgs.*
4 Fgzj s^ratgpp, ANU Press, Canberra, 1978.
R. and V. Routley, 'Nuclear energy and obligations to the future',
21 (1978) 133-179.
R. and V. Routley, 'Some ethical aspects of energy options', in
Fzzgrpz/ a?%f PggpZg; Saa-ZaZ JmpZtaat'Za^s <pf P-Z/ygrgn^ F?zgrpz/ FM^z^rgs,
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).
Tbe 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
2
hasn't at all - the no-abandonment-of-nuclear-power conclusion in no way fellows.
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.
Por 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
ot the extravagant energy use of only 5 generations or so.
Like the consigner in
the bus example, contemporary industrial society proposes, in extricating itself
^rom 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
What makes matters worse is that present industrial
action morally unacceptable.
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 simply 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 timej-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, intuitionisti
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;
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:
in the nuclear development case
this necessary condition is not satisfied.14oral 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.
7.
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 enormous
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
8.
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
Such an option would also fail, it seems, to satisfy the
consumption figures.
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
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 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.5
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 future;
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
y
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.
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-bodv
(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.
-1*
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.
Et 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.
w
REFERENCES
B.L. Cohen, 'The disposal of radioactive wastes from fission reactors',
Sg-Zg^tf^a Amgr-faa^ 236 (June 1977) 22-31.
Flowers Report: Fz^aZgar Pazjgr a?zJ ^Fg FwPra^g??^. Sixth Report of
the British Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution, London, 1976.
Fox Report.: Fa??pgr Pra??7'zw Pw-Zra?w?g7ztaZ
F-frst Report,
Australian Government Publishing Service, Canberra, 19/7.
J.R. Hallam,
'Synroc or C#nroc?', F/za*Z?n Pgaat^azz 4 (2-3) (1979)
4-5.
A. Lovins, 'Energy strategy: the road not taken:', Forgan Aj^a-frs
55 (1) (October 1976) 65-96.
A. Lovins, Soft F%grgrp Pa^As, Friends of the Earth, San Francisco, 1977
B. Martin, 'Is alternative technology enough?', 6%a-f% Pgaat-Zaz?
3 (2) (1977) 17-21.
B. Martin, 'Call for research into Synroc', 7%g Fan&grua Tvxgs,
December 6, 1978, p.15.
G.T. Prance and T.S. Elias (editors),
Botanic Garden, 1977.
-fs Fcrgpgr, New York
A.E. Ringwood, Safa PZspasaZ a/
Pgz?gZ F^aZgar Fgaa^a?^ fVasZgs.*
4 Fgzj s^ratgpp, ANU Press, Canberra, 1978.
R. and V. Routley, 'Nuclear energy and obligations to the future',
21 (1978) 133-179.
R. and V. Routley, 'Some ethical aspects of energy options', in
Fzzgrpz/ a?%f PggpZg; Saa-ZaZ JmpZtaat'Za^s <pf P-Z/ygrgn^ F?zgrpz/ FM^z^rgs,
edited by M. Diesendorf, Society for Social Responsibility in Science
(A.C.T.), Canberra, 1979.
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GAEAN GREENHOUSE, NUCLEAR WINTER,
AND ANTHROPIC DOOMSDAY?
... climate change, like no other issue, calls the whole notion of human
progress into question. The [ever promised] benefits of newer technologies,
more efficient economics, and improved political systems could be
overwhelmed by uncontrolled global warming.
... the pace of climate change will soon overwhelm natural variability in the
earth's climate. Indeed, it can be compared with nuclear war for its potential to
disrupt a wide range of human and natural systems, [severely] complicating the
task of managing economies and coping with other problems. Irrigation
works, settlement patterns, and food production [among others] would be
tragically disrupted ... (Worldwatch 89, p.ll, p.10)
There are many approaches to the
the cluster of problems upon
which this philosophical investigation focuses. These approaches range from playing the
issue down entirely, dismissing it as not a problem, not something anyone should worry
about, at the one end of the range, to playing it up at the other. Those who play it up may
even foresee the demise of the human race, unless substantially new socio-economic
arrangements - with restructured cities, revitalized lands, rejuvenated oceans - soon
eventuate.
There is certainly plenty of room for different approaches (see Diagram 1), and for
some eclecticism. For what is being relied upon, in every case, comprises shaky and
contestable arguments, from flimsy forecasting models lacking many apparently relevant
details. No one of sound judgment, aware that weather reports for twelve hours ahead can
be wildly astray, would place a very high level of confidence on climatic forecasts for fifty
years ahead down a very hazardous track. Nonetheless there is enough information to act;
and there is information rationally requiring action.
For things in the future are not going to be the same. It is very doubtful that they are
going to be any better (though much important economic theorizing presupposes as much,
such as the monetary discounting of the future). They are not going to be similar even,
because so many parameters important to life are changing, several at exponential rates.
Significant in these changes are likely climatic changes. The Greenhouse effect is among
these, a result of the increases of "greenhouse" gases, especially carbon dioxide and
methane, in the Earth's atmosphere, which have followed exponential paths since the highenergy phase of industrial culture (see Diagram 7). The growth in gas concentration
produces, what it is lagged by, but is now apparent, a significant increase in mean global
temperatures. This has major implications for much of life on Earth.
�Course of action
Reasons offered
Short response
No problem
Refutable
No certainty
Irrational
Adaptive capacity
Exaggerated
High-tech resolution
Wishful thinking
Severe dislocation
otherwise
Utopian
Individual
survival
Pointless
No action^
Moderate action
Considerable action
These very condensed responses will be expanded and explained as we proceed. In
accord with an esteemed philosophical tradition, a medical analogy is first deployed; it serves
to throw main points into high relief. Consider the possible illness of the Earth, for instance
as a result of brutalisation and poisoning. Look on the Earth then as a patient^, who exhibits
some symptoms of a possibly disabling illness; for instance the patient's system is
overloaded with troublesome trace elements and her temperature appears to be rising.
Compare rational medical practice where a human patient gives indications of possibly
disabling illness, for instance the patient shows signs of hypertension. Now consider some
of the spectrum of approaches. Suppose the advice is to take no action, to do nothing but
monitor the situation until further information comes in, until even (to take a worst case) it
becomes evident that the patient indeed has hypertension and suffers a severe consequence.
That would be regarded as irresponsible practice. To say that there is no problem when
symptoms are there, would be regarded as utterly irresponsible, and medically refutable. To
say that no action should be taken until certainty as to the complaint is established would be
seen as incompetent medical practice.
Taoist no-action would be different. It would not have undertaken excessive industrial action in
the first place.
This is precisely not the way less modest Gaean hypotheses regard the Earth. For there the Earth
is active, actively participating in co-evolutionary developments. But the health analogy does of
course go right back to ancient chthonic view, systematically presented in Plato, according to
which The Earth is a living being of whom humans are only a part. Right relationship with the
Earth means that the total organism is in good health; so environmental problems are seen as
illness, as a failure of one part of the organism to interact supportivcly with others' (Hughes,
p.60). For Gaean themes in other ancient philosophies, both before and after Plato, see Hughes
p.57.
�a
?
3
A responsible practitioner begins recommending some remedial action straight away.
Naturally there are various options open as to what may be prescribed. These include, at the
one end, high-tech procedures, such as, what would be ridiculous simply for hypertension,
full medical engine-and-gearbox replacement (heart and kidney transplant), or, a little less
ludicrous but ridiculously commonplace, a whole-remaining-life course of pharmaceutical
products, e.g. tablets. At the other end, lifestyle changes are proposed, such as more
exercise, weight loss, stress reduction, and an improved diet with less sodium input.
Reasonable advice would not include pure adaptation, that the patient went on living as
before in the expectation that her system would adapt to the situation. Nor would it be
reasonably suggested, except in somewhat unusual circumstances, that the patient entirely
change her lifestyle, abandon her work, house and so on, and live somewhere else. Even so
unusual circumstances, which might include residence in a very polluted environment or
work in a nuclear plant, are no doubt on the increase.
Like all analogies, the medical analogy has limitations. One feature it does not capture
concerns the holistic aspects of the Earth's sickness, and why accordingly an individualistic
survival approach, egotistically rational enough for hypertension and perhaps even for a
localised nuclear war, cannot succeed. The reason is, of course, that holistic problems are
too extensive for individuals, or even small collectives, acting on their own to be effective
or to make much difference. Some are too big even for large collectives or states, but would
require whole regions of the Earth acting in concert. But of course some state players, such
as the superpowers as regards nuclear winter, can make a substantial difference, or even all
the difference.
The medical analogy also indicates the outcome of further investigation of approaches.
Briefly, as with a chronic illness, the conclusion is that there is no very easy path; future
humans should expect a hard landing.
1. Investigative philosophy, argument and rational decision as applied to
climatic probiematiques.
The role of philosophy in such a complex problematique as that of Greenhouse effects
is not difficult to state briefly. Philosophy, Anglo-American philosophy especially, is
concerned above all with
Investigative philosophy resembles
philosophy, except that it may upset the philosophy it applies; it investigates arguments, their
features - assumptions, reliability, etc. - and their generalisation to rational processes and
methods, but
normal philosophical topics. The generalisation to rational processes
comprehends a wider range of philosophical throughput than the orthodox narrow range of
argument typically addressed in logic courses; to probabilistic and plausibilistic reasoning, to
decision processing and making.
�4
A main objective in this piece of investigative philosophy is to consider certain
argumcmj pointing to probabilities of severe dislocation as a result of Greenhouse effects,
and the resulting impact on rariana/
formation and action. There are certain
arguments of particular interest for radical decision and action: various neo-Malthusian
arguments, catastrophe arguments, and doomsday arguments.
A main run of arguments to considerable action are limitative in character. Such
ZimifafMm arguments are sometimes alternatively called *neo Malthusian', since Malthus
presented a very elementary, very controversial, argument of this general type. But such is
the hostility, especially in Marxist-influenced quarters, to Malthus's associated themes (some
of them admittedly repulsive) that merely to associate an argument terminologically with
Malthus is thereby likely to condemn it. To avoid such fallacious condemnation-byassociation, the graphic term 'neo-Malthusian' is largely avoided in what follows. The
general form of these limitation arguments is simply this: growth in some parameter over
time encounters limits, typically with severe, even catastrophic, effects; for seldom is the
transition to severely constrained behaviour smooth. A characteristic graphic representation
is as follows:
Diagram 2. GrowfA
ZimiM
growth
parameter
exponential growth
pattern
encountering
limits
subsequent
varying behaviour
The limits are often imposed just by finitude, for instance finiteness of a resource or a sink.
But other limits can be important, for instance where new phenomena or thresholds come
into play. General limitation arguments loom in the background in what follows, where we
shall be arguing on a double front:
�*
*
5
A. Significant disequilibrium of the Earth's systems is a real possibility, and
accordingly must be reckoned with in decision procedures. Though the probability of such
an outcome may only be modest, the case has to be taken seriously because the result
(arrived at by a limitation argument typically) is so bad. Suppose, for instance, the outcome
is that the Earth ceases to be habitable in present terms, to be able to carry its present
demanding load. Such an outcome would have an extremely high negative value, so it
would tend to dominate other alternatives. (But it need not be an entirely worst case, where
perhaps the dominant terrestrial species becomes extinct, or the Earth becomes devoid of
"higher" life. Under the bad result contemplated some better-off humans in special
circumstance may subsist for a while.) Such sufficiently bad cases
be taken account
of in decision making; they have to be taken account of in rgrz'o/ia/ decision procedures.
A*. Significant disequilibrium not only has a non-negligible probability, but set in the
proper content has a sizeable probability; so it cannot be ignored or discounted as too low to
bother about. For such an argument
has to be established at the outset than for a rational
decision theory argument.
Such a different argument, of especial concern as regard climatic changes, is the
following
argument:-
* There is some probability that the Gaean "greenhouse effect", generated by human
activity, will get out of control, that Gaean control mechanisms will fail, and that the Earth
will, for example, overheat (Runaway Greenhouse, or
premiss).
* That result would be disastrous for human activities, and indeed for humans
Pr<9.sp(?cf).
* Because of the unusual, and unusually precarious, position of humans (of certain critical
anthropic parameters), such a probability of disaster is not in fact small but decidedly large.
As a consequence then, the human species will probably sharply decline, and even become
extinct (C^^^p/26
That is, by a rectified version of Murphy's law - that if something can go wrong then in
appropriate unusual conditions, it very probably will - an incrementally small probability is
inflated into a very large probability.
It would be a mistake to conclude that because the argument itself looks an unlikely
one, everyone can stop worrying. The argument is but ong of a substantial raft of
arguments, suggesting that we are already in deep trouble, that 5/23^ have everyone
worried; it is but a final intellectual sting, so to say, from the previously inconspicuous
cosmological tail.
�6
Such a doomsday argument no doubt puts together, in one more exact form, some of
the sorts of considerations that are troubling many people, especially concerned youth, about
the Greenhouse business: that humans (including themselves) are on a decline or extinction
path. It is no doubt not the only consideration that should be troubling them or us. For
whether or not doomsday warnings are warranted, there are other matters that should be
sufficiently worrisome, to anyone of moral integrity:* Future times are likely to be exceedingly uncomfortable for very many creatures, as
habitats are destroyed, food producing regions are eliminated, and environments seriously
impoverished. (Many of these creatures are nonexistents, mere future existents, i.e.
creatures that do not yet exist or participate in market or voting rituals, but nonetheless they
wzZ/ exist and may participate. But, despite their presently unfavourable ontological status,
they are entitled to fair and decent treatment.)
* Given such future prospects, present practices which do nothing or vanishingly little to
ameliorate these prospects, are decidedly irrational. Indeed a main message that will emerge
from the present exercise is the mora/ Zrrtmpna/f/y of critical large-scale human practices.
The irrationality, morally-weighed-down irrationality, of present large-scale human
practices is already conspicuous from the wintry downside of climatic prospects of which
Greenhouse warming is the upside.
�7
Diagram 3. Macro-c/wKmc jarring am?Observed global average temperatures,
1880-1987, with forward projections (historic data from Worldwatch p.10).
mean
global
temperature
(degrees C)
The apparatus for conducting a world-wide nuclear war is entirely in place and indeed
on alert The probability of such a war, even if small, is not zero. Among the many awful
effects of a large nuclear war is that of nuclear winter, which would probably bring about the
demise of present human civilisation, and would at the very least mean enormous dislocation
for most surviving humans and other creatures. A sufficiently diabolical chemico-nuclear
war, reaching into all inhabited parts of the globe, could indeed drive the human species
close to extinction.
The decidedly dubious rationality and morality of these general nuclear arrangements both through what they are in themselves for what purposes, and through their moral
�8
opportunity costs - are widely appreciated. The thesis that the arrangements and practices
are immoral, irradonal, and ought to be dismantled - already much argued, and also
contested^ - is not the present concern. The thermonuclear downside is, by comparison, a
very easy case to examine philosophically, and argue, as compared with the greenhouse
upside.4 For there is, for instance, a case of sorts for much increased use of greenhouse
gases, such as CFCs in refrigerators, a case that hardly extends very plausibly to nuclear
weapons. It is a case heavily pressed by some "developing" nations, for polluting devices
already in widespread use in more affluent places, as necessary for local standards of living.
These nations want, or are heavily encouraged, to extend the war against Nature through the
habitats they have gained control over, in the name of economic progress.
War also joins Greenhouse summer and nuclear winter. For the barely-analogical
rapacious war against Nature is a major contributor to Greenhouse gas emissions, for
instance, in the domestication of wetlands for rice paddies, through the heavy pillaging of
forests, and the like, typically carried on with swords and bayonets reforged to jump
ploughs, chemical weapons turned to herbicide guns, and tanks converted to bulldozers.
The protracted war against Nature^, carried, it had been supposed, to a victorious conclusion
with the rise of science and technology and the ubiquitous advance of industralisation, seems
however to have backfired. For it is turning the Earth, Gaea herself, into a patient, with
crippled life support systems, thereby endangering the sustained future even of the
victorious. Yet another Pyrrhic victory.
Greenhouse and nuclear winter are more intricately connected than through war and as
the upside and downside of meteorological phenomena. One of the high-tech solutions
suggested for atmospheric overheating, involves the generation of wintering effects - to cool
things down - by flinging enough dust up into the atmosphere, a trick no doubt most easily
achieved on the requisite scale by nuclear explosives. Needless to say, like backbuming
against out-of-control fires, artificial winter would be a pretty desperate and, given present
expertise, dangerous expedient.
2. The Greenhouse debate, main policy responses, and irrational decision.
The Greenhouse debate, as to what to do, if anything, about forecast Greenhouse
effects on Earth, is intellectually disturbing. For it has revealed, as we shall soon see, that
many of those who have spoken, worse that /pta/ry q/ r/io-yg wAo
who have some role
For my very small contribution to this, see the War and Peace scries in
Papery
E/iwv/wig/mxZ
RSSS, Australian National University.
Global warming, by no means entirely certain, is assumed to be the outcome of increasing
greenhouse gas build up. Of course though some mean temperatures will rise, cooling will
probably occur also in some localized regions.
A war incited and applauded by illustrious philosophical forebears.
�*
&
9
in decision making (including both experts and politicians),
mah'ng in con^'n'on^ p/nncorrainiy or possible riskA
a J7rm gra.%? on
The main canvassed policy approaches to the Greenhouse problematique lie firmly
within the dominant social outlook, the high-tech growth and development ideology.
Diagram 4 E?r<9<26? po/z'cy
fa rA^ Gr^g/i/z<9^^ /?ra^/^marz^a^.
Dominant paradigm options
Alternative ecological outlook
Procrastination (wait-and-see)
Soft energy paths and
alternative regulation
Adaptation (sink-or-swim)
Socio-economic
transformation
Regulation
Intervention (star wars)
We will briefly outline, and find wanting, a// the dominant approaches.
* Procra^rznaaon, the prevailing response.
In fact the main governmental and conservative response thus far has been procrastination,
or "wait-and-see" as it is more benignly known.*? The approach makes much of the
uncertainties, of the shortcomings, in even the most elaborate general circulation models for
future climatic change, of the high noise-to-signal levels. On such bases it contends that it is
too early to do anything, except staging some meetings, organising some review
committees, undertaking some monitoring, and funding a little more "research". It
obviously does nothing to rock the growth ideology boat.
Certainly a few scientists, outside main policy making reaches, do have a sound intuitive
appreciation of these problems, and of the deficiencies of prevailing practices, e.g. Pittock 87.
There is little excuse for prevailing ignorance of or ignoring of decision theory: for the elements
of the standard theory are readily accessible and very elementary. In the present essay a
modification of standard decision theory (as expounded e.g. in Jeffrey) is assumed as background;
for details see Sylvan.
Following Knight, many economists (try to) distinguish between uncertainty and risk. Risk is
said to obtain when some more or less objective numerical probabilities can be assigned to
outcomes, a situation not obtaining as regards global greenhouse effects. Bayesians, who can
always assign subjective probabilities tend to eschew the distinction, e.g. Cyert and DeGroot,
who say that 'decision making under uncertainty refers to situations in which the outcome of the
decision is not precisely predictable'(p.3). Either way, Greenhouse involves uncertainty - to
which rational procedures should be applied.
There is significant rhetorical art in the choice of classificatory labels, a rather philosophically
neglected art. A PR person must have been hired to produce the Greenhouse adaptation of
'adaptation*.
�10
There is the pretence that we do not know enough to act.s But it is known that carbon
dioxide, methane and other greenhouse gases are fast increasing. The main causes and
enough likely enough consequences are also known. Theoretical considerations have
already been partially confirmed by rising temperatures in the eighties. Outcomes of rising
temperatures are also known in broad outline: rising sea levels, and so forth. In addition,
there are partial small-scale models of Greenhouse effects in action. For example, a city
such as Mexico City, which is situated in the bowl-like valley, is placed in an environment
which traps heat as well as polludon. The ecological effects, like the human effects, are
pretty dramatic even at this small level, and hardly to be sought, or emulated elsewhere.
There is a pretence, fostered also by many sciendsts, that Greenhouse difficuldes have
only just been discovered; a date commonly set for that watershed event is the Villiers
conference and statement of 1985 (e.g. Pittock 87 pp.2-3). Actually there have been
Greenhouse warnings for more than a decade, and there has been a corresponding decade of
inacdon. Nor is any acdon of much significance presently seriously contemplated.
Back in 1979 Bernard wrote at length about and reported the substantial concern of
climatologists about Greenhouse effects. Even the magazine
not then noted for its
green sympathies, recorded that The release of carbon dioxide to the atmosphere by the
burning of fossil fuels is, conceivably, the most important environmental issue in the world
today" (May 3 1979). Bernard quotes many other concerned scientists, several asserdng that
'the government must start dealing with this problem now". They meant the United States
government. "The"" government didn't take the hint. For more than a decade then, sciendsts
have been emphasizing that the Greenhouse threat is a major environmental problem, and
that action should be taken immediately. Over 10 years nothing of real significance to
counter the effects has happened. There has been more than a
q/TKacdo/t, during
which matters have got worse, and the time frame for evasive acdon disturbingly shorter. It
is already evident that requisite decision making under uncertainty is not taking place. On
straight inductive grounds, it would be reasonable to expect nothing will be done. While
there are theoretical grounds to back up such an assessment, still it is only just beginning to
get through to a much wider public (which can exercise a marginal influence on what
politicians say) that there is - or T/zay be, as some more reactionary modal-mongering
academics would have - a problem or two.
Part of the problem is that scientists have been caught out (e.g. crying wolf) and have become
ultra-cautious. With the advent of thermodymamics, for instance, scientists began 'threatening
mankind with a rather swift "heat death"' as the universe ran down. Thus M. Alier, on 'blatant
ideological use of science even by scientists themselves' (see Bernard p.9). More recently, many
rang alarm bells prematurely concerning an impending mini-ice-age.
The past predictive failures of scientists have been used as evidence for scepticism concerning
greenhouse effects; see Me Kibben p.8. It is an unsatisfactorily selective argument; interestingly
it is not used in a similar way against economists, whose predictive record is significantly worse.
�11
Many scientists have joined the wait-and-see queue, with their begging bowls, hoping
for more hand-outs for research. They assume, rightly enough, that more information
would assist with rational decision-making, and also, quite wrongly, that "scientific
certainty" is required for action to be taken. Physical scientists are not alone in their
misapprehension of rational decision methods.
Although there is a good deal of practical experience available of statistical-type
decision making under uncertainty, for instance as regards insurance coverage and
engineering projects, decision theory, especially as regards unrepeatable situations, has not
penetrated very far into standard scientific methodology or much into mainstream parts of
social sciences. 'Economists in particular have shown a talent for bringing every problem
back to a world of certainty where all solutions are known or can be easily found/ Natural
scientists including climatologists are, for the most part, on the same erroneous reducdon-tounattainable-certainty trip.
'This is not to say that economists have not worked on
uncertainty. ... however ... uncertainty is introduced and then taken out by assumption'
(Cyert and DeGroot, continuing, p.l).
But there are several classes of problemadc
situations, where decision and action may be required, where uncertainty
be
removed or discarded by fiat, reducdon stratagems or otherwise, notably:* inherently probabilistic situations, such as those of indeterminacy in quantum theory;
* essentially unpredictable situadons (which may be determinisdc) such as those now under
invesdgadon in chaos theory;
* presently uncertain situations and outcomes, which may eventually resolve into certain
cases, or may tum into some of the above classes, where there is not time to wait for
resolution.
The Greenhouse problem is regularly put into the latter class, a standard assumpdon being
that with enough money and research effort thrown at it, it will resolve to decent certainty.
But it may well not. Climate is now a prime arena for applications of chaos theory (in any
case inidal conditions for application of meteorological equadons are seldom very accurate
and are now shifting with the accumulation of Greenhouse gases). There are grounds for
supposing that critical parts of climatology will fall into the essentially unpredictable class,
that the sought certainly is unattainable. If so the standard begging-bowl posture of too
many research scientists: Supply more funding so we can go on researching undl we obtain
certainty, is misguided.^
Or, less charitably, downright dishonest. Nor does it seem to have occurred to most research
scientists demanding more money that an important reason why they are not obtaining the
funding they expect, or even enough to run complex modellings on expensive computers, is
because their research results could, if unfavourable, act as a serious drag on the industrial
establishment. 77zey are Aar<^/y go//7g to /?e we// jrt/tt/et/ to ^e/eg/twuze woder/i /a^artr/a/
society.
�12
There are thus some severe problems with this prevailing response. Firstly, it is
irrational. Certainty,
achieved, may be achieved too late. What was required for
rationality was decision making in advance of certainty. Secondly, certainty may be
unobtainable. The meteorological equations may be non-linear (nonadditive) and so
incapable of delivering firm results given slightly fluctuating initial data. Not only are many
experts and decision makers only comfortable about acting in circumstances of relative
certainty; almost as bad, where some uncertainty is involved, only what is considered Zz^/y
gets genuine consideration. Rational decision making has however to take account of what
may not be very likely at all, but may be quite disastrous should it occur (e.g. a nuclear
accident with full meltdown). In this respect too, the standard response is methodologically
unsound.
* AzZapzarz^n, learning to live with and love the Greenhouse.
The policy That tends to be favoured by most economists' is an adaptive strategy: '"Let
society adjust to environmental changes without attempting to mitigate or prevent the
changes in advance". We could adapt to climate change for example, by planting alternative
crop strains [themselves] ... more widely adapted... ' (Schneider p.8). Observe, however,
that it is a decidedly rayzrzcf&% "adaptation" that is being proposed, that humans adjust to the
results of present economic and industrial practices, rather than adjusting fAem. It is
zz^^zz/?z^6Z that economic growth comes first, that we do not change (e.g. through decent
regulation) high energy industrial practices. A fuller and smarter adaptation would adapt
r/z&yg practices. The policy is like a pernicious agriculture policy that says, "Let farmers
adjust to the results of soil erosion, salination and so on, without attempting to mitigate or
prevent these deleterious changes in advance." Such "adaptadve agriculture", the present
predominant practice in advanced agriculture, is anti-environmental, but is given a spurious
air of evolutionary inevitability and evolutionary redistributive justice; you can't buck natural
evolution, which is entirely natural, can you? Let us condense such far-from-inevitable and
highly artificial mal-adaptation in the neologism
Greenhouse adaptation, like
nuclear adaptation, is badaptation (some, less kind, would say wa^aptation).
There is a pragmatic, if cynical, political argument for badaptation, namely, that
zznzZat^raZ action to prevent a warming is unfeasible and requisite international cooperation is
unattainable. Both contentions are open to doubt. Unilateral action by the USA, by far the
Earth's heaviest resource and energy consumer (per capita and on several other relevant
dimensions), could make a major difference, especially when backed up by pressure
(familiar from other settings, such as the narcotics war) on other nations and through the
United Nations. Unfortunately the USA is also the world's largest supplier of influential
growth economists. In any case, international agreements such as those on whaling and
�13
concerning Antarctica, are attainable, and sometimes effective. The ozone protocols,
limiting production of CFCs, show that results can be achieved to limit trace gas emissions.
The adaptadon proposal is presently compatible with wait-and-see; both mean little or
no hauling back on trace gas production. Indeed procrastination will force sociedes towards
badaptation. Typical of adaptation, like procrastination, is an (over-)emphasis on the
uncertainties of Greenhouse forecasts, and on the decision-theoretic paralysis such
uncertaindes are alleged to produce. Characterisdc of adaptadon too is a minimisadon of the
of Greenhouse modification. No doubt the impression that things won't be so very
different, or far removed from what has already been experienced, is important in getting
adaptationism more readily accepted, as a radonal course of acdon (instead of the seemingly
irradonal course it is). Thus badaptation tends to play with figures at the low end of
projected ranges of temperature increase, such as 1.5°C for 2050, when in fact present data
indicates something rather in the vicinity of 4° C - in a setting, furthermore, where fracdons
of a degree centigrade may well be linked to macro-physical and macro-biological change.
Recent modellings deliver, on average, an increase in 2°C attributable to carbon dioxide, and
it is widely thought that other trace gases will double the CO2 effect^, thus yielding a 4°C
temperature increase around 2050.
The colossal extent of future human dislocation has correspondingly been deliberately
underemphasized. The adaptive capacides of human arrangements, when humans are living
at the margin, to massive natural shifts, has been grossly exaggerated. Consider agriculture
alone - set aside flooded cides, sunken atoll islands, and all the rest. Some of the Earth's
major grain producing regions - upon which famine relief projects depend - could be pushed
substantially out of business. The conditions which prevailed during the American dust
bowl experience of the nineteen-thirties were benign indeed compared with those which
threaten with mid twenty-first century Greenhouse condidons. The mid-continental summer
temperatures were only 1-2° C warmer than the present average; under greenhouse
conditions they could well be more than 3-4° C warmer. In the dust-bowl rainfall only
slipped at critical growing times (e.g. July for northern corn) to 80% of the contemporary
norm; but under Greenhouse conditions it could be significantly less again (only winter
precipitation increasing). A super dust-bowl is not improbable (for much more detail, see
Bernard). Similarly for other similar latitude Northern grain producing regions. But the
high-energy industrial superstructure is crucially based upon sufficient cheap food (bread)
for the urban masses.
10
See e.g. Pearman p.18. Note that methane is beginning to rival carbon dioxide as a gas whose
atmospheric propordons really matter and whose present exponential increase is excessive.
�14
* Tnfgrvenn'o?!, high-tech Earth engineering.
Interventionist proposals so far floated include
(D New oceans in parts of the Earth's land surface lying below, at, or near sea level. These
projects would make the mega-dams of recent times look like children's play.
@ Wintering effects. Production of sufficient dust in the atmosphere, achieved for instance
by nuclear detonations, to mitigate heating effects. Such enterprise would make
modification of the weather by cloud seeding look like childs' play.
Fortunately these and other expensive and grandiose proposals, which would call for
considerable international cooperation,
far down the planning track; with these schemes
procrastination is rational.
*
controlling free(-wheeling) enterprise.
Regulation itself is of course transparadigmatic; where it belongs depend on what measures
(what sorts of constraints, rights, etc.) are proposed and how they are imposed or enforced.
If it is, for example, some industrial law-and-order, smokestack scrubbing regulations or
Greenhouse polluting rights, within the status quo, that is one thing, but if a minimally-
constrained growth paradigm is questioned and alternative socio-economic arrangements
advocated, that is quite another, and falls outside the dominant paradigm. Such policies
involving regulations controlling fossil fuel emissions especially, are negatively labelled
in the predominantly American policy literature, though there is now no
preventing some Greenhouse effects; but the worse to follow could still be prevented. What
is usually covered under the label is however some regulation within prevailing political
arrangements. So energy efficiencies and savings for investment in growth elsewhere is
comprehensible, straight growth-curtailing non-consumption is not contemplated. But the
latter is just what alternatives do contemplate.
Democratic political arrangements do not exclude such alternatives; both the power
bases of political leaders and economic prescriptions do. Adequate regulation within
prevailing socio-economic arrangements is going to prove impossible, without adjustment of
power structures and economic imperatives - in effect without far-reaching systemic and
ideological adjustment. While such adjustment appears rational, it seems unlikely (see
further section 5). Power holders and the power structures into which they slot have too
much to lose. So it is hardly remarkable that regulation itself is not so bureaucratically
popular (at least under that mode of presentation) in these latter days of economic
irrationalism, and is strongly resented and resisted.
Some of the U.S. bureaucratic reaction to the Antarctic ozone hole, now regularly
attributed to extensive CFC usage, is instructive. A top Reagan official 'said that since
CFO's were useful to industry, people should use sunglasses and baseball caps as protection
against retina damage and skin cancer' - individualisdcally distributed adaptationism, terrific
�€?
&
15
for creatures outside "sunglasses and baseball caps" economies. Other Reagan
administrators spoke for procrastination, one academic-turned-bureaucrat observing that 'so
far the ozone hole has had little effect on skin cancer rates in the United States'. The
prevailing bureaucratic procrastination stance that was applied to the much easier ozone
problem (which has belated obtained weak international responses), is now extended to
Greenhouse effects. It is typically, typically irrationally, stated by high administrators that
'significant gaps exist in our knowledge .... These scientific uncertainties must be reduced
before we commit the
economic future to drastic and potentially misplaced policy
responses' (preceding quotations from McKibben p.10, p.ll, italics added).
and the
of the Greenhouse
business is thereby also revealed. Like heart disease and cancer, Greenhouse effects are
gaining much discussion and some funding because they just may severely effect the
affluent, affluent humans and affluent nations, that have a good deal to lose, in United States
especially. The impact will, however, be at least as severe in some third world nations,
whose lands or much of them will be flooded, countries which cannot afford extensive
The extensive
expensive dyking (or where such effort would be in the longer term, as seas rise, be
pointless), countries such as Pacific coral atoll nations and delta states like Bangladesh. But
the really serious losers will no doubt be, not humans , rich or poor, but nonhumans.
Biological diversity, already being reduced by various human activities, may be
one of the chief casualties of global warming. Massive destruction of forests,
wetlands, and even the polar tundra could irrevocably destroy complex eco
systems that have existed for millennia. Indeed, various biological reserves
created in the past decade to protect species diversity could become virtual death
traps as wildlife attempt to survive in conditions for which they are poorly
suited. Accelerated species extinction is an inevitable consequence of a rapid
warming (Worldwatch p.10).
3. Arguments to dislocation and for a Lesser Venus Prospect.
There is at least a small probability that predicted increases in mean atmospheric
temperatures will seriously interfere with most remaining natural habitats and result in the
degeneration or destruction of many of them, especially forests, wetlands, and marine
environments. For example, most wetlands will either be flooded or else evaporate under
increasing temperatures. Again, the prospect is for the boreal forest to shrink from about
23% of the world's forest to something like 1% of a much diminished forest covering. Nor
will adaptationism help here; for natural evolution is much too slow for adaptationism to
succeed n.
11
Cf. Keeton pp.763-4, '... typical migration rates for forest boundaries are of the order of 502000m per annum ... [A requisite] shift of 500-1000km would, however, take hundreds of years.
... Pollen evidence... suggests that large changes occurred in forest composition during the
Holocene period some 8000-10000 years ago, even though the climate changes then were less
�16
Natural ecosystems will not adapt effectively to rapid climatic change.... With
regard to forests, habitats for plants and animals cannot be re-created or
transplanted rapidly. Continuing climatic changes would strain the capabilities
of management practices even in commercial tree plantations (Beijer Institute
Report pp.21-3).
The decline or demise of these systems, vast reservoirs for greenhouse gases, will accelerate
the warming, and accordingly make matters substantially worse:
Trees are adapted to a narrow range of temperature and moisture levels, and
cannot cope with rapid climate change. A temperature increase of 1 degree
Celsius per decade in mid- to upper latitudes translates into a shift in vegetation
zones of 60-100 miles northward. Terrestrial ecosystems cannot migrate that
fast. Vast numbers of trees are likely to die, and new trees adapted to warmer
temperatures are unlikely to be able to replace them rapidly. During such a
disruption, huge areas of forest could die and, as they decay or bum, send large
quantities of additional CO2 into the atmosphere, accelerating the warming
(Worldwatch p.10).
Of course the immediate climatic patterns would be somewhat more complex. If enough
soot and ash from fires were flung into the atmosphere there would be a cooling effect, like
that of a small nuclear winter, before heating accelerated. The present pattern of ecosystemic
loss would also be sharply accelerated. For when natural ecosystems get reduced to about
30% of their initial size, they tend to collapse of themselves.
Moreover, there would be other significant positive feedback from ecosystems other
than the terrestrial forests, from the oceans especially. As the oceans warm, they lose their
capacity to serve as carbon dioxide reservoirs. So they too release additional gases,
including previously absorbed CO2, back into the atmosphere, further accelerating the
warming. A critical question arises as to how much danger such positive feedback poses?
As so often, informed opinions, and so probability estimates differ. However 'several
scientists working in the area consider that positive feedback effects will force a very bleak
picture to be drawn" (Worldwatch p.19).^
Unlike the interim effect of a small nuclear winter, where after a few years at most,
climatic behaviour (as distinct from radioactivity levels and, differently, from ecological
communities) would presumably return towards the previous norm, there will be /7<9 similar
under greenhouse impact. Technically then, stability would be lost under the
than those expected by 2030 [and forests were more extensive and less interfered with]' (Pittock
87a p.209, rearranged).
Second order probabilities, probabilities and uncertainties in the light of first order subjective
probabilities, enter importantly.
�17
impact,^ disequilibrium induced. An eventual long-term return to some different but
sufficiently congenial equilibrium could well be excluded. Under new climatic regimes
plants themselves may be able to do little more than hang on for part of their own lives. In
many places conditions would be too severe for much of the "year" to permit normal plant
functioning, including what is crucial for Greenhouse amelioration, photosynthesis. In most
plants, photosynthesis only occurs across a narrow band of temperatures (e.g. 6 - 34°C);
outside that range the plants shut down operations.^ Even more important, many plants
would leave few or no successful successors. Even where plants set seed, seedlings would
not survive under the severe conditions expected; for instance, they would be killed by hot
dry summer conditions, or in other places by frosts to which they are not adapted, both
phenomena already familiar after clearfelling of forests. The situation at a famous place in
southern Sahara, where there is but one ancient tree hanging on in thousands of square
kilometres of desert, a tree with viable seeds which sets no seedlings, could be more or less
replicated in many other places where forests or woody plants once grew.
In fact we are already witnessing the demise of the trees in much of Australia. Already
dead and dying trees form a predominant feature of the Australian rural landscape. Virtually
whichever way ecologists travel in Australia where trees remain, they are confronted with
dead and dying trees
The reasons for the present decline of trees in rural Australia is, for
the most part, not to be attributed to early Greenhouse or even pollution effects. "6 It is
thought to be due to a complex of factors, including a range of insect predators whose
efforts are concentrated on isolated trees left after an excessive zeal for clearing (i.e. holistic
effects enter as regards healthy persistence of trees). Excessive disturbance of ecological
systems, though overclearing of trees, has seriously upset the systems. Types of systemic
stress and disturbance are likely to be much accelerated given the additional impact of
Greenhouse warming on plant functioning and reproduction.
f<9 some
q/
worth
disentangling. Firstly, a system may be disturbed by interfering with critical components
There are several
within the system structure, processing parts, such as botanical systems or their
interconnections. As with a computer, if a cridcal component is broken or a circuit cut, the
probability of serious malfunction increases. Secondly, a system normally operates within a
Stability is defined in physics in terms of immediate return to an initial (inertial) position after
small disturbance.
The upper bound may be difficult to appreciate in most of Aotearoa. But in much of Australia,
during the summer, many plants close down their operations for much of the day.
Other effects of increased heat on major food plants matter for human affairs. Severe heat
interferes with fertilization and reproduction in com, and apparently affects the ability of rice in
Asia to reproduce; so considerably reduced yields of staple foods may be anticipated.
Reported by Recher on EarfAworw.
Thus coastline vegctational destruction through detergents in sewerage waters.
�18
certain range of condition. Take it outside these conditions or push it towards limits (let the
computer get too hot or too cold), and probability of breakdown is much increased.
Feedback loops, which are an important feature of cybernetic systems are particularly
vulnerable to normality disturbance. Cybernetic systems afford one example of more
holistic behaviour; dissipative systems, where perhaps strange new features may enter as
systemic loading is increased, another. Such new features may not be at all congenial to
dominant forms, or to maintenance of life support arrangements.
It should be evident from details already assembled that there is some probability the
Greenhouse efforts could seriously disturb the crucial carbon cycle. The carbon cycle loops,
in major fashion, through both the higher plant complexes and the oceans, both major
carbon dioxide reservoirs - but just how critically through them is uncertain. However,
with the serious disturbance of main components in the cycle, the real possibility of cycle
malfunction can hardly be excluded. Much the same holds with other crucial chemical
cycles, such as the sulphur cycle (though woody plants are perhaps less important here, the
oceans are highly significant, the oceans Costeau has already pronounced moribund). To a
lesser extent, several of the other well-known bio-chemical cycles, such as those for
nitrogen, sodium, and so forth, depend for their stability and maintenance on the adequate
operation of active ecological structures. Plainly if a cycle loops through a component, such
as a tropical forest, which is severely disturbed then the crucial cycle itself could be locally
disrupted.
There is some probability, furthermore, that the changes will disturb other physical
cycles crucial to the stability of systems. For some of the Earth's feedback systems are in
fact maintained in equilibrium through natural ecosystems. A striking example appears to be
the regulating of the Earth's temperature itself. Lovelock and collaborators have devised an
elementary daiyy wor/d m(9dg/ which reveals how a feedback system with two types of
daisies can, within limits, stabilize temperatures despite increasing solar energy input (see
the next diagram). The limits are important, for as these limits are approached the
maintenance systems break down. Thus again, instability could ensue under disturbance.
�19
Diagram 5.77z^rm<9.s7anc r^ga/aizoa a/*rA^ Earr/z j ^zayac^ i^mp^ramrf rAraag/z p/a/zM (a
much simplified picture from Lovelock 88 p.58).
!n the "Datsyworid" mode), tife adjusts the pfanefs
temperature to suit ttseif. A basic assumption is that on
Daisyworid, as on Earth, the sun is getting progressive^
hotter. Biack daisies grow best when the surface temperature
is tow, because their petals absorb radiation. As the sun's
heat increases, the white daisies begin to nourish. Their
petais reflect radiation, thus heipingto iower surface
temperature. Between the time the seeds first germinate and
when the sun gets too hot, the piants maintain a steady
surface temperature by adjusting the pfanefs aibedo.
Without doubt these matters are bad enough. Demise of most of the Earth's richness^
is not a minor matter. Worse could follow.
Apart from direct ecological breakdown, there are several other major ways through
which the maintenance structures of the Earth can be not merely awkwardly disturbed, but
thrown right out of kilter - perhaps, given the d^/zcacy of several critical matters, never to
return present norms. Most obvious and immediately threatening is
* nuclear warfare, and therewith nuclear winter.
But there are of course other severe shocks that the planet could suffer than those chemonuclear warfare, some human induced, some a "chance" matter of the planets' posidon in
space; namely
* a mini Big Bang, or an undermining of metastability, brought about through very high
energy experimentadon (see Leslie);
* a collision with a large meteorite or asteroid.
Such uncertaindes, not germane to the main climatic arguments, are listed, not to achieve a
bogus completeness, but to emphasize that complete certainty is not to expected, not
radonally. Should we obtain it, should we obtain easy relatively unproblemadc lives, then
we have, by world standards, been rather lucky. Moreover, these latter uncertaindes do so
17
Natural richness is its main richness, much exceeding human arufice.
�20
far appear negligible compared with those bound up with climate.is The Greenhouse
problemadque differs (as do nuclear winter and also high energy experimentation) from such
possibilities as destruction of the Earth's favourable climate or life-supports by collision with
an asteroid in two crucial respects:
the poor prognoses are largely a matter of human making (meaning the making of certain
among humans) and
the damaging situations could be substantially averted by positive or concerted human
activity.
According analogies with remote phenomena such as decline of the sun, asteroid collisions,
etc., sometimes applied to dismiss concerns with global environmental problems, do not
hold up, and should be resisted.
The human-induced climatic problems are primarily ascribable to:
* excess economic development. The practices involve a complex and sustained assault on
most of the Earth's major ecosystems, forests, seas, and so on, along with the alteration of
atmospheric composition by greenhouse gases. For example, the forests are cut down,
burnt, poisoned by herbicides and acid rain, or otherwise removed or destroyed. (Therewith
too a great deal more carbon dioxide is released into the atmosphere and major sinks of
carbon dioxide are removed.) As a result of these concerted growth-and-development
activities such systems are driven to limits, and breakdown occurs. Once it occurs at some
weak point it can escalate elsewhere, like a conflagradon; thus again ecosystemic collapse for
example.
Quite apart from breakdown at or approaching limits, for instance because of systemic
overload, remarkable changes can occur in dissipative systems under stress or strain.
* excess energy or chemical loading. Though such striking examples as the chemical clock,
it has been demonstrated that dissipative systems can suddenly, and often rather
unpredictably, undergo extraordinary changes, as for instance energy flux is increased
(Prigogine and others).
Such non-additive or nonlinear effects, characteristic of more holistic dissipative
systems, seem bound to occur within the Earth's atmosphere and oceans as they undergo
compositional changes. Carbon dioxide itself provides a good example:
None of these assessments are strikingly objective, but are a matter of appearance. The risk of
catastrophic destruction of Earth civilization by an asteroid or comet is discussed, and compared
with either less exotic risks, in Chapman and Morrison, chapter 19. It has been guesstimated at
a 1 in 300,000 chance per year, a much smaller probability than that serious Greenhouse effect
will eventuate (often put at about 85%), but comparable with some rather more mundane risks
(see p.283). The risks from very high energy experimentation will no doubt rise sharply as
orders of attainable energy increase.
�21
With small quantities its effect on the temperature of the air is proportional to
the amount added; there is a linear effect. However once the carbon dioxide
concentration in the air approaches 1%, new nonlinear effects come into play
and heating greatly increases. In the absence of a biosphere to fix carbon
dioxide, its concentration in the atmosphere would probably exceed the critical
figure of 1%. The Earth would then heat up rapidly to a temperature near to
that of boiling water. Increasing temperatures would speed up chemical
reacdons and accelerate their progress towards chemical equilibrium. ...
eventually ... the Earth would become permanently cocooned in a brilliant white
cloud - a second Venus, although not quite as hot (Lovelock pp.45-6).
Fortunately for Gaean prospects, the percentage of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is now
nowhere near 1% nor likely to be pushed near 1% by projected increases in carbon dioxide
levels under economic activity over the next 50 years^. However eventual exponential
growth will lead towards accentuated levels, and the side effect of such growth, the release
of carbon dioxide from forests and oceans and the considerable reduction in fixadon of
carbon dioxide with the decline of forests, will lead in that disastrous direction rather more
rapidly. The 1% bound constitutes just one of the many serious limits (fortunately a fairly
remote one) to condnuation of present developmental pracdces.
Now there can be no radonal confidence with respect to complex dissipadve systems about the behaviour of which we presendy know comparadvely little - that other nonaddidve
effects will not be encountered at a much earlier stage. After all, the Gaean system, its
atmosphere, oceans and ecosystems, will be pushed into essendally unexperienced and
substandally unknown reaches. There is, for example, no experience from comparable past
times of such elevated temperatures as Greenhouse effects will lead to, to draw upon.
'There is no evidence that the land-bound glaciers in Greenland and Antarctica have ever
completely melted in the last two million years'. There is experience of much colder
periods. 'During ice ages, the earth's average temperature has been about 5°C colder than at
present, with glaciers covering major portions of continents' (Barth p.7). But there is no
similar experience of temperatures 4-5° C warmer than at present (in any warm interglacial
period), 'a global increase of more than 2°C above present is unprecedented in the era of
human civilization' (Schneider p.6).
It would accordingly be decidedly rash, rash decision making, to assign a zero or
negligible probability to the emergence of new or unknown effects of relevance, to assume
all will go smoothly and well. That would presuppose, in any event, a completeness in
present scientific knowledge, contrary to the information we actually have that present
investigation of holistic systems, among much else, is still in its infancy. The probability of
19
In the atmosphere of the very early Earth, CO? exceeded the critical 1% figure; but solar
luminosity was about 25% less than now. With increasing solar flux the Earth would have
overheated had the proportion of CO2 not been much reduced (e.g. see Lovelock 88 p.56).
�22
something critical (e.g. perhaps radicals like hydroxyl) having been left out of estimations,
of room accordingly for something unexpected or for something to go wrong, may be small
(though experience implies it is not always so), but it certainly appears to be non-zero.
For the overconfident, with excess faith in the flimsy scientific edifice, there is a
salutary lesson to be drawn from the erratic and stumbling path of the main proponent of
Gaia hypotheses, Lovelock. Lovelock, coming from a working life as an industrial chemist,
part of that time for a giant chemical transnational, had, and retained for a considerable time
after he began his holistic hypothesizing, a strong antipathy for environmentalists.^ Even
Gaia was for industry and against the environmentalists; she was going to laughingly soak
up all the pollution, courtesy of the chemical companies especially, that we humans could
throw at her. In particular, we did not really need to worry much about ozone depletion or
greenhouse gas escalations^ 'Contrary to the forebodings of many environmentalists,
finding a suitable" destructive agent to bring about a 'doom scenario" 'turns out to be an
almost insoluble problem" (79 p.40). Lovelock makes it easier for himself by helping
himself to the assumption that a doomsday scenario involves the destruction of all "life"',
'down to the last spore of some deep-buried anaerobic bacteria" (p.40). But even for the
least chauvinistic of environmentalists, destruction of all humans but the select elect would
be quite enough for a decent doomsday. Lovelock's high redefinition of a environmental
'doomsday scenario" is unacceptable. Lovelock does not however stay within the bound of
his redefinition. He proceeds to pooh-pooh the idea that anything much that we humans
could accomplish would make any difference to Gaia (p.41) or even to most humans,
including use of nuclear devices.
Unfortunately for Lovelock's credibility, he was writing three years before the
seemingly obvious wintering effects of a major nuclear war were realised by the accredited
scientific community. Appealing in a common scienufic fashion to scientific authority, he
proceeds to minimalize the human and ecological effects of a major war. The report he relies
upon as authoritative was a 1975 (unreferenced) one of 'the US Nadonal Academy of
Sciences ... prepared by an eight-man committee of their own
assisted by forty-eight other
explosions and a//
chosen from those
members,
in the effects of nuclear
to them" (p.41, italics added). Lovelock draws from
the disdnguished expert report the findings that
Coupled with this, there was a certain schizophrenia in Lovelock's attitude to the natural
environment. There was also a matching schizophrenia as to the fragility of life on Earth. On
the one side, it required very delicate settings and fine tuning to arise; this is part of the argument
for a Gaia hypothesis. On the other side, life is 'tough, robust, and [highly] adaptable', virtually
indestructible (79 p.90). But though a flawed hero, Lovelock is a hero nonetheless.
See e.g. Lovelock 79, p.40ff; and also, on ozone, 88 p.63.
�23
... if half of all the nuclear weapons in the world's arsenals, about 10,000
megatons, were used in a nuclear war the effects on most of the human and
man-made ecosystems of the world would be small at first and would become
negligible within thirty years. Both aggressor and victim nations would of
course suffer catastrophic local devastation, but areas remote from the battle
and, especially important in the biosphere, marine and coastal ecosystems
would be minimally disturbed (p.41).
Three years later Turco and others proceeded to detail a very different scenario, that of
widespread and ecologically damaging nuclear winter. Not for the only time, Lovelock had
been caught out badly.
As with pollution, Lovelock has more recently shifted ground,^ considerably, on the
vulnerability of the Earth to human-induced disturbance. When a system such as Gaea in
homeostatis
is stressed to near the limits of regulation even a small disturbance may cause it
to jump to a new stable state or even fail entirely....
It could be that the regulation of the Earth's climate is not far from one of these
limits. Thus if some part of climate regulation is connected with the natural
level of CO2 then clearly we are close to the limits of its regulation. This is
because CO2 cannot be reduced much below the level observed for the last
glaciation, about 180 ppm, without seriously limiting the rate of growth of the
more abundant C3 type plants. If we perturb the Earth's radiation balance by
adding more CO2 and other greenhouse gases to the atmosphere or reduce its
capacity to regulate by decreasing the area of forests or both of these together
then we could be surprised by a sudden jump of both CO2 and temperature to a
new and much warmer steady state; or by the initiation of periodic fluctuations
between that state and our present climate.
The anomalously low abundance of CO2 on Earth when compared with the
other terrestrial planets and especially the fact that the mean temperature of the
Earth is on the cool side of the optimum for regulation, suggests strongly that
the biota is regulating the climate by pumping CO2 from the air. The common
feature of most of our pollutions and of our exploitation of the land surface
seems to be unintentionally to thwart this natural process (Lovelock 85 pp.5354).
The argument to the lesser
par/i, to significant disequilibrium with the Earth's
ecological support system destabilized, takes the following lines. The Earth appears to be a
dissipative (far-from-equilibrium) system held at its present
by a combinadon of an
(increasing) solar flux - a main energy input into the system - and its major ecological
arrangements, especially vegetational complexes and live oceans. The sheer extent to which
the resulting system differs from the stable dead system it could otherwise be is shown by
the following table for atmospheric and oceanic composidon.
Shifdng ground may be fine, especially when it is to an improved position. But it should be
done honesdy and openly, not stealthily or shiftily. Lovelock proceeds to attribute a cancature
of his <9WH previous position to cdtics of the Gaia hypothesis (as a clever Tabneation', which
also it was not): that it is 'an argument developed to allow industry to pollute at will, since
mother Gaia will clean up the mess '(85 p.53).
�24
TABLE 1.
Substance
Funerary
Equilibrium
(principal components per cent).
Venus
Earth
Carbon dioxide
A
Nitrogen
1
R
Oxygen
Argon
0
C
E
A
N
S
Water
Lifeless
Mars
Earth
99
0
98
1.9
98
1.9
0
trace
trace
1
0.1
0.1
Earth
95
2.7
0.13
2
63
Salt
3.5
Sodium
nitrate
1.7
Present
0.03
79
21
1
96
n.a.
n.a.
3.5
traces
Surface
temperatures (°C)
n.a
477
Total pressure
(bars)
n.a.
90
290+50
60
-53
13
0064
1
The table is based upon tables 1 and 2 of Lovelock 79, p.37 and p.39.
The whole Earth system is accordingly far from equilibrium. Unpredictable behaviour
as loads increase is therefore almost to be expected. A likely moral is presumably: stress the
system, or destabilize ecosystem controls sufficiently, and the system may be in deep
trouble. It is relevant to inquire briefly into what evidence we so far have on this score.
To do so let us reconsider some of the array of arguments there are from some sort of
holistic organisation of the Earth (for a modest Gaea hypothesis, to the effect that the (outer)
Earth is a naturally regulated nonadditive cybernetic system, important attributes of which
are regulated by the biota).
/or the participation of the Earth's ecological support
systems, plant complexes especially, the Earth would not be blessed with its present life-
benign physical characteristics. The oceans would be much saltier and too salty for most
life, the air would not contain the present rich mixture of oxygen and carbon dioxide so
important for terrestrial life, and so on; perhaps most important the Earth would be
significantly hotter and too hot for most life, for most of what does the regulating and
stabilizing of present conditions. For the solar flux has increased in intensity about 30%
since life appeared on Earth, whereas the mean global temperatures have exhibited no
�25
corresponding increase, but have remained relatively constant. Such an expected constancy
in the face of disturbing inputs is ascribed, under holistic approaches that do something to
explain it, to the concerted activity of plant life, as already indicated.
The general tenor of the argument is so far this:- By arguments from physical and
other models, and because of uncertainties, the probability that something could go badly
wrong is not merely nonzero^ but indeed far from negligible. Part of the argument can be
put as follows:- There is a decent probability that a modest Gaea hypothesis holds. But
then, there is a considerable probability that excessive Greenhouse build-up will lead to
damaging system destabilization. So combining probabilities, there at least a nonnegligible
probability of such destabilization.
An analogy should now emphasize both the dubiousness of what is being proposed
under adaptationism and the precariousness of the human predicament. The proposal is to
take this ancient craft, now overloaded with human passengers and their heavy baggage, a
cargo it was never organised to carry, out on new routes and run it faster and higher than it
has ever travelled before. Even for an experimental prototype, a now very fast (air-)bus say,
with a select test crew, such a procedure, of running over new uncharted routes at speeds
and heights never attained before, would be risky enterprise. With an ancient craft, with a
heavy non-elite cargo of baggage and passengers (some whom try to interfere with the
controls), the proposal is extremely rash. For the chances that the craft will break/down and
perhaps crash, with serious consequences to passengers and for the baggage, are greatly
elevated over the risks of proceeding as usual much more slowly. With the costs of crashing
so severe, rational operators and sensible pilots would not take them.^
Unfortunately the analogy is not at all far-fetched, but resembles what is in store for
spaceship Earth, already under significant stress with its excessive human passenger load
and their heavy ecological practices. Not only is the future itself pretty new territory, but it
is a future at terrestrial temperatures never before attained. As a result too of these enhanced
temperatures, important processes will proceed faster than ever before, in particular all
chemical processes. Simply to take the craft up there, as do-nothing and adaptation
approaches would have is to emulate the risks and hubris of Daedelus; such approaches are
From logical theories of probability such as Camap's non-zero probabilities are rather easily
reached (perhaps too easily, with the converse feature that natural laws never obtain high
probabilities. The difficulty can be averted, to some extent, by restriction to physical models.)
The analogy is an old one, which we exploited before in the nuclear case; for the "bus analogy",
see Routley and Routley. The analogy admits of much graphic variation. Instead of running the
craft at excess speed, an alternative or additional image is that of destroying the controls of the
craft. Lovelock deploys this apposite image (88 p.63), which corresponds to the demolition of
Gaean control systems. Others speak of a colossal experiment with the Earth; but strictly the
conditions for a controlled experiment are not met.
�26
aptly named D<2^Zfa?i. Given anthropic terrestrial practices, a Daedelian future and fate
should not be excluded.
4. A Sting in the Cosmic Tail: the mini-Furphy theorem and on the iikeiy
decline of Homo sapiens spp. economicus.
The anthropic doomsday argument developed relies upon a modified Murphy's law.
The trouble with the initial formulation of Murphy's law:
^anyf/ung can go wrong, if wii/,
was that it was insufficiently qualified, much too absolutist, and apparently self-refuting.^
Certain crucial qualifications are required:* Replacement of the too certain conclusion by a somewhat weaker probabilistic one: for
instance, it pro&a&/y will.
* Correlative to weakening the conclusion, strengthening the premiss, by rendering it more
specific; namely, in place of "anything" or "something" put "some thing ... given a chancy
situation".
The modified formulation is accordingly the following mini-Furphy proposition^
r/HKg can ge/iMZMe/y go wrong, given o re/onvefy cAoncy Mfi/ohon,
zf pro/MZ&iy wi/i.
Here "chancy" means more or less what it means according to the dictionaries: doubtful,
decidedly risky, or as we shall construe it, having a comparadvely low probability vis-a-vis
its altemadves. The precise extent of relative chanciness will be explained as we go.
The proposidon is itself a corollary of a more general result, an ancient principle. The
generalisadon replaces "go wrong" by "happen'; the ancient principle is that of jy/^ndfM^,
sometimes stated, with quite insufficient reservations, as that all places are full, or ony
ggnfdn^/y
^fofg
&onn<% fo
rgo/fy^Z (when genuinely possible states are
compadble with all that is already transpiring). The principle, whose distinguished history is
traced in Lovejoy, has emerged in contemporary particle physics, in such forms as the
For this and other formulations of Murphy's law, and many loosely associated humorous
maxims with grains of truth encapsulated, see Block. As to the history of the "law", which
originated with J.M. Chase, editor of Aw'adPH
see the
A/nerzcgmi;
Chase's inidal formulation in a 1955 issue read 'If an aircraft part can be installed incorrectly,
someone will install it that way". Silberman's paradox, that if Murphy's Law can go wrong, it
will, is not a genuine paradox. For it can simply be asserted that where Murphy's Law is a real
law it will not go wrong. The connection of Murphy's Law with the pnnciple of plendtude
appears to have escaped much notice.
This little theorem was originally titled the Murphy-Leslie theorem. It is an adaptation,
suggested by Leslie's work, of Murphy's Law. While this secuon is overwhelmingly indebted to
Leslie, the arguments developed
from those Leslie advances. For Leslie's arguments and
also his debts, and so the transitive debts of this section, see Leslie himself, who deserves to be
read in defence his own legidmate doomsday apprehensions. The Appendix indicates the very
limited extent to which Leslie's arguments arc here endorsed.
�27
following: if a thing (e.g. an elementary particle) is not forbidden, excluded by quantum
rules, then it is bound to occur (or be realised), even is "compulsory". For things and
events generally, such completeness (all nonexcluded particle niches are occupied) cannot
reasonably be expected.^ The main mini-plentitude proposition has, like its mini-Furphy
specialization to bad outcomes, to take the much more hedged form: if something can
genuinely happen, given a relatively chancy situation, it probably will.
To prove this proposition, let us first recast it in appropriate symbolic form. Let D be
some arbitrary (bad) situation, a suitable disaster in the intended application. Let the
possibility of D's happening - such as something's going wrong - be represented by a non
zero probability, and genuineness by non-negligible probability. It can be assumed that that
probability, P(D), is small; if it were large enough the requisite conclusion would follow in
any case. Let C represent the relativizing features, what is given that renders the situation
chancy. Then what we aim to show is that where P(D) is small positive, P(D { C) is
probable.
The proof applies a special case of Bayes' theorem, which takes the following form
where there are n alternative hvpotheses hi,...,hn including h:
P(h { i)
=
"
* Pd 1 M
I P(hr) X P(i { hr)
r = 1
Here h is the hypothesis, which in our application is D, i is the additional information (or, as
in Carnap, a new observation), which in our case is C.28 P(h j i) is the probability of h
given i, or of h on condition i (the backward arrow notation, { , symbolises the condition
There is a marvellous Greek term,
which could serve to cover items where the particle
physics "principle" is satisfied. 'We may call an event agathonic to convey that, though in itself
it was highly unlikely, we might have known that something of that sort was bound to happen.
... from the name of the tragic poet to whom Aristotle attributes the view that it is very probable
that the improbable should happen. (Kaplan p.9 rearranged). Is the chronic chthonic Greenhouse
escalation agathonic?
The formulation is a special case of that proved in Carnap, p.331; namely that (absolute) case
where the evidence e is elided, or e set = 1. A similar result follows, subject to slightly more
rigorous conditions, in relevant probability theory; see Routley 79 p.954.
In effect we shall look at the form
P(h ) ,) =
--------------- * PC < D
'
P(h) X P(i { h) + XP(hr) X P(i { hr)
n
with the sum excluding the product for h.
Though demonstrable given satisfiable exclusion and exhaustion conditions, Bayes' theorem is
not lacking critics, in part because of the surprises this bit of logic can deliver. Carnap meets
the objection that Bayes' theorem has sometimes 'been applied to cases where it led to strange or
even absurd results' thus: 'This was mostly due to an uncritical use of the principle of
indifference :... [The] theorem is provable ... on the basis of those weak assumptions which
practically all theories of probability seem to have in common' (p.331, sub 1 elided). Of course
the present applications could (just) be objected to on the grounds that the logical conditions for
the theorem to apply are not fully satisfied.
�28
involved and shows its direction). For simplicity we shall suppose that all the alternatives to
D are concentrated (as far as symbolic exposure goes) in one, namely D*. Then the form we
seek to apply is simply:
P(D { C)
=
__________ { D)_______________ _
'
P(D) x P(C { D) + P(D*) x P(C { D*)
The arithmetic details needed can be tabulated in a revealing form as follows:
C<2.$ay
D
D*
Initial (or prior) probability
d
1-d
m, say 1/d
m/L,say 1/d!
of outcome
relative chance that C
As it is the
chance of C that matters, we can rescale to set m = 1/d. To make C
relatively chancy, L has some modest size; specifically let L exceed 1-d/d.
Then the probability to be estimated, P(D { C), is
d x 1/d
dxl/d + (l-d)/dL
_
"
__ 1
1+^
where k -
- That is, P(D { C) = y where k = 1,
andP(D { C)>
when
-when L >
.
Thus D is probable, at least in being more probable than not, given C, when L is of at least
modest size, i.e. given C is relatively chancy. In a merely apparently more general form of
the estimation, where we do not align m to d,
P(D { C)
______ d x m______
d x m + (1-d) x m/1
1
1
1 + k'
as before. That is, m drops out, only the relative chanciness really matters. The little
plendtude theorem follows as before.
Now to put some relevant flesh on these abstract statements and figures. Let D be
some future disaster such as the catastrophic decline, for instance, through summer or winter
phenomena, of the human species, from which the enormous present population never
recovers. At worst (from a chauvinistic angle) the population, like many catastrophically
effected by human activities, goes extinct. Suppose, for a bifurcating outcome, there is a
�29
catastrophe stage, before halfway through next century, 2050. If humans do not get their act
together before then, they go into catastrophic decline, as already indicated. If however they
do get their ecopolitical act together then humans, while they hardly live happily ever after
(poverty, inequality, domination, and other evils not being removed), continue to persist or
even grow in numbers, perhaps fanning out through the solar system (in the way envisaged
by too many physicists). Suppose further we are optimists, imagining that the prior
probability of D, ecodisaster and human decline, is small, say 1%. That is d = .01, and the
inidal probability of D*, human "success", is .99. The figures are pretty notional. Supreme
optimists would want to set d much smaller, pessimists rather at a higher probability.
Table 2.
D human decline
D* human success
Initial probabilities
1%, i.e. .01
99%, i.e. .99
Relative chanciness,
1/100, i.e. .01
1/100 x 1/1
ofC
Then the probability of human decline given C,
.01 X .01
P(D { C)
.01 x .01 + .99 x .01/1
1/2
, when 1 > 99.
For example, when 1 is set, conservatively, at 1,000, then the probability of human decline
given present chanciness is approximately 90%. It remains to fill out C, thereby showing
that 1 is very likely much much larger than 99, and correspondingly human decline so much
the more probable in the light of additional information, i.e. 6!
usual jargon.
probable in the
There are several high risk factors, acting in a certain concert, factors emphasized more
than a decade ago in world systems modellings (such as, most famously, that of the Club of
Rome), Malthusian factors such as human population, economic product, pollution, energy
consumption, ... . (The list rolls on.) It is appropriate to estimate posterior probability
relative to any one of these, any of which can serve as C, in order to expose the riskiness of
present gross human practices. In brief, because there are several high risk factors, so there
are several appropriate relative or reference classes. Thus the posterior probability is
assessed relative to such matters as humans now being thus and so, our or my being alive
�30
now (Leslie's first-person reference class), this being present energy use, present waste
output, present forest destruction and so forth. The upshot is not the triviality that
probability can be jacked up by placement in a suitably restricted context, though that
analyticity is established.^ The point is that, environmentally, more affluent humans have
fdgmjg/vgj produced such adverse circumstances, which are upon us, the very
circumstances typically productive of limitadon results.
In sum, the aadirapfc argument considers the environmentally invidious situadon of
present humans on the Earth. The argument can be carried through either in terms of sheer
population, gross numbers, or in terms of human resource grabbing, as esdmated for
instance through energy consumption. In fact all the other factors are anthropically tied, to
gross human numbers, via the environmental impact equation and because the levels are
human-use numbers.
Let us consider the prospects given addidonal information as to the present phase of
gross human population. C will be some such proposition as: the proportional
preponderance of humans who have ever lived alive now, or to personalize it: the chance that
you or your family, are alive now.
Diagram 6: (?ar praf^nf popidadon pred/camg/zf <?n die /wo jce/iarioj.
Humans have got themselves - to some extent pat themselves, though much may be
the result of muddling through - into an extremely dubious, environmentally insidious, and
One of the weaknesses in the argument may appear to be its dependence on an appropnate choice
of relative class. For, the high relative probabilities can fall away if different reference classes,
not exhibiting such growth patterns are taken, c.g. present wattle distribution, birds being thus
and so. On the other hand, probabilities can be elevated even more by selection of more unusual
reference classes, such as our being scientists, or being computer programmers, etc.. It is not so
remarkable that probabilities can be wound up - or down - perhaps quite dramatically, by
appropriate relativisation, by appropriate selection of a reference class.
�31
unsustainable position, on a range of critical parameters. Their numbers are excessive, their
high energy use is excessive, their waste and their polludon are both excessive - and all these
and other excesses are at the steep end of upward exponendal curves. Several relevant
graphs are distressingly exponendal, with the present in the near verdeal growth phase:
Digram 7 : GrowrA in
are drawn from Boyden).
envzronm^nfgZZy r^Z^vanr parg/neter-P (all graphs exhibited
�32
Many other similarly shaped graphs could be added, for instance for growth of
pollution, of waste products, of weapons (in terms of tonnes of explosive power), of other
greenhouse gases such as the chlorofluorocarbons (which accelerated from zero in the
nineteen thirties), and so on. The display typifies the accelerating human roller coaster (or
air bus).
Those curves are dghtly interconnected, in criss-crossing fashion. For example, the
productivity of contemporary agriculture which enables the feeding of huge urbanised
human populations depends on a very high energy use (in term of energy efficiency,
contemporary high-tech agriculture falls below that of much traditional agriculture). The
maintenance of high populations with supplies of cheap food depends in tum on fossil fuel
agriculture. Because of the intertwining of these phenomena, there is no easy way of getting
off the accelerating roller-coaster.
Nor, as observed, is there much real effort devoted to slowing the coaster. For
politicians it would be politically risky and inexpedient to try (for them the rhetoric about an
ecologically sustainable future must remain just that, more rhetoric). For many other power
holders and brokers such ideas are ideologically excluded: growth remains the gospel. So a
precarious position becomes ever more precarious. Humans are in a decidedly chancy
position, because of their population situation and other limitative factors; they are becoming
very disaster-prone. If humans want an acceptable future for themselves - they have
virtually ruled out an acceptable future for many other creatures, through their predominantly
selfish thoughtless greedy practices - then they will probably have to mend their collective
ways, very considerably and very soon. But, given the nature of the beast, that itself seems
improbable.
Humans, if they seek a more assured future, should make a concerted effort to put
themselves into a less precarious position. That could be achieved by proceeding to reduce
relative risks. These relative risks, sharply reducing prospects for a reliable future, fall into
two classes:-
* Manufactured risk factors, including weaponry such as mega-nuclear devices and
elements of biochemical warfare, and experimental equipment such as very high energy
particle accelerators (which could perhaps tunnel under a metastable state or induce a miniBig-Bang; see again Leslie).
* Accumulated risk factors, such as the huge relative size of human population, energy
consumption, greenhouse gas production, etc.30
30
As before, there are various different reasons why these induce risk, limitative and probabilistic
in particular.
�33
Despite the ideological obstacles - enormous political, religious and economic
obstacles blocking the way of requisite change - major efforts should be put into reducing
these types of risks. Philosophers, beyond other intellectuals, cozdd have a significant
role in breaking down the ideological barriers and in clarifying and developing the arguments
involved. Given the track-record of professional philosophers, don't expect very much.31
5. Further notes on human prospects and improved practices: What in
generai ought to be done about the Greenhouse problematique?
The general result already reached, that humans collectively should substantially
reduce their risk taking, and in particular reduce their gross numbers, extends to radonal
Greenhouse decision and action theory. But that large and difficult challenge - with all that
it entails by way of radical change upon present arrangements - is not all that there is to try,
all that should radonally be attempted.
While some increase in mean global temperatures, and what that implies, can no longer
be averted, the potentially most damaging effects can be: namely, by curtailing humaninduced output of Greenhouse gases. Moreover, there is an approximate upper bound of
importance, upon temperature, which can serve to supply a significant limit on output. That
bound - which conrrnns rfyZr raZd/zg by confining encountered situadons a? those where there
is some
ba-sds* - is given by esdmated temperatures during Aldthermal and
Eemian eras. Those temperatures are estimated to have been between about 1/2 a degree and
1 degree Centigrade above contemporary (pre-1980) temperatures; so the upper bound is
about PC.
31
There is much else for philosophers to contribute in these fields, especially on the expanding
issues of future redistributive justice, ecological equity, genuinely pluralistic arrangements, etc.
�34
gZo^zzZ
zznd^r Z&ree zn/^rcy/zzzg sc^zzzzrzoy.
AT
(°C )
Dnzgram # :
B^zckgroz/nd in/orw^hozz:
'Annual mean global surface air temperature computed for trace gas scenarios A, B, and C
.... Scenario A assumes continued growth rates of greenhouse gas emissions typical of the
past 20 years, i.e., about 1.5% per year emission growth; scenario B has emission rates
approximately fixed at current rates; scenario C drastically reduces trace gas emissions
between 1990 and 2000.... The shaded range is an estimate of global temperature during the
peak of the current and previous interglacial periods, about 6,000 and 120,000 years before
present, respectively. The zero point fbr observation is the 1951-1980 mean; the zero point
for the model is the control run mean' (Walsh p.14, from whom the diagram is drawn).
Not only will a continuation of current emission trends take global temperatures clean
through and way beyond that bound, so also will an alternative set-up where emission rates
are fixed more or less at current rates. The only apparent way to remain rationally within an
experiential domain is to curtail sharply trace gas emissions, beginning early in the 1990s.
That means shifting from the dominant growth ideology; it means expensive re- and de
industrialisation. Short of catastrophic nuclear war it seems unlikely.
�35
There are several reasons why requisite change looks unlikely. Firstly, requisite
changes are generally difficult, ideologically unwelcome, extensive and expensive.
Politicians will accordingly be extremely loath to undertake them, to offer more than
tokenism. Moreover, those states and corporations that avoid making hard changes will,
like free riders, be at a comparadve advantage in the short term as regards both profits and
power. Secondly, then, there are Tragedy-of-Commons reasons, i.e. those deriving from
general Prisoners' Dilemma situations. However the troughs induced by such dilemmas
could be climbed out of; they can be transcended given, for instance, some resolute players
committed to major change, despite heavy commercial and political disadvantages, and
prepared to pursue judicious tit-for-tat strategies. Thirdly, because main Greenhouse effects
are gradual, long-term by polidcal standards, and uncertain, the main pohdcal temptation will
undoubtedly again be to avoid the problems - to muddle incrementally along, and hope that
the problems will dissolve or that something (some magical technology perhaps) will turn up
or that adaptadon will occur or, at worst, that the problems will fall to some successors.
Meanwhile the problems will continue to be dismissed as "too hard", "too uncertain", and
their costs, polidcal and economic and ideological, as "too great". We have already
accumulated substantial experience of these inadequate evasive, dismissive and
postponement procedures.
What should of course be attempted involves extensive changes and restructuring
across virtually the entire face of industrialisation and urbanisation, and therewith extensive
alterations in the demands they impose upon new urban environments. The ultimate
objective as regards the Greenhouse problems - a reduction in the rate of increase of, and
then in the gross levels of, emissions of Greenhouse gases - direcdy implies, above all,
constraints on the combustion of fossil fuels, both decelerating use and improved use, but
also much better regulation, in one way or another, of production of other Greenhouse gases
and of interference with ecosystems storing or absorbing Greenhouse gases. The main
burden as regards requisite changes falls on the main users of fossil fuels and main
consumers of Greenhouse relevant products, namely the Earth's most affluent centres: North
America, Japan and Europe. In these centres especially, the work should be started on
reducing consumption of fossil fuel involved goods and services. (In a thoroughly
methodical approach a GG, Greenhouse gas, rating would be assigned to each sort of good
and service, the objective being to reduce these ratings, an effort that would no doubt
concentrate upon highly rated and easily altered items.) The general types of changes needed
or desirable are well enough known to environmental planners, and include: restructuring of
cides into network systems, so that reliance upon automobile commudng and truck transport
of goods is much reduced, improved building practices for energy efficiency cogeneration
and related technologies, increased reliance on solar energy technologies, and so on.
�36
Venturing much further into unknown territory are the types of political and economic
alterations required to implement the planning changes. It has already been insinuated that
conventional governmental and public policy practices, analyses and procedures are
inadequate to the tasks ahead. For these presuppose, for example, reladvely short-term and
quite bounded settings, in which most information (as to costs, benefits, beneficiaries, etc.)
is more or less certain, and where an ethical/ideological framework is taken for granted.
Indeed most of the favoured procedures - such as reliance on standard cost-benefit analyses,
on markets of orthodox economics, on muddling through, etc - not only depend on certainty
and are unfitted for situations of uncertainty, and assume at best a decidedly shallow
approach to environmental matters; but further they tend to exhibit, what is quite compatible
with short-term rationality, long-term irrationality. Much intellectual effort should be
invested, straightaway, in designing and developing improved political structures and
matching decision-making procedures. Such structures deserve to be better articulated and
understood - a large task - before the struggle is begun in earnest - perhaps in East
European style - to put some of them into place.
From the angle of radical change, then, impact of the Greenhouse problematique is far
from entirely negative. For it may encourage or even force many more of us into thinking
about and doing what should be done from a deep perspective anyway, such as rectifying
recent heavy human impact upon environments, and beginning at once to put in place more
environment-friendly arrangements and structures'^
Richard Sylvan
APPENDIX: As to the Doomsday Argument circulated by Leslie.
The anthropic argument of the penultimate section applies limitation results to escalate
probabilities. By contrast, the argument deployed by Leslie has comparatively little to do
with limitation features or the special risks of the present times (it does depend upon some
features of the temporal distribution of the total human population). As a consequence also,
32
This more positive conclusion contrasts with final pessimistic corollary which ended the
previous interim version of this essay. The corollary, which followed the gloomy (but
warranted) claim that requisite restructuring change seems unlikely, and was intended to underpin
it, was simply this: Humans collectively are not (particularly) rational. But we had already
been told as much by philosophers like Russell and surmised as much from the latest
perambulations in the long history of human wars.
Finally, a significant debt should be recorded at least to all the following: to John Leslie for
leading ideas and for comments, to David Bennett for comments and for research and production
assistance, to Pat Troy for an opportunity to read his unpublished paper on the topic, to
Malcolm Slade and Joseph Wayne Smith for encouragement to write on the topic, and to several
members of the audience at the Australasian Association of Philosophy Conference, held in
Christchurch, New Zealand, during August 1989, where parts of the essay were fruitfully
discussed and several worthwhile suggestions or objections made.
�37
it has no direct application to the special environmental problems of the present. It yields at
best a general admonition against human risk taking - and even the inference to that is shaky
the argument itself is unavoidable.
The central claim of Leslie's argument comes to this: unless the human race ends soon,
then any one of us present humans is not an ordinary one at all, but an exceptionally early
one. (Such statistical ordinariness is presumably supposed analytic upon total human
populadon distributions.) Thus (contraposing and distributing a reasonable expectation
functor), since it is reasonable to expect that such humans are ordinary (minor premiss), it is
reasonable to expect the human race will soon die out
of the weaknesses of Leslie's Doomsday Argument, especially in its quasiinductive guise (e.g. PQ p.2), is its background reliance upon an indifference principle
assumpdon, much as in faulty applicadons of Bayes' theorem, already noted. (The principle
is used in Leslie's um argument; see p.12.) The problemadc assumption shows up in c^rz.y
clauses in Leslie's deontic probability (typicality) principle, what he describes as
"the Argument's underlying principle' (in fact a minor premiss): one should. %ZZ eZ^ &^Zng
take one's position to be fairly typical rather than very untypical, or in different
formulation: whenever Zach'/zg gvz'^nce to r/zg ccnfra/y, one should prefer to think of one's
own position as fairly typical rather than highly untypical (both principles are stated, though
with different emphases in PQ p.2). Much the same principle, but in stronger form, operates
in what he calls 'the crux of the argument': dmZ^yj you /zav^ specially jfrong
to
believe that you are a very untypically early human, you ought not to believe it' (p.10,
rearranged, different emphasis).
Unfortunately for the Argument's principle, matters are not so indifferent, things are
not so equal, some sciendsts have reasons which they think are cogent, for believing that
present humans are fairly early members of the species. Consider Lovelock, whom, as we
have seen, used to think that the Earth and its life systems were virtually indestructible; it is
only necessary to add the familiar belief that humans themselves (like rats) are very
resourceful beings, virtually impossible to exterminate, to arrive at the result that there is
reason to believe that the human race is bound to persist for many more generations. That
is, of course, both the informed and not unreasoned popular view, guiding much practice.
As a result the principle is, at the very least, in doubt. Accordingly what Leslie presents as
the crux of the argument is not endorsed here.
The Argument is vulnerable in other ways as well. For one, the main premiss is, in
duly contraposed form, not quite so evident, as for instance the human race could just tail off
at low population levels on Earth. For another, the distribution of the functor 'it is
reasonable to expect that' across the conditional involved is not unproblematic: the
�38
distribution principle itself is contested in the literature, and here the result it is supposed to
yield looks unreasonable!
References
H. W. Bernard, T/za GraaK/zazz^a E)/acr, Ballinger, Cambridge Mass., 1980.
A. Block, Mzap/zy'.? Law. Boo/: Two, Magnum, Methuen Paperbacks, London, 1980.
S. Boyden, WasfarK Czvz'ZzzarzaK zn EzaZagzcaZ Parspacrzva, Clarendon, Oxford, 1987.
L.R. Brown and others, ^rara a/r/za WarZzZ 79^9, Norton/Worldwatch, New York, 1989;
referred to as Worldwatch.
R. Carnap, Eagz'caZ FazzK<7a?zaK.s' a/ PraZ?a/?zZzzy, Second edition, University of Chicago
Press, 1962.
C.R. Chapman and D. Morrison, Ca^mzc Cara^rrap/za^, Plenum, New York, 1989.
R.M. Cyert and M.H. DeGroot, 7?ayasz'aK AKaZy^z^ aK<7 (/zzcortoz/zzy ZK EcaKaKzzc T/zaary,
Rowman & LittEeld, New Jersey, 1987.
'Developing policies for responding to climatic change", Report of the Beijer Institute,
February 1988.
W.T. Keeton, BzaZagzcaZ -SczaKca, Third edition, Norton, New York, 1980.
I. Prigogine, Or^ar azTra/C/zaag , Batam, Toronto, 1984.
J. D. Hughes, 'Gaia: an ancient view of our planet", T/za EcaZagz^r 13(1983) 54-60.
R. Jeffrey, T/za Eagzc p/Dacz\YzaK 2ed., University Chicago Press, 1983.
A. Kaplan, 7K Pz/r^zzz'r p/Wz'-y&wz, Glencoe, Beverly Hills Ca., 1977.
J. Leslie, 'Risking and World's End", EzzZZazzK a/ r/za C<2K<2<7Z<2K Azzc/aar 5aczary 10(3)
(1989) 10-15; all references to Leslie are to this article unless otherwise indicated.
J. Leslie, 'Is the end of the world nigh?", T/za E/zzZa^ap/zzcaZ Czzarrar/y, to appear; referred to
as PQ.
J.E. Lovelock, Gaza. A Kaw Zaa/z ar Zz/a <9K Earr/z, Oxford University Press, 1979.
J. Lovelock, 'Are we destabilising world climate?", T/za Eaa/agz^r 15(1985) 52-55.
J.Lovelock, 'Man and Gaia", T/za Earr/z E apart. MaKz'zarzKg z/za Eazz/a/ar Czzr EKVz'raKKzaKZ
(ed. E. Goldsmith and N. Hilyard), Mitchell Beazley, London, 1988, 51-64.
A. Lovejoy, T/za Graaf C/zaz'K p/EazKg, Harvard University Press, Massuchusetts, 1950.
B. McKibben, 'Is the world getting hotter?" T/za Aaw Yar% Eavz'aw, 8 December 1988, 711.
G.I. Pearman (ed.), GraaK/zazz^a. P/aKKZKg /ar c/zKzaza c/zaKga, Division of Atmospheric
Research,CSIRO, 1988.
�39
B. Pittock, 'Climatic catastrophes: The international implications of the greenhouse effect
and nuclear winter', Peace Research Centre, Working Paper No. 20, RSPacS, Australian
National University, 1987.
B. Pittock, 'Forests beyond 2000 - effect of atmospheric change', AM.yfra/i(2M For^rry
50(1987a) 205-215.
R. and V. Routley, 'Nuclear energy and obligations to the future', 7E%zEry 21(1978) 133179.
R. Routley, 'Ultralogic as universal?' reprinted as an Appendix in Expiring
Jzz/tgZ^ RM^E^yafxZ, RSSS, Australian National University, 1979.
S. Schneider, 'Not to decide is to decide', in
'88: P/anm/ig/br OZ/ware C/zange
(ed. T. Dendy), Department of Environment and Planning, Adelaide, 1989, 5-10.
R. Sylvan, 'Modern myths concerning rationality: the imperatives of consistency and
(constrained) maximality', 1988, Rarzona/zzy antZ ZrrazfpfzaZzzy.* E^r <2HtZ
(ed. S.
Bidermann and B. Scharfstein), Brill, 1989.
R.P. Turco and others, 'Nuclear winter: Global consequences of multiple nuclear
explosions', 5cz^nce 222 (1983) 1283-1292.
K. Walsh, 'Greenhouse-induced climatic change in Australia' in Urgex/zazAfe '88., op.czf.,
10-19.
�
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GAEAN GREENHOUSE, NUCLEAR WINTER,
AND ANTHROPIC DOOMSDAY?
... climate change, like no other issue, calls the whole notion of human
progress into question. The [ever promised] benefits of newer technologies,
more efficient economics, and improved political systems could be
overwhelmed by uncontrolled global warming.
... the pace of climate change will soon overwhelm natural variability in the
earth's climate. Indeed, it can be compared with nuclear war for its potential to
disrupt a wide range of human and natural systems, [severely] complicating the
task of managing economies and coping with other problems. Irrigation
works, settlement patterns, and food production [among others] would be
tragically disrupted ... (Worldwatch 89, p.ll, p.10)
There are many approaches to the
the cluster of problems upon
which this philosophical investigation focuses. These approaches range from playing the
issue down entirely, dismissing it as not a problem, not something anyone should worry
about, at the one end of the range, to playing it up at the other. Those who play it up may
even foresee the demise of the human race, unless substantially new socio-economic
arrangements - with restructured cities, revitalized lands, rejuvenated oceans - soon
eventuate.
There is certainly plenty of room for different approaches (see Diagram 1), and for
some eclecticism. For what is being relied upon, in every case, comprises shaky and
contestable arguments, from flimsy forecasting models lacking many apparently relevant
details. No one of sound judgment, aware that weather reports for twelve hours ahead can
be wildly astray, would place a very high level of confidence on climatic forecasts for fifty
years ahead down a very hazardous track. Nonetheless there is enough information to act;
and there is information rationally requiring action.
For things in the future are not going to be the same. It is very doubtful that they are
going to be any better (though much important economic theorizing presupposes as much,
such as the monetary discounting of the future). They are not going to be similar even,
because so many parameters important to life are changing, several at exponential rates.
Significant in these changes are likely climatic changes. The Greenhouse effect is among
these, a result of the increases of "greenhouse" gases, especially carbon dioxide and
methane, in the Earth's atmosphere, which have followed exponential paths since the highenergy phase of industrial culture (see Diagram 7). The growth in gas concentration
produces, what it is lagged by, but is now apparent, a significant increase in mean global
temperatures. This has major implications for much of life on Earth.
Course of action
Reasons offered
Short response
No problem
Refutable
No certainty
Irrational
Adaptive capacity
Exaggerated
High-tech resolution
Wishful thinking
Severe dislocation
otherwise
Utopian
Individual
survival
Pointless
No action^
Moderate action
Considerable action
These very condensed responses will be expanded and explained as we proceed. In
accord with an esteemed philosophical tradition, a medical analogy is first deployed; it serves
to throw main points into high relief. Consider the possible illness of the Earth, for instance
as a result of brutalisation and poisoning. Look on the Earth then as a patient^, who exhibits
some symptoms of a possibly disabling illness; for instance the patient's system is
overloaded with troublesome trace elements and her temperature appears to be rising.
Compare rational medical practice where a human patient gives indications of possibly
disabling illness, for instance the patient shows signs of hypertension. Now consider some
of the spectrum of approaches. Suppose the advice is to take no action, to do nothing but
monitor the situation until further information comes in, until even (to take a worst case) it
becomes evident that the patient indeed has hypertension and suffers a severe consequence.
That would be regarded as irresponsible practice. To say that there is no problem when
symptoms are there, would be regarded as utterly irresponsible, and medically refutable. To
say that no action should be taken until certainty as to the complaint is established would be
seen as incompetent medical practice.
Taoist no-action would be different. It would not have undertaken excessive industrial action in
the first place.
This is precisely not the way less modest Gaean hypotheses regard the Earth. For there the Earth
is active, actively participating in co-evolutionary developments. But the health analogy does of
course go right back to ancient chthonic view, systematically presented in Plato, according to
which The Earth is a living being of whom humans are only a part. Right relationship with the
Earth means that the total organism is in good health; so environmental problems are seen as
illness, as a failure of one part of the organism to interact supportivcly with others' (Hughes,
p.60). For Gaean themes in other ancient philosophies, both before and after Plato, see Hughes
p.57.
a
?
3
A responsible practitioner begins recommending some remedial action straight away.
Naturally there are various options open as to what may be prescribed. These include, at the
one end, high-tech procedures, such as, what would be ridiculous simply for hypertension,
full medical engine-and-gearbox replacement (heart and kidney transplant), or, a little less
ludicrous but ridiculously commonplace, a whole-remaining-life course of pharmaceutical
products, e.g. tablets. At the other end, lifestyle changes are proposed, such as more
exercise, weight loss, stress reduction, and an improved diet with less sodium input.
Reasonable advice would not include pure adaptation, that the patient went on living as
before in the expectation that her system would adapt to the situation. Nor would it be
reasonably suggested, except in somewhat unusual circumstances, that the patient entirely
change her lifestyle, abandon her work, house and so on, and live somewhere else. Even so
unusual circumstances, which might include residence in a very polluted environment or
work in a nuclear plant, are no doubt on the increase.
Like all analogies, the medical analogy has limitations. One feature it does not capture
concerns the holistic aspects of the Earth's sickness, and why accordingly an individualistic
survival approach, egotistically rational enough for hypertension and perhaps even for a
localised nuclear war, cannot succeed. The reason is, of course, that holistic problems are
too extensive for individuals, or even small collectives, acting on their own to be effective
or to make much difference. Some are too big even for large collectives or states, but would
require whole regions of the Earth acting in concert. But of course some state players, such
as the superpowers as regards nuclear winter, can make a substantial difference, or even all
the difference.
The medical analogy also indicates the outcome of further investigation of approaches.
Briefly, as with a chronic illness, the conclusion is that there is no very easy path; future
humans should expect a hard landing.
1. Investigative philosophy, argument and rational decision as applied to
climatic probiematiques.
The role of philosophy in such a complex problematique as that of Greenhouse effects
is not difficult to state briefly. Philosophy, Anglo-American philosophy especially, is
concerned above all with
Investigative philosophy resembles
philosophy, except that it may upset the philosophy it applies; it investigates arguments, their
features - assumptions, reliability, etc. - and their generalisation to rational processes and
methods, but
normal philosophical topics. The generalisation to rational processes
comprehends a wider range of philosophical throughput than the orthodox narrow range of
argument typically addressed in logic courses; to probabilistic and plausibilistic reasoning, to
decision processing and making.
4
A main objective in this piece of investigative philosophy is to consider certain
argumcmj pointing to probabilities of severe dislocation as a result of Greenhouse effects,
and the resulting impact on rariana/
formation and action. There are certain
arguments of particular interest for radical decision and action: various neo-Malthusian
arguments, catastrophe arguments, and doomsday arguments.
A main run of arguments to considerable action are limitative in character. Such
ZimifafMm arguments are sometimes alternatively called *neo Malthusian', since Malthus
presented a very elementary, very controversial, argument of this general type. But such is
the hostility, especially in Marxist-influenced quarters, to Malthus's associated themes (some
of them admittedly repulsive) that merely to associate an argument terminologically with
Malthus is thereby likely to condemn it. To avoid such fallacious condemnation-byassociation, the graphic term 'neo-Malthusian' is largely avoided in what follows. The
general form of these limitation arguments is simply this: growth in some parameter over
time encounters limits, typically with severe, even catastrophic, effects; for seldom is the
transition to severely constrained behaviour smooth. A characteristic graphic representation
is as follows:
Diagram 2. GrowfA
ZimiM
growth
parameter
exponential growth
pattern
encountering
limits
subsequent
varying behaviour
The limits are often imposed just by finitude, for instance finiteness of a resource or a sink.
But other limits can be important, for instance where new phenomena or thresholds come
into play. General limitation arguments loom in the background in what follows, where we
shall be arguing on a double front:
*
*
5
A. Significant disequilibrium of the Earth's systems is a real possibility, and
accordingly must be reckoned with in decision procedures. Though the probability of such
an outcome may only be modest, the case has to be taken seriously because the result
(arrived at by a limitation argument typically) is so bad. Suppose, for instance, the outcome
is that the Earth ceases to be habitable in present terms, to be able to carry its present
demanding load. Such an outcome would have an extremely high negative value, so it
would tend to dominate other alternatives. (But it need not be an entirely worst case, where
perhaps the dominant terrestrial species becomes extinct, or the Earth becomes devoid of
"higher" life. Under the bad result contemplated some better-off humans in special
circumstance may subsist for a while.) Such sufficiently bad cases
be taken account
of in decision making; they have to be taken account of in rgrz'o/ia/ decision procedures.
A*. Significant disequilibrium not only has a non-negligible probability, but set in the
proper content has a sizeable probability; so it cannot be ignored or discounted as too low to
bother about. For such an argument
has to be established at the outset than for a rational
decision theory argument.
Such a different argument, of especial concern as regard climatic changes, is the
following
argument:-
* There is some probability that the Gaean "greenhouse effect", generated by human
activity, will get out of control, that Gaean control mechanisms will fail, and that the Earth
will, for example, overheat (Runaway Greenhouse, or
premiss).
* That result would be disastrous for human activities, and indeed for humans
Pr<9.sp(?cf).
* Because of the unusual, and unusually precarious, position of humans (of certain critical
anthropic parameters), such a probability of disaster is not in fact small but decidedly large.
As a consequence then, the human species will probably sharply decline, and even become
extinct (C^^^p/26
That is, by a rectified version of Murphy's law - that if something can go wrong then in
appropriate unusual conditions, it very probably will - an incrementally small probability is
inflated into a very large probability.
It would be a mistake to conclude that because the argument itself looks an unlikely
one, everyone can stop worrying. The argument is but ong of a substantial raft of
arguments, suggesting that we are already in deep trouble, that 5/23^ have everyone
worried; it is but a final intellectual sting, so to say, from the previously inconspicuous
cosmological tail.
6
Such a doomsday argument no doubt puts together, in one more exact form, some of
the sorts of considerations that are troubling many people, especially concerned youth, about
the Greenhouse business: that humans (including themselves) are on a decline or extinction
path. It is no doubt not the only consideration that should be troubling them or us. For
whether or not doomsday warnings are warranted, there are other matters that should be
sufficiently worrisome, to anyone of moral integrity:* Future times are likely to be exceedingly uncomfortable for very many creatures, as
habitats are destroyed, food producing regions are eliminated, and environments seriously
impoverished. (Many of these creatures are nonexistents, mere future existents, i.e.
creatures that do not yet exist or participate in market or voting rituals, but nonetheless they
wzZ/ exist and may participate. But, despite their presently unfavourable ontological status,
they are entitled to fair and decent treatment.)
* Given such future prospects, present practices which do nothing or vanishingly little to
ameliorate these prospects, are decidedly irrational. Indeed a main message that will emerge
from the present exercise is the mora/ Zrrtmpna/f/y of critical large-scale human practices.
The irrationality, morally-weighed-down irrationality, of present large-scale human
practices is already conspicuous from the wintry downside of climatic prospects of which
Greenhouse warming is the upside.
7
Diagram 3. Macro-c/wKmc jarring am?Observed global average temperatures,
1880-1987, with forward projections (historic data from Worldwatch p.10).
mean
global
temperature
(degrees C)
The apparatus for conducting a world-wide nuclear war is entirely in place and indeed
on alert The probability of such a war, even if small, is not zero. Among the many awful
effects of a large nuclear war is that of nuclear winter, which would probably bring about the
demise of present human civilisation, and would at the very least mean enormous dislocation
for most surviving humans and other creatures. A sufficiently diabolical chemico-nuclear
war, reaching into all inhabited parts of the globe, could indeed drive the human species
close to extinction.
The decidedly dubious rationality and morality of these general nuclear arrangements both through what they are in themselves for what purposes, and through their moral
8
opportunity costs - are widely appreciated. The thesis that the arrangements and practices
are immoral, irradonal, and ought to be dismantled - already much argued, and also
contested^ - is not the present concern. The thermonuclear downside is, by comparison, a
very easy case to examine philosophically, and argue, as compared with the greenhouse
upside.4 For there is, for instance, a case of sorts for much increased use of greenhouse
gases, such as CFCs in refrigerators, a case that hardly extends very plausibly to nuclear
weapons. It is a case heavily pressed by some "developing" nations, for polluting devices
already in widespread use in more affluent places, as necessary for local standards of living.
These nations want, or are heavily encouraged, to extend the war against Nature through the
habitats they have gained control over, in the name of economic progress.
War also joins Greenhouse summer and nuclear winter. For the barely-analogical
rapacious war against Nature is a major contributor to Greenhouse gas emissions, for
instance, in the domestication of wetlands for rice paddies, through the heavy pillaging of
forests, and the like, typically carried on with swords and bayonets reforged to jump
ploughs, chemical weapons turned to herbicide guns, and tanks converted to bulldozers.
The protracted war against Nature^, carried, it had been supposed, to a victorious conclusion
with the rise of science and technology and the ubiquitous advance of industralisation, seems
however to have backfired. For it is turning the Earth, Gaea herself, into a patient, with
crippled life support systems, thereby endangering the sustained future even of the
victorious. Yet another Pyrrhic victory.
Greenhouse and nuclear winter are more intricately connected than through war and as
the upside and downside of meteorological phenomena. One of the high-tech solutions
suggested for atmospheric overheating, involves the generation of wintering effects - to cool
things down - by flinging enough dust up into the atmosphere, a trick no doubt most easily
achieved on the requisite scale by nuclear explosives. Needless to say, like backbuming
against out-of-control fires, artificial winter would be a pretty desperate and, given present
expertise, dangerous expedient.
2. The Greenhouse debate, main policy responses, and irrational decision.
The Greenhouse debate, as to what to do, if anything, about forecast Greenhouse
effects on Earth, is intellectually disturbing. For it has revealed, as we shall soon see, that
many of those who have spoken, worse that /pta/ry q/ r/io-yg wAo
who have some role
For my very small contribution to this, see the War and Peace scries in
Papery
E/iwv/wig/mxZ
RSSS, Australian National University.
Global warming, by no means entirely certain, is assumed to be the outcome of increasing
greenhouse gas build up. Of course though some mean temperatures will rise, cooling will
probably occur also in some localized regions.
A war incited and applauded by illustrious philosophical forebears.
*
&
9
in decision making (including both experts and politicians),
mah'ng in con^'n'on^ p/nncorrainiy or possible riskA
a J7rm gra.%? on
The main canvassed policy approaches to the Greenhouse problematique lie firmly
within the dominant social outlook, the high-tech growth and development ideology.
Diagram 4 E?r<9<26? po/z'cy
fa rA^ Gr^g/i/z<9^^ /?ra^/^marz^a^.
Dominant paradigm options
Alternative ecological outlook
Procrastination (wait-and-see)
Soft energy paths and
alternative regulation
Adaptation (sink-or-swim)
Socio-economic
transformation
Regulation
Intervention (star wars)
We will briefly outline, and find wanting, a// the dominant approaches.
* Procra^rznaaon, the prevailing response.
In fact the main governmental and conservative response thus far has been procrastination,
or "wait-and-see" as it is more benignly known.*? The approach makes much of the
uncertainties, of the shortcomings, in even the most elaborate general circulation models for
future climatic change, of the high noise-to-signal levels. On such bases it contends that it is
too early to do anything, except staging some meetings, organising some review
committees, undertaking some monitoring, and funding a little more "research". It
obviously does nothing to rock the growth ideology boat.
Certainly a few scientists, outside main policy making reaches, do have a sound intuitive
appreciation of these problems, and of the deficiencies of prevailing practices, e.g. Pittock 87.
There is little excuse for prevailing ignorance of or ignoring of decision theory: for the elements
of the standard theory are readily accessible and very elementary. In the present essay a
modification of standard decision theory (as expounded e.g. in Jeffrey) is assumed as background;
for details see Sylvan.
Following Knight, many economists (try to) distinguish between uncertainty and risk. Risk is
said to obtain when some more or less objective numerical probabilities can be assigned to
outcomes, a situation not obtaining as regards global greenhouse effects. Bayesians, who can
always assign subjective probabilities tend to eschew the distinction, e.g. Cyert and DeGroot,
who say that 'decision making under uncertainty refers to situations in which the outcome of the
decision is not precisely predictable'(p.3). Either way, Greenhouse involves uncertainty - to
which rational procedures should be applied.
There is significant rhetorical art in the choice of classificatory labels, a rather philosophically
neglected art. A PR person must have been hired to produce the Greenhouse adaptation of
'adaptation*.
10
There is the pretence that we do not know enough to act.s But it is known that carbon
dioxide, methane and other greenhouse gases are fast increasing. The main causes and
enough likely enough consequences are also known. Theoretical considerations have
already been partially confirmed by rising temperatures in the eighties. Outcomes of rising
temperatures are also known in broad outline: rising sea levels, and so forth. In addition,
there are partial small-scale models of Greenhouse effects in action. For example, a city
such as Mexico City, which is situated in the bowl-like valley, is placed in an environment
which traps heat as well as polludon. The ecological effects, like the human effects, are
pretty dramatic even at this small level, and hardly to be sought, or emulated elsewhere.
There is a pretence, fostered also by many sciendsts, that Greenhouse difficuldes have
only just been discovered; a date commonly set for that watershed event is the Villiers
conference and statement of 1985 (e.g. Pittock 87 pp.2-3). Actually there have been
Greenhouse warnings for more than a decade, and there has been a corresponding decade of
inacdon. Nor is any acdon of much significance presently seriously contemplated.
Back in 1979 Bernard wrote at length about and reported the substantial concern of
climatologists about Greenhouse effects. Even the magazine
not then noted for its
green sympathies, recorded that The release of carbon dioxide to the atmosphere by the
burning of fossil fuels is, conceivably, the most important environmental issue in the world
today" (May 3 1979). Bernard quotes many other concerned scientists, several asserdng that
'the government must start dealing with this problem now". They meant the United States
government. "The"" government didn't take the hint. For more than a decade then, sciendsts
have been emphasizing that the Greenhouse threat is a major environmental problem, and
that action should be taken immediately. Over 10 years nothing of real significance to
counter the effects has happened. There has been more than a
q/TKacdo/t, during
which matters have got worse, and the time frame for evasive acdon disturbingly shorter. It
is already evident that requisite decision making under uncertainty is not taking place. On
straight inductive grounds, it would be reasonable to expect nothing will be done. While
there are theoretical grounds to back up such an assessment, still it is only just beginning to
get through to a much wider public (which can exercise a marginal influence on what
politicians say) that there is - or T/zay be, as some more reactionary modal-mongering
academics would have - a problem or two.
Part of the problem is that scientists have been caught out (e.g. crying wolf) and have become
ultra-cautious. With the advent of thermodymamics, for instance, scientists began 'threatening
mankind with a rather swift "heat death"' as the universe ran down. Thus M. Alier, on 'blatant
ideological use of science even by scientists themselves' (see Bernard p.9). More recently, many
rang alarm bells prematurely concerning an impending mini-ice-age.
The past predictive failures of scientists have been used as evidence for scepticism concerning
greenhouse effects; see Me Kibben p.8. It is an unsatisfactorily selective argument; interestingly
it is not used in a similar way against economists, whose predictive record is significantly worse.
11
Many scientists have joined the wait-and-see queue, with their begging bowls, hoping
for more hand-outs for research. They assume, rightly enough, that more information
would assist with rational decision-making, and also, quite wrongly, that "scientific
certainty" is required for action to be taken. Physical scientists are not alone in their
misapprehension of rational decision methods.
Although there is a good deal of practical experience available of statistical-type
decision making under uncertainty, for instance as regards insurance coverage and
engineering projects, decision theory, especially as regards unrepeatable situations, has not
penetrated very far into standard scientific methodology or much into mainstream parts of
social sciences. 'Economists in particular have shown a talent for bringing every problem
back to a world of certainty where all solutions are known or can be easily found/ Natural
scientists including climatologists are, for the most part, on the same erroneous reducdon-tounattainable-certainty trip.
'This is not to say that economists have not worked on
uncertainty. ... however ... uncertainty is introduced and then taken out by assumption'
(Cyert and DeGroot, continuing, p.l).
But there are several classes of problemadc
situations, where decision and action may be required, where uncertainty
be
removed or discarded by fiat, reducdon stratagems or otherwise, notably:* inherently probabilistic situations, such as those of indeterminacy in quantum theory;
* essentially unpredictable situadons (which may be determinisdc) such as those now under
invesdgadon in chaos theory;
* presently uncertain situations and outcomes, which may eventually resolve into certain
cases, or may tum into some of the above classes, where there is not time to wait for
resolution.
The Greenhouse problem is regularly put into the latter class, a standard assumpdon being
that with enough money and research effort thrown at it, it will resolve to decent certainty.
But it may well not. Climate is now a prime arena for applications of chaos theory (in any
case inidal conditions for application of meteorological equadons are seldom very accurate
and are now shifting with the accumulation of Greenhouse gases). There are grounds for
supposing that critical parts of climatology will fall into the essentially unpredictable class,
that the sought certainly is unattainable. If so the standard begging-bowl posture of too
many research scientists: Supply more funding so we can go on researching undl we obtain
certainty, is misguided.^
Or, less charitably, downright dishonest. Nor does it seem to have occurred to most research
scientists demanding more money that an important reason why they are not obtaining the
funding they expect, or even enough to run complex modellings on expensive computers, is
because their research results could, if unfavourable, act as a serious drag on the industrial
establishment. 77zey are Aar<^/y go//7g to /?e we// jrt/tt/et/ to ^e/eg/twuze woder/i /a^artr/a/
society.
12
There are thus some severe problems with this prevailing response. Firstly, it is
irrational. Certainty,
achieved, may be achieved too late. What was required for
rationality was decision making in advance of certainty. Secondly, certainty may be
unobtainable. The meteorological equations may be non-linear (nonadditive) and so
incapable of delivering firm results given slightly fluctuating initial data. Not only are many
experts and decision makers only comfortable about acting in circumstances of relative
certainty; almost as bad, where some uncertainty is involved, only what is considered Zz^/y
gets genuine consideration. Rational decision making has however to take account of what
may not be very likely at all, but may be quite disastrous should it occur (e.g. a nuclear
accident with full meltdown). In this respect too, the standard response is methodologically
unsound.
* AzZapzarz^n, learning to live with and love the Greenhouse.
The policy That tends to be favoured by most economists' is an adaptive strategy: '"Let
society adjust to environmental changes without attempting to mitigate or prevent the
changes in advance". We could adapt to climate change for example, by planting alternative
crop strains [themselves] ... more widely adapted... ' (Schneider p.8). Observe, however,
that it is a decidedly rayzrzcf&% "adaptation" that is being proposed, that humans adjust to the
results of present economic and industrial practices, rather than adjusting fAem. It is
zz^^zz/?z^6Z that economic growth comes first, that we do not change (e.g. through decent
regulation) high energy industrial practices. A fuller and smarter adaptation would adapt
r/z&yg practices. The policy is like a pernicious agriculture policy that says, "Let farmers
adjust to the results of soil erosion, salination and so on, without attempting to mitigate or
prevent these deleterious changes in advance." Such "adaptadve agriculture", the present
predominant practice in advanced agriculture, is anti-environmental, but is given a spurious
air of evolutionary inevitability and evolutionary redistributive justice; you can't buck natural
evolution, which is entirely natural, can you? Let us condense such far-from-inevitable and
highly artificial mal-adaptation in the neologism
Greenhouse adaptation, like
nuclear adaptation, is badaptation (some, less kind, would say wa^aptation).
There is a pragmatic, if cynical, political argument for badaptation, namely, that
zznzZat^raZ action to prevent a warming is unfeasible and requisite international cooperation is
unattainable. Both contentions are open to doubt. Unilateral action by the USA, by far the
Earth's heaviest resource and energy consumer (per capita and on several other relevant
dimensions), could make a major difference, especially when backed up by pressure
(familiar from other settings, such as the narcotics war) on other nations and through the
United Nations. Unfortunately the USA is also the world's largest supplier of influential
growth economists. In any case, international agreements such as those on whaling and
13
concerning Antarctica, are attainable, and sometimes effective. The ozone protocols,
limiting production of CFCs, show that results can be achieved to limit trace gas emissions.
The adaptadon proposal is presently compatible with wait-and-see; both mean little or
no hauling back on trace gas production. Indeed procrastination will force sociedes towards
badaptation. Typical of adaptation, like procrastination, is an (over-)emphasis on the
uncertainties of Greenhouse forecasts, and on the decision-theoretic paralysis such
uncertaindes are alleged to produce. Characterisdc of adaptadon too is a minimisadon of the
of Greenhouse modification. No doubt the impression that things won't be so very
different, or far removed from what has already been experienced, is important in getting
adaptationism more readily accepted, as a radonal course of acdon (instead of the seemingly
irradonal course it is). Thus badaptation tends to play with figures at the low end of
projected ranges of temperature increase, such as 1.5°C for 2050, when in fact present data
indicates something rather in the vicinity of 4° C - in a setting, furthermore, where fracdons
of a degree centigrade may well be linked to macro-physical and macro-biological change.
Recent modellings deliver, on average, an increase in 2°C attributable to carbon dioxide, and
it is widely thought that other trace gases will double the CO2 effect^, thus yielding a 4°C
temperature increase around 2050.
The colossal extent of future human dislocation has correspondingly been deliberately
underemphasized. The adaptive capacides of human arrangements, when humans are living
at the margin, to massive natural shifts, has been grossly exaggerated. Consider agriculture
alone - set aside flooded cides, sunken atoll islands, and all the rest. Some of the Earth's
major grain producing regions - upon which famine relief projects depend - could be pushed
substantially out of business. The conditions which prevailed during the American dust
bowl experience of the nineteen-thirties were benign indeed compared with those which
threaten with mid twenty-first century Greenhouse condidons. The mid-continental summer
temperatures were only 1-2° C warmer than the present average; under greenhouse
conditions they could well be more than 3-4° C warmer. In the dust-bowl rainfall only
slipped at critical growing times (e.g. July for northern corn) to 80% of the contemporary
norm; but under Greenhouse conditions it could be significantly less again (only winter
precipitation increasing). A super dust-bowl is not improbable (for much more detail, see
Bernard). Similarly for other similar latitude Northern grain producing regions. But the
high-energy industrial superstructure is crucially based upon sufficient cheap food (bread)
for the urban masses.
10
See e.g. Pearman p.18. Note that methane is beginning to rival carbon dioxide as a gas whose
atmospheric propordons really matter and whose present exponential increase is excessive.
14
* Tnfgrvenn'o?!, high-tech Earth engineering.
Interventionist proposals so far floated include
(D New oceans in parts of the Earth's land surface lying below, at, or near sea level. These
projects would make the mega-dams of recent times look like children's play.
@ Wintering effects. Production of sufficient dust in the atmosphere, achieved for instance
by nuclear detonations, to mitigate heating effects. Such enterprise would make
modification of the weather by cloud seeding look like childs' play.
Fortunately these and other expensive and grandiose proposals, which would call for
considerable international cooperation,
far down the planning track; with these schemes
procrastination is rational.
*
controlling free(-wheeling) enterprise.
Regulation itself is of course transparadigmatic; where it belongs depend on what measures
(what sorts of constraints, rights, etc.) are proposed and how they are imposed or enforced.
If it is, for example, some industrial law-and-order, smokestack scrubbing regulations or
Greenhouse polluting rights, within the status quo, that is one thing, but if a minimally-
constrained growth paradigm is questioned and alternative socio-economic arrangements
advocated, that is quite another, and falls outside the dominant paradigm. Such policies
involving regulations controlling fossil fuel emissions especially, are negatively labelled
in the predominantly American policy literature, though there is now no
preventing some Greenhouse effects; but the worse to follow could still be prevented. What
is usually covered under the label is however some regulation within prevailing political
arrangements. So energy efficiencies and savings for investment in growth elsewhere is
comprehensible, straight growth-curtailing non-consumption is not contemplated. But the
latter is just what alternatives do contemplate.
Democratic political arrangements do not exclude such alternatives; both the power
bases of political leaders and economic prescriptions do. Adequate regulation within
prevailing socio-economic arrangements is going to prove impossible, without adjustment of
power structures and economic imperatives - in effect without far-reaching systemic and
ideological adjustment. While such adjustment appears rational, it seems unlikely (see
further section 5). Power holders and the power structures into which they slot have too
much to lose. So it is hardly remarkable that regulation itself is not so bureaucratically
popular (at least under that mode of presentation) in these latter days of economic
irrationalism, and is strongly resented and resisted.
Some of the U.S. bureaucratic reaction to the Antarctic ozone hole, now regularly
attributed to extensive CFC usage, is instructive. A top Reagan official 'said that since
CFO's were useful to industry, people should use sunglasses and baseball caps as protection
against retina damage and skin cancer' - individualisdcally distributed adaptationism, terrific
€?
&
15
for creatures outside "sunglasses and baseball caps" economies. Other Reagan
administrators spoke for procrastination, one academic-turned-bureaucrat observing that 'so
far the ozone hole has had little effect on skin cancer rates in the United States'. The
prevailing bureaucratic procrastination stance that was applied to the much easier ozone
problem (which has belated obtained weak international responses), is now extended to
Greenhouse effects. It is typically, typically irrationally, stated by high administrators that
'significant gaps exist in our knowledge .... These scientific uncertainties must be reduced
before we commit the
economic future to drastic and potentially misplaced policy
responses' (preceding quotations from McKibben p.10, p.ll, italics added).
and the
of the Greenhouse
business is thereby also revealed. Like heart disease and cancer, Greenhouse effects are
gaining much discussion and some funding because they just may severely effect the
affluent, affluent humans and affluent nations, that have a good deal to lose, in United States
especially. The impact will, however, be at least as severe in some third world nations,
whose lands or much of them will be flooded, countries which cannot afford extensive
The extensive
expensive dyking (or where such effort would be in the longer term, as seas rise, be
pointless), countries such as Pacific coral atoll nations and delta states like Bangladesh. But
the really serious losers will no doubt be, not humans , rich or poor, but nonhumans.
Biological diversity, already being reduced by various human activities, may be
one of the chief casualties of global warming. Massive destruction of forests,
wetlands, and even the polar tundra could irrevocably destroy complex eco
systems that have existed for millennia. Indeed, various biological reserves
created in the past decade to protect species diversity could become virtual death
traps as wildlife attempt to survive in conditions for which they are poorly
suited. Accelerated species extinction is an inevitable consequence of a rapid
warming (Worldwatch p.10).
3. Arguments to dislocation and for a Lesser Venus Prospect.
There is at least a small probability that predicted increases in mean atmospheric
temperatures will seriously interfere with most remaining natural habitats and result in the
degeneration or destruction of many of them, especially forests, wetlands, and marine
environments. For example, most wetlands will either be flooded or else evaporate under
increasing temperatures. Again, the prospect is for the boreal forest to shrink from about
23% of the world's forest to something like 1% of a much diminished forest covering. Nor
will adaptationism help here; for natural evolution is much too slow for adaptationism to
succeed n.
11
Cf. Keeton pp.763-4, '... typical migration rates for forest boundaries are of the order of 502000m per annum ... [A requisite] shift of 500-1000km would, however, take hundreds of years.
... Pollen evidence... suggests that large changes occurred in forest composition during the
Holocene period some 8000-10000 years ago, even though the climate changes then were less
16
Natural ecosystems will not adapt effectively to rapid climatic change.... With
regard to forests, habitats for plants and animals cannot be re-created or
transplanted rapidly. Continuing climatic changes would strain the capabilities
of management practices even in commercial tree plantations (Beijer Institute
Report pp.21-3).
The decline or demise of these systems, vast reservoirs for greenhouse gases, will accelerate
the warming, and accordingly make matters substantially worse:
Trees are adapted to a narrow range of temperature and moisture levels, and
cannot cope with rapid climate change. A temperature increase of 1 degree
Celsius per decade in mid- to upper latitudes translates into a shift in vegetation
zones of 60-100 miles northward. Terrestrial ecosystems cannot migrate that
fast. Vast numbers of trees are likely to die, and new trees adapted to warmer
temperatures are unlikely to be able to replace them rapidly. During such a
disruption, huge areas of forest could die and, as they decay or bum, send large
quantities of additional CO2 into the atmosphere, accelerating the warming
(Worldwatch p.10).
Of course the immediate climatic patterns would be somewhat more complex. If enough
soot and ash from fires were flung into the atmosphere there would be a cooling effect, like
that of a small nuclear winter, before heating accelerated. The present pattern of ecosystemic
loss would also be sharply accelerated. For when natural ecosystems get reduced to about
30% of their initial size, they tend to collapse of themselves.
Moreover, there would be other significant positive feedback from ecosystems other
than the terrestrial forests, from the oceans especially. As the oceans warm, they lose their
capacity to serve as carbon dioxide reservoirs. So they too release additional gases,
including previously absorbed CO2, back into the atmosphere, further accelerating the
warming. A critical question arises as to how much danger such positive feedback poses?
As so often, informed opinions, and so probability estimates differ. However 'several
scientists working in the area consider that positive feedback effects will force a very bleak
picture to be drawn" (Worldwatch p.19).^
Unlike the interim effect of a small nuclear winter, where after a few years at most,
climatic behaviour (as distinct from radioactivity levels and, differently, from ecological
communities) would presumably return towards the previous norm, there will be /7<9 similar
under greenhouse impact. Technically then, stability would be lost under the
than those expected by 2030 [and forests were more extensive and less interfered with]' (Pittock
87a p.209, rearranged).
Second order probabilities, probabilities and uncertainties in the light of first order subjective
probabilities, enter importantly.
17
impact,^ disequilibrium induced. An eventual long-term return to some different but
sufficiently congenial equilibrium could well be excluded. Under new climatic regimes
plants themselves may be able to do little more than hang on for part of their own lives. In
many places conditions would be too severe for much of the "year" to permit normal plant
functioning, including what is crucial for Greenhouse amelioration, photosynthesis. In most
plants, photosynthesis only occurs across a narrow band of temperatures (e.g. 6 - 34°C);
outside that range the plants shut down operations.^ Even more important, many plants
would leave few or no successful successors. Even where plants set seed, seedlings would
not survive under the severe conditions expected; for instance, they would be killed by hot
dry summer conditions, or in other places by frosts to which they are not adapted, both
phenomena already familiar after clearfelling of forests. The situation at a famous place in
southern Sahara, where there is but one ancient tree hanging on in thousands of square
kilometres of desert, a tree with viable seeds which sets no seedlings, could be more or less
replicated in many other places where forests or woody plants once grew.
In fact we are already witnessing the demise of the trees in much of Australia. Already
dead and dying trees form a predominant feature of the Australian rural landscape. Virtually
whichever way ecologists travel in Australia where trees remain, they are confronted with
dead and dying trees
The reasons for the present decline of trees in rural Australia is, for
the most part, not to be attributed to early Greenhouse or even pollution effects. "6 It is
thought to be due to a complex of factors, including a range of insect predators whose
efforts are concentrated on isolated trees left after an excessive zeal for clearing (i.e. holistic
effects enter as regards healthy persistence of trees). Excessive disturbance of ecological
systems, though overclearing of trees, has seriously upset the systems. Types of systemic
stress and disturbance are likely to be much accelerated given the additional impact of
Greenhouse warming on plant functioning and reproduction.
f<9 some
q/
worth
disentangling. Firstly, a system may be disturbed by interfering with critical components
There are several
within the system structure, processing parts, such as botanical systems or their
interconnections. As with a computer, if a cridcal component is broken or a circuit cut, the
probability of serious malfunction increases. Secondly, a system normally operates within a
Stability is defined in physics in terms of immediate return to an initial (inertial) position after
small disturbance.
The upper bound may be difficult to appreciate in most of Aotearoa. But in much of Australia,
during the summer, many plants close down their operations for much of the day.
Other effects of increased heat on major food plants matter for human affairs. Severe heat
interferes with fertilization and reproduction in com, and apparently affects the ability of rice in
Asia to reproduce; so considerably reduced yields of staple foods may be anticipated.
Reported by Recher on EarfAworw.
Thus coastline vegctational destruction through detergents in sewerage waters.
18
certain range of condition. Take it outside these conditions or push it towards limits (let the
computer get too hot or too cold), and probability of breakdown is much increased.
Feedback loops, which are an important feature of cybernetic systems are particularly
vulnerable to normality disturbance. Cybernetic systems afford one example of more
holistic behaviour; dissipative systems, where perhaps strange new features may enter as
systemic loading is increased, another. Such new features may not be at all congenial to
dominant forms, or to maintenance of life support arrangements.
It should be evident from details already assembled that there is some probability the
Greenhouse efforts could seriously disturb the crucial carbon cycle. The carbon cycle loops,
in major fashion, through both the higher plant complexes and the oceans, both major
carbon dioxide reservoirs - but just how critically through them is uncertain. However,
with the serious disturbance of main components in the cycle, the real possibility of cycle
malfunction can hardly be excluded. Much the same holds with other crucial chemical
cycles, such as the sulphur cycle (though woody plants are perhaps less important here, the
oceans are highly significant, the oceans Costeau has already pronounced moribund). To a
lesser extent, several of the other well-known bio-chemical cycles, such as those for
nitrogen, sodium, and so forth, depend for their stability and maintenance on the adequate
operation of active ecological structures. Plainly if a cycle loops through a component, such
as a tropical forest, which is severely disturbed then the crucial cycle itself could be locally
disrupted.
There is some probability, furthermore, that the changes will disturb other physical
cycles crucial to the stability of systems. For some of the Earth's feedback systems are in
fact maintained in equilibrium through natural ecosystems. A striking example appears to be
the regulating of the Earth's temperature itself. Lovelock and collaborators have devised an
elementary daiyy wor/d m(9dg/ which reveals how a feedback system with two types of
daisies can, within limits, stabilize temperatures despite increasing solar energy input (see
the next diagram). The limits are important, for as these limits are approached the
maintenance systems break down. Thus again, instability could ensue under disturbance.
19
Diagram 5.77z^rm<9.s7anc r^ga/aizoa a/*rA^ Earr/z j ^zayac^ i^mp^ramrf rAraag/z p/a/zM (a
much simplified picture from Lovelock 88 p.58).
!n the "Datsyworid" mode), tife adjusts the pfanefs
temperature to suit ttseif. A basic assumption is that on
Daisyworid, as on Earth, the sun is getting progressive^
hotter. Biack daisies grow best when the surface temperature
is tow, because their petals absorb radiation. As the sun's
heat increases, the white daisies begin to nourish. Their
petais reflect radiation, thus heipingto iower surface
temperature. Between the time the seeds first germinate and
when the sun gets too hot, the piants maintain a steady
surface temperature by adjusting the pfanefs aibedo.
Without doubt these matters are bad enough. Demise of most of the Earth's richness^
is not a minor matter. Worse could follow.
Apart from direct ecological breakdown, there are several other major ways through
which the maintenance structures of the Earth can be not merely awkwardly disturbed, but
thrown right out of kilter - perhaps, given the d^/zcacy of several critical matters, never to
return present norms. Most obvious and immediately threatening is
* nuclear warfare, and therewith nuclear winter.
But there are of course other severe shocks that the planet could suffer than those chemonuclear warfare, some human induced, some a "chance" matter of the planets' posidon in
space; namely
* a mini Big Bang, or an undermining of metastability, brought about through very high
energy experimentadon (see Leslie);
* a collision with a large meteorite or asteroid.
Such uncertaindes, not germane to the main climatic arguments, are listed, not to achieve a
bogus completeness, but to emphasize that complete certainty is not to expected, not
radonally. Should we obtain it, should we obtain easy relatively unproblemadc lives, then
we have, by world standards, been rather lucky. Moreover, these latter uncertaindes do so
17
Natural richness is its main richness, much exceeding human arufice.
20
far appear negligible compared with those bound up with climate.is The Greenhouse
problemadque differs (as do nuclear winter and also high energy experimentation) from such
possibilities as destruction of the Earth's favourable climate or life-supports by collision with
an asteroid in two crucial respects:
the poor prognoses are largely a matter of human making (meaning the making of certain
among humans) and
the damaging situations could be substantially averted by positive or concerted human
activity.
According analogies with remote phenomena such as decline of the sun, asteroid collisions,
etc., sometimes applied to dismiss concerns with global environmental problems, do not
hold up, and should be resisted.
The human-induced climatic problems are primarily ascribable to:
* excess economic development. The practices involve a complex and sustained assault on
most of the Earth's major ecosystems, forests, seas, and so on, along with the alteration of
atmospheric composition by greenhouse gases. For example, the forests are cut down,
burnt, poisoned by herbicides and acid rain, or otherwise removed or destroyed. (Therewith
too a great deal more carbon dioxide is released into the atmosphere and major sinks of
carbon dioxide are removed.) As a result of these concerted growth-and-development
activities such systems are driven to limits, and breakdown occurs. Once it occurs at some
weak point it can escalate elsewhere, like a conflagradon; thus again ecosystemic collapse for
example.
Quite apart from breakdown at or approaching limits, for instance because of systemic
overload, remarkable changes can occur in dissipative systems under stress or strain.
* excess energy or chemical loading. Though such striking examples as the chemical clock,
it has been demonstrated that dissipative systems can suddenly, and often rather
unpredictably, undergo extraordinary changes, as for instance energy flux is increased
(Prigogine and others).
Such non-additive or nonlinear effects, characteristic of more holistic dissipative
systems, seem bound to occur within the Earth's atmosphere and oceans as they undergo
compositional changes. Carbon dioxide itself provides a good example:
None of these assessments are strikingly objective, but are a matter of appearance. The risk of
catastrophic destruction of Earth civilization by an asteroid or comet is discussed, and compared
with either less exotic risks, in Chapman and Morrison, chapter 19. It has been guesstimated at
a 1 in 300,000 chance per year, a much smaller probability than that serious Greenhouse effect
will eventuate (often put at about 85%), but comparable with some rather more mundane risks
(see p.283). The risks from very high energy experimentation will no doubt rise sharply as
orders of attainable energy increase.
21
With small quantities its effect on the temperature of the air is proportional to
the amount added; there is a linear effect. However once the carbon dioxide
concentration in the air approaches 1%, new nonlinear effects come into play
and heating greatly increases. In the absence of a biosphere to fix carbon
dioxide, its concentration in the atmosphere would probably exceed the critical
figure of 1%. The Earth would then heat up rapidly to a temperature near to
that of boiling water. Increasing temperatures would speed up chemical
reacdons and accelerate their progress towards chemical equilibrium. ...
eventually ... the Earth would become permanently cocooned in a brilliant white
cloud - a second Venus, although not quite as hot (Lovelock pp.45-6).
Fortunately for Gaean prospects, the percentage of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is now
nowhere near 1% nor likely to be pushed near 1% by projected increases in carbon dioxide
levels under economic activity over the next 50 years^. However eventual exponential
growth will lead towards accentuated levels, and the side effect of such growth, the release
of carbon dioxide from forests and oceans and the considerable reduction in fixadon of
carbon dioxide with the decline of forests, will lead in that disastrous direction rather more
rapidly. The 1% bound constitutes just one of the many serious limits (fortunately a fairly
remote one) to condnuation of present developmental pracdces.
Now there can be no radonal confidence with respect to complex dissipadve systems about the behaviour of which we presendy know comparadvely little - that other nonaddidve
effects will not be encountered at a much earlier stage. After all, the Gaean system, its
atmosphere, oceans and ecosystems, will be pushed into essendally unexperienced and
substandally unknown reaches. There is, for example, no experience from comparable past
times of such elevated temperatures as Greenhouse effects will lead to, to draw upon.
'There is no evidence that the land-bound glaciers in Greenland and Antarctica have ever
completely melted in the last two million years'. There is experience of much colder
periods. 'During ice ages, the earth's average temperature has been about 5°C colder than at
present, with glaciers covering major portions of continents' (Barth p.7). But there is no
similar experience of temperatures 4-5° C warmer than at present (in any warm interglacial
period), 'a global increase of more than 2°C above present is unprecedented in the era of
human civilization' (Schneider p.6).
It would accordingly be decidedly rash, rash decision making, to assign a zero or
negligible probability to the emergence of new or unknown effects of relevance, to assume
all will go smoothly and well. That would presuppose, in any event, a completeness in
present scientific knowledge, contrary to the information we actually have that present
investigation of holistic systems, among much else, is still in its infancy. The probability of
19
In the atmosphere of the very early Earth, CO? exceeded the critical 1% figure; but solar
luminosity was about 25% less than now. With increasing solar flux the Earth would have
overheated had the proportion of CO2 not been much reduced (e.g. see Lovelock 88 p.56).
22
something critical (e.g. perhaps radicals like hydroxyl) having been left out of estimations,
of room accordingly for something unexpected or for something to go wrong, may be small
(though experience implies it is not always so), but it certainly appears to be non-zero.
For the overconfident, with excess faith in the flimsy scientific edifice, there is a
salutary lesson to be drawn from the erratic and stumbling path of the main proponent of
Gaia hypotheses, Lovelock. Lovelock, coming from a working life as an industrial chemist,
part of that time for a giant chemical transnational, had, and retained for a considerable time
after he began his holistic hypothesizing, a strong antipathy for environmentalists.^ Even
Gaia was for industry and against the environmentalists; she was going to laughingly soak
up all the pollution, courtesy of the chemical companies especially, that we humans could
throw at her. In particular, we did not really need to worry much about ozone depletion or
greenhouse gas escalations^ 'Contrary to the forebodings of many environmentalists,
finding a suitable" destructive agent to bring about a 'doom scenario" 'turns out to be an
almost insoluble problem" (79 p.40). Lovelock makes it easier for himself by helping
himself to the assumption that a doomsday scenario involves the destruction of all "life"',
'down to the last spore of some deep-buried anaerobic bacteria" (p.40). But even for the
least chauvinistic of environmentalists, destruction of all humans but the select elect would
be quite enough for a decent doomsday. Lovelock's high redefinition of a environmental
'doomsday scenario" is unacceptable. Lovelock does not however stay within the bound of
his redefinition. He proceeds to pooh-pooh the idea that anything much that we humans
could accomplish would make any difference to Gaia (p.41) or even to most humans,
including use of nuclear devices.
Unfortunately for Lovelock's credibility, he was writing three years before the
seemingly obvious wintering effects of a major nuclear war were realised by the accredited
scientific community. Appealing in a common scienufic fashion to scientific authority, he
proceeds to minimalize the human and ecological effects of a major war. The report he relies
upon as authoritative was a 1975 (unreferenced) one of 'the US Nadonal Academy of
Sciences ... prepared by an eight-man committee of their own
assisted by forty-eight other
explosions and a//
chosen from those
members,
in the effects of nuclear
to them" (p.41, italics added). Lovelock draws from
the disdnguished expert report the findings that
Coupled with this, there was a certain schizophrenia in Lovelock's attitude to the natural
environment. There was also a matching schizophrenia as to the fragility of life on Earth. On
the one side, it required very delicate settings and fine tuning to arise; this is part of the argument
for a Gaia hypothesis. On the other side, life is 'tough, robust, and [highly] adaptable', virtually
indestructible (79 p.90). But though a flawed hero, Lovelock is a hero nonetheless.
See e.g. Lovelock 79, p.40ff; and also, on ozone, 88 p.63.
23
... if half of all the nuclear weapons in the world's arsenals, about 10,000
megatons, were used in a nuclear war the effects on most of the human and
man-made ecosystems of the world would be small at first and would become
negligible within thirty years. Both aggressor and victim nations would of
course suffer catastrophic local devastation, but areas remote from the battle
and, especially important in the biosphere, marine and coastal ecosystems
would be minimally disturbed (p.41).
Three years later Turco and others proceeded to detail a very different scenario, that of
widespread and ecologically damaging nuclear winter. Not for the only time, Lovelock had
been caught out badly.
As with pollution, Lovelock has more recently shifted ground,^ considerably, on the
vulnerability of the Earth to human-induced disturbance. When a system such as Gaea in
homeostatis
is stressed to near the limits of regulation even a small disturbance may cause it
to jump to a new stable state or even fail entirely....
It could be that the regulation of the Earth's climate is not far from one of these
limits. Thus if some part of climate regulation is connected with the natural
level of CO2 then clearly we are close to the limits of its regulation. This is
because CO2 cannot be reduced much below the level observed for the last
glaciation, about 180 ppm, without seriously limiting the rate of growth of the
more abundant C3 type plants. If we perturb the Earth's radiation balance by
adding more CO2 and other greenhouse gases to the atmosphere or reduce its
capacity to regulate by decreasing the area of forests or both of these together
then we could be surprised by a sudden jump of both CO2 and temperature to a
new and much warmer steady state; or by the initiation of periodic fluctuations
between that state and our present climate.
The anomalously low abundance of CO2 on Earth when compared with the
other terrestrial planets and especially the fact that the mean temperature of the
Earth is on the cool side of the optimum for regulation, suggests strongly that
the biota is regulating the climate by pumping CO2 from the air. The common
feature of most of our pollutions and of our exploitation of the land surface
seems to be unintentionally to thwart this natural process (Lovelock 85 pp.5354).
The argument to the lesser
par/i, to significant disequilibrium with the Earth's
ecological support system destabilized, takes the following lines. The Earth appears to be a
dissipative (far-from-equilibrium) system held at its present
by a combinadon of an
(increasing) solar flux - a main energy input into the system - and its major ecological
arrangements, especially vegetational complexes and live oceans. The sheer extent to which
the resulting system differs from the stable dead system it could otherwise be is shown by
the following table for atmospheric and oceanic composidon.
Shifdng ground may be fine, especially when it is to an improved position. But it should be
done honesdy and openly, not stealthily or shiftily. Lovelock proceeds to attribute a cancature
of his <9WH previous position to cdtics of the Gaia hypothesis (as a clever Tabneation', which
also it was not): that it is 'an argument developed to allow industry to pollute at will, since
mother Gaia will clean up the mess '(85 p.53).
24
TABLE 1.
Substance
Funerary
Equilibrium
(principal components per cent).
Venus
Earth
Carbon dioxide
A
Nitrogen
1
R
Oxygen
Argon
0
C
E
A
N
S
Water
Lifeless
Mars
Earth
99
0
98
1.9
98
1.9
0
trace
trace
1
0.1
0.1
Earth
95
2.7
0.13
2
63
Salt
3.5
Sodium
nitrate
1.7
Present
0.03
79
21
1
96
n.a.
n.a.
3.5
traces
Surface
temperatures (°C)
n.a
477
Total pressure
(bars)
n.a.
90
290+50
60
-53
13
0064
1
The table is based upon tables 1 and 2 of Lovelock 79, p.37 and p.39.
The whole Earth system is accordingly far from equilibrium. Unpredictable behaviour
as loads increase is therefore almost to be expected. A likely moral is presumably: stress the
system, or destabilize ecosystem controls sufficiently, and the system may be in deep
trouble. It is relevant to inquire briefly into what evidence we so far have on this score.
To do so let us reconsider some of the array of arguments there are from some sort of
holistic organisation of the Earth (for a modest Gaea hypothesis, to the effect that the (outer)
Earth is a naturally regulated nonadditive cybernetic system, important attributes of which
are regulated by the biota).
/or the participation of the Earth's ecological support
systems, plant complexes especially, the Earth would not be blessed with its present life-
benign physical characteristics. The oceans would be much saltier and too salty for most
life, the air would not contain the present rich mixture of oxygen and carbon dioxide so
important for terrestrial life, and so on; perhaps most important the Earth would be
significantly hotter and too hot for most life, for most of what does the regulating and
stabilizing of present conditions. For the solar flux has increased in intensity about 30%
since life appeared on Earth, whereas the mean global temperatures have exhibited no
25
corresponding increase, but have remained relatively constant. Such an expected constancy
in the face of disturbing inputs is ascribed, under holistic approaches that do something to
explain it, to the concerted activity of plant life, as already indicated.
The general tenor of the argument is so far this:- By arguments from physical and
other models, and because of uncertainties, the probability that something could go badly
wrong is not merely nonzero^ but indeed far from negligible. Part of the argument can be
put as follows:- There is a decent probability that a modest Gaea hypothesis holds. But
then, there is a considerable probability that excessive Greenhouse build-up will lead to
damaging system destabilization. So combining probabilities, there at least a nonnegligible
probability of such destabilization.
An analogy should now emphasize both the dubiousness of what is being proposed
under adaptationism and the precariousness of the human predicament. The proposal is to
take this ancient craft, now overloaded with human passengers and their heavy baggage, a
cargo it was never organised to carry, out on new routes and run it faster and higher than it
has ever travelled before. Even for an experimental prototype, a now very fast (air-)bus say,
with a select test crew, such a procedure, of running over new uncharted routes at speeds
and heights never attained before, would be risky enterprise. With an ancient craft, with a
heavy non-elite cargo of baggage and passengers (some whom try to interfere with the
controls), the proposal is extremely rash. For the chances that the craft will break/down and
perhaps crash, with serious consequences to passengers and for the baggage, are greatly
elevated over the risks of proceeding as usual much more slowly. With the costs of crashing
so severe, rational operators and sensible pilots would not take them.^
Unfortunately the analogy is not at all far-fetched, but resembles what is in store for
spaceship Earth, already under significant stress with its excessive human passenger load
and their heavy ecological practices. Not only is the future itself pretty new territory, but it
is a future at terrestrial temperatures never before attained. As a result too of these enhanced
temperatures, important processes will proceed faster than ever before, in particular all
chemical processes. Simply to take the craft up there, as do-nothing and adaptation
approaches would have is to emulate the risks and hubris of Daedelus; such approaches are
From logical theories of probability such as Camap's non-zero probabilities are rather easily
reached (perhaps too easily, with the converse feature that natural laws never obtain high
probabilities. The difficulty can be averted, to some extent, by restriction to physical models.)
The analogy is an old one, which we exploited before in the nuclear case; for the "bus analogy",
see Routley and Routley. The analogy admits of much graphic variation. Instead of running the
craft at excess speed, an alternative or additional image is that of destroying the controls of the
craft. Lovelock deploys this apposite image (88 p.63), which corresponds to the demolition of
Gaean control systems. Others speak of a colossal experiment with the Earth; but strictly the
conditions for a controlled experiment are not met.
26
aptly named D<2^Zfa?i. Given anthropic terrestrial practices, a Daedelian future and fate
should not be excluded.
4. A Sting in the Cosmic Tail: the mini-Furphy theorem and on the iikeiy
decline of Homo sapiens spp. economicus.
The anthropic doomsday argument developed relies upon a modified Murphy's law.
The trouble with the initial formulation of Murphy's law:
^anyf/ung can go wrong, if wii/,
was that it was insufficiently qualified, much too absolutist, and apparently self-refuting.^
Certain crucial qualifications are required:* Replacement of the too certain conclusion by a somewhat weaker probabilistic one: for
instance, it pro&a&/y will.
* Correlative to weakening the conclusion, strengthening the premiss, by rendering it more
specific; namely, in place of "anything" or "something" put "some thing ... given a chancy
situation".
The modified formulation is accordingly the following mini-Furphy proposition^
r/HKg can ge/iMZMe/y go wrong, given o re/onvefy cAoncy Mfi/ohon,
zf pro/MZ&iy wi/i.
Here "chancy" means more or less what it means according to the dictionaries: doubtful,
decidedly risky, or as we shall construe it, having a comparadvely low probability vis-a-vis
its altemadves. The precise extent of relative chanciness will be explained as we go.
The proposidon is itself a corollary of a more general result, an ancient principle. The
generalisadon replaces "go wrong" by "happen'; the ancient principle is that of jy/^ndfM^,
sometimes stated, with quite insufficient reservations, as that all places are full, or ony
ggnfdn^/y
^fofg
&onn<% fo
rgo/fy^Z (when genuinely possible states are
compadble with all that is already transpiring). The principle, whose distinguished history is
traced in Lovejoy, has emerged in contemporary particle physics, in such forms as the
For this and other formulations of Murphy's law, and many loosely associated humorous
maxims with grains of truth encapsulated, see Block. As to the history of the "law", which
originated with J.M. Chase, editor of Aw'adPH
see the
A/nerzcgmi;
Chase's inidal formulation in a 1955 issue read 'If an aircraft part can be installed incorrectly,
someone will install it that way". Silberman's paradox, that if Murphy's Law can go wrong, it
will, is not a genuine paradox. For it can simply be asserted that where Murphy's Law is a real
law it will not go wrong. The connection of Murphy's Law with the pnnciple of plendtude
appears to have escaped much notice.
This little theorem was originally titled the Murphy-Leslie theorem. It is an adaptation,
suggested by Leslie's work, of Murphy's Law. While this secuon is overwhelmingly indebted to
Leslie, the arguments developed
from those Leslie advances. For Leslie's arguments and
also his debts, and so the transitive debts of this section, see Leslie himself, who deserves to be
read in defence his own legidmate doomsday apprehensions. The Appendix indicates the very
limited extent to which Leslie's arguments arc here endorsed.
27
following: if a thing (e.g. an elementary particle) is not forbidden, excluded by quantum
rules, then it is bound to occur (or be realised), even is "compulsory". For things and
events generally, such completeness (all nonexcluded particle niches are occupied) cannot
reasonably be expected.^ The main mini-plentitude proposition has, like its mini-Furphy
specialization to bad outcomes, to take the much more hedged form: if something can
genuinely happen, given a relatively chancy situation, it probably will.
To prove this proposition, let us first recast it in appropriate symbolic form. Let D be
some arbitrary (bad) situation, a suitable disaster in the intended application. Let the
possibility of D's happening - such as something's going wrong - be represented by a non
zero probability, and genuineness by non-negligible probability. It can be assumed that that
probability, P(D), is small; if it were large enough the requisite conclusion would follow in
any case. Let C represent the relativizing features, what is given that renders the situation
chancy. Then what we aim to show is that where P(D) is small positive, P(D { C) is
probable.
The proof applies a special case of Bayes' theorem, which takes the following form
where there are n alternative hvpotheses hi,...,hn including h:
P(h { i)
=
"
* Pd 1 M
I P(hr) X P(i { hr)
r = 1
Here h is the hypothesis, which in our application is D, i is the additional information (or, as
in Carnap, a new observation), which in our case is C.28 P(h j i) is the probability of h
given i, or of h on condition i (the backward arrow notation, { , symbolises the condition
There is a marvellous Greek term,
which could serve to cover items where the particle
physics "principle" is satisfied. 'We may call an event agathonic to convey that, though in itself
it was highly unlikely, we might have known that something of that sort was bound to happen.
... from the name of the tragic poet to whom Aristotle attributes the view that it is very probable
that the improbable should happen. (Kaplan p.9 rearranged). Is the chronic chthonic Greenhouse
escalation agathonic?
The formulation is a special case of that proved in Carnap, p.331; namely that (absolute) case
where the evidence e is elided, or e set = 1. A similar result follows, subject to slightly more
rigorous conditions, in relevant probability theory; see Routley 79 p.954.
In effect we shall look at the form
P(h ) ,) =
--------------- * PC < D
'
P(h) X P(i { h) + XP(hr) X P(i { hr)
n
with the sum excluding the product for h.
Though demonstrable given satisfiable exclusion and exhaustion conditions, Bayes' theorem is
not lacking critics, in part because of the surprises this bit of logic can deliver. Carnap meets
the objection that Bayes' theorem has sometimes 'been applied to cases where it led to strange or
even absurd results' thus: 'This was mostly due to an uncritical use of the principle of
indifference :... [The] theorem is provable ... on the basis of those weak assumptions which
practically all theories of probability seem to have in common' (p.331, sub 1 elided). Of course
the present applications could (just) be objected to on the grounds that the logical conditions for
the theorem to apply are not fully satisfied.
28
involved and shows its direction). For simplicity we shall suppose that all the alternatives to
D are concentrated (as far as symbolic exposure goes) in one, namely D*. Then the form we
seek to apply is simply:
P(D { C)
=
__________ { D)_______________ _
'
P(D) x P(C { D) + P(D*) x P(C { D*)
The arithmetic details needed can be tabulated in a revealing form as follows:
C<2.$ay
D
D*
Initial (or prior) probability
d
1-d
m, say 1/d
m/L,say 1/d!
of outcome
relative chance that C
As it is the
chance of C that matters, we can rescale to set m = 1/d. To make C
relatively chancy, L has some modest size; specifically let L exceed 1-d/d.
Then the probability to be estimated, P(D { C), is
d x 1/d
dxl/d + (l-d)/dL
_
"
__ 1
1+^
where k -
- That is, P(D { C) = y where k = 1,
andP(D { C)>
when
-when L >
.
Thus D is probable, at least in being more probable than not, given C, when L is of at least
modest size, i.e. given C is relatively chancy. In a merely apparently more general form of
the estimation, where we do not align m to d,
P(D { C)
______ d x m______
d x m + (1-d) x m/1
1
1
1 + k'
as before. That is, m drops out, only the relative chanciness really matters. The little
plendtude theorem follows as before.
Now to put some relevant flesh on these abstract statements and figures. Let D be
some future disaster such as the catastrophic decline, for instance, through summer or winter
phenomena, of the human species, from which the enormous present population never
recovers. At worst (from a chauvinistic angle) the population, like many catastrophically
effected by human activities, goes extinct. Suppose, for a bifurcating outcome, there is a
29
catastrophe stage, before halfway through next century, 2050. If humans do not get their act
together before then, they go into catastrophic decline, as already indicated. If however they
do get their ecopolitical act together then humans, while they hardly live happily ever after
(poverty, inequality, domination, and other evils not being removed), continue to persist or
even grow in numbers, perhaps fanning out through the solar system (in the way envisaged
by too many physicists). Suppose further we are optimists, imagining that the prior
probability of D, ecodisaster and human decline, is small, say 1%. That is d = .01, and the
inidal probability of D*, human "success", is .99. The figures are pretty notional. Supreme
optimists would want to set d much smaller, pessimists rather at a higher probability.
Table 2.
D human decline
D* human success
Initial probabilities
1%, i.e. .01
99%, i.e. .99
Relative chanciness,
1/100, i.e. .01
1/100 x 1/1
ofC
Then the probability of human decline given C,
.01 X .01
P(D { C)
.01 x .01 + .99 x .01/1
1/2
, when 1 > 99.
For example, when 1 is set, conservatively, at 1,000, then the probability of human decline
given present chanciness is approximately 90%. It remains to fill out C, thereby showing
that 1 is very likely much much larger than 99, and correspondingly human decline so much
the more probable in the light of additional information, i.e. 6!
usual jargon.
probable in the
There are several high risk factors, acting in a certain concert, factors emphasized more
than a decade ago in world systems modellings (such as, most famously, that of the Club of
Rome), Malthusian factors such as human population, economic product, pollution, energy
consumption, ... . (The list rolls on.) It is appropriate to estimate posterior probability
relative to any one of these, any of which can serve as C, in order to expose the riskiness of
present gross human practices. In brief, because there are several high risk factors, so there
are several appropriate relative or reference classes. Thus the posterior probability is
assessed relative to such matters as humans now being thus and so, our or my being alive
30
now (Leslie's first-person reference class), this being present energy use, present waste
output, present forest destruction and so forth. The upshot is not the triviality that
probability can be jacked up by placement in a suitably restricted context, though that
analyticity is established.^ The point is that, environmentally, more affluent humans have
fdgmjg/vgj produced such adverse circumstances, which are upon us, the very
circumstances typically productive of limitadon results.
In sum, the aadirapfc argument considers the environmentally invidious situadon of
present humans on the Earth. The argument can be carried through either in terms of sheer
population, gross numbers, or in terms of human resource grabbing, as esdmated for
instance through energy consumption. In fact all the other factors are anthropically tied, to
gross human numbers, via the environmental impact equation and because the levels are
human-use numbers.
Let us consider the prospects given addidonal information as to the present phase of
gross human population. C will be some such proposition as: the proportional
preponderance of humans who have ever lived alive now, or to personalize it: the chance that
you or your family, are alive now.
Diagram 6: (?ar praf^nf popidadon pred/camg/zf <?n die /wo jce/iarioj.
Humans have got themselves - to some extent pat themselves, though much may be
the result of muddling through - into an extremely dubious, environmentally insidious, and
One of the weaknesses in the argument may appear to be its dependence on an appropnate choice
of relative class. For, the high relative probabilities can fall away if different reference classes,
not exhibiting such growth patterns are taken, c.g. present wattle distribution, birds being thus
and so. On the other hand, probabilities can be elevated even more by selection of more unusual
reference classes, such as our being scientists, or being computer programmers, etc.. It is not so
remarkable that probabilities can be wound up - or down - perhaps quite dramatically, by
appropriate relativisation, by appropriate selection of a reference class.
31
unsustainable position, on a range of critical parameters. Their numbers are excessive, their
high energy use is excessive, their waste and their polludon are both excessive - and all these
and other excesses are at the steep end of upward exponendal curves. Several relevant
graphs are distressingly exponendal, with the present in the near verdeal growth phase:
Digram 7 : GrowrA in
are drawn from Boyden).
envzronm^nfgZZy r^Z^vanr parg/neter-P (all graphs exhibited
32
Many other similarly shaped graphs could be added, for instance for growth of
pollution, of waste products, of weapons (in terms of tonnes of explosive power), of other
greenhouse gases such as the chlorofluorocarbons (which accelerated from zero in the
nineteen thirties), and so on. The display typifies the accelerating human roller coaster (or
air bus).
Those curves are dghtly interconnected, in criss-crossing fashion. For example, the
productivity of contemporary agriculture which enables the feeding of huge urbanised
human populations depends on a very high energy use (in term of energy efficiency,
contemporary high-tech agriculture falls below that of much traditional agriculture). The
maintenance of high populations with supplies of cheap food depends in tum on fossil fuel
agriculture. Because of the intertwining of these phenomena, there is no easy way of getting
off the accelerating roller-coaster.
Nor, as observed, is there much real effort devoted to slowing the coaster. For
politicians it would be politically risky and inexpedient to try (for them the rhetoric about an
ecologically sustainable future must remain just that, more rhetoric). For many other power
holders and brokers such ideas are ideologically excluded: growth remains the gospel. So a
precarious position becomes ever more precarious. Humans are in a decidedly chancy
position, because of their population situation and other limitative factors; they are becoming
very disaster-prone. If humans want an acceptable future for themselves - they have
virtually ruled out an acceptable future for many other creatures, through their predominantly
selfish thoughtless greedy practices - then they will probably have to mend their collective
ways, very considerably and very soon. But, given the nature of the beast, that itself seems
improbable.
Humans, if they seek a more assured future, should make a concerted effort to put
themselves into a less precarious position. That could be achieved by proceeding to reduce
relative risks. These relative risks, sharply reducing prospects for a reliable future, fall into
two classes:-
* Manufactured risk factors, including weaponry such as mega-nuclear devices and
elements of biochemical warfare, and experimental equipment such as very high energy
particle accelerators (which could perhaps tunnel under a metastable state or induce a miniBig-Bang; see again Leslie).
* Accumulated risk factors, such as the huge relative size of human population, energy
consumption, greenhouse gas production, etc.30
30
As before, there are various different reasons why these induce risk, limitative and probabilistic
in particular.
33
Despite the ideological obstacles - enormous political, religious and economic
obstacles blocking the way of requisite change - major efforts should be put into reducing
these types of risks. Philosophers, beyond other intellectuals, cozdd have a significant
role in breaking down the ideological barriers and in clarifying and developing the arguments
involved. Given the track-record of professional philosophers, don't expect very much.31
5. Further notes on human prospects and improved practices: What in
generai ought to be done about the Greenhouse problematique?
The general result already reached, that humans collectively should substantially
reduce their risk taking, and in particular reduce their gross numbers, extends to radonal
Greenhouse decision and action theory. But that large and difficult challenge - with all that
it entails by way of radical change upon present arrangements - is not all that there is to try,
all that should radonally be attempted.
While some increase in mean global temperatures, and what that implies, can no longer
be averted, the potentially most damaging effects can be: namely, by curtailing humaninduced output of Greenhouse gases. Moreover, there is an approximate upper bound of
importance, upon temperature, which can serve to supply a significant limit on output. That
bound - which conrrnns rfyZr raZd/zg by confining encountered situadons a? those where there
is some
ba-sds* - is given by esdmated temperatures during Aldthermal and
Eemian eras. Those temperatures are estimated to have been between about 1/2 a degree and
1 degree Centigrade above contemporary (pre-1980) temperatures; so the upper bound is
about PC.
31
There is much else for philosophers to contribute in these fields, especially on the expanding
issues of future redistributive justice, ecological equity, genuinely pluralistic arrangements, etc.
34
gZo^zzZ
zznd^r Z&ree zn/^rcy/zzzg sc^zzzzrzoy.
AT
(°C )
Dnzgram # :
B^zckgroz/nd in/orw^hozz:
'Annual mean global surface air temperature computed for trace gas scenarios A, B, and C
.... Scenario A assumes continued growth rates of greenhouse gas emissions typical of the
past 20 years, i.e., about 1.5% per year emission growth; scenario B has emission rates
approximately fixed at current rates; scenario C drastically reduces trace gas emissions
between 1990 and 2000.... The shaded range is an estimate of global temperature during the
peak of the current and previous interglacial periods, about 6,000 and 120,000 years before
present, respectively. The zero point fbr observation is the 1951-1980 mean; the zero point
for the model is the control run mean' (Walsh p.14, from whom the diagram is drawn).
Not only will a continuation of current emission trends take global temperatures clean
through and way beyond that bound, so also will an alternative set-up where emission rates
are fixed more or less at current rates. The only apparent way to remain rationally within an
experiential domain is to curtail sharply trace gas emissions, beginning early in the 1990s.
That means shifting from the dominant growth ideology; it means expensive re- and de
industrialisation. Short of catastrophic nuclear war it seems unlikely.
35
There are several reasons why requisite change looks unlikely. Firstly, requisite
changes are generally difficult, ideologically unwelcome, extensive and expensive.
Politicians will accordingly be extremely loath to undertake them, to offer more than
tokenism. Moreover, those states and corporations that avoid making hard changes will,
like free riders, be at a comparadve advantage in the short term as regards both profits and
power. Secondly, then, there are Tragedy-of-Commons reasons, i.e. those deriving from
general Prisoners' Dilemma situations. However the troughs induced by such dilemmas
could be climbed out of; they can be transcended given, for instance, some resolute players
committed to major change, despite heavy commercial and political disadvantages, and
prepared to pursue judicious tit-for-tat strategies. Thirdly, because main Greenhouse effects
are gradual, long-term by polidcal standards, and uncertain, the main pohdcal temptation will
undoubtedly again be to avoid the problems - to muddle incrementally along, and hope that
the problems will dissolve or that something (some magical technology perhaps) will turn up
or that adaptadon will occur or, at worst, that the problems will fall to some successors.
Meanwhile the problems will continue to be dismissed as "too hard", "too uncertain", and
their costs, polidcal and economic and ideological, as "too great". We have already
accumulated substantial experience of these inadequate evasive, dismissive and
postponement procedures.
What should of course be attempted involves extensive changes and restructuring
across virtually the entire face of industrialisation and urbanisation, and therewith extensive
alterations in the demands they impose upon new urban environments. The ultimate
objective as regards the Greenhouse problems - a reduction in the rate of increase of, and
then in the gross levels of, emissions of Greenhouse gases - direcdy implies, above all,
constraints on the combustion of fossil fuels, both decelerating use and improved use, but
also much better regulation, in one way or another, of production of other Greenhouse gases
and of interference with ecosystems storing or absorbing Greenhouse gases. The main
burden as regards requisite changes falls on the main users of fossil fuels and main
consumers of Greenhouse relevant products, namely the Earth's most affluent centres: North
America, Japan and Europe. In these centres especially, the work should be started on
reducing consumption of fossil fuel involved goods and services. (In a thoroughly
methodical approach a GG, Greenhouse gas, rating would be assigned to each sort of good
and service, the objective being to reduce these ratings, an effort that would no doubt
concentrate upon highly rated and easily altered items.) The general types of changes needed
or desirable are well enough known to environmental planners, and include: restructuring of
cides into network systems, so that reliance upon automobile commudng and truck transport
of goods is much reduced, improved building practices for energy efficiency cogeneration
and related technologies, increased reliance on solar energy technologies, and so on.
36
Venturing much further into unknown territory are the types of political and economic
alterations required to implement the planning changes. It has already been insinuated that
conventional governmental and public policy practices, analyses and procedures are
inadequate to the tasks ahead. For these presuppose, for example, reladvely short-term and
quite bounded settings, in which most information (as to costs, benefits, beneficiaries, etc.)
is more or less certain, and where an ethical/ideological framework is taken for granted.
Indeed most of the favoured procedures - such as reliance on standard cost-benefit analyses,
on markets of orthodox economics, on muddling through, etc - not only depend on certainty
and are unfitted for situations of uncertainty, and assume at best a decidedly shallow
approach to environmental matters; but further they tend to exhibit, what is quite compatible
with short-term rationality, long-term irrationality. Much intellectual effort should be
invested, straightaway, in designing and developing improved political structures and
matching decision-making procedures. Such structures deserve to be better articulated and
understood - a large task - before the struggle is begun in earnest - perhaps in East
European style - to put some of them into place.
From the angle of radical change, then, impact of the Greenhouse problematique is far
from entirely negative. For it may encourage or even force many more of us into thinking
about and doing what should be done from a deep perspective anyway, such as rectifying
recent heavy human impact upon environments, and beginning at once to put in place more
environment-friendly arrangements and structures'^
Richard Sylvan
APPENDIX: As to the Doomsday Argument circulated by Leslie.
The anthropic argument of the penultimate section applies limitation results to escalate
probabilities. By contrast, the argument deployed by Leslie has comparatively little to do
with limitation features or the special risks of the present times (it does depend upon some
features of the temporal distribution of the total human population). As a consequence also,
32
This more positive conclusion contrasts with final pessimistic corollary which ended the
previous interim version of this essay. The corollary, which followed the gloomy (but
warranted) claim that requisite restructuring change seems unlikely, and was intended to underpin
it, was simply this: Humans collectively are not (particularly) rational. But we had already
been told as much by philosophers like Russell and surmised as much from the latest
perambulations in the long history of human wars.
Finally, a significant debt should be recorded at least to all the following: to John Leslie for
leading ideas and for comments, to David Bennett for comments and for research and production
assistance, to Pat Troy for an opportunity to read his unpublished paper on the topic, to
Malcolm Slade and Joseph Wayne Smith for encouragement to write on the topic, and to several
members of the audience at the Australasian Association of Philosophy Conference, held in
Christchurch, New Zealand, during August 1989, where parts of the essay were fruitfully
discussed and several worthwhile suggestions or objections made.
37
it has no direct application to the special environmental problems of the present. It yields at
best a general admonition against human risk taking - and even the inference to that is shaky
the argument itself is unavoidable.
The central claim of Leslie's argument comes to this: unless the human race ends soon,
then any one of us present humans is not an ordinary one at all, but an exceptionally early
one. (Such statistical ordinariness is presumably supposed analytic upon total human
populadon distributions.) Thus (contraposing and distributing a reasonable expectation
functor), since it is reasonable to expect that such humans are ordinary (minor premiss), it is
reasonable to expect the human race will soon die out
of the weaknesses of Leslie's Doomsday Argument, especially in its quasiinductive guise (e.g. PQ p.2), is its background reliance upon an indifference principle
assumpdon, much as in faulty applicadons of Bayes' theorem, already noted. (The principle
is used in Leslie's um argument; see p.12.) The problemadc assumption shows up in c^rz.y
clauses in Leslie's deontic probability (typicality) principle, what he describes as
"the Argument's underlying principle' (in fact a minor premiss): one should. %ZZ eZ^ &^Zng
take one's position to be fairly typical rather than very untypical, or in different
formulation: whenever Zach'/zg gvz'^nce to r/zg ccnfra/y, one should prefer to think of one's
own position as fairly typical rather than highly untypical (both principles are stated, though
with different emphases in PQ p.2). Much the same principle, but in stronger form, operates
in what he calls 'the crux of the argument': dmZ^yj you /zav^ specially jfrong
to
believe that you are a very untypically early human, you ought not to believe it' (p.10,
rearranged, different emphasis).
Unfortunately for the Argument's principle, matters are not so indifferent, things are
not so equal, some sciendsts have reasons which they think are cogent, for believing that
present humans are fairly early members of the species. Consider Lovelock, whom, as we
have seen, used to think that the Earth and its life systems were virtually indestructible; it is
only necessary to add the familiar belief that humans themselves (like rats) are very
resourceful beings, virtually impossible to exterminate, to arrive at the result that there is
reason to believe that the human race is bound to persist for many more generations. That
is, of course, both the informed and not unreasoned popular view, guiding much practice.
As a result the principle is, at the very least, in doubt. Accordingly what Leslie presents as
the crux of the argument is not endorsed here.
The Argument is vulnerable in other ways as well. For one, the main premiss is, in
duly contraposed form, not quite so evident, as for instance the human race could just tail off
at low population levels on Earth. For another, the distribution of the functor 'it is
reasonable to expect that' across the conditional involved is not unproblematic: the
38
distribution principle itself is contested in the literature, and here the result it is supposed to
yield looks unreasonable!
References
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A. Block, Mzap/zy'.? Law. Boo/: Two, Magnum, Methuen Paperbacks, London, 1980.
S. Boyden, WasfarK Czvz'ZzzarzaK zn EzaZagzcaZ Parspacrzva, Clarendon, Oxford, 1987.
L.R. Brown and others, ^rara a/r/za WarZzZ 79^9, Norton/Worldwatch, New York, 1989;
referred to as Worldwatch.
R. Carnap, Eagz'caZ FazzK<7a?zaK.s' a/ PraZ?a/?zZzzy, Second edition, University of Chicago
Press, 1962.
C.R. Chapman and D. Morrison, Ca^mzc Cara^rrap/za^, Plenum, New York, 1989.
R.M. Cyert and M.H. DeGroot, 7?ayasz'aK AKaZy^z^ aK<7 (/zzcortoz/zzy ZK EcaKaKzzc T/zaary,
Rowman & LittEeld, New Jersey, 1987.
'Developing policies for responding to climatic change", Report of the Beijer Institute,
February 1988.
W.T. Keeton, BzaZagzcaZ -SczaKca, Third edition, Norton, New York, 1980.
I. Prigogine, Or^ar azTra/C/zaag , Batam, Toronto, 1984.
J. D. Hughes, 'Gaia: an ancient view of our planet", T/za EcaZagz^r 13(1983) 54-60.
R. Jeffrey, T/za Eagzc p/Dacz\YzaK 2ed., University Chicago Press, 1983.
A. Kaplan, 7K Pz/r^zzz'r p/Wz'-y&wz, Glencoe, Beverly Hills Ca., 1977.
J. Leslie, 'Risking and World's End", EzzZZazzK a/ r/za C<2K<2<7Z<2K Azzc/aar 5aczary 10(3)
(1989) 10-15; all references to Leslie are to this article unless otherwise indicated.
J. Leslie, 'Is the end of the world nigh?", T/za E/zzZa^ap/zzcaZ Czzarrar/y, to appear; referred to
as PQ.
J.E. Lovelock, Gaza. A Kaw Zaa/z ar Zz/a <9K Earr/z, Oxford University Press, 1979.
J. Lovelock, 'Are we destabilising world climate?", T/za Eaa/agz^r 15(1985) 52-55.
J.Lovelock, 'Man and Gaia", T/za Earr/z E apart. MaKz'zarzKg z/za Eazz/a/ar Czzr EKVz'raKKzaKZ
(ed. E. Goldsmith and N. Hilyard), Mitchell Beazley, London, 1988, 51-64.
A. Lovejoy, T/za Graaf C/zaz'K p/EazKg, Harvard University Press, Massuchusetts, 1950.
B. McKibben, 'Is the world getting hotter?" T/za Aaw Yar% Eavz'aw, 8 December 1988, 711.
G.I. Pearman (ed.), GraaK/zazz^a. P/aKKZKg /ar c/zKzaza c/zaKga, Division of Atmospheric
Research,CSIRO, 1988.
39
B. Pittock, 'Climatic catastrophes: The international implications of the greenhouse effect
and nuclear winter', Peace Research Centre, Working Paper No. 20, RSPacS, Australian
National University, 1987.
B. Pittock, 'Forests beyond 2000 - effect of atmospheric change', AM.yfra/i(2M For^rry
50(1987a) 205-215.
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R. Routley, 'Ultralogic as universal?' reprinted as an Appendix in Expiring
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S. Schneider, 'Not to decide is to decide', in
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(ed. T. Dendy), Department of Environment and Planning, Adelaide, 1989, 5-10.
R. Sylvan, 'Modern myths concerning rationality: the imperatives of consistency and
(constrained) maximality', 1988, Rarzona/zzy antZ ZrrazfpfzaZzzy.* E^r <2HtZ
(ed. S.
Bidermann and B. Scharfstein), Brill, 1989.
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10-19.
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1031
/&J
29.5.95
PARADIGMATIC ROOTS
OF
ENVIRONMENTAL PROBLEMS
Abstract. Virtually all diagnoses of the roots, and sources, of environmental
problems are defective. While defective diagnoses persist, problems will not
be adequately addressed.
Focal questions ask why human communities so frequently degrade,
impoverish or even destroy their own environments, and more generally why
the whole earth is now in jeopardy through human enterprise. More
immediate answers, sometimes correct so far as they go (which is not deep
enough), look to components of environmental impact equations. More
thorough-going answers fall into two classes: first those that do not question
entrenched paradigms, but seek (unsuccessfully) to explain widespread
problems simply through defective practice, and secondly those that, rightly
recognising that defective practice is no adequate answer, look to deeper
paradigmatic sources of problems. A fatal flaw in most of the latter answers
lies in their monistic concentration on a single paradigm, or single narrow
band of paradigms. These flaws are exposed, whence a wider, more
satisfactory answer can be broached.
Background busywork includes firstly, explaining problems and relevant
paradigms and how paradigms operate regarding environmental problems,
and secondly, detailed disentangling of proposed and alleged sources of the
problems. With this done, it is argued that none of these answers,
fashionable or other, to the focal questions is satisfactory. Here lies the
important hard, but very negative and decidedly incomplete, work of the
present investigation.
A different more complex investigation is accordingly instigated. An initial
answer is located through broader classes of paradigms : environmentally
friendly and unfriendly. Further effort is expended, profitably, in trying to
characterize these classes. Among significant corollaries, one is striking:
philosophy as portrayed through its standard history is dismal environmental
news.
�2
PARADIGMATIC ROOTS
of
ENVIRONMENTAL PROBLEMS
Broaching focal questions, and searching for deeper answers.
Human activity is now degrading terrestrial eco-systems at an extraordinarily rapid rate
(liquidation of natural forest systems affords just one striking example). In modern times
humans have devised sophisticated and sophistical idea-systems which justify such system
degradation. Often in the past they would not have seen such transformation as mattering;
many remain so programmed, regarding transformation as increasing wealth (a presumption
encouraged under mainstream economics). More recently dominant human cultures have
developed social systems which induct most humans into degradation procedures (through
need, tax impositions, pressure to engage in cash economies, and so on) and which weave
entrapping justificatory webs (through agencies, councils, courts, educations, missions, and so
on).
Whence arises an increasingly broached question1: Why is this happening? More
explicitly, why do human communities so frequently degrade and impoverish their
environments, their own habitats? Indeed why do they sometimes, persistently, perhaps over a
long period, destroy their own habitats? More sweepingly, why is the whole earth now perhaps
in jeopardy through human enterprise^ For those eager to anticipate the main outcome, the
unremarkable answer to be eventually found to these focal questions is in essence this: because
too many humans, especially those in control of environmentally impacting enterprises, remain
committed to or caught within environmentally unfriendly paradigms, diverse paradigms but all
displaying quite insufficient regard for the health and well-being of relevant habitats and of the
earth.
Parts of any answers to such focal questions come immediately through environmental
impact equations, conservation laws, and such like. For example, degradation is occurring
through the impact of overpopulation, excessive pollution, damaging or faulty technologies,
and so on.
While such answers are important, and often correct as far as they go in
combination, and while they may correctly indicate what has to be changed somehow, they are
nonetheless somewhat superficial, and they leave much to be explained. For example, they do
not explain why a community persisted upon a course that deliberately led to such problems, or
why it is so resistant to changes that might reduce impacts and pull it out of its problem-holes.
Less superficial answers look to ideologically entrenched attitudes and commitments, to
1
In sources as diverse as Shepard (first page) and Jacobs (p.23). Contrary to other sources, such
as Marshall, humans are by no means the only biological species that proceed to degrade or
impoverish their own environments. Introduced “pest” species, such as rabbits and mynahs in
Antipodes, also do so; perhaps some botanical species contrive to as well.
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pervasive paradigms that underwrite anti-environmental practices, as for instance the wood
production ideology does forestry practice, even so-called “new forestry”, and market ideology
does economic practice, even so-called “environmental economics”.2
An illustrative example which reveals the power of paradigms in blocking or facilitating
action will shortcut a more elaborate argument, through action theory, to the efficacy of idea
systems. Consider an unwanted pregnancy, resulting despite due precautions or whatever.
Observe that, more and more there are comparatively safe technologies available to effect
termination and seemingly solve the immediate problem. Ask: why so many people are
opposed to choice of abortion? A very common answer is: because they are operating under an
elaborate paradigm, typically organised religion (bureaucratic Christianity in the West), themes
of which, the creeds of which, prohibit such choices.3 Of course pro-choice considerations are
also paradigmatically embedded, for instance in forms of liberalism. Picturesquely, a social
paradigm imposes controls on action, a system of red and green lights on a captured agent's
routing procedures.
Or with a different picture, paradigms project a steeply impeding
Paradigms not only guide, control and limit; they also
correlatively give permission—as, for instance, space to play god, freedom to release a new
topography on action space.
species or variety which may or has proved a pest or noxious or has been biologically
engineered, liberty to neglect or degrade or vandalize. But paradigms do even more; they
facilitate explanation, above all they make understanding possible. In these regards, they may
work for better as well as for worse. Thus it is not a matter of getting rid of them, were this
even feasible, but of getting right paradigms.
The settings in terms of which agents such as humans act and operate, even down-toearth everyday agents, invariably include, not far in the background, paradigms, cultures,
creeds, ideologies, pervasive myths or the like, all idea-systems, all involving models (in a
technical sense) of one sort or another. Even the most practical (and vociferously practical) of
humans are governed by background ideosystems.
It is in terms of these background
ideosystems that a great deal concerning human practices with respect to natural environments
can be explained, what would otherwise lack satisfactory explanation.4
That explanation comes not however through a single paradigm, as has too often been
supposed in trying to answer focal questions, but through a bundle of somehow aligned
paradigms. Compare how a person may be represented, in social science, not through a single
2
3
4
For more on this style of explanation, see further RP.
It is not, going to be contended that religion—or a certain Abramic religion, such as
Christianity—is the main villain of the environmental piece. It is now well enough appreciated
that religions in general borrowed much in their damaging articles from ancient philosophies.
What will however, be suggested is that dominant philosophies do have much to answer for in
this regard.
Further, as logical positivists observed, explanation and justification patterns tend to overlap.
How people justify their practices offers an explanation, though perhaps a misleading or
superficial explanation, of them.
;
As well, positivistic theories show, though in an oversimplified way, how models, which
paradigms are, serve in explanation justification and understanding. See e.g. Hanson.
/.
/
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role or program, but by way of a set of interconnected roles. What has been regularly
overlooked in seeking deeper paradigmatic sources of environmental problems is systematic
plurality. In part this neglect of plurality can be explained through countervailing propensity to
seek single answers, and to try to locate uniqueness, where however causes and sources are
plural. So it is with paradigmatic sources and roots of environmental problems. They are
plural.
As to what is going on theoretically, there is a fairly complex story to be told, an easier
working image for which is appropriately ecological. That image focusses upon the structure of
a perhaps impenetrable thicket or tangle, such as a dense rainforest patch, or, itself simplified, a
fig or bamboo thicket. Below an emergent top layer representing the problems concerned,
those raised by the focal questions, there is the canopy layer, of interlinked proximate causes.
Below that again stands a plurality of stems, plural supports, which can be construed as
supporting sources, and below them again, ultimately sustaining the whole structure, a
multiplicity of intertwined roots, representing paradigmatic basics.
What is sought are ultimate sources, and roots, not immediate causes. The cause of local
pollution may be a factory that an agent installed, to produce more flim-flam. That too may be
the physical source of the immediate problem. But deeper questioning seeks the reasons for
such production and such factories. While there may be problems with ideas and idea
structures as causes, as causally efficacious, these problems do not transfer to reasons and
sources. Nonetheless there are buried metaphors, and linkages, to be unscrambled: how are “A
is source of B” and “A is a root of B” to be explicated?
While there is much written on roots and sources of environmental problems or
developments virtually none of it addresses the question of what is meant by the partially
buried metaphors of roots and sources . One striking example is supplied by Pepper's useful
introductory text, The Roots of Modern Environmentalism. Although this text presents itself
specifically as concerning roots, there is in fact no explication offered of the crucial roots
metaphor/which it turns. For that matter there is no direct account of what the roots of
environmentalism—still less, though quite different, of environmental problems to which
environmentalism answers—are supposed to be (granted there is much oblique material). It is
apparent also that Pepper has become rather carried away with the roots metaphor, throwing it
into several chapter headings and applying it pretty indiscriminately to mean simply elements
(from some earlier occurrence); thus for instance, ‘the roots of the theme of reconciliation of
freedom and authority’ (p.193). Such usage is unsound. Because rudiments of some idea make
an earlier appearance in some authority or work, later workers may not have arrived at such an
idea by expanding on these rudiments; they may have arrived where they did quite
independently or by a different route. The mistake is that of reading a source or (genetic)
causal linkage into a mere temporal conjunction: post hoc, propter hoc.
Neither roots nor sources are mere beginnings or simply early occurrences; there have to
be continuing connections, with directional relationships such as supply or sustenance. But for
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roots and sources different connections and elaborations are to be expected. After all, the
metaphors, and likewise what they give rise to, are evidently different; more literally, plants
have roots, normally below them, springs and streams rise from sources, not roots, often above
them, and so on. Both differ from another popular basis-beginning buried metaphor, that of
foundations. Foundations bring in other features such as solidity, stability and comparative
permanency, while severing critical transmission features (for foundations may merely
passively support, not sustain supported superstructure).
So foundations, for all their
importance in epistemology and elsewhere iffoundationalism is correct, can be set aside.5
So far dictionaries do better than popular and philosophical texts. For instance, a short
listing for the figurature use of ‘root’ runs: ‘the basis, bottom, the fundamental part, or that
which supplies origin, sustenance, means of development, etc.’ (Concise English Dictionary).
Such a two component account will serve nicely, for a start. However conjunctions should
substantially displace disjunctions, else roots could collapse to foundations or could collapse to
mere trace element supplements. Roots both give a basis and bottom binding into a substratum
and supply sustenance and means of development. Roots connections are richer as well as
more specific than sources, which may merely show from where an item comes or is obtained.
Further that place of derivation that may not be a basis or bottom, but for instance a source
book. With roots, like normal foundations, a basis or bottom is reached, whereas sources may
have further sources (hence the search for “deeper”, even ultimate, sources). Finally, root and
source connections carry explanations, at least genetic explanations—concerning how items got
to be what and the way they are—because roots and sources are characteristically that from
which items develop. Sometimes even more information, including a whole control system,
gets transmitted. As much happens where roots are paradigmatic, to return to that strange mix
of buried metaphors.
Reaching deeper roots is important. Without locating them, perhaps all the roots (should
they resemble blackberry), problems may not get properly addressed. Should we wrongly
locate roots, then proposed resolutions directed at these, cutting them off or replacing them, will
also go astray, wrongly directed or whatever. Such is the fate of many proposals concerning
environmental problems.
There are several parts to the approach sketched, if it is to be properly elaborated—
including a working classification of environmental problems and their proximate solutions,
and an account of paradigms and their roles—before getting to paradigmatic answers to focal
questions. But we can be brief on these necessary preliminaries, because main details are
already in circulation and because they have been addressed elsewhere.
1. Problems and paradigms.
5
Despite a referee’s suggestion that discussion of “roots” ‘could be improved by a contrast of the
“roots” metaphor with the “foundations” metaphor, the fact is that we are decidedly not
concerned with foundations of environmental problems; to the contrary, we do not wish to see
them supported (if shoddily), established and so on. On the growing complexity and varying
interpretations offoundations, an emergent bog, see for instance Chisholm.
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Although these will be duly connected, with paradigms implicated in problems, they are
different components, and admit and deserve separate explanation.
la. Environmental problems and proximate solutions.
Definitions of ‘environmental problem’, and classifications of such problems, have already
been ventured.6 What problems emerge as environmental depends upon background value
framework. What counts as a major problem on deeper environmental perceptions may be but
a minor problem, or written off as not a problem at all, on shallower perspectives. Among such
indicator problems, ones here taken as serious problems, are those of
• sustaining biodiversity and
• maintaining significant wilderness.7
Even if the broad impact of human enterprise were sufficiently reduced to guarantee
comfortable survival of future humans, these desiderata may well not be guaranteed. There
would be outstanding problems.
In any event, it is not too difficult to say more or less what environmental problems are
(at worst by furnishing familiar lists), and in many cases to indicate at least in principle how
they might be resolved. Environmental impact equations, encountered in a more perceptive
classification of problems, reveal how they can be resolved. Namely, by altering relevant
impact parameters.
Given this why are they proving so intractable? Why is so little done? Why is so very
little spent, despite all the talk.8 Proximate solutions, about as far as positive science conveys
us, are not however satisfactory stopping points.
How is it, given so much scientific
information and expertise, that humans are continuing to sharply degrade, and risk substantially
destroying, their habitats.
To these, the focal questions of this exercise, there is an array of competing answers on
offer or to be met in an extensive literative. As we will soon discover, most of these answers
are too simple; and taken, as intended, as comprehensive, they are wrong. Correct answers to
the questions are however important, because if we fail to get to bottom of the issues, there is
even less prospect of satisfactory action to turn around a difficult and deterioration situation^.
That these issues do not matter, that casual human relationships, or how many devaluing
dollars uncaring humans can briefly stuff in their pockets, matter more than whole islands of
habitats—these sorts of value judgements (after all matter is a value term par excellence)
derive from and are supported by particular ideologies.
lb. Model-like objects: paradigms, ideologies, cultures ,and so on.
A paradigm can be explicated, technically, as a model in precisely a generous logical sense.9
See for example GE, which duly details connections of the problems with impact equations and
proximate solutions.
As to the extent of the problem (even) in North America, and a proposed remedy, see The
Wildlands Project.
See e.g. The cost ofpast environmental policy in OECD countries, Box 1.7, in Pearce et al, p.24.
See RP, where many environmentally relevant illustrations are given and explained.
ry)
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That is, a paradigm amounts to a structure supplied by an elaborate interpretation function on a
general system, i.e. semantical and other evaluations defined on an integrated relational
structure. Naturally it is required to be faithful to what it models, the social forms and norms,
scientific research programs, or whatever. A social paradigm, in contrast to a scientific
paradigm, is a paradigm where the propositional and action theory, the socio-political themes
and value judgements, is that of a social group. A pure culture is but a comprehensive social
paradigm, where by “comprehensive” is meant that it covers a sufficiently comprehensive part
of the life-styles and life-forms of the community concerned. There are now many examples of
formulations of the themes delivered under rival social paradigms and under different cultures;
from these, mostly sketchy formulations we can work back towards the underlying models.
The basic vehicle, a situations or worlds model, is a semantical object, an item like a
complex universal10 similarly open to a range of construals and reduction attempts, e.g.
metaphysical, conceptual, epistemic, linguistic and so on. Once this is realised, it can be seen
that successive cohorts of philosophers and sociologists, historians and geographers have
repeated one another in vaguely discerning essentially the same sorts of underlying structures
under different categorisations: thus, for instance, forms of understanding (Kant), of
consciousness (Marx), of life (Wittgenstein), conceptual schemes (Conant), presuppositions
(Collingwood), discursive formations (Foucault), Weltanschauungs, total views (Naess),
traditions (MacIntyre), traditions of thought, cultures, perspectives, outlooks, ideologies,
programs,.... An ideology, for instance, in the nonderogatory (non-Marxist) sense is an ideasA
system, initially a propositional system or theory with a relevant domain of ideas operative,
from which a paradigm can be discerned and elaborated.
Such models are typically presented in extremely truncated form, for example through a
tabulation of capsule themes. Here is a combination example:
TABLE 1: Elements of Taoism as contrasted with Deep Ecology and with the dominant
paradigm: an initial capsule formulation J1
Taoism
Deep Ecology
Dominant (Western)
Paradigm
Harmony with nature,
through Tao
Harmony with nature
Domination over nature
Nature valuable in itself;
“humanism” rejected
Natural environment
valued for itself
Nature a resource;
intrinsic value confined
to humans
It resembles a structured universal; compare e.g. Plato’s system of forms, Locke’s of complex
ideas. Naturally there are differences between, for instance, traditions (of thought) which are
historically bound, cultures, which are geographically and otherewise connected, and conceptual
schemes (where a conceptual reduction is insinuated), but all are, at logical bottom, models of
paradigmatic sort.
This tripartite example is adapted from UTD, where capsule elements of Taoism are duly
expanded.
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Levelling of differences;
wide impartiality
Biocentric egalitarianism
Human supremacy
Supplies ample
Earth supplies limited
Ample resources with
substitutes
Following Tao-te
Spiritual goals,
especially self-realisation
Material economic growth
a predominant goal
Enlightenment
Self-realisation
Personal (material)
enrichment
Doing with enough
(recycling inappropriate)
Doing with enough;
recycling
Consumerism
Non-competitive lifestyle;
voluntary simplicity
Cooperative lifestyle
Competitive lifestyle
Decentralised/neighbourhood and village focus
Decentralised/bioregional
/neighbourhood focus
Centralised/urban centred/
national focus
Hierarchy without
power structure;
anarchoid
Non-hierarchical/
grassroots democracy
Power structure
hierarchical
Limited technology
Appropriate technology
High technology
Considerable caution
Precautionary practice
Risking taking (verging
upon adventurism)
Paradigms control action space by some equivalent of directives; under an earlier analogy, red
and green lights duly interpreted. They may not supply direct commands, general obligations
and prohibitions, but may operate more indirectly. For instance an enlightened person, a role
model, a person following Tao, would act this way, not that. (Taoism, like certain modern
ideologies, eschews deontic judgements.)
Paradigms are absorbed and they guide practice. They commonly form part of actors'
worlds; they are certainly part of actors' programs for practice and considered action in a world.
In a sense then, they are things, programs actors carry round in their heads; so heads (or rather
consciousnesses) have to be changed, not rolled.
2. Proposed answers to focal questions; a preliminary classification of inadequate answers
(7)
and suggested remedies.
Most of the extraordinary range of answers proposed supply but a single source, and are
accordingly defective for this reason, usually among other reasons. Indeed it is not much of an
exaggeration to assert that virtually everything proposed, in a now extensive literature, is
wrong.
TABLE 2. Main tabulation of answers and remedies, in three stages.
D. Defective
practice answers
Source
Remedy
Objections
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DI.
Ignorance
Relevant
information
Information
now available
D2.
Unintended consequences
Relevant
information
Information
now available
D2a
Faulty technique,
or technology
Repairs
Repairs already
made
D3
Deviation (from
theory, etc.)
Education (for failure
to limit deviance)
Adherence
D4.
Systemic lock-in
(through poverty,
ensnarement in
market forces, etc.)
Trap removal
a. Explains
only certain
cases, and
b. Due to
paradigmatic
features
D5.
Insensitivity or
insensibility
Problem
apprised
Remedy tried;
background
ideological
blockage
D3a
a. Deviation
uneliminable, or
b. Adherence
no remedy
When pursued, objections like those noted either force defective practice out as unsatisfactory,
or push it back to paradigmatic features.
Source single paradigm
Remedies proposed (among others)
Pl.
Christianity (mainstream
Catholicism)
Scientific enlightenment, or
alternative (Eastern) religion
Pla.
Protestantism and its ethic
P2.
P2a
Cartesianism
Dualism
P. Defective paradigm
answers
Monism
Anti-dualism
Modified holism
P2b
Mechanism
Substance metaphysics
P3.
P3a Possessive individualism
P3aa Personalism
Organicism
Process metaphysics
Non-reductionism
Transpersonalism
P4.
Capitalism
Socialism
P5.
Industrialism
Pre-industrialism (romanticism)
Post-industrialism
P5a Technocratic bureaucracy
P5aa. Transnational business
P6.
Enlightenment
Anti-enlightenment
Anti-materialism
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P6a
Materialism
Spiritualism
P8.
P9
Patriarchy, andocentrism
Human domination
of humans
Feminism
Anti-domination
(anti-hierarchy)
Observe that what some have proposed as remedies, others have been as sources; remedies
proposed tend to share defects of sources.
PS. Further sample listings of this paradigmatic sort (but with the paradigms often subject
specific or partial) include:
Source
Platonism
Typical remedy suggested
New metaphysics
Leibnitzianism
New metaphysics
Kantianism
Anglo-American philosophy12
Consequentialism
Utilitarianism
Economism (economic imperialism as
Alternative ethics
Continental philosophy
New social science; ethics
contrasted with straight economic roots)
Contractarianism
Domination transfer
Consequentialism
Domination removal
Human nature (esp. aggression)
Adolescencism
Maturation
Infantilism (from Freudian physchology)
Maturation
And so on.
A very rough recipe runs as follows: draw up a potted list of major movements and factors in
dominant Western thought. Then many—perhaps it is not excessive to say most—entries in
that list will have been nominated, likely separately, by someone as the source of the problems.
That list accordingly continues (even including, sometimes, entries like Taylorism, i.e.
reorganisation of industry along lines popularized by Taylor), but what is included is
representative of the important and more interesting answers to be encountered. There are other
allegedly nonparadigmatic answers however, varying from interesting to crazy, that should also
be taken into some account, for instance answers like Shepard's challenging answer. Although
Shepard dismisses ideologies, what he offers is a further ideosystem, of similar dubious or false
cast. Strange answers include pushing it all back to human psychology (thus not only Shepard,
but also Fox, and Ehrlich and other gurus with insistence upon ‘mental maladaptation’).
The mainstream form, analytic philosophy, appears to comprise empiricism-cum-utilitarianism
in Britain, tempered in America by pragmatism.
/s
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Basically, there is something wrong with a society that does that to its habitat. It is sick
—in a popular sense, yes, it is sick. It is the slides that follow, however, along psychological
routes, that are to be resisted. One slide begins invitingly: As it is not literally sick, well not
physically usually, it must be mentally sick; that is, sliding further and fast, insane or mad. But
the sources of mental sickness lie in childhood (as Freudianism erroneously insists). The slide
continues to: what we have are immature societies, frozen at an early stage of development. No
doubt there is something toyheme that dominant societies, USA especially (which now
influences so much in other cultures), are locked into youth culture, a sort of late consumptive
adolescence.13 No doubt, too, that maturity—but an environmental maturity—is desirable,
even mandatory.
Meanwhile, immaturity is fostered right through human life. Considerable effort is put
into trying to induct older people, who are often marginalised, into active consumptive society,
to spend their money through tourism, on new compact housing, in those most wasteful of
modem institutions such as airliners and hotels, hospitals and old-age homes, and so forth.
3. Documentation as to some of the acclaimed purer sources.
Like the lists of proposals and intricated paradigms, the documentation too is somewhat
perfunctory, tending here and there towards notes. Of course there are excuses. While whole
theses could be spun out on several of these topics, already beginning to elicit such treatment, a
prime objective here is different from usual: neither to convict, nor to clear or excuse, but to
partially implicate most items cited in the main tabulation above. Consider, in brief, some of
the usually accredited sources:
• Western religion, above all Christianity. The theme that the source of ecological problems,
‘the historical roots of our ecological crisis’, are to be found in Western religion, and
specifically in ‘the Judaeo-Christian belief that mankind was created to have dominion over
nature’, was repeated in a particularly pointed and subsequently influential way by White.14
One helpful summary of White's line of argument runs as follows:
Allied with technological and scientific developments, orthodox Christianity
has produced arrogant exploitation of nature, and a contemporary ecological
crisis. White's thesis is that the West's successful science and technology
developed between the 8th and 12th centuries — it is much older than the
scientific revolution though it was not until about 1850 — following the
democratic revolutions — that the science and technology were combined to
produce truly immense powers to change nature. The early development,
however, was paralleled by the development of exploitative attitudes to
nature which seemed to be ‘in harmony with larger intellectual patterns ,
namely the victory of Christianity over paganism. This destroyed the
animistic beliefs whereby men thought twice before they plundered and
destroyed natural objects. It substituted instead a faith in perpetual progress,
13
14
It interestingly matches the locking of primary production systems into pioneering stages such as
preclimax formations. Shepard’s dialectic is investigated in more detail in the Appendix .
White's article has generated an enormous defensive literature, primarily from Christian
apologists, but also from softer environmentalists and from testy historians of ideas. The whole
area looks in danger of disappearing from intellectual view under a heavy blanketing snowfall,
snowed.
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a belief that God designed nature for man's benefit and rule, and that action,
not contemplation, was the correct Christian behaviour. Science formed an
extension of theology (for to know God you had to find out how his creation
worked), and technology provided the active means to carry out God's will.
Because today's attitudes are essentially inherited from Christianity, then it
‘bears the burden of guilt’ for contemporary ecological disruption.15
What has happened with the divisive charge, advanced by White, that Christianity was
the prime source of environmental problems, is particularly instructive. In an attempt to diffuse
the charge Christian apologists pointed to, what there undoubtedly were, recessive strands or
isolated seeds in Christianity which were much more environmentally benign (though some
such as stewardship, which has evolved toward total managerialism and sustainable
development, have proved increasingly problematic). That does little or nothing to meet a more
sensitive and telling criticism that mainstream (or dominant) Christianity has much to answer
for as regards destruction and degradation of natural environments.16 Similar responses are
apposite for attempts to exonerate their wider sources, such as Western philosophy.
Against the sheeting of responsibility to religion, dominant forms of which should
undoubtedly cop some heavy criticism, it has been contended that
philosophy ... is the primary source of most Western ideas [and] is ...
responsible for the ideas and attitudes that inhibit environmental protection
today.... Religion ... though often criticized ... as the chief culprit, has played
a much less fundamental role. Most of the environmentally offensive ideas in
Western religion originated not in religion but in Western philosophy.17
• Classical Greek philosophy, above all the peak philosophies of Plato and Aristotle.
Greek philosophers approached natural phenomena in a way that (1)
prevented the development of an ecological perspective, (2) discouraged the
aesthetic appreciation of the natural world, and (3) promoted a conception of
reality that made the idea of nature preservation conceptually difficult, if not
impossible.18
More sweepingly, they set Western philosophy on a ruinous environmental course, a course
accentuated with the appearance of modem rationalist and empiricist philosophies.
• Cartesian philosophy. The dominant modern environmental approach is sometimes
15
16
17
18
Pepper pp.44-5. Pepper then embarks upon the murky story of alternative interpretations of
Biblical data and the Christian tradition, dredged up by a series of White's critiques. The issue
continuejto be debated; for an older survey of traditions see Passmore, for a challenging recent
contribution to the debate see Callicott.
Each religion is multistranded. But we should look hardest at dominant operative forms: Ask,
not merely what they say, but what they do, and would do. For an outline of just such a telling
criticism of mainstream Christianity, see Singer esp. pp.265-8.
Hargrove p.15. Certainly the sort of message that Pentecostal missionaries even now try to
preach to resistant Australian Aboriginals, that the earth is just filth, mere rubbish, can be traced
back in direct line to Plato’s attitude to the land, an attitude Hargrove and Plumwood help
expose.
Hargrove p.21. Hargrove’s claims may appear to have been confuted by Attfield, but really,
while they have been subject to minor qualification, they have been highlighted. There is a
much fuller story still to be told about classical Greek philosophy reassessed environmentally, of
the very different roles and impacts of Plato (with his unearthly philosophy), of Aristotle (with
his earthier chauvinism), of Stoics and of Epicureans, and of neo-Platonists. For a modest
beginning, see Plumwood on Plato, Toulmin on Stoics as contrasted with Epicureans, and
Glacken on lesser or lost Greek strands.
[S
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denominated Cartesianism, or the Cartesian Technocratic paradigm, in honour of Descartes,
upon whom (as a conveniently select individual from a swag of like-minded people) several of
the leading themes and ideas can be pinned.19
While Descartes was undoubtedly
extraordinarily influential, so were others; Newton for one, Locke for another. The paradigm is
accordingly better denominated the Atomist-Empiricist-Technocratic paradigm, or some such.
Evidently it substantially overlaps other modern ideologies, such as that of the Enlightenment,
widely implicated as major sources of environmental problems.
• Western metaphysics. While some conglomeration of the preceding sources and others
(some potted history of Western metaphysics, so to say) may be offered, more often what is
presented is some selection of Western metaphysical elements. Here is one example, plainly
exhibiting a heavy Heideggerean influence:
The roots of our environmental problems lie in Western metaphysics. For
metaphysics, Being is presencing; no allowance is made for any other mode
(sheltering, declining, concealing). Once metaphysics has established the
absolute dominion of the present over the not-present or no-longer-present,
the way is paved for the scientific method, with its emphasis on replicability
of results, predicability, quantification, and control. Nature becomes a
“natural resource” —and people become “human resources”. The sources of
anthropocentricism, imperialism, colonialism, sexism and consumerism can
all be traced back to metaphysics.
Western metaphysics has more or less conquered the world, and there is no
going back. Western metaphysics is more than simply a false consciousness
overlaid on top of “authentic” experience. Being changes historically, and
metaphysics is the index of that change... Metaphysics has a conquering,
exclusive imperative, ... and different [former] modes now exist only as
vestigial traSces. They cannot be resurrected through ancient wisdom, native
healing, goddess worship, or any other supposedly intact, dormant system.
We cannot create a “new order”. That would simply be another form of the
Will to Power... We can—and must—turn away from the dominant rhythms
of western metaphysics if we are to avoid the nihilism of a perpetually
ensconced technocratic rationalism.20
An alternative to turning entirely away from Western metaphysics, consists in combining
b
rejection of standard Western metaphysics (or, less sweepingly, of dominant metaphysics,
characteristically individualistic and atomistic) in favour of development of recessive traditions
or mere Western seeds.
Such a more sophisticated approach, also critical of Western
metaphysics, with atomism a main villain, is pursued by those who promote instead process or
plenum metaphysics.21
For encapsulation of the Cartesianism paradigm (a dominant dualistic form), summarising
Drengson’s exposition, see RP, table 5. Drengson, for one, has helped portray Descartes as the
environmentally evil genius (or demiurge). That some orthodox philosophers, not merely
maverick philosophers, are now rushing to the defence of Descartes should be seen as entirely in
keeping with the character and roles of Western philosophy.
Undisclosed source. Amusingly, I have seen myself accused of ‘rejecting] in its entirety
mainstream western philosophy and science, ... seen as the cause of the [environmental]
problem’ and instead basing my ‘ecocentric values on Eastern philosophies’ (thus Bellett). This
charge was levelled on the strength of a peripheral exercise on classical Taoism and Deep
Ecology (now included in UTD).
For the first process option, see Gare; for the second, where the plenum is that of a holistic
relativity theory (more exactly holistic relativistic geometrodynamics), see Mathews.
�14
• Enlightenment. The source of problems lies in ‘the intellectual heritage of the Enlightenment’
(e.g. Dobson). Of course the main doctrines of the Enlightenment substantially overlap those
of modern mainstream philosophy and of Descartes’ philosophy (but they shed dualistic and
theistic scholastic hang-overs).
• Capitalism. The assumption that capitalism is responsible for environmental as well as social
evils, widespread until recently in state-socialist countries (when their own records were
revealed), can be traced back to Marx. According to Marx, with capitalism
for the first time, nature becomes purely an object for humankind, purely a
matter of utility; ceases to be recognised as a power for itself; and the
theoretical discovery of its autonomous laws appears merely as a ruse so as to
subject it under human needs, whether as an object of consumption or as a
means of production.22
But, as observed, a main embedded theme had appeared in earlier philosophy; for instance, the
idea of nature as purely an object for humankind, was advanced in Aristotle: ‘Now if nature
makes nothing incomplete and nothing in vain, the inference must be that she has made all
animals for the sake of man’.23 Aristotle adopted a similar stance on nature as on other species.
The theme was to be oft repeated in subsequent Aristotelianism, and reiterated apparently in
shallower Stoicism.
But the subjection of everything to utility, no doubt a relative of
capitalism, appears to be a distinctively modem contribution.
•
Modern industrial society or industrialism. Modern industrialism (‘the smooth
superhighway of industrial progress’) is the source, such is an extraordinarily popular theme:
‘... the root causes of the present crisis lie deep with the very foundations of the industrial
paradigm’.24 Similarly ‘roots [of] the environment crisis ... go deeper to the foundations of
modern industrial society’25 Again, ‘the structural roots of the environmental crises [are found
in] industrialism, in commoditization, in commercialism, and in competition and greed’26 The
popular theme, that industrialism is the source, tends to confuse mere means— industrial
technology can without any doubt at all vastly facilitate environmental degradation (as well as,
It should not be overlooked that some of those who nominated metaphysics meant thereby
paradigm or paradigms or an equivalent. But what they may gain thereby in verisimilitude, they
tend to lose in confusion.
Grundrisse p.409f.
Aristotle, Politics, Book 1, ch.8. What an inference, you might well exclaim. See further
Hargrove p.25.
M. Gabriel, ‘How “attitudes and implements” have brought us to “the end of nature’”, a paper
presented at UNE Environmental Paradigms Conference, April 1993. Gabriel proposes a
managerial resolution: ‘for us to learn to manage both our relationship to our environment, and
more broadly the environment itself’ (quotes from abstract of paper). This amounts to the flip
side of an old problematic record. For the “solution” derives from the same defective box as the
evident problem.
Gabriel ibid. Similarly industrialism is assumed as the source throughout McLaughlin (the
theme pervades his book) and as the root of the modern problem in Marshall (p.5ff). While
seriously astray as to roots and sources, those critical of industrialism have a significant case.
For, as well as functioning as a major inflator of intact problems, industrialism has helped
generate side problems of its own, as with new types of chemical and nuclear pollution.
Editorial in The Ecologist, Jan-Feb 1992, p.2.
�15
less satisfactorily, subsequent clean-up and environmental repair)— with sources and causes,
what directs and powers those uses of industrial technique and practice.
• Economic growth or economic development. ‘According to a common and currently
influential diagnosis, the environmental crisis has essentially economic roots
One
widespread misconception is that economic growth is the source of environmental problems.
The assumption is astray for several reasons. For one, growth is at best a proximate cause,
itself in need of explanation. More importantly, growth may occur in sectors of an economy,
such as information technology or religious or artistic services, which have little or no
environmental impact. Also conversely, an economy which fails to grow, but is desperately
trying to survive, may exact heavy environmental costs (e.g. the forests are clear-felled to pay
for continuing employment). No doubt though, stock economic growth is intimately intricated
with proximate causes of environmental problems (through environmental impact equations).
Similar considerations tell against the familiar proposition that the source of the problems
is economic development itself or, what is different, the entrenched model of economic
development. While it is no doubt correct, and important to emphasize, that ‘the Western
model of economic development, far from being the solution to’ environmental and social
problems, is ‘actually fuelling’ them, it is not the sole or distinguished source of the
problems.27
28
• Human nature. "... the roots of our ecologic crisis reach beyond the variable topsoil of
intellectual history, whether Eastern or Western, into the common substrata of human nature
itself.’29 What such “nature” amounts to and how it functions as roots, both commonly left
obscure, turns upon background hypotheses as to the nature of this nature. Different false
27
28
29
Goodin, p.573. While not contesting the theme, Goodin does continue: ‘the problem is not just
that there are too many people, or even that they are enjoying too high a standard of living. All
that is true, too, of course. More fundamentally, however, problems of environmental
despoliation are said to derive from skewed incentives as they pursue their various goals’
(p.573). That too will be seen to be seriously astray, though it contains large grains of truth; it
presumes unchanged the prevailing economically-skewed dominant social paradigm.
Both socialists and other opponents of capitalistic conspicuous consumption tend to select the
living-standard component of the main environmental impact equation as the source of the crisis.
Thus Cuban luminary, Castro, in a recent stunningly succinct speech: ‘Less luxury, less wastage.
Otherwise it will be too late’.
Quoting claims of E. Goldsmith, advanced in an interview in Forest and Bird 273 (August 1994)
pp.46-7. The need for emphasis will persist while locally prominent political figures like the
present Prime Minister of Australia travel around the Earth with the hackneyed message that
only economic growth will solve environmental problems.
Seeing growth as the problem affords only a superficial analysis, like that of pointing to
overconsumption with which growth is interconnected. As deeper inquiry reveals, underlying
both issues of economic growth, employment and consumption, and alternatives taken, are
models, paradigmatic models. Growth is but a means to objectives assumed in the dominant
paradigm. A deeper analysis shows too why more growth will not ultimately solve relevant
problems.
Callicott and Ames, ‘Epilogue: On the relation of idea and action’ p.282 (see also p.281), in a
desperate and apparently unsuccessful attempt to reconcile the claim (repeatedly advanced in
their book) that Asian traditions of thought can make a significant contribution to much
improved treatment for natural and built environments, with ‘the deplorable environmental
conditions prevailing in contemporary Asia’ (p.280).
�16
hypotheses, that humans are invariably driven by aggression, sexual or reproductive
imperatives, economic needs, yield different defective accounts. 0
• Patriarchy. The source is patriarchy, and androgyny; problems derive from mistreatment of
women. ‘Our troubles begin with the invention of male deities located off the planet’.30
‘patriarchy is the source of the environmental crisis’.31 One sample linkage statement runs as
follows:
... there is a huge denial ... of the violence perpetrated on women both
historically and ... presently] and ... this?the same energy that, turned against
the Earth, is destroying the very life-support systems and rapidly destroying
the conditions that makes complex life possible. The fires that consume the
Amazon are the very same fires that burned 9 million witches and I believe
that there can be no solution of our ecological problems unless we
simultaneously address our gender issues.32
A 15
Patriarchy, as source, is evidently a special case of long invoked domination transfer themes:
• Human domination and exploitation of humans'.
It is an extraordinarily widespread
assumption that the impact of humans (or, until recently, of Man!) on the environment, or
creatures or things in it, is a product of that of humans with each other, typically of groups or
classes. In misleadingly brief form, the source is social: Man’s inhumanity to Man; and the
solution correspondingly is social. Unremarkably, this unlikely assumption comes in a variety
of different forms: early, concerning the mistreatment of animals as an (inevitable) spill-over
from mistreatment of humans, recently concerning maltreatment of nature spilling over from, or
being one with, that of women. The fashionable assumption runs, in one form or another, from
Aquinas through Kant to a range of recent trend-setters, including Marcuse, Illich, Passmore,
Bookchin ... and some leading feminists. In particular, it is part of the very meaning of social
ecology, an ideology shaped and championed by Bookchin: ‘ecological problems arise from
deep-seated social problems’.33 On this theme among others, Bookchin simply follows a
prominent trend in social anarchism set by Kropotkin and his contemporary Reclus:
all see that the domination and exploitation of nature by man is but an
extension of the domination of man by man. Thus, ‘Both Kropotkin and
Reclus ... laid the foundations of a radical theory of human ecology.
Ecological despoliation was seen to reflect imbalances in human relationships
—domination of nature thus following from human domination’. ... It follows
that if domineering and exploitative human relationships can be avoided in
small-scale decentralised societies then such societies are also best for a
30
31
32
33
/n
Quoted in Eckersley p.64, who develops and begins to assess patriarchical source themes. For a
more critical assessment see the sequel to GE.
See Seed, quoted in the sequel to GE; also Salleh (e.g. in EP3).
John Seed’s Workshop Schedule 1992, Rainforest Information Centre, Lismore, 12. 12.91.
Seed’s extravagant identity claims are but a dramatic extension of that popular tendency to
transform comparison and similarity statements into identity claims. Indeed reductionism often
reaches further, with attempted conversion of all relational statements into identity ones, along
with unrelational property claims.
Bookchin sometimes qualifies this central claim, with ‘nearly all present’, e.g. EP3 p.354. But
he is not strictly entitled to any such qualification, given his invariant theme that the domination
of nature always results from humans’ domination of other humans (see e.g. Clark EP3, p.346).
The text EP3 contains a sizeable section providing a useful introduction to social ecology.
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harmonious man-nature relationship.34
Domination and exploitation of one division by another can in turn be seen as a case of
dualism at work, between the one, the dominator or dominating class, and the other, the
dominated.
• A snare of dualisms. Environmental problems derive from operation of a set of connected
ideologically-entrenched and defective dualisms.35
• Modern educational systems'. Roots of environmental problems lie in educational systems.
Or if roots don't, solutions do. However, roots of environmental or social problems do not lie in
educational systems. Parts of their solutions may however. For education is critical, for
instance, in correcting insufficient adherence to established satisfactory arrangements, such as,
so it is claimed, Enlightenment ideals or traditional ethical systems.36 Therewith we are
transported full circle back to defective practice answers.
4. A selective commentary on, and objections to, proposed answers
A main part of this exercise consists in a detailed critical commentary on the entries in the
main tabulation, and on proposals like them. Small beginnings are made on the exercise, in two
stages reflecting a major division in the main tabulation.
ad D. Defective practice answers tend to come from those who presume we are already in
possession of adequate theories, or what approximates them or supplies main elements of them.
(Such answers are also more liable to emanate from conservatives, opposed to new or radical
theories, advanced on the basis of inadequacy of prevailing theories in practice.)
Defective practice answers are especially popular in economic reaches. There was a time,
perhaps not past yet, when all market failures in the shape of negative externalities were passed
off as unintended consequences of economic activity. While “consequences” or outputs such
things as pollution certainly are, unintended they mostly are not now, without emptying
‘unintended’ of its normal sense. For example, industrialists, apprised of conservation laws and
unsurprised by polluted wastes, who dump their waste where and when regulators and waste
watchers are not looking, can hardly pretend that that output is an unintended consequence of
their industry. That should now be a rotten joke, itself with serious consequences.
Accordingly new ecological economics insists that we dig deeper—without however
exceeding economic settings or a shifting dominant paradigm—to discover why markets may
foreseeably fail and why environmentally rectifying technology is not delivered.37 Where they
Pepper p.192, with internal quotation from Breitbart. Unfortunately it is all too evident, given
humans could so socially organise, that they could settle into harmonious small-scale
communities which retained but little of pristine natural environments.
Such a proposition obtains a much fuller elaboration within Plumwood. In an interesting way,
such a proposal can hardly be wrong, given the conclusion reached below that a set of defective
paradigms ifl at work. For evidently paradigms can be covered by dualisms, represented by a set
of them in each case, somewhat as numbers can be represented in binary terms, generated from a
basic two-oneness duality.
Thus Passmore, Attfield, and others. For a critical assessment of education, see GE
Thus e.g. Jacobs, p.24.
�18
usually arrive, travelling within such unduly confined settings, is, like welfare economics
before ecological, at better regulated markets, with business set as before within frameworks of
plans and incentives, controls and penalties. Environmentally, however, such approaches do
not reach very deep, or tap into underlying paradigmatic problem-sources.
But these sorts of defective practice answers do not always derive from standard
economic sources. A deviation-style answer is much favoured by Marxists to explain failure,
environmental and other, of the former Soviet Union and other Eastern block countries; namely
that true, or authentic, Marxism was not practiced. Unfortunately, even if it had been,
environmental consequences would be little better, given the heavy industrial commitments and
environmental shallowness, at best, of true Marxism.38 Differently, enlightenment liberals like
Passmore try to ascribe failures in Western environmental practice, not to any deficiencies in
mainstream theory, but to deviation from well established principles. Unfortunately adherence
to these “well established principles” is just one way in which the Earth will lose what remains
of its wilderness and remarkable diversity.
Now there are no doubt cases, past especially but also present, some resulting
(collectively) in extensive environmental degradation, where defective practice answers may be
correct. For example, there is harrowing case after harrowing case (brought together in texts
like Topsoil and Civilization and Agricultural Origins and Dispersal) of degradation of prime
agricultural lands by imposed farming practices, where at least early on (before damage became
visible) ignorance and unintended consequences could be legitimately claimed. In most
historical cases we do not have enough information to be able to say with much assurance that
agriculture proceeded until effective collapse because of continuing ignorance, or because
practices were locked-in in one way or another, or because of sheer obduracy. But we do know
more about present agricultural practices, for example in more arid parts of Australia,
concerning both irrigated and dry-land agriculture. Many of these practices are undoubtedly
sharply degrading lands, and the consequences of the practices, which cannot plead or pretend
ignorance, are sufficiently appreciated. But the practices persist, and are encouraged by a
sweep of subsidies or concessions. No doubt some of the practitioners can reasonably claim
that they are locked into bad practices through circumstance, circumstances now beyond their
control such as financial pressures, unfavourable terms-of-trade, and so on, coupled with the
need to make a living. But some, such as companies controlling large tracts of land, can make
no such claims or excuses, nor can claim such things as family precedence, attachment to place,
and similar. Their obdurate practice has to be attributed to something else, most obviously not
deviation from theory, but commitment to an environmentally defective paradigm.
ad P and PS. Dealing with defective paradigm answers is an even more complex, and vexed,
38
It is surprising how much of the practice of later Socialist states is prefigured in texts like The
Communist Manifesto. Thus “industrial armies” are to be set up; credit, communications and
transport are to become state monopolies; “migrants and rebels” are to have their property
confiscated; and so on. All this runs contrary to much Marxist apologetics (as A. Urquhart, who
made those points, also observed).
�19
business. Let us try to condense main matters to a few broad themes:
1.
Many of the (incomplete) paradigms listed are not even sufficient for environmental
impasses. They may be seriously mistaken, they may have undesirable intellectual and perhaps
social effects, but a society could persist sustainably with those drawbacks. Thus, for example,
substance metaphysics (under modified Spinozism), dualisms, even patriarchy. The same
might even hold for materialism and mechanism, (assuming these practices can be coherently
made out, that depending on how differentiated ideologies and values are accommodated, and
so forth).
To illustrate: a metaphysics, of any sort, cannot be the whole story, because it does not,
on its own, account for action, anti-environmental or other. Without special bridges, link
principles, from metaphysics to value-intricating action theory, a sort of naturalistic fallacy
operates.
Thus subverted, in essentially Hume’s way, are all the vulgar sources of
environmental problems which take them as derived from metaphysics of one sort or another.
Such a criticism does not however extend to more comprehensive paradigms which connect
appropriately with practice.
2.
While several—not just one—of the paradigms listed are sufficient—in the right
circumstances (given long historical development, accumulation, and so on39)—none are
necessary. Similar impasses could arise, and locally have arisen, given significantly different
paradigms;
for example given, instead of main Western trouble-making paradigms,
Confucianism or advanced Polynesianism.
At this stage in dialectic, green history and the like—bio-history, eco-history, and related
virtual histories (concerning what would have happened)—enter decisively. For instance,
Ponting's Green History of the World begins with a graphic account of the rise and ecological
fall of Easter Island under the impact of Polynesian projects. The work also conveniently
documents many other examples, well-known to biohistorians, of ecological degradation or
collapse, far from the influence of Western paradigms.40 An important example (much less
speculative than some of the numerous other examples because of a comparative wealth of
primary documentation) outlines the destruction of accessible Chinese ecosystems under
Confucian dynasties. What several of these examples—Polynesian, Mayan, Sumerian and
others—also reveal is that no very high level of technology is needed to inflict serious
environmental damage; persistence in pursuit of an ideological project (with nothing directly to
do with basic needs) will suffice.
Other cultures did wreak, or would (given the technology and numbers, both of which
While it is easy to imagine ineffectual or incompetent tribes which live benignly
environmentally, by just muddling along, under even the worst of paradigms, that is not really to
the point. A pertinent tribe needs to have developed the structure which leads to problems, to
have the means, and so on.
Ponting’s valuable/ though rather simple/ book is but one of several bleak texts. Another is
Hillel’s, and there is a succession of earlier classic works by geographers: Lowdermilk, Dale,
Mallory, Thorp and others. In general however, geographers and historian do not dig deep
enough, to paradigmatic roots.
/3
�20
some were gaining) have wreaked similar damage. For instance, deforestation, salination,
megafaunal elimination, and so on, were well established, and expanding, before (or effectively
outside) the rise of modern Western paradigms, or in extensive regions outside their influence.
3.
The list of paradigms, as so far assembled, is substantially Western in orientation.
Moreover environmental woes are regularly ascribed to Western sources — wrongly. For non
Western paradigms have led, or would lead given the opportunities (including access to the
technologies), to outcomes as undesirable as under dominant Western paradigm. Witness
again Confucianism, for instance, and its role and influence in Asian regions. Confucianism
incorporates human chauvinism par excellence (as well as, some might say, Chinese
chauvinism).41 Or consider Islam, with its reach across the Middle East and beyond.
The main tabulation (of table 2) should accordingly be extended to take due account of
non-Western paradigms, including for example:
Other Abrahamic religions
Islam
Judaism
Confucianism
Shintoism
Polynesianism, at least in advanced forms as on Easter Island.
What is “Western” is tending to blur also. Is Judaism Western, how western, or Islam? There
is also a tendency to suppose that more Western religions, Abrahamic religions, with their
intense monotheism, are significantly ideologically worse than non-Westem. But the contrasts
are different and much more complex than that. A better divide is into monistic and pluralistic.
Even so, many undesirable social and environmental features are incorporated in, or
encouraged by, religious pluralisms from the Indian subcontinent.
4.
All the single paradigm answers are inadequate, all are too simple. Even so some are
less inadequate than others. It is the same, more or less, for the combined answers, often to be
encountered. For generally they represent but one thin cross-section of Western paradigms.
While all the single one-source one-shot paradigmatic answers, occur on their own, often
they are combined. For instance, although Descartes is often cited as a villain, more often
criticism of Cartesianism is combined with criticism of other concurrent ideological elements,
such as Baconian empiricism (less incompatibly, Drengson, for one, regularly combines
criticism of the technocratic paradigm with criticism of Cartesianism—though Descartes, for all
his rich and appalling thought, contributed little to the rise of technocratic organisation.)
Similarly Hargrove combines Greek philosophy, as original source, with modern rationalism
and much else.
5.
A general method of showing the inadequacy of all the paradigmatic answers tabulated,
and others, is familiar from logical theory: namely, the method of counter-models, of which the
41
Its net of effects extends widely. Consider, e.g., the role of Chinese medicine in decline of large
fauna worldwide.
�21
counter-examples (under head 2) provide special cases. A presently important illustration
concerns patriarchy as a source of environmental woes. Counter-models reveal the substantial
independence of mistreatment of women and mistreatment of environmental items such as
animals or ecosystems. One the one hand, it is easy to envisage situations, not far from the
actual in some regions, where the lot of women is significantly improved, but the lot of
environmental items is not (e.g. men change their behaviour and attitudes relevantly as regards
women, are forced to change, or whatever); just such an outcome would accord with persisting
human chauvinism. More relevant, on the other, there are situations where the position of
environmental items is much improved, for instance under much more careful husbandry, but
that of women is not, for one reason or another (e.g. they remain other, different, second class,
etc.). It follows from the elaboration of such counter-models that patriarchy is not the source of
environmental problems, as there can be continuing patriarchy without the present range of
environmental problems (problems can dry up while patriarchy continues to operate). There is
no need to deny that patriarchy as (contingently) practised, with its sweeping supremacist
attitudes which make no due distinctions between inferior items, may be a major contributing
factor in present problems. Such slack contingent conjunctions do not convert to roots or
sources. Similarly with other social roots of environmental problems, for instance with human
domination of humans as^supposed source of all problems.
5. Towards a more satisfactory explanation.
Not only are the paradigmatic roots seriously intertangled (because of connections of one
paradigm with another, because for instance of heavy philosophical inputs into religious
paradigms), but further there is not a single defective paradigm. Rather there is a family or
sheaf of paradigms, commitment to any of which, or any suitable combination of which, in
requisite circumstances, appears to have yielded environmentally untoward outcomes (requisite
circumstances including availability of technology, extent of social support, and so on). Within
that plurality there are of course gradations—and not only gradations but major differences—in
calibre, in environmental friendliness. For example, Cartesianism which regards animals as
mere automata incapable of feeling genuine pain, is significantly worse as regards other life
forms and their decent treatment than a utilitarianism which positively values animal sentience.
The family is not exclusively Western, nor somewhat more plausibly Northern, even
though as a result of forces like migration, colonialism and cultural imperialism, paradigms of
these sorts now predominate. Paradigms and cultures of less “advanced” and of third world
communities have also operated to enhance environmental vandalism and degradation locally
and regionally.
Nor are major inflators of environmental problems essentially Western. Industrialization
and technological advance—neither intrinsically Western, both manifested in varying degrees
in other cultures—are, without much doubt, what have inflated environmental problems from
rather localised ones, damaging for instance islands and river catchments, to grander and even
global ones. They are the engines, powerhouses, of major problems, generating thereby spin
�22
off problems as well. But, once again, they are not deeper sources, but only means. (For again
push questioning deeper, and ask: why bother or persist with industry, the effort and dirt and
mess involved?) Nor, however, did they run on their own, nor do they continue on their own.
Such engines were not designed and built, fuelled and tended, independently.42 They evolved
primarily in the specially favoured culture of capitalism, though parallel developments could
have occurred, and later did, in other prepared and heavily controlled surroundings, such as
state socialism or post-imperial Confucianism. Now however these engines have been rendered
more reliable and less dependent on careful cultural support, and have been transformed to run
in less favourable settings.
Thus inflation can escalate from a multiplicity of prepared sources, thereby intensifying
problems and spreading them to larger regions. The intensification and spread is much
facilitated by the joint transfer of technology, industry and coupled problems from region to
region. As a result of transfer, inflation can occur within settings of quite different paradigms.
Even if the whole “West” went into a terminal decline, and its paradigms disappeared into
history, serious environmental exploitation and degradation would continue, driven by other
enthusiastic cultures. For instance, the West could in theory collapse through protracted war,
through pollution and congestion, or climate change and agriculture failure (there are many
unexcludible routes to catastrophic decline, outlined in “Limits to Growth” scenarios, that could
differentially impact on the West). Degradation would now continue however; there would be
only temporary respite from environmental crises.
While most of the conspicuous problems, awfully aggregated in contemporary
environmental crises, are accelerated by—what connects them—contemporary industrial
society, not all environmental problems are or have been of this sort. However, too many of the
other problems, such as destruction of rainforests by itinerant peasants, can be seen as by
products or similar of the main generators. Thus, in the illustration, the peasants displaced by
agribusiness or absentee wealth-holders, arrived there on industrially-made roads opening the
forests, and often wrecked this damage using industrial machinery.
An environmental friendly culture has to be much more critical concerning certain types
of industrialization, and much more selective regarding technology than present dominant
cultures, Western or non-Western. A friendly paradigm would not only ensure much more
selectivity and care, but would sharply limit impacts of damaging technology and
industrialization. While there are such paradigms, on the ideas market, they mostly lack
Lacking favourable ideological settings, earlier technological “break throughs” were not duly
developed: thus early wheels, steam engines, dyes, gunpowder, etc. Western cultures did not
enjoy a monopoly upon technology powerful enough, when massed, to induce global crises.
The picture of development of large-scale environmental problems being sketched bears
superficial resemblance to that now tendered for development of the early Universe, where, to
achieve presumed size, a source event, the Big Bang, was followed by huge inflationary
phenomena. Naturally the resemblance has limitations; for instance, universe inflation is not
terrestrially replicable in the way industrialization now is (hired or delivered off the shelf,
pollution problems and all, with a big price tag).
�Ti
sophisticated contemporary elaboration and they may be flawed in other respects. Examples of
more friendly paradigms, that do not lead of themselves to massive environmental problems
and crises conditions, include those now tabulated:
TABLE 3: Examples, some flawed, of environmentally friendly paradigms.
Oriental ideologies:
Taoism (classical)
recessive traditions,
now with tiny
followings and little
political influence.
Jainism
Indigenous cultures:
Australian Aboriginals (e.g. Aranda)
Amazonian Indians.
Western philosophies:
under certain
favourable
interpretations
old
Stoicism
new
Deep-green theories, such as deep ecology.
Given the remoteness of most of these examples from predominant contemporary life, and
difficulties with their wide adaptability, it is a short step to a familiar conclusion that new
paradigms need to be worked out soon. Much much more intellectual effort should be devoted
to such enterprise.
One upshot, then, is a rough classification of paradigms into two families, the second
large: environmentally friendly, and unfriendly. No doubt there is a small fuzzy residue class43
lying between major unfriendly and friendly divisions.
Environmental friendliness means more or less what it appear, to mean, what a functional
break-down into components would yield: friendliness in approaches, practices and attitudes, to
environments, especially more natural environments, with friendliness including, as usual,
goodwill and kindliness towards (and substantially displaceable by these). As indicated, such
friendliness concerns not merely actual practices, but also attitudes held, as reflected in what
would be done in certain other sorts of situations.
Certainly a culture that manifests
unfriendliness, as a sweep of Northern cultures do, is unfriendly. But, as well, various
“primitive” cultures, whose practices are not hostile, for example because they lack means or
resources, energy or health, may nonetheless be unfriendly; for instance all members of a
culture hold thoroughly negative attiudes which they are in fact unable to put into practice.
It is not too difficult to explain in outline which paradigms will, if duly, diligently or
religiously practiced, lead to environmental problems and impasse.
In logical terms neither, perhaps as well as another residue class, both.
Certain family
�24
characteristics, of unfriendly paradigms are worth elaborating:
* Direct untoward effects, illustrated through Cartesianism and Confucianism.
More
generally, direct impact is illustrated by any idea-system which attributes little or no value to
natural items, and typically much value to nature transforming or interfering human (or elite)
projects, and whose themes are linked to practice. So it is with Confucianism, which is entirely
human focussed. ‘Centering his attention on man in his present life, Confucius had as his goal
the achievement of a good society characterized by harmonious social relations.’44 The outside
world, the natural environment, was of no moral significance. It mattered only instrumentally,
to humans. Descartes went further. Human bodies too were automata, complex machinery.
‘The exception is [mind, or specifically] thought, and its external manifestation language: this
alone cannot be explained mechanistically—a thesis which leads Descartes to assert a
fundamental divide between human beings and “the beasts’”.45 The remaining world, the
natural environment—lacking humanity, thought, mind—was again of no moral significance.
It possessed derivatively only what value and meaning humans, or minds, chose to confer or
project upon it, typically little or none.
Since, either way, any way, a natural environment devoid of humans has no thoughts,
purposes or interests, no value or meaning of its own, it could hardly matter what happens to it.
It could be regarded and treated, justifiably, as nothing but a reservoir of resources for humans.
Cartesians drew just such conclusions; similar conclusions derive, by one route or another from
Platonism and Pentecostalism, and are implicit at least in Confucianism. Descartes again went
further than some others. His practices and methods, like those of Bacon, were ‘aimed at
making men the masters and possessors of nature’.46
Untowards effects result through linkage of ideological theory to heavy practice. Link
principles, reminiscent of “correspondence rules” used in explaining applications of scientific
theories and normally included in comprehensive paradigms, connect the theoretic level to
practice, they also serve to activate otherwise inoperative or uncoupled paradigms. Such
principles may take the form of directives; familiar examples include maximization directives,
such as maximize personal fun, tribal utility, national interest, or state GNP.
* Indirect combination effects, illustrated through Leibnitzianism. Any which yield satisfaction
of all or enough elements of the consumption impact equation, and so would generate excessive
impacts. To illustrate, consider what might be called Leibnitzianism, in honour of Leibnitz’s
fragmentary ideology. Leibnitz was substantially committed to all of human population
growth, unfettered technological advance, and human lifestyles of consumption,47 in short, to
Reese p.102 For much more on the geographic impact of Confucianism, as also compared with
other (Asian) paradigms, see Tuan’s investigations.
Cottingham p.15. The utter invalidity of Descartes' argument (reported in Cottingham) to this
divide is now comparatively easy to expose, given almost 400 years of hindsight. There are no
such status divides—just as flamboyant forms of deep ecology maintain.
See Descartes, Discourse VI.
For requisite details, see Aiton. The case against Leibnitzianism is developed in a sequel.
�25
precisely those factors that combine in the impact recipe to produce excessive human impacts
upon environments. However neutral Leibnitz’s metaphysics, his monadology, may have
been—by contrast with Plato’s or Descartes’, both of which explicitly devalued much or all of
the natural world—Leibnitz’s wider ideology is linked indirectly, through impact equations, to
damaging effects.
Some imagine that this oblique formalistic detailing, through direct and indirect classes,
can be simply cut through, retaining plurality and so forth. Surely environmental friendliness is
nothing but environmental depth? While the suggestion points in the right sort of direction (for
the relevant sort of depth) it too is astray.48 Depth is neither necessary nor sufficient. Take the
move plausible sufficiency half, plausible because depth helps, no end. Nonetheless depth can
be achieved in macho ways (as ecofeminism has emphasized against deep ecology), ways
which may not be altogether friendly to less favoured species, groups or habitats. For example,
depth can be satisfied through due selection and support of some super species and magnificent
habitats—requisite environmental impartiality (and reflected justice), critical for friendliness as
intended, being neglected.49 Still less in depth necessary. For kindliness can, both in principle
and in practice, extend far beyond humans, still ranked top, to much more of “creation”. Such
extensive kindliness, observed in some humanistic humans, appears to be exhibited in some
sects and tribes not committed to depth, and it could well be considerably more widespread,
under changed but not deepened ideological conditions. Naturally, however, deepening would
afford an obvious, and excellent, reason for change.
As friendliness is not tantamount to depth, nor similarly is a prime part of what explains
depth, recognition of intrinsic value in nature outside humans. Some animal liberationists who
display high regard for creatures with capacity to suffer, show little goodwill towards forests
largely unpopulated by such creatures. Conversely, though shifting ground, an environmentally
friendly society may hold that value is but an anthropocentric construct, merely projected onto a
basically neutral world.
All the same, aspects of depth are normally reliable indicators of environmental
sensitivity and friendliness, and inversely, aspects of shallowness (as investigated in authentic
deep ecology) marks of unfriendliness.
Shallowness will work out satisfactorily
environmentally only with what is now rare (given ideological dominance), a right mix of
humans; and its any longer working widely is implausible. These reliable marks include such
familiar features as
* short-term framework.
* devaluation of natural items as against human elements or artefacts (typically exhibiting
As to the relevant sort of depth, see GE. Other accounts of depth are also preferred in deep
ecology, some of which relate to the present exercise. In particular deep questioning should lead
to paradigmatic roots, to Naess’s “total views”.
Herein lies another reason why something like biospecies egalitarianism is essential in deep
ecology; such a requirement needs, not dilution away (as has happened in American and
transpersonal deep ecology), but rectification.
�26
human chauvinism); and, as a corollary of heavy devaluation,
* entitlement to domination, dominion over nature;
* appropriation of nature, its conversion to property.
* maximization assumptions concerning personal or societal aggrandizement, utility and size,
coupled with grand projects.
* technofix approach to environmental problems.
Friendly paradigms will tend to invert these features. An environmentally friendly
paradigm can be expected to yield environmentally significant corollaries, such as the following
samples:
* an end to degrading primary production; instead ecological forestry and ecological
agriculture will come to prevail.
* a strong selectivity regarding industrialization, which weeds out damaging forms.
* a calling off of grand ideologically-grounded projects, interfering with or damaging natural
environments, such as major dams, river diversions, demolished islands (e.g. for airports), new
mountains, terraforming, extensive rainmaking, climatic interference, and generally the sweep
of “playing God” projects. A little of this sort of unfriendly technology can go a very long way.
As unfriendly paradigms are decidedly plural, so likewise are answers to questions as to
why agents adhere, or continue to adhere, to environmentally unfriendly paradigms. Some of
the diverse answers match answers already encountered in the main tabulation. Reasons are
psychological, social and cultural (with a familiar circularity here encountered), and include
considerations of the following sorts and others: because that is how things are done, or have
always been done; because needs can be met, perhaps only met, in that way, so it is believed;
because there are no alternatives, or none seen, perhaps because none have been sought;
because negative outcomes can be overcome, or do not really matter; and so on.
A short answer can now be ventured to the focal questions: Because, in one way or
another, most agents are bound to—locked into, committed to, captured by, or just passively go
along with—environmentally unfriendly paradigms. As a result the (long-term) health of the
rest of environments does not matter, or matter enough.
6. Glimpsing an entertaining corollary: an unfavourable report upon dominant
philosophy.
It will hardly have escaped notice that virtually all dominant philosophical roads lead to
Rome, to environmentally unfriendly paradigms.
Stripped of metaphor, there are
environmental conditions of adequacy, which most philosophical systems fail to meet. In an
environmentally friendly new world, most philosophy that is remembered, indeed most of the
humanities, is destined for scrapping. Prevailing philosophy is a serious impediment to
satisfactory environmental outcomes. Predominant philosophy, not just Western philosophy,
has by and large been bad environmental news.
It may be insisted that philosophy can make no difference, for instance to environmental
practice. It is not an expression of basic needs, or of any such practical matters. Exceptions to
�27
such practical bravado have however to be recognised almost immediately; philosophy soon
enters for organizational, justificatory and explanatory ends. That concession still grossly
under-estimates the extent to which ideas, and more generally paradigms, influence and even
govern action and practice, especially reflective and rational action. The substantial point is not
therefore removed through any alleged practical impotence of philosophy.
Mainstream philosophy has supplied, or mightily assisted in supplying, dominant
unfriendly paradigms under which environments labour. Of course not everything has to be
trashed, as even defective enterprises or evil projects may include decent part or worthwhile
features; much can be salvaged, arguments, subtheories and so on (and with intellectual tipping
there need be little material waste). Nor therefore is it as if an entirely fresh start has to be
made. As well as salvaged bits and pieces (which need to be carefully tested for soundness),
there are brash new alternatives such as authentic deep ecology, and there are recessive
paradigms and neglected traditions to peruse for suggestions, for inspiration, and perhaps to
rehabilitate.
Richard Sylvan*
APPENDIX. On Shepard’s approach to focal questions.
A remarkably sustained investigation of the focal questions is found in Shepard’s
intriguing books. In his Nature and Madness, he considers and quickly dismisses many of the
stock responses to focal questions suggested by contemporary luminaries (or by himself in
earlier work), such as lack of information, faulty technique, insensibility, greed, political
inertia, change to agriculture and settlement,50... . He would (and should, for his eliminative
argument) have also dismissed industrialization, state and corporate control, and so on.
More disconcertingly, for present purposes, Shepard claims that ‘a history of ideas’—
similarly no doubt a story of paradigms—will not serve; for it ‘is not enough to explain human
behaviour’ (p.3), it ‘seems too easy and academic’ (p.3), itself an easy and superficial criticism.
But if, for instance, the ‘dictum that nature should serve man’ and ‘insistence that animals feel
no pain’ should become widely entrenched, then they may well impact heavily on practice, as
accordingly appears to be the case. His slight further argument appears to miss the intended
target: ‘The meticulous analysis of these philosophies and the discovery that they articulate an
ethos beg the question’ (p.3). How, it can reasonably be inquired? What is offered is but the
An earlier, even rougher version of this article was presented at the Environmental Paradigms
Conference, University of New England, Armidale, April 1993. It would not have been written
without its solicitation for the Conference; also it might well not been thought through in
fashionable but confining and perhaps misleading paradigmatic terms.
A subsequent working draft has benefitted, slightly, from comments from very unimpressed
reviewers. Thanks certainly to Holmes Rolston for helpful comments.
No doubt a popular picture of human social changes with agriculture and settlement zs simplistic:
that before societies lived in harmony, afterwards they did not. But it is also too simple to go on
to claim, as Shepard does, that ‘the economic and material demands of growing villages and
towns are ... not causes but results of this change’ (p.3). Some demands appear to derive from
factors, such as population pressures, which were among causes of the changes.
�28
facile, false, ‘ideas are impotent’ consideration, fostered by thinking and operating in terms of
causes (e.g. lower p.3), rather than reasons and (rational) explanation, and encouraged through
an attempted move to (what is explanatorily inadequate) pure behaviour. For a simple example
of the familiar explanatory roles of ideas and paradigms, consider an alternative explanation
through them. The admittedly bizarre (“crazy”) ‘turning everything into something man-made
and [or] man-used’ (p.5) is readily explained through dominant paradigms: that is the way it
acquires value, otherwise it is worthless. There is no need at all for psychopathology here.
Correspondingly Shepard briefly reviews and rejects several of the very partial, and often
hopeless, solutions suggested under stock responses to focal questions such as making
information, or better information, more widely available, bringing people from all walks of
like together, encouraging conviviality, hitting problems with smart technology, practicing
conservation, and so on.
Shepard’s own resolution is more readily reached from a further (meta-focal) question
that he proceeds to ask: why do humans persist in degrading their habitats once sources and
solutions are made transparent? He effectively argues by elimination: other sources (read as
causes) do not succeed in providing an answer; but ‘the idea of a sick society’ (which he leaps
to, without argument, p.4) does. Wrong on both counts: On the first because a non-causal
explanation in terms of ideological wiring can provide answers (listen to politicians,
representative of the people, again, just a little time). On the second because some industrial
societies are not sick in a normal sense (though some may be), rather sickness has to be so
redefined (such low redefinitions are among underlying subplots51) that having certain
ideological commitments that are carried into practice counts as “sickness”.
So it is that Shepard arrives at his theme of ‘general, culturally-ratified distortions of
childhood, of massive disablement of ontogeny as the basis of irrational and self-destructive
attitudes towards the natural environment’ (p.ix). Succinctly, ‘there are profound psychic
dislocations at the root of modern society’ (p.xii). Psychic disorders have evolved: ‘over the
centuries major institutions and metaphysics might finally celebrate attitudes and ideas
originating in the normal context of immaturity [or]... adolescence ...’ (p. 15).
Having glided easily and invalidly to the idea of sick societies, in a mere three pages,
Shepard proceeds to diagnose in more detail the nature of th'e alleged sickness.52 It supposedly
arises, like other psychopathy with which it is immediately associated, in infancy, and is
manifest in life-long immaturity, with whole societies stuck in a kind of destructive
adolescence. No doubt there is something to some of what Shepard describes in child and
For trickery through redefinition of sickness and madness, Wisdom has already prepared us.
Observe that Shepard’s redefinition of sickness to include sick (i.e. debasing and devaluing)
practices with regard to natural habitats (and conjoined therewith, to, older people) does not
leave no contrast classes. For there remain benign ‘relic tribal’ societies, such as the Manus,
Crow and Comanche, Aranda and !Kung San (p.xii), ‘people who feel themselves to be guests
rather than masters' (p.6 empasis added)—an elegant analogy.
‘The idea of a sick society’, which as Shepard confesses (on p.4) is hardly new, is reached on the
third page of the main text.
�29
person development (not the ‘private demons’ and so on) or might well have described. There
is evidently, conspicuously in “new world” societies, wide commitment to a shallow juvenile
culture, adulation or imitation of immature media and sport models and flawed authority
figures, marginalization of the elderly, and so on, coupled with hyper-activity, violence and
vandalism. But, like political commitment to extensive economic activity, this is hardly
satisfactorily accounted for through psychopathological reduction, concentrating the whole
social problematic in the ontogeny of individuals.53 A superior explanation to widespread
individual psychic disorder proceeds through ideological commitment, that industrial humans
are raised and educated in, inducted into and committed to, defective ideologies, without
coming to know or properly experience alternatives.
The ‘portraits of maturity’ alluded to likewise appear individualistic and culture-bound,
resembling those of deep ecology, directed at embroidery of person and self, through personal
growth and identity, wider identification and relatedness, self-realization.54 They are not
exactly those of older and ecologically wiser societies. They do not reveal ecologically mature
mixed communities.
Furthermore, comparisons with relic tribal societies, which are important, can be
decoupled from psychopathological analysis and reduction. Different lifeways, commitments
and ideologies, are what they are and do not all reduce to matters of mental health.
Undoubtedly we can learn of and from these different societies. We can still witness ‘small-
group, leisured, foraging life-ways with[in] natural surroundings. ... there is the rub—... for us,
now, that world no longer exists’ (p. 14 rearranged). Nor is it really true that such a world is no
longer accessible to most of us; more leisured small-group ways can be retrieved, some natural
surrounding can even now be restored.
In a curious fashion, Shepard has managed to invert likely causal relations. While a
certain interaction can no doubt be conceded, it is not so much human ill-health that is leading
to environmental degradation, but rather environmental degradation, generally brought about
for other reasons, that is increasingly leading to human ill-health, and in the longer term causing
erosion of life-support systems.
REFERENCES
E.J. Aiton, Leibnitz A Biography, Adam Hilger, Bristol, 1985.
53
54
A psychopathic reduction is in part made plausible by reexpression in medical or psychological
terms of what would better be otherwise expressed. Consider, for instance the language of the
following clever paragraph, which infiltrates much with no argument:
‘The person himself is, of course, caught between his inner calendar and the surgeries of
' society. His momentum for further growth may be twisted or amputated according to the
hostilities, fears, or fantasies required of him, as his retardation is silently engineered to
domesticate his integrity or to allow him to share in the collective dream of mastery’ (p. 16).
But the trapping of agents between inner directives and social conditions and demands, or
between rival ideologies, can be retold in different, less medical and metaphorical terms.
Cf pp.12-14. Likewise there is a conservative underlay, more oppressive than that of deep
ecology: insistence on ‘one particular mother’ (p.7) even suggestion of unsatisfactoriness in
‘taking mothers off to work’ (p. 15)!
�30
R. Attfield, ‘Has the history of philosophy ruined the environment?’ Environmental Ethics
13(1991) 127-137.
R. Attfield, The Ethics of Environmental Concern, Second edition, University of Georgia Press,
Athens, 1991.
A. Bellett, ‘The evaluation of values compatible with ecological sustainability’, Fundamental
Questions Papers, No.2, CRES, Australian National University, 1990.
J.B. Callicott and R.T. Ames (eds), Nature in Asian Traditions of Thought, SUNY Press,
Albany NY., 1989.
J. Callicott, ‘Genesis and John Muir’ ReVision 12(3) (1990) 31-41.
R. Chisholm, The Foundations of Knowing, Harvester Press, Sussex, 1982.
J. Cottingham, The Rationalists, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1988.
C. Dale, Topsoil and Civilization, Revised edition by V.G. Carter, University of Oklahama
Press, Norman, 1974.
A Dobson (ed.), Green Reader, Routledge, London, 1991?
A. Drengson, ‘Ecosophy’, Positive Vibrations, (1990?) 8-10.
R. Eckersley, Environmentalism and Political Theory, UCL Press, London, 1992.
W. Fox, Towards a Transpersonal Ecology, Shambala, Boston, 1990.
A. Gare, Beyond European Civilization, Eco-logical Press, Bungendore, 1993.
C. J. Glacken, Traces on the Rhodian Shore, University of California Press, Berkeley, 1967.
R. Goodin, ‘Selling environmental indulgences’, Kyklos 47(1994) 573-596.
N. R. Hanson, Patterns of discovery: an inquiry into conceptual foundations of science,
Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1958.
E. C. Hargrove, Foundations of Environmental Ethics, Prentice Hall, N.J., 1989.
D Hillel, Out of the Earth: Civilization and the Life of the Soil., Free Press, Macmillan, 1991.
M. Jacobs, The Green Economy, Pluto, London, 1991.
K. Marx, Grundrisse: Foundations of the critique of political economy, Harmondsworth,
England 1973.
F. Mathews, The Ecological Self, Routledge, London, 1991.
A. McLaughlin, Regarding Nature: Industrialism and Deep Ecology , SUNY Press, Albany
N. Y., 1993.
P. Marshall, Nature’s Web, in two editions, Simon and Schuster, 1992 and 1993.
A. Naess and D. Rothenberg, Ecology, community and Lifestyle, Cambridge University Press,
Cambridge, 1989.
J. Passmore, Man’s Responsibility for Nature, Duckworth, London, 1974.
D. Pearce and others, Blueprint for a Green Economy, Earthscan Publications, London, 1989.
D. Pepper, The Roots of Modern Environmentalism, Ed: Tom Colveson London; Dover N.H.
Croom Helm 1984.
V. Plumwood, Feminism and the Mastery of Nature, Routledge, London, 1993.
C. Ponting, A Green History of the World, Sinclair-Stevenson, London, 1991.
�31
R. Routley, ‘Roles and limits of paradigms in environmental thought and action’, Discussion
papers in environmental philosophy #1, RSSS, Australian National University, 1982; also,
modified, in Environmental Philosophy (ed. R. Elliot and A. Gare), University of Queensland
Press, Brisbane, 1983; referred to as RP.
C. O. Sauer, Agricultural Origins and Dispersal, American Geographical Society, New York,
1952.
P. Singer, Practical Ethics, expanded edition, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1993.
P. Shepard, Nature and Madness, Sierra Club Books, San Francisco, 1982.
R. Sylvan and D. Bennett, The Greening of Ethics, White Horse Press, Cambridge, 1994;
referred to as GE.
R. Sylvan with D. Bennett, Of Utopias, Tao and Deep Ecology, Green Series #19, RSSS
Australian National University, 1990; referred to as UTD.
The Wildlands Project, World Earth, special issue, Canton NY, 1993.
Y.F. Tuan, ‘Discrepancies between environmental attitude and behaviour: examples from
Europe and China’, The Canadian Geographer 12(1968) 176-91.
S. Toulmin, The Return to Cosmology, University of California, Berkeley, 1982.
L. White Jr., ‘Historic roots of our ecologic crisis’, Science 155(1967) 1203-7.
J. Wisdom, Philosophy and Psychoanalysis, Blackwell, Oxford, 1953.
M. Zimmerman and others (eds.), Environmental Philosophy, Prentice Hall, N.J., 1993; referred
to as EP3.
�
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/&J
29.5.95
PARADIGMATIC ROOTS
OF
ENVIRONMENTAL PROBLEMS
Abstract. Virtually all diagnoses of the roots, and sources, of environmental
problems are defective. While defective diagnoses persist, problems will not
be adequately addressed.
Focal questions ask why human communities so frequently degrade,
impoverish or even destroy their own environments, and more generally why
the whole earth is now in jeopardy through human enterprise. More
immediate answers, sometimes correct so far as they go (which is not deep
enough), look to components of environmental impact equations. More
thorough-going answers fall into two classes: first those that do not question
entrenched paradigms, but seek (unsuccessfully) to explain widespread
problems simply through defective practice, and secondly those that, rightly
recognising that defective practice is no adequate answer, look to deeper
paradigmatic sources of problems. A fatal flaw in most of the latter answers
lies in their monistic concentration on a single paradigm, or single narrow
band of paradigms. These flaws are exposed, whence a wider, more
satisfactory answer can be broached.
Background busywork includes firstly, explaining problems and relevant
paradigms and how paradigms operate regarding environmental problems,
and secondly, detailed disentangling of proposed and alleged sources of the
problems. With this done, it is argued that none of these answers,
fashionable or other, to the focal questions is satisfactory. Here lies the
important hard, but very negative and decidedly incomplete, work of the
present investigation.
A different more complex investigation is accordingly instigated. An initial
answer is located through broader classes of paradigms : environmentally
friendly and unfriendly. Further effort is expended, profitably, in trying to
characterize these classes. Among significant corollaries, one is striking:
philosophy as portrayed through its standard history is dismal environmental
news.
2
PARADIGMATIC ROOTS
of
ENVIRONMENTAL PROBLEMS
Broaching focal questions, and searching for deeper answers.
Human activity is now degrading terrestrial eco-systems at an extraordinarily rapid rate
(liquidation of natural forest systems affords just one striking example). In modern times
humans have devised sophisticated and sophistical idea-systems which justify such system
degradation. Often in the past they would not have seen such transformation as mattering;
many remain so programmed, regarding transformation as increasing wealth (a presumption
encouraged under mainstream economics). More recently dominant human cultures have
developed social systems which induct most humans into degradation procedures (through
need, tax impositions, pressure to engage in cash economies, and so on) and which weave
entrapping justificatory webs (through agencies, councils, courts, educations, missions, and so
on).
Whence arises an increasingly broached question1: Why is this happening? More
explicitly, why do human communities so frequently degrade and impoverish their
environments, their own habitats? Indeed why do they sometimes, persistently, perhaps over a
long period, destroy their own habitats? More sweepingly, why is the whole earth now perhaps
in jeopardy through human enterprise^ For those eager to anticipate the main outcome, the
unremarkable answer to be eventually found to these focal questions is in essence this: because
too many humans, especially those in control of environmentally impacting enterprises, remain
committed to or caught within environmentally unfriendly paradigms, diverse paradigms but all
displaying quite insufficient regard for the health and well-being of relevant habitats and of the
earth.
Parts of any answers to such focal questions come immediately through environmental
impact equations, conservation laws, and such like. For example, degradation is occurring
through the impact of overpopulation, excessive pollution, damaging or faulty technologies,
and so on.
While such answers are important, and often correct as far as they go in
combination, and while they may correctly indicate what has to be changed somehow, they are
nonetheless somewhat superficial, and they leave much to be explained. For example, they do
not explain why a community persisted upon a course that deliberately led to such problems, or
why it is so resistant to changes that might reduce impacts and pull it out of its problem-holes.
Less superficial answers look to ideologically entrenched attitudes and commitments, to
1
In sources as diverse as Shepard (first page) and Jacobs (p.23). Contrary to other sources, such
as Marshall, humans are by no means the only biological species that proceed to degrade or
impoverish their own environments. Introduced “pest” species, such as rabbits and mynahs in
Antipodes, also do so; perhaps some botanical species contrive to as well.
3
pervasive paradigms that underwrite anti-environmental practices, as for instance the wood
production ideology does forestry practice, even so-called “new forestry”, and market ideology
does economic practice, even so-called “environmental economics”.2
An illustrative example which reveals the power of paradigms in blocking or facilitating
action will shortcut a more elaborate argument, through action theory, to the efficacy of idea
systems. Consider an unwanted pregnancy, resulting despite due precautions or whatever.
Observe that, more and more there are comparatively safe technologies available to effect
termination and seemingly solve the immediate problem. Ask: why so many people are
opposed to choice of abortion? A very common answer is: because they are operating under an
elaborate paradigm, typically organised religion (bureaucratic Christianity in the West), themes
of which, the creeds of which, prohibit such choices.3 Of course pro-choice considerations are
also paradigmatically embedded, for instance in forms of liberalism. Picturesquely, a social
paradigm imposes controls on action, a system of red and green lights on a captured agent's
routing procedures.
Or with a different picture, paradigms project a steeply impeding
Paradigms not only guide, control and limit; they also
correlatively give permission—as, for instance, space to play god, freedom to release a new
topography on action space.
species or variety which may or has proved a pest or noxious or has been biologically
engineered, liberty to neglect or degrade or vandalize. But paradigms do even more; they
facilitate explanation, above all they make understanding possible. In these regards, they may
work for better as well as for worse. Thus it is not a matter of getting rid of them, were this
even feasible, but of getting right paradigms.
The settings in terms of which agents such as humans act and operate, even down-toearth everyday agents, invariably include, not far in the background, paradigms, cultures,
creeds, ideologies, pervasive myths or the like, all idea-systems, all involving models (in a
technical sense) of one sort or another. Even the most practical (and vociferously practical) of
humans are governed by background ideosystems.
It is in terms of these background
ideosystems that a great deal concerning human practices with respect to natural environments
can be explained, what would otherwise lack satisfactory explanation.4
That explanation comes not however through a single paradigm, as has too often been
supposed in trying to answer focal questions, but through a bundle of somehow aligned
paradigms. Compare how a person may be represented, in social science, not through a single
2
3
4
For more on this style of explanation, see further RP.
It is not, going to be contended that religion—or a certain Abramic religion, such as
Christianity—is the main villain of the environmental piece. It is now well enough appreciated
that religions in general borrowed much in their damaging articles from ancient philosophies.
What will however, be suggested is that dominant philosophies do have much to answer for in
this regard.
Further, as logical positivists observed, explanation and justification patterns tend to overlap.
How people justify their practices offers an explanation, though perhaps a misleading or
superficial explanation, of them.
;
As well, positivistic theories show, though in an oversimplified way, how models, which
paradigms are, serve in explanation justification and understanding. See e.g. Hanson.
/.
/
4
role or program, but by way of a set of interconnected roles. What has been regularly
overlooked in seeking deeper paradigmatic sources of environmental problems is systematic
plurality. In part this neglect of plurality can be explained through countervailing propensity to
seek single answers, and to try to locate uniqueness, where however causes and sources are
plural. So it is with paradigmatic sources and roots of environmental problems. They are
plural.
As to what is going on theoretically, there is a fairly complex story to be told, an easier
working image for which is appropriately ecological. That image focusses upon the structure of
a perhaps impenetrable thicket or tangle, such as a dense rainforest patch, or, itself simplified, a
fig or bamboo thicket. Below an emergent top layer representing the problems concerned,
those raised by the focal questions, there is the canopy layer, of interlinked proximate causes.
Below that again stands a plurality of stems, plural supports, which can be construed as
supporting sources, and below them again, ultimately sustaining the whole structure, a
multiplicity of intertwined roots, representing paradigmatic basics.
What is sought are ultimate sources, and roots, not immediate causes. The cause of local
pollution may be a factory that an agent installed, to produce more flim-flam. That too may be
the physical source of the immediate problem. But deeper questioning seeks the reasons for
such production and such factories. While there may be problems with ideas and idea
structures as causes, as causally efficacious, these problems do not transfer to reasons and
sources. Nonetheless there are buried metaphors, and linkages, to be unscrambled: how are “A
is source of B” and “A is a root of B” to be explicated?
While there is much written on roots and sources of environmental problems or
developments virtually none of it addresses the question of what is meant by the partially
buried metaphors of roots and sources . One striking example is supplied by Pepper's useful
introductory text, The Roots of Modern Environmentalism. Although this text presents itself
specifically as concerning roots, there is in fact no explication offered of the crucial roots
metaphor/which it turns. For that matter there is no direct account of what the roots of
environmentalism—still less, though quite different, of environmental problems to which
environmentalism answers—are supposed to be (granted there is much oblique material). It is
apparent also that Pepper has become rather carried away with the roots metaphor, throwing it
into several chapter headings and applying it pretty indiscriminately to mean simply elements
(from some earlier occurrence); thus for instance, ‘the roots of the theme of reconciliation of
freedom and authority’ (p.193). Such usage is unsound. Because rudiments of some idea make
an earlier appearance in some authority or work, later workers may not have arrived at such an
idea by expanding on these rudiments; they may have arrived where they did quite
independently or by a different route. The mistake is that of reading a source or (genetic)
causal linkage into a mere temporal conjunction: post hoc, propter hoc.
Neither roots nor sources are mere beginnings or simply early occurrences; there have to
be continuing connections, with directional relationships such as supply or sustenance. But for
5
roots and sources different connections and elaborations are to be expected. After all, the
metaphors, and likewise what they give rise to, are evidently different; more literally, plants
have roots, normally below them, springs and streams rise from sources, not roots, often above
them, and so on. Both differ from another popular basis-beginning buried metaphor, that of
foundations. Foundations bring in other features such as solidity, stability and comparative
permanency, while severing critical transmission features (for foundations may merely
passively support, not sustain supported superstructure).
So foundations, for all their
importance in epistemology and elsewhere iffoundationalism is correct, can be set aside.5
So far dictionaries do better than popular and philosophical texts. For instance, a short
listing for the figurature use of ‘root’ runs: ‘the basis, bottom, the fundamental part, or that
which supplies origin, sustenance, means of development, etc.’ (Concise English Dictionary).
Such a two component account will serve nicely, for a start. However conjunctions should
substantially displace disjunctions, else roots could collapse to foundations or could collapse to
mere trace element supplements. Roots both give a basis and bottom binding into a substratum
and supply sustenance and means of development. Roots connections are richer as well as
more specific than sources, which may merely show from where an item comes or is obtained.
Further that place of derivation that may not be a basis or bottom, but for instance a source
book. With roots, like normal foundations, a basis or bottom is reached, whereas sources may
have further sources (hence the search for “deeper”, even ultimate, sources). Finally, root and
source connections carry explanations, at least genetic explanations—concerning how items got
to be what and the way they are—because roots and sources are characteristically that from
which items develop. Sometimes even more information, including a whole control system,
gets transmitted. As much happens where roots are paradigmatic, to return to that strange mix
of buried metaphors.
Reaching deeper roots is important. Without locating them, perhaps all the roots (should
they resemble blackberry), problems may not get properly addressed. Should we wrongly
locate roots, then proposed resolutions directed at these, cutting them off or replacing them, will
also go astray, wrongly directed or whatever. Such is the fate of many proposals concerning
environmental problems.
There are several parts to the approach sketched, if it is to be properly elaborated—
including a working classification of environmental problems and their proximate solutions,
and an account of paradigms and their roles—before getting to paradigmatic answers to focal
questions. But we can be brief on these necessary preliminaries, because main details are
already in circulation and because they have been addressed elsewhere.
1. Problems and paradigms.
5
Despite a referee’s suggestion that discussion of “roots” ‘could be improved by a contrast of the
“roots” metaphor with the “foundations” metaphor, the fact is that we are decidedly not
concerned with foundations of environmental problems; to the contrary, we do not wish to see
them supported (if shoddily), established and so on. On the growing complexity and varying
interpretations offoundations, an emergent bog, see for instance Chisholm.
6
Although these will be duly connected, with paradigms implicated in problems, they are
different components, and admit and deserve separate explanation.
la. Environmental problems and proximate solutions.
Definitions of ‘environmental problem’, and classifications of such problems, have already
been ventured.6 What problems emerge as environmental depends upon background value
framework. What counts as a major problem on deeper environmental perceptions may be but
a minor problem, or written off as not a problem at all, on shallower perspectives. Among such
indicator problems, ones here taken as serious problems, are those of
• sustaining biodiversity and
• maintaining significant wilderness.7
Even if the broad impact of human enterprise were sufficiently reduced to guarantee
comfortable survival of future humans, these desiderata may well not be guaranteed. There
would be outstanding problems.
In any event, it is not too difficult to say more or less what environmental problems are
(at worst by furnishing familiar lists), and in many cases to indicate at least in principle how
they might be resolved. Environmental impact equations, encountered in a more perceptive
classification of problems, reveal how they can be resolved. Namely, by altering relevant
impact parameters.
Given this why are they proving so intractable? Why is so little done? Why is so very
little spent, despite all the talk.8 Proximate solutions, about as far as positive science conveys
us, are not however satisfactory stopping points.
How is it, given so much scientific
information and expertise, that humans are continuing to sharply degrade, and risk substantially
destroying, their habitats.
To these, the focal questions of this exercise, there is an array of competing answers on
offer or to be met in an extensive literative. As we will soon discover, most of these answers
are too simple; and taken, as intended, as comprehensive, they are wrong. Correct answers to
the questions are however important, because if we fail to get to bottom of the issues, there is
even less prospect of satisfactory action to turn around a difficult and deterioration situation^.
That these issues do not matter, that casual human relationships, or how many devaluing
dollars uncaring humans can briefly stuff in their pockets, matter more than whole islands of
habitats—these sorts of value judgements (after all matter is a value term par excellence)
derive from and are supported by particular ideologies.
lb. Model-like objects: paradigms, ideologies, cultures ,and so on.
A paradigm can be explicated, technically, as a model in precisely a generous logical sense.9
See for example GE, which duly details connections of the problems with impact equations and
proximate solutions.
As to the extent of the problem (even) in North America, and a proposed remedy, see The
Wildlands Project.
See e.g. The cost ofpast environmental policy in OECD countries, Box 1.7, in Pearce et al, p.24.
See RP, where many environmentally relevant illustrations are given and explained.
ry)
-
That is, a paradigm amounts to a structure supplied by an elaborate interpretation function on a
general system, i.e. semantical and other evaluations defined on an integrated relational
structure. Naturally it is required to be faithful to what it models, the social forms and norms,
scientific research programs, or whatever. A social paradigm, in contrast to a scientific
paradigm, is a paradigm where the propositional and action theory, the socio-political themes
and value judgements, is that of a social group. A pure culture is but a comprehensive social
paradigm, where by “comprehensive” is meant that it covers a sufficiently comprehensive part
of the life-styles and life-forms of the community concerned. There are now many examples of
formulations of the themes delivered under rival social paradigms and under different cultures;
from these, mostly sketchy formulations we can work back towards the underlying models.
The basic vehicle, a situations or worlds model, is a semantical object, an item like a
complex universal10 similarly open to a range of construals and reduction attempts, e.g.
metaphysical, conceptual, epistemic, linguistic and so on. Once this is realised, it can be seen
that successive cohorts of philosophers and sociologists, historians and geographers have
repeated one another in vaguely discerning essentially the same sorts of underlying structures
under different categorisations: thus, for instance, forms of understanding (Kant), of
consciousness (Marx), of life (Wittgenstein), conceptual schemes (Conant), presuppositions
(Collingwood), discursive formations (Foucault), Weltanschauungs, total views (Naess),
traditions (MacIntyre), traditions of thought, cultures, perspectives, outlooks, ideologies,
programs,.... An ideology, for instance, in the nonderogatory (non-Marxist) sense is an ideasA
system, initially a propositional system or theory with a relevant domain of ideas operative,
from which a paradigm can be discerned and elaborated.
Such models are typically presented in extremely truncated form, for example through a
tabulation of capsule themes. Here is a combination example:
TABLE 1: Elements of Taoism as contrasted with Deep Ecology and with the dominant
paradigm: an initial capsule formulation J1
Taoism
Deep Ecology
Dominant (Western)
Paradigm
Harmony with nature,
through Tao
Harmony with nature
Domination over nature
Nature valuable in itself;
“humanism” rejected
Natural environment
valued for itself
Nature a resource;
intrinsic value confined
to humans
It resembles a structured universal; compare e.g. Plato’s system of forms, Locke’s of complex
ideas. Naturally there are differences between, for instance, traditions (of thought) which are
historically bound, cultures, which are geographically and otherewise connected, and conceptual
schemes (where a conceptual reduction is insinuated), but all are, at logical bottom, models of
paradigmatic sort.
This tripartite example is adapted from UTD, where capsule elements of Taoism are duly
expanded.
8
Levelling of differences;
wide impartiality
Biocentric egalitarianism
Human supremacy
Supplies ample
Earth supplies limited
Ample resources with
substitutes
Following Tao-te
Spiritual goals,
especially self-realisation
Material economic growth
a predominant goal
Enlightenment
Self-realisation
Personal (material)
enrichment
Doing with enough
(recycling inappropriate)
Doing with enough;
recycling
Consumerism
Non-competitive lifestyle;
voluntary simplicity
Cooperative lifestyle
Competitive lifestyle
Decentralised/neighbourhood and village focus
Decentralised/bioregional
/neighbourhood focus
Centralised/urban centred/
national focus
Hierarchy without
power structure;
anarchoid
Non-hierarchical/
grassroots democracy
Power structure
hierarchical
Limited technology
Appropriate technology
High technology
Considerable caution
Precautionary practice
Risking taking (verging
upon adventurism)
Paradigms control action space by some equivalent of directives; under an earlier analogy, red
and green lights duly interpreted. They may not supply direct commands, general obligations
and prohibitions, but may operate more indirectly. For instance an enlightened person, a role
model, a person following Tao, would act this way, not that. (Taoism, like certain modern
ideologies, eschews deontic judgements.)
Paradigms are absorbed and they guide practice. They commonly form part of actors'
worlds; they are certainly part of actors' programs for practice and considered action in a world.
In a sense then, they are things, programs actors carry round in their heads; so heads (or rather
consciousnesses) have to be changed, not rolled.
2. Proposed answers to focal questions; a preliminary classification of inadequate answers
(7)
and suggested remedies.
Most of the extraordinary range of answers proposed supply but a single source, and are
accordingly defective for this reason, usually among other reasons. Indeed it is not much of an
exaggeration to assert that virtually everything proposed, in a now extensive literature, is
wrong.
TABLE 2. Main tabulation of answers and remedies, in three stages.
D. Defective
practice answers
Source
Remedy
Objections
7
9
DI.
Ignorance
Relevant
information
Information
now available
D2.
Unintended consequences
Relevant
information
Information
now available
D2a
Faulty technique,
or technology
Repairs
Repairs already
made
D3
Deviation (from
theory, etc.)
Education (for failure
to limit deviance)
Adherence
D4.
Systemic lock-in
(through poverty,
ensnarement in
market forces, etc.)
Trap removal
a. Explains
only certain
cases, and
b. Due to
paradigmatic
features
D5.
Insensitivity or
insensibility
Problem
apprised
Remedy tried;
background
ideological
blockage
D3a
a. Deviation
uneliminable, or
b. Adherence
no remedy
When pursued, objections like those noted either force defective practice out as unsatisfactory,
or push it back to paradigmatic features.
Source single paradigm
Remedies proposed (among others)
Pl.
Christianity (mainstream
Catholicism)
Scientific enlightenment, or
alternative (Eastern) religion
Pla.
Protestantism and its ethic
P2.
P2a
Cartesianism
Dualism
P. Defective paradigm
answers
Monism
Anti-dualism
Modified holism
P2b
Mechanism
Substance metaphysics
P3.
P3a Possessive individualism
P3aa Personalism
Organicism
Process metaphysics
Non-reductionism
Transpersonalism
P4.
Capitalism
Socialism
P5.
Industrialism
Pre-industrialism (romanticism)
Post-industrialism
P5a Technocratic bureaucracy
P5aa. Transnational business
P6.
Enlightenment
Anti-enlightenment
Anti-materialism
10
P6a
Materialism
Spiritualism
P8.
P9
Patriarchy, andocentrism
Human domination
of humans
Feminism
Anti-domination
(anti-hierarchy)
Observe that what some have proposed as remedies, others have been as sources; remedies
proposed tend to share defects of sources.
PS. Further sample listings of this paradigmatic sort (but with the paradigms often subject
specific or partial) include:
Source
Platonism
Typical remedy suggested
New metaphysics
Leibnitzianism
New metaphysics
Kantianism
Anglo-American philosophy12
Consequentialism
Utilitarianism
Economism (economic imperialism as
Alternative ethics
Continental philosophy
New social science; ethics
contrasted with straight economic roots)
Contractarianism
Domination transfer
Consequentialism
Domination removal
Human nature (esp. aggression)
Adolescencism
Maturation
Infantilism (from Freudian physchology)
Maturation
And so on.
A very rough recipe runs as follows: draw up a potted list of major movements and factors in
dominant Western thought. Then many—perhaps it is not excessive to say most—entries in
that list will have been nominated, likely separately, by someone as the source of the problems.
That list accordingly continues (even including, sometimes, entries like Taylorism, i.e.
reorganisation of industry along lines popularized by Taylor), but what is included is
representative of the important and more interesting answers to be encountered. There are other
allegedly nonparadigmatic answers however, varying from interesting to crazy, that should also
be taken into some account, for instance answers like Shepard's challenging answer. Although
Shepard dismisses ideologies, what he offers is a further ideosystem, of similar dubious or false
cast. Strange answers include pushing it all back to human psychology (thus not only Shepard,
but also Fox, and Ehrlich and other gurus with insistence upon ‘mental maladaptation’).
The mainstream form, analytic philosophy, appears to comprise empiricism-cum-utilitarianism
in Britain, tempered in America by pragmatism.
/s
'
11
Basically, there is something wrong with a society that does that to its habitat. It is sick
—in a popular sense, yes, it is sick. It is the slides that follow, however, along psychological
routes, that are to be resisted. One slide begins invitingly: As it is not literally sick, well not
physically usually, it must be mentally sick; that is, sliding further and fast, insane or mad. But
the sources of mental sickness lie in childhood (as Freudianism erroneously insists). The slide
continues to: what we have are immature societies, frozen at an early stage of development. No
doubt there is something toyheme that dominant societies, USA especially (which now
influences so much in other cultures), are locked into youth culture, a sort of late consumptive
adolescence.13 No doubt, too, that maturity—but an environmental maturity—is desirable,
even mandatory.
Meanwhile, immaturity is fostered right through human life. Considerable effort is put
into trying to induct older people, who are often marginalised, into active consumptive society,
to spend their money through tourism, on new compact housing, in those most wasteful of
modem institutions such as airliners and hotels, hospitals and old-age homes, and so forth.
3. Documentation as to some of the acclaimed purer sources.
Like the lists of proposals and intricated paradigms, the documentation too is somewhat
perfunctory, tending here and there towards notes. Of course there are excuses. While whole
theses could be spun out on several of these topics, already beginning to elicit such treatment, a
prime objective here is different from usual: neither to convict, nor to clear or excuse, but to
partially implicate most items cited in the main tabulation above. Consider, in brief, some of
the usually accredited sources:
• Western religion, above all Christianity. The theme that the source of ecological problems,
‘the historical roots of our ecological crisis’, are to be found in Western religion, and
specifically in ‘the Judaeo-Christian belief that mankind was created to have dominion over
nature’, was repeated in a particularly pointed and subsequently influential way by White.14
One helpful summary of White's line of argument runs as follows:
Allied with technological and scientific developments, orthodox Christianity
has produced arrogant exploitation of nature, and a contemporary ecological
crisis. White's thesis is that the West's successful science and technology
developed between the 8th and 12th centuries — it is much older than the
scientific revolution though it was not until about 1850 — following the
democratic revolutions — that the science and technology were combined to
produce truly immense powers to change nature. The early development,
however, was paralleled by the development of exploitative attitudes to
nature which seemed to be ‘in harmony with larger intellectual patterns ,
namely the victory of Christianity over paganism. This destroyed the
animistic beliefs whereby men thought twice before they plundered and
destroyed natural objects. It substituted instead a faith in perpetual progress,
13
14
It interestingly matches the locking of primary production systems into pioneering stages such as
preclimax formations. Shepard’s dialectic is investigated in more detail in the Appendix .
White's article has generated an enormous defensive literature, primarily from Christian
apologists, but also from softer environmentalists and from testy historians of ideas. The whole
area looks in danger of disappearing from intellectual view under a heavy blanketing snowfall,
snowed.
12
a belief that God designed nature for man's benefit and rule, and that action,
not contemplation, was the correct Christian behaviour. Science formed an
extension of theology (for to know God you had to find out how his creation
worked), and technology provided the active means to carry out God's will.
Because today's attitudes are essentially inherited from Christianity, then it
‘bears the burden of guilt’ for contemporary ecological disruption.15
What has happened with the divisive charge, advanced by White, that Christianity was
the prime source of environmental problems, is particularly instructive. In an attempt to diffuse
the charge Christian apologists pointed to, what there undoubtedly were, recessive strands or
isolated seeds in Christianity which were much more environmentally benign (though some
such as stewardship, which has evolved toward total managerialism and sustainable
development, have proved increasingly problematic). That does little or nothing to meet a more
sensitive and telling criticism that mainstream (or dominant) Christianity has much to answer
for as regards destruction and degradation of natural environments.16 Similar responses are
apposite for attempts to exonerate their wider sources, such as Western philosophy.
Against the sheeting of responsibility to religion, dominant forms of which should
undoubtedly cop some heavy criticism, it has been contended that
philosophy ... is the primary source of most Western ideas [and] is ...
responsible for the ideas and attitudes that inhibit environmental protection
today.... Religion ... though often criticized ... as the chief culprit, has played
a much less fundamental role. Most of the environmentally offensive ideas in
Western religion originated not in religion but in Western philosophy.17
• Classical Greek philosophy, above all the peak philosophies of Plato and Aristotle.
Greek philosophers approached natural phenomena in a way that (1)
prevented the development of an ecological perspective, (2) discouraged the
aesthetic appreciation of the natural world, and (3) promoted a conception of
reality that made the idea of nature preservation conceptually difficult, if not
impossible.18
More sweepingly, they set Western philosophy on a ruinous environmental course, a course
accentuated with the appearance of modem rationalist and empiricist philosophies.
• Cartesian philosophy. The dominant modern environmental approach is sometimes
15
16
17
18
Pepper pp.44-5. Pepper then embarks upon the murky story of alternative interpretations of
Biblical data and the Christian tradition, dredged up by a series of White's critiques. The issue
continuejto be debated; for an older survey of traditions see Passmore, for a challenging recent
contribution to the debate see Callicott.
Each religion is multistranded. But we should look hardest at dominant operative forms: Ask,
not merely what they say, but what they do, and would do. For an outline of just such a telling
criticism of mainstream Christianity, see Singer esp. pp.265-8.
Hargrove p.15. Certainly the sort of message that Pentecostal missionaries even now try to
preach to resistant Australian Aboriginals, that the earth is just filth, mere rubbish, can be traced
back in direct line to Plato’s attitude to the land, an attitude Hargrove and Plumwood help
expose.
Hargrove p.21. Hargrove’s claims may appear to have been confuted by Attfield, but really,
while they have been subject to minor qualification, they have been highlighted. There is a
much fuller story still to be told about classical Greek philosophy reassessed environmentally, of
the very different roles and impacts of Plato (with his unearthly philosophy), of Aristotle (with
his earthier chauvinism), of Stoics and of Epicureans, and of neo-Platonists. For a modest
beginning, see Plumwood on Plato, Toulmin on Stoics as contrasted with Epicureans, and
Glacken on lesser or lost Greek strands.
[S
13
denominated Cartesianism, or the Cartesian Technocratic paradigm, in honour of Descartes,
upon whom (as a conveniently select individual from a swag of like-minded people) several of
the leading themes and ideas can be pinned.19
While Descartes was undoubtedly
extraordinarily influential, so were others; Newton for one, Locke for another. The paradigm is
accordingly better denominated the Atomist-Empiricist-Technocratic paradigm, or some such.
Evidently it substantially overlaps other modern ideologies, such as that of the Enlightenment,
widely implicated as major sources of environmental problems.
• Western metaphysics. While some conglomeration of the preceding sources and others
(some potted history of Western metaphysics, so to say) may be offered, more often what is
presented is some selection of Western metaphysical elements. Here is one example, plainly
exhibiting a heavy Heideggerean influence:
The roots of our environmental problems lie in Western metaphysics. For
metaphysics, Being is presencing; no allowance is made for any other mode
(sheltering, declining, concealing). Once metaphysics has established the
absolute dominion of the present over the not-present or no-longer-present,
the way is paved for the scientific method, with its emphasis on replicability
of results, predicability, quantification, and control. Nature becomes a
“natural resource” —and people become “human resources”. The sources of
anthropocentricism, imperialism, colonialism, sexism and consumerism can
all be traced back to metaphysics.
Western metaphysics has more or less conquered the world, and there is no
going back. Western metaphysics is more than simply a false consciousness
overlaid on top of “authentic” experience. Being changes historically, and
metaphysics is the index of that change... Metaphysics has a conquering,
exclusive imperative, ... and different [former] modes now exist only as
vestigial traSces. They cannot be resurrected through ancient wisdom, native
healing, goddess worship, or any other supposedly intact, dormant system.
We cannot create a “new order”. That would simply be another form of the
Will to Power... We can—and must—turn away from the dominant rhythms
of western metaphysics if we are to avoid the nihilism of a perpetually
ensconced technocratic rationalism.20
An alternative to turning entirely away from Western metaphysics, consists in combining
b
rejection of standard Western metaphysics (or, less sweepingly, of dominant metaphysics,
characteristically individualistic and atomistic) in favour of development of recessive traditions
or mere Western seeds.
Such a more sophisticated approach, also critical of Western
metaphysics, with atomism a main villain, is pursued by those who promote instead process or
plenum metaphysics.21
For encapsulation of the Cartesianism paradigm (a dominant dualistic form), summarising
Drengson’s exposition, see RP, table 5. Drengson, for one, has helped portray Descartes as the
environmentally evil genius (or demiurge). That some orthodox philosophers, not merely
maverick philosophers, are now rushing to the defence of Descartes should be seen as entirely in
keeping with the character and roles of Western philosophy.
Undisclosed source. Amusingly, I have seen myself accused of ‘rejecting] in its entirety
mainstream western philosophy and science, ... seen as the cause of the [environmental]
problem’ and instead basing my ‘ecocentric values on Eastern philosophies’ (thus Bellett). This
charge was levelled on the strength of a peripheral exercise on classical Taoism and Deep
Ecology (now included in UTD).
For the first process option, see Gare; for the second, where the plenum is that of a holistic
relativity theory (more exactly holistic relativistic geometrodynamics), see Mathews.
14
• Enlightenment. The source of problems lies in ‘the intellectual heritage of the Enlightenment’
(e.g. Dobson). Of course the main doctrines of the Enlightenment substantially overlap those
of modern mainstream philosophy and of Descartes’ philosophy (but they shed dualistic and
theistic scholastic hang-overs).
• Capitalism. The assumption that capitalism is responsible for environmental as well as social
evils, widespread until recently in state-socialist countries (when their own records were
revealed), can be traced back to Marx. According to Marx, with capitalism
for the first time, nature becomes purely an object for humankind, purely a
matter of utility; ceases to be recognised as a power for itself; and the
theoretical discovery of its autonomous laws appears merely as a ruse so as to
subject it under human needs, whether as an object of consumption or as a
means of production.22
But, as observed, a main embedded theme had appeared in earlier philosophy; for instance, the
idea of nature as purely an object for humankind, was advanced in Aristotle: ‘Now if nature
makes nothing incomplete and nothing in vain, the inference must be that she has made all
animals for the sake of man’.23 Aristotle adopted a similar stance on nature as on other species.
The theme was to be oft repeated in subsequent Aristotelianism, and reiterated apparently in
shallower Stoicism.
But the subjection of everything to utility, no doubt a relative of
capitalism, appears to be a distinctively modem contribution.
•
Modern industrial society or industrialism. Modern industrialism (‘the smooth
superhighway of industrial progress’) is the source, such is an extraordinarily popular theme:
‘... the root causes of the present crisis lie deep with the very foundations of the industrial
paradigm’.24 Similarly ‘roots [of] the environment crisis ... go deeper to the foundations of
modern industrial society’25 Again, ‘the structural roots of the environmental crises [are found
in] industrialism, in commoditization, in commercialism, and in competition and greed’26 The
popular theme, that industrialism is the source, tends to confuse mere means— industrial
technology can without any doubt at all vastly facilitate environmental degradation (as well as,
It should not be overlooked that some of those who nominated metaphysics meant thereby
paradigm or paradigms or an equivalent. But what they may gain thereby in verisimilitude, they
tend to lose in confusion.
Grundrisse p.409f.
Aristotle, Politics, Book 1, ch.8. What an inference, you might well exclaim. See further
Hargrove p.25.
M. Gabriel, ‘How “attitudes and implements” have brought us to “the end of nature’”, a paper
presented at UNE Environmental Paradigms Conference, April 1993. Gabriel proposes a
managerial resolution: ‘for us to learn to manage both our relationship to our environment, and
more broadly the environment itself’ (quotes from abstract of paper). This amounts to the flip
side of an old problematic record. For the “solution” derives from the same defective box as the
evident problem.
Gabriel ibid. Similarly industrialism is assumed as the source throughout McLaughlin (the
theme pervades his book) and as the root of the modern problem in Marshall (p.5ff). While
seriously astray as to roots and sources, those critical of industrialism have a significant case.
For, as well as functioning as a major inflator of intact problems, industrialism has helped
generate side problems of its own, as with new types of chemical and nuclear pollution.
Editorial in The Ecologist, Jan-Feb 1992, p.2.
15
less satisfactorily, subsequent clean-up and environmental repair)— with sources and causes,
what directs and powers those uses of industrial technique and practice.
• Economic growth or economic development. ‘According to a common and currently
influential diagnosis, the environmental crisis has essentially economic roots
One
widespread misconception is that economic growth is the source of environmental problems.
The assumption is astray for several reasons. For one, growth is at best a proximate cause,
itself in need of explanation. More importantly, growth may occur in sectors of an economy,
such as information technology or religious or artistic services, which have little or no
environmental impact. Also conversely, an economy which fails to grow, but is desperately
trying to survive, may exact heavy environmental costs (e.g. the forests are clear-felled to pay
for continuing employment). No doubt though, stock economic growth is intimately intricated
with proximate causes of environmental problems (through environmental impact equations).
Similar considerations tell against the familiar proposition that the source of the problems
is economic development itself or, what is different, the entrenched model of economic
development. While it is no doubt correct, and important to emphasize, that ‘the Western
model of economic development, far from being the solution to’ environmental and social
problems, is ‘actually fuelling’ them, it is not the sole or distinguished source of the
problems.27
28
• Human nature. "... the roots of our ecologic crisis reach beyond the variable topsoil of
intellectual history, whether Eastern or Western, into the common substrata of human nature
itself.’29 What such “nature” amounts to and how it functions as roots, both commonly left
obscure, turns upon background hypotheses as to the nature of this nature. Different false
27
28
29
Goodin, p.573. While not contesting the theme, Goodin does continue: ‘the problem is not just
that there are too many people, or even that they are enjoying too high a standard of living. All
that is true, too, of course. More fundamentally, however, problems of environmental
despoliation are said to derive from skewed incentives as they pursue their various goals’
(p.573). That too will be seen to be seriously astray, though it contains large grains of truth; it
presumes unchanged the prevailing economically-skewed dominant social paradigm.
Both socialists and other opponents of capitalistic conspicuous consumption tend to select the
living-standard component of the main environmental impact equation as the source of the crisis.
Thus Cuban luminary, Castro, in a recent stunningly succinct speech: ‘Less luxury, less wastage.
Otherwise it will be too late’.
Quoting claims of E. Goldsmith, advanced in an interview in Forest and Bird 273 (August 1994)
pp.46-7. The need for emphasis will persist while locally prominent political figures like the
present Prime Minister of Australia travel around the Earth with the hackneyed message that
only economic growth will solve environmental problems.
Seeing growth as the problem affords only a superficial analysis, like that of pointing to
overconsumption with which growth is interconnected. As deeper inquiry reveals, underlying
both issues of economic growth, employment and consumption, and alternatives taken, are
models, paradigmatic models. Growth is but a means to objectives assumed in the dominant
paradigm. A deeper analysis shows too why more growth will not ultimately solve relevant
problems.
Callicott and Ames, ‘Epilogue: On the relation of idea and action’ p.282 (see also p.281), in a
desperate and apparently unsuccessful attempt to reconcile the claim (repeatedly advanced in
their book) that Asian traditions of thought can make a significant contribution to much
improved treatment for natural and built environments, with ‘the deplorable environmental
conditions prevailing in contemporary Asia’ (p.280).
16
hypotheses, that humans are invariably driven by aggression, sexual or reproductive
imperatives, economic needs, yield different defective accounts. 0
• Patriarchy. The source is patriarchy, and androgyny; problems derive from mistreatment of
women. ‘Our troubles begin with the invention of male deities located off the planet’.30
‘patriarchy is the source of the environmental crisis’.31 One sample linkage statement runs as
follows:
... there is a huge denial ... of the violence perpetrated on women both
historically and ... presently] and ... this?the same energy that, turned against
the Earth, is destroying the very life-support systems and rapidly destroying
the conditions that makes complex life possible. The fires that consume the
Amazon are the very same fires that burned 9 million witches and I believe
that there can be no solution of our ecological problems unless we
simultaneously address our gender issues.32
A 15
Patriarchy, as source, is evidently a special case of long invoked domination transfer themes:
• Human domination and exploitation of humans'.
It is an extraordinarily widespread
assumption that the impact of humans (or, until recently, of Man!) on the environment, or
creatures or things in it, is a product of that of humans with each other, typically of groups or
classes. In misleadingly brief form, the source is social: Man’s inhumanity to Man; and the
solution correspondingly is social. Unremarkably, this unlikely assumption comes in a variety
of different forms: early, concerning the mistreatment of animals as an (inevitable) spill-over
from mistreatment of humans, recently concerning maltreatment of nature spilling over from, or
being one with, that of women. The fashionable assumption runs, in one form or another, from
Aquinas through Kant to a range of recent trend-setters, including Marcuse, Illich, Passmore,
Bookchin ... and some leading feminists. In particular, it is part of the very meaning of social
ecology, an ideology shaped and championed by Bookchin: ‘ecological problems arise from
deep-seated social problems’.33 On this theme among others, Bookchin simply follows a
prominent trend in social anarchism set by Kropotkin and his contemporary Reclus:
all see that the domination and exploitation of nature by man is but an
extension of the domination of man by man. Thus, ‘Both Kropotkin and
Reclus ... laid the foundations of a radical theory of human ecology.
Ecological despoliation was seen to reflect imbalances in human relationships
—domination of nature thus following from human domination’. ... It follows
that if domineering and exploitative human relationships can be avoided in
small-scale decentralised societies then such societies are also best for a
30
31
32
33
/n
Quoted in Eckersley p.64, who develops and begins to assess patriarchical source themes. For a
more critical assessment see the sequel to GE.
See Seed, quoted in the sequel to GE; also Salleh (e.g. in EP3).
John Seed’s Workshop Schedule 1992, Rainforest Information Centre, Lismore, 12. 12.91.
Seed’s extravagant identity claims are but a dramatic extension of that popular tendency to
transform comparison and similarity statements into identity claims. Indeed reductionism often
reaches further, with attempted conversion of all relational statements into identity ones, along
with unrelational property claims.
Bookchin sometimes qualifies this central claim, with ‘nearly all present’, e.g. EP3 p.354. But
he is not strictly entitled to any such qualification, given his invariant theme that the domination
of nature always results from humans’ domination of other humans (see e.g. Clark EP3, p.346).
The text EP3 contains a sizeable section providing a useful introduction to social ecology.
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17
harmonious man-nature relationship.34
Domination and exploitation of one division by another can in turn be seen as a case of
dualism at work, between the one, the dominator or dominating class, and the other, the
dominated.
• A snare of dualisms. Environmental problems derive from operation of a set of connected
ideologically-entrenched and defective dualisms.35
• Modern educational systems'. Roots of environmental problems lie in educational systems.
Or if roots don't, solutions do. However, roots of environmental or social problems do not lie in
educational systems. Parts of their solutions may however. For education is critical, for
instance, in correcting insufficient adherence to established satisfactory arrangements, such as,
so it is claimed, Enlightenment ideals or traditional ethical systems.36 Therewith we are
transported full circle back to defective practice answers.
4. A selective commentary on, and objections to, proposed answers
A main part of this exercise consists in a detailed critical commentary on the entries in the
main tabulation, and on proposals like them. Small beginnings are made on the exercise, in two
stages reflecting a major division in the main tabulation.
ad D. Defective practice answers tend to come from those who presume we are already in
possession of adequate theories, or what approximates them or supplies main elements of them.
(Such answers are also more liable to emanate from conservatives, opposed to new or radical
theories, advanced on the basis of inadequacy of prevailing theories in practice.)
Defective practice answers are especially popular in economic reaches. There was a time,
perhaps not past yet, when all market failures in the shape of negative externalities were passed
off as unintended consequences of economic activity. While “consequences” or outputs such
things as pollution certainly are, unintended they mostly are not now, without emptying
‘unintended’ of its normal sense. For example, industrialists, apprised of conservation laws and
unsurprised by polluted wastes, who dump their waste where and when regulators and waste
watchers are not looking, can hardly pretend that that output is an unintended consequence of
their industry. That should now be a rotten joke, itself with serious consequences.
Accordingly new ecological economics insists that we dig deeper—without however
exceeding economic settings or a shifting dominant paradigm—to discover why markets may
foreseeably fail and why environmentally rectifying technology is not delivered.37 Where they
Pepper p.192, with internal quotation from Breitbart. Unfortunately it is all too evident, given
humans could so socially organise, that they could settle into harmonious small-scale
communities which retained but little of pristine natural environments.
Such a proposition obtains a much fuller elaboration within Plumwood. In an interesting way,
such a proposal can hardly be wrong, given the conclusion reached below that a set of defective
paradigms ifl at work. For evidently paradigms can be covered by dualisms, represented by a set
of them in each case, somewhat as numbers can be represented in binary terms, generated from a
basic two-oneness duality.
Thus Passmore, Attfield, and others. For a critical assessment of education, see GE
Thus e.g. Jacobs, p.24.
18
usually arrive, travelling within such unduly confined settings, is, like welfare economics
before ecological, at better regulated markets, with business set as before within frameworks of
plans and incentives, controls and penalties. Environmentally, however, such approaches do
not reach very deep, or tap into underlying paradigmatic problem-sources.
But these sorts of defective practice answers do not always derive from standard
economic sources. A deviation-style answer is much favoured by Marxists to explain failure,
environmental and other, of the former Soviet Union and other Eastern block countries; namely
that true, or authentic, Marxism was not practiced. Unfortunately, even if it had been,
environmental consequences would be little better, given the heavy industrial commitments and
environmental shallowness, at best, of true Marxism.38 Differently, enlightenment liberals like
Passmore try to ascribe failures in Western environmental practice, not to any deficiencies in
mainstream theory, but to deviation from well established principles. Unfortunately adherence
to these “well established principles” is just one way in which the Earth will lose what remains
of its wilderness and remarkable diversity.
Now there are no doubt cases, past especially but also present, some resulting
(collectively) in extensive environmental degradation, where defective practice answers may be
correct. For example, there is harrowing case after harrowing case (brought together in texts
like Topsoil and Civilization and Agricultural Origins and Dispersal) of degradation of prime
agricultural lands by imposed farming practices, where at least early on (before damage became
visible) ignorance and unintended consequences could be legitimately claimed. In most
historical cases we do not have enough information to be able to say with much assurance that
agriculture proceeded until effective collapse because of continuing ignorance, or because
practices were locked-in in one way or another, or because of sheer obduracy. But we do know
more about present agricultural practices, for example in more arid parts of Australia,
concerning both irrigated and dry-land agriculture. Many of these practices are undoubtedly
sharply degrading lands, and the consequences of the practices, which cannot plead or pretend
ignorance, are sufficiently appreciated. But the practices persist, and are encouraged by a
sweep of subsidies or concessions. No doubt some of the practitioners can reasonably claim
that they are locked into bad practices through circumstance, circumstances now beyond their
control such as financial pressures, unfavourable terms-of-trade, and so on, coupled with the
need to make a living. But some, such as companies controlling large tracts of land, can make
no such claims or excuses, nor can claim such things as family precedence, attachment to place,
and similar. Their obdurate practice has to be attributed to something else, most obviously not
deviation from theory, but commitment to an environmentally defective paradigm.
ad P and PS. Dealing with defective paradigm answers is an even more complex, and vexed,
38
It is surprising how much of the practice of later Socialist states is prefigured in texts like The
Communist Manifesto. Thus “industrial armies” are to be set up; credit, communications and
transport are to become state monopolies; “migrants and rebels” are to have their property
confiscated; and so on. All this runs contrary to much Marxist apologetics (as A. Urquhart, who
made those points, also observed).
19
business. Let us try to condense main matters to a few broad themes:
1.
Many of the (incomplete) paradigms listed are not even sufficient for environmental
impasses. They may be seriously mistaken, they may have undesirable intellectual and perhaps
social effects, but a society could persist sustainably with those drawbacks. Thus, for example,
substance metaphysics (under modified Spinozism), dualisms, even patriarchy. The same
might even hold for materialism and mechanism, (assuming these practices can be coherently
made out, that depending on how differentiated ideologies and values are accommodated, and
so forth).
To illustrate: a metaphysics, of any sort, cannot be the whole story, because it does not,
on its own, account for action, anti-environmental or other. Without special bridges, link
principles, from metaphysics to value-intricating action theory, a sort of naturalistic fallacy
operates.
Thus subverted, in essentially Hume’s way, are all the vulgar sources of
environmental problems which take them as derived from metaphysics of one sort or another.
Such a criticism does not however extend to more comprehensive paradigms which connect
appropriately with practice.
2.
While several—not just one—of the paradigms listed are sufficient—in the right
circumstances (given long historical development, accumulation, and so on39)—none are
necessary. Similar impasses could arise, and locally have arisen, given significantly different
paradigms;
for example given, instead of main Western trouble-making paradigms,
Confucianism or advanced Polynesianism.
At this stage in dialectic, green history and the like—bio-history, eco-history, and related
virtual histories (concerning what would have happened)—enter decisively. For instance,
Ponting's Green History of the World begins with a graphic account of the rise and ecological
fall of Easter Island under the impact of Polynesian projects. The work also conveniently
documents many other examples, well-known to biohistorians, of ecological degradation or
collapse, far from the influence of Western paradigms.40 An important example (much less
speculative than some of the numerous other examples because of a comparative wealth of
primary documentation) outlines the destruction of accessible Chinese ecosystems under
Confucian dynasties. What several of these examples—Polynesian, Mayan, Sumerian and
others—also reveal is that no very high level of technology is needed to inflict serious
environmental damage; persistence in pursuit of an ideological project (with nothing directly to
do with basic needs) will suffice.
Other cultures did wreak, or would (given the technology and numbers, both of which
While it is easy to imagine ineffectual or incompetent tribes which live benignly
environmentally, by just muddling along, under even the worst of paradigms, that is not really to
the point. A pertinent tribe needs to have developed the structure which leads to problems, to
have the means, and so on.
Ponting’s valuable/ though rather simple/ book is but one of several bleak texts. Another is
Hillel’s, and there is a succession of earlier classic works by geographers: Lowdermilk, Dale,
Mallory, Thorp and others. In general however, geographers and historian do not dig deep
enough, to paradigmatic roots.
/3
20
some were gaining) have wreaked similar damage. For instance, deforestation, salination,
megafaunal elimination, and so on, were well established, and expanding, before (or effectively
outside) the rise of modern Western paradigms, or in extensive regions outside their influence.
3.
The list of paradigms, as so far assembled, is substantially Western in orientation.
Moreover environmental woes are regularly ascribed to Western sources — wrongly. For non
Western paradigms have led, or would lead given the opportunities (including access to the
technologies), to outcomes as undesirable as under dominant Western paradigm. Witness
again Confucianism, for instance, and its role and influence in Asian regions. Confucianism
incorporates human chauvinism par excellence (as well as, some might say, Chinese
chauvinism).41 Or consider Islam, with its reach across the Middle East and beyond.
The main tabulation (of table 2) should accordingly be extended to take due account of
non-Western paradigms, including for example:
Other Abrahamic religions
Islam
Judaism
Confucianism
Shintoism
Polynesianism, at least in advanced forms as on Easter Island.
What is “Western” is tending to blur also. Is Judaism Western, how western, or Islam? There
is also a tendency to suppose that more Western religions, Abrahamic religions, with their
intense monotheism, are significantly ideologically worse than non-Westem. But the contrasts
are different and much more complex than that. A better divide is into monistic and pluralistic.
Even so, many undesirable social and environmental features are incorporated in, or
encouraged by, religious pluralisms from the Indian subcontinent.
4.
All the single paradigm answers are inadequate, all are too simple. Even so some are
less inadequate than others. It is the same, more or less, for the combined answers, often to be
encountered. For generally they represent but one thin cross-section of Western paradigms.
While all the single one-source one-shot paradigmatic answers, occur on their own, often
they are combined. For instance, although Descartes is often cited as a villain, more often
criticism of Cartesianism is combined with criticism of other concurrent ideological elements,
such as Baconian empiricism (less incompatibly, Drengson, for one, regularly combines
criticism of the technocratic paradigm with criticism of Cartesianism—though Descartes, for all
his rich and appalling thought, contributed little to the rise of technocratic organisation.)
Similarly Hargrove combines Greek philosophy, as original source, with modern rationalism
and much else.
5.
A general method of showing the inadequacy of all the paradigmatic answers tabulated,
and others, is familiar from logical theory: namely, the method of counter-models, of which the
41
Its net of effects extends widely. Consider, e.g., the role of Chinese medicine in decline of large
fauna worldwide.
21
counter-examples (under head 2) provide special cases. A presently important illustration
concerns patriarchy as a source of environmental woes. Counter-models reveal the substantial
independence of mistreatment of women and mistreatment of environmental items such as
animals or ecosystems. One the one hand, it is easy to envisage situations, not far from the
actual in some regions, where the lot of women is significantly improved, but the lot of
environmental items is not (e.g. men change their behaviour and attitudes relevantly as regards
women, are forced to change, or whatever); just such an outcome would accord with persisting
human chauvinism. More relevant, on the other, there are situations where the position of
environmental items is much improved, for instance under much more careful husbandry, but
that of women is not, for one reason or another (e.g. they remain other, different, second class,
etc.). It follows from the elaboration of such counter-models that patriarchy is not the source of
environmental problems, as there can be continuing patriarchy without the present range of
environmental problems (problems can dry up while patriarchy continues to operate). There is
no need to deny that patriarchy as (contingently) practised, with its sweeping supremacist
attitudes which make no due distinctions between inferior items, may be a major contributing
factor in present problems. Such slack contingent conjunctions do not convert to roots or
sources. Similarly with other social roots of environmental problems, for instance with human
domination of humans as^supposed source of all problems.
5. Towards a more satisfactory explanation.
Not only are the paradigmatic roots seriously intertangled (because of connections of one
paradigm with another, because for instance of heavy philosophical inputs into religious
paradigms), but further there is not a single defective paradigm. Rather there is a family or
sheaf of paradigms, commitment to any of which, or any suitable combination of which, in
requisite circumstances, appears to have yielded environmentally untoward outcomes (requisite
circumstances including availability of technology, extent of social support, and so on). Within
that plurality there are of course gradations—and not only gradations but major differences—in
calibre, in environmental friendliness. For example, Cartesianism which regards animals as
mere automata incapable of feeling genuine pain, is significantly worse as regards other life
forms and their decent treatment than a utilitarianism which positively values animal sentience.
The family is not exclusively Western, nor somewhat more plausibly Northern, even
though as a result of forces like migration, colonialism and cultural imperialism, paradigms of
these sorts now predominate. Paradigms and cultures of less “advanced” and of third world
communities have also operated to enhance environmental vandalism and degradation locally
and regionally.
Nor are major inflators of environmental problems essentially Western. Industrialization
and technological advance—neither intrinsically Western, both manifested in varying degrees
in other cultures—are, without much doubt, what have inflated environmental problems from
rather localised ones, damaging for instance islands and river catchments, to grander and even
global ones. They are the engines, powerhouses, of major problems, generating thereby spin
22
off problems as well. But, once again, they are not deeper sources, but only means. (For again
push questioning deeper, and ask: why bother or persist with industry, the effort and dirt and
mess involved?) Nor, however, did they run on their own, nor do they continue on their own.
Such engines were not designed and built, fuelled and tended, independently.42 They evolved
primarily in the specially favoured culture of capitalism, though parallel developments could
have occurred, and later did, in other prepared and heavily controlled surroundings, such as
state socialism or post-imperial Confucianism. Now however these engines have been rendered
more reliable and less dependent on careful cultural support, and have been transformed to run
in less favourable settings.
Thus inflation can escalate from a multiplicity of prepared sources, thereby intensifying
problems and spreading them to larger regions. The intensification and spread is much
facilitated by the joint transfer of technology, industry and coupled problems from region to
region. As a result of transfer, inflation can occur within settings of quite different paradigms.
Even if the whole “West” went into a terminal decline, and its paradigms disappeared into
history, serious environmental exploitation and degradation would continue, driven by other
enthusiastic cultures. For instance, the West could in theory collapse through protracted war,
through pollution and congestion, or climate change and agriculture failure (there are many
unexcludible routes to catastrophic decline, outlined in “Limits to Growth” scenarios, that could
differentially impact on the West). Degradation would now continue however; there would be
only temporary respite from environmental crises.
While most of the conspicuous problems, awfully aggregated in contemporary
environmental crises, are accelerated by—what connects them—contemporary industrial
society, not all environmental problems are or have been of this sort. However, too many of the
other problems, such as destruction of rainforests by itinerant peasants, can be seen as by
products or similar of the main generators. Thus, in the illustration, the peasants displaced by
agribusiness or absentee wealth-holders, arrived there on industrially-made roads opening the
forests, and often wrecked this damage using industrial machinery.
An environmental friendly culture has to be much more critical concerning certain types
of industrialization, and much more selective regarding technology than present dominant
cultures, Western or non-Western. A friendly paradigm would not only ensure much more
selectivity and care, but would sharply limit impacts of damaging technology and
industrialization. While there are such paradigms, on the ideas market, they mostly lack
Lacking favourable ideological settings, earlier technological “break throughs” were not duly
developed: thus early wheels, steam engines, dyes, gunpowder, etc. Western cultures did not
enjoy a monopoly upon technology powerful enough, when massed, to induce global crises.
The picture of development of large-scale environmental problems being sketched bears
superficial resemblance to that now tendered for development of the early Universe, where, to
achieve presumed size, a source event, the Big Bang, was followed by huge inflationary
phenomena. Naturally the resemblance has limitations; for instance, universe inflation is not
terrestrially replicable in the way industrialization now is (hired or delivered off the shelf,
pollution problems and all, with a big price tag).
Ti
sophisticated contemporary elaboration and they may be flawed in other respects. Examples of
more friendly paradigms, that do not lead of themselves to massive environmental problems
and crises conditions, include those now tabulated:
TABLE 3: Examples, some flawed, of environmentally friendly paradigms.
Oriental ideologies:
Taoism (classical)
recessive traditions,
now with tiny
followings and little
political influence.
Jainism
Indigenous cultures:
Australian Aboriginals (e.g. Aranda)
Amazonian Indians.
Western philosophies:
under certain
favourable
interpretations
old
Stoicism
new
Deep-green theories, such as deep ecology.
Given the remoteness of most of these examples from predominant contemporary life, and
difficulties with their wide adaptability, it is a short step to a familiar conclusion that new
paradigms need to be worked out soon. Much much more intellectual effort should be devoted
to such enterprise.
One upshot, then, is a rough classification of paradigms into two families, the second
large: environmentally friendly, and unfriendly. No doubt there is a small fuzzy residue class43
lying between major unfriendly and friendly divisions.
Environmental friendliness means more or less what it appear, to mean, what a functional
break-down into components would yield: friendliness in approaches, practices and attitudes, to
environments, especially more natural environments, with friendliness including, as usual,
goodwill and kindliness towards (and substantially displaceable by these). As indicated, such
friendliness concerns not merely actual practices, but also attitudes held, as reflected in what
would be done in certain other sorts of situations.
Certainly a culture that manifests
unfriendliness, as a sweep of Northern cultures do, is unfriendly. But, as well, various
“primitive” cultures, whose practices are not hostile, for example because they lack means or
resources, energy or health, may nonetheless be unfriendly; for instance all members of a
culture hold thoroughly negative attiudes which they are in fact unable to put into practice.
It is not too difficult to explain in outline which paradigms will, if duly, diligently or
religiously practiced, lead to environmental problems and impasse.
In logical terms neither, perhaps as well as another residue class, both.
Certain family
24
characteristics, of unfriendly paradigms are worth elaborating:
* Direct untoward effects, illustrated through Cartesianism and Confucianism.
More
generally, direct impact is illustrated by any idea-system which attributes little or no value to
natural items, and typically much value to nature transforming or interfering human (or elite)
projects, and whose themes are linked to practice. So it is with Confucianism, which is entirely
human focussed. ‘Centering his attention on man in his present life, Confucius had as his goal
the achievement of a good society characterized by harmonious social relations.’44 The outside
world, the natural environment, was of no moral significance. It mattered only instrumentally,
to humans. Descartes went further. Human bodies too were automata, complex machinery.
‘The exception is [mind, or specifically] thought, and its external manifestation language: this
alone cannot be explained mechanistically—a thesis which leads Descartes to assert a
fundamental divide between human beings and “the beasts’”.45 The remaining world, the
natural environment—lacking humanity, thought, mind—was again of no moral significance.
It possessed derivatively only what value and meaning humans, or minds, chose to confer or
project upon it, typically little or none.
Since, either way, any way, a natural environment devoid of humans has no thoughts,
purposes or interests, no value or meaning of its own, it could hardly matter what happens to it.
It could be regarded and treated, justifiably, as nothing but a reservoir of resources for humans.
Cartesians drew just such conclusions; similar conclusions derive, by one route or another from
Platonism and Pentecostalism, and are implicit at least in Confucianism. Descartes again went
further than some others. His practices and methods, like those of Bacon, were ‘aimed at
making men the masters and possessors of nature’.46
Untowards effects result through linkage of ideological theory to heavy practice. Link
principles, reminiscent of “correspondence rules” used in explaining applications of scientific
theories and normally included in comprehensive paradigms, connect the theoretic level to
practice, they also serve to activate otherwise inoperative or uncoupled paradigms. Such
principles may take the form of directives; familiar examples include maximization directives,
such as maximize personal fun, tribal utility, national interest, or state GNP.
* Indirect combination effects, illustrated through Leibnitzianism. Any which yield satisfaction
of all or enough elements of the consumption impact equation, and so would generate excessive
impacts. To illustrate, consider what might be called Leibnitzianism, in honour of Leibnitz’s
fragmentary ideology. Leibnitz was substantially committed to all of human population
growth, unfettered technological advance, and human lifestyles of consumption,47 in short, to
Reese p.102 For much more on the geographic impact of Confucianism, as also compared with
other (Asian) paradigms, see Tuan’s investigations.
Cottingham p.15. The utter invalidity of Descartes' argument (reported in Cottingham) to this
divide is now comparatively easy to expose, given almost 400 years of hindsight. There are no
such status divides—just as flamboyant forms of deep ecology maintain.
See Descartes, Discourse VI.
For requisite details, see Aiton. The case against Leibnitzianism is developed in a sequel.
25
precisely those factors that combine in the impact recipe to produce excessive human impacts
upon environments. However neutral Leibnitz’s metaphysics, his monadology, may have
been—by contrast with Plato’s or Descartes’, both of which explicitly devalued much or all of
the natural world—Leibnitz’s wider ideology is linked indirectly, through impact equations, to
damaging effects.
Some imagine that this oblique formalistic detailing, through direct and indirect classes,
can be simply cut through, retaining plurality and so forth. Surely environmental friendliness is
nothing but environmental depth? While the suggestion points in the right sort of direction (for
the relevant sort of depth) it too is astray.48 Depth is neither necessary nor sufficient. Take the
move plausible sufficiency half, plausible because depth helps, no end. Nonetheless depth can
be achieved in macho ways (as ecofeminism has emphasized against deep ecology), ways
which may not be altogether friendly to less favoured species, groups or habitats. For example,
depth can be satisfied through due selection and support of some super species and magnificent
habitats—requisite environmental impartiality (and reflected justice), critical for friendliness as
intended, being neglected.49 Still less in depth necessary. For kindliness can, both in principle
and in practice, extend far beyond humans, still ranked top, to much more of “creation”. Such
extensive kindliness, observed in some humanistic humans, appears to be exhibited in some
sects and tribes not committed to depth, and it could well be considerably more widespread,
under changed but not deepened ideological conditions. Naturally, however, deepening would
afford an obvious, and excellent, reason for change.
As friendliness is not tantamount to depth, nor similarly is a prime part of what explains
depth, recognition of intrinsic value in nature outside humans. Some animal liberationists who
display high regard for creatures with capacity to suffer, show little goodwill towards forests
largely unpopulated by such creatures. Conversely, though shifting ground, an environmentally
friendly society may hold that value is but an anthropocentric construct, merely projected onto a
basically neutral world.
All the same, aspects of depth are normally reliable indicators of environmental
sensitivity and friendliness, and inversely, aspects of shallowness (as investigated in authentic
deep ecology) marks of unfriendliness.
Shallowness will work out satisfactorily
environmentally only with what is now rare (given ideological dominance), a right mix of
humans; and its any longer working widely is implausible. These reliable marks include such
familiar features as
* short-term framework.
* devaluation of natural items as against human elements or artefacts (typically exhibiting
As to the relevant sort of depth, see GE. Other accounts of depth are also preferred in deep
ecology, some of which relate to the present exercise. In particular deep questioning should lead
to paradigmatic roots, to Naess’s “total views”.
Herein lies another reason why something like biospecies egalitarianism is essential in deep
ecology; such a requirement needs, not dilution away (as has happened in American and
transpersonal deep ecology), but rectification.
26
human chauvinism); and, as a corollary of heavy devaluation,
* entitlement to domination, dominion over nature;
* appropriation of nature, its conversion to property.
* maximization assumptions concerning personal or societal aggrandizement, utility and size,
coupled with grand projects.
* technofix approach to environmental problems.
Friendly paradigms will tend to invert these features. An environmentally friendly
paradigm can be expected to yield environmentally significant corollaries, such as the following
samples:
* an end to degrading primary production; instead ecological forestry and ecological
agriculture will come to prevail.
* a strong selectivity regarding industrialization, which weeds out damaging forms.
* a calling off of grand ideologically-grounded projects, interfering with or damaging natural
environments, such as major dams, river diversions, demolished islands (e.g. for airports), new
mountains, terraforming, extensive rainmaking, climatic interference, and generally the sweep
of “playing God” projects. A little of this sort of unfriendly technology can go a very long way.
As unfriendly paradigms are decidedly plural, so likewise are answers to questions as to
why agents adhere, or continue to adhere, to environmentally unfriendly paradigms. Some of
the diverse answers match answers already encountered in the main tabulation. Reasons are
psychological, social and cultural (with a familiar circularity here encountered), and include
considerations of the following sorts and others: because that is how things are done, or have
always been done; because needs can be met, perhaps only met, in that way, so it is believed;
because there are no alternatives, or none seen, perhaps because none have been sought;
because negative outcomes can be overcome, or do not really matter; and so on.
A short answer can now be ventured to the focal questions: Because, in one way or
another, most agents are bound to—locked into, committed to, captured by, or just passively go
along with—environmentally unfriendly paradigms. As a result the (long-term) health of the
rest of environments does not matter, or matter enough.
6. Glimpsing an entertaining corollary: an unfavourable report upon dominant
philosophy.
It will hardly have escaped notice that virtually all dominant philosophical roads lead to
Rome, to environmentally unfriendly paradigms.
Stripped of metaphor, there are
environmental conditions of adequacy, which most philosophical systems fail to meet. In an
environmentally friendly new world, most philosophy that is remembered, indeed most of the
humanities, is destined for scrapping. Prevailing philosophy is a serious impediment to
satisfactory environmental outcomes. Predominant philosophy, not just Western philosophy,
has by and large been bad environmental news.
It may be insisted that philosophy can make no difference, for instance to environmental
practice. It is not an expression of basic needs, or of any such practical matters. Exceptions to
27
such practical bravado have however to be recognised almost immediately; philosophy soon
enters for organizational, justificatory and explanatory ends. That concession still grossly
under-estimates the extent to which ideas, and more generally paradigms, influence and even
govern action and practice, especially reflective and rational action. The substantial point is not
therefore removed through any alleged practical impotence of philosophy.
Mainstream philosophy has supplied, or mightily assisted in supplying, dominant
unfriendly paradigms under which environments labour. Of course not everything has to be
trashed, as even defective enterprises or evil projects may include decent part or worthwhile
features; much can be salvaged, arguments, subtheories and so on (and with intellectual tipping
there need be little material waste). Nor therefore is it as if an entirely fresh start has to be
made. As well as salvaged bits and pieces (which need to be carefully tested for soundness),
there are brash new alternatives such as authentic deep ecology, and there are recessive
paradigms and neglected traditions to peruse for suggestions, for inspiration, and perhaps to
rehabilitate.
Richard Sylvan*
APPENDIX. On Shepard’s approach to focal questions.
A remarkably sustained investigation of the focal questions is found in Shepard’s
intriguing books. In his Nature and Madness, he considers and quickly dismisses many of the
stock responses to focal questions suggested by contemporary luminaries (or by himself in
earlier work), such as lack of information, faulty technique, insensibility, greed, political
inertia, change to agriculture and settlement,50... . He would (and should, for his eliminative
argument) have also dismissed industrialization, state and corporate control, and so on.
More disconcertingly, for present purposes, Shepard claims that ‘a history of ideas’—
similarly no doubt a story of paradigms—will not serve; for it ‘is not enough to explain human
behaviour’ (p.3), it ‘seems too easy and academic’ (p.3), itself an easy and superficial criticism.
But if, for instance, the ‘dictum that nature should serve man’ and ‘insistence that animals feel
no pain’ should become widely entrenched, then they may well impact heavily on practice, as
accordingly appears to be the case. His slight further argument appears to miss the intended
target: ‘The meticulous analysis of these philosophies and the discovery that they articulate an
ethos beg the question’ (p.3). How, it can reasonably be inquired? What is offered is but the
An earlier, even rougher version of this article was presented at the Environmental Paradigms
Conference, University of New England, Armidale, April 1993. It would not have been written
without its solicitation for the Conference; also it might well not been thought through in
fashionable but confining and perhaps misleading paradigmatic terms.
A subsequent working draft has benefitted, slightly, from comments from very unimpressed
reviewers. Thanks certainly to Holmes Rolston for helpful comments.
No doubt a popular picture of human social changes with agriculture and settlement zs simplistic:
that before societies lived in harmony, afterwards they did not. But it is also too simple to go on
to claim, as Shepard does, that ‘the economic and material demands of growing villages and
towns are ... not causes but results of this change’ (p.3). Some demands appear to derive from
factors, such as population pressures, which were among causes of the changes.
28
facile, false, ‘ideas are impotent’ consideration, fostered by thinking and operating in terms of
causes (e.g. lower p.3), rather than reasons and (rational) explanation, and encouraged through
an attempted move to (what is explanatorily inadequate) pure behaviour. For a simple example
of the familiar explanatory roles of ideas and paradigms, consider an alternative explanation
through them. The admittedly bizarre (“crazy”) ‘turning everything into something man-made
and [or] man-used’ (p.5) is readily explained through dominant paradigms: that is the way it
acquires value, otherwise it is worthless. There is no need at all for psychopathology here.
Correspondingly Shepard briefly reviews and rejects several of the very partial, and often
hopeless, solutions suggested under stock responses to focal questions such as making
information, or better information, more widely available, bringing people from all walks of
like together, encouraging conviviality, hitting problems with smart technology, practicing
conservation, and so on.
Shepard’s own resolution is more readily reached from a further (meta-focal) question
that he proceeds to ask: why do humans persist in degrading their habitats once sources and
solutions are made transparent? He effectively argues by elimination: other sources (read as
causes) do not succeed in providing an answer; but ‘the idea of a sick society’ (which he leaps
to, without argument, p.4) does. Wrong on both counts: On the first because a non-causal
explanation in terms of ideological wiring can provide answers (listen to politicians,
representative of the people, again, just a little time). On the second because some industrial
societies are not sick in a normal sense (though some may be), rather sickness has to be so
redefined (such low redefinitions are among underlying subplots51) that having certain
ideological commitments that are carried into practice counts as “sickness”.
So it is that Shepard arrives at his theme of ‘general, culturally-ratified distortions of
childhood, of massive disablement of ontogeny as the basis of irrational and self-destructive
attitudes towards the natural environment’ (p.ix). Succinctly, ‘there are profound psychic
dislocations at the root of modern society’ (p.xii). Psychic disorders have evolved: ‘over the
centuries major institutions and metaphysics might finally celebrate attitudes and ideas
originating in the normal context of immaturity [or]... adolescence ...’ (p. 15).
Having glided easily and invalidly to the idea of sick societies, in a mere three pages,
Shepard proceeds to diagnose in more detail the nature of th'e alleged sickness.52 It supposedly
arises, like other psychopathy with which it is immediately associated, in infancy, and is
manifest in life-long immaturity, with whole societies stuck in a kind of destructive
adolescence. No doubt there is something to some of what Shepard describes in child and
For trickery through redefinition of sickness and madness, Wisdom has already prepared us.
Observe that Shepard’s redefinition of sickness to include sick (i.e. debasing and devaluing)
practices with regard to natural habitats (and conjoined therewith, to, older people) does not
leave no contrast classes. For there remain benign ‘relic tribal’ societies, such as the Manus,
Crow and Comanche, Aranda and !Kung San (p.xii), ‘people who feel themselves to be guests
rather than masters' (p.6 empasis added)—an elegant analogy.
‘The idea of a sick society’, which as Shepard confesses (on p.4) is hardly new, is reached on the
third page of the main text.
29
person development (not the ‘private demons’ and so on) or might well have described. There
is evidently, conspicuously in “new world” societies, wide commitment to a shallow juvenile
culture, adulation or imitation of immature media and sport models and flawed authority
figures, marginalization of the elderly, and so on, coupled with hyper-activity, violence and
vandalism. But, like political commitment to extensive economic activity, this is hardly
satisfactorily accounted for through psychopathological reduction, concentrating the whole
social problematic in the ontogeny of individuals.53 A superior explanation to widespread
individual psychic disorder proceeds through ideological commitment, that industrial humans
are raised and educated in, inducted into and committed to, defective ideologies, without
coming to know or properly experience alternatives.
The ‘portraits of maturity’ alluded to likewise appear individualistic and culture-bound,
resembling those of deep ecology, directed at embroidery of person and self, through personal
growth and identity, wider identification and relatedness, self-realization.54 They are not
exactly those of older and ecologically wiser societies. They do not reveal ecologically mature
mixed communities.
Furthermore, comparisons with relic tribal societies, which are important, can be
decoupled from psychopathological analysis and reduction. Different lifeways, commitments
and ideologies, are what they are and do not all reduce to matters of mental health.
Undoubtedly we can learn of and from these different societies. We can still witness ‘small-
group, leisured, foraging life-ways with[in] natural surroundings. ... there is the rub—... for us,
now, that world no longer exists’ (p. 14 rearranged). Nor is it really true that such a world is no
longer accessible to most of us; more leisured small-group ways can be retrieved, some natural
surrounding can even now be restored.
In a curious fashion, Shepard has managed to invert likely causal relations. While a
certain interaction can no doubt be conceded, it is not so much human ill-health that is leading
to environmental degradation, but rather environmental degradation, generally brought about
for other reasons, that is increasingly leading to human ill-health, and in the longer term causing
erosion of life-support systems.
REFERENCES
E.J. Aiton, Leibnitz A Biography, Adam Hilger, Bristol, 1985.
53
54
A psychopathic reduction is in part made plausible by reexpression in medical or psychological
terms of what would better be otherwise expressed. Consider, for instance the language of the
following clever paragraph, which infiltrates much with no argument:
‘The person himself is, of course, caught between his inner calendar and the surgeries of
' society. His momentum for further growth may be twisted or amputated according to the
hostilities, fears, or fantasies required of him, as his retardation is silently engineered to
domesticate his integrity or to allow him to share in the collective dream of mastery’ (p. 16).
But the trapping of agents between inner directives and social conditions and demands, or
between rival ideologies, can be retold in different, less medical and metaphorical terms.
Cf pp.12-14. Likewise there is a conservative underlay, more oppressive than that of deep
ecology: insistence on ‘one particular mother’ (p.7) even suggestion of unsatisfactoriness in
‘taking mothers off to work’ (p. 15)!
30
R. Attfield, ‘Has the history of philosophy ruined the environment?’ Environmental Ethics
13(1991) 127-137.
R. Attfield, The Ethics of Environmental Concern, Second edition, University of Georgia Press,
Athens, 1991.
A. Bellett, ‘The evaluation of values compatible with ecological sustainability’, Fundamental
Questions Papers, No.2, CRES, Australian National University, 1990.
J.B. Callicott and R.T. Ames (eds), Nature in Asian Traditions of Thought, SUNY Press,
Albany NY., 1989.
J. Callicott, ‘Genesis and John Muir’ ReVision 12(3) (1990) 31-41.
R. Chisholm, The Foundations of Knowing, Harvester Press, Sussex, 1982.
J. Cottingham, The Rationalists, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1988.
C. Dale, Topsoil and Civilization, Revised edition by V.G. Carter, University of Oklahama
Press, Norman, 1974.
A Dobson (ed.), Green Reader, Routledge, London, 1991?
A. Drengson, ‘Ecosophy’, Positive Vibrations, (1990?) 8-10.
R. Eckersley, Environmentalism and Political Theory, UCL Press, London, 1992.
W. Fox, Towards a Transpersonal Ecology, Shambala, Boston, 1990.
A. Gare, Beyond European Civilization, Eco-logical Press, Bungendore, 1993.
C. J. Glacken, Traces on the Rhodian Shore, University of California Press, Berkeley, 1967.
R. Goodin, ‘Selling environmental indulgences’, Kyklos 47(1994) 573-596.
N. R. Hanson, Patterns of discovery: an inquiry into conceptual foundations of science,
Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1958.
E. C. Hargrove, Foundations of Environmental Ethics, Prentice Hall, N.J., 1989.
D Hillel, Out of the Earth: Civilization and the Life of the Soil., Free Press, Macmillan, 1991.
M. Jacobs, The Green Economy, Pluto, London, 1991.
K. Marx, Grundrisse: Foundations of the critique of political economy, Harmondsworth,
England 1973.
F. Mathews, The Ecological Self, Routledge, London, 1991.
A. McLaughlin, Regarding Nature: Industrialism and Deep Ecology , SUNY Press, Albany
N. Y., 1993.
P. Marshall, Nature’s Web, in two editions, Simon and Schuster, 1992 and 1993.
A. Naess and D. Rothenberg, Ecology, community and Lifestyle, Cambridge University Press,
Cambridge, 1989.
J. Passmore, Man’s Responsibility for Nature, Duckworth, London, 1974.
D. Pearce and others, Blueprint for a Green Economy, Earthscan Publications, London, 1989.
D. Pepper, The Roots of Modern Environmentalism, Ed: Tom Colveson London; Dover N.H.
Croom Helm 1984.
V. Plumwood, Feminism and the Mastery of Nature, Routledge, London, 1993.
C. Ponting, A Green History of the World, Sinclair-Stevenson, London, 1991.
31
R. Routley, ‘Roles and limits of paradigms in environmental thought and action’, Discussion
papers in environmental philosophy #1, RSSS, Australian National University, 1982; also,
modified, in Environmental Philosophy (ed. R. Elliot and A. Gare), University of Queensland
Press, Brisbane, 1983; referred to as RP.
C. O. Sauer, Agricultural Origins and Dispersal, American Geographical Society, New York,
1952.
P. Singer, Practical Ethics, expanded edition, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1993.
P. Shepard, Nature and Madness, Sierra Club Books, San Francisco, 1982.
R. Sylvan and D. Bennett, The Greening of Ethics, White Horse Press, Cambridge, 1994;
referred to as GE.
R. Sylvan with D. Bennett, Of Utopias, Tao and Deep Ecology, Green Series #19, RSSS
Australian National University, 1990; referred to as UTD.
The Wildlands Project, World Earth, special issue, Canton NY, 1993.
Y.F. Tuan, ‘Discrepancies between environmental attitude and behaviour: examples from
Europe and China’, The Canadian Geographer 12(1968) 176-91.
S. Toulmin, The Return to Cosmology, University of California, Berkeley, 1982.
L. White Jr., ‘Historic roots of our ecologic crisis’, Science 155(1967) 1203-7.
J. Wisdom, Philosophy and Psychoanalysis, Blackwell, Oxford, 1953.
M. Zimmerman and others (eds.), Environmental Philosophy, Prentice Hall, N.J., 1993; referred
to as EP3.
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Lake George - Desk Pile 1: Theories for Everything
Box 15: Green Projects in Progress
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1165
PARADIGMATIC ROOTS
OF
ENVIRONMENTAL PROBLEMS
Abstract. Virtually all diagnoses of the roots, and sources, of environmental
problems are defective. While defective diagnoses persist, problems will not
be adequately addressed.
Focal questions ask why human communities so frequently degrade,
impoverish or even destroy their own environments, and more generally why
the whole earth is now in jeopardy through human enterprise. More
immediate answers, sometimes correct so far as they go (which is not deep
enough), look to components of environmental impact equations. More
thorough-going answers fall into two classes: first those that do not question
entrenched paradigms, but seek (unsuccessfully) to explain widespread
problems simply through defective practice, and secondly those that, rightly
recognising that defective practice is no adequate answer, look to deeper
paradigmatic sources of problems. A fatal flaw in most of the latter answers
lies in their monistic concentration on a single paradigm, or single narrow
band of paradigms. These flaws are exposed, whence a wider, more
satisfactory answer can be broached.
Background busywork includes firstly, explaining problems and relevant
paradigms and how paradigms operate regarding environmental problems,
and secondly, detailed disentangling of proposed and alleged sources of the
problems. With this done, it is argued that none of these answers,
fashionable or other, to the focal questions is satisfactory. Here lies the
important hard, but very negative and decidedly incomplete, work of the
present investigation.
. . .
A different more complex investigation is accordingly instigated. An initial
answer is located through broader classes of paradigms : environmentally
friendly and unfriendly. Further effort is expended, profitably, in trying to
characterize these classes. Among significant corollaries, one is striking,
philosophy as portrayed through its standard history is dismal environmental
news.
3.7.95
�2
PARADIGMATIC ROOTS
of
ENVIRONMENTAL PROBLEMS
Broaching focal questions, and searching for deeper answers.
Human activity is now degrading terrestrial eco-systems at an extraordinarily rapid rate
(liquidation of natural forest systems affords just one striking example). In modem times
humans have devised sophisticated and sophistical idea-systems which justify such system
degradation.
Often in the past they would not have seen such transformation as mattering,
many remain so programmed, regarding transformation as increasing wealth (a presumption
encouraged under mainstream economics). More recently dominant human cultures have
developed social systems which induct most humans into degradation procedures (through
need, tax impositions, pressure to engage in cash economies, and so on) and which weave
entrapping justificatory webs (through agencies, councils, courts, educations, missions, and so
on).
Whence arises an increasingly broached question1: Why is this happening? More
explicitly, why do human communities so frequently degrade and impoverish their
environments, their own habitats? Indeed why do they sometimes, persistently, perhaps over a
long period, destroy their own habitats? More sweepingly, why is the whole earth now perhaps
in jeopardy through human enterprise? For those eager to anticipate the main outcome, the
unremarkable answer to be eventually found to these focal questions is in essence this: because
too many humans, especially those in control of environmentally impacting enterprises, remain
committed to or caught within environmentally unfriendly paradigm?, diverse paradigms but all
displaying quite insufficient regard for the health and well-being of relevant habitats and of the
earth.
Parts of any answers to such focal questions come immediately through environmental
impact equations, conservation laws, and such like. For example, degradation is occurring
through the impact of overpopulation, excessive pollution, damaging or faulty technologies,
and so on.
While such answers are important, and often correct as far as they go in
combination, and while they may correctly indicate what has to be changed somehow, they are
nonetheless somewhat superficial, and they leave much to be explained. For example, they do
not explain why a community persisted upon a course that deliberately led to such problems, or
why it is so resistant to changes that might reduce impacts and pull it out of its problem-holes.
Less superficial answers look to ideologically entrenched attitudes and commitments, to
1
In sources as diverse as Shepard (first page) and Jacobs (p.23). Contrary to other sources, such
as Marshall, humans are by no means the only biological species that proceed to degrade or
impoverish their own environments. Introduced “pest” species, such as rabbits and mynahs in
the Antipodes, also do so; perhaps some botanical species contrive to as well.
�3
pervasive paradigms that underwrite anti-environmental practices, as for instance the wood
production ideology does forestry practice, even so-called “new forestry”, and market ideology
does economic practice, even so-called “environmental economics”.2
An illustrative example which reveals the power of paradigms in blocking or facilitating
action will shortcut a more elaborate argument, through action theory, to the efficacy of idea
systems. Consider an unwanted pregnancy, resulting despite due precautions or whatever.
Observe that, more and more there are comparatively safe technologies available to effect
termination and seemingly solve the immediate problem. Ask: why so many people are
opposed to choice of abortion? A very common answer is: because they are operating under an
elaborate paradigm, typically organised religion (bureaucratic Christianity in the West), themes
of which, the creeds of which, prohibit such choices.3 Of course pro-choice considerations are
also paradigmatically embedded, for instance in forms of liberalism. Picturesquely, a social
paradigm imposes controls on action, a system of red and green lights on a captured agent s
routing procedures.
Or with a different picture, paradigms project a steeply impeding
topography on action space.
Paradigms not only guide, control and limit; they also
correlatively give permission—as, for instance, space to play god, freedom to release a new
species or variety which may or has proved a pest or noxious or has been biologically
engineered, liberty to neglect or degrade or vandalize. But paradigms do even more; they
facilitate explanation, above all they make understanding possible. In these regards, they may
work for better as well as for worse. Thus it is not a matter of getting rid of them, were this
even feasible, but of getting right paradigms.
The settings in terms of which agents such as humans act and operate, even down-toearth everyday agents, invariably include, not far in the background, paradigms, cultures,
creeds, ideologies, pervasive myths or the like, all idea-systems, all involving models (in a
technical sense) of one sort or another. Even the most practical (and vociferously practical) of
humans are governed by background ideosystems.
It is in terms of these background
ideosystems that a great deal concerning human practices with respect to natural environments
can be explained, what would otherwise lack satisfactory explanation.4
That explanation comes not however through a single paradigm, as has too often been
supposed in trying to answer focal questions, but through a bundle of somehow aligned
paradigms. Compare how a person may be represented, in social science, not through a single
2
3
4
For more on this style of explanation, see further RP.
It is not, going to be contended that religion—or a certain Abramic religion, such as
Christianity—is the main villain of the environmental piece. It is now well enough appreciated
that religions in general borrowed much in their damaging articles from ancient philosophies.
What will however, be suggested is that dominant philosophies do have much to answer for in
this regard.
Further, as logical positivists observed, explanation and justification patterns tend to overlap.
How people justify their practices offers an explanation, though perhaps a misleading or
superficial explanation, of them.
As well, positivistic theories show, though in an oversimplified way, how models, which
paradigms are, serve in explanation justification and understanding. See e.g. Hanson.
�4
role or program, but by way of a set of interconnected roles. What has been regularly
overlooked in seeking deeper paradigmatic sources of environmental problems is systematic
plurality. In part this neglect of plurality can be explained through countervailing propensity to
seek single answers, and to try to locate uniqueness, where however causes and sources are
plural. So it is with paradigmatic sources and roots of environmental problems. They are
plural.
As to what is going on theoretically, there is a fairly complex story to be told, an easier
working image for which is appropriately ecological. That image focusses upon the structure of
a perhaps impenetrable thicket or tangle, such as a dense rainforest patch, or, itself simplified, a
fig or bamboo thicket. Below an emergent top layer representing the problems concerned,
those raised by the focal questions, there is the canopy layer, of interlinked proximate causes.
Below that again stands a plurality of stems, plural supports, which can be construed as
supporting sources, and below them again, ultimately sustaining the whole structure, a
multiplicity of intertwined roots, representing paradigmatic basics.
What is sought are ultimate sources, and roots, not immediate causes. The cause of local
pollution may be a factory that an agent installed, to produce more flim-flam. That too may be
the physical source of the immediate problem. But deeper questioning seeks the reasons for
such production and such factories. While there may be problems with ideas and idea
structures as causes, as causally efficacious, these problems do not transfer to reasons and
sources. Nonetheless there are buried metaphors, and linkages, to be unscrambled: how are ‘‘A
is source of B” and “A is a root of B” to be explicated?
While there is much written on roots and sources of environmental problems or
developments virtually none of it addresses the question of what is meant by the partially
buried metaphors of roots and sources . One striking example is supplied by Pepper's useful
introductory text, The Roots of Modem Environmentalism. Although this text presents itself
specifically as concerning roots, there is in fact no explication offered of the crucial roots
metaphor on which it turns. For that matter there is no direct account of what the roots of
environmentalism—still less, though quite different, of environmental problems to which
environmentalism answers—are supposed to be (granted there is much oblique material). It is
apparent also that Pepper has become rather carried away with the roots metaphor, throwing it
into several chapter headings and applying it pretty indiscriminately to mean simply elements
(from some earlier occurrence); thus for instance, ‘the roots of the theme of reconciliation of
freedom and authority’ (p. 193). Such usage is unsound. Because rudiments of some idea make
an earlier appearance in some authority or work, later workers may not have arrived at such an
idea by expanding on these rudiments; they may have arrived where they did quite
independently or by a different route. The mistake is that of reading a source or (genetic)
causal linkage into a mere temporal conjunction: post hoc, propter hoc.
Neither roots nor sources are mere beginnings or simply early occurrences; there have to
be continuing connections, with directional relationships such as supply or sustenance. But for
�5
roots and sources different connections and elaborations are to be expected. After all, the
metaphors, and likewise what they give rise to, are evidently different; more literally, plants
have roots, normally below them, springs and streams rise from sources, not roots, often above
them, and so on. Both differ from another popular basis-beginning buried metaphor, that of
foundations. Foundations bring in other features such as solidity, stability and comparative
permanency, while severing critical transmission features (for foundations may merely
passively support, not sustain supported superstructure).
So foundations, for all their
importance in epistemology and elsewhere if foundationalism is correct, can be set aside.
So far dictionaries do better than popular and philosophical texts. For instance, a short
listing for the figurature use of ‘root’ runs: ‘the basis, bottom, the fundamental part, or that
which supplies origin, sustenance, means of development, etc. (Concise English Dictionary).
Such a two component account will serve nicely, for a start. However conjunctions should
substantially displace disjunctions, else roots could collapse to foundations or could collapse to
mere trace element supplements. Roots both give a basis and bottom binding into a substratum
and supply sustenance and means of development. Roots connections are richer as well as
more specific than sources, which may merely show from where an item comes or is obtained.
Further that place of derivation that may not be a basis or bottom, but for instance a source
book. With roots, like normal foundations, a basis or bottom is reached, whereas sources may
have further sources (hence the search for ’‘deeper”, even ultimate, sources). Finally, root and
source connections carry explanations, at least genetic explanations—concerning how items got
to be what and the way they are—because roots and sources are characteristically that from
which items develop. Sometimes even more information, including a whole control system,
gets transmitted. As much happens where roots are paradigmatic, to return to that strange mix
of buried metaphors.
Reaching deeper roots is important. Without locating them, perhaps all the roots (should
they resemble blackberry), problems may not get properly addressed. Should we wrongly
locate roots, then proposed resolutions directed at these, cutting them off or replacing them, will
also go astray, wrongly directed or whatever. Such is the fate of many proposals concerning
environmental problems.
There are several parts to the approach sketched, if it is to be properly elaboratedincluding a working classification of environmental problems and their proximate solutions,
and an account of paradigms and their roles—before getting to paradigmatic answers to focal
questions. But we can be brief on these necessary preliminaries, because main details are
already in circulation and because they have been addressed elsewhere.
1. Problems and paradigms.
5
Despite a referee’s suggestion that discussion of “roots” ‘could be improved by a contrast of the
“roots” metaphor with the “foundations” metaphor, the fact is that we are decidedly not
concerned with foundations of environmental problems; to the contrary, we do not wish to see
them supported (if shoddily), established and so on. On the growing complexity and varying
interpretations offoundations, an emergent bog, see for instance Chisholm.
�6
Although these will be duly connected, with paradigms implicated in problems, they are
different components, and admit and deserve separate explanation.
la. Environmental problems and proximate solutions.
Definitions of ‘environmental problem’, and classifications of such problems, have already
been ventured.6 What problems emerge as environmental depends upon background value
framework. What counts as a major problem on deeper environmental perceptions may be but
a minor problem, or written off as not a problem at all, on shallower perspectives. Among such
indicator problems, ones here taken as serious problems, are those of
• sustaining biodiversity and
• maintaining significant wilderness.7
Even if the broad impact of human enterprise were sufficiently reduced to guarantee
comfortable survival of future humans, these desiderata may well not be guaranteed. There
would be outstanding problems.
In any event, it is not too difficult to say more or less what environmental problems are
(at worst by furnishing familiar lists), and in many cases to indicate at least in principle how
they might be resolved. Environmental impact equations, encountered in a more perceptive
classification of problems, reveal how they can be resolved. Namely, by altering relevant
impact parameters.
Given this why are they proving so intractable? Why is so little done? Why is so very
little spent, despite all the talk.8 Proximate solutions, about as far as positive science conveys
us, are not however satisfactory stopping points.
How is it, given so much scientific
information and expertise, that humans are continuing to sharply degrade, and risk substantially
destroying, their habitats.
To these, the focal questions of this exercise, there is an array of competing answers on
offer or to be met in an extensive literative. As we will soon discover, most of these answers
are too simple; and taken, as intended, as comprehensive, they are wrong. Correct answers to
the questions are however important, because if we fail to get to the bottom of the issues, there
is even less prospect of satisfactory action to mm around a difficult and deteriorating situation.
That these issues do not matter, that casual human relationships, or how many devaluing
dollars uncaring humans can briefly stuff in their pockets, matter more than whole islands of
habitats—these sorts of value judgements (after all matter is a value term par excellence)
derive from and are supported by particular ideologies.
lb. Model-like objects: paradigms, ideologies, cultures ,and so on.
A paradigm can be explicated, technically, as a model in precisely a generous logical sense.9
6
7
8
9
See for example GE, which duly details connections of the problems with impact equations and
proximate solutions.
As to the extent of the problem (even) in North America, and a proposed remedy, see The
Wildlands Project.
See e.g. The cost of past environmental policy in OECD countries, Box 1.7, in Pearce et al, p.24.
See RP, where many environmentally relevant illustrations are given and explained.
�7
That is, a paradigm amounts to a structure supplied by an elaborate interpretation function on a
general system, i.e. semantical and other evaluations defined on an integrated relational
structure. Naturally it is required to be faithful to what it models, the social forms and norms,
scientific research programs, or whatever. A social paradigm, in contrast to a scientific
paradigm, is a paradigm where the propositional and action theory, the socio-political themes
and value judgements, is that of a social group. A pure culture is but a comprehensive social
paradigm, where by “comprehensive” is meant that it covers a sufficiently comprehensive part
of the life-styles and life-forms of the community concerned. There are now many examples of
formulations of the themes delivered under rival social paradigms and under different cultures;
from these, mostly sketchy formulations we can work back towards the underlying models.
The basic vehicle, a situations or worlds model, is a semantical object, an item like a
complex universal10 similarly open to a range of construals and reduction attempts, e.g.
metaphysical, conceptual, epistemic, linguistic and so on. Once this is realised, it can be seen
that successive cohorts of philosophers and sociologists, historians and geographers have
repeated one another in vaguely discerning essentially the same sorts of underlying structures
under different categorisations: thus, for instance, forms of understanding (Kant), of
consciousness (Marx), of life (Wittgenstein), conceptual schemes (Conant), presuppositions
(Collingwood), discursive formations (Foucault), Weltanschauungs, total views (Naess),
traditions (MacIntyre), traditions of thought, cultures, perspectives, outlooks, ideologies,
programs, .... An ideology, for instance, in the non-derogatory (non-Marxist) sense is an ideas-
system, initially a propositional system or theory with a relevant domain of ideas operative,
from which a paradigm can be discerned and elaborated.
Such models are typically presented in extremely truncated form, for example through a
tabulation of capsule themes. Here is a combination example:
TABLE 1: Elements of Taoism as contrasted with Deep Ecology and with the dominant
paradigm: an initial capsule formulation -11
Taoism
Deep Ecology
Dominant (Western)
Paradigm
Harmony with nature,
through Tao
Harmony with nature
Domination over nature
Nature valuable in itself;
“humanism” rejected
Natural environment
valued for itself
Nature a resource;
intrinsic value confined
to humans
10
11
It resembles a structured universal; compare e.g. Plato’s system of forms, Locke’s of complex
ideas. Naturally there are differences between, for instance, traditions (of thought) which are
historically bound, cultures, which are geographically and otherewise connected, and conceptual
schemes (where a conceptual reduction is insinuated), but all are, at logical bottom, models of
paradigmatic sort.
This tripartite example is adapted from UTD, where capsule elements of Taoism are duly
expanded.
�8
Levelling of differences;
wide impartiality
Biocentric egalitarianism
Human supremacy
Supplies ample
Earth supplies limited
Ample resources with
substitutes
Following Tao-te
Spiritual goals,
especially self-realisation
Material economic growth
a predominant goal
Enlightenment
Self-realisation
Personal (material)
enrichment
Doing with enough
(recycling inappropriate)
Doing with enough;
recycling
Consumerism
Non-competitive lifestyle;
voluntary simplicity
Cooperative lifestyle
Competitive lifestyle
Decentralised/neighbourhood and village focus
Decentralised/bioregional
/neighbourhood focus
Centralised/urban centred/
national focus
Hierarchy without
power structure;
anarchoid
Non-hierarchical/
grassroots democracy
Power structure
hierarchical
Limited technology
Appropriate technology
High technology
Considerable caution
Precautionary practice
Risking taking (verging
upon adventurism)
Paradigms control action space by some equivalent of directives; under an earlier analogy, red
and green lights duly interpreted. They may not supply direct commands, general obligations
and prohibitions, but may operate more indirectly. For instance an enlightened person, a role
model, a person following Tao, would act this way, not that. (Taoism, like certain modem
ideologies, eschews deontic judgements.)
Paradigms are absorbed and they guide practice. They commonly form part of actors'
worlds; they are certainly part of actors' programs for practice and considered action in a world.
In a sense then, they are things, programs actors carry round in their heads; so heads (or rather
consciousnesses) have to be changed, not rolled.
2. Proposed answers to focal questions: a preliminary classification of inadequate answers
and suggested remedies.
Most of the extraordinary range of answers proposed supply but a single source, and are
accordingly defective for this reason, usually among other reasons. Indeed it is not much of an
exaggeration to assert that virtually everything proposed, in a now extensive literature, is
wrong.
TABLE 2. Main tabulation of answers and remedies , in three stages.
D. Defective
practice answers
Source
Remedy
Objections
�9
DI.
Ignorance
Relevant
information
Information
now available
D2.
Unintended consequences
Relevant
information
Information
now available
D2a
Faulty technique,
or technology
Repairs
Repairs already
made
D3
Deviation (from
theory, etc.)
Education (for failure
to limit deviance)
Adherence
a. Deviation
uneliminable, or
b. Adherence
no remedy
D4.
Systemic lock-in
(through poverty,
ensnarement in
market forces, etc.)
Trap removal
a. Explains
only certain
cases, and
b. Due to
paradigmatic
features
D5.
Insensitivity or
insensibility
Problem
apprised
Remedy tried;
background
ideological
blockage
D3a
When pursued, objections like those noted either force defective practice out as unsatisfactory,
or push it back to paradigmatic features.
Source single paradigm
Remedies proposed (among others)
Pl.
Christianity (mainstream
Catholicism)
Scientific enlightenment, or
alternative (Eastern) religion
Pla.
Protestantism and its ethic
P2.
P2a
Cartesianism
Dualism
Anti-dualism
P2b
Mechanism
Organicism
P. Defective paradigm
answers
Substance metaphysics
P3.
P3a Possessive individualism
P3aa Personalism
Monism
Modified holism
Process metaphysics
Non-reductionism
Transpersonalism
P4.
Capitalism
Socialism
P5.
Industrialism
Pre-industrialism (romanticism)
Post-industrialism
P5a Technocratic bureaucracy
P5aa. Transnational business
P6.
Enlightenment
Anti-enlightenment
Anti-materialism
�10
P6a
Materialism
Spiritualism
P8.
P9
Patriarchy, andocentrism
Human domination
of humans
Feminism
Anti-domination
(anti-hierarchy)
Observe that what some have proposed as remedies, others have seen as sources; remedies
proposed tend to share defects of sources.
PS. Further sample listings of this paradigmatic sort (but with the paradigms often subject
specific or partial) include:
Typical remedy suggested
Source
Platonism
Leibnitzianism
Kantianism
Anglo-American philosophy12
Utilitarianism
Economism (economic imperialism as
New metaphysics
New metaphysics
Consequentialism
Continental philosophy
Alternative ethics
New social science; ethics
contrasted with straight economic roots)
Contractarianism
Consequentialism
Domination transfer
Domination removal
Human nature (esp. aggression)
Adolescencism
Infantilism (from Freudian physchology)
Maturation
Maturation
And so on.
A very rough recipe runs as follows: draw up a potted list of major movements and factors in
dominant Western thought. Then many—perhaps it is not excessive to say most—entries in
that list will have been nominated, likely separately, by someone as the source of the problems.
That list accordingly continues (even including, sometimes, entries like Taylorism, i.e.
reorganisation of industry along lines popularized by Taylor), but what is included is
representative of the important and more interesting answers to be encountered. There are other
allegedly nonparadigmatic answers however, varying from interesting to crazy, that should also
be taken into some account, for instance answers like Shepard’s challenging answer. Although
Shepard dismisses ideologies, what he offers is a further ideosystem, of similar dubious or false
cast. Strange answers include pushing it all back to human psychology (thus not only Shepard,
but also Fox, and Ehrlich and other gurus with insistence upon ‘mental maladaptation’).
12
The mainstream form, analytic philosophy, appears to comprise empiricism-cum-utilitarianism
in Britain, tempered in America by pragmatism.
�11
Basically, there is something wrong with a society that does that to its habitat. It is sick
—in a popular sense, yes, it is sick. It is the slides that follow, however, along psychological
routes, that are to be resisted. One slide begins invitingly: As it is not literally sick, well not
physically usually, it must be mentally sick; that is, sliding further and fast, insane or mad. But
the sources of mental sickness lie in childhood (as Freudianism erroneously insists). The slide
continues to: what we have are immature societies, frozen at an early stage of development. No
doubt there is something to the theme that dominant societies, USA especially (which now
influences so much in other cultures), are locked into youth culture, a sort of late consumptive
adolescence.13 No doubt, too, that maturity—but an environmental maturity—is desirable,
even mandatory.
Meanwhile, immaturity is fostered right through human life. Considerable effort is put
into trying to induct older people, who are often marginalised, into active consumptive society,
to spend their money through tourism, on new compact housing, in those most wasteful of
modem institutions such as airliners and hotels, hospitals and old-age homes, and so forth.
3. Documentation as to some of the acclaimed purer sources.
Like the lists of proposals and intricated paradigms, the documentation too is somewhat
perfunctory, tending here and there towards notes. Of course there are excuses. While whole
theses could be spun out on several of these topics, already beginning to elicit such treatment, a
prime objective here is different from usual: neither to convict, nor to clear or excuse, but to
partially implicate most items cited in the main tabulation above. Consider, in brief, some of
the usually accredited sources:
• Western religion, above all Christianity. The theme that the source of ecological problems,
‘the historical roots of our ecological crisis’, are to be found in Western religion, and
specifically in ‘the Judaeo-Christian belief that mankind was created to have dominion over
nature’, was repeated in a particularly pointed and subsequently influential way by White.14
One helpful summary of White's line of argument runs as follows:
Allied with technological and scientific developments, orthodox Christianity
has produced arrogant exploitation of nature, and a contemporary ecological
crisis. White's thesis is that the West's successful science and technology
developed between the 8th and 12th centuries — it is much older than the
scientific revolution though it was not until about 1850 — following the
democratic revolutions — that the science and technology were combined to
produce truly immense powers to change nature. The early development,
however, was paralleled by the development of exploitative attitudes to
nature which seemed to be ‘in harmony with larger intellectual patterns’,
namely the victory of Christianity over paganism. This destroyed the
animistic beliefs whereby men thought twice before they plundered and
destroyed natural objects. It substituted instead a faith in perpetual progress,
13
14
It interestingly matches the locking of primary production systems into pioneering stages such as
preclimax formations. Shepard’s dialectic is investigated in more detail in the Appendix .
White's article has generated an enormous defensive literature, primarily from Christian
apologists, but also from softer environmentalists and from testy historians of ideas. The whole
area looks in danger of disappearing from intellectual view under a heavy blanketing snowfall,
snowed.
�12
a belief that God designed nature for man's benefit and rule, and that action,
not contemplation, was the correct Christian behaviour. Science formed an
extension of theology (for to know God you had to find out how his creation
worked), and technology provided the active means to carry out God's will.
Because today's attitudes are essentially inherited from Christianity, then it
‘bears the burden of guilt’ for contemporary ecological disruption.15
What has happened with the divisive charge, advanced by White, that Christianity was
the prime source of environmental problems, is particularly instructive. In an attempt to diffuse
the charge Christian apologists pointed to, what there undoubtedly were, recessive strands or
isolated seeds in Christianity which were much more environmentally benign (though some
such as stewardship, which has evolved toward total managerialism and sustainable
development, have proved increasingly problematic). That does little or nothing to meet a more
sensitive and telling criticism that mainstream (or dominant) Christianity has much to answer
for as regards destruction and degradation of natural environments.16 Similar responses are
apposite for attempts to exonerate their wider sources, such as Western philosophy.
Against the sheeting of responsibility to religion, dominant forms of which should
undoubtedly cop some heavy criticism, it has been contended that
philosophy ... is the primary source of most Western ideas [and] is ...
responsible for the ideas and attitudes that inhibit environmental protection
today. ... Religion ... though often criticized ... as the chief culprit, has played
a much less fundamental role. Most of the environmentally offensive ideas in
Western religion originated not in religion but in Western philosophy.17
• Classical Greek philosophy, above all the peak philosophies of Plato and Aristotle.
Greek philosophers approached natural phenomena in a way that (1)
prevented the development of an ecological perspective, (2) discouraged the
aesthetic appreciation of the natural world, and (3) promoted a conception of
reality that made the idea of nature preservation conceptually difficult, if not
impossible.18
More sweepingly, they set Western philosophy on a ruinous environmental course, a course
accentuated with the appearance of modem rationalist and empiricist philosophies.
• Cartesian philosophy.
15
16
17
18
The dominant modern environmental approach is sometimes
Pepper pp.44-5. Pepper then embarks upon the murky story of alternative interpretations of
Biblical data and the Christian tradition, dredged up by a series of White's critiques. The issue
continues to be debated; for an older survey of traditions see Passmore, for a challenging recent
contribution to the debate see Callicott.
Each religion is multistranded. But we should look hardest at dominant operative forms: Ask,
not merely what they say, but what they do, and would do. For an outline of just such a telling
criticism of mainstream Christianity, see Singer esp. pp.265-8.
Hargrove p.15. Certainly the sort of message that Pentecostal missionaries even now try to
preach to resistant Australian Aboriginals, that the earth is just filth, mere rubbish, can be traced
back in direct line to Plato’s attitude to the land, an attitude Hargrove and Plumwood help
expose.
Hargrove p.21. Hargrove’s claims may appear to have been confuted by Attfield, but really,
while they have been subject to minor qualification, they have been highlighted. There is a
much fuller story still to be told about classical Greek philosophy reassessed environmentally, of
the very different roles and impacts of Plato (with his unearthly philosophy), of Aristotle (with
his earthier chauvinism), of Stoics and of Epicureans, and of neo-Platonists. For a modest
beginning, see Plumwood on Plato, Toulmin on Stoics as contrasted with Epicureans, and
Glacken on lesser or lost Greek strands.
�13
denominated Cartesianism, or the Cartesian Technocratic paradigm, in honour of Descartes,
upon whom (as a conveniently select individual from a swag of like-minded people) several of
the leading themes and ideas can be pinned.19 While Descartes was undoubtedly
extraordinarily influential, so were others; Newton for one, Locke for another. The paradigm is
accordingly better denominated the Atomist-Empiricist-Technocratic paradigm, or some such.
Evidently it substantially overlaps other modem ideologies, such as that of the Enlightenment,
widely implicated as major sources of environmental problems.
• Western metaphysics. While some conglomeration of the preceding sources and others
(some potted history of Western metaphysics, so to say) may be offered, more often what is
presented is some selection of Western metaphysical elements. Here is one example, plainly
exhibiting a heavy Heideggerean influence:
.
The roots of our environmental problems lie in Western metaphysics. For
metaphysics, Being is presencing; no allowance is made for any other mode
(sheltering, declining, concealing). Once metaphysics has established the
absolute dominion of the present over the not-present or no-longer-present,
the way is paved for the scientific method, with its emphasis on replicability
of results, predicability, quantification, and control. Nature becomes a
“natural resource” —and people become “human resources . The sources of
anthropocentricism, imperialism, colonialism, sexism and consumerism can
all be traced back to metaphysics.
Western metaphysics has more or less conquered the world, and there is no
going back. Western metaphysics is more than simply a false consciousness
overlaid on top of “authentic” experience. Being changes historically, and
metaphysics is the index of that change... Metaphysics has a conquering,
exclusive imperative, ... and different [former] modes now exist only as
vestigial traces. They cannot be resurrected through ancient wisdom, native
healing, goddess worship, or any other supposedly intact, dormant system.
We cannot create a “new order”. That would simply be another form of the
Will to Power... We can—and must—turn away from the dominant rhythms
of western metaphysics if we are to avoid the nihilism of a perpetually
ensconced technocratic rationalism.20
An alternative to turning entirely away from Western metaphysics, consists in combining
rejection of standard Western metaphysics (or, less sweepingly, of dominant metaphysics,
characteristically individualistic and atomistic) in favour of development of recessive traditions
or mere Western seeds.
Such a more sophisticated approach, also critical of Western
metaphysics, with atomism a main villain, is pursued by those who promote instead process or
plenum metaphysics.21
19
20
21
For encapsulation of the Cartesianism paradigm (a dominant dualistic form), summarising
Drengson’s exposition, see RP, table 5. Drengson, for one, has helped portray Descartes as the
environmentally evil genius (or demiurge). That some orthodox philosophers, not merely
maverick philosophers, are now rushing to the defence of Descartes should be seen as entirely in
keeping with the character and roles of Western philosophy.
Undisclosed source. Amusingly, I have seen myself accused of ‘rejecting] in its entirety
mainstream western philosophy and science, ... seen as the cause of the [environmcntalj
problem’ and instead basing my ‘ecocentric values on Eastern philosophies’ (thus Bellett). This
charge was levelled on the strength of a peripheral exercise on classical Taoism and Deep
Ecology (now included in UTD).
For the first process option, see Gare; for the second, where the plenum is that of a holistic
relativity theory (more exactly holistic relativistic geometrodynamics), see Mathews.
�14
• Enlightenment. The source of problems lies in ‘the intellectual heritage of the Enlightenment’
(e.g. Dobson). Of course the main doctrines of the Enlightenment substantially overlap those
of modern mainstream philosophy and of Descartes’ philosophy (but they shed dualistic and
theistic scholastic hang-overs).
• Capitalism. The assumption that capitalism is responsible for environmental as well as social
evils, widespread until recently in state-socialist countries (when their own records were
revealed), can be traced back to Marx. According to Marx, with capitalism
for the first time, nature becomes purely an object for humankind, purely a
matter of utility; ceases to be recognised as a power for itself; and the
theoretical discovery of its autonomous laws appears merely as a ruse so as to
subject it under human needs, whether as an object of consumption or as a
means of production.22
But, as observed, a main embedded theme had appeared in earlier philosophy; for instance, the
idea of nature as purely an object for humankind, was advanced in Aristotle: ’Now if nature
makes nothing incomplete and nothing in vain, the inference must be that she has made all
animals for the sake of man’.23 Aristotle adopted a similar stance on nature as on other species.
The theme was to be oft repeated in subsequent Aristotelianism, and reiterated apparently in
shallower Stoicism. But the subjection of everything to utility, no doubt a relative of
capitalism, appears to be a distinctively modem contribution.
•
Modern industrial society or industrialism. Modem industrialism (‘the smooth
superhighway of industrial progress’) is the source, such is an extraordinarily popular theme:
‘... the root causes of the present crisis lie deep with the very foundations of the industrial
paradigm’.24 Similarly ‘roots [of] the environment crisis ... go deeper to the foundations of
modem industrial society’.2526Again, ‘the structural roots of the environmental crises [are found
in] industrialism, in commoditization, in commercialism, and in competition and greed
The
popular theme, that industrialism is the source, tends to confuse mere means— industrial
technology can without any doubt at all vastly facilitate environmental degradation (as well as,
22
23
24
25
26
It should not be overlooked that some of those who nominated metaphysics meant thereby
paradigm or paradigms or an equivalent. But what they may gain thereby in verisimilitude, they
tend to lose in confusion.
Grundrisse p.409f.
Aristotle, Politics, Book 1, ch.8. What an inference, you might well exclaim. See further
Hargrove p.25.
M. Gabriel, ‘How “attitudes and implements” have brought us to “the end of nature”’, a paper
presented at UNE Environmental Paradigms Conference, April 1993. Gabriel proposes a
managerial resolution: ‘for us to learn to manage both our relationship to our environment, and
more broadly the environment itself (quotes from abstract of paper). This amounts to the flip
side of an old problematic record. For the “solution” derives from the same defective box as the
evident problem.
Gabriel ibid. Similarly industrialism is assumed as the source throughout McLaughlin (the
theme pervades his book) and as the root of the modem problem in Marshall (p.5ff). While
seriously astray as to roots and sources, those critical of industrialism have a significant case.
For, as well as functioning as a major inflator of intact problems, industrialism has helped
generate side problems of its own, as with new types of chemical and nuclear pollution.
Editorial in The Ecologist, Jan-Feb 1992, p.2.
�15
less satisfactorily, subsequent clean-up and environmental repair)— with sources and causes,
what directs and powers those uses of industrial technique and practice.
• Economic growth or economic development. ‘According to a common and currently
influential diagnosis, the environmental crisis has essentially economic roots’.27 One
widespread misconception is that economic growth is the source of environmental problems.
The assumption is astray for several reasons. For one, growth is at best a proximate cause,
itself in need of explanation. More importantly, growth may occur in sectors of an economy,
such as information technology or religious or artistic services, which have little or no
environmental impact. Also conversely, an economy which fails to grow, but is desperately
trying to survive, may exact heavy environmental costs (e.g. the forests are clear-felled to pay
for continuing employment). No doubt though, stock economic growth is intimately intricated
with proximate causes of environmental problems (through environmental impact equations).
Similar considerations tell against the familiar proposition that the source of the problems
is economic development itself or, what is different, the entrenched model of economic
development. While it is no doubt correct, and important to emphasize, that ‘the Western
model of economic development, far from being the solution to’ environmental and social
problems, is ‘actually fuelling’ them, it is not the sole or distinguished source of the
problems.28
• Human nature. "... the roots of our ecologic crisis reach beyond the variable topsoil of
intellectual history, whether Eastern or Western, into the common substrata of human nature
itself.’29 What such “nature” amounts to and how it functions as roots, both commonly left
obscure, turns upon background hypotheses as to the nature of this nature. Different false
27
28
29
Goodin, p.573. While not contesting the theme, Goodin does continue: ‘the problem is not just
that there are too many people, or even that they are enjoying too high a standard of living. All
that is true, too, of course. More fundamentally, however, problems of environmental
despoliation are said to derive from skewed incentives as they pursue their various goals’
(p.573). That too will be seen to be seriously astray, though it contains large grains of truth; it
presumes unchanged the prevailing economically-skewed dominant social paradigm.
Both socialists and other opponents of capitalistic conspicuous consumption tend to select the
living-standard component of the main environmental impact equation as the source of the crisis.
Thus Cuban luminary, Castro, in a recent stunningly succinct speech: ‘Less luxury, less wastage.
Otherwise it will be too late’.
Quoting claims of E. Goldsmith, advanced in an interview in Forest and Bird 273 (August 1994)
pp.46-7. The need for emphasis will persist while locally prominent political figures like the
present Prime Minister of Australia travel around the Earth with the hackneyed message that
only economic growth will solve environmental problems.
Seeing growth as the problem affords only a superficial analysis, like that of pointing to
overconsumption with which growth is interconnected. As deeper inquiry reveals, underlying
both issues of economic growth, employment and consumption, and alternatives taken, are
models, paradigmatic models. Growth is but a means to objectives assumed in the dominant
paradigm. A deeper analysis shows too why more growth will not ultimately solve relevant
problems.
Callicott and Ames, ‘Epilogue: On the relation of idea and action’ p.282 (see also p.281), in a
desperate and apparently unsuccessful attempt to reconcile the claim (repeatedly advanced in
their book) that Asian traditions of thought can make a significant contribution to much
improved treatment for natural and built environments, with ‘the deplorable environmental
conditions prevailing in contemporary Asia’ (p.280).
�16
hypotheses, that humans are invariably driven by aggression, sexual or reproductive
imperatives, economic needs, yield different defective accounts. In Catholic orthodoxy such a
source, human nature, comes burdened with original sin; the source of a sweep of problems,
including now environmental ones, is “man’s fallen nature”. That astonishing source also
comes contaminated, as for instance gender biassed.
• Patriarchy. The source is patriarchy, and androgyny; problems derive from mistreatment of
women. ‘Our troubles begin with the invention of male deities located off the planet’.30
‘patriarchy is the source of the environmental crisis’.31 One sample linkage statement runs as
follows:
there is a huge denial ... of the violence perpetrated on women both
historically and ... presently] and ... this is the same energy that, turned
against the Earth, is destroying the very life-support systems and rapidly
destroying the conditions that makes complex life possible. The fires that
consume the Amazon are the very same fires that burned 9 million witches
and I believe that there can be no solution of our ecological problems unless
we simultaneously address our gender issues.32
Patriarchy, as source, is evidently a special case of long invoked domination transfer themes:
• Human domination and exploitation of humans'. It is an extraordinarily widespread
assumption that the impact of humans (or, until recently, of Man!) on the environment, or
creatures or things in it, is a product of that of humans with each other, typically of groups or
classes. In misleadingly brief form, the source is social: Man’s inhumanity to Man; and the
solution correspondingly is social. Unremarkably, this unlikely assumption comes in a variety
of different forms: early, concerning the mistreatment of animals as an (inevitable) spill-over
from mistreatment of humans, recently concerning maltreatment of nature spilling over from, or
being one with, that of women. The fashionable assumption runs, in one form or another, from
Aquinas through Kant to a range of recent trend-setters, including Marcuse, Illich, Passmore,
Bookchin ... and some leading feminists. In particular, it is part of the very meaning of social
ecology, an ideology shaped and championed by Bookchin: ‘ecological problems arise from
deep-seated social problems’.33 On this theme among others, Bookchin simply follows a
prominent trend in social anarchism set by Kropotkin and his contemporary Reclus:
all see that the domination and exploitation of nature by man is but an
extension of the domination of man by man. Thus, ‘Both Kropotkin and
Reclus ... laid the foundations of a radical theory of human ecology.
Ecological despoliation was seen to reflect imbalances in human relationships
30
31
32
33
Quoted in Eckersley p.64, who develops and begins to assess patriarchical source themes. For a
more critical assessment see the sequel to GE.
See Seed, quoted in the sequel to GE; also Salleh (e.g. in EP3).
John Seed’s Workshop Schedule 1992, Rainforest Information Centre, Lismore, 12. 12.91.
Seed’s extravagant identity claims are but a dramatic extension of that popular tendency to
transform comparison and similarity statements into identity claims. Indeed reductionism often
reaches further, with attempted conversion of all relational statements into identity ones, along
with unrelational property claims.
Bookchin sometimes qualifies this central claim, with ‘nearly all present’, e.g. EP3 p.354. But
he is not strictly entitled to any such qualification, given his invariant theme that the domination
of nature always results from humans’ domination of other humans (see e.g. Clark EP3, p.346).
The text EP3 contains a sizeable section providing a useful introduction to social ecology.
�17
—domination of nature thus following from human domination’.... It follows
that if domineering and exploitative human relationships can be avoided in
small-scale decentralised societies then such societies are also best for a
harmonious man-nature relationship.34
Domination and exploitation of one division by another can in turn be seen as a case of
dualism at work, between the one, the dominator or dominating class, and the other, the
dominated.
• A snare of dualisms. Environmental problems derive from operation of a set of connected
ideologically-entrenched and defective dualisms.35
• Modern educational systems: Roots of environmental problems lie in educational systems.
Or if roots don't, solutions do. However, roots of environmental or social problems do not lie in
educational systems. Parts of their solutions may however. For education is critical, for
instance, in correcting insufficient adherence to established satisfactory arrangements, such as,
so it is claimed, Enlightenment ideals or traditional ethical systems.36 Therewith we are
transported full circle back to defective practice answers.
4. A selective commentary on, and objections to, proposed answers
A main part of this exercise consists in a detailed critical commentary on the entries in the
main tabulation, and on proposals like them. Small beginnings are made on the exercise, in two
stages reflecting a major division in the main tabulation.
ad D. Defective practice answers tend to come from those who presume we are already in
possession of adequate theories, or what approximates them or supplies main elements of them.
(Such answers are also more liable to emanate from conservatives, opposed to new or radical
theories, advanced on the basis of inadequacy of prevailing theories in practice.)
Defective practice answers are especially popular in economic reaches. There was a time,
perhaps not past yet, when all market failures in the shape of negative externalities were passed
off as unintended consequences of economic activity. While “consequences” or outputs such
things as pollution certainly are, unintended they mostly are not now, without emptying
‘unintended’ of its normal sense. For example, industrialists, apprised of conservation laws and
unsurprised by polluted wastes, who dump their waste where and when regulators and waste
watchers are not looking, can hardly pretend that that output is an unintended consequence of
their industry. That should now be a rotten joke, itself with serious consequences.
Accordingly new ecological economics insists that we dig deeper—without however
exceeding economic settings or a shifting dominant paradigm—to discover why markets may
34
35
36
Pepper p.192, with internal quotation from Breitbart. Unfortunately it is all too evident, given
humans could so socially organise, that they could settle into harmonious small-scale
communities which retained but little of pristine natural environments.
Such a proposition obtains a much fuller elaboration within Plumwood. In an interesting way,
such a proposal can hardly be wrong, given the conclusion reached below that a set of defective
paradigms is at work. For evidently paradigms can be covered by dualisms, represented by a set
of them in each case, somewhat as numbers can be represented in binary terms, generated from a
basic two-oneness duality.
Thus Passmore, Attfield, and others. For a critical assessment of education, see GE
�18
foreseeably fail and why environmentally rectifying technology is not delivered.3738Where they
usually arrive, travelling within such unduly confined settings, is, like welfare economics
before ecological, at better regulated markets, with business set as before within frameworks of
plans and incentives, controls and penalties. Environmentally, however, such approaches do
not reach very deep, or tap into underlying paradigmatic problem-sources.
But these sorts of defective practice answers do not always derive from standard
economic sources. A deviation-style answer is much favoured by Marxists to explain failure,
environmental and other, of the former Soviet Union and other Eastern block countries, namely
that true, or authentic, Marxism was not practiced. Unfortunately, even if it had been,
environmental consequences would be little better, given the heavy industrial commitments and
environmental shallowness, at best, of true Marxism.3^ Differently, enlightenment liberals like
Passmore try to ascribe failures in Western environmental practice, not to any deficiencies in
mainstream theory, but to deviation from well established principles. Unfortunately adherence
to these “well established principles” is just one way in which the Earth will lose what remains
of its wilderness and remarkable diversity.
Now there are no doubt cases, past especially but also present, some resulting
(collectively) in extensive environmental degradation, where defective practice answers may be
correct. For example, there is harrowing case after harrowing case (brought together in texts
like Topsoil and Civilization and Agricultural Origins and Dispersal) of degradation of prime
agricultural lands by imposed farming practices, where at least early on (before damage became
visible) ignorance and unintended consequences could be legitimately claimed. In most
historical cases we do not have enough information to be able to say with much assurance that
agriculture proceeded until effective collapse because of continuing ignorance, or because
practices were locked-in in one way or another, or because of sheer obduracy. But we do know
more about present agricultural practices, for example in more arid parts of Australia,
concerning both irrigated and dry-land agriculture. Many of these practices are undoubtedly
sharply degrading lands, and the consequences of the practices, which cannot plead or pretend
ignorance, are sufficiently appreciated. But the practices persist, and are encouraged by a
sweep of subsidies or concessions. No doubt some of the practitioners can reasonably claim
that they are locked into bad practices through circumstance, circumstances now beyond their
control such as financial pressures, unfavourable terms-of-trade, and so on, coupled with the
need to make a living. But some, such as companies controlling large tracts of land, can make
no such claims or excuses, nor can claim such things as family precedence, attachment to place,
and similar. Their obdurate practice has to be attributed to something else, most obviously not
37
38
Thus e.g. Jacobs, p.24.
It is surprising how much of the practice of later Socialist states is prefigured in texts like The
Communist Manifesto. Thus “industrial armies” are to be set up; credit, communications and
transport are to become state monopolies; “migrants and rebels” are to have their property
confiscated; and so on. All this runs contrary to much Marxist apologetics (as A. Urquhart, who
made those points, also observed).
�19
deviation from theory, but commitment to an environmentally defective paradigm.
ad P and PS. Dealing with defective paradigm answers is an even more complex, and vexed,
business. Let us try to condense main matters to a few broad themes:
1.
Many of the (incomplete) paradigms listed are not even sufficient for environmental
impasses. They may be seriously mistaken, they may have undesirable intellectual and perhaps
social effects, but a society could persist sustainably with those drawbacks. Thus, for example,
substance metaphysics (under modified Spinozism), dualisms, even patriarchy. The same
might even hold for materialism and mechanism, (assuming these practices can be coherently
made out, that depending on how differentiated ideologies and values are accommodated, and
so forth).
To illustrate: a metaphysics, of any sort, cannot be the whole story, because it does not,
on its own, account for action, anti-environmental or other. Without special bridges, link
principles, from metaphysics to value-intricating action theory, a sort of naturalistic fallacy
operates.
Thus subverted, in essentially Hume’s way, are all the vulgar sources of
environmental problems which take them as derived from metaphysics of one sort or another.
Such a criticism does not however extend to more comprehensive paradigms which connect
appropriately with practice.
2.
While several—not just one—of the paradigms listed are sufficient—in the right
circumstances (given long historical development, accumulation, and so on39)—none are
necessary. Similar impasses could arise, and locally have arisen, given significantly different
paradigms;
for example given, instead of main Western trouble-making paradigms,
Confucianism or advanced Polynesianism.
At this stage in dialectic, green history and the like—bio-history, eco-history, and related
virtual histories (concerning what would have happened)—enter decisively. For instance,
Ponting's Green History of the World begins with a graphic account of the rise and ecological
fall of Easter Island under the impact of Polynesian projects. The work also conveniently
documents many other examples, well-known to biohistorians, of ecological degradation or
collapse, far from the influence of Western paradigms.40 An important example (much less
speculative than some of the numerous other examples because of a comparative wealth of
primary documentation) outlines the destruction of accessible Chinese ecosystems under
Confucian dynasties. What several of these examples—Polynesian, Mayan, Sumerian and
others—also reveal is that no very high level of technology is needed to inflict serious
environmental damage; persistence in pursuit of an ideological project (with nothing directly to
39
40
While it is easy to imagine ineffectual or incompetent tribes which live benignly
environmentally, by just muddling along, under even the worst of paradigms, that is not really to
the point. A pertinent tribe needs to have developed the structure which leads to problems, to
have the means, and so on.
Ponting’s valuable though rather simple book is but one of several bleak texts. Another is
Hillel’s, and there is a succession of earlier classic works by geographers: Lowdermilk, Dale,
Mallory, Thorp and others. In general however, geographers and historians do not dig deep
enough, to paradigmatic roots.
�20
do with basic needs) will suffice.
Other cultures did wreak, or would (given the technology and numbers, both of which
some were gaining) have wreaked similar damage. For instance, deforestation, salination,
megafaunal elimination, and so on, were well established, and expanding, before (or effectively
outside) the rise of modem Western paradigms, or in extensive regions outside their influence.
3.
The list of paradigms, as so far assembled, is substantially Western in orientation.
Moreover environmental woes are regularly ascribed to Western sources
wrongly. For nonWestem paradigms have led, or would lead given the opportunities (including access to the
technologies), to outcomes as undesirable as under dominant Western paradigm. Witness
again Confucianism, for instance, and its role and influence in Asian regions. Confucianism
incorporates human chauvinism par excellence (as well as, some might say, Chinese
chauvinism).41 Or consider Islam, with its reach across the Middle East and beyond.
The main tabulation (of table 2) should accordingly be extended to take due account of
non-Westem paradigms, including for example:
Other Abrahamic religions
Islam
Judaism
Confucianism
Shintoism
Polynesianism, at least in advanced forms as on Easter Island.
What is “Western” is tending to blur also. Is Judaism Western, how western, or Islam? There
is also a tendency to suppose that more Western religions, Abrahamic religions, with their
intense monotheism, are significantly ideologically worse than non-Westem. But the contrasts
are different and much more complex than that. A better divide is into monistic and pluralistic.
Even so, many undesirable social and environmental features are incorporated in, or
encouraged by, religious pluralisms from the Indian subcontinent.
4.
All the single paradigm answers are inadequate, all are too simple. Even so some are
less inadequate than others. It is the same, more or less, for the combined answers, often to be
encountered. For generally they represent but one thin cross-section of Western paradigms.
While all the single one-source one-shot paradigmatic answers, occur on their own, often
they are combined. For instance, although Descartes is often cited as a villain, more often
criticism of Cartesianism is combined with criticism of other concurrent ideological elements,
such as Baconian empiricism (less incompatibly, Drengson, for one, regularly combines
criticism of the technocratic paradigm with criticism of Cartesianism
though Descartes, for all
his rich and appalling thought, contributed little to the rise of technocratic organisation.)
Similarly Hargrove combines Greek philosophy, as original source, with modem rationalism
and much else.
41
Its net of effects extends widely. Consider, e.g., the role of Chinese medicine in decline of large
fauna worldwide.
�5.
A general method of showing the inadequacy of all the paradigmatic answers tabulated,
and others, is familiar from logical theory: namely, the method of counter-models, of which the
counter-examples (under head 2) provide special cases. A presently important illustration
concerns patriarchy as a source of environmental woes. Counter-models reveal the substantial
independence of mistreatment of women and mistreatment of environmental items such as
animals or ecosystems. One the one hand, it is easy to envisage situations, not far from the
actual in some regions, where the lot of women is significantly improved, but the lot of
environmental items is not (e.g. men change their behaviour and attitudes relevantly as regards
women, are forced to change, or whatever); just such an outcome would accord with persisting
human chauvinism. More relevant, on the other, there are situations where the position of
environmental items is much improved, for instance under much more careful husbandry, but
that of women is not, for one reason or another (e.g. they remain other, different, second class,
etc.). It follows from the elaboration of such counter-models that patriarchy is not the source of
environmental problems, as there can be continuing patriarchy without the present range of
environmental problems (problems can dry up while patriarchy continues to operate). There is
no need to deny that patriarchy as (contingently) practised, with its sweeping supremacist
attitudes which make no due distinctions between inferior items, may be a major contributing
factor in present problems. Such slack contingent conjunctions do not convert to roots or
sources. Similarly with other social roots of environmental problems, for instance with human
domination of humans as the supposed source of all problems.
5. Towards a more satisfactory explanation.
Not only are the paradigmatic roots seriously intertangled (because of connections of one
paradigm with another, because for instance of heavy philosophical inputs into religious
paradigms), but further there is not a single defective paradigm. Rather there is a family or
sheaf of paradigms, commitment to any of which, or any suitable combination of which, in
requisite circumstances, appears to have yielded environmentally untoward outcomes (requisite
circumstances including availability of technology, extent of social support, and so on). Within
that plurality there are of course gradations—and not only gradations but major differences
in
calibre, in environmental friendliness. For example, Cartesianism which regards animals as
mere automata incapable of feeling genuine pain, is significantly worse as regards other life
forms and their decent treatment than a utilitarianism which positively values animal sentience.
The family is not exclusively Western, nor somewhat more plausibly Northern, even
though as a result of forces like migration, colonialism and cultural imperialism, paradigms of
these sorts now predominate. Paradigms and cultures of less “advanced” and of third world
communities have also operated to enhance environmental vandalism and degradation locally
and regionally.
Nor are major inflators of environmental problems essentially Western. Industrialization
and technological advance—neither intrinsically Western, both manifested in varying degrees
in other cultures—are, without much doubt, what have inflated environmental problems from
�22
rather localised ones, damaging for instance islands and river catchments, to grander and even
global ones. They are the engines, powerhouses, of major problems, generating thereby spin
off problems as well. But, once again, they are not deeper sources, but only means. (For again
push questioning deeper, and ask: why bother or persist with industry, the effort and dirt and
mess involved?) Nor, however, did they run on their own, nor do they continue on their own.
Such engines were not designed and built, fuelled and tended, independently.42 They evolved
primarily in the specially favoured culture of capitalism, though parallel developments could
have occurred, and later did, in other prepared and heavily controlled surroundings, such as
state socialism or post-imperial Confucianism. Now however these engines have been rendered
more reliable and less dependent on careful cultural support, and have been transformed to run
in less favourable settings.
Thus inflation can escalate from a multiplicity of prepared sources, thereby intensifying
problems and spreading them to larger regions. The intensification and spread is much
facilitated by the joint transfer of technology, industry and coupled problems from region to
region. As a result of transfer, inflation can occur within settings of quite different paradigms.
Even if the whole “West” went into a terminal decline, and its paradigms disappeared into
history, serious environmental exploitation and degradation would continue, driven by other
enthusiastic cultures. For instance, the West could in theory collapse through protracted war,
through pollution and congestion, or climate change and agriculture failure (there are many
unexcludible routes to catastrophic decline, outlined in “Limits to Growth” scenarios, that could
differentially impact on the West). Degradation would now continue however; there would be
only temporary respite from environmental crises.
While most of the conspicuous problems, awfully aggregated in contemporary
environmental crises, are accelerated by—what connects them—contemporary industrial
society, not all environmental problems are or have been of this sort. However, too many of the
other problems, such as destruction of rainforests by itinerant peasants, can be seen as by
products or similar of the main generators. Thus, in the illustration, the peasants displaced by
agribusiness or absentee wealth-holders, arrived there on industrially-made roads opening the
forests, and often wrecked this damage using industrial machinery.
An environmental friendly culture has to be much more critical concerning certain types
of industrialization, and much more selective regarding technology than present dominant
cultures, Western or non-Westem. A friendly paradigm would not only ensure much more
Lacking favourable ideological settings, earlier technological “break throughs” were not duly
developed: thus early wheels, steam engines, dyes, gunpowder, etc. Western cultures did not
enjoy a monopoly upon technology powerful enough, when massed, to induce global crises.
The pictuie of development of large-scale environmental problems being sketched bears
superficial resemblance to that now tendered for development of the early Universe, where, to
achieve presumed size, a source event, the Big Bang, was followed by huge inflationary
phenomena. Naturally the resemblance has limitations; for instance, universe inflation is not
terrestrially replicable in the way industrialization now is (hired or delivered off the shelf,
pollution problems and all, with a big price tag).
�23
selectivity and care, but would sharply limit impacts of damaging technology and
industrialization. While there are such paradigms, on the ideas market, they mostly lack
sophisticated contemporary elaboration and they may be flawed in other respects. Examples of
more friendly paradigms, that do not lead of themselves to massive environmental problems
and crises conditions, include those now tabulated:
TABLE 3: Examples, some flawed, of environmentally friendly paradigms.
Oriental ideologies:
Taoism (classical)
recessive traditions,
now with tiny
followings and little
political influence.
Jainism
Indigenous cultures:
Australian Aboriginals (e.g. Aranda)
Amazonian Indians.
Western philosophies:
under certain
favourable
interpretations
old
Stoicism
new
Deep-green theories, such as deep ecology.
Given the remoteness of most of these examples from predominant contemporary life, and
difficulties with their wide adaptability, it is a short step to a familiar conclusion that new
paradigms need to be worked out soon. Much much more intellectual effort should be devoted
to such enterprise.
One upshot, then, is a rough classification of paradigms into two families, the second
large: environmentally friendly, and unfriendly. No doubt there is a small fuzzy residue class
lying between major unfriendly and friendly divisions.
Environmental friendliness means more or less what it appears to mean, what a functional
break-down into components would yield: friendliness in approaches, practices and attitudes, to
environments, especially more natural environments, with friendliness including, as usual,
goodwill and kindliness towards (and substantially displaceable by these). As indicated, such
friendliness concerns not merely actual practices, but also attitudes held, as reflected in what
would be done in certain other sorts of situations.
Certainly a culture that manifests
unfriendliness, as a sweep of Northern cultures do, is unfriendly. But, as well, various
“primitive” cultures, whose practices are not hostile, for example because they lack means or
resources, energy or health, may nonetheless be unfriendly; for instance all members of a
culture hold thoroughly negative attiudes which they are in fact unable to put into practice.
43
In logical terms neither, perhaps as well as another residue class, both.
�24
It is not too difficult to explain in outline which paradigms will, if duly, diligently or
religiously practiced, lead to environmental problems and impasse.
Certain family
characteristics, of unfriendly paradigms are worth elaborating:
* Direct untoward effects, illustrated through Cartesianism and Confucianism.
More
generally, direct impact is illustrated by any idea-system which attributes little or no value to
natural items, and typically much value to nature transforming or interfering human (or elite)
projects, and whose themes are linked to practice. So it is with Confucianism, which is entirely
human focussed. ‘Centering his attention on man in his present life, Confucius had as his goal
the achievement of a good society characterized by harmonious social relations.’44 The outside
world, the natural environment, was of no moral significance. It mattered only instrumentally,
to humans. Descartes went further. Human bodies too were automata, complex machinery.
‘The exception is [znznJ, or specifically] thought, and its external manifestation language: this
alone cannot be explained mechanistically—a thesis which leads Descartes to assert a
fundamental divide between human beings and “the beasts’”.45 The remaining world, the
natural environment—lacking humanity, thought, mind—was again of no moral significance.
It possessed derivatively only what value and meaning humans, or minds, chose to confer or
project upon it, typically little or none.
Since, either way, any way, a natural environment devoid of humans has no thoughts,
purposes or interests, no value or meaning of its own, it could hardly matter what happens to it.
It could be regarded and treated, justifiably, as nothing but a reservoir of resources for humans.
Cartesians drew just such conclusions; similar conclusions derive, by one route or another from
Platonism and Pentecostalism, and are implicit at least in Confucianism. Descartes again went
further than some others. His practices and methods, like those of Bacon, were aimed at
making men the masters and possessors of nature’ .46
Untowards effects result through linkage of ideological theory to heavy practice. Link
principles, reminiscent of “correspondence rules” used in explaining applications of scientific
theories and normally included in comprehensive paradigms, connect the theoretic level to
practice, they also serve to activate otherwise inoperative or uncoupled paradigms. Such
principles may take the form of directives; familiar examples include maximization directives,
such as maximize personal fun, tribal utility, national interest, or state GNP.
* Indirect combination effects, illustrated through Leibnitzianism. Any which yield satisfaction
of all or enough elements of the consumption impact equation, and so would generate excessive
impacts. To illustrate, consider what might be called Leibnitzianism, in honour of Leibnitz’s
fragmentary ideology. Leibnitz was substantially committed to all of human population
44
45
46
Reese p.102 For much more on the geographic impact of Confucianism, as also compared with
other (Asian) paradigms, see Tuan’s investigations.
Cottingham p. 15. The utter invalidity of Descartes' argument (reported in Cottingham) to this
divide is now comparatively easy to expose, given almost 400 years of hindsight. There are no
such status divides—-just as flamboyant forms of deep ecology maintain.
See Descartes, Discourse VI.
�25
growth, unfettered technological advance, and human lifestyles of consumption,47 in short, to
precisely those factors that combine in the impact recipe to produce excessive human impacts
upon environments. However neutral Leibnitz’s metaphysics, his monadology, may have
been—by contrast with Plato’s or Descartes’, both of which explicitly devalued much or all of
the natural world—Leibnitz’s wider ideology is linked indirectly, through impact equations, to
damaging effects.
Some imagine that this oblique formalistic detailing, through direct and indirect classes,
can be simply cut through, retaining plurality and so forth. Surely environmental friendliness is
nothing but environmental depth? While the suggestion points in the right sort of direction (for
the relevant sort of depth) it too is astray.48 Depth is neither necessary nor sufficient. Take the
move plausible sufficiency half, plausible because depth helps, no end. Nonetheless depth can
be achieved in macho ways (as ecofeminism has emphasized against deep ecology), ways
which may not be altogether friendly to less favoured species, groups or habitats. For example,
depth can be satisfied through due selection and support of some super species and magnificent
habitats—requisite environmental impartiality (and reflected justice), critical for friendliness as
intended, being neglected.49 Still less in depth necessary. For kindliness can, both in principle
and in practice, extend far beyond humans, still ranked top, to much more of “creation . Such
extensive kindliness, observed in some humanistic humans, appears to be exhibited in some
sects and tribes not committed to depth, and it could well be considerably more widespread,
under changed but not deepened ideological conditions. Naturally, however, deepening would
afford an obvious, and excellent, reason for change.
As friendliness is not tantamount to depth, nor similarly is a prime part of what explains
depth, recognition of intrinsic value in nature outside humans. Some animal liberationists who
display high regard for creatures with capacity to suffer, show little goodwill towards forests
largely unpopulated by such creatures. Conversely, though shifting ground, an environmentally
friendly society may hold that value is but an anthropocentric construct, merely projected onto a
basically neutral world.
All the same, aspects of depth are normally reliable indicators of environmental
sensitivity and friendliness, and inversely, aspects of shallowness (as investigated in authentic
deep ecology) marks of unfriendliness.
Shallowness will work out satisfactorily
environmentally only with what is now rare (given ideological dominance), a right mix of
humans; and its any longer working widely is implausible. These reliable marks include such
familiar features as
47
48
49
For requisite details, see Aiton. The case against Leibnitzianism is developed in a sequel.
As to the relevant sort of depth, see GE. Other accounts of depth are also preferred in deep
ecology, some of which relate to the present exercise. In particular deep questioning should lead
to paradigmatic roots, to Naess’s “total views”.
Herein lies another reason why something like biospecies egalitarianism is essential in deep
ecology; such a requirement needs, not dilution away (as has happened in American and
transpersonal deep ecology), but rectification.
�26
* short-term framework.
* devaluation of natural items as against human elements or artefacts (typically exhibiting
human chauvinism); and, as a corollary of heavy devaluation,
* entitlement to domination, dominion ove’r nature;
* appropriation of nature, its conversion to property.
* maximization assumptions concerning personal or societal aggrandizement, utility and size,
coupled with grand projects.
* technofix approach to environmental problems.
Friendly paradigms will tend to invert these features. An environmentally friendly
paradigm can be expected to yield environmentally significant corollaries, such as the following
samples:
* an end to degrading primary production; instead ecological forestry and ecological
agriculture will come to prevail.
* a strong selectivity regarding industrialization, which weeds out damaging forms.
* a calling off of grand ideologically-grounded projects, interfering with or damaging natural
environments, such as major dams, river diversions, demolished islands (e.g. for airports), new
mountains, terraforming, extensive rainmaking, climatic interference, and generally the sweep
of “playing God” projects. A little of this sort of unfriendly technology can go a very long way.
As unfriendly paradigms are decidedly plural, so likewise are answers to questions as to
why agents adhere, or continue to adhere, to environmentally unfriendly paradigms. Some of
the diverse answers match answers already encountered in the main tabulation. Reasons are
psychological, social and cultural (with a familiar circularity here encountered), and include
considerations of the following sorts and others: because that is how things are done, or have
always been done; because needs can be met, perhaps only met, in that way, so it is believed;
because there are no alternatives, or none seen, perhaps because none have been sought;
because negative outcomes can be overcome, or do not really matter; and so on.
A short answer can now be ventured to the focal questions: Because, in one way or
another, most agents are bound to—locked into, committed to, captured by, or just passively go
along with—environmentally unfriendly paradigms. As a result the (long-term) health of the
rest of environments does not matter, or matter enough.
6. Glimpsing an entertaining corollary: an unfavourable report upon dominant
philosophy.
It will hardly have escaped notice that virtually all dominant philosophical roads lead to
Rome, to environmentally unfriendly paradigms.
Stripped of metaphor, there are
environmental conditions of adequacy, which most philosophical systems fail to meet. In an
environmentally friendly new world, most philosophy that is remembered, indeed most of the
humanities, is destined for scrapping. Prevailing philosophy is a serious impediment to
satisfactory environmental outcomes. Predominant philosophy, not just Western philosophy,
has by and large been bad environmental news.
�27
It may be insisted that philosophy can make no difference, for instance to environmental
practice. It is not an expression of basic needs, or of any such practical matters. Exceptions to
such practical bravado have however to be recognised almost immediately; philosophy soon
enters for organizational, justificatory and explanatory ends. That concession still grossly
under-estimates the extent to which ideas, and more generally paradigms, influence and even
govern action and practice, especially reflective and rational action. The substantial point is not
therefore removed through any alleged practical impotence of philosophy.
Mainstream philosophy has supplied, or mightily assisted in supplying, dominant
unfriendly paradigms under which environments labour. Of course not everything has to be
trashed, as even defective enterprises or evil projects may include decent part or worthwhile
features; much can be salvaged, arguments, subtheories and so on (and with intellectual tipping
there need be little material waste). Nor therefore is it as if an entirely fresh start has to be
made. As well as salvaged bits and pieces (which need to be carefully tested for soundness),
there are brash new alternatives such as authentic deep ecology, and there are recessive
paradigms and neglected traditions to peruse for suggestions, for inspiration, and perhaps to
rehabilitate.
Richard Sylvan*
APPENDIX. On Shepard’s approach to focal questions.
A remarkably sustained investigation of the focal questions is found in Shepard s
intriguing books. In his Nature and Madness, he considers and quickly dismisses many of the
stock responses to focal questions suggested by contemporary luminaries (or by himself in
earlier work), such as lack of information, faulty technique, insensibility, greed, political
inertia, change to agriculture and settlement, 5<\.. . He would (and should, for his eliminative
argument) have also dismissed industrialization, state and corporate control, and so on.
More disconcertingly, for present purposes, Shepard claims that ‘a history of ideas’—
similarly no doubt a story of paradigms—will not serve; for it ‘is not enough to explain human
behaviour’ (p.3), it ‘seems too easy and academic’ (p.3), itself an easy and superficial criticism.
But if, for instance, the ‘dictum that nature should serve man’ and ‘insistence that animals feel
no pain’ should become widely entrenched, then they may well impact heavily on practice, as
accordingly appears to be the case. His slight further argument appears to miss the intended
An earlier, even rougher version of this article was presented at the Environmental Paradigms
Conference, University of New England, Armidale, April 1993. It would not have been written
without its solicitation for the Conference; also it might well not been thought through in
fashionable but confining and perhaps misleading paradigmatic terms.
A subsequent working draft has benefitted, slightly, from comments from very unimpressed
reviewers. Thanks certainly to Holmes Rolston for helpful comments.
No doubt a popular picture of human social changes with agriculture and settlement is simplistic:
that before societies lived in harmony, afterwards they did not. But it is also too simple to go on
to claim, as Shepard does, that ‘the economic and material demands of growing villages and
towns are ... not causes but results of this change’ (p.3). Some demands appear to derive from
factors, such as population pressures, which were among causes of the changes.
�28
target: ‘The meticulous analysis of these philosophies and the discovery that they articulate an
ethos beg the question’ (p.3). How, it can reasonably be inquired? What is offered is but the
facile, false, ‘ideas are impotent’ consideration, fostered by thinking and operating in terms of
causes (e.g. lower p.3), rather than reasons and (rational) explanation, and encouraged through
an attempted move to (what is explanatorily inadequate) pure behaviour. For a simple example
of the familiar explanatory roles of ideas and paradigms, consider an alternative explanation
through them. The admittedly bizarre (“crazy”) ‘turning everything into something man-made
and [or] man-used’ (p.5) is readily explained through dominant paradigms: that is the way it
acquires value, otherwise it is worthless. There is no need at all for psychopathology here.
Correspondingly Shepard briefly reviews and rejects several of the very partial, and often
hopeless, solutions suggested under stock responses to focal questions such as making
information, or better information, more widely available, bringing people from all walks of life
together, encouraging conviviality, hitting problems with smart technology, practicing
conservation, and so on.
Shepard’s own resolution is more readily reached from a further (meta-focal) question
that he proceeds to ask: why do humans persist in degrading their habitats once sources and
solutions are made transparent? He effectively argues by elimination: other sources (read as
causes) do not succeed in providing an answer; but ‘the idea of a sick society’ (which he leaps
to, without argument, p.4) does. Wrong on both counts: On the first because a non-causal
explanation in terms of ideological wiring can provide answers (listen to politicians,
representative of the people, again, just a little time). On the second because some industrial
societies are not sick in a normal sense (though some may be), rather sickness has to be so
redefined (such low redefinitions are among underlying subplots51) that having certain
ideological commitments that are carried into practice counts as “sickness”.
So it is that Shepard arrives at his theme of ‘general, culturally-ratified distortions of
childhood, of massive disablement of ontogeny as the basis of irrational and self-destructive
attitudes towards the natural environment’ (p.ix). Succinctly, ‘there are profound psychic
dislocations at the root of modem society’ (p.xii). Psychic disorders have evolved: ‘over the
centuries major institutions and metaphysics might finally celebrate attitudes and ideas
originating in the normal context of immaturity [or]... adolescence ...’ (p. 15).
Having glided easily and invalidly to the idea of sick societies, in a mere three pages,
Shepard proceeds to diagnose in more detail the nature of the alleged sickness.52 It supposedly
arises, like other psychopathy with which it is immediately associated, in infancy, and is
51
52
For trickery through redefinition of sickness and madness, Wisdom has already prepared us.
Observe that Shepard’s redefinition of sickness to include sick (i.e. debasing and devaluing)
piactices with regard to natural habitats (and conjoined therewith, to, older people) does not
leave no contrast classes. For there remain benign ‘relic tribal’ societies, such as the Manus,
Crow and Comanche, Aranda and !Kung San (p.xii), ‘people who feel themselves to be guests
rather than masters' (p.6 empasis added)—an elegant analogy.
‘The idea of a sick society’, which as Shepard confesses (on p.4) is hardly new, is reached on the
third page of the main text.
�29
manifest in life-long immaturity, with whole societies stuck in a kind of destructive
adolescence. No doubt there is something to some of what Shepard describes in child and
person development (not the ‘private demons’ and so on) or might well have described. There
is evidently, conspicuously in “new world” societies, wide commitment to a shallow juvenile
culture, adulation or imitation of immature media and sport models and flawed authority
figures, marginalization of the elderly, and so on, coupled with hyper-activity, violence and
vandalism. But, like political commitment to extensive economic activity, this is hardly
satisfactorily accounted for through psychopathological reduction, concentrating the whole
social problematic in the ontogeny of individuals.55 A superior explanation to widespread
individual psychic disorder proceeds through ideological commitment, that industrial humans
are raised and educated in, inducted into and committed to, defective ideologies, without
coming to know or properly experience alternatives.
The ‘portraits of maturity’ alluded to likewise appear individualistic and culture-bound,
resembling those of deep ecology, directed at embroidery of person and self, through personal
growth and identity, wider identification and relatedness, self-realization.*
54 They are not
exactly those of older and ecologically wiser societies. They do not reveal ecologically mature
mixed communities.
Furthermore, comparisons with relic tribal societies, which are important, can be
decoupled from psychopathological analysis and reduction. Different lifeways, commitments
and ideologies, are what they are and do not all reduce to matters of mental health.
Undoubtedly we can learn of and from these different societies. We can still witness smallgroup, leisured, foraging life-ways with[in] natural surroundings. ... there is the rub—... for us,
now, that world no longer exists’ (p.14 rearranged). Nor is it really true that such a world is no
longer accessible to most of us; more leisured small-group ways can be retrieved, some natural
surrounding can even now be restored.
In a curious fashion, Shepard has managed to invert likely causal relations. While a
certain interaction can no doubt be conceded, it is not so much human ill-health that is leading
to environmental degradation, but rather environmental degradation, generally brought about
for other reasons, that is increasingly leading to human ill-health, and in the longer term causing
erosion of life-support systems.
55
54
A psychopathic reduction is in part made plausible by reexpression in medical or psychological
terms of what would better be otherwise expressed. Consider, for instance the language of the
following clever paragraph, which infiltrates much with no argument:
. ‘The person himself is, of course, caught between his inner calendar and the surgeries of
society. His momentum for further growth may be twisted or amputated according to the
hostilities, fears, or fantasies required of him, as his retardation is silently engineered to
domesticate his integrity or to allow him to share in the collective dream of mastery (p.16).
But the trapping of agents between inner directives and social conditions and demands, or
between rival ideologies, can be retold in different, less medical and metaphorical terms.
Cf pp.12-14. Likewise there is a conservative underlay, more oppressive than that of deep
ecology: insistence on ‘one particular mother’ (p.7) even suggestion of unsatisfactoriness in
‘taking mothers off to work’ (p. 15)!
�30
REFERENCES
E.J. Aiton, Leibnitz A Biography, Adam Hilger, Bristol, 1985.
R. Attfield, ‘Has the history of philosophy ruined the environment?’ Environmental Ethics
13(1991) 127-137.
R. Attfield, The Ethics of Environmental Concern, Second edition, University of Georgia Press,
Athens, 1991.
A. Bellett, ‘The evaluation of values compatible with ecological sustainability’, Fundamental
Questions Papers, No.2, CRES, Australian National University, 1990.
J.B. Callicott and R.T. Ames (eds), Nature in Asian Traditions of Thought, SUNY Press,
Albany NY., 1989.
J. Callicott, ‘Genesis and John Muir’ ReVision 12(3) (1990) 31-41.
R. Chisholm, The Foundations of Knowing, Harvester Press, Sussex, 1982.
J. Cottingham, The Rationalists, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1988.
C. Dale, Topsoil and Civilization, Revised edition by V.G. Carter, University of Oklahama
Press, Norman, 1974.
A Dobson (ed.), Green Reader, Routledge, London, 1991?
A. Drengson, ‘Ecosophy’, Positive Vibrations, (1990?) 8-10.
R. Eckersley, Environmentalism and Political Theory, UCL Press, London, 1992.
W. Fox, Towards a Transpersonal Ecology, Shambala, Boston, 1990.
A. Gare, Beyond European Civilization, Eco-logical Press, Bungendore, 1993.
C. J. Glacken, Traces on the Rhodian Shore, University of California Press, Berkeley, 1967.
R. Goodin, ‘Selling environmental indulgences’, Kyklos 47(1994) 573-596.
N. R. Hanson, Patterns of discovery: an inquiry into conceptual foundations of science,
Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1958.
E. C. Hargrove, Foundations of Environmental Ethics, Prentice Hall, N.J., 1989.
D Hillel, Out of the Earth: Civilization and the Life of the Soil., Free Press, Macmillan, 1991.
M. Jacobs, The Green Economy, Pluto, London, 1991.
K. Marx, Grundrisse: Foundations of the critique of political economy, Harmondsworth,
England 1973.
F. Mathews, The Ecological Self, Routledge, London, 1991.
A. McLaughlin, Regarding Nature: Industrialism and Deep Ecology , SUNY Press, Albany
N. Y., 1993.
P. Marshall, Nature’s Web, in two editions, Simon and Schuster, 1992 and 1993.
A. Naess and D. Rothenberg, Ecology, community and Lifestyle, Cambridge University Press,
Cambridge, 1989.
J. Passmore, Man’s Responsibility for Nature, Duckworth, London, 1974.
D. Pearce and others, Blueprint for a Green Economy, Earthscan Publications, London, 1989.
D. Pepper, The Roots of Modem Environmentalism, Ed: Tom Colveson London; Dover N.H.
Croom Helm 1984.
�31
V. Plumwood, Feminism and the Mastery of Nature, Routledge, London, 1993.
C. Ponting, A Green History of the World, Sinclair-Stevenson, London, 1991.
R. Routley, ‘Roles and limits of paradigms in environmental thought and action’, Discussion
papers in environmental philosophy #1, RSSS, Australian National University, 1982; also,
modified, in Environmental Philosophy (ed. R. Elliot and A. Gare), University of Queensland
Press, Brisbane, 1983; referred to as RP.
C. O. Sauer, Agricultural Origins and Dispersal, American Geographical Society, New York,
1952.
P. Singer, Practical Ethics, expanded edition, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1993.
P. Shepard, Nature and Madness, Sierra Club Books, San Francisco, 1982.
R. Sylvan and D. Bennett, The Greening of Ethics, White Horse Press, Cambridge, 1994;
referred to as GE.
R. Sylvan with D. Bennett, Of Utopias, Tao and Deep Ecology, Green Series #19, RSSS
Australian National University, 1990; referred to as UTD.
The Wildlands Project, World Earth, special issue, Canton NY, 1993.
Y.F. Tuan, ‘Discrepancies between environmental attitude and behaviour: examples from
Europe and China’, The Canadian Geographer 12(1968) 176-91.
S. Toulmin, The Return to Cosmology, University of California, Berkeley, 1982.
L. White Jr., ‘Historic roots of our ecologic crisis’, Science 155(1967) 1203-7.
J. Wisdom, Philosophy and Psychoanalysis, Blackwell, Oxford, 1953.
M. Zimmerman and others (eds.), Environmental Philosophy, Prentice Hall, N.J., 1993; referred
to as EP3.
�
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1165
PARADIGMATIC ROOTS
OF
ENVIRONMENTAL PROBLEMS
Abstract. Virtually all diagnoses of the roots, and sources, of environmental
problems are defective. While defective diagnoses persist, problems will not
be adequately addressed.
Focal questions ask why human communities so frequently degrade,
impoverish or even destroy their own environments, and more generally why
the whole earth is now in jeopardy through human enterprise. More
immediate answers, sometimes correct so far as they go (which is not deep
enough), look to components of environmental impact equations. More
thorough-going answers fall into two classes: first those that do not question
entrenched paradigms, but seek (unsuccessfully) to explain widespread
problems simply through defective practice, and secondly those that, rightly
recognising that defective practice is no adequate answer, look to deeper
paradigmatic sources of problems. A fatal flaw in most of the latter answers
lies in their monistic concentration on a single paradigm, or single narrow
band of paradigms. These flaws are exposed, whence a wider, more
satisfactory answer can be broached.
Background busywork includes firstly, explaining problems and relevant
paradigms and how paradigms operate regarding environmental problems,
and secondly, detailed disentangling of proposed and alleged sources of the
problems. With this done, it is argued that none of these answers,
fashionable or other, to the focal questions is satisfactory. Here lies the
important hard, but very negative and decidedly incomplete, work of the
present investigation.
. . .
A different more complex investigation is accordingly instigated. An initial
answer is located through broader classes of paradigms : environmentally
friendly and unfriendly. Further effort is expended, profitably, in trying to
characterize these classes. Among significant corollaries, one is striking,
philosophy as portrayed through its standard history is dismal environmental
news.
3.7.95
2
PARADIGMATIC ROOTS
of
ENVIRONMENTAL PROBLEMS
Broaching focal questions, and searching for deeper answers.
Human activity is now degrading terrestrial eco-systems at an extraordinarily rapid rate
(liquidation of natural forest systems affords just one striking example). In modem times
humans have devised sophisticated and sophistical idea-systems which justify such system
degradation.
Often in the past they would not have seen such transformation as mattering,
many remain so programmed, regarding transformation as increasing wealth (a presumption
encouraged under mainstream economics). More recently dominant human cultures have
developed social systems which induct most humans into degradation procedures (through
need, tax impositions, pressure to engage in cash economies, and so on) and which weave
entrapping justificatory webs (through agencies, councils, courts, educations, missions, and so
on).
Whence arises an increasingly broached question1: Why is this happening? More
explicitly, why do human communities so frequently degrade and impoverish their
environments, their own habitats? Indeed why do they sometimes, persistently, perhaps over a
long period, destroy their own habitats? More sweepingly, why is the whole earth now perhaps
in jeopardy through human enterprise? For those eager to anticipate the main outcome, the
unremarkable answer to be eventually found to these focal questions is in essence this: because
too many humans, especially those in control of environmentally impacting enterprises, remain
committed to or caught within environmentally unfriendly paradigm?, diverse paradigms but all
displaying quite insufficient regard for the health and well-being of relevant habitats and of the
earth.
Parts of any answers to such focal questions come immediately through environmental
impact equations, conservation laws, and such like. For example, degradation is occurring
through the impact of overpopulation, excessive pollution, damaging or faulty technologies,
and so on.
While such answers are important, and often correct as far as they go in
combination, and while they may correctly indicate what has to be changed somehow, they are
nonetheless somewhat superficial, and they leave much to be explained. For example, they do
not explain why a community persisted upon a course that deliberately led to such problems, or
why it is so resistant to changes that might reduce impacts and pull it out of its problem-holes.
Less superficial answers look to ideologically entrenched attitudes and commitments, to
1
In sources as diverse as Shepard (first page) and Jacobs (p.23). Contrary to other sources, such
as Marshall, humans are by no means the only biological species that proceed to degrade or
impoverish their own environments. Introduced “pest” species, such as rabbits and mynahs in
the Antipodes, also do so; perhaps some botanical species contrive to as well.
3
pervasive paradigms that underwrite anti-environmental practices, as for instance the wood
production ideology does forestry practice, even so-called “new forestry”, and market ideology
does economic practice, even so-called “environmental economics”.2
An illustrative example which reveals the power of paradigms in blocking or facilitating
action will shortcut a more elaborate argument, through action theory, to the efficacy of idea
systems. Consider an unwanted pregnancy, resulting despite due precautions or whatever.
Observe that, more and more there are comparatively safe technologies available to effect
termination and seemingly solve the immediate problem. Ask: why so many people are
opposed to choice of abortion? A very common answer is: because they are operating under an
elaborate paradigm, typically organised religion (bureaucratic Christianity in the West), themes
of which, the creeds of which, prohibit such choices.3 Of course pro-choice considerations are
also paradigmatically embedded, for instance in forms of liberalism. Picturesquely, a social
paradigm imposes controls on action, a system of red and green lights on a captured agent s
routing procedures.
Or with a different picture, paradigms project a steeply impeding
topography on action space.
Paradigms not only guide, control and limit; they also
correlatively give permission—as, for instance, space to play god, freedom to release a new
species or variety which may or has proved a pest or noxious or has been biologically
engineered, liberty to neglect or degrade or vandalize. But paradigms do even more; they
facilitate explanation, above all they make understanding possible. In these regards, they may
work for better as well as for worse. Thus it is not a matter of getting rid of them, were this
even feasible, but of getting right paradigms.
The settings in terms of which agents such as humans act and operate, even down-toearth everyday agents, invariably include, not far in the background, paradigms, cultures,
creeds, ideologies, pervasive myths or the like, all idea-systems, all involving models (in a
technical sense) of one sort or another. Even the most practical (and vociferously practical) of
humans are governed by background ideosystems.
It is in terms of these background
ideosystems that a great deal concerning human practices with respect to natural environments
can be explained, what would otherwise lack satisfactory explanation.4
That explanation comes not however through a single paradigm, as has too often been
supposed in trying to answer focal questions, but through a bundle of somehow aligned
paradigms. Compare how a person may be represented, in social science, not through a single
2
3
4
For more on this style of explanation, see further RP.
It is not, going to be contended that religion—or a certain Abramic religion, such as
Christianity—is the main villain of the environmental piece. It is now well enough appreciated
that religions in general borrowed much in their damaging articles from ancient philosophies.
What will however, be suggested is that dominant philosophies do have much to answer for in
this regard.
Further, as logical positivists observed, explanation and justification patterns tend to overlap.
How people justify their practices offers an explanation, though perhaps a misleading or
superficial explanation, of them.
As well, positivistic theories show, though in an oversimplified way, how models, which
paradigms are, serve in explanation justification and understanding. See e.g. Hanson.
4
role or program, but by way of a set of interconnected roles. What has been regularly
overlooked in seeking deeper paradigmatic sources of environmental problems is systematic
plurality. In part this neglect of plurality can be explained through countervailing propensity to
seek single answers, and to try to locate uniqueness, where however causes and sources are
plural. So it is with paradigmatic sources and roots of environmental problems. They are
plural.
As to what is going on theoretically, there is a fairly complex story to be told, an easier
working image for which is appropriately ecological. That image focusses upon the structure of
a perhaps impenetrable thicket or tangle, such as a dense rainforest patch, or, itself simplified, a
fig or bamboo thicket. Below an emergent top layer representing the problems concerned,
those raised by the focal questions, there is the canopy layer, of interlinked proximate causes.
Below that again stands a plurality of stems, plural supports, which can be construed as
supporting sources, and below them again, ultimately sustaining the whole structure, a
multiplicity of intertwined roots, representing paradigmatic basics.
What is sought are ultimate sources, and roots, not immediate causes. The cause of local
pollution may be a factory that an agent installed, to produce more flim-flam. That too may be
the physical source of the immediate problem. But deeper questioning seeks the reasons for
such production and such factories. While there may be problems with ideas and idea
structures as causes, as causally efficacious, these problems do not transfer to reasons and
sources. Nonetheless there are buried metaphors, and linkages, to be unscrambled: how are ‘‘A
is source of B” and “A is a root of B” to be explicated?
While there is much written on roots and sources of environmental problems or
developments virtually none of it addresses the question of what is meant by the partially
buried metaphors of roots and sources . One striking example is supplied by Pepper's useful
introductory text, The Roots of Modem Environmentalism. Although this text presents itself
specifically as concerning roots, there is in fact no explication offered of the crucial roots
metaphor on which it turns. For that matter there is no direct account of what the roots of
environmentalism—still less, though quite different, of environmental problems to which
environmentalism answers—are supposed to be (granted there is much oblique material). It is
apparent also that Pepper has become rather carried away with the roots metaphor, throwing it
into several chapter headings and applying it pretty indiscriminately to mean simply elements
(from some earlier occurrence); thus for instance, ‘the roots of the theme of reconciliation of
freedom and authority’ (p. 193). Such usage is unsound. Because rudiments of some idea make
an earlier appearance in some authority or work, later workers may not have arrived at such an
idea by expanding on these rudiments; they may have arrived where they did quite
independently or by a different route. The mistake is that of reading a source or (genetic)
causal linkage into a mere temporal conjunction: post hoc, propter hoc.
Neither roots nor sources are mere beginnings or simply early occurrences; there have to
be continuing connections, with directional relationships such as supply or sustenance. But for
5
roots and sources different connections and elaborations are to be expected. After all, the
metaphors, and likewise what they give rise to, are evidently different; more literally, plants
have roots, normally below them, springs and streams rise from sources, not roots, often above
them, and so on. Both differ from another popular basis-beginning buried metaphor, that of
foundations. Foundations bring in other features such as solidity, stability and comparative
permanency, while severing critical transmission features (for foundations may merely
passively support, not sustain supported superstructure).
So foundations, for all their
importance in epistemology and elsewhere if foundationalism is correct, can be set aside.
So far dictionaries do better than popular and philosophical texts. For instance, a short
listing for the figurature use of ‘root’ runs: ‘the basis, bottom, the fundamental part, or that
which supplies origin, sustenance, means of development, etc. (Concise English Dictionary).
Such a two component account will serve nicely, for a start. However conjunctions should
substantially displace disjunctions, else roots could collapse to foundations or could collapse to
mere trace element supplements. Roots both give a basis and bottom binding into a substratum
and supply sustenance and means of development. Roots connections are richer as well as
more specific than sources, which may merely show from where an item comes or is obtained.
Further that place of derivation that may not be a basis or bottom, but for instance a source
book. With roots, like normal foundations, a basis or bottom is reached, whereas sources may
have further sources (hence the search for ’‘deeper”, even ultimate, sources). Finally, root and
source connections carry explanations, at least genetic explanations—concerning how items got
to be what and the way they are—because roots and sources are characteristically that from
which items develop. Sometimes even more information, including a whole control system,
gets transmitted. As much happens where roots are paradigmatic, to return to that strange mix
of buried metaphors.
Reaching deeper roots is important. Without locating them, perhaps all the roots (should
they resemble blackberry), problems may not get properly addressed. Should we wrongly
locate roots, then proposed resolutions directed at these, cutting them off or replacing them, will
also go astray, wrongly directed or whatever. Such is the fate of many proposals concerning
environmental problems.
There are several parts to the approach sketched, if it is to be properly elaboratedincluding a working classification of environmental problems and their proximate solutions,
and an account of paradigms and their roles—before getting to paradigmatic answers to focal
questions. But we can be brief on these necessary preliminaries, because main details are
already in circulation and because they have been addressed elsewhere.
1. Problems and paradigms.
5
Despite a referee’s suggestion that discussion of “roots” ‘could be improved by a contrast of the
“roots” metaphor with the “foundations” metaphor, the fact is that we are decidedly not
concerned with foundations of environmental problems; to the contrary, we do not wish to see
them supported (if shoddily), established and so on. On the growing complexity and varying
interpretations offoundations, an emergent bog, see for instance Chisholm.
6
Although these will be duly connected, with paradigms implicated in problems, they are
different components, and admit and deserve separate explanation.
la. Environmental problems and proximate solutions.
Definitions of ‘environmental problem’, and classifications of such problems, have already
been ventured.6 What problems emerge as environmental depends upon background value
framework. What counts as a major problem on deeper environmental perceptions may be but
a minor problem, or written off as not a problem at all, on shallower perspectives. Among such
indicator problems, ones here taken as serious problems, are those of
• sustaining biodiversity and
• maintaining significant wilderness.7
Even if the broad impact of human enterprise were sufficiently reduced to guarantee
comfortable survival of future humans, these desiderata may well not be guaranteed. There
would be outstanding problems.
In any event, it is not too difficult to say more or less what environmental problems are
(at worst by furnishing familiar lists), and in many cases to indicate at least in principle how
they might be resolved. Environmental impact equations, encountered in a more perceptive
classification of problems, reveal how they can be resolved. Namely, by altering relevant
impact parameters.
Given this why are they proving so intractable? Why is so little done? Why is so very
little spent, despite all the talk.8 Proximate solutions, about as far as positive science conveys
us, are not however satisfactory stopping points.
How is it, given so much scientific
information and expertise, that humans are continuing to sharply degrade, and risk substantially
destroying, their habitats.
To these, the focal questions of this exercise, there is an array of competing answers on
offer or to be met in an extensive literative. As we will soon discover, most of these answers
are too simple; and taken, as intended, as comprehensive, they are wrong. Correct answers to
the questions are however important, because if we fail to get to the bottom of the issues, there
is even less prospect of satisfactory action to mm around a difficult and deteriorating situation.
That these issues do not matter, that casual human relationships, or how many devaluing
dollars uncaring humans can briefly stuff in their pockets, matter more than whole islands of
habitats—these sorts of value judgements (after all matter is a value term par excellence)
derive from and are supported by particular ideologies.
lb. Model-like objects: paradigms, ideologies, cultures ,and so on.
A paradigm can be explicated, technically, as a model in precisely a generous logical sense.9
6
7
8
9
See for example GE, which duly details connections of the problems with impact equations and
proximate solutions.
As to the extent of the problem (even) in North America, and a proposed remedy, see The
Wildlands Project.
See e.g. The cost of past environmental policy in OECD countries, Box 1.7, in Pearce et al, p.24.
See RP, where many environmentally relevant illustrations are given and explained.
7
That is, a paradigm amounts to a structure supplied by an elaborate interpretation function on a
general system, i.e. semantical and other evaluations defined on an integrated relational
structure. Naturally it is required to be faithful to what it models, the social forms and norms,
scientific research programs, or whatever. A social paradigm, in contrast to a scientific
paradigm, is a paradigm where the propositional and action theory, the socio-political themes
and value judgements, is that of a social group. A pure culture is but a comprehensive social
paradigm, where by “comprehensive” is meant that it covers a sufficiently comprehensive part
of the life-styles and life-forms of the community concerned. There are now many examples of
formulations of the themes delivered under rival social paradigms and under different cultures;
from these, mostly sketchy formulations we can work back towards the underlying models.
The basic vehicle, a situations or worlds model, is a semantical object, an item like a
complex universal10 similarly open to a range of construals and reduction attempts, e.g.
metaphysical, conceptual, epistemic, linguistic and so on. Once this is realised, it can be seen
that successive cohorts of philosophers and sociologists, historians and geographers have
repeated one another in vaguely discerning essentially the same sorts of underlying structures
under different categorisations: thus, for instance, forms of understanding (Kant), of
consciousness (Marx), of life (Wittgenstein), conceptual schemes (Conant), presuppositions
(Collingwood), discursive formations (Foucault), Weltanschauungs, total views (Naess),
traditions (MacIntyre), traditions of thought, cultures, perspectives, outlooks, ideologies,
programs, .... An ideology, for instance, in the non-derogatory (non-Marxist) sense is an ideas-
system, initially a propositional system or theory with a relevant domain of ideas operative,
from which a paradigm can be discerned and elaborated.
Such models are typically presented in extremely truncated form, for example through a
tabulation of capsule themes. Here is a combination example:
TABLE 1: Elements of Taoism as contrasted with Deep Ecology and with the dominant
paradigm: an initial capsule formulation -11
Taoism
Deep Ecology
Dominant (Western)
Paradigm
Harmony with nature,
through Tao
Harmony with nature
Domination over nature
Nature valuable in itself;
“humanism” rejected
Natural environment
valued for itself
Nature a resource;
intrinsic value confined
to humans
10
11
It resembles a structured universal; compare e.g. Plato’s system of forms, Locke’s of complex
ideas. Naturally there are differences between, for instance, traditions (of thought) which are
historically bound, cultures, which are geographically and otherewise connected, and conceptual
schemes (where a conceptual reduction is insinuated), but all are, at logical bottom, models of
paradigmatic sort.
This tripartite example is adapted from UTD, where capsule elements of Taoism are duly
expanded.
8
Levelling of differences;
wide impartiality
Biocentric egalitarianism
Human supremacy
Supplies ample
Earth supplies limited
Ample resources with
substitutes
Following Tao-te
Spiritual goals,
especially self-realisation
Material economic growth
a predominant goal
Enlightenment
Self-realisation
Personal (material)
enrichment
Doing with enough
(recycling inappropriate)
Doing with enough;
recycling
Consumerism
Non-competitive lifestyle;
voluntary simplicity
Cooperative lifestyle
Competitive lifestyle
Decentralised/neighbourhood and village focus
Decentralised/bioregional
/neighbourhood focus
Centralised/urban centred/
national focus
Hierarchy without
power structure;
anarchoid
Non-hierarchical/
grassroots democracy
Power structure
hierarchical
Limited technology
Appropriate technology
High technology
Considerable caution
Precautionary practice
Risking taking (verging
upon adventurism)
Paradigms control action space by some equivalent of directives; under an earlier analogy, red
and green lights duly interpreted. They may not supply direct commands, general obligations
and prohibitions, but may operate more indirectly. For instance an enlightened person, a role
model, a person following Tao, would act this way, not that. (Taoism, like certain modem
ideologies, eschews deontic judgements.)
Paradigms are absorbed and they guide practice. They commonly form part of actors'
worlds; they are certainly part of actors' programs for practice and considered action in a world.
In a sense then, they are things, programs actors carry round in their heads; so heads (or rather
consciousnesses) have to be changed, not rolled.
2. Proposed answers to focal questions: a preliminary classification of inadequate answers
and suggested remedies.
Most of the extraordinary range of answers proposed supply but a single source, and are
accordingly defective for this reason, usually among other reasons. Indeed it is not much of an
exaggeration to assert that virtually everything proposed, in a now extensive literature, is
wrong.
TABLE 2. Main tabulation of answers and remedies , in three stages.
D. Defective
practice answers
Source
Remedy
Objections
9
DI.
Ignorance
Relevant
information
Information
now available
D2.
Unintended consequences
Relevant
information
Information
now available
D2a
Faulty technique,
or technology
Repairs
Repairs already
made
D3
Deviation (from
theory, etc.)
Education (for failure
to limit deviance)
Adherence
a. Deviation
uneliminable, or
b. Adherence
no remedy
D4.
Systemic lock-in
(through poverty,
ensnarement in
market forces, etc.)
Trap removal
a. Explains
only certain
cases, and
b. Due to
paradigmatic
features
D5.
Insensitivity or
insensibility
Problem
apprised
Remedy tried;
background
ideological
blockage
D3a
When pursued, objections like those noted either force defective practice out as unsatisfactory,
or push it back to paradigmatic features.
Source single paradigm
Remedies proposed (among others)
Pl.
Christianity (mainstream
Catholicism)
Scientific enlightenment, or
alternative (Eastern) religion
Pla.
Protestantism and its ethic
P2.
P2a
Cartesianism
Dualism
Anti-dualism
P2b
Mechanism
Organicism
P. Defective paradigm
answers
Substance metaphysics
P3.
P3a Possessive individualism
P3aa Personalism
Monism
Modified holism
Process metaphysics
Non-reductionism
Transpersonalism
P4.
Capitalism
Socialism
P5.
Industrialism
Pre-industrialism (romanticism)
Post-industrialism
P5a Technocratic bureaucracy
P5aa. Transnational business
P6.
Enlightenment
Anti-enlightenment
Anti-materialism
10
P6a
Materialism
Spiritualism
P8.
P9
Patriarchy, andocentrism
Human domination
of humans
Feminism
Anti-domination
(anti-hierarchy)
Observe that what some have proposed as remedies, others have seen as sources; remedies
proposed tend to share defects of sources.
PS. Further sample listings of this paradigmatic sort (but with the paradigms often subject
specific or partial) include:
Typical remedy suggested
Source
Platonism
Leibnitzianism
Kantianism
Anglo-American philosophy12
Utilitarianism
Economism (economic imperialism as
New metaphysics
New metaphysics
Consequentialism
Continental philosophy
Alternative ethics
New social science; ethics
contrasted with straight economic roots)
Contractarianism
Consequentialism
Domination transfer
Domination removal
Human nature (esp. aggression)
Adolescencism
Infantilism (from Freudian physchology)
Maturation
Maturation
And so on.
A very rough recipe runs as follows: draw up a potted list of major movements and factors in
dominant Western thought. Then many—perhaps it is not excessive to say most—entries in
that list will have been nominated, likely separately, by someone as the source of the problems.
That list accordingly continues (even including, sometimes, entries like Taylorism, i.e.
reorganisation of industry along lines popularized by Taylor), but what is included is
representative of the important and more interesting answers to be encountered. There are other
allegedly nonparadigmatic answers however, varying from interesting to crazy, that should also
be taken into some account, for instance answers like Shepard’s challenging answer. Although
Shepard dismisses ideologies, what he offers is a further ideosystem, of similar dubious or false
cast. Strange answers include pushing it all back to human psychology (thus not only Shepard,
but also Fox, and Ehrlich and other gurus with insistence upon ‘mental maladaptation’).
12
The mainstream form, analytic philosophy, appears to comprise empiricism-cum-utilitarianism
in Britain, tempered in America by pragmatism.
11
Basically, there is something wrong with a society that does that to its habitat. It is sick
—in a popular sense, yes, it is sick. It is the slides that follow, however, along psychological
routes, that are to be resisted. One slide begins invitingly: As it is not literally sick, well not
physically usually, it must be mentally sick; that is, sliding further and fast, insane or mad. But
the sources of mental sickness lie in childhood (as Freudianism erroneously insists). The slide
continues to: what we have are immature societies, frozen at an early stage of development. No
doubt there is something to the theme that dominant societies, USA especially (which now
influences so much in other cultures), are locked into youth culture, a sort of late consumptive
adolescence.13 No doubt, too, that maturity—but an environmental maturity—is desirable,
even mandatory.
Meanwhile, immaturity is fostered right through human life. Considerable effort is put
into trying to induct older people, who are often marginalised, into active consumptive society,
to spend their money through tourism, on new compact housing, in those most wasteful of
modem institutions such as airliners and hotels, hospitals and old-age homes, and so forth.
3. Documentation as to some of the acclaimed purer sources.
Like the lists of proposals and intricated paradigms, the documentation too is somewhat
perfunctory, tending here and there towards notes. Of course there are excuses. While whole
theses could be spun out on several of these topics, already beginning to elicit such treatment, a
prime objective here is different from usual: neither to convict, nor to clear or excuse, but to
partially implicate most items cited in the main tabulation above. Consider, in brief, some of
the usually accredited sources:
• Western religion, above all Christianity. The theme that the source of ecological problems,
‘the historical roots of our ecological crisis’, are to be found in Western religion, and
specifically in ‘the Judaeo-Christian belief that mankind was created to have dominion over
nature’, was repeated in a particularly pointed and subsequently influential way by White.14
One helpful summary of White's line of argument runs as follows:
Allied with technological and scientific developments, orthodox Christianity
has produced arrogant exploitation of nature, and a contemporary ecological
crisis. White's thesis is that the West's successful science and technology
developed between the 8th and 12th centuries — it is much older than the
scientific revolution though it was not until about 1850 — following the
democratic revolutions — that the science and technology were combined to
produce truly immense powers to change nature. The early development,
however, was paralleled by the development of exploitative attitudes to
nature which seemed to be ‘in harmony with larger intellectual patterns’,
namely the victory of Christianity over paganism. This destroyed the
animistic beliefs whereby men thought twice before they plundered and
destroyed natural objects. It substituted instead a faith in perpetual progress,
13
14
It interestingly matches the locking of primary production systems into pioneering stages such as
preclimax formations. Shepard’s dialectic is investigated in more detail in the Appendix .
White's article has generated an enormous defensive literature, primarily from Christian
apologists, but also from softer environmentalists and from testy historians of ideas. The whole
area looks in danger of disappearing from intellectual view under a heavy blanketing snowfall,
snowed.
12
a belief that God designed nature for man's benefit and rule, and that action,
not contemplation, was the correct Christian behaviour. Science formed an
extension of theology (for to know God you had to find out how his creation
worked), and technology provided the active means to carry out God's will.
Because today's attitudes are essentially inherited from Christianity, then it
‘bears the burden of guilt’ for contemporary ecological disruption.15
What has happened with the divisive charge, advanced by White, that Christianity was
the prime source of environmental problems, is particularly instructive. In an attempt to diffuse
the charge Christian apologists pointed to, what there undoubtedly were, recessive strands or
isolated seeds in Christianity which were much more environmentally benign (though some
such as stewardship, which has evolved toward total managerialism and sustainable
development, have proved increasingly problematic). That does little or nothing to meet a more
sensitive and telling criticism that mainstream (or dominant) Christianity has much to answer
for as regards destruction and degradation of natural environments.16 Similar responses are
apposite for attempts to exonerate their wider sources, such as Western philosophy.
Against the sheeting of responsibility to religion, dominant forms of which should
undoubtedly cop some heavy criticism, it has been contended that
philosophy ... is the primary source of most Western ideas [and] is ...
responsible for the ideas and attitudes that inhibit environmental protection
today. ... Religion ... though often criticized ... as the chief culprit, has played
a much less fundamental role. Most of the environmentally offensive ideas in
Western religion originated not in religion but in Western philosophy.17
• Classical Greek philosophy, above all the peak philosophies of Plato and Aristotle.
Greek philosophers approached natural phenomena in a way that (1)
prevented the development of an ecological perspective, (2) discouraged the
aesthetic appreciation of the natural world, and (3) promoted a conception of
reality that made the idea of nature preservation conceptually difficult, if not
impossible.18
More sweepingly, they set Western philosophy on a ruinous environmental course, a course
accentuated with the appearance of modem rationalist and empiricist philosophies.
• Cartesian philosophy.
15
16
17
18
The dominant modern environmental approach is sometimes
Pepper pp.44-5. Pepper then embarks upon the murky story of alternative interpretations of
Biblical data and the Christian tradition, dredged up by a series of White's critiques. The issue
continues to be debated; for an older survey of traditions see Passmore, for a challenging recent
contribution to the debate see Callicott.
Each religion is multistranded. But we should look hardest at dominant operative forms: Ask,
not merely what they say, but what they do, and would do. For an outline of just such a telling
criticism of mainstream Christianity, see Singer esp. pp.265-8.
Hargrove p.15. Certainly the sort of message that Pentecostal missionaries even now try to
preach to resistant Australian Aboriginals, that the earth is just filth, mere rubbish, can be traced
back in direct line to Plato’s attitude to the land, an attitude Hargrove and Plumwood help
expose.
Hargrove p.21. Hargrove’s claims may appear to have been confuted by Attfield, but really,
while they have been subject to minor qualification, they have been highlighted. There is a
much fuller story still to be told about classical Greek philosophy reassessed environmentally, of
the very different roles and impacts of Plato (with his unearthly philosophy), of Aristotle (with
his earthier chauvinism), of Stoics and of Epicureans, and of neo-Platonists. For a modest
beginning, see Plumwood on Plato, Toulmin on Stoics as contrasted with Epicureans, and
Glacken on lesser or lost Greek strands.
13
denominated Cartesianism, or the Cartesian Technocratic paradigm, in honour of Descartes,
upon whom (as a conveniently select individual from a swag of like-minded people) several of
the leading themes and ideas can be pinned.19 While Descartes was undoubtedly
extraordinarily influential, so were others; Newton for one, Locke for another. The paradigm is
accordingly better denominated the Atomist-Empiricist-Technocratic paradigm, or some such.
Evidently it substantially overlaps other modem ideologies, such as that of the Enlightenment,
widely implicated as major sources of environmental problems.
• Western metaphysics. While some conglomeration of the preceding sources and others
(some potted history of Western metaphysics, so to say) may be offered, more often what is
presented is some selection of Western metaphysical elements. Here is one example, plainly
exhibiting a heavy Heideggerean influence:
.
The roots of our environmental problems lie in Western metaphysics. For
metaphysics, Being is presencing; no allowance is made for any other mode
(sheltering, declining, concealing). Once metaphysics has established the
absolute dominion of the present over the not-present or no-longer-present,
the way is paved for the scientific method, with its emphasis on replicability
of results, predicability, quantification, and control. Nature becomes a
“natural resource” —and people become “human resources . The sources of
anthropocentricism, imperialism, colonialism, sexism and consumerism can
all be traced back to metaphysics.
Western metaphysics has more or less conquered the world, and there is no
going back. Western metaphysics is more than simply a false consciousness
overlaid on top of “authentic” experience. Being changes historically, and
metaphysics is the index of that change... Metaphysics has a conquering,
exclusive imperative, ... and different [former] modes now exist only as
vestigial traces. They cannot be resurrected through ancient wisdom, native
healing, goddess worship, or any other supposedly intact, dormant system.
We cannot create a “new order”. That would simply be another form of the
Will to Power... We can—and must—turn away from the dominant rhythms
of western metaphysics if we are to avoid the nihilism of a perpetually
ensconced technocratic rationalism.20
An alternative to turning entirely away from Western metaphysics, consists in combining
rejection of standard Western metaphysics (or, less sweepingly, of dominant metaphysics,
characteristically individualistic and atomistic) in favour of development of recessive traditions
or mere Western seeds.
Such a more sophisticated approach, also critical of Western
metaphysics, with atomism a main villain, is pursued by those who promote instead process or
plenum metaphysics.21
19
20
21
For encapsulation of the Cartesianism paradigm (a dominant dualistic form), summarising
Drengson’s exposition, see RP, table 5. Drengson, for one, has helped portray Descartes as the
environmentally evil genius (or demiurge). That some orthodox philosophers, not merely
maverick philosophers, are now rushing to the defence of Descartes should be seen as entirely in
keeping with the character and roles of Western philosophy.
Undisclosed source. Amusingly, I have seen myself accused of ‘rejecting] in its entirety
mainstream western philosophy and science, ... seen as the cause of the [environmcntalj
problem’ and instead basing my ‘ecocentric values on Eastern philosophies’ (thus Bellett). This
charge was levelled on the strength of a peripheral exercise on classical Taoism and Deep
Ecology (now included in UTD).
For the first process option, see Gare; for the second, where the plenum is that of a holistic
relativity theory (more exactly holistic relativistic geometrodynamics), see Mathews.
14
• Enlightenment. The source of problems lies in ‘the intellectual heritage of the Enlightenment’
(e.g. Dobson). Of course the main doctrines of the Enlightenment substantially overlap those
of modern mainstream philosophy and of Descartes’ philosophy (but they shed dualistic and
theistic scholastic hang-overs).
• Capitalism. The assumption that capitalism is responsible for environmental as well as social
evils, widespread until recently in state-socialist countries (when their own records were
revealed), can be traced back to Marx. According to Marx, with capitalism
for the first time, nature becomes purely an object for humankind, purely a
matter of utility; ceases to be recognised as a power for itself; and the
theoretical discovery of its autonomous laws appears merely as a ruse so as to
subject it under human needs, whether as an object of consumption or as a
means of production.22
But, as observed, a main embedded theme had appeared in earlier philosophy; for instance, the
idea of nature as purely an object for humankind, was advanced in Aristotle: ’Now if nature
makes nothing incomplete and nothing in vain, the inference must be that she has made all
animals for the sake of man’.23 Aristotle adopted a similar stance on nature as on other species.
The theme was to be oft repeated in subsequent Aristotelianism, and reiterated apparently in
shallower Stoicism. But the subjection of everything to utility, no doubt a relative of
capitalism, appears to be a distinctively modem contribution.
•
Modern industrial society or industrialism. Modem industrialism (‘the smooth
superhighway of industrial progress’) is the source, such is an extraordinarily popular theme:
‘... the root causes of the present crisis lie deep with the very foundations of the industrial
paradigm’.24 Similarly ‘roots [of] the environment crisis ... go deeper to the foundations of
modem industrial society’.2526Again, ‘the structural roots of the environmental crises [are found
in] industrialism, in commoditization, in commercialism, and in competition and greed
The
popular theme, that industrialism is the source, tends to confuse mere means— industrial
technology can without any doubt at all vastly facilitate environmental degradation (as well as,
22
23
24
25
26
It should not be overlooked that some of those who nominated metaphysics meant thereby
paradigm or paradigms or an equivalent. But what they may gain thereby in verisimilitude, they
tend to lose in confusion.
Grundrisse p.409f.
Aristotle, Politics, Book 1, ch.8. What an inference, you might well exclaim. See further
Hargrove p.25.
M. Gabriel, ‘How “attitudes and implements” have brought us to “the end of nature”’, a paper
presented at UNE Environmental Paradigms Conference, April 1993. Gabriel proposes a
managerial resolution: ‘for us to learn to manage both our relationship to our environment, and
more broadly the environment itself (quotes from abstract of paper). This amounts to the flip
side of an old problematic record. For the “solution” derives from the same defective box as the
evident problem.
Gabriel ibid. Similarly industrialism is assumed as the source throughout McLaughlin (the
theme pervades his book) and as the root of the modem problem in Marshall (p.5ff). While
seriously astray as to roots and sources, those critical of industrialism have a significant case.
For, as well as functioning as a major inflator of intact problems, industrialism has helped
generate side problems of its own, as with new types of chemical and nuclear pollution.
Editorial in The Ecologist, Jan-Feb 1992, p.2.
15
less satisfactorily, subsequent clean-up and environmental repair)— with sources and causes,
what directs and powers those uses of industrial technique and practice.
• Economic growth or economic development. ‘According to a common and currently
influential diagnosis, the environmental crisis has essentially economic roots’.27 One
widespread misconception is that economic growth is the source of environmental problems.
The assumption is astray for several reasons. For one, growth is at best a proximate cause,
itself in need of explanation. More importantly, growth may occur in sectors of an economy,
such as information technology or religious or artistic services, which have little or no
environmental impact. Also conversely, an economy which fails to grow, but is desperately
trying to survive, may exact heavy environmental costs (e.g. the forests are clear-felled to pay
for continuing employment). No doubt though, stock economic growth is intimately intricated
with proximate causes of environmental problems (through environmental impact equations).
Similar considerations tell against the familiar proposition that the source of the problems
is economic development itself or, what is different, the entrenched model of economic
development. While it is no doubt correct, and important to emphasize, that ‘the Western
model of economic development, far from being the solution to’ environmental and social
problems, is ‘actually fuelling’ them, it is not the sole or distinguished source of the
problems.28
• Human nature. "... the roots of our ecologic crisis reach beyond the variable topsoil of
intellectual history, whether Eastern or Western, into the common substrata of human nature
itself.’29 What such “nature” amounts to and how it functions as roots, both commonly left
obscure, turns upon background hypotheses as to the nature of this nature. Different false
27
28
29
Goodin, p.573. While not contesting the theme, Goodin does continue: ‘the problem is not just
that there are too many people, or even that they are enjoying too high a standard of living. All
that is true, too, of course. More fundamentally, however, problems of environmental
despoliation are said to derive from skewed incentives as they pursue their various goals’
(p.573). That too will be seen to be seriously astray, though it contains large grains of truth; it
presumes unchanged the prevailing economically-skewed dominant social paradigm.
Both socialists and other opponents of capitalistic conspicuous consumption tend to select the
living-standard component of the main environmental impact equation as the source of the crisis.
Thus Cuban luminary, Castro, in a recent stunningly succinct speech: ‘Less luxury, less wastage.
Otherwise it will be too late’.
Quoting claims of E. Goldsmith, advanced in an interview in Forest and Bird 273 (August 1994)
pp.46-7. The need for emphasis will persist while locally prominent political figures like the
present Prime Minister of Australia travel around the Earth with the hackneyed message that
only economic growth will solve environmental problems.
Seeing growth as the problem affords only a superficial analysis, like that of pointing to
overconsumption with which growth is interconnected. As deeper inquiry reveals, underlying
both issues of economic growth, employment and consumption, and alternatives taken, are
models, paradigmatic models. Growth is but a means to objectives assumed in the dominant
paradigm. A deeper analysis shows too why more growth will not ultimately solve relevant
problems.
Callicott and Ames, ‘Epilogue: On the relation of idea and action’ p.282 (see also p.281), in a
desperate and apparently unsuccessful attempt to reconcile the claim (repeatedly advanced in
their book) that Asian traditions of thought can make a significant contribution to much
improved treatment for natural and built environments, with ‘the deplorable environmental
conditions prevailing in contemporary Asia’ (p.280).
16
hypotheses, that humans are invariably driven by aggression, sexual or reproductive
imperatives, economic needs, yield different defective accounts. In Catholic orthodoxy such a
source, human nature, comes burdened with original sin; the source of a sweep of problems,
including now environmental ones, is “man’s fallen nature”. That astonishing source also
comes contaminated, as for instance gender biassed.
• Patriarchy. The source is patriarchy, and androgyny; problems derive from mistreatment of
women. ‘Our troubles begin with the invention of male deities located off the planet’.30
‘patriarchy is the source of the environmental crisis’.31 One sample linkage statement runs as
follows:
there is a huge denial ... of the violence perpetrated on women both
historically and ... presently] and ... this is the same energy that, turned
against the Earth, is destroying the very life-support systems and rapidly
destroying the conditions that makes complex life possible. The fires that
consume the Amazon are the very same fires that burned 9 million witches
and I believe that there can be no solution of our ecological problems unless
we simultaneously address our gender issues.32
Patriarchy, as source, is evidently a special case of long invoked domination transfer themes:
• Human domination and exploitation of humans'. It is an extraordinarily widespread
assumption that the impact of humans (or, until recently, of Man!) on the environment, or
creatures or things in it, is a product of that of humans with each other, typically of groups or
classes. In misleadingly brief form, the source is social: Man’s inhumanity to Man; and the
solution correspondingly is social. Unremarkably, this unlikely assumption comes in a variety
of different forms: early, concerning the mistreatment of animals as an (inevitable) spill-over
from mistreatment of humans, recently concerning maltreatment of nature spilling over from, or
being one with, that of women. The fashionable assumption runs, in one form or another, from
Aquinas through Kant to a range of recent trend-setters, including Marcuse, Illich, Passmore,
Bookchin ... and some leading feminists. In particular, it is part of the very meaning of social
ecology, an ideology shaped and championed by Bookchin: ‘ecological problems arise from
deep-seated social problems’.33 On this theme among others, Bookchin simply follows a
prominent trend in social anarchism set by Kropotkin and his contemporary Reclus:
all see that the domination and exploitation of nature by man is but an
extension of the domination of man by man. Thus, ‘Both Kropotkin and
Reclus ... laid the foundations of a radical theory of human ecology.
Ecological despoliation was seen to reflect imbalances in human relationships
30
31
32
33
Quoted in Eckersley p.64, who develops and begins to assess patriarchical source themes. For a
more critical assessment see the sequel to GE.
See Seed, quoted in the sequel to GE; also Salleh (e.g. in EP3).
John Seed’s Workshop Schedule 1992, Rainforest Information Centre, Lismore, 12. 12.91.
Seed’s extravagant identity claims are but a dramatic extension of that popular tendency to
transform comparison and similarity statements into identity claims. Indeed reductionism often
reaches further, with attempted conversion of all relational statements into identity ones, along
with unrelational property claims.
Bookchin sometimes qualifies this central claim, with ‘nearly all present’, e.g. EP3 p.354. But
he is not strictly entitled to any such qualification, given his invariant theme that the domination
of nature always results from humans’ domination of other humans (see e.g. Clark EP3, p.346).
The text EP3 contains a sizeable section providing a useful introduction to social ecology.
17
—domination of nature thus following from human domination’.... It follows
that if domineering and exploitative human relationships can be avoided in
small-scale decentralised societies then such societies are also best for a
harmonious man-nature relationship.34
Domination and exploitation of one division by another can in turn be seen as a case of
dualism at work, between the one, the dominator or dominating class, and the other, the
dominated.
• A snare of dualisms. Environmental problems derive from operation of a set of connected
ideologically-entrenched and defective dualisms.35
• Modern educational systems: Roots of environmental problems lie in educational systems.
Or if roots don't, solutions do. However, roots of environmental or social problems do not lie in
educational systems. Parts of their solutions may however. For education is critical, for
instance, in correcting insufficient adherence to established satisfactory arrangements, such as,
so it is claimed, Enlightenment ideals or traditional ethical systems.36 Therewith we are
transported full circle back to defective practice answers.
4. A selective commentary on, and objections to, proposed answers
A main part of this exercise consists in a detailed critical commentary on the entries in the
main tabulation, and on proposals like them. Small beginnings are made on the exercise, in two
stages reflecting a major division in the main tabulation.
ad D. Defective practice answers tend to come from those who presume we are already in
possession of adequate theories, or what approximates them or supplies main elements of them.
(Such answers are also more liable to emanate from conservatives, opposed to new or radical
theories, advanced on the basis of inadequacy of prevailing theories in practice.)
Defective practice answers are especially popular in economic reaches. There was a time,
perhaps not past yet, when all market failures in the shape of negative externalities were passed
off as unintended consequences of economic activity. While “consequences” or outputs such
things as pollution certainly are, unintended they mostly are not now, without emptying
‘unintended’ of its normal sense. For example, industrialists, apprised of conservation laws and
unsurprised by polluted wastes, who dump their waste where and when regulators and waste
watchers are not looking, can hardly pretend that that output is an unintended consequence of
their industry. That should now be a rotten joke, itself with serious consequences.
Accordingly new ecological economics insists that we dig deeper—without however
exceeding economic settings or a shifting dominant paradigm—to discover why markets may
34
35
36
Pepper p.192, with internal quotation from Breitbart. Unfortunately it is all too evident, given
humans could so socially organise, that they could settle into harmonious small-scale
communities which retained but little of pristine natural environments.
Such a proposition obtains a much fuller elaboration within Plumwood. In an interesting way,
such a proposal can hardly be wrong, given the conclusion reached below that a set of defective
paradigms is at work. For evidently paradigms can be covered by dualisms, represented by a set
of them in each case, somewhat as numbers can be represented in binary terms, generated from a
basic two-oneness duality.
Thus Passmore, Attfield, and others. For a critical assessment of education, see GE
18
foreseeably fail and why environmentally rectifying technology is not delivered.3738Where they
usually arrive, travelling within such unduly confined settings, is, like welfare economics
before ecological, at better regulated markets, with business set as before within frameworks of
plans and incentives, controls and penalties. Environmentally, however, such approaches do
not reach very deep, or tap into underlying paradigmatic problem-sources.
But these sorts of defective practice answers do not always derive from standard
economic sources. A deviation-style answer is much favoured by Marxists to explain failure,
environmental and other, of the former Soviet Union and other Eastern block countries, namely
that true, or authentic, Marxism was not practiced. Unfortunately, even if it had been,
environmental consequences would be little better, given the heavy industrial commitments and
environmental shallowness, at best, of true Marxism.3^ Differently, enlightenment liberals like
Passmore try to ascribe failures in Western environmental practice, not to any deficiencies in
mainstream theory, but to deviation from well established principles. Unfortunately adherence
to these “well established principles” is just one way in which the Earth will lose what remains
of its wilderness and remarkable diversity.
Now there are no doubt cases, past especially but also present, some resulting
(collectively) in extensive environmental degradation, where defective practice answers may be
correct. For example, there is harrowing case after harrowing case (brought together in texts
like Topsoil and Civilization and Agricultural Origins and Dispersal) of degradation of prime
agricultural lands by imposed farming practices, where at least early on (before damage became
visible) ignorance and unintended consequences could be legitimately claimed. In most
historical cases we do not have enough information to be able to say with much assurance that
agriculture proceeded until effective collapse because of continuing ignorance, or because
practices were locked-in in one way or another, or because of sheer obduracy. But we do know
more about present agricultural practices, for example in more arid parts of Australia,
concerning both irrigated and dry-land agriculture. Many of these practices are undoubtedly
sharply degrading lands, and the consequences of the practices, which cannot plead or pretend
ignorance, are sufficiently appreciated. But the practices persist, and are encouraged by a
sweep of subsidies or concessions. No doubt some of the practitioners can reasonably claim
that they are locked into bad practices through circumstance, circumstances now beyond their
control such as financial pressures, unfavourable terms-of-trade, and so on, coupled with the
need to make a living. But some, such as companies controlling large tracts of land, can make
no such claims or excuses, nor can claim such things as family precedence, attachment to place,
and similar. Their obdurate practice has to be attributed to something else, most obviously not
37
38
Thus e.g. Jacobs, p.24.
It is surprising how much of the practice of later Socialist states is prefigured in texts like The
Communist Manifesto. Thus “industrial armies” are to be set up; credit, communications and
transport are to become state monopolies; “migrants and rebels” are to have their property
confiscated; and so on. All this runs contrary to much Marxist apologetics (as A. Urquhart, who
made those points, also observed).
19
deviation from theory, but commitment to an environmentally defective paradigm.
ad P and PS. Dealing with defective paradigm answers is an even more complex, and vexed,
business. Let us try to condense main matters to a few broad themes:
1.
Many of the (incomplete) paradigms listed are not even sufficient for environmental
impasses. They may be seriously mistaken, they may have undesirable intellectual and perhaps
social effects, but a society could persist sustainably with those drawbacks. Thus, for example,
substance metaphysics (under modified Spinozism), dualisms, even patriarchy. The same
might even hold for materialism and mechanism, (assuming these practices can be coherently
made out, that depending on how differentiated ideologies and values are accommodated, and
so forth).
To illustrate: a metaphysics, of any sort, cannot be the whole story, because it does not,
on its own, account for action, anti-environmental or other. Without special bridges, link
principles, from metaphysics to value-intricating action theory, a sort of naturalistic fallacy
operates.
Thus subverted, in essentially Hume’s way, are all the vulgar sources of
environmental problems which take them as derived from metaphysics of one sort or another.
Such a criticism does not however extend to more comprehensive paradigms which connect
appropriately with practice.
2.
While several—not just one—of the paradigms listed are sufficient—in the right
circumstances (given long historical development, accumulation, and so on39)—none are
necessary. Similar impasses could arise, and locally have arisen, given significantly different
paradigms;
for example given, instead of main Western trouble-making paradigms,
Confucianism or advanced Polynesianism.
At this stage in dialectic, green history and the like—bio-history, eco-history, and related
virtual histories (concerning what would have happened)—enter decisively. For instance,
Ponting's Green History of the World begins with a graphic account of the rise and ecological
fall of Easter Island under the impact of Polynesian projects. The work also conveniently
documents many other examples, well-known to biohistorians, of ecological degradation or
collapse, far from the influence of Western paradigms.40 An important example (much less
speculative than some of the numerous other examples because of a comparative wealth of
primary documentation) outlines the destruction of accessible Chinese ecosystems under
Confucian dynasties. What several of these examples—Polynesian, Mayan, Sumerian and
others—also reveal is that no very high level of technology is needed to inflict serious
environmental damage; persistence in pursuit of an ideological project (with nothing directly to
39
40
While it is easy to imagine ineffectual or incompetent tribes which live benignly
environmentally, by just muddling along, under even the worst of paradigms, that is not really to
the point. A pertinent tribe needs to have developed the structure which leads to problems, to
have the means, and so on.
Ponting’s valuable though rather simple book is but one of several bleak texts. Another is
Hillel’s, and there is a succession of earlier classic works by geographers: Lowdermilk, Dale,
Mallory, Thorp and others. In general however, geographers and historians do not dig deep
enough, to paradigmatic roots.
20
do with basic needs) will suffice.
Other cultures did wreak, or would (given the technology and numbers, both of which
some were gaining) have wreaked similar damage. For instance, deforestation, salination,
megafaunal elimination, and so on, were well established, and expanding, before (or effectively
outside) the rise of modem Western paradigms, or in extensive regions outside their influence.
3.
The list of paradigms, as so far assembled, is substantially Western in orientation.
Moreover environmental woes are regularly ascribed to Western sources
wrongly. For nonWestem paradigms have led, or would lead given the opportunities (including access to the
technologies), to outcomes as undesirable as under dominant Western paradigm. Witness
again Confucianism, for instance, and its role and influence in Asian regions. Confucianism
incorporates human chauvinism par excellence (as well as, some might say, Chinese
chauvinism).41 Or consider Islam, with its reach across the Middle East and beyond.
The main tabulation (of table 2) should accordingly be extended to take due account of
non-Westem paradigms, including for example:
Other Abrahamic religions
Islam
Judaism
Confucianism
Shintoism
Polynesianism, at least in advanced forms as on Easter Island.
What is “Western” is tending to blur also. Is Judaism Western, how western, or Islam? There
is also a tendency to suppose that more Western religions, Abrahamic religions, with their
intense monotheism, are significantly ideologically worse than non-Westem. But the contrasts
are different and much more complex than that. A better divide is into monistic and pluralistic.
Even so, many undesirable social and environmental features are incorporated in, or
encouraged by, religious pluralisms from the Indian subcontinent.
4.
All the single paradigm answers are inadequate, all are too simple. Even so some are
less inadequate than others. It is the same, more or less, for the combined answers, often to be
encountered. For generally they represent but one thin cross-section of Western paradigms.
While all the single one-source one-shot paradigmatic answers, occur on their own, often
they are combined. For instance, although Descartes is often cited as a villain, more often
criticism of Cartesianism is combined with criticism of other concurrent ideological elements,
such as Baconian empiricism (less incompatibly, Drengson, for one, regularly combines
criticism of the technocratic paradigm with criticism of Cartesianism
though Descartes, for all
his rich and appalling thought, contributed little to the rise of technocratic organisation.)
Similarly Hargrove combines Greek philosophy, as original source, with modem rationalism
and much else.
41
Its net of effects extends widely. Consider, e.g., the role of Chinese medicine in decline of large
fauna worldwide.
5.
A general method of showing the inadequacy of all the paradigmatic answers tabulated,
and others, is familiar from logical theory: namely, the method of counter-models, of which the
counter-examples (under head 2) provide special cases. A presently important illustration
concerns patriarchy as a source of environmental woes. Counter-models reveal the substantial
independence of mistreatment of women and mistreatment of environmental items such as
animals or ecosystems. One the one hand, it is easy to envisage situations, not far from the
actual in some regions, where the lot of women is significantly improved, but the lot of
environmental items is not (e.g. men change their behaviour and attitudes relevantly as regards
women, are forced to change, or whatever); just such an outcome would accord with persisting
human chauvinism. More relevant, on the other, there are situations where the position of
environmental items is much improved, for instance under much more careful husbandry, but
that of women is not, for one reason or another (e.g. they remain other, different, second class,
etc.). It follows from the elaboration of such counter-models that patriarchy is not the source of
environmental problems, as there can be continuing patriarchy without the present range of
environmental problems (problems can dry up while patriarchy continues to operate). There is
no need to deny that patriarchy as (contingently) practised, with its sweeping supremacist
attitudes which make no due distinctions between inferior items, may be a major contributing
factor in present problems. Such slack contingent conjunctions do not convert to roots or
sources. Similarly with other social roots of environmental problems, for instance with human
domination of humans as the supposed source of all problems.
5. Towards a more satisfactory explanation.
Not only are the paradigmatic roots seriously intertangled (because of connections of one
paradigm with another, because for instance of heavy philosophical inputs into religious
paradigms), but further there is not a single defective paradigm. Rather there is a family or
sheaf of paradigms, commitment to any of which, or any suitable combination of which, in
requisite circumstances, appears to have yielded environmentally untoward outcomes (requisite
circumstances including availability of technology, extent of social support, and so on). Within
that plurality there are of course gradations—and not only gradations but major differences
in
calibre, in environmental friendliness. For example, Cartesianism which regards animals as
mere automata incapable of feeling genuine pain, is significantly worse as regards other life
forms and their decent treatment than a utilitarianism which positively values animal sentience.
The family is not exclusively Western, nor somewhat more plausibly Northern, even
though as a result of forces like migration, colonialism and cultural imperialism, paradigms of
these sorts now predominate. Paradigms and cultures of less “advanced” and of third world
communities have also operated to enhance environmental vandalism and degradation locally
and regionally.
Nor are major inflators of environmental problems essentially Western. Industrialization
and technological advance—neither intrinsically Western, both manifested in varying degrees
in other cultures—are, without much doubt, what have inflated environmental problems from
22
rather localised ones, damaging for instance islands and river catchments, to grander and even
global ones. They are the engines, powerhouses, of major problems, generating thereby spin
off problems as well. But, once again, they are not deeper sources, but only means. (For again
push questioning deeper, and ask: why bother or persist with industry, the effort and dirt and
mess involved?) Nor, however, did they run on their own, nor do they continue on their own.
Such engines were not designed and built, fuelled and tended, independently.42 They evolved
primarily in the specially favoured culture of capitalism, though parallel developments could
have occurred, and later did, in other prepared and heavily controlled surroundings, such as
state socialism or post-imperial Confucianism. Now however these engines have been rendered
more reliable and less dependent on careful cultural support, and have been transformed to run
in less favourable settings.
Thus inflation can escalate from a multiplicity of prepared sources, thereby intensifying
problems and spreading them to larger regions. The intensification and spread is much
facilitated by the joint transfer of technology, industry and coupled problems from region to
region. As a result of transfer, inflation can occur within settings of quite different paradigms.
Even if the whole “West” went into a terminal decline, and its paradigms disappeared into
history, serious environmental exploitation and degradation would continue, driven by other
enthusiastic cultures. For instance, the West could in theory collapse through protracted war,
through pollution and congestion, or climate change and agriculture failure (there are many
unexcludible routes to catastrophic decline, outlined in “Limits to Growth” scenarios, that could
differentially impact on the West). Degradation would now continue however; there would be
only temporary respite from environmental crises.
While most of the conspicuous problems, awfully aggregated in contemporary
environmental crises, are accelerated by—what connects them—contemporary industrial
society, not all environmental problems are or have been of this sort. However, too many of the
other problems, such as destruction of rainforests by itinerant peasants, can be seen as by
products or similar of the main generators. Thus, in the illustration, the peasants displaced by
agribusiness or absentee wealth-holders, arrived there on industrially-made roads opening the
forests, and often wrecked this damage using industrial machinery.
An environmental friendly culture has to be much more critical concerning certain types
of industrialization, and much more selective regarding technology than present dominant
cultures, Western or non-Westem. A friendly paradigm would not only ensure much more
Lacking favourable ideological settings, earlier technological “break throughs” were not duly
developed: thus early wheels, steam engines, dyes, gunpowder, etc. Western cultures did not
enjoy a monopoly upon technology powerful enough, when massed, to induce global crises.
The pictuie of development of large-scale environmental problems being sketched bears
superficial resemblance to that now tendered for development of the early Universe, where, to
achieve presumed size, a source event, the Big Bang, was followed by huge inflationary
phenomena. Naturally the resemblance has limitations; for instance, universe inflation is not
terrestrially replicable in the way industrialization now is (hired or delivered off the shelf,
pollution problems and all, with a big price tag).
23
selectivity and care, but would sharply limit impacts of damaging technology and
industrialization. While there are such paradigms, on the ideas market, they mostly lack
sophisticated contemporary elaboration and they may be flawed in other respects. Examples of
more friendly paradigms, that do not lead of themselves to massive environmental problems
and crises conditions, include those now tabulated:
TABLE 3: Examples, some flawed, of environmentally friendly paradigms.
Oriental ideologies:
Taoism (classical)
recessive traditions,
now with tiny
followings and little
political influence.
Jainism
Indigenous cultures:
Australian Aboriginals (e.g. Aranda)
Amazonian Indians.
Western philosophies:
under certain
favourable
interpretations
old
Stoicism
new
Deep-green theories, such as deep ecology.
Given the remoteness of most of these examples from predominant contemporary life, and
difficulties with their wide adaptability, it is a short step to a familiar conclusion that new
paradigms need to be worked out soon. Much much more intellectual effort should be devoted
to such enterprise.
One upshot, then, is a rough classification of paradigms into two families, the second
large: environmentally friendly, and unfriendly. No doubt there is a small fuzzy residue class
lying between major unfriendly and friendly divisions.
Environmental friendliness means more or less what it appears to mean, what a functional
break-down into components would yield: friendliness in approaches, practices and attitudes, to
environments, especially more natural environments, with friendliness including, as usual,
goodwill and kindliness towards (and substantially displaceable by these). As indicated, such
friendliness concerns not merely actual practices, but also attitudes held, as reflected in what
would be done in certain other sorts of situations.
Certainly a culture that manifests
unfriendliness, as a sweep of Northern cultures do, is unfriendly. But, as well, various
“primitive” cultures, whose practices are not hostile, for example because they lack means or
resources, energy or health, may nonetheless be unfriendly; for instance all members of a
culture hold thoroughly negative attiudes which they are in fact unable to put into practice.
43
In logical terms neither, perhaps as well as another residue class, both.
24
It is not too difficult to explain in outline which paradigms will, if duly, diligently or
religiously practiced, lead to environmental problems and impasse.
Certain family
characteristics, of unfriendly paradigms are worth elaborating:
* Direct untoward effects, illustrated through Cartesianism and Confucianism.
More
generally, direct impact is illustrated by any idea-system which attributes little or no value to
natural items, and typically much value to nature transforming or interfering human (or elite)
projects, and whose themes are linked to practice. So it is with Confucianism, which is entirely
human focussed. ‘Centering his attention on man in his present life, Confucius had as his goal
the achievement of a good society characterized by harmonious social relations.’44 The outside
world, the natural environment, was of no moral significance. It mattered only instrumentally,
to humans. Descartes went further. Human bodies too were automata, complex machinery.
‘The exception is [znznJ, or specifically] thought, and its external manifestation language: this
alone cannot be explained mechanistically—a thesis which leads Descartes to assert a
fundamental divide between human beings and “the beasts’”.45 The remaining world, the
natural environment—lacking humanity, thought, mind—was again of no moral significance.
It possessed derivatively only what value and meaning humans, or minds, chose to confer or
project upon it, typically little or none.
Since, either way, any way, a natural environment devoid of humans has no thoughts,
purposes or interests, no value or meaning of its own, it could hardly matter what happens to it.
It could be regarded and treated, justifiably, as nothing but a reservoir of resources for humans.
Cartesians drew just such conclusions; similar conclusions derive, by one route or another from
Platonism and Pentecostalism, and are implicit at least in Confucianism. Descartes again went
further than some others. His practices and methods, like those of Bacon, were aimed at
making men the masters and possessors of nature’ .46
Untowards effects result through linkage of ideological theory to heavy practice. Link
principles, reminiscent of “correspondence rules” used in explaining applications of scientific
theories and normally included in comprehensive paradigms, connect the theoretic level to
practice, they also serve to activate otherwise inoperative or uncoupled paradigms. Such
principles may take the form of directives; familiar examples include maximization directives,
such as maximize personal fun, tribal utility, national interest, or state GNP.
* Indirect combination effects, illustrated through Leibnitzianism. Any which yield satisfaction
of all or enough elements of the consumption impact equation, and so would generate excessive
impacts. To illustrate, consider what might be called Leibnitzianism, in honour of Leibnitz’s
fragmentary ideology. Leibnitz was substantially committed to all of human population
44
45
46
Reese p.102 For much more on the geographic impact of Confucianism, as also compared with
other (Asian) paradigms, see Tuan’s investigations.
Cottingham p. 15. The utter invalidity of Descartes' argument (reported in Cottingham) to this
divide is now comparatively easy to expose, given almost 400 years of hindsight. There are no
such status divides—-just as flamboyant forms of deep ecology maintain.
See Descartes, Discourse VI.
25
growth, unfettered technological advance, and human lifestyles of consumption,47 in short, to
precisely those factors that combine in the impact recipe to produce excessive human impacts
upon environments. However neutral Leibnitz’s metaphysics, his monadology, may have
been—by contrast with Plato’s or Descartes’, both of which explicitly devalued much or all of
the natural world—Leibnitz’s wider ideology is linked indirectly, through impact equations, to
damaging effects.
Some imagine that this oblique formalistic detailing, through direct and indirect classes,
can be simply cut through, retaining plurality and so forth. Surely environmental friendliness is
nothing but environmental depth? While the suggestion points in the right sort of direction (for
the relevant sort of depth) it too is astray.48 Depth is neither necessary nor sufficient. Take the
move plausible sufficiency half, plausible because depth helps, no end. Nonetheless depth can
be achieved in macho ways (as ecofeminism has emphasized against deep ecology), ways
which may not be altogether friendly to less favoured species, groups or habitats. For example,
depth can be satisfied through due selection and support of some super species and magnificent
habitats—requisite environmental impartiality (and reflected justice), critical for friendliness as
intended, being neglected.49 Still less in depth necessary. For kindliness can, both in principle
and in practice, extend far beyond humans, still ranked top, to much more of “creation . Such
extensive kindliness, observed in some humanistic humans, appears to be exhibited in some
sects and tribes not committed to depth, and it could well be considerably more widespread,
under changed but not deepened ideological conditions. Naturally, however, deepening would
afford an obvious, and excellent, reason for change.
As friendliness is not tantamount to depth, nor similarly is a prime part of what explains
depth, recognition of intrinsic value in nature outside humans. Some animal liberationists who
display high regard for creatures with capacity to suffer, show little goodwill towards forests
largely unpopulated by such creatures. Conversely, though shifting ground, an environmentally
friendly society may hold that value is but an anthropocentric construct, merely projected onto a
basically neutral world.
All the same, aspects of depth are normally reliable indicators of environmental
sensitivity and friendliness, and inversely, aspects of shallowness (as investigated in authentic
deep ecology) marks of unfriendliness.
Shallowness will work out satisfactorily
environmentally only with what is now rare (given ideological dominance), a right mix of
humans; and its any longer working widely is implausible. These reliable marks include such
familiar features as
47
48
49
For requisite details, see Aiton. The case against Leibnitzianism is developed in a sequel.
As to the relevant sort of depth, see GE. Other accounts of depth are also preferred in deep
ecology, some of which relate to the present exercise. In particular deep questioning should lead
to paradigmatic roots, to Naess’s “total views”.
Herein lies another reason why something like biospecies egalitarianism is essential in deep
ecology; such a requirement needs, not dilution away (as has happened in American and
transpersonal deep ecology), but rectification.
26
* short-term framework.
* devaluation of natural items as against human elements or artefacts (typically exhibiting
human chauvinism); and, as a corollary of heavy devaluation,
* entitlement to domination, dominion ove’r nature;
* appropriation of nature, its conversion to property.
* maximization assumptions concerning personal or societal aggrandizement, utility and size,
coupled with grand projects.
* technofix approach to environmental problems.
Friendly paradigms will tend to invert these features. An environmentally friendly
paradigm can be expected to yield environmentally significant corollaries, such as the following
samples:
* an end to degrading primary production; instead ecological forestry and ecological
agriculture will come to prevail.
* a strong selectivity regarding industrialization, which weeds out damaging forms.
* a calling off of grand ideologically-grounded projects, interfering with or damaging natural
environments, such as major dams, river diversions, demolished islands (e.g. for airports), new
mountains, terraforming, extensive rainmaking, climatic interference, and generally the sweep
of “playing God” projects. A little of this sort of unfriendly technology can go a very long way.
As unfriendly paradigms are decidedly plural, so likewise are answers to questions as to
why agents adhere, or continue to adhere, to environmentally unfriendly paradigms. Some of
the diverse answers match answers already encountered in the main tabulation. Reasons are
psychological, social and cultural (with a familiar circularity here encountered), and include
considerations of the following sorts and others: because that is how things are done, or have
always been done; because needs can be met, perhaps only met, in that way, so it is believed;
because there are no alternatives, or none seen, perhaps because none have been sought;
because negative outcomes can be overcome, or do not really matter; and so on.
A short answer can now be ventured to the focal questions: Because, in one way or
another, most agents are bound to—locked into, committed to, captured by, or just passively go
along with—environmentally unfriendly paradigms. As a result the (long-term) health of the
rest of environments does not matter, or matter enough.
6. Glimpsing an entertaining corollary: an unfavourable report upon dominant
philosophy.
It will hardly have escaped notice that virtually all dominant philosophical roads lead to
Rome, to environmentally unfriendly paradigms.
Stripped of metaphor, there are
environmental conditions of adequacy, which most philosophical systems fail to meet. In an
environmentally friendly new world, most philosophy that is remembered, indeed most of the
humanities, is destined for scrapping. Prevailing philosophy is a serious impediment to
satisfactory environmental outcomes. Predominant philosophy, not just Western philosophy,
has by and large been bad environmental news.
27
It may be insisted that philosophy can make no difference, for instance to environmental
practice. It is not an expression of basic needs, or of any such practical matters. Exceptions to
such practical bravado have however to be recognised almost immediately; philosophy soon
enters for organizational, justificatory and explanatory ends. That concession still grossly
under-estimates the extent to which ideas, and more generally paradigms, influence and even
govern action and practice, especially reflective and rational action. The substantial point is not
therefore removed through any alleged practical impotence of philosophy.
Mainstream philosophy has supplied, or mightily assisted in supplying, dominant
unfriendly paradigms under which environments labour. Of course not everything has to be
trashed, as even defective enterprises or evil projects may include decent part or worthwhile
features; much can be salvaged, arguments, subtheories and so on (and with intellectual tipping
there need be little material waste). Nor therefore is it as if an entirely fresh start has to be
made. As well as salvaged bits and pieces (which need to be carefully tested for soundness),
there are brash new alternatives such as authentic deep ecology, and there are recessive
paradigms and neglected traditions to peruse for suggestions, for inspiration, and perhaps to
rehabilitate.
Richard Sylvan*
APPENDIX. On Shepard’s approach to focal questions.
A remarkably sustained investigation of the focal questions is found in Shepard s
intriguing books. In his Nature and Madness, he considers and quickly dismisses many of the
stock responses to focal questions suggested by contemporary luminaries (or by himself in
earlier work), such as lack of information, faulty technique, insensibility, greed, political
inertia, change to agriculture and settlement, 5<\.. . He would (and should, for his eliminative
argument) have also dismissed industrialization, state and corporate control, and so on.
More disconcertingly, for present purposes, Shepard claims that ‘a history of ideas’—
similarly no doubt a story of paradigms—will not serve; for it ‘is not enough to explain human
behaviour’ (p.3), it ‘seems too easy and academic’ (p.3), itself an easy and superficial criticism.
But if, for instance, the ‘dictum that nature should serve man’ and ‘insistence that animals feel
no pain’ should become widely entrenched, then they may well impact heavily on practice, as
accordingly appears to be the case. His slight further argument appears to miss the intended
An earlier, even rougher version of this article was presented at the Environmental Paradigms
Conference, University of New England, Armidale, April 1993. It would not have been written
without its solicitation for the Conference; also it might well not been thought through in
fashionable but confining and perhaps misleading paradigmatic terms.
A subsequent working draft has benefitted, slightly, from comments from very unimpressed
reviewers. Thanks certainly to Holmes Rolston for helpful comments.
No doubt a popular picture of human social changes with agriculture and settlement is simplistic:
that before societies lived in harmony, afterwards they did not. But it is also too simple to go on
to claim, as Shepard does, that ‘the economic and material demands of growing villages and
towns are ... not causes but results of this change’ (p.3). Some demands appear to derive from
factors, such as population pressures, which were among causes of the changes.
28
target: ‘The meticulous analysis of these philosophies and the discovery that they articulate an
ethos beg the question’ (p.3). How, it can reasonably be inquired? What is offered is but the
facile, false, ‘ideas are impotent’ consideration, fostered by thinking and operating in terms of
causes (e.g. lower p.3), rather than reasons and (rational) explanation, and encouraged through
an attempted move to (what is explanatorily inadequate) pure behaviour. For a simple example
of the familiar explanatory roles of ideas and paradigms, consider an alternative explanation
through them. The admittedly bizarre (“crazy”) ‘turning everything into something man-made
and [or] man-used’ (p.5) is readily explained through dominant paradigms: that is the way it
acquires value, otherwise it is worthless. There is no need at all for psychopathology here.
Correspondingly Shepard briefly reviews and rejects several of the very partial, and often
hopeless, solutions suggested under stock responses to focal questions such as making
information, or better information, more widely available, bringing people from all walks of life
together, encouraging conviviality, hitting problems with smart technology, practicing
conservation, and so on.
Shepard’s own resolution is more readily reached from a further (meta-focal) question
that he proceeds to ask: why do humans persist in degrading their habitats once sources and
solutions are made transparent? He effectively argues by elimination: other sources (read as
causes) do not succeed in providing an answer; but ‘the idea of a sick society’ (which he leaps
to, without argument, p.4) does. Wrong on both counts: On the first because a non-causal
explanation in terms of ideological wiring can provide answers (listen to politicians,
representative of the people, again, just a little time). On the second because some industrial
societies are not sick in a normal sense (though some may be), rather sickness has to be so
redefined (such low redefinitions are among underlying subplots51) that having certain
ideological commitments that are carried into practice counts as “sickness”.
So it is that Shepard arrives at his theme of ‘general, culturally-ratified distortions of
childhood, of massive disablement of ontogeny as the basis of irrational and self-destructive
attitudes towards the natural environment’ (p.ix). Succinctly, ‘there are profound psychic
dislocations at the root of modem society’ (p.xii). Psychic disorders have evolved: ‘over the
centuries major institutions and metaphysics might finally celebrate attitudes and ideas
originating in the normal context of immaturity [or]... adolescence ...’ (p. 15).
Having glided easily and invalidly to the idea of sick societies, in a mere three pages,
Shepard proceeds to diagnose in more detail the nature of the alleged sickness.52 It supposedly
arises, like other psychopathy with which it is immediately associated, in infancy, and is
51
52
For trickery through redefinition of sickness and madness, Wisdom has already prepared us.
Observe that Shepard’s redefinition of sickness to include sick (i.e. debasing and devaluing)
piactices with regard to natural habitats (and conjoined therewith, to, older people) does not
leave no contrast classes. For there remain benign ‘relic tribal’ societies, such as the Manus,
Crow and Comanche, Aranda and !Kung San (p.xii), ‘people who feel themselves to be guests
rather than masters' (p.6 empasis added)—an elegant analogy.
‘The idea of a sick society’, which as Shepard confesses (on p.4) is hardly new, is reached on the
third page of the main text.
29
manifest in life-long immaturity, with whole societies stuck in a kind of destructive
adolescence. No doubt there is something to some of what Shepard describes in child and
person development (not the ‘private demons’ and so on) or might well have described. There
is evidently, conspicuously in “new world” societies, wide commitment to a shallow juvenile
culture, adulation or imitation of immature media and sport models and flawed authority
figures, marginalization of the elderly, and so on, coupled with hyper-activity, violence and
vandalism. But, like political commitment to extensive economic activity, this is hardly
satisfactorily accounted for through psychopathological reduction, concentrating the whole
social problematic in the ontogeny of individuals.55 A superior explanation to widespread
individual psychic disorder proceeds through ideological commitment, that industrial humans
are raised and educated in, inducted into and committed to, defective ideologies, without
coming to know or properly experience alternatives.
The ‘portraits of maturity’ alluded to likewise appear individualistic and culture-bound,
resembling those of deep ecology, directed at embroidery of person and self, through personal
growth and identity, wider identification and relatedness, self-realization.*
54 They are not
exactly those of older and ecologically wiser societies. They do not reveal ecologically mature
mixed communities.
Furthermore, comparisons with relic tribal societies, which are important, can be
decoupled from psychopathological analysis and reduction. Different lifeways, commitments
and ideologies, are what they are and do not all reduce to matters of mental health.
Undoubtedly we can learn of and from these different societies. We can still witness smallgroup, leisured, foraging life-ways with[in] natural surroundings. ... there is the rub—... for us,
now, that world no longer exists’ (p.14 rearranged). Nor is it really true that such a world is no
longer accessible to most of us; more leisured small-group ways can be retrieved, some natural
surrounding can even now be restored.
In a curious fashion, Shepard has managed to invert likely causal relations. While a
certain interaction can no doubt be conceded, it is not so much human ill-health that is leading
to environmental degradation, but rather environmental degradation, generally brought about
for other reasons, that is increasingly leading to human ill-health, and in the longer term causing
erosion of life-support systems.
55
54
A psychopathic reduction is in part made plausible by reexpression in medical or psychological
terms of what would better be otherwise expressed. Consider, for instance the language of the
following clever paragraph, which infiltrates much with no argument:
. ‘The person himself is, of course, caught between his inner calendar and the surgeries of
society. His momentum for further growth may be twisted or amputated according to the
hostilities, fears, or fantasies required of him, as his retardation is silently engineered to
domesticate his integrity or to allow him to share in the collective dream of mastery (p.16).
But the trapping of agents between inner directives and social conditions and demands, or
between rival ideologies, can be retold in different, less medical and metaphorical terms.
Cf pp.12-14. Likewise there is a conservative underlay, more oppressive than that of deep
ecology: insistence on ‘one particular mother’ (p.7) even suggestion of unsatisfactoriness in
‘taking mothers off to work’ (p. 15)!
30
REFERENCES
E.J. Aiton, Leibnitz A Biography, Adam Hilger, Bristol, 1985.
R. Attfield, ‘Has the history of philosophy ruined the environment?’ Environmental Ethics
13(1991) 127-137.
R. Attfield, The Ethics of Environmental Concern, Second edition, University of Georgia Press,
Athens, 1991.
A. Bellett, ‘The evaluation of values compatible with ecological sustainability’, Fundamental
Questions Papers, No.2, CRES, Australian National University, 1990.
J.B. Callicott and R.T. Ames (eds), Nature in Asian Traditions of Thought, SUNY Press,
Albany NY., 1989.
J. Callicott, ‘Genesis and John Muir’ ReVision 12(3) (1990) 31-41.
R. Chisholm, The Foundations of Knowing, Harvester Press, Sussex, 1982.
J. Cottingham, The Rationalists, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1988.
C. Dale, Topsoil and Civilization, Revised edition by V.G. Carter, University of Oklahama
Press, Norman, 1974.
A Dobson (ed.), Green Reader, Routledge, London, 1991?
A. Drengson, ‘Ecosophy’, Positive Vibrations, (1990?) 8-10.
R. Eckersley, Environmentalism and Political Theory, UCL Press, London, 1992.
W. Fox, Towards a Transpersonal Ecology, Shambala, Boston, 1990.
A. Gare, Beyond European Civilization, Eco-logical Press, Bungendore, 1993.
C. J. Glacken, Traces on the Rhodian Shore, University of California Press, Berkeley, 1967.
R. Goodin, ‘Selling environmental indulgences’, Kyklos 47(1994) 573-596.
N. R. Hanson, Patterns of discovery: an inquiry into conceptual foundations of science,
Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1958.
E. C. Hargrove, Foundations of Environmental Ethics, Prentice Hall, N.J., 1989.
D Hillel, Out of the Earth: Civilization and the Life of the Soil., Free Press, Macmillan, 1991.
M. Jacobs, The Green Economy, Pluto, London, 1991.
K. Marx, Grundrisse: Foundations of the critique of political economy, Harmondsworth,
England 1973.
F. Mathews, The Ecological Self, Routledge, London, 1991.
A. McLaughlin, Regarding Nature: Industrialism and Deep Ecology , SUNY Press, Albany
N. Y., 1993.
P. Marshall, Nature’s Web, in two editions, Simon and Schuster, 1992 and 1993.
A. Naess and D. Rothenberg, Ecology, community and Lifestyle, Cambridge University Press,
Cambridge, 1989.
J. Passmore, Man’s Responsibility for Nature, Duckworth, London, 1974.
D. Pearce and others, Blueprint for a Green Economy, Earthscan Publications, London, 1989.
D. Pepper, The Roots of Modem Environmentalism, Ed: Tom Colveson London; Dover N.H.
Croom Helm 1984.
31
V. Plumwood, Feminism and the Mastery of Nature, Routledge, London, 1993.
C. Ponting, A Green History of the World, Sinclair-Stevenson, London, 1991.
R. Routley, ‘Roles and limits of paradigms in environmental thought and action’, Discussion
papers in environmental philosophy #1, RSSS, Australian National University, 1982; also,
modified, in Environmental Philosophy (ed. R. Elliot and A. Gare), University of Queensland
Press, Brisbane, 1983; referred to as RP.
C. O. Sauer, Agricultural Origins and Dispersal, American Geographical Society, New York,
1952.
P. Singer, Practical Ethics, expanded edition, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1993.
P. Shepard, Nature and Madness, Sierra Club Books, San Francisco, 1982.
R. Sylvan and D. Bennett, The Greening of Ethics, White Horse Press, Cambridge, 1994;
referred to as GE.
R. Sylvan with D. Bennett, Of Utopias, Tao and Deep Ecology, Green Series #19, RSSS
Australian National University, 1990; referred to as UTD.
The Wildlands Project, World Earth, special issue, Canton NY, 1993.
Y.F. Tuan, ‘Discrepancies between environmental attitude and behaviour: examples from
Europe and China’, The Canadian Geographer 12(1968) 176-91.
S. Toulmin, The Return to Cosmology, University of California, Berkeley, 1982.
L. White Jr., ‘Historic roots of our ecologic crisis’, Science 155(1967) 1203-7.
J. Wisdom, Philosophy and Psychoanalysis, Blackwell, Oxford, 1953.
M. Zimmerman and others (eds.), Environmental Philosophy, Prentice Hall, N.J., 1993; referred
to as EP3.
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IS THERE A NEED FOR A NEW, AN ENVIRONMENTAL, ETHIC?
Richard Routley (Australia)
§ 1. It is increasingly said that civilization, Western civilization at least, stands in need of a new
ethic (and derivatively of a new economics) setting out people's relations to the natural environ
ment, in Leopold’s words ‘an ethic dealing with man’s relation to land and to the animals and
plants which grow upon it' (| 1], p. 238). It is not of course that old and prevaling 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, 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.1 It is to
this, to the values and evaluations of the prevailing ethics, that Leopold and others in fact take ex
ception. Leopold regards as subject to moral criticism, as wrong, behaviour that on prevailing
views is morally permissible. But it is not, as Leopold seems to think, that such behaviour is
beyond the scope of the prevailing ethics and that 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 as matters stand,
as he himself-explains, men do not feel morally ashamed if they interfere with a wilderness, if they
maltreat the land, extract from it whatever it will yield, and then move on; and such conduct is not
taken to interfere with and does not rouse the moral indignation of others. ‘A farmer who clears the
woods ofTa 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.’ (UJ), p.245)
Under what we shall call an environmental ethic such traditionally permissible conduct would be
accounted morally wrong, and the farmer subject to proper moral criticism.
Let us grant such evaluations for the purpose of the argument. What is not so clear is that a
new ethic is required even for such radical judgements. For one thing 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. For, notoriosly, ethics are
not clearly articulated or at all well worked out, so that the application of identity criteria for ethics
may remain obscure.2 Furthermore we tend to cluster a family of ethical systems which do not
differ on core or fundamental principles together as the one ethic; e.g. the Christain ethic, which is
an umbrella notion covering a cluster of differing and even competing systems. In fact then there
are two other possibilities, apart from a new environmental ethic, which might cater for the
evaluations, namely that of an extension of modification of the prevailing ethics or that of the
development of principles that are already encompassed or latent within the prevailing ethic. The
second possibility, that environmental evaluations can be incorporated within (and ecological
problems solved within) the framework of prevailing Western ethics, is open because there isn’t a
1 A view occasionally tempered by the idea that trees house spirits
2 To the consternation nodoubt of Quineans But the fact is that we can talk perfectly well about inchoate and fragmentary
systems the identity of which may be indeterminate
205
�single ethical system uniquely assumed in Western civilisation: on many issues, and especially on
controversial issues such as infanticide, women’s rights and drugs, there are competing sets of prin
ciples. 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.
Indeed Passmore (in [21) has mapped out three important traditions in Western ethical views
concerning man’s relation to nature; a dominant tradition, the despotic position, with man as
despot (or tyrant), and two lesser traditions, the stewardship position, with man as custodian, and
the co-operative position with man as perfcctor. Nor are these the only traditions; 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 Stoic - Augustine view - it exists only for his sake), whereas on an environmental
ethic man is not so free to do as 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. who is man steward for and responsible to? However both traditions are
inconsistent with an environmental ethic because they imply policies of complete interference,
whereas on an environmental ethic some worthwhile parts of the earth’s surface should be preserv
ed from substantial 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 com
fortable north-European small farm and village landscape. According to the co-operative position
man’s proper role is todevelop, cultivate and perfect nature — all nature eventually - by bringing
out its potentialities, the test of perfection being primarily usefulness for human purposes; 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. Although these 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, they
do not go far enough: 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 thoroughgoing environmental ethic would reject, a
principle of total use,implying that every natural area should be cultivated or otherwise used3 for
human ends, “humanized”.
As the important Western traditions exclude an environmental ethic, it would appear that
such an ethic, not primitive, mystical or romantic, would be new alright. The matter is not so
straightforward; for the dominant ethic has been substantially qualified by the rider that one is not
always entitled to do as one pleases where this physically interferes with others. Maybe some such
proviso was implicit all along (despite evidence to the contrary), and it was simply assumed that
doing what one pleased with natural items would not affect others (the non-interference assump
tion). Be this as it may, the modified dominant position 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 environment for no satisfactory
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 [3]) that blends with the modified position; and so on. The posi
tion may even serve to restrict the sort of family size one is entitled to have since in a finite situa
tion excessive population levels will interfere with future people. Nontheless neither the modified
dominant position nor its Western variants, obtained by combining it with the lesser traditions, is
adequate as an environmental ethic, as I shall try to show. A new ethic is wanted.
2. -A^ we noticed-(an) ethic is ambiguous, as between a specific ethical system, a specific ethic,
and a more generic notion, a super ethic, under which specific ethics cluster.4 An ethical system S
3 If ‘use’ is extended, somewhat illicitly, to include use for preservation, this total use principle is rendered inocuous at least
as regards its actual effects. Note that the total use principle is tied to the resource view of nature
4 A meta-ethic is, as usual, a theory about ethics, super ethics, their features and fundamental notions
206
�'^"es
- a( SeS’a,Pr0pos^r th«>ry whlch in.
is, near enough, a proposit1or ., ~"f'm (1.e. a structured set of propositions) or theory which in--.:ludes ( like individuals of a th• . a set of values and (like postulates of a theory) a set
° of general
or to‘other
he^er conduct.
to verselytypically
to its of
thers
obligatory,
or isonf
? applypermissible
n’ untableand wrong,
what
concern,n~
evaluativeOnjudgements
of what are rights, what is valued, and !>O forth. A general or lawlike proposition of a system is a
principle; and certainly if systems S, and S2 contain _different principles, then they are different
systems. It follows that any en\llnnmental ethic differs from the important traditional ethics outlined. Moreover if environmental ethic5 lifTer from Western ethical systems on some core principle
embedded in Western systems, then ,hese systems differ from the Western super ethic (assurring,
what seems to be so, that it can be uniquely characterised) - in which case if an environmental
ethic is needed t!ien a new ethic is wanted It suffices then to locate a core principle and to provide
environmental count,·r examples to 1t.
It 1s commonly assumed that there are, what amount to, core principles of Western ethical
systems. principles that will accordingly belong to the super ethic. The fairness principle inscribed
in the Golden Ruk I w ,des one example. Directly relevant here. as a good stab at a core principle.
is the com111unli, formulated liberal principle 0f the moqified flominan"-,~siti on..A recent for-""•..._ ,/c,.,.M,....,,, ~ lo/,'/
mulation~ runs a, follows ( 131, p. 58}:
'The liberal philosophy of the Western world holds that one should be able to do what he
wishes, providing ( I) that he does not harm others and (2) that he is not hkel 1 to harm himself
irreparably.'
Let us call this prmciple basic (/Funan) chauvinism - because under it humans, or people,
come fir~t and everything else a bad last - though sometimes the principle is hailed as a freedom
principle because it gives perm1ss10n to perform a wide range of actions (including actions which
mess up the environment and natural things) providing they do not harm others. In fact it tends to
cunningly shift the onus of proof to others. It is wortti remarking that harming others in the restriction is narrower than a rc,tnction tu the I usual) interests of others; it is not enough that 1t is in my
interests, because I detest you, that you stop breathing; you are free to breathe, for the time being
anywa~ because 1t does not harm me. There remains a problem however as to e~actly what counts
as harm or interference. Moreover the width of the pnnciple is so far obscure because 'other' ma~
be filled out in significantly diffen:nt 11, ays. it makes a difference to the e,itent, and pri, ilege, of the
chauvinism whether 'other' expands to ·other human' - which is too restrictive - or to 'other'peradequacy
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workable, and it is generally assumed that it applies at most to present and future others.
,(
.,
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It is taken for granted in designing counter
·~ .....-<;,_
semantical analysis of permissibility and obligation statements stretches out over ideal situations , ... ~#...
ideal
some
in
(which may be incomplete or even inconsistent), so that what is permissible holds
situation, what is obligatory in every id.:al situation, and what is wrong is excluded in every ideal
situation. But the mam point to grasp for the counter example\ that follow, is that ethical principles
if correct are universal and are assessed over the class of ideal situations.
-(i) The last man example. The last man (or person) surviving the collapse of the world system
lays about him, eliminating, as far as he can, every living thing, animal or plant (but painlessly if
you like, as a• the best abattoirs). What he doc~ 1s quite permissible according to ba 1c chauvinism,
but on environmental ground~ what he does is wrong. Moreover one does not have to be committed to esoteric values to regard Mr Last Man as behaving badly (the reason being perhaps that raof corresponding
in' advance
dical thinking and values have shifted in an environmental
usurne direction ’’
^""oplos
shifts in the formulation of fundamental evaluative principles}.
(ii) The last people example. The last man example can be broadened to the last people example.
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 rul!! out
«rcorre
p„
that what these people do harms or somehow physically interferes with later people.
the spossibility
Otherwise one could as well 1..ons1der science fiction cases where peoole arrive at a new planet and
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207
207
WIMI iWlliMMW-l-i
�destroy its ecosystems, whether with good intentions such as perfecting the planet for their ends
and making it more fruitful or, forgetting the lesser traditions, just for the hell 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 forests disappear in favour of quarries 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 extinctions. On an en
vironmental ethic the last people have behaved badly; they have simplified and largely destroyed
all the natural ecosystems, and with their demise the world will soon be an ugly and largely wreck
ed place. But this conduct may conform with the basic chauvinist principle, and as well with the
principles enjoined by the lesser traditions. Indeed the main point of elaborating this example is
because, as the last man example reveals, basic chauvinism may conflict with stewardship or co
operation principles. The conflict may be removed it seems by conjoining a further proviso to the
basic principle, to the effect (3) that he does not wilfully destroy natural resources. But as the last
people do not destroy resources wilfully, but perhaps “for the best of reasons”, the variant is still
environmentally inadequate.
(iii) The great entrepreneur example. The last man example can be adjusted so as to not fall foul
of clause (3). The last man is an industrialist; 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 may even
meet Pareto optimality requirements given prevailing notions of being “better off’.
Just as we can extend the last man example to a class of last people, so we can extend this ex
ample to the industrial society example: the society looks rather like ours.
(iv) The vanishing species example. Consider the blue whale, a mixed good on the economic pic
ture. The blue whale is on the verge of extinction because of his qualities as a private good, as a
source of valuable oil and meat. The catching and marketing of blue whales does not harm the
whalers; it does not harm or physically interfere with others in any good sense, though it may up
set them and they may be prepared to compensate the whalers if they desist: nor need whale hun
ting be wilful destruction. (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 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 will
not cease allocating whale^ to commercial uses, as a satisfactory environmental economics
would; instead the market model will grind inexorably 6 along the private demand curve until the
blue whale population is no longer viable—if that point has not already been passed.
In sum, the class of permissible actions that rebound on the environment is more narrowly
circumscribed on an environmental ethic than it is in the Western super ethic. But aren’t en
vironmentalists going too far in claiming that these people, those of the examples and respected in
dustrialists, fishermen and farmers are behaving, when engaging in environmentally degrading ac
tivities of the sort described, in a morally impermissible way ? No. what these people do is to a
greater or lesser extent evil, 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 slaughter of the last remain
ing blue whales for private profit. But how to reformulate basic chauvinism as a satisfactory
6 For the tragedy-of-the-commons type reasons well explained in 131
�2^°;™ pn"c,p e ls 3 morc d,flku11 matter. A tentative, but none too adequate beginning might be
made by extending (2) to include harm to or interference with others who would be so affected by
the action in question were they placed in the environment and (3) to exclude speciepide. It may be
preferable, m view of the way the freedom principle sets the onus of proof, simply to scrap it
altogether, and instead to specify classes of rights and permissible conduct, as in a bill of rights.
rei2tsArhadRaJ change-ri" a ^eory some,,mcs forces changes in the meta-theory; e.g. a logic which
jects the Reference Theory tn 4 thoroughgoing way requires a modification of the usual metatheory which also accepts the Reference Theory and indeed which is tailored to cater only for
logics which do conform. A somewhat similar phenomena seems to occur in the case of a
meta-ethic adequate for an environmental ethic. Quite apart from introducing several environmen
tally important notions, such as conservation, pollution, growth and preservation, for meta-ethical
analysis, an environmental ethic compels re-examination and modified analyses of such
characteristic actions as natural right, ground of right, and of the relations of obligation and per
missibility to rights; it may well require re-assessment of traditional analyses of such notions as
\alue and right, especially where these are based on chauvinist assumptions; and it forces the rejec
tion of many of the more prominent meta-ethical positions. These points are illustrated by a verv
brie! examination of accounts of natural right and then by a sketch of the species bias of some
major positions,7
Hart (in |5|) 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’. But this sufficient condition for a
human natural right depends on accepting the very human chauvinist principle an environmental
ethic rejects, 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 straight forward 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.
An environmental ethic does not commit one to the view that natural objects such as trees
have rights (though such a view is occasionally held, e.g. by pantheists. But pantheism is false since
artefacts are not alive). For moral prohibitions forbidding certain actions with respect to an object
do not award that object a correlative right. That it would be wrong to mutilate a given tree or
piece of property does not entail that the tree or piece of property has a correlative right not to be
mutilated (without seriously stretching the notion of a right). Environmental views can stick with
mainstream theses according to which rights are coupled with corresponding responsibilities and
so with bearing obligations, and with corresponding interests and concern; i.e., at least, whatever
has a right also has responsibilities and therefore obligations, and whatever has a right has in
terests. Thus although any person may have a right by no means every living thing can
(significantly) have rights, and arguably most sentient objects other than persons cannot have
rights. But persons can relate morally, through obligations, prohibitions and so forth, to practically
anything at all.
r
J
The species bias of certain ethical and economic positions which aim to make principles of
conduct or reasonable economic behaviour calculable is easily brought out. These positions
typica ly 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 an ordinal p ranking of the states in question (e.g. of afTairs, of
the economy); then some principle is supplied to determine a collective p ranking of these states in
terms of individual prankings, 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 even if the base class is extended to embrace
persons, or even some animals (at the cost, like that of including remotely future humans, of losing
P°’ntS arC deVdOped by thOSC protcstin« about human maltreatment of animals; see especially the essays
�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. For 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 (the evaluation of
most Australian farmers anyway). 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 blue
whales as a mixed good, were to succeed in outweighing private whaling demands; for if no one in
the base class happened to know that blue whales exist or cared a jot that they do then
‘‘rational” economic decision-making would do nothing to prevent their extinction. Whether the
blue whale survives should not have to depend on what humans know or what they see on televi
sion. Human interests and preferences are far too parochial to provide a satisfactory basis for
deciding on what is environmentally desirable.
These ethical and economic theories are not alone in their species chauvinism; much the
same applies to most going meta-ethical theories which, unlike intuitionistic theories, try to offer
some rationale for their basic principles. For instance, on social contract positions obligations are a
matter of mutual agreements between individuals of the 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
* v^gue 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
too bad for them: that is (rough) justice.
REFERENCES
1. A. Leopold, A Sand Country Almanac with other essays on Conservation. New York (1966).
2. J. Passmore, Ecological Problems and Western Traditions (unpublished).
3. P.W.Barkley and D.W.Seckier, Economic Growth and Environmental Decay. The Solution becomes the
Problem, New York (1972).
4. S. and R. Godlovitch and J. Harris (editors), Animals, Men and Morals. An enquiry into the maltreatment
of non-humans, London (1971).
5. H.L.A.Hart, ‘Are there any natural rights?’, reprinted in A.Quinton (editor), Political Philosophy, Oxford
(1967).
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IS THERE A NEED FOR A NEW, AN ENVIRONMENTAL, ETHIC?
Richard Routley (Australia)
§ 1. It is increasingly said that civilization, Western civilization at least, stands in need of a new
ethic (and derivatively of a new economics) setting out people's relations to the natural environ
ment, in Leopold's words ‘an ethic dealing with man’s relation to land and to the animals and
plants which grow upon it’ ([1], p. 238). It is not of course that old and prevaling 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, 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.1 It is to
this, to the values and evaluations of the prevailing ethics, that Leopold and others in fact take ex
ception. Leopold regards as subject to moral criticism, as wrong, behaviour that on prevailing
views is morally permissible. But it is not, as Leopold seems to think, that such behaviour is
beyond the scope of the prevailing ethics and that 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 as matters stand,
as he himself explains, men do not feel morally ashamed if they interfere with a wilderness, if they
maltreat the land, extract from it whatever it will yield, and then move on; and such conduct is not
taken to interfere with and does not rouse the moral indignation of others. ‘A farmer who clears the
woods off a 75% slope,turns his cows into the clearing, and dumps its rainfall,rocks, andsoil into
the community creek, is still (if otherwise decent) a respected member of society.’ ([1]), p.245)
Under what we shall call an environmental ethic such traditionally permissible conduct would be
accounted morally wrong, and the farmer subject to proper moral criticism.
Let us grant such evaluations for the purpose of the argument. What is not so clear is that a
new ethic is required even for such radical judgements. For one thing 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. For, notoriosly, ethics are
not clearly articulated or at all well worked out, so that the application of identity criteria for ethics
may remain obscure.2 Furthermore we tend to cluster a family of ethical systems which do not
differ on core or fundamental principles together as the one ethic; e.g. the Christain ethic, which is
an umbrella notion covering a cluster of differing and even competing systems. In fact then there
are two other possibilities, apart from a new environmental ethic, which might cater for the
evaluations, namely that of an extension of modification of the prevailing ethics or that of the
development of principles that are already encompassed or latent within the prevailing ethic. The
second possibility, that environmental evaluations can be incorporated within (and ecological
problems solved within) the framework of prevailing Western ethics, is open because there isn’t a
1 A view occasionally tempered by the idea that trees house spirits
2 To the consternation .nodoubt of Quineans. But the fact is that we can talk perfectly well about inchoate and fragmentary
systems the identity of which may be indeterminate
205
�is, near enough: ~ propositional system (i.e. a structured set of propositions) or theory which includes ( like md1v1duals of a theory) a set of values and (like postulates of a theory) a set of general
evaluative Ju~gements co~cermng conduct, typically of what is obligatory, permissible and wrong
of_ what ~re rights, what _is valued, and so forth. A ~eneral or lawlike proposition of a system is ~
prmc1ple, and certainly 1f syst~ms S, and S2 contam different principles, then they are different
systems. It foll?ws t~at any environmental ethic differs from the important traditional ethics outlined. Moreo~er 1f environmental ethics differ from Western ethical systems on some core principle
embedded m Western systems, then these systems differ from the Western super ethic (assuming
wh~t _seems to be so, that it can be uniquely characterised) - in which case if an environm~ntai
eth1_c 1s needed then a new ethic is wanted. It suffices then to locate a core principle and to provide
environmental counter examples to it.
It is com_monly assu_med that_ there are. what amount to, core principles of Western ethical
~ystems, principles that will accordingly belong to the super ethic. The fairness principle inscribed
~n the Golden Rule provides o~e example. Directly relevant here, as a good stab at a core principle,
ts the . commonly formulated hberal pnnc1ple of the modified dominance position .. A recent for: · " • "'• ,;, /'' /,'. /
~·- - ·· ..._
mulation 5 runs as follows ( [ 3 I, p. 58):
. 'The liberal philosophy of the Wes tern world holds that one should be able to do what he
wishes, prov1dmg ( 1) that he d0es not harm orhers and (2) that he is not likely to harm himself
irreparably.'
Let us call this principle basic (human) chauvinism - because under it humans, or people.
co_me_ first and everyt_hmg else a bad last - though sometimes the principle is hailed as a freedom
pnnc1ple becaus~ 1t gives perm1ss1on to perform a wide range of actions (including actio.ns which
mess_ up the ~nv1ronment and natural things) providing they do not harm others. In fact it tends to
c_unn_mgly shift the onus of pro?fto others. It is worth remarking that harming others in the restrict10n 1s narrower than a restnct1on to the (usual) interests of others; it is not enough that it is in my
mterests, because. I detest you, that you stop breathing; you are free to breathe, for the time being
anyway, because 1t does not harm me. There remains a problem however as to exactly what counts
as harm or mter_ference. Mor~over the width of the principle is so far obscure because 'other' may
be fill~d. out m s1gmficantly different ways: it makes a difference to the e~tent, and privilege, of the
cha~vm1s~ whe~her '.other' _ex~ands to 'other human' - which is too restrictive - or to 'other'person or to _other sent1~nt be1~g ; and 1t mak~s a difference to the adequacy of the principle, and inversely to its economic apphcab1hty, to which class of others it is intended to apply whether to
future as well as to present others, whether to remote future others or only to non-discountable
future others, a?d. whether to possible others. The latter would make the principle completely unworkable, and 1t 1s generally assumed that it applies at most to present and future others. ' //4-_ ItIt_ is taken for granted. in_ d_e_signing counter examples to basic chauvinist principles, that a ....,. /..~..., . (
sem_antical analysis of perm1ss1b1hty and obligation statements stretches out over ideal situations r.,.·-=-"'t.. :.;1 -c.:
, · ~/:_
(".~-htch may be mcon:iplete or even inconsistent), so that what is permissible holds in some ideal
ideal
every
in
s1tuat10n, what 1s obl_1gato_ry in every ideal situation, and what is wrong is excluded
~1tuat10n. But the_mam pomt to grasp for the counter examples that follow, is that ethical principles
· t·
1f correct are umversal and are assessed over the class of I·deal s1tua
ions.
(') Th z
collapse of the world system
the
1
_survi~ing
perso~)
(or
man
e as_t ma~ e~a~ple. The last
lays ~bout him, ehmmatmg, ~s far as he can, e~ery !tvmg th_mg, animal or plant (but painlessly if
iou hke, a~ at the best abattoirs). What he does 1s qmte permissible according to basic chauvinism
ut on envir?nmental grounds what he does is wrong. Moreover one does not have to be commit~
~~d \o e~ot~nc values to regard M'.. Las_t Man as behaving badly (the reason being perhaps that ra~cfa th mkmg a nd val~es have shifted m an environmental direction in advance of corresponding
s .. 1 ts m the formulation of fundamental evaluative principles).
(u) The last people example. The last man example can be broadened to the last people example.
We can assume that they know they are the last people, e.g. because they are aware that radiation
effects h_a~~ blocked any chance of reproduction. One considers the last people in order to rule out
~e pos~1b1hty that what these pe~ple d~ harms or somehow physically interferes with later people.
therwise one could as well consider science fiction cases where people arrive at a new planet and
single ethical system uniquely assumed in Western civilization: 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.
Indeed Passmore (in [2]) has mapped out three important traditions in Western ethical views
concerning man's relation to nature; a dominant tradition, the despotic position, with man as
despot (or tyrant), and two lesser traditions, the stewardship position, with man as custodian, and
the co-operative position with man as perfector. Nor are these the only traditions; 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 Stoic - Augustine view - it exists only for his sake), whereas on an environmental
ethic man is not so free to do as 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. who is man steward for and responsible to? However both traditions are
inconsistent with an 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 substantial 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 north-Europea n small farm and village landscape. According to the co-operative position
man's proper role is todevelop, cultivate and perfect nature - all nature eventually - by bringing
out its potentialities, the test of perfection being primarily usefulness for human purposes; 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. Although these 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, they
do not go far enough: 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 thoroughgoing environmental ethic would reject, a
3
principle of total use,implying that every natural area should be cultivated or otherwise used for
human ends, "humanized".
As the important Western traditions exclude an environmental ethic, it would appear that
such an ethic, not primitive, mystical or romantic, would be new alright. The matter is not so
straightforwa rd; for the dominant ethic has been substantially qualified by the rider that one is riot
always entitled to do as one pleases where this physically interferes with others. Maybe some such
proviso was implicit all along (despite evidence to the contrary), and it was simply assumed that
doing what one pleased with natural items would not affect others (the non-interference assumption). Be this as it may, the modified dominant position appears, at least for m~ny 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 environment for no satisfactory
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 [3]) that blends with the modified position; and so on. The 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. Nontheless neither the modified
dominant position nor its Western variants, obtained by combining it with the lesser traditions, is
adequate as an environmental ethic, as I shall try to show. A new ethic is wanted.
a ~pecific ethic,
/§ 2. -As. we noticed----(a~ ethic is ambi~uous, as bet_ween a specifi~ ethical system,
and a more generic notion, a super ethic, under which specific ethics cluster.4 An ethical system S
./
3 If 'use' is extended, somewhat illicitly, to include use for preservation, this total use principle is rendered inocuous at least
as regards its actual effects. Note that the total use p1 inciple is tied to the resource view of nature
4-A meta-elhic is, as usual, a theory about ethics, super ethics, their features and fundamental notions
5 A related principle is that (modified) free c.1tcrprise can operate
I
il
11 ,·thi'n
s· -1 1- •
1m1 ar 1m11s
207
�destroy its ecosystems, whether with good intentions such as perfecting the planet for their ends
and making it more fruitful or, forgetting the lesser traditions, just for the hell of it.
Let us assume that the last people are very numerous. They humanely exterminate every wild
ar,imal and they eliminate the fish of the seas, they put all arable land under intensive cultivation,
and all ~emaining forests disappear in favour of quarries 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 extinctions. On an environmental ethic the last people have behaved badly; 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 basic chauvinist principle, and as well with the
principles enjoined ·by the lesser traditions. Indeed the main point of elaborating this example is
because, as the last man example reveals, basic chauvinism may conflict with stewardship or cooperation principles. The conflict may be removed it seems by conjoining a further proviso to the
basic principle, to the effect (3) that he does not wilfully destroy natural resources. But as the last
people do not destroy resources wilfully, but perhaps "for the best of reasons", the variant is still
environmentally inadequate.
(iii) The great entrepreneur example. The last man example can be adjusted so as to not fall foul
of clause (3). The last man is an industrialist; 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 outpJt to fulfil some plan, and he will be increasing his own and general welfare since h~
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 may even
meet Pareto optimality requirements given prevailing notions of being "better off'.
Just as we can extend the last man example to a class of last people, so we can extend this example to the industrial society example: the society looks rather like ours.
(iv) The vanishing species example. Consider the blue whale, a mixed good on the economic picture. The blue whale is on the verge of extinction because of his qualities as a private good, as a
source of valuable oil and meat. The catching and marketing of blue whales does not harm the
whalers; it does not harm or physically interfere with others in any good sense, though it may upset them and they may be prepared to compensate the whalers if they desist; nor need whale hunting be wilful destruction. (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 activity or the activities of animals he has introduced, e.g. many
plains-dwelling Australian marsupials and the Arabian oryx.) The l?ehaviour of the whalers in
eliminating this magnificent species of whale is accqrdingly quite permissible-at least according to
basic chauvinism. But on an environmental ethic it is not. However the free-market mechanism will
not cease allocating whal~[~ to commercial uses, as a satisfactory environmental econo_mics
would; instead the market model will grind inexorably 6 along the private demand curve until the
blue whale population is no longer viable-if that point has not already been passed.
In sum, the class of permissible actions that rebound on the environment _is more narrowly
circumscribed on an environmental ethic than it is in the Western super ethic. But aren't environmentalists going too far in claiming that these people, those of the examples and respe~ted industrialists fishermen and farmers are behaving, when engaging in environmentally degrading activities of ;he sort described, in a morally impermissible way~ No, what these people do _is to a
greater or lesser extent evil, and hence in serious cases morally impermissible. For exampl_e, mso~ar
as the killing or forced displacement of primitive peoples who stand in the way of an mdustnal
development is morally indefensible and impermissible, so also is _the slau~hter of the last_ remaining blue whales for private profit. But how to reformulate basic chauvm1sm as a satisfactory
6 For the tragedy-of-the-commons type reasons well explained in [31
freedom principle is a more difficult matter. A tentative, but none too adequate beginning might be
made by extending (2) to include harm to or interference with others who would be so affected by
the action in question were they placed in the environment and (3) to exclude specieside. It may be
preferable , in view of the way the freedom principle sets the onus of proof. simply to scrap it
altogether, and instead to specify classes of rights and permissible conduct. as in a bill of rights.
§ 3. A radical change in a {eory sometimes forces changes in the meta-theory; e.g. a logic which
rejects the Reference Theory in a thoroughgoing way requires a modification of the usual metatheory which also accepts the Reference Theory and indeed which is tailored to cater only for
logics which do conform. A somewhat similar phenomena seems to occur in the case of a
meta-ethic adequate for an environmental ethic. Quite apart from introducing several environmentally important notions, such as conservation, pollu1io11, growth and presen•atio11,for meta-ethical
analysis, an environmental ethic compels re-examination and modified analyses of such
characteristic actions as na1ural right, ground of right, and of the relations of obligation and permissibility to rights: it may well require re-assessment of traditional analyses of such notions as
i-alue and right, especially where these are based on chauvinist assumptions; and it forces the rejection o [ many of the more prominent meta-ethical positions. These points are illustrated by a very
brief examination of accounts of natural right and then by a sketch of the species bias of some
major positions. 7
Hart (in I 5]) 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'. But this sufficient condition for a
human natural right depends on accepting the very human chauvinist principle an em iron mental
ethic rt::jects, since if a person has a natural right he has a right; so too the deflni1io11 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 straight forward matter now that human rights with
rcspc:ct to animals and the natural environment are, like those with respect to slaves not all that
lon g ago, undergoing major re-evaluation.
An environmental ethic does not commit one to the view that natural objects such as trees
have rights (though such a view is occa~ionally held, e.g. by pantheists. But pantheism is false since
artefacts are not alive). For moral prohibitions forbidding certain actions with respect to an object
do not award that object a correlative right. That it would be wrong to mutilate a given tree or
piece of property does not entail that the tree or piece of property has a correlative right n_ot to _be
mutilated (without seriously stretching the notion of a right). Environmental views can stick with
mainstream theses according to which rights are coupled with corresponding responsibilities and
so with bearing obligations, and with corresponding interests and concern; i.e., at least, whatever
has a right also has responsibilities and therefore obligations, and whatever has a right has interests . Thus although any person may have a right by no means every living thing can
(significantly) have rights. and arguably most sentient objects other than persons cannot have
rights. But persons can relate morally, through obligations, prohibitions and so forth. to practically
anything at all.
The species bias of certain ethical and economic positions which aim to make principles of
conduct or reasonable economic behaviour calculable is easily brought out. These positions
typically employ a single criterion p, such as preference or happiness, as a summ.um_ bonu_m;
characteristically each individual of some base class, almost always humans, but perhaps mcludmg
future humans, is supposed to have an ordinal p ranking of the states in question (e.g. of affairs, 6f
the economy); then some principle is supplied to determine a collective p ranking of these states in
terms of individual prankings, and what is best or ought to be done is determined either_ ~ire~tl~, as
in act-utilitarianism under the Greatest Happiness principle, or indirectly, asin rule-ut1lttanantsm,
in terms of some optimization principle applied to the collective ranking. The species bias is
transparent from the selection of the base class. And even if the base class is extended to embr~ce
persons. or even some animals (at the cost. like that of including remotely future humans, of losing
1 Some of thes< points arc developed by those protesting about human maltreatment of animals; see especially the essays
collec!ed in I 4 I
9
~
iii
208
WJ 6
14
209
�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. For 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 (the evaluation of
most Australian farmers anyway). 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 blue
whales as a mixed good, were to succeed in outweighing private whaling demands; for if no one in
the base class happened to know that blue whales exist or cared a jot that they do then
“rational” economic decision-making would do nothing to prevent their extinction. Whether the
blue whale survives should not have to depend on what humans know or what they see on televi
sion. Human interests and preferences are far too parochial to provide a satisfactory basis for
deciding on what is environmentally desirable.
These ethical and economic theories are not alone in their species chauvinism; much the
same applies to most going meta-ethical theories which, unlike intuitionistic theories, try to offer
some rationale for their basic principles. For instance, on social contract positions obligations are a
matter of mutual agreements between individuals of the 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
v v^gue 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
too bad for them: that is (rough) justice.
REFERENCES
1. A. Leopold, A Sand Country Almanac with other essays on Conservation. New York (1966).
2. J. Passmore, Ecological Problems and Western Traditions (unpublished).
3. P.W.Barkley and D.W.Seckier, Economic Growth and Environmental Decay. The Solution becomes the
Problem, New York (1972).
4. S. and R.Godlovitch and J. Harris (editors), A nimals, Men and Morals. An enquiry into the maltreatment
of non-humans, London (1971).
5. H.L.A.Hart, ‘Are there any natural rights?’, reprinted in A.Quinton (editor), Political Philosophy, Oxford
(1967).
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it is none loo 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. For, notoriosly, ethics are
not clearly articulated or al all well worked out. so that the application of identity criteria foi ethics
may remain obscure. Furthermore we tend to cluster a family of ethical sy stems which do not
differ on core or fundamental principles together as the one ethic; e.g. the Christen ethic, which is
an umbrella notion covering a cluster of differing and even competing systems. In fact then there
are two,.other possibilities, apart from a new environmental ethic, which might cater for the
evaluations, namely that of an extension of modification of the prevailing ethicszor that of the
development of principles that are already encompassed or latent within the prevailing ethic. The
second possibility, that environmental evaluations can be incorporated within (and ecological
problems solved within) the /?<rf
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single ethical system uniquely assumed in Western civilization: on many issues, and especially on
ckd«°T^a *ssues such as infanticide, women’s rights and drugs, there are competing sets of prin
S’ T.
? nCW e^h‘C and Prevai,ln8 ethics tends to suggest a sort of monolithic structure, a
uniformity that prevathng ethics, and even a single ethic, need not have.
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Indeed Passmore (in |2|) has mapped out three important traditions in Western ethical views
concerning man’s relation to nature; a dominant tradition, the despotic position, with man as
despot (or tyrant), and two lesser traditions, the stewardship position, with man as custodian, and
the co-operative position with man as perfector. Nor are these the only traditions; primitivism is
another, and both romanticism and mysticism have influenced Western views.-31
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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 Stoic^— Augustine view - it exists only for his sake), whereas on an environmental
ethic man is not so free to do as 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 removeej, eg. vv/zo is man steward for and responsible to? However both traditions are
inconsistent with a ^environmental ethic because they imply policies of complete interference,
whereas on an environmental ethic some worthwhile parts of the earth’s surface should be presen
ed from substantial 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 com
fortable north-European small farm and village landscape. According to the co-operative position
man’s proper role is todevelop, cultivate and perfect galiye - all nature eventually - by bringing
out its potentialities, the test of perfection being
^usefulness for.human purposes: 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./ '7Zu^ /fate-
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principle of total use,imping that every r-turJl X
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<»e pr , pie is tied to the resource view of nature ,
�such an ethic, not primitive, mystical or’romantic, would be new aljigjiu The matter is r
straightforward: for the dominant.ethic has been substantial!v uuaiitle^y the n&er that one is not
always entitled to do as one pleases where this physically int^Tes \0tn peers'.
7
> proviso was implicit all along (despite evidence to the contrary), and it was simply assumed that
doing what one pleased with natural items would not affect others (the Goiyuuterference assump
tion). Be this as it may, the modified dominant position 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 environment for no satisfactory
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 [31) that blends with the modified position;
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. may even serve to restrict the sort of family size one is entitled to have since in a finite situa
tion excessive population levels will interfere with future people. Nontheless neither the modified
dominant position nor its Western variants, obtained by combining it with the lesser traditions, is
adequate as an environmental ethic, as I ^vall
A new ethic is wanted,
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is, near‘enough, a propositional system (i.e. a structured set of propositions) or theory which in
dudes (like individuals of a theory > a set of values and (like postulates of a theory) a set of general
evaluative judgements concerning conduct, typically of what is obligators permissible and wrong.'x* !
of what are rights, what is valued, and so forth. A general or lawlike proposition of a system is a \
principle; and certamlv if systems S, and S2contain different principles, then they are different
systems. It follows that anv en onmental ethic differs from the important traditional ethics outlin
ed. Moreover if environmental ethics differ from Western ethical systems on some core principlaJL
embedded in Western systems, then these systems differ from the Western super ethic (assuming. I
what seems to be so. that it can be uniquely characterised) - in which case if an environmental
ethic /s needed then a new- ethic is wanted. It suffices then to locate a core principle and to provide
environ mental counter examples to it z
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are' w^at amount to, core principles of Western ethicaSR
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is the commonly formulated liberal principle
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(which may be incomplete or even inconsistent), so that what is permissible holds in some idefl^fe
situation, what is obligatory in every ideal situation, and what is wrong is excluded in every ideal ' ■
situation. But the main point to grasp for the counter examples that follow, is that ethical principles
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(i) ’ The last man example. The last man (or person) surviving the collapse of the world system
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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
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(ii) The last people example. The last man example can be
. to the last people example.
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
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�destroy its ecosystems, whether with good intentions such as perfecting the planet for their ends
and making it more fruitful or, forgetting the lesser traditions, just for the
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 forests disappear in favour ofpatfuM 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 extinctions. On an en
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people do not destroy resources wilfully, but perhaps “for the best of reasons’", the variant is still
environmentally inadequate.
(iii) The great entrepreneur example. The last man example can be adjusted so as to not fall foul
of clause (3). The last man is an industrialist; 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 may even
meet Pareto optimality requirements given prevailing notions of being “better ofT’.
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on the verge of extinction because of his qualities as a private good, as a
source of valuable oil and meat. The catching and marketing of blue whales does not harm the
whalers; it does not harm or physically interfere with others in any good sense, though it may up
set them and they may be prepared to compensate the whalers if they desist; nor need whale hun
ting be wilful destruction. (Slightly different examples which eliminate the hunting aspect of the
blue w'hale example are provided by cases where a speues is eliminated or threatened through
destruction of its habitat by man’s 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 will
not cease allocating whale$ to commercial uses, as a satisfactory environmental economics I
would; instead the market r
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jf vironmentalists going too far in claiming that these people, those of the examples and respected in
dustrialists, fishermen and farmers arc behaving, when engaging in environmentally degrading ac
tivities of the sort described, in a morally impermissible way? No, what these people do is to a
5 greater or lesser extent eviitand hence in serious vases morally impermissible. For example, insofar
as the killing or forced displacement of primiioe peoples who stand in the way of an industrial
development is morally indefensible and-^r* permissible, so also is the slaughter ol the last remain
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�does not commit one to the view
that natural objects such as trees have rights
is occasionally held, e.g. by pantheists.
since artefacts are not alive).
(though such a view
But pantheism is false
For moral prohibitions forbidding
certain actions with respect to an object do^riot award that object
a correlative right.
That it would be wrong to mutilate a given
tree or piece of property does not entail that the tree or piece of
property has a correlative right not to be mutilated (without
seriously stretching the notion of a right).
Environmental views
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IS THERE A NEED FOR A NEW, AN ENVIRONMENTAL, ETHIC?
Richard Routley (Australia)
§ 1. It is increasingly said that civilization, Western civilization at least, stands in need of a new
ethic (and derivatively of a new economics) setting out people's relations to the natural environ
ment, in Leopold’s words ‘an ethic dealing with man’s relation to land and to the animals and
plants which grow upon it' (| 1], p. 238). It is not of course that old and prevaling 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, 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.1 It is to
this, to the values and evaluations of the prevailing ethics, that Leopold and others in fact take ex
ception. Leopold regards as subject to moral criticism, as wrong, behaviour that on prevailing
views is morally permissible. But it is not, as Leopold seems to think, that such behaviour is
beyond the scope of the prevailing ethics and that 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 as matters stand,
as he himself-explains, men do not feel morally ashamed if they interfere with a wilderness, if they
maltreat the land, extract from it whatever it will yield, and then move on; and such conduct is not
taken to interfere with and does not rouse the moral indignation of others. ‘A farmer who clears the
woods ofTa 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.’ (UJ), p.245)
Under what we shall call an environmental ethic such traditionally permissible conduct would be
accounted morally wrong, and the farmer subject to proper moral criticism.
Let us grant such evaluations for the purpose of the argument. What is not so clear is that a
new ethic is required even for such radical judgements. For one thing 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. For, notoriosly, ethics are
not clearly articulated or at all well worked out, so that the application of identity criteria for ethics
may remain obscure.2 Furthermore we tend to cluster a family of ethical systems which do not
differ on core or fundamental principles together as the one ethic; e.g. the Christain ethic, which is
an umbrella notion covering a cluster of differing and even competing systems. In fact then there
are two other possibilities, apart from a new environmental ethic, which might cater for the
evaluations, namely that of an extension of modification of the prevailing ethics or that of the
development of principles that are already encompassed or latent within the prevailing ethic. The
second possibility, that environmental evaluations can be incorporated within (and ecological
problems solved within) the framework of prevailing Western ethics, is open because there isn’t a
1 A view occasionally tempered by the idea that trees house spirits
2 To the consternation nodoubt of Quineans But the fact is that we can talk perfectly well about inchoate and fragmentary
systems the identity of which may be indeterminate
205
single ethical system uniquely assumed in Western civilisation: on many issues, and especially on
controversial issues such as infanticide, women’s rights and drugs, there are competing sets of prin
ciples. 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.
Indeed Passmore (in [21) has mapped out three important traditions in Western ethical views
concerning man’s relation to nature; a dominant tradition, the despotic position, with man as
despot (or tyrant), and two lesser traditions, the stewardship position, with man as custodian, and
the co-operative position with man as perfcctor. Nor are these the only traditions; 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 Stoic - Augustine view - it exists only for his sake), whereas on an environmental
ethic man is not so free to do as 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. who is man steward for and responsible to? However both traditions are
inconsistent with an environmental ethic because they imply policies of complete interference,
whereas on an environmental ethic some worthwhile parts of the earth’s surface should be preserv
ed from substantial 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 com
fortable north-European small farm and village landscape. According to the co-operative position
man’s proper role is todevelop, cultivate and perfect nature — all nature eventually - by bringing
out its potentialities, the test of perfection being primarily usefulness for human purposes; 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. Although these 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, they
do not go far enough: 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 thoroughgoing environmental ethic would reject, a
principle of total use,implying that every natural area should be cultivated or otherwise used3 for
human ends, “humanized”.
As the important Western traditions exclude an environmental ethic, it would appear that
such an ethic, not primitive, mystical or romantic, would be new alright. The matter is not so
straightforward; for the dominant ethic has been substantially qualified by the rider that one is not
always entitled to do as one pleases where this physically interferes with others. Maybe some such
proviso was implicit all along (despite evidence to the contrary), and it was simply assumed that
doing what one pleased with natural items would not affect others (the non-interference assump
tion). Be this as it may, the modified dominant position 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 environment for no satisfactory
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 [3]) that blends with the modified position; and so on. The posi
tion may even serve to restrict the sort of family size one is entitled to have since in a finite situa
tion excessive population levels will interfere with future people. Nontheless neither the modified
dominant position nor its Western variants, obtained by combining it with the lesser traditions, is
adequate as an environmental ethic, as I shall try to show. A new ethic is wanted.
2. -A^ we noticed-(an) ethic is ambiguous, as between a specific ethical system, a specific ethic,
and a more generic notion, a super ethic, under which specific ethics cluster.4 An ethical system S
3 If ‘use’ is extended, somewhat illicitly, to include use for preservation, this total use principle is rendered inocuous at least
as regards its actual effects. Note that the total use principle is tied to the resource view of nature
4 A meta-ethic is, as usual, a theory about ethics, super ethics, their features and fundamental notions
206
'^"es
- a( SeS’a,Pr0pos^r th«>ry whlch in.
is, near enough, a proposit1or ., ~"f'm (1.e. a structured set of propositions) or theory which in--.:ludes ( like individuals of a th• . a set of values and (like postulates of a theory) a set
° of general
or to‘other
he^er conduct.
to verselytypically
to its of
thers
obligatory,
or isonf
? applypermissible
n’ untableand wrong,
what
concern,n~
evaluativeOnjudgements
of what are rights, what is valued, and !>O forth. A general or lawlike proposition of a system is a
principle; and certainly if systems S, and S2 contain _different principles, then they are different
systems. It follows that any en\llnnmental ethic differs from the important traditional ethics outlined. Moreover if environmental ethic5 lifTer from Western ethical systems on some core principle
embedded in Western systems, then ,hese systems differ from the Western super ethic (assurring,
what seems to be so, that it can be uniquely characterised) - in which case if an environmental
ethic is needed t!ien a new ethic is wanted It suffices then to locate a core principle and to provide
environmental count,·r examples to 1t.
It 1s commonly assumed that there are, what amount to, core principles of Western ethical
systems. principles that will accordingly belong to the super ethic. The fairness principle inscribed
in the Golden Ruk I w ,des one example. Directly relevant here. as a good stab at a core principle.
is the com111unli, formulated liberal principle 0f the moqified flominan"-,~siti on..A recent for-""•..._ ,/c,.,.M,....,,, ~ lo/,'/
mulation~ runs a, follows ( 131, p. 58}:
'The liberal philosophy of the Western world holds that one should be able to do what he
wishes, providing ( I) that he does not harm others and (2) that he is not hkel 1 to harm himself
irreparably.'
Let us call this prmciple basic (/Funan) chauvinism - because under it humans, or people,
come fir~t and everything else a bad last - though sometimes the principle is hailed as a freedom
principle because it gives perm1ss10n to perform a wide range of actions (including actions which
mess up the environment and natural things) providing they do not harm others. In fact it tends to
cunningly shift the onus of proof to others. It is wortti remarking that harming others in the restriction is narrower than a rc,tnction tu the I usual) interests of others; it is not enough that 1t is in my
interests, because I detest you, that you stop breathing; you are free to breathe, for the time being
anywa~ because 1t does not harm me. There remains a problem however as to e~actly what counts
as harm or interference. Moreover the width of the pnnciple is so far obscure because 'other' ma~
be filled out in significantly diffen:nt 11, ays. it makes a difference to the e,itent, and pri, ilege, of the
chauvinism whether 'other' expands to ·other human' - which is too restrictive - or to 'other'peradequacy
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,(
.,
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It is taken for granted in designing counter
·~ .....-<;,_
semantical analysis of permissibility and obligation statements stretches out over ideal situations , ... ~#...
ideal
some
in
(which may be incomplete or even inconsistent), so that what is permissible holds
situation, what is obligatory in every id.:al situation, and what is wrong is excluded in every ideal
situation. But the mam point to grasp for the counter example\ that follow, is that ethical principles
if correct are universal and are assessed over the class of ideal situations.
-(i) The last man example. The last man (or person) surviving the collapse of the world system
lays about him, eliminating, as far as he can, every living thing, animal or plant (but painlessly if
you like, as a• the best abattoirs). What he doc~ 1s quite permissible according to ba 1c chauvinism,
but on environmental ground~ what he does is wrong. Moreover one does not have to be committed to esoteric values to regard Mr Last Man as behaving badly (the reason being perhaps that raof corresponding
in' advance
dical thinking and values have shifted in an environmental
usurne direction ’’
^""oplos
shifts in the formulation of fundamental evaluative principles}.
(ii) The last people example. The last man example can be broadened to the last people example.
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 rul!! out
«rcorre
p„
that what these people do harms or somehow physically interferes with later people.
the spossibility
Otherwise one could as well 1..ons1der science fiction cases where peoole arrive at a new planet and
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207
207
WIMI iWlliMMW-l-i
destroy its ecosystems, whether with good intentions such as perfecting the planet for their ends
and making it more fruitful or, forgetting the lesser traditions, just for the hell 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 forests disappear in favour of quarries 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 extinctions. On an en
vironmental ethic the last people have behaved badly; they have simplified and largely destroyed
all the natural ecosystems, and with their demise the world will soon be an ugly and largely wreck
ed place. But this conduct may conform with the basic chauvinist principle, and as well with the
principles enjoined by the lesser traditions. Indeed the main point of elaborating this example is
because, as the last man example reveals, basic chauvinism may conflict with stewardship or co
operation principles. The conflict may be removed it seems by conjoining a further proviso to the
basic principle, to the effect (3) that he does not wilfully destroy natural resources. But as the last
people do not destroy resources wilfully, but perhaps “for the best of reasons”, the variant is still
environmentally inadequate.
(iii) The great entrepreneur example. The last man example can be adjusted so as to not fall foul
of clause (3). The last man is an industrialist; 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 may even
meet Pareto optimality requirements given prevailing notions of being “better off’.
Just as we can extend the last man example to a class of last people, so we can extend this ex
ample to the industrial society example: the society looks rather like ours.
(iv) The vanishing species example. Consider the blue whale, a mixed good on the economic pic
ture. The blue whale is on the verge of extinction because of his qualities as a private good, as a
source of valuable oil and meat. The catching and marketing of blue whales does not harm the
whalers; it does not harm or physically interfere with others in any good sense, though it may up
set them and they may be prepared to compensate the whalers if they desist: nor need whale hun
ting be wilful destruction. (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 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 will
not cease allocating whale^ to commercial uses, as a satisfactory environmental economics
would; instead the market model will grind inexorably 6 along the private demand curve until the
blue whale population is no longer viable—if that point has not already been passed.
In sum, the class of permissible actions that rebound on the environment is more narrowly
circumscribed on an environmental ethic than it is in the Western super ethic. But aren’t en
vironmentalists going too far in claiming that these people, those of the examples and respected in
dustrialists, fishermen and farmers are behaving, when engaging in environmentally degrading ac
tivities of the sort described, in a morally impermissible way ? No. what these people do is to a
greater or lesser extent evil, 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 slaughter of the last remain
ing blue whales for private profit. But how to reformulate basic chauvinism as a satisfactory
6 For the tragedy-of-the-commons type reasons well explained in 131
2^°;™ pn"c,p e ls 3 morc d,flku11 matter. A tentative, but none too adequate beginning might be
made by extending (2) to include harm to or interference with others who would be so affected by
the action in question were they placed in the environment and (3) to exclude speciepide. It may be
preferable, m view of the way the freedom principle sets the onus of proof, simply to scrap it
altogether, and instead to specify classes of rights and permissible conduct, as in a bill of rights.
rei2tsArhadRaJ change-ri" a ^eory some,,mcs forces changes in the meta-theory; e.g. a logic which
jects the Reference Theory tn 4 thoroughgoing way requires a modification of the usual metatheory which also accepts the Reference Theory and indeed which is tailored to cater only for
logics which do conform. A somewhat similar phenomena seems to occur in the case of a
meta-ethic adequate for an environmental ethic. Quite apart from introducing several environmen
tally important notions, such as conservation, pollution, growth and preservation, for meta-ethical
analysis, an environmental ethic compels re-examination and modified analyses of such
characteristic actions as natural right, ground of right, and of the relations of obligation and per
missibility to rights; it may well require re-assessment of traditional analyses of such notions as
\alue and right, especially where these are based on chauvinist assumptions; and it forces the rejec
tion of many of the more prominent meta-ethical positions. These points are illustrated by a verv
brie! examination of accounts of natural right and then by a sketch of the species bias of some
major positions,7
Hart (in |5|) 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’. But this sufficient condition for a
human natural right depends on accepting the very human chauvinist principle an environmental
ethic rejects, 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 straight forward 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.
An environmental ethic does not commit one to the view that natural objects such as trees
have rights (though such a view is occasionally held, e.g. by pantheists. But pantheism is false since
artefacts are not alive). For moral prohibitions forbidding certain actions with respect to an object
do not award that object a correlative right. That it would be wrong to mutilate a given tree or
piece of property does not entail that the tree or piece of property has a correlative right not to be
mutilated (without seriously stretching the notion of a right). Environmental views can stick with
mainstream theses according to which rights are coupled with corresponding responsibilities and
so with bearing obligations, and with corresponding interests and concern; i.e., at least, whatever
has a right also has responsibilities and therefore obligations, and whatever has a right has in
terests. Thus although any person may have a right by no means every living thing can
(significantly) have rights, and arguably most sentient objects other than persons cannot have
rights. But persons can relate morally, through obligations, prohibitions and so forth, to practically
anything at all.
r
J
The species bias of certain ethical and economic positions which aim to make principles of
conduct or reasonable economic behaviour calculable is easily brought out. These positions
typica ly 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 an ordinal p ranking of the states in question (e.g. of afTairs, of
the economy); then some principle is supplied to determine a collective p ranking of these states in
terms of individual prankings, 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 even if the base class is extended to embrace
persons, or even some animals (at the cost, like that of including remotely future humans, of losing
P°’ntS arC deVdOped by thOSC protcstin« about human maltreatment of animals; see especially the essays
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. For 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 (the evaluation of
most Australian farmers anyway). 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 blue
whales as a mixed good, were to succeed in outweighing private whaling demands; for if no one in
the base class happened to know that blue whales exist or cared a jot that they do then
‘‘rational” economic decision-making would do nothing to prevent their extinction. Whether the
blue whale survives should not have to depend on what humans know or what they see on televi
sion. Human interests and preferences are far too parochial to provide a satisfactory basis for
deciding on what is environmentally desirable.
These ethical and economic theories are not alone in their species chauvinism; much the
same applies to most going meta-ethical theories which, unlike intuitionistic theories, try to offer
some rationale for their basic principles. For instance, on social contract positions obligations are a
matter of mutual agreements between individuals of the 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
* v^gue 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
too bad for them: that is (rough) justice.
REFERENCES
1. A. Leopold, A Sand Country Almanac with other essays on Conservation. New York (1966).
2. J. Passmore, Ecological Problems and Western Traditions (unpublished).
3. P.W.Barkley and D.W.Seckier, Economic Growth and Environmental Decay. The Solution becomes the
Problem, New York (1972).
4. S. and R. Godlovitch and J. Harris (editors), Animals, Men and Morals. An enquiry into the maltreatment
of non-humans, London (1971).
5. H.L.A.Hart, ‘Are there any natural rights?’, reprinted in A.Quinton (editor), Political Philosophy, Oxford
(1967).
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IS THERE A NEED FOR A NEW, AN ENVIRONMENTAL, ETHIC?
Richard Routley (Australia)
§ 1. It is increasingly said that civilization, Western civilization at least, stands in need of a new
ethic (and derivatively of a new economics) setting out people's relations to the natural environ
ment, in Leopold's words ‘an ethic dealing with man’s relation to land and to the animals and
plants which grow upon it’ ([1], p. 238). It is not of course that old and prevaling 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, 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.1 It is to
this, to the values and evaluations of the prevailing ethics, that Leopold and others in fact take ex
ception. Leopold regards as subject to moral criticism, as wrong, behaviour that on prevailing
views is morally permissible. But it is not, as Leopold seems to think, that such behaviour is
beyond the scope of the prevailing ethics and that 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 as matters stand,
as he himself explains, men do not feel morally ashamed if they interfere with a wilderness, if they
maltreat the land, extract from it whatever it will yield, and then move on; and such conduct is not
taken to interfere with and does not rouse the moral indignation of others. ‘A farmer who clears the
woods off a 75% slope,turns his cows into the clearing, and dumps its rainfall,rocks, andsoil into
the community creek, is still (if otherwise decent) a respected member of society.’ ([1]), p.245)
Under what we shall call an environmental ethic such traditionally permissible conduct would be
accounted morally wrong, and the farmer subject to proper moral criticism.
Let us grant such evaluations for the purpose of the argument. What is not so clear is that a
new ethic is required even for such radical judgements. For one thing 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. For, notoriosly, ethics are
not clearly articulated or at all well worked out, so that the application of identity criteria for ethics
may remain obscure.2 Furthermore we tend to cluster a family of ethical systems which do not
differ on core or fundamental principles together as the one ethic; e.g. the Christain ethic, which is
an umbrella notion covering a cluster of differing and even competing systems. In fact then there
are two other possibilities, apart from a new environmental ethic, which might cater for the
evaluations, namely that of an extension of modification of the prevailing ethics or that of the
development of principles that are already encompassed or latent within the prevailing ethic. The
second possibility, that environmental evaluations can be incorporated within (and ecological
problems solved within) the framework of prevailing Western ethics, is open because there isn’t a
1 A view occasionally tempered by the idea that trees house spirits
2 To the consternation .nodoubt of Quineans. But the fact is that we can talk perfectly well about inchoate and fragmentary
systems the identity of which may be indeterminate
205
is, near enough: ~ propositional system (i.e. a structured set of propositions) or theory which includes ( like md1v1duals of a theory) a set of values and (like postulates of a theory) a set of general
evaluative Ju~gements co~cermng conduct, typically of what is obligatory, permissible and wrong
of_ what ~re rights, what _is valued, and so forth. A ~eneral or lawlike proposition of a system is ~
prmc1ple, and certainly 1f syst~ms S, and S2 contam different principles, then they are different
systems. It foll?ws t~at any environmental ethic differs from the important traditional ethics outlined. Moreo~er 1f environmental ethics differ from Western ethical systems on some core principle
embedded m Western systems, then these systems differ from the Western super ethic (assuming
wh~t _seems to be so, that it can be uniquely characterised) - in which case if an environm~ntai
eth1_c 1s needed then a new ethic is wanted. It suffices then to locate a core principle and to provide
environmental counter examples to it.
It is com_monly assu_med that_ there are. what amount to, core principles of Western ethical
~ystems, principles that will accordingly belong to the super ethic. The fairness principle inscribed
~n the Golden Rule provides o~e example. Directly relevant here, as a good stab at a core principle,
ts the . commonly formulated hberal pnnc1ple of the modified dominance position .. A recent for: · " • "'• ,;, /'' /,'. /
~·- - ·· ..._
mulation 5 runs as follows ( [ 3 I, p. 58):
. 'The liberal philosophy of the Wes tern world holds that one should be able to do what he
wishes, prov1dmg ( 1) that he d0es not harm orhers and (2) that he is not likely to harm himself
irreparably.'
Let us call this principle basic (human) chauvinism - because under it humans, or people.
co_me_ first and everyt_hmg else a bad last - though sometimes the principle is hailed as a freedom
pnnc1ple becaus~ 1t gives perm1ss1on to perform a wide range of actions (including actio.ns which
mess_ up the ~nv1ronment and natural things) providing they do not harm others. In fact it tends to
c_unn_mgly shift the onus of pro?fto others. It is worth remarking that harming others in the restrict10n 1s narrower than a restnct1on to the (usual) interests of others; it is not enough that it is in my
mterests, because. I detest you, that you stop breathing; you are free to breathe, for the time being
anyway, because 1t does not harm me. There remains a problem however as to exactly what counts
as harm or mter_ference. Mor~over the width of the principle is so far obscure because 'other' may
be fill~d. out m s1gmficantly different ways: it makes a difference to the e~tent, and privilege, of the
cha~vm1s~ whe~her '.other' _ex~ands to 'other human' - which is too restrictive - or to 'other'person or to _other sent1~nt be1~g ; and 1t mak~s a difference to the adequacy of the principle, and inversely to its economic apphcab1hty, to which class of others it is intended to apply whether to
future as well as to present others, whether to remote future others or only to non-discountable
future others, a?d. whether to possible others. The latter would make the principle completely unworkable, and 1t 1s generally assumed that it applies at most to present and future others. ' //4-_ ItIt_ is taken for granted. in_ d_e_signing counter examples to basic chauvinist principles, that a ....,. /..~..., . (
sem_antical analysis of perm1ss1b1hty and obligation statements stretches out over ideal situations r.,.·-=-"'t.. :.;1 -c.:
, · ~/:_
(".~-htch may be mcon:iplete or even inconsistent), so that what is permissible holds in some ideal
ideal
every
in
s1tuat10n, what 1s obl_1gato_ry in every ideal situation, and what is wrong is excluded
~1tuat10n. But the_mam pomt to grasp for the counter examples that follow, is that ethical principles
· t·
1f correct are umversal and are assessed over the class of I·deal s1tua
ions.
(') Th z
collapse of the world system
the
1
_survi~ing
perso~)
(or
man
e as_t ma~ e~a~ple. The last
lays ~bout him, ehmmatmg, ~s far as he can, e~ery !tvmg th_mg, animal or plant (but painlessly if
iou hke, a~ at the best abattoirs). What he does 1s qmte permissible according to basic chauvinism
ut on envir?nmental grounds what he does is wrong. Moreover one does not have to be commit~
~~d \o e~ot~nc values to regard M'.. Las_t Man as behaving badly (the reason being perhaps that ra~cfa th mkmg a nd val~es have shifted m an environmental direction in advance of corresponding
s .. 1 ts m the formulation of fundamental evaluative principles).
(u) The last people example. The last man example can be broadened to the last people example.
We can assume that they know they are the last people, e.g. because they are aware that radiation
effects h_a~~ blocked any chance of reproduction. One considers the last people in order to rule out
~e pos~1b1hty that what these pe~ple d~ harms or somehow physically interferes with later people.
therwise one could as well consider science fiction cases where people arrive at a new planet and
single ethical system uniquely assumed in Western civilization: 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.
Indeed Passmore (in [2]) has mapped out three important traditions in Western ethical views
concerning man's relation to nature; a dominant tradition, the despotic position, with man as
despot (or tyrant), and two lesser traditions, the stewardship position, with man as custodian, and
the co-operative position with man as perfector. Nor are these the only traditions; 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 Stoic - Augustine view - it exists only for his sake), whereas on an environmental
ethic man is not so free to do as 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. who is man steward for and responsible to? However both traditions are
inconsistent with an 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 substantial 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 north-Europea n small farm and village landscape. According to the co-operative position
man's proper role is todevelop, cultivate and perfect nature - all nature eventually - by bringing
out its potentialities, the test of perfection being primarily usefulness for human purposes; 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. Although these 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, they
do not go far enough: 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 thoroughgoing environmental ethic would reject, a
3
principle of total use,implying that every natural area should be cultivated or otherwise used for
human ends, "humanized".
As the important Western traditions exclude an environmental ethic, it would appear that
such an ethic, not primitive, mystical or romantic, would be new alright. The matter is not so
straightforwa rd; for the dominant ethic has been substantially qualified by the rider that one is riot
always entitled to do as one pleases where this physically interferes with others. Maybe some such
proviso was implicit all along (despite evidence to the contrary), and it was simply assumed that
doing what one pleased with natural items would not affect others (the non-interference assumption). Be this as it may, the modified dominant position appears, at least for m~ny 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 environment for no satisfactory
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 [3]) that blends with the modified position; and so on. The 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. Nontheless neither the modified
dominant position nor its Western variants, obtained by combining it with the lesser traditions, is
adequate as an environmental ethic, as I shall try to show. A new ethic is wanted.
a ~pecific ethic,
/§ 2. -As. we noticed----(a~ ethic is ambi~uous, as bet_ween a specifi~ ethical system,
and a more generic notion, a super ethic, under which specific ethics cluster.4 An ethical system S
./
3 If 'use' is extended, somewhat illicitly, to include use for preservation, this total use principle is rendered inocuous at least
as regards its actual effects. Note that the total use p1 inciple is tied to the resource view of nature
4-A meta-elhic is, as usual, a theory about ethics, super ethics, their features and fundamental notions
5 A related principle is that (modified) free c.1tcrprise can operate
I
il
11 ,·thi'n
s· -1 1- •
1m1 ar 1m11s
207
destroy its ecosystems, whether with good intentions such as perfecting the planet for their ends
and making it more fruitful or, forgetting the lesser traditions, just for the hell of it.
Let us assume that the last people are very numerous. They humanely exterminate every wild
ar,imal and they eliminate the fish of the seas, they put all arable land under intensive cultivation,
and all ~emaining forests disappear in favour of quarries 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 extinctions. On an environmental ethic the last people have behaved badly; 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 basic chauvinist principle, and as well with the
principles enjoined ·by the lesser traditions. Indeed the main point of elaborating this example is
because, as the last man example reveals, basic chauvinism may conflict with stewardship or cooperation principles. The conflict may be removed it seems by conjoining a further proviso to the
basic principle, to the effect (3) that he does not wilfully destroy natural resources. But as the last
people do not destroy resources wilfully, but perhaps "for the best of reasons", the variant is still
environmentally inadequate.
(iii) The great entrepreneur example. The last man example can be adjusted so as to not fall foul
of clause (3). The last man is an industrialist; 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 outpJt to fulfil some plan, and he will be increasing his own and general welfare since h~
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 may even
meet Pareto optimality requirements given prevailing notions of being "better off'.
Just as we can extend the last man example to a class of last people, so we can extend this example to the industrial society example: the society looks rather like ours.
(iv) The vanishing species example. Consider the blue whale, a mixed good on the economic picture. The blue whale is on the verge of extinction because of his qualities as a private good, as a
source of valuable oil and meat. The catching and marketing of blue whales does not harm the
whalers; it does not harm or physically interfere with others in any good sense, though it may upset them and they may be prepared to compensate the whalers if they desist; nor need whale hunting be wilful destruction. (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 activity or the activities of animals he has introduced, e.g. many
plains-dwelling Australian marsupials and the Arabian oryx.) The l?ehaviour of the whalers in
eliminating this magnificent species of whale is accqrdingly quite permissible-at least according to
basic chauvinism. But on an environmental ethic it is not. However the free-market mechanism will
not cease allocating whal~[~ to commercial uses, as a satisfactory environmental econo_mics
would; instead the market model will grind inexorably 6 along the private demand curve until the
blue whale population is no longer viable-if that point has not already been passed.
In sum, the class of permissible actions that rebound on the environment _is more narrowly
circumscribed on an environmental ethic than it is in the Western super ethic. But aren't environmentalists going too far in claiming that these people, those of the examples and respe~ted industrialists fishermen and farmers are behaving, when engaging in environmentally degrading activities of ;he sort described, in a morally impermissible way~ No, what these people do _is to a
greater or lesser extent evil, and hence in serious cases morally impermissible. For exampl_e, mso~ar
as the killing or forced displacement of primitive peoples who stand in the way of an mdustnal
development is morally indefensible and impermissible, so also is _the slau~hter of the last_ remaining blue whales for private profit. But how to reformulate basic chauvm1sm as a satisfactory
6 For the tragedy-of-the-commons type reasons well explained in [31
freedom principle is a more difficult matter. A tentative, but none too adequate beginning might be
made by extending (2) to include harm to or interference with others who would be so affected by
the action in question were they placed in the environment and (3) to exclude specieside. It may be
preferable , in view of the way the freedom principle sets the onus of proof. simply to scrap it
altogether, and instead to specify classes of rights and permissible conduct. as in a bill of rights.
§ 3. A radical change in a {eory sometimes forces changes in the meta-theory; e.g. a logic which
rejects the Reference Theory in a thoroughgoing way requires a modification of the usual metatheory which also accepts the Reference Theory and indeed which is tailored to cater only for
logics which do conform. A somewhat similar phenomena seems to occur in the case of a
meta-ethic adequate for an environmental ethic. Quite apart from introducing several environmentally important notions, such as conservation, pollu1io11, growth and presen•atio11,for meta-ethical
analysis, an environmental ethic compels re-examination and modified analyses of such
characteristic actions as na1ural right, ground of right, and of the relations of obligation and permissibility to rights: it may well require re-assessment of traditional analyses of such notions as
i-alue and right, especially where these are based on chauvinist assumptions; and it forces the rejection o [ many of the more prominent meta-ethical positions. These points are illustrated by a very
brief examination of accounts of natural right and then by a sketch of the species bias of some
major positions. 7
Hart (in I 5]) 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'. But this sufficient condition for a
human natural right depends on accepting the very human chauvinist principle an em iron mental
ethic rt::jects, since if a person has a natural right he has a right; so too the deflni1io11 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 straight forward matter now that human rights with
rcspc:ct to animals and the natural environment are, like those with respect to slaves not all that
lon g ago, undergoing major re-evaluation.
An environmental ethic does not commit one to the view that natural objects such as trees
have rights (though such a view is occa~ionally held, e.g. by pantheists. But pantheism is false since
artefacts are not alive). For moral prohibitions forbidding certain actions with respect to an object
do not award that object a correlative right. That it would be wrong to mutilate a given tree or
piece of property does not entail that the tree or piece of property has a correlative right n_ot to _be
mutilated (without seriously stretching the notion of a right). Environmental views can stick with
mainstream theses according to which rights are coupled with corresponding responsibilities and
so with bearing obligations, and with corresponding interests and concern; i.e., at least, whatever
has a right also has responsibilities and therefore obligations, and whatever has a right has interests . Thus although any person may have a right by no means every living thing can
(significantly) have rights. and arguably most sentient objects other than persons cannot have
rights. But persons can relate morally, through obligations, prohibitions and so forth. to practically
anything at all.
The species bias of certain ethical and economic positions which aim to make principles of
conduct or reasonable economic behaviour calculable is easily brought out. These positions
typically employ a single criterion p, such as preference or happiness, as a summ.um_ bonu_m;
characteristically each individual of some base class, almost always humans, but perhaps mcludmg
future humans, is supposed to have an ordinal p ranking of the states in question (e.g. of affairs, 6f
the economy); then some principle is supplied to determine a collective p ranking of these states in
terms of individual prankings, and what is best or ought to be done is determined either_ ~ire~tl~, as
in act-utilitarianism under the Greatest Happiness principle, or indirectly, asin rule-ut1lttanantsm,
in terms of some optimization principle applied to the collective ranking. The species bias is
transparent from the selection of the base class. And even if the base class is extended to embr~ce
persons. or even some animals (at the cost. like that of including remotely future humans, of losing
1 Some of thes< points arc developed by those protesting about human maltreatment of animals; see especially the essays
collec!ed in I 4 I
9
~
iii
208
WJ 6
14
209
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. For 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 (the evaluation of
most Australian farmers anyway). 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 blue
whales as a mixed good, were to succeed in outweighing private whaling demands; for if no one in
the base class happened to know that blue whales exist or cared a jot that they do then
“rational” economic decision-making would do nothing to prevent their extinction. Whether the
blue whale survives should not have to depend on what humans know or what they see on televi
sion. Human interests and preferences are far too parochial to provide a satisfactory basis for
deciding on what is environmentally desirable.
These ethical and economic theories are not alone in their species chauvinism; much the
same applies to most going meta-ethical theories which, unlike intuitionistic theories, try to offer
some rationale for their basic principles. For instance, on social contract positions obligations are a
matter of mutual agreements between individuals of the 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
v v^gue 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
too bad for them: that is (rough) justice.
REFERENCES
1. A. Leopold, A Sand Country Almanac with other essays on Conservation. New York (1966).
2. J. Passmore, Ecological Problems and Western Traditions (unpublished).
3. P.W.Barkley and D.W.Seckier, Economic Growth and Environmental Decay. The Solution becomes the
Problem, New York (1972).
4. S. and R.Godlovitch and J. Harris (editors), A nimals, Men and Morals. An enquiry into the maltreatment
of non-humans, London (1971).
5. H.L.A.Hart, ‘Are there any natural rights?’, reprinted in A.Quinton (editor), Political Philosophy, Oxford
(1967).
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it is none loo 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. For, notoriosly, ethics are
not clearly articulated or al all well worked out. so that the application of identity criteria foi ethics
may remain obscure. Furthermore we tend to cluster a family of ethical sy stems which do not
differ on core or fundamental principles together as the one ethic; e.g. the Christen ethic, which is
an umbrella notion covering a cluster of differing and even competing systems. In fact then there
are two,.other possibilities, apart from a new environmental ethic, which might cater for the
evaluations, namely that of an extension of modification of the prevailing ethicszor that of the
development of principles that are already encompassed or latent within the prevailing ethic. The
second possibility, that environmental evaluations can be incorporated within (and ecological
problems solved within) the /?<rf
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single ethical system uniquely assumed in Western civilization: on many issues, and especially on
ckd«°T^a *ssues such as infanticide, women’s rights and drugs, there are competing sets of prin
S’ T.
? nCW e^h‘C and Prevai,ln8 ethics tends to suggest a sort of monolithic structure, a
uniformity that prevathng ethics, and even a single ethic, need not have.
- r. .
jM40/
Indeed Passmore (in |2|) has mapped out three important traditions in Western ethical views
concerning man’s relation to nature; a dominant tradition, the despotic position, with man as
despot (or tyrant), and two lesser traditions, the stewardship position, with man as custodian, and
the co-operative position with man as perfector. Nor are these the only traditions; primitivism is
another, and both romanticism and mysticism have influenced Western views.-31
' j
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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 Stoic^— Augustine view - it exists only for his sake), whereas on an environmental
ethic man is not so free to do as 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 removeej, eg. vv/zo is man steward for and responsible to? However both traditions are
inconsistent with a ^environmental ethic because they imply policies of complete interference,
whereas on an environmental ethic some worthwhile parts of the earth’s surface should be presen
ed from substantial 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 com
fortable north-European small farm and village landscape. According to the co-operative position
man’s proper role is todevelop, cultivate and perfect galiye - all nature eventually - by bringing
out its potentialities, the test of perfection being
^usefulness for.human purposes: 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./ '7Zu^ /fate-
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Indeeo these lesser traditions lead to what a thomnpho’ ‘dr‘”"lg anJ utl,izing ofall natural areas
principle of total use,imping that every r-turJl X
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<»e pr , pie is tied to the resource view of nature ,
such an ethic, not primitive, mystical or’romantic, would be new aljigjiu The matter is r
straightforward: for the dominant.ethic has been substantial!v uuaiitle^y the n&er that one is not
always entitled to do as one pleases where this physically int^Tes \0tn peers'.
7
> proviso was implicit all along (despite evidence to the contrary), and it was simply assumed that
doing what one pleased with natural items would not affect others (the Goiyuuterference assump
tion). Be this as it may, the modified dominant position 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 environment for no satisfactory
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 [31) that blends with the modified position;
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. may even serve to restrict the sort of family size one is entitled to have since in a finite situa
tion excessive population levels will interfere with future people. Nontheless neither the modified
dominant position nor its Western variants, obtained by combining it with the lesser traditions, is
adequate as an environmental ethic, as I ^vall
A new ethic is wanted,
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is, near‘enough, a propositional system (i.e. a structured set of propositions) or theory which in
dudes (like individuals of a theory > a set of values and (like postulates of a theory) a set of general
evaluative judgements concerning conduct, typically of what is obligators permissible and wrong.'x* !
of what are rights, what is valued, and so forth. A general or lawlike proposition of a system is a \
principle; and certamlv if systems S, and S2contain different principles, then they are different
systems. It follows that anv en onmental ethic differs from the important traditional ethics outlin
ed. Moreover if environmental ethics differ from Western ethical systems on some core principlaJL
embedded in Western systems, then these systems differ from the Western super ethic (assuming. I
what seems to be so. that it can be uniquely characterised) - in which case if an environmental
ethic /s needed then a new- ethic is wanted. It suffices then to locate a core principle and to provide
environ mental counter examples to it z
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. to the last people example.
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.
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destroy its ecosystems, whether with good intentions such as perfecting the planet for their ends
and making it more fruitful or, forgetting the lesser traditions, just for the
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 forests disappear in favour ofpatfuM 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 extinctions. On an en
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people do not destroy resources wilfully, but perhaps “for the best of reasons’", the variant is still
environmentally inadequate.
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of clause (3). The last man is an industrialist; 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 may even
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on the verge of extinction because of his qualities as a private good, as a
source of valuable oil and meat. The catching and marketing of blue whales does not harm the
whalers; it does not harm or physically interfere with others in any good sense, though it may up
set them and they may be prepared to compensate the whalers if they desist; nor need whale hun
ting be wilful destruction. (Slightly different examples which eliminate the hunting aspect of the
blue w'hale example are provided by cases where a speues is eliminated or threatened through
destruction of its habitat by man’s 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 will
not cease allocating whale$ to commercial uses, as a satisfactory environmental economics I
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does not commit one to the view
that natural objects such as trees have rights
is occasionally held, e.g. by pantheists.
since artefacts are not alive).
(though such a view
But pantheism is false
For moral prohibitions forbidding
certain actions with respect to an object do^riot award that object
a correlative right.
That it would be wrong to mutilate a given
tree or piece of property does not entail that the tree or piece of
property has a correlative right not to be mutilated (without
seriously stretching the notion of a right).
Environmental views
can stick with,jmainstrean» theses according to which rights
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coupled with corresponding responsibilities and so with bearing
obligations, and with corresponding interests and concerns; i.e.,
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Handwritten notes and annotated photocopy (2 copies) of Routley R (1973) 'Is there a need for a new, an environmental, ethic?', Proceedings of the XVth World Congress of Philosophy, 1:205-210.
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Box 15: Green Projects in Progress
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Text
PARADIGMATIC ROOTS
OF
ENVIRONMENTAL PROBLEMS
Abstract. Virtually all diagnoses of the roots, and sources, of environmental
problems are defective. While defective diagnoses persist, problems will not
be adequately addressed.
Focal questions ask why human communities so frequently degrade,
impoverish or even destroy their own environments, and more generally why
the whole earth is now in jeopardy through human enterprise. More
immediate answers, sometimes correct so far as they go (which is not far
enough), look to components of environmental impact equations. More
thorough-going answers fall into two classes: first those that do not question
entrenched paradigms, but seek (unsuccessfully) to explain widespread
problems simply through defective practice, and secondly those that, rightly
recognising that defective practice is no adequate answer, look to deeper
paradigmatic sources of problems. A fatal flaw in most of the latter answers
lies in their monistic concentration on a single paradigm, or single narrow
band of paradigms. These flaws are exposed, whence a wider, more
satisfactory answer can be broached.
Background busywork includes firstly, explaining problems and relevant
paradigms and how paradigms operate regarding environmental problems,
and secondly, detailed disentangling of proposed and alleged sources of the
problems. With this done, it is argued that none of these fashionable answers
to the focal questions is satisfactory. A different more complex answer
through broader classes of paradigms is accordingly investigated. Among
significant corollaries, this one stands out: philosophy as portrayed through
its standard history is dismal environmental news.
0. Focal questions and deeper answers.
Human activity is now degrading terrestrial eco-systems at an extraordinarily rapid rate.
In modem times humans have devised sophisticated and sophistical idea-systems which justify
such system degradation; formerly they would have seen such transformation for not mattering,
many still do, transformation as increasing wealth (as in mainstream economics). More
recently they have developed social systems which induct most humans into degradation
procedures (through need, induction into cash economies, and so on) and which weave
entrapping justificatory webs (through agencies, bureaus, courts, and so on).
Whence an increasingly broached question1: Why is this happening? More explicitly,
Why do human communities so frequently degrade and impoverish their environments, their
own habitats? Indeed why do they sometimes, persistently, perhaps over a long period, destroy
their own habitats? More sweepingly, why is the whole earth now perhaps in jeopardy through
human enterprise? The answer to be arrived at to these focal questions is in essence this:
because too many humans, especially those in control of environmentally impacting
enterprises, are committed to or caught within environmentally unfriendly paradigms,
paradigms displaying quite insufficient regard for the health and well-being of relevant habitats
and of the earth.
1
In sources as diverse as Shepard (first page) and Jacobs (p.23).
�Parts of the answers to such focal questions come immediately through environmental
impact equations, conservation laws, and such like. For example, degradation is occurring
through the impact of overpopulation, excessive pollution, damaging or faulty technologies,
and so on. While such answers are important, often correct as far as they go, and while they
may correctly indicate what has to be changed somehow, they are nonetheless somewhat
superficial, and they leave much to be explained. For example, they do not explain why a
community persisted upon a course that deliberately led to such problems, or why it is so
resistant to changes that might reduce impacts and pull it out of its problem-holes. Less
superficial answers look to ideologically entrenched attitudes and commitments, to pervasive
paradigms that underwrite anti-environmental practices, as for instance the wood-production
ideology does forestry practice, even so-called “new forestry”.2
An illustrative example which reveals the power of paradigms in blocking or facilitating
action will shortcut a more elaborate argument, through action theory, to the efficacy of idea
systems. Consider an unwanted pregnancy, resulting despite due precautions or whatever.
Observe that, more and more there are comparatively safe technologies available to effect
termination and seemingly solve the immediate problem. Ask: why so many people are
opposed to choice of abortion? A very common answer is: because they are operating under an
elaborate paradigm, typically organised religion (bureaucratic Christianity in the West), themes
of which, the creeds of which, prohibit such choices.3 Of course pro-choice considerations are
also paradigmatically embedded, for instance in forms of liberalism. Picturesquely, a social
paradigm imposes controls on action, a system of red and green lights on a captured agent's
routing procedures.
Or with a different picture, paradigms project a steeply impeding
topography on action space.
Paradigms not only guide, control and limit; they also
correlatively give permission, as, for instance, space to play god, freedom to release a new
species or variety which may or has proved a pest or noxious or has been biologically
engineered, liberty to neglect or degrade or vandalize.
The settings in terms of which agents such as humans act and operate, even down-toearth everyday agents, invariably include, not far in the background, paradigms, cultures,
creeds, ideologies, myths or the like, all idea-systems, all involving models (in a technical
sense) of one sort or another. Even the most practical (and vociferously practical) of humans
are governed by background ideosystems. It is in terms of these background ideosystems that a
great deal concerning human practices with respect to natural environments can be explained,
what would otherwise lack satisfactory explanation.4 That explanation comes not however
2
3
4
For main details of this illustrative example, see FF. For more on this style of explanation, see
further Routley.
I am not, however, going to maintain that religion, or a certain religion such as Christianity, is
the main villain of the environmental piece. Religions in general borrowed much in their
damaging articles from philosophies (see below). What I shall be suggesting is that dominant
philosophies do have much to answer for in this regard.
As logical positivists observed, explanation and justification patterns tend to coincide. How
people justify their practices offers an explanation, though perhaps a misleading or superficial
�3
through a single paradigm, as has too often been supposed, but through a bundle of apparently
aligned paradigms.
One working image for what is going on here is appropriately ecological: that of a fig
cluster (similarly a mangrove or bamboo thicket):
Diagram 1: Structural diagram connecting problems with their multiple roots
many
emergent
problems
interlinked
proximate
causes
plural
supporting
sources
multiple
interlinked
roots
Observe systematic plurality. Notice however a countervailing human propensity to seek single
answers and uniqueness (as depicted in the rhomboidal box), where causes and sources are
plural. So it is with paradigmatic sources and roots of environmental problems. They are
plural.5
What is sought are ultimate sources, or roots, not immediate causes. The cause of the
pollution may be a factory that the agent installed, to produce more flim-flam. That too may be
the physical source of the immediate problem. But deeper questioning seeks the reasons for
such production and such factories. While there may be problems with ideas and idea
structures as causes, as causally efficacious, these problems do not transfer to reasons and
sources. (But there are buried metaphors, and linkages, to be unscrambled: how are “A is
source of B” and “A is a root of B” to be explicated? In terms of directional explanatory and
other rational transmission connections.6)
explanation, of them.
History too is not singular, but plural, as has occasionally been recognized; at the very least there
are plausible alternative histories.
While there is much written on roots and sources of environmental problems or developments
virtually none of it addresses die question of what is meant by the partially buried metaphors ot
roots and sources (the metaphors are evidently different; more literally, plants have roots,
normally below them, streams rise from sources, not roots, normally above them, and so on).
A striking example is supplied by Pepper's useful introductory text. Although this text, The
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These deeper sources are important. Without locating them, perhaps all of them (if they
resemble blackberry), problems may not get properly addressed. Should we wrongly locate
roots, then proposed resolutions directed at ±ese, cutting them off or replacing them, will also
go astray, wrongly directed or whatever.
There are several parts to the approach sketched, if it is to be properly elaborated—
including a working classification of environmental problems and their proximate solutions,
and an account of paradigms and their roles—before getting to paradigmatic answers to focal
questions. But we can be brief on the necessary preliminaries, because they have been
addressed elsewhere.
1. Problems and paradigms.
Although these will be duly connected, paradigms implicated in problems, they are different
components, and admit and deserve separate explanation.
la. Environmental problems and proximate solutions.
A definition of ‘environmental problem’, and a classification of such problems, has already
been proposed.7 Observe that the final sets of problems that emerge are not value-framework
independent. What constitutes a major problem on deeper perceptions may be but a minor
problem, or written off as not a problem at all, on shallower perspectives. Among such
indicator problems, that it is here presumed are serious problems, are those of
• sustaining biodiversity and
• maintaining significant wilderness.8
Even if the broad impact of human enterprise is sufficiently reduced to guarantee comfortable
survival of future humans, these, desiderata may not be guaranteed. There will be outstanding
problems.
In any event, it is not too difficult to say more or less what environmental problems are
(at worst by furnishing familiar lists), and in many cases to indicate at least in principle how
they are to be resolved. Impact equations, emerging immediately from a classification of
Roots of Modem Environmentalism, presents itself specifically as concerning roots, there is in
fact no explication offered of the crucial roots metaphor, and for that matter no direct account of
what the roots of environmentalism—still less, though quite different, of environmental
problems to which environmentalism answers—are supposed to be (granted there is much
oblique material). It is apparent that Pepper has become rather carried away with the roots
metaphor, throwing it into several chapter headings and applying it pretty indiscriminately to
mean simply elements (from some earlier occurrence); thus for instance, ‘the roots of the theme
of reconciliation of freedom and authority’ (p.193). Such a usage is unsound. Because
rudiments of some idea make an earlier appearance in some authority or work, later workers may
not have arrived at such an idea by expanding on these rudiments; they may have arrived where
they did quite independently or by a different route. The mistake is that of reading a source or
(genetic) causal linkage into a mere temporal injunction: post hoc, propter hoc.
Dictionaries do better, with a short listing for the figurature use of root running: the basis,
bottom, the fundamental part, or that which supplies origin, sustenance, means of development,
etc.’ (Concise English Dictionary). That will serve, for a start.
7
See Sylvan and Bennett, GE.
8
As to the extent of the problem in North America, and a proposed remedy, see The Wildlands
Project.
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problems, reveal how they are to be resolved.9 Namely, by altering relevant impact parameters.
Given this why are they proving so intractable? Why is so little done? Why is so very
little spent, despite all the talk.10 Proximate solutions, about as far as positive science conveys
us, are not a satisfactory stopping point. How is it, given so much scientific information and
expertise, that humans are continuing to sharply degrade, and risk substantially destroying, their
habitats.
To these, the focal questions of this exercise, there is an array of competing answers on
offer. As we will soon see, most of these answers too simple, and taken as intended as
comprehensive, they are wrong. The questions however are important, because if we fail to get
to bottom of these, there is even less prospect of satisfactory action to turn around a very
difficult situation.
That these issues do not matter, that casual human relationships or how many dollars
uncaring humans can stuff in their pockets, matter more than whole islands of habitats—these
sorts of value judgements (after all matter is a value term par excellence) derive from and are
supported by particular ideologies.
lb. Model-like objects: paradigms, ideologies, cultures ,and so on.
A paradigm was explicated, in previous work, as a model in precisely a generous logical
sense.11 That is, a paradigm amounts to a structure supplied by an elaborate interpretation
function on a general system, i.e. on an integrated relational structure. Naturally it is required
to
faithful to what it models, the social forms and norms, scientific research programs, etc.
A social paradigm, in contrast to a scientific paradigm, is a paradigm where the propositional
and imperatival theory, the socio-political themes and value judgements, is that of a social
group. A pure culture is but a comprehensive social paradigm, where by “comprehensive” is
meant that it covers a sufficiently comprehensive part of the life-styles and life-forms of the
community concerned. There are now many examples of capsule formulations of the themes
delivered under rival social paradigms and under different cultures; from these formulations we
can work back towards the underlying models.
The basic vehicle, a situations or worlds model, is a semantical object, an item like a
complex universal12 similarly open to a range of construals and reduction attempts, e.g.
metaphysical, conceptual, epistemic, linguistic and so on. Once this is realised, it can be seen
that successive cohorts of philosophers and sociologists have repeated one another in vaguely
discerning essentially the same sorts of underlying structures under different categorisations:
thus, for instance, forms of understanding (Kant), of consciousness (Marx), of life
(Wittgenstein), conceptual schemes
(Conant),
presuppositions
(Collingwood),
For details see again Greening of Ethics.
See e.g. The cost ofpast environmental policy in OECD countries, Box 1.7, in Pearce et al, p.24.
See Routley, where many environmentally relevant examples are documented. For an analogous
account of culture see Sylvan 86.
It resembles a structured universal, e.g. Plato’s system of forms, Locke’s of complex ideas.
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Weltanschauungs, total views (Naess), perspectives, outlooks, ideologies, programs, ... . An
ideology, for instance, in the nonderogatory (non-Marxist) sense is an ideas-system, initially a
propositional system or theory with a relevant domain of ideas operative, from which a
paradigm can be discerned and elaborated.
Paradigms are now regularly presented, in extremely truncated form, through a tabulation
of capsule themes. Here is a combination example:
TABLE 2: Elements of Taoism as contrasted with Deep Ecology and with the dominant
paradigm: an initial capsule formulation ,13
Taoism
Deep Ecology
Dominant (Western)
Paradigm
Harmony with nature,
±rough Tao
Harmony with nature
Domination over nature
Nature valuable in itself;
“humanism” rejected
Natural environment
valued for itself
Nature a resource;
intrinsic value confined
to humans
Levelling of differences;
wide impartiality
Biocentric egalitarianism
Human supremacy
Supplies ample
Earth supplies limited
Ample resources with
substitutes
Following Tao-te
Spiritual goals,
especially self-realisation
Material economic growth
a predominant goal
Enlightenment
Self-realisation
Personal (material)
enrichment
Doing with enough
(recycling inappropriate)
Doing with enough;
recycling
Consumerism
Non-competitive lifestyle;
voluntary simplicity
Cooperative lifestyle
Competitive lifestyle
Decentralised/neighbourhood and village focus
Decentralised/bioregional
/neighbourhood focus
Centralised/urban centred/
national focus
Hierarchy without
power structure;
anarchoid
Non-hierarchical/
grassroots democracy
Power structure
hierarchical
Limited technology
Appropriate technology
High technology
Considerable caution
Precautionary practice
Risking taking (verging
upon adventurism)
13
This tripartite example is adapted from UTD, where capsule elements of Taoism are duly
expanded.
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I
As observed, paradigms control action space by some equivalent of directives; red and green
lights duly interpreted. They may not supply direct commands, general obligations and
prohibitions, but may operate more indirectly. For instance an enlightened person, a role
model, a person following Tao, would act this way, not that. (Taoism, like certain modem
ideosystems, eschews deontics.)
Paradigms are absorbed and they guide practice. They commonly form part of actors'
worlds; they are certainly part of actors' programs for practice and considered action in a world.
In a sense then, they are things, programs actors carry round in their heads; so heads have to be
changed, not rolled.
2. Proposed answers to focal questions; a preliminary classification of inadequate answers
and suggested remedies.
Most of the wide range of answers proposed supply a single source, and are defective.
Roughly, virtually everything you have read on this (or may read elsewhere) is wrong.
TABLE 3. Main tabulation of answers and remedies
Source
Defective
practice answers
Remedy
Objections
DI.
Ignorance
Relevant
information
Information
now available
D2.
Unintended consequences
Relevant
information
Information
now available
D2a
Faulty technique,
or technology
Repairs
Repairs already
made
D3
Deviation (from
theory, etc.)
Education (for failure
to limit deviance)
Adherence
a. Deviation
uneliminable, or
b. Adherence
no remedy
D4.
Systemic lock-in
(through poverty,
ensnarement in
market forces, etc.)
Trap removal
a. Explains
only certain
cases, and
b. Due to
paradigmatic
features
D5.
Insensitivity or
insensibility
Problem
apprised
Remedy tried;
background
ideological
blockage
Source single paradigm
Remedies proposed (among others)
Christianity (mainstream
Catholicism)
Scientific enlightenment, or
alternative (Eastern) religion
D3a
Defective paradigm
answers
Pl.
i
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Pla.
Protestantism and its ethic
P2.
P2a
Cartesianism
Dualism
P2b
Mechanism
Monism
Anti-dualism
Modified holism
Substance metaphysics
P3.
P3a Possessive individualism
P3aa Personalism
Organicism
Process metaphysics
Non-reductionism
Transpersonalism
P4.
Capitalism
Socialism
P5.
Industrialism
Pre-industrialism (romanticism)
Post-industrialism
P5a Technocratic bureaucracy
P5aa. Transnational business
Enlightenment
Anti-enlightenment
P6a
Materialism
Anti-materialism
Spiritualism
P8.
P8a
Patriarchy, Masculinism
Human domination
of humans
Feminism
Anti-domination
(anti-hierarchy)
P6.
Further sample listings of this paradigmatic sort (but with the paradigms often subject specific
or partial) include:
Source
Typical remedy suggested
Platonism
New metaphysics
Leibnitzianism
New metaphysics
Kantianism
C onsequentialism
Mainstrand Anglo-American philosophy:
reductive empiricism-cum-utilitarianism
Continental philosophy
Utilitarianism
Economism
New social science, or ethics
Contractarianism
Consequentialism
Domination transfer
Domination removal
Adolescencism
Infantilism (from Freudian physchology)
Maturation
Maturation
And so on.
A very rough recipe runs as follows: draw up a potted list of major movements and factors in
dominant Western thought. Then most elements in that list will have been nominated, likely
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separately but perhaps only in combination, by someone as the source of the problems.
That list accordingly continues (even including sometimes entries like Taylorism), but
what is included is representative of the important and more interesting answers to be
encountered. There are other answers however, some varying from interesting to crazy, that we
should also take into account, for instance Shepard's answers. Although Shepard dismisses
ideologies, what he offers is a further ideosystem, of similar dubious or false cast. Strange
answers include pushing it back to human psychology (thus not only Shepard, but also Fox, and
Ehrlich with talk of ‘mental maladaptation’).
Basically, there is something wrong with a society that does that to its habitat. It is sick
— in a popular sense, yes, it is sick. It is the slides that follow, however, that are to be resisted.
The slide begins invitingly: As it is not literally sick, well not physically usually, it must be
mentally sick; that is, sliding further and fast, insane or mad.
But the sources of mental
sickness lie in childhood (as Freudianism erroneously insists). The slide continues to: what we
have are immature societies, frozen at an early stage of development. No doubt there is
something to theme that dominant societies, USA especially (which influences so much now in
other cultures), are locked into youth culture, a sort of late consumptive adolescence.1415No
doubt, too, that maturity — but a environmental maturity — is desirable, even mandatory.
Meanwhile, immaturity is fostered right through human life. Considerable effort is put
into trying to induct older people, who are often marginalised, into active consumptive society,
to spend their money through tourism, on new housing, in those most wasteful of modern
institutions such as airliners and hotels, hospitals and old-age homes, and so forth.
3. Documentation as to some of the acclaimed purer sources.
Like the lists of proposals and intricated paradigms, the documentation too is somewhat
perfunctory, tending towards notes. While whole theses could be spun out on several of these
topics, already beginning to elicit such treatment, a prime objective here is different from usual:
neither to convict, nor to clear or excuse, but to partially implicate most items cited in the main
tabulation above. Consider, in brief, some of the usually accredited sources:
• Western religion, above all Christianity. The theme that the source of ecological problems,
‘the historical roots of our ecological crisis’, are to be found in Western religion, and
specifically in ‘the Judaeo-Christian belief that mankind was created to have dominion over
nature’, was advanced in a particularly pointed and subsequently influential way by White.
One useful summary of White's line of argument runs as follows:
Allied with technological and scientific developments, orthodox Christianity
has produced arrogant exploitation of nature, and a contemporary ecological
crisis. White's thesis is that the West's successful science and technology
14
15
It interestingly matches the locking of primary production systems into pioneering stages such as
preclimax formations. Shepard’s dialectic is investigated in more detail in Appendix 3.
White's article has generated an enormous defensive literature, primarily from Christian
apologists, but also from softer environmentalists and from testy historians of ideas. The whole
area looks in danger of disappearing from intellectual view under a heavy blanketing snowfall,
snowed.
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developed between the 8th and 12th centuries — it is much older than the
scientific revolution though it was not until about 1850 — following the
democratic revolutions — that the science and technology were combined to
produce truly immense powers to change nature. The early development,
however, was paralleled by the development of exploitative attitudes to
nature which seemed to be ‘in harmony with larger intellectual patterns’,
namely the victory of Christianity over paganism. This destroyed the
animistic beliefs whereby men thought twice before they plundered and
destroyed natural objects. It substituted instead a faith in perpetual progress,
a belief that God designed nature for man's benefit and rule, and that action,
not contemplation, was the correct Christian behaviour. Science formed an
extension of theology (for to know God you had to find out how his creation
worked), and technology provided the active means to carry out God's will.
Because today’s attitudes are essentially inherited from Christianity, then it
‘bears the burden of guilt’ for contemporary ecological disruption.16
What has happened with the divisive charge, advanced by White, that Christianity was
the prime source of environmental problems, is particularly instructive. In an attempt to diffuse
the charge Christian apologists pointed to, what there undoubtedly were, recessive strands or
isolated seeds in Christianity which were much more environmentally benign (though some
such as stewardship, which has evolved toward total managerialism and sustainable
development, have proved increasingly problematic). That does little or nothing to meet a more
sensitive criticism that mainstream (or dominant) Christianity has much to answer for as
regards destruction and degradation of natural environments.17 Similar responses are apposite
for attempts to exonerate their wider sources, such as Western philosophy.
Against the sheeting of responsibility to religion, dominant forms of which should
undoubtedly cop some heavy criticism, it has been contended that
philosophy ... is the primary source of most Western ideas [and] is ...
responsible for the ideas and attitudes that inhibit environmental protection
today.... Religion... though often criticized ... as the chief culprit, has played
a much less fundamental role. Most of the environmentally offensive ideas in
Western religion originated not in religion but in Western philosophy.18
• Classical Greek philosophy, above all the peak philosophies of Plato and Aristotle.
Greek philosophers approached natural phenomena in a way that (1)
prevented the development of an ecological perspective, (2) discouraged the
aesthetic appreciation of the natural world, and (3) promoted a conception of
reality that made the idea of nature preservation conceptually difficult, if not
impossible.19
16
17
18
19
Pepper pp.44-5. Pepper then embarks upon the murky story of alternative interpretations of
Biblical data and the Christian tradition, dredged up by a series of White's critiques. The issue
continues to be debated; for an interesting recent contribution see Callicott.
Each religion is multistranded. But we should look hardest at dominant operative forms. Ask,
first, not what they say, but what they do, and would do.
Hargrove p.15. Certainly the sort of message that Pentecostal missionaries even now try to
preach to resistant Australian Aboriginals, that the earth is just filth, mere rubbish, can be traced
back in direct line to Plato’s attitude to the land, an attitude Hargrove and Plumwood help
expose.
Hargrove p.21. Hargrove’s claims may appear to have been confuted by Attfield, but really,
while they have been subject to minor qualification, they have been highlighted: see Appendix 1.
There is a much fuller story still to be told about classical Greek philosophy reassessed
environmentally, of the very different roles and impacts ot Plato (with his unearthly philosophy),
of Aristotle (with his earthier chauvinism), of Stoics and of Epicureans. For a modest beginning,
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More sweepingly, they set Western philosophy on a ruinous environmental course, a course
accentuated with the appearance of modem rationalist and empiricist philosophies.
• Cartesian philosophy. The dominant modern environmental approach is sometimes
denominated Cartesianism, or the Cartesian Technocratic paradigm, in honour of Descartes,
upon whom (as a conveniently select individual from a swag of like-minded people) several of
the leading themes and ideas can be pinned.20
While Descartes was undoubtedly
extraordinarily influential, so were others; Newton for one, Locke for another. The paradigm is
accordingly better denominated the Atomist-Empiricist-Technocratic paradigm, or some such.
Evidently it substantially overlaps other modem ideologies, such as that of the Enlightenment,
widely implicated as major sources of environmental problems.
• Western metaphysics. While some conglomeration of the preceding sources and others (some
potted history of Western metaphysics, so to say) may be offered, more often what is presented
is some selection of Western metaphysical elements. Here is one example, plainly exhibiting a
heavy Heideggerean influence:
The root of our environmental problems lie in Western metaphysics. For
metaphysics, Being is presencing; no allowance is made for any other mode
(sheltering, declining, concealing). Once metaphysics has established the
absolute dominion of the present over the not-present or no-longer-present,
the way is paved for the scientific method, with its emphasis on replicability
of results, predicability, quantification, and control. Nature becomes a
“natural resource” —and people become “human resources”. The sources of
anthropocentricism, -imperialism, colonialism, sexism and consumerism can
all be traced back to metaphysics.
Western metaphysics has more or less conquered the world, and there is no
going back. Western metaphysics is more than simply a false consciousness
overlaid on top of “authentic” experience. Being changes historically, and
metaphysics is the index of that change... Metaphysics has a conquering,
exclusive imperative, ... and different [former] modes now exist only as
vestigial trances. They cannot be resurrected through ancient wisdom, native
healing, goddess worship, or any other supposedly intact, dormant system.
We cannot create a “new order”. That would simply be another form of the
Will to Power... We can—and must—turn away from the dominant rhythms
of western metaphysics if we are to avoid the nihilism of a perpetually
ensconced technocratic rationalism.21
An alternative to turning entirely away from Western metaphysics, consists in combining
20
21
see Plumwood on Plato, Toulmin on Stoics as contrasted with Epicureans, and Glacken on lesser
or lost Greek strands.
For encapsulation of the Cartesianism paradigm (a dominant dualistic form), summarising
Drengson’s exposition, see Routley, table 5. For certain critical elements of Descartes
contribution, see Appendix 2. Drengson, for one, has helped portray Descartes as the
environmentally evil genius (or demiurge). That some orthodox philosophers, not merely
maverick philosophers, are now rushing to the defence of Descartes should be seen as entirely in
keeping with the character and roles of Western philosophy.
Undisclosed source. Amusingly, I have seen myself accused of ‘reject[ing] in its entirety
mainstream western philosophy and science, ... seen as the cause of the [environmental]
problem’ and instead basing my ‘ecocentric values on Eastern philosophies (thus Bellett). This
charge was levelled on the strength of a peripheral exercise on classical Taoism and Deep
Ecology (now included in UTD).
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rejection of standard Western metaphysics (or, less sweepingly, of dominant metaphysics,
characteristically individualistic and atomistic) in favour of development of recessive traditions
or mere Western seeds.
Such a more sophisticated approach, also critical of Western
metaphysics, with atomism a main villain, is pursued by those who promote instead process or
plenum metaphysics.22
• Enlightenment. The source of problems lies in ‘the intellectual heritage of the Enlightenment’
(e.g. Dobson). Of course the main doctrines of the Enlightenment substantially overlap those
of modem mainstream philosophy and of Descartes’ philosophy (but they shed dualistic and
theistic scholastic hang-overs).
• Capitalism. The assumption that capitalism is responsible for environmental as well as social
evils, widespread until recently in state-socialist countries (when their own records were
revealed) can be traced back to Marx. According to Marx, with capitalism
for the first time, nature becomes purely an object for humankind, purely a
matter of utility; ceases to be recognised as a power for itself; and the
theoretical discovery of its autonomous laws appears merely as a ruse so as to
subject it under human needs, whether as an object of consumption or as a
means of production.23
But, as observed, the main theme had appeared in earlier philosophy; for instance, the idea of
nature as purely an object for humankind, was advanced in Aristotle: ‘Now if nature makes
nothing incomplete and nothing in vain, the inference must be that she has made all animals for
the sake of man’.24 Aristotle adopted a similar stance on nature as on other species. The theme
was to be oft repeated in subsequent Aristotelianism, and reiterated apparently in shallower
Stoicism. But the subjection of everything to utility appears to be a distinctively modem
contribution.
♦ Modem industrial society. Modem industrialism (‘the smooth-superhighway of industrial
progress’) is the source, such is an extraordinarily popular theme: ‘... the root causes of the
present crisis lie deep with the very foundations of the industrial paradigm’.25 Similarly ‘roots
[of] the environment crisis ... go deeper to the foundations of modem industrial society .26
Again, ‘the structural roots of the environmental crises [are found in] industrialism, in
commoditization, in commercialism, and in competition and greed’27 The popular theme, that
industrialism is the source, tends to confuse mere means— industrial technology can without
22
23
24
25
26
27
For the first process option, see Gare; for the second, where the plenum is that of a holistic
relativity theory (more exactly holistic relativistic geometrodynamics), see Mathews.
Grundrisse p.409f.
Aristotle, Politics, Book 1, ch.8. What an inference, you might well exclaim. See further
Hargrove p.25.
M. Gabriel, ‘How “attitudes and implements” have brought us to “the end of nature , a paper
presented at UNE Environmental Paradigms Conference, April 1993. Gabriel proposes a
managerial resolution: ‘for us to learn to manage both our relationship to our environment, and
more broadly the environment itself (quotes from abstract of paper). This amounts to the flip
side of an old problematic record. For the “solution” derives from the same defective box as the
evident problem.
Gabriel ibid. Similarly in McLauglin.
Editorial in The Ecologist, Jan-Feb 1992, p.2.
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any doubt at all vastly facilitate environmental degradation (as well as, less satisfactorily,
subsequent clean-up and environmental repair)— with sources and causes, what directs and
powers those uses of industrial technique and practice.
• Patriarchy. The source is patriarchy, and androgyny; problems derive from mistreatment of
women. ‘Our troubles begin with the invention of male deities located off the planet’.28
‘patriarchy is the source of the environmental crisis’.29 One sample linkage statement runs as
follows:
... there is a huge denial ... of the violence perpetrated on women both
historically and ... presently] and ... this the same energy that, turned against
the Earth, is destroying the very life-support systems and rapidly destroying
the conditions that makes complex life possible. The fires that consume the
Amazon are the very same fires that burned 9 million witches and I believe
that there can be no solution of our ecological problems unless we
simultaneously address our gender issues.30
Patriarchy, as source, is evidently a special case of long invoked domination transfer themes:
• Human domination and exploitation of humans: It is an extraordinarily widespread
assumption that the impact of humans (or, until recently, of Man!) on the environment, or
creatures or things in it, is a product of that of humans with each other, typically of groups or
classes. In misleadingly brief form, the source is social: Man’s inhumanity to Man; and the
solution correspondingly is social. Unremarkably, this unlikely assumption comes in a variety
of different forms: early, concerning the mistreatment of animals as an (inevitable) spill-over
from mistreatment of humans, recently concerning maltreatment of nature spilling over from, or
being one with, that of women. The fashionable assumption runs, in one form or another, from
Aquinas through Kant to a range of recent trend setters, including Marcuse, Ulich, Passmore,
Bookchin ... and some leading feminists. In particular, it is part of the very meaning of social
ecology, an ideology shaped and championed by Bookchin: ‘ecological problems arise from
deep-seated social problems’.31 On this theme among others, Bookchin simply follows a
prominent trend in social anarchism set by Kropotkin and his contemporary Reclus:
all see that the domination and exploitation of nature by man is but an
extension of the domination of man by man. Thus, ‘Both Kropotkin and
Reclus ... laid the foundations of a radical theory of human ecology.
Ecological despoliation was seen to reflect imbalances in human relationships
—domination of nature thus following from human domination’.... It follows
that if domineering and exploitative human relationships can be avoided in
small-scale decentralised societies then such societies are also best for a
Quoted in Eckersley p.64, who develops and begins to assess patriarchical source themes. For a
more critical assessment see GEF.
See Seed, quoted in GEF; also Salleh (see e.g. EP3).
John Seed’s Workshop Schedule 1992, Rainforest Information Centre, Lismore, 12. 12.91.
Seed’s extravagant identity claims are but a dramatic extension of that popular tendency to
transform comparison and similarity statements into identity claims. Indeed reductionism often
reaches further, with attempted conversion of all relational statements into identity ones, along
with unrelational property claims.
Bookchin sometimes qualifies this central claim, with ‘nearly all present’, e.g. EP3 p.354. But
he is not strictly entitled to any such qualification, given his invariant theme that the domination
of nature always results from die humans domination ot other humans (see e.g. Clark EP3,
p.346). The text EP3 contains a big section providing a useful introduction to social ecology.
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harmonious man-nature relationship.32
Domination and exploitation of one division by another can in turn be seen as a case of
dualism at work, between the one, the dominator or dominating class, and the other, the
dominated.
• A snare of dualisms. Environmental problems derive from operation of a set of connected
ideologically-entrenched and defective dualisms.33
• Modern educational systems: Roots of environmental problems lie in educational systems.
Or if roots don't, solutions do. However, roots of environmental or social problems do not lie in
educational systems. Parts of their solutions may however. For education is critical, for
instance, in correcting insufficient adherence to established satisfactory arrangements, such as,
so it is claimed, Enlightenment ideals or traditional ethical systems.34 Therewith we are
transported full circle back to defective practice answers.
4. Commentary on, and objections to, proposed answers
A main part of this exercise consists in a detailed critical commentary on the entries in the
main tabulation, and on proposals like them. Small beginnings are made on the exercise, in two
stages reflecting the major division in the main tabulation.
D.
Defective practice answers tend to come from those who presume we are already in
possession of adequate theories, or what approximates them or supplies main elements of them.
(Such answers are also more liable to emanate from conservatives, opposed to new or radical
theories, advanced on the basis of inadequacy of prevailing theories in practice.)
Defective practice answers are especially popular in economic reaches. There was a time,
perhaps not past yet, when all market failures in the shape of negative externalities were passed
off as unintended consequences of economic activity. While outputs or “consequences” such
matters as pollution certainly are, unintended they mostly are not now, without emptying
‘unintended’ of its normal sense. For example, industrialists, apprised of conservation laws and
unsurprised by polluted wastes, who dump their waste where and when regulators and waste
watchers are not looking, can hardly pretend that that output is an unintended consequence of
their industry. That should now be a bad joke.
Accordingly new green economics insists that we dig deeper—without however
exceeding economic settings—to discover why markets may foreseeably fail and why
environmentally rectifying technology is not delivered.35 Where they usually arrive, travelling
32
33
34
35
Pepper p.192, with internal quotation from Breitbart. Unfortunately it is all too evident, given
humans could so socially organise, that they could setde into harmonious small-scale
communities which retained but little of pristine natural environments.
Such a proposition, outlined in V. and R. Routley, obtains a much fuller elaboration within
Plumwood. In an interesting way, such a proposal can hardly be wrong, given the conclusion
reached below that a set of defective paradigms in at work. For evidently paradigms can be
covered by dualisms, represented by set of diem in each case, somewhat as numbers can be
represented in binary terms, generated from a basic two-oneness duality.
Thus Passmore, Attfield, and others. For a critical assessment of education, see Sylvan and
Bennett.
Thus e.g. Jacobs, p.24.
�a
15
within such unduly confined settings, is, like welfare economics before green, at better
regulated markets, with business set as before within frameworks of plans and incentives,
controls and penalties. Environmentally, however, such approaches do not reach very deep, or
tap into underlying paradigmatic problem-sources.
But these sorts of defective practice answers do not always derive from standard
economic sources. A deviation-style answer is much favoured by Marxists to explain failure,
environmental and other, of the former Soviet Union and other Eastern block countries; namely
that true Marxism was not practiced. Unfortunately, even if it had been, environmental
consequences would be no better, given the heavy industrial commitments and environmental
shallowness, at best, of true Marxism.36 Differently, enlightenment liberals like Passmore try
to ascribe failures in Western environmental practice, not to any deficiencies in mainstream
theory, but to deviation from well established principles. Unfortunately adherence to these
“well established principles” is just one way in which the Earth will lose what remains of its
wilderness and remarkable diversity.
Now there are no doubt cases, past especially but also present, some resulting
(collectively) in extensive environmental degradation, where defective practice answers may be
correct. For example, there is harrowing case after harrowing case (brought together in texts
like Topsoil and Civilization ) of degradation of prime agricultural lands by imposed farming
practices, where at least early on (before damage became visible) ignorance and unintended
consequences could be legitimately claimed. In most historical cases we do not have enough
information to be able to say with much assurance that agriculture proceeded until effective
collapse because of continuing ignorance, or because practices were locked-in in one way or
another, or because of sheer obduracy. But we do know more about present agricultural
practices, for example in more arid parts of Australia, concerning both irrigated and dry-land
agriculture.
Many of these practices are undoubtedly sharply degrading lands, and the
consequences of the practices, which cannot plead or pretend ignorance, are sufficiently
appreciated.
But the practices persist, and are encouraged by a sweep of subsidies or
concessions. No doubt some of the practitioners can reasonably claim that they are locked into
bad practices through circumstance, circumstances now beyond their control such as financial
pressures, unfavourable terms-of-trade, and so on, coupled with the need to make a living. But
some, such as companies controlling large tracts of land, can make no such claims or excuses,
nor can claim such things as family precedence, attachment to place, and similar. Their
obdurate practice has to be attributed to something else, most obviously not deviation from
theory, but commitment to an environmentally defective paradigm.
P.
Dealing with defective paradigm answers is an even more complex, and vexed,
36
It is surprising how much of the practice of later Socialist states is prefigured in texts like The
Communist Manifesto. Thus “industrial armies” are to be set up; credit, communications and
transport are to become state monopolies; “migrants and rebels” are to have dieir property
confiscated; and so on. All this runs contrary to much Marxist apologetics (as A. Urquhart, who
made those points, also observed).
�16
business. Let us try to condense main matters to a few themes:
1.
Many of the (incomplete) paradigms listed are not even sufficient for environmental
impasses. They may be seriously mistaken, they may have undesirable intellectual and perhaps
social effects, but a society could persist sustainably with those drawbacks. Thus, for example,
substance metaphysics (under modified Spinozism), dualisms, even patriarchy. The same
might even hold for materialism and mechanism, (assuming these practices can be coherently
made out, that depending on how differentiated ideologies and values are accommodated, and
so forth).
To illustrate: a metaphysics, of any sort, cannot be the whole story, because it does not,
on it own, account for action, anti-environmental or other. Without special bridges from
metaphysics to value-intricating action theory, a sort of naturalistic fallacy operates. Thus
subverted, in essentially Hume’s way, are all the vulgar sources of environmental problems
which take them as derived from metaphysics.
2.
While several—not just one—of the paradigms listed are sufficient—in the right
circumstances (given long historical development, accumulation, and so on37)—none are
necessary. Similar impasses could arise, and locally have arisen, given significantly different
paradigms;
for example given, instead of main Western trouble-making paradigms,
Confucianism or advanced Polynesianism.
At this stage in dialectic, green history or ecohistory, and related virtual histories, enter
decisively. Ponting's Green History of the World begins with a graphic account of the rise and
ecological fall of Easter Island under the impact of Polynesian projects. The work also
conveniently documents many other examples, well-known to biohistorians, of ecological
degradation or collapse, far from the influence of Western paradigms. An important example
(much less speculative than some of the examples because of a comparative wealth of primary
documentation) outlines the destruction of accessible Chinese ecosystems under Confucian
dynasties. What several of these examples also reveal is that no very high level of technology
is needed to inflict serious environmental damage; persistence in pursuit of an ideological
project (with nothing directly to do with basic needs) will suffice.
Other cultures did, or would have (given the technology and numbers), wrecked similar
damage. For instance, deforestation, salination, megafaunal elimination, and so on, were well
established before rise of modem Western paradigms, or in regions outside their influence.
3.
The list of paradigms, as so far presented, is entirely Western in orientation. Moreover
environmental woes are regularly ascribed to Western sources — wrongly. For non-Western
paradigms have led, or would lead given the opportunities (including access to the
technologies), to outcomes as undesirable as under dominant Western paradigm. Witness
37
While it is easy to imagine ineffectual or incompetent tribes which live benignly
environmentally, by just muddling along, under even the worst of paradigms, that is not really to
the point. A pertinent tribe needs to have developed the structure which leads to problems, to
have the means, and so on.
�17
again Confucianism, for instance, and its role and influence in Asian regions. Confucianism
incorporates human chauvinism par excellence (as well as, some might say, Chinese
chauvinism).38 Or Islam, with its reach across the Middle East.
The main tabulation (of table 3) should accordingly be extended to take due account of
non-Westem paradigms, including for example:
Other Abrahamic religions
Islam
(Judaism
Confucianism
Shintoism
Polynesianism, at least in advanced forms as on Easter Island.
What is “Western” is tending to blur also. Is Judaism Western, how western, or Islam? There
is also a tendency to suppose that more Western religions, Abrahamic religions, with their
intense monotheism, are significantly ideologically worse than non-Westem. But the contrasts
are different and much more complex than that. A better divide is into monistic and pluralistic.
Even so, many undesirable social and environmental features are incorporated in or encouraged
by religious pluralisms from the Indian subcontinent.
4.
All the single paradigm answers are inadequate, all are too simple. Even so some are
less inadequate than others. It is the same, more or less, for the combined answers, often to be
encountered. For generally they represent but one thin cross-section of Western paradigms.
While all the single one-source one-shot paradigmatic answers, occur on their own, often
they are combined. For instance, although Descartes is often cited as a villain, more often
criticism of Cartesianism is combined with criticism of other concurrent ideological elements,
such as Baconian empiricism (less incompatibly, Drengson, for one, regularly combines
criticism of the technocratic paradigm with criticism of Cartesianism—though Descartes, for all
his rich and appalling thought, contributed little to the rise of technocratic organisation.)
Similarly Hargrove combines Greek philosophy, as original source, with modern rationalism
and much else.
5. Towards a more satisfactory explanation.
Not only are the paradigmatic roots seriously intertangled (because of connections of one
paradigm with another, because for instance of heavy philosophical inputs into religious
paradigms), but further there is not a single defective paradigm. Rather there is a family or
sheaf of paradigms, commitment to any of which, or any suitable combination of which, in
requisite circumstances, appears to have yielded environmentally untoward outcomes (requisite
circumstances including availability of technology, extent of social support, and so on). Within
that plurality there are of course gradations—and not only gradations but major differences—in
calibre, in environmental friendliness. A Cartesianism which regards animals as mere auto
38
Its net of effects extends widely. Consider, e.g., the role of Chinese medicine in decline of large
fauna.
�18
mata incapable of feeling genuine pain, is significantly worse as regards other life-forms and
their decent treatment than a utilitarianism which positively values animal sentience.
The family is not exclusively Western, or Northern, though (through colonialism and
cultural imperialism) paradigm of these sorts now predominate. Paradigms and cultures of less
“advanced” and third world communities have also operated to enhance environmental
vandalism and degradation locally and regionally.
Industrialization and technological advance are, without doubt, what have inflated
environmental problems from rather localised ones, damaging islands and river catchments, to
grander and global ones. They are the engines, powerhouses, of major problems/9
They did not however run on their own, nor do they continue on their own. Such engines
were not designed and built, fuelled and tended, independently.39
40 They evolved primarily in
the specially favoured culture of capitalism, though parallel developments could have occurred,
and later did, in other prepared and heavily controlled surroundings, such as state socialism.
Now however these engines have been rendered more reliable and less dependent on careful
cultural support, and have been transferred to run in less favourable settings.
TABLE 4: Connected continuing sources of global environmental problems
Transfer
of technology,
industry and
problems to
other regions
Inflation
intensification
and spread of
problems to
larger regions
Technologicalindustrial
development
within
ideological
cultural
framework
development
within another ,
\ or different /
• framework
/
Multiple
sources
of
various regional
problems
39
40
The picture of development of environmental problems preferred accordingly bears passing
resemblance to that now tendered for development of the early Universe, where a source event,
the Big Bang, was followed by a huge inflationary phenomenon. Naturally the resemblance has
limitations; for instance, universe inflation is not terrestrially replicable in the way
industrialization now is (hired or delivered off the shelf, pollution problems and all, with a big
price tag).
Lacking such favourable ideological surroundings, earlier technological “break throughs were
not duly developed: thus early wheels, steam engines, gunpowder, etc.
�19
Even if the whole “West” went into a terminal decline, and its paradigms disappeared into
history, serious environmental exploitation and degradation would continue, driven by other
cultures. For instance, the West could collapse through protracted war, through choking on its
own toxic wastes, or whatever (there are many routes to catastrophic decline, outlined for
instance in “Limits to Growth” scenarios, that could differentially impact on the West).
Degradation would now continue, however; there would be only temporary respite from
environmental crises.
While most of the problems, awfully aggregated in contemporary environmental crises,
are produced or accelerated by — what connects them — contemporary industrial society, not
all environmental problems are or have been of this sort. But many of the other problems, such
as destruction of rainforests by itinerant peasants, can be seen as by-products, or similar; thus,
in the example, the peasants displaced by agribusiness, absentee wealth-holders or similar,
arrived there on industrially-made roads opening the forests, and often wrecked this damage
using industrial machinery.
An environmental friendly culture has to be much more critical concerning certain types
of industrialization, and much more selective regarding technology than present dominant
cultures, Western or non-Westem. While there are such paradigms, on the ideas market, they
mostly lack sophisticated contemporary elaboration.
Examples of more friendly paradigms, that do not lead of themselves to massive
environmental problems and crises include those now tabulated:
TABLE 5: Examples, several flawed, of environmentally friendly paradigms.
Oriental ideologies:
Taoism (classical)
Jainism
recessive traditions,
now with tiny
followings and little
political influence.
Indigenous cultures:
Australian Aboriginals (e.g. Aranda)
Amazonian Indians, etc.
Western philosophies:
old
Stoicism
Spinozism
new
Deep green theories, such as deep ecology.
under certain
favourable
interpretations
Given the remoteness of most of these examples from contemporary life, and difficulties with
their wide adaptability, it is a short step to a familiar conclusion that new paradigms need to be
worked out. Much more intellectual effort should be devoted to such enterprise.
What we have arrived at, then, is a rough classification of paradigms into two large
�20
families: environmentally friendly and unfriendly. No doubt there is a fuzzy residue class
(neither, and perhaps both).
DIAGRAM 6: Broad environmental division of paradigms.
To questions as to why agents adhere, or continue to adhere, to environmentally unfriendly
paradigms, the answers are likewise plural, and diverse (and some match answers in Table 3).
Reasons are psychological, social and cultural (with circularity here encountered), and include
considerations of the following sorts and others: because that is how things are done, or have
always been done; because needs can be met, perhaps only met, in that way, so it is believed;
because there are no alternatives, or none seen, perhaps because none have been sought;
because negative outcomes can be overcome, or do not really matter; and so on.
It is not difficult to indicate, more or less, which paradigms will, if duly, diligently or
religiously practiced, lead to environmental problems and impasse.
Some family
characteristics, then, of unfriendly paradigms:
* Combination effects, illustrated through Leibnitzianism. Any which guarantees satisfaction
of all or enough elements of the consumption impact equation, and so would generate excessive
impacts. To illustrate, consider what might be called Leibnitzianism, in honour of Leibnitz
(though Leibnitz's fragmentary work did not initiate any genuine historic school). Leibnitz was
heavily committed to all of human population growth, unfettered technological advance, and
human lifestyles of consumption, in short, to precisely those factors that combine in the impact
recipe to produce excessive human impacts upon environments. There is fair evidence for these
contentions. First, Leibnitz was an early exponent of utilitarianism, indeed he was all-round an
enthusiastic maximizer. From his formulation of utilitarianism, he drew an immediate obvious
corollary: the directive to increase human population (maximizing on aggregate human pleasure
is most obviously achieved by production of more happy humans, other aspects of which
technology and affluence can assure).41 Secondly, Leibnitz was a technology enthusiast; he
was heavily committed to the developments and use of scientific technology, for which he had
all sorts of schemes (e.g. the characteristic universalis intended to encapsulate all of knowledge
in an accessible useable form, a complete calculus duly mechanised, as well as numerous
technological projects.42). Thirdly, he was committed to an affluent lifestyle for himself and
(through symmetry and basic assumptions of utilitarianism) for others. For his own part, he
For Leibnitz’s anticipation of utilitarianism, see Hruschka. For Leibnitz’s immediate application
of the principle, to support human population increase, see p.172.
‘Leibnitz's interest in machinery is illustrated by his complicated plan to drain the Harz mines,
which involved the construction of a new type of windmill, and a virtually friction-free pump’,
Cottingham p.193. For a detailed account of Leibnitz’s extensive entrepreneurial and
technological activities, see Aiton.
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abandoned an academic career at an obscure German university ‘in favour of the more active
and lucrative pursuits of the courtier and diplomat’ and, so it turned out, the bright lights of
major European cities and grand tours of Europe.43
Leibnitz has sometimes been accounted environmentally friendly. Some of that apparent
friendliness was due to scholastic conservativism. Thus he was opposed to mechanism; he was
sympathetic to the organic and teleological, which did not contract to isolated human and
superhuman loci. His metaphysical theory of monads, which are centres of living energy,
effectively distributed life everywhere, though not equally. Harmony and order too prevailed
throughout the universe, though under God's maximizing management, the presence of which
they duly established! But even this life-expanding harmonious order, variants of which are
now familiar from Whiteheadian and deep ecological quarters, was not as benign as it has
superficially appeared.
Leibnitz supposed that, by virtue of pre-established harmony and final causes governing
inevitable progress, humans would not go wrong in the longer term in their environmental
activities, that they could not 'cumulatively make undesirable changes in nature’.44 Leibnitz
joyfully foresaw more and more of the Earth coming under cultivation, and its long-term
advancement to a complete intensive garden, even if there were occasional relapses where parts
deteriorated back temporarily towards wild state. Leibnitz even criticised Cartesianism, now
widely regarded as prime villain of the environmental piece, as failing ‘to provide the modal
stimulus .... to the control of nature’ ... ‘to scientific advance’. The idea of control, advancing
to total control, total management, is prophesized in Leibnitz (in a sort of chauvinistic Gaia
hypothesis). He saw ‘order as progressively increasing, with the help of man [as] a finisher of
nature. He boldly applauded the idea of progress to the earth as a unit, assuming both an
orderliness on earth and an orderliness in the changes it had undergone by man’.45 No doubt
Leibnitz’s lifestyle commitments need not (and may not) be reflected in his philosophy, which
may have independent environmental merit, for example as stimulation or input for later
developments. There is unfortunately little evidence that that is so. Nonetheless, substantial
fragments of Leibnitz’s philosophy do admit environmental bending and adaptation, in a way
that Descartes’ philosophy does not at all easily.
An important corollary does emerge: that a promising new metaphysics is no panacea for
improved environmental performance or paradigms. Not merely neutral metaphysics, but even
positive metaphysics, such as certain organic and process theories, are compatible with, and can
be coupled with, damaging social theories and life-styles. It is almost enough to consider the
theories, practices and lifestyles of Aristotle, Leibnitz and Whitehead.46
43
44
45
46
Cottingham p.24, p.26.
Glacken p.478. As he remarks, these bold assumptions made by Leibnitz have proved wrong.
Glacken p.506.
Leibnitz’s standing in die history of philosophy is somewhat curious. His main achievement,
setting aside his reputation as an intellectual wizard with lots of ideas, appears to be spasmodic
work upon a beautiful ruin, an incomplete (and incompletable) metaphysics, of which only
�22
* Direct untoward effects, illustrated through Cartesianism and Confucianism, or indeed any
system which attributes little or no value to natural items, and perhaps much value to nature
transforming or interfering human (or elite) projects. So it is with Confucianism, which is
entirely human focussed. ‘Centering his attention on man in his present life, Confucius had as
his goal the achievement of a good society characterized by harmonious social relations.’47
The outside world, the nature environment, was of no moral significance. It mattered only
instrumentally, to humans. Descartes went further. Human bodies too were automata, complex
machinery. ‘The exception is [mind, or specifically] thought, and its external manifestation
language: this alone cannot be explained mechanistically—a thesis which leads Descartes to
assert a fundamental divide between human beings and “the beasts”’.48 The remaining world,
the natural environment—lacking humanity, thought, mind—was again of no moral
significance. It possessed derivatively only what value and meaning humans, or minds, chose
to confer or project upon it.
Since, either way, any way, a natural environment devoid of humans had no thoughts,
purposes or interests, no value or meaning of its own, it could not matter what happened to it.
It could be regarded, justifiably, as nothing but a reservoir of resources for humans.49
Cartesians drew just such conclusions; similar conclusions derive from Platonism and
Pentecostalism, and are implicit at least in Confucianism. Descartes again went further. His
practices and methods, like those of Bacon, were ‘aimed at making men the masters and
possessors of nature’.50
* devaluation of natural items as against human elements or artefacts (typically exhibiting
human chauvinism);51 as a corollary,
* entitlement to domination, dominion over nature;
* short-term framework;
* maximization assumptions, coupled with grand projects.
Family characteristic of friendly paradigms will tend to invert (in effect negate) these
features. An environmentally friendly paradigm can be expected to yield environmentally
significant corollaries, such as:
* an end to degrading primary production, wherever it prevails.
47
48
49
50
51
Instead ecological forestry
tantalizing fragmentary structures were ever available.
It is not even as if there is a surviving supply of challenging bad arguments that can be put
before baffled students, as with Descartes and Berkeley for instance.
Reese p. 102.
Cottingham p.15. The utter invalidity of Descartes' argument to this divide (cited by
Cottingham) is now comparatively easy to expose, given almost 400 years of hindsight. There
are no such status divides. See further Appendix 2.
Borrowing some nice phraseology from F. Mathews.
See Discourse VI.
Shallow will work out only with right mix ol humans. But in any case, it is implausible. An
appealing ecological dieorem insinuates itself hereabouts: Given certain conditions (such as
short-term vision, techno-fix, ...), shallowness is necessary and sulficient for environmental
crisis.
�23
and ecological agriculture will come to prevail.
• a calling off of grand ideologically-grounded projects, interfering with or damaging natural
environments, such as major dams, river diversions, demolished islands (e.g. for airports), new
mountains, terraforming, extensive rainmaking, climatic interference, and generally the sweep
of “playing God” projects. A little of this sort of technology can go a very long way.
A short answer can now be ventured to the focal questions: Because most agents are
bound to (locked into, committed to, or captively go along with) environmentally unfriendly
paradigms. As a result the (long-term) health of the rest of environments does not matter, or
matter enough.
6. Resulting unfavourable report on dominant philosophy.
It will hardly have escaped notice that virtually all dominant philosophical roads lead to
Rome, to environmentally unfriendly paradigms.
Stripped of metaphor, there are
environmental conditions of adequacy, which most philosophical systems fail to meet In an
environmentally friendly new world, most philosophy that is remembered, indeed most of the
humanities, is destined for scrapping. Prevailing philosophy is a serious impediment to
satisfactory environmental outcomes. Philosophy, not just Western philosophy, has by and
large been bad environmental news.52 It has supplied, or mightily assisted in supplying, main
unfriendly paradigms under which environments labour. Of course not everything has to be
tipped; much can be salvaged, arguments, subtheories and so on (and with intellectual tipping
there need be little material waste). Nor therefore is it as if an entirely fresh start has to be
made. As well as salvaged bits and pieces (which need to be carefully tested for soundness),
there are recessive paradigms and neglected traditions to look to for suggestions, and
inspiration, and perhaps to rehabilitate.
Richard Sylvan*
via Bungendore, OZ.
APPENDIX 1. Dominant philosophy has aided and abetted ruination of terrestrial
environments.
That dominant intellectual paradigms are dismal news for deep (nonchauvinistic)
environmental theory has been previously argued, in contraposed form.53 More recently
Hargrove has investigated, in detail, negative implications of the main philosophical tradition
53
It may be insisted that philosophy can make no difference, for instance to environmental
practice. It is not an expression of basic needs, or of any such practical matters. Exceptions to
such practical bravado have however to be recognised almost immediately; philosophy soon
enters for organizational, justificatory and explanatory ends. That concession still grossly under
estimates the extent to which ideas, and more generally paradigms, influence and even govern
action and practice, especially reflective and rational action.
On the substantial point, not dierefore removed through the alleged practical impotence ot
philosophy, see Appendix 1.
An earlier version of this article was presented at die Environmental Paradigms Conference,
University of New England, Armidale, April 93. It would not have been written otherwise.
Notably at the end of EE, pp. 188-9.
�24
for environmental theory and practice, especially/or environmental attitudes concerned with
nature and creature preservation, with nature appreciation and development of a proper
ecological perspective.54 However Hargrove has ventured some of his particularly challenging
themes in insufficiently careful form, thereby leaving himself unnecessarily vulnerable to
criticism and counter-claims. These include the criticisms assembled by Attfield, who, though
not unsympathetic to Hargrove’s case, has excessively weakened the themes. For example,
what Attfield presents as ‘substantially correct’ is Hargrove’s ‘verdict that the history of
philosophy has discouraged preservationist attitudes’, vastly less than Hargrove’s actual
negative verdict which comprehended considerably more than just “preservationist attitudes”,
and recorded a situation conspicuously worse than mere “discouragement” of nature and
creature preservation, as well as much else. Indeed it is worse than Hargrove has charged;
Hargrove’s indictment of mainstream philosophy is itself weaker than that here ventured, which
takes mainstream philosophy as thoroughly implicated in the present escalating environmental
mess, through its roles as a major source and supplier of operative ideas and paradigms.
There is a single qualification, invoked incidentally by Attfield himself, that would
remove much of Attfield’s criticism: a restriction to mainstream philosophy (or differently, to
dominant philosophy). Consider Attfield’s exceptions to ‘the adverse impacts of Western
philosophy’, those alleged ‘philosophical traditions that have encouraged taking nature
seriously’. Firstly, insofar as the Church Fathers, medieval Christians and others Attfield
alludes to are philosophers at all, they are entirely minor figures, unlikely to be known to many
philosophers, and but rarely or never referred to in regular philosophy courses; they do not form
part of mainstream philosophy.55 Secondly, these minor figures do not afford the clear support
for his claims that Attfield has regularly assumed.56 Many of the statements supposed to offer
support are ambivalent, or environmentally dubious, supporting some form of managerialism
(e.g. perfectionism or stewardship); and in any case they have to be set against the remainder of
what a figure says and does (so far as can be ascertained). After all, as regards the latter matter,
there are isolated claims in major philosophers (Plato is regularly cited in this regard) which
may make them appear environmentally aware and even sympathetic.
Although Plato’s philosophy generally suggests that he neither knew or cared
about environmental problems, one passage in the Critias shows that he was
very much aware of at least one problem: the effect of deforestation on soil
See e.g. Hargrove, p.21.
Consider the sorts of exceptions:
• minor philosophers, many of whom we know very little about, outside gossip and speculation,
such as Ilieophrastus, early Stoics, and lesser Epicureans.
• figures who are only secondarily or marginally philosophers, such as Hooke, Boyle, Ray and
Evelyn.
• medieval and early modem Christians, who typically are not significant philosophers, and
were usually committed not the nature preservation and the like, but to nature management or
perfection.
In work referred to on p. 127. The main historical claims, many of them based on secondary
sources, are stated in his The Ethics of Environmental Concern A more detailed criticism of
these claims will be made elsewhere.
�25
♦
quality in Greece during his own lifetime.57
Unfortunately Hargrove does but a comparatively poor job in accounting for what he
alleges, Plato’s indifference and lack of ecological concern.58 The reasons for Plato’s
indifference to serious ecological degradation of forests and soils in Greece can be ascribed to
a combination of several elements of Plato’s philosophy (a natural-world-dismissive ideology)
including: elevation of transcendental forms as what was truly real and really of value,
denigration and dismissal of the everyday natural world as utterly inferior, of entirely lower
existence or even illusory and certainly not of rational concern. This dualistic ontology and
axiology—a wonderfully valuable world of forms standing in complete contrast with the
illusory material world of perception—was supplemented and reinforced by a corresponding
epistemology. Under a tripartite theory of mind, the higher rational part, which gave epistemic
access to the forms, a part exhibited only by humans and more elevated beings, was sharply
separated from the two lower animal parts. Thus under Plato’s conception of the human,
humans and especially the important rational component of the human, stood in opposition to
nature; the distinctively human task is completely separate from nature and concerned with
control of it and its unruly elements. It is because what really has value—rational selves
cavorting among the forms—is separate from nature, transcending it, with nature at best
comprising very inferior copies, of lower existence, that it does not matter what happens to the
earth and earthly things, to mere matter, that is a matter of indifference. 59
APPENDIX 2. On the prominent roles of dominant philosophy in the inferiorization and
mistreatment of (mere) animals.
Although the attitudes concerned reach back to antiquity, and were rationalized in
classical Greek philosophy (through a theory of separate parts, “highest” of which was a soul or
rational component), the whole appalling affair was given an enormous stimulus by Cartesian
philosophy.
Descartes cherished a scheme
for a purely mechanistic science of physiology. Descartes compares the
human body to an ‘automaton’ and argues that had we sufficient knowledge
of the structure of its working parts we could explain even highly complex
behavioural responses in purely mechanical terms. The exception is thought,
and its external manifestation, language: this leads Descartes to assert a
fundamental divide between human beings and ‘the beasts’:
There are no men so dull-witted or stupid—and this includes even madmen—
that they are incapable of arranging various words together and forming an
utterance in order to make their thoughts understood, whereas no animal,
however perfect, can do the like. This is not because they lack the necessary
organs, for we see that magpies and parrots can utter words as we do, and yet
cannot speak as we do (i.e. show that they are thinking what they are saying).
By contrast, even men born deaf and dumb, and thus deprived of speech organs
as much as the beasts, or more so, normally invent their own signs to make
59
Hargrove, p.29.
This sort of problem arises not merely in regard to Plato, as Attfield observes, with decided
relish. There is little doubt but that Hargrove’s historical excess needs to be sharpened and much
elaborated, and, in some critical areas, rectified.
On this classical polarisation of nature and higher humanity, see Plumwood.
�26
themselves understood ... This shows that the beasts do not merely have less
reason than man, but have no reason at all ...^®
These sorts of considerations have been immensely influential in establishing a received
fundamental ontological divide, not merely between humans and (other) animals, but between
humans and nature. But, as we should now appreciate, they are all subtly, or less subtly, astray,
and do not sustain the conclusion drawn.
Firstly, investigation reveals internal incoherence. No men are incapable of stringing
words together and forming utterances, yet many men are so incapable, not least those who are
dumb. As his differential objective demands, Descartes exaggerates what those bom deaf and
dumb may do—they do not ‘normally invent their own signs’, but may painstakingly learn a
sign language—by contrast with ‘the beasts’. But, as we are now learning, many animals,
whose organs are not well adapted to speech, can also painstakingly learn sign language.
Indeed they may communicate by signs and sounds (though not usually speech) “in the wild”.
There is no sharp cut-off, such as a fundamental divide presumes, between creatures that can, or
do, communicate by signs and sounds, and those who cannot, or do not.
Secondly, even less is there a significant boundary between those that can understand
inputs and reason, and those that cannot, or do not.
None of reasoning, thought and
understanding are inextricably or inexorably tied to speech, nor, more broadly, to language.60
61
For example, dogs, whose speech is rather limited (though they certainly communicate,
including to humans, by a range of different sounds, as well as signs), can understand and
respond to several hundred commands and the like (that is, to a number of the same order as the
vocabulary of basic languages). As for reasoning, the problem-solving capabilities of many
sorts of animals, especially laboratory rats, are now well (even excessively, for primal comfort)
documented.
Regrettably, Descartes has not been on his own, or out on an exceptional limb. Virtually
all past great philosophers insisted, if not on an unbridgeable gap, certainly on a difference in
kind of supreme philosophical importance, between humans and other animals. Only Hume
afforded a conspicuous exception to unedifying philosophical orthodoxy. Worse with other
supposedly fundamental divides, such as that partitioning off nonsentients, there appear to have
been no exceptions. The world was and is sharply divided, so it was and is imagined, into fixed
inflexible categories. Furthermore, despite Hume, Cartesian inputs have persisted, for instance
in the widespread philosophical idea—running contrary to an enormous body of evidence—that
animals have no interests, preferences or intentions, that they receive no satisfaction from what
they do or choose to do, and so on.
Cartesianism certainly assisted, not merely in changing philosophical method importantly,
60
61
Cottingham, Three Rationalists, p.15, also quoting Descartes.
For this reason, the “language of thought” conception, pervading much cognitive science, is
decidedly regressive. Nor is it necessary: combinatorial operations, which can perform a fine
representational job, provide an improved replacement for such a “language”: see DP chapter
11.
�27
but in altering metaphysics irrevocably, above all as regards human place in nature. As an
outcome of rectified method,
Philosophy, including physical science, becomes in Descartes a selfcontained discipline, guided by the light of reason; it has no need to be
supplemented by revelation, scripture, or ecclesiastic teaching.62
As to the new physics and its outcome in metaphysics,
despite a certain amount of judicious fudging over whether the earth ‘really’
moves, Descartes was firmly committed to the new Copernican cosmology,
whereby the Earth is dethroned from its central position. The Earth is simply
a planet, it has the same status as Mars and Saturn—‘bodies we do not make
so much of’... . What is more, the sun itself is only one star among
innumerable others, each of which is the centre of its own celestial ‘vortex’.
Descartes [rightly] saw all this as having important implications for human
life. The universe, as conceived of in medieval and scholastic cosmology,
was one which revealed, in all its details, the purposes of a benevolent
creator. In the words of Paracelsus, writing some hundred years before
Descartes ‘all things belonging to nature exist for the benefit of man’. For
Descartes the vastly expanded size of the post-Copernican universe, the
possibility of innumerable other worlds, and the insignificance of our planet
in comparison with the hugeness of the whole, made it impossible to continue
to regard man as the ‘dearest of God’s creatures’.... The belief that all things
exist for our benefit alone, says Descartes ..., involves a presumptuous view
of our status and a failure to recognize the unlimited vastness of God’s
creation....63
So, in important respects, Cartesianism offered improvements and a way forward.
environmentally. But the message was mixed and muffled, as with that concerning final
causes, hostility to which Descartes justified as a corollary. No doubt final causes were used to
smuggle in divine purposes, specifically God’s special concern for the welfare of humans (no
doubt the Church and Church fathers who engaged in this smuggling were not to be trusted).
However undesirable practices could be weeded out, without eradicating respectable ones.
Over-zealous in just this fashion was the common 17th Century slogan, ‘Abandon final causes
and look for underlying structures’, which affords another example of explanatory skimping.64
Sound methodology can admit both internal structures and final causes.
Nonetheless,
dethroning, relegating or abandoning final causes was a major movement within modern
deanthropocentrization, so far as it has yet proceeded. Lovejoy has highlighted the matter. For,
according to him,
...physico-theological ideas came to rest on the assumption that all other
elements of nature were created for man’s sake, and therefore put man and
nature into an unequal relationship:
Tout est cree pour Thomme is at once the tacit premise and the triumphant
conclusion of that long series of teleological arguments which ... is one of the
62
63
64
Cottingham pp. 176-177. Unfortunately for Descartes’ grand systematic-doubt project, reason
was far from sufficient, and did need supplementation, though not through reinstatement of
established prejudice. Though judiciously shedding some ancient conventional wisdom (e.g.
concerning humans’ privileged control place in nature), Descartes was either forced or else felt
obliged to reinstate much received wisdom, through poorly concealed subterfuges, in order to get
his rationalistic roadshow moving.
Cottingham, ibid.
On the slogan, and the Church, see Cottingham p. 178. On skimping, see DP chapter 11.
�most curious moments of human imbecility.65
APPENDIX 3. On Shepard’s approach to focal questions.
A remarkably sustained investigation of the focal questions is found in Shepard’s books.
In his Nature and Madness, he considers and quickly dismisses many of the stock responses to
focal questions suggested by contemporary luminaries (or by himself in earlier work), such as
lack of information, faulty technique, insensibility, greed, political inertia, change to agriculture
and settlement,66.... He would (and should, for his eliminative argument) have also dismissed
industrialization, state and corporate control, and so on.
More disconcertingly, for present purposes, Shepard claims that ‘a history of ideas’—
similarly no doubt a story of paradigms—will not serve; for it ‘is not enough to explain human
behaviour’ (p.3), it ‘seems too easy and academic’ (p.3), itself an easy and superficial criticism.
But if, for instance, the ‘dictum that nature should serve man’ and ‘insistence that animals feels
no pain’ should become widely entrenched, then they may well impact heavily on practice, as
accordingly appears to be the case. His slight further argument appears to miss the intended
target: ‘The meticulous analysis of these philosophies and the discovery that they articulate an
ethos beg the question’ (p.3). How, it can reasonably be inquired? What is offered is but the
facile, false, ‘ideas are impotent’ consideration, fostered by thinking and operating in terms of
causes (e.g. lower p.3), rather than reasons and (rational) explanation, and encouraged through
an attempted move to (what is explanatorily inadequate) pure behaviour. For a simple example
of the familiar explanatory roles of ideas and paradigms, consider an alternative explanation
through them. The admittedly bizarre (“crazy”) ‘turning everything into something man-made
and [or] man-used’ (p.5) is readily explained through dominant paradigms: that is the way it
acquires value, otherwise it is worthless. There is no need at all for psychopathology here.
Correspondingly Shepard briefly reviews and rejects several of the very partial, and often
hopeless, solutions suggested under stock responses to focal questions such as making
information, or better information, more widely available, bringing people from all walks of
like together, encouraging conviviality, hitting problems with smart technology, practicing
conservation, and so on.
Shepard’s own resolution is more readily reached from a further (meta-focal) question
that he proceeds to ask: why do humans persist in degrading their habitats once sources and
solutions are made transparent? He effectively argues by elimination: other sources (read as
causes) do not succeed in providing an answer; but ‘the idea of a sick society’ (which he leaps
to, without argument, p.4) does. Wrong on both counts: On the first because a non-causal
explanation in terms of ideological wiring can provide answers (listen to politicians,
65
66
Pepper p.44, quoting Lovejoy.
No doubt a popular picture of human social changes with agriculture and settlement ir simplistic:
that before societies lived in harmony, afterwards they did not. But it is also too simple to go on
to claim, as Shepard does, that ‘the economic and material demands of growing villages and
towns are ... not causes but results of this change’ (p.3). Some demands appear to derive from
factors, such as population pressures, which were among causes of the changes.
�29
representative of the people, again, just a little time). On the second because some industrial
societies are not sick in a normal sense (though some may be), rather sickness has to be so
redefined (such low redefinitions are among underlying subplots67) that having certain
ideological commitments that are carried into practice counts as “sickness”.
So it is that Shepard arrives at his theme of ‘general, culturally-ratified distortions of
childhood, of massive disablement of ontogeny as the basis of irrational and self-destructive
attitudes towards the natural environment’ (p.ix). Succinctly, ‘there are profound psychic
dislocation at the root of modem society’ (p.xii). Psychic disorders have evolved: ‘over the
centuries major institutions and metaphysics might finally celebrate attitudes and ideas
originating in the normal context of immaturity [or]... adolescence ...’ (p. 15).
Having glided easily and invalidly to the idea of sick societies, in a mere three pages,
Shepard proceeds to diagnose in more detail the nature of the alleged sickness.68 It supposedly
arises, like other psychopathy with which it is immediately associated, in infancy, and is
manifest in life-long immaturity, with whole societies stuck in a kind of destractive
adolescence. No doubt there is something to some of what Shepard describes in child and
person development (not the ‘private demons’ and so on) or might well have described. There
is evidently, conspicuously in “new world” societies, wide commitment to a shallow juvenile
culture, adulation or imitation of immature media and sport models and flawed authority
figures, marginalization of the elderly, and so on, coupled with hyper-activity, violence and
vandalism. But, like political commitment to extensive economic activity, this is hardly
satisfactorily accounted for through psychopathological reduction, concentrating the whole
social problematic in the ontogeny of individuals.69 A superior explanation to widespread
individual psychic disorder proceeds through ideological commitment, that industrial human
are raised and educated in, inducted into and committed to, defective ideologies without
coming to know or properly experience alternatives.
The ‘portraits of maturity’ alluded to likewise appear individualistic and culture-bound,
resembling those of deep ecology, directed at embroidery of person and self, through personal
For trickery through redefinition of sickness and madness, Wisdom has already prepared us.
Observe that Shepard’s redefinition of sickness to include sick (i.e. debasing and devaluing)
practices with regard to natural habitats (and conjoined therewith, to, older people) does not
leave no contrast classes. For there remain benign ‘relic tribal’ societies, such as the Manus,
Crow and Comanche, Aranda and !Kung San (p.xii), ‘people who feel themselves to be guests
rather than masters’ (p.6 empasis added)—an elegant analogy.
‘The idea of a sick society’, which as Shepard confesses (on p.4) is hardly new, is reached on the
third page of the main text.
A psychopathic reduction is in part made plausible by reexpression in medical or psychological
terms of what would better be otherwise expressed. Consider, for instance the language of the
following clever paragraph, which infiltrates much with no argument:
‘The person himself is, of course, caught between his inner calendar and the surgeries of
society. His momentum for further growth may be twisted or amputated according to the
hostilities, fears, or fantasies required of him, as his retardation is silently engineered to
domesticate his integrity or to allow him to share in the collective dream of mastery (p.16).
But the trapping of agents between inner directives and social conditions and demands, or
between rival ideologies, can be retold in different, less medical and metaphorical terms.
�30
growth and identity, wider identification and relatedness, self-realization.70 They are not
exactly those of older and ecologically wiser societies. They do not reveal ecologically mature
mixed communities.
Furthermore, comparisons with relic tribal societies, which are important, can be
decoupled from psychopathological analysis and reduction. Different lifeways, commitments
and ideologies, are what they are and do not all reduce to matters of mental health.
Undoubtedly we can learn of and from these different societies. We can still witness ‘smallgroup, leisured, foraging life-ways with[in] natural surroundings.... there is the rub—... for us,
now, that world no longer exists’ (p. 14 rearranged). Nor is it really true that such a world is no
longer accessible to most of us; more leisured small-group ways can be retrieved, some natural
surrounding can even now be restored.
In a curious fashion, Shepard has managed to invert likely causal relations. While a
certain interaction can no doubt be conceded, it is not so much human ill-health that is leading
to environmental degradation, but rather environmental degradation, generally brought about
for other reasons, that is increasingly leading to human ill-health, and in the longer term causing
erosion of life-support systems.
REFERENCES
E.J. Aiton, Leibnitz A Biography, Adam Hilger, Bristol, 1985.
R. Attfield, ‘Has the history of philosophy ruined the environment?’ Environmental Ethics
13(1991) 127-137.
A. Bellett, ‘The evaluation of values compatible with ecological sustainability’, Fundamental
Questions Papers, No.2 CRES, Australian National University, 1990.
J. Callicott, ‘Genesis and John Muir’ Re Vision 12(3) (1990) 31-41.
J. Cottingham, The Rationalists, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1988.
C. Dale, V.G. Carter, Topsoil and Civilization, Rev ed. Norman; University of Oklahama Press,
1974.
A Dobson, Green Reader, Routledge, London, 1991?
A. Drengson, ‘Ecosophy’, Positive Vibrations, (1990?) 8-10.
R. Eckersley, Environmentalism and Political Theory, UCL Press, London, 1992.
A. Gare, Beyond European Civilization, Eco-logical Press, Bun gendore, 1993.
C.J. Glacken, Traces on the Rhodian Shore, University of California Press, Berkeley, 1967.
E.C. Hargrove, Foundations of Environmental Ethics, Prentice Hall, N.J., 1989.
J. Hruschka, ‘The greatest happiness principle and other early German anticipations of
utilitarian theory’, Utilitas 3(2)(1991) 165-177
M. Jacobs, The Green Economy, Pluto, London, 1991.
Cf pp.12-14. Likewise there is a conservative underlay, more oppressive than that of deep
ecology: insistence on ‘one particular mother’ (p.7) even suggestion of unsatisfactoriness in
‘taking mothers off to work’ (p.l5)!
�31
A. McLaughlin, Regarding Nature'. Industrialism and Deep Ecology SUNY Press, Albany
N.Y., 1993.
F. Mathews, The Ecological Self, Bames and Noble, Maryland, 1991.
J. Passmore, Man’s Responsibility for Nature, Duckworth, London, 1974
D. Pearce and others, Blueprintfor a Green Economy, Earthscan Publications, London, 1989.
D. Pepper, The Roots of Modern Environmentalism, Ed: Tom Colveson London; Dover N.H.
Croom Helm 1984.
V. Plumwood, Feminism and the Master of Nature, Routledge, London, 1993.
C. Ponting, A Green History of the World, Sinclair-Stevenson, London, 1991.
V. and R. Routley, The Fight for the Forests, RSSS, Australian National University, 1973;
referred to as FF.
R. and V. Routley, ‘Social themes, self-management and environmental problems’, in
Environmental Philosophy (eds. D. Mannison and others) RSSS, Australian National
University, 1980.
R. and V. Routley ‘Human chauvinism and environmental ethics’, in Environmental
Philosophy (eds. D. Mannison and others), RSSS Australian National University, 1980;
referred to as EE.
R. Routley, ‘Roles and limits of paradigms in environmental thought and action’, Discussion
papers in environmental philosophy #1, RSSS, Australian National University, 1982.
P. Shephard, Nature and Madness, Sierra Club Books, San Francisco, 1982.
R. Sylvan and D. Bennett, The Greening of Ethics, White Horse Press, Cambridge, 1994.
R. Sylvan with D. Bennett, Of Utopias, Tao and Deep Ecology, Green Series #19, RSSS
Australian National University, 1990; referred to as UTD.
R. Sylvan, Culture and the Roots of Political Divergence, mimeographed, Canberra, 1986.
R. Sylvan, Deep Pluralism, University of Edinburgh Press, 1994; referred to as DP.
The Wildlands Project, World Earth, special issue, Canton NY, 1993.
S. Toulmin, The Return to Cosmology, University of California, Berkeley, 1982.
J. Wisdom, Philosophy and Psychoanalysis. Blackwell, Oxford, 1953.
M. Zimmerman and others (eds.) Environmental Philosophy, Prentice Hall, N.J. 1993; referred
to as EP3.
�
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PARADIGMATIC ROOTS
OF
ENVIRONMENTAL PROBLEMS
Abstract. Virtually all diagnoses of the roots, and sources, of environmental
problems are defective. While defective diagnoses persist, problems will not
be adequately addressed.
Focal questions ask why human communities so frequently degrade,
impoverish or even destroy their own environments, and more generally why
the whole earth is now in jeopardy through human enterprise. More
immediate answers, sometimes correct so far as they go (which is not far
enough), look to components of environmental impact equations. More
thorough-going answers fall into two classes: first those that do not question
entrenched paradigms, but seek (unsuccessfully) to explain widespread
problems simply through defective practice, and secondly those that, rightly
recognising that defective practice is no adequate answer, look to deeper
paradigmatic sources of problems. A fatal flaw in most of the latter answers
lies in their monistic concentration on a single paradigm, or single narrow
band of paradigms. These flaws are exposed, whence a wider, more
satisfactory answer can be broached.
Background busywork includes firstly, explaining problems and relevant
paradigms and how paradigms operate regarding environmental problems,
and secondly, detailed disentangling of proposed and alleged sources of the
problems. With this done, it is argued that none of these fashionable answers
to the focal questions is satisfactory. A different more complex answer
through broader classes of paradigms is accordingly investigated. Among
significant corollaries, this one stands out: philosophy as portrayed through
its standard history is dismal environmental news.
0. Focal questions and deeper answers.
Human activity is now degrading terrestrial eco-systems at an extraordinarily rapid rate.
In modem times humans have devised sophisticated and sophistical idea-systems which justify
such system degradation; formerly they would have seen such transformation for not mattering,
many still do, transformation as increasing wealth (as in mainstream economics). More
recently they have developed social systems which induct most humans into degradation
procedures (through need, induction into cash economies, and so on) and which weave
entrapping justificatory webs (through agencies, bureaus, courts, and so on).
Whence an increasingly broached question1: Why is this happening? More explicitly,
Why do human communities so frequently degrade and impoverish their environments, their
own habitats? Indeed why do they sometimes, persistently, perhaps over a long period, destroy
their own habitats? More sweepingly, why is the whole earth now perhaps in jeopardy through
human enterprise? The answer to be arrived at to these focal questions is in essence this:
because too many humans, especially those in control of environmentally impacting
enterprises, are committed to or caught within environmentally unfriendly paradigms,
paradigms displaying quite insufficient regard for the health and well-being of relevant habitats
and of the earth.
1
In sources as diverse as Shepard (first page) and Jacobs (p.23).
Parts of the answers to such focal questions come immediately through environmental
impact equations, conservation laws, and such like. For example, degradation is occurring
through the impact of overpopulation, excessive pollution, damaging or faulty technologies,
and so on. While such answers are important, often correct as far as they go, and while they
may correctly indicate what has to be changed somehow, they are nonetheless somewhat
superficial, and they leave much to be explained. For example, they do not explain why a
community persisted upon a course that deliberately led to such problems, or why it is so
resistant to changes that might reduce impacts and pull it out of its problem-holes. Less
superficial answers look to ideologically entrenched attitudes and commitments, to pervasive
paradigms that underwrite anti-environmental practices, as for instance the wood-production
ideology does forestry practice, even so-called “new forestry”.2
An illustrative example which reveals the power of paradigms in blocking or facilitating
action will shortcut a more elaborate argument, through action theory, to the efficacy of idea
systems. Consider an unwanted pregnancy, resulting despite due precautions or whatever.
Observe that, more and more there are comparatively safe technologies available to effect
termination and seemingly solve the immediate problem. Ask: why so many people are
opposed to choice of abortion? A very common answer is: because they are operating under an
elaborate paradigm, typically organised religion (bureaucratic Christianity in the West), themes
of which, the creeds of which, prohibit such choices.3 Of course pro-choice considerations are
also paradigmatically embedded, for instance in forms of liberalism. Picturesquely, a social
paradigm imposes controls on action, a system of red and green lights on a captured agent's
routing procedures.
Or with a different picture, paradigms project a steeply impeding
topography on action space.
Paradigms not only guide, control and limit; they also
correlatively give permission, as, for instance, space to play god, freedom to release a new
species or variety which may or has proved a pest or noxious or has been biologically
engineered, liberty to neglect or degrade or vandalize.
The settings in terms of which agents such as humans act and operate, even down-toearth everyday agents, invariably include, not far in the background, paradigms, cultures,
creeds, ideologies, myths or the like, all idea-systems, all involving models (in a technical
sense) of one sort or another. Even the most practical (and vociferously practical) of humans
are governed by background ideosystems. It is in terms of these background ideosystems that a
great deal concerning human practices with respect to natural environments can be explained,
what would otherwise lack satisfactory explanation.4 That explanation comes not however
2
3
4
For main details of this illustrative example, see FF. For more on this style of explanation, see
further Routley.
I am not, however, going to maintain that religion, or a certain religion such as Christianity, is
the main villain of the environmental piece. Religions in general borrowed much in their
damaging articles from philosophies (see below). What I shall be suggesting is that dominant
philosophies do have much to answer for in this regard.
As logical positivists observed, explanation and justification patterns tend to coincide. How
people justify their practices offers an explanation, though perhaps a misleading or superficial
3
through a single paradigm, as has too often been supposed, but through a bundle of apparently
aligned paradigms.
One working image for what is going on here is appropriately ecological: that of a fig
cluster (similarly a mangrove or bamboo thicket):
Diagram 1: Structural diagram connecting problems with their multiple roots
many
emergent
problems
interlinked
proximate
causes
plural
supporting
sources
multiple
interlinked
roots
Observe systematic plurality. Notice however a countervailing human propensity to seek single
answers and uniqueness (as depicted in the rhomboidal box), where causes and sources are
plural. So it is with paradigmatic sources and roots of environmental problems. They are
plural.5
What is sought are ultimate sources, or roots, not immediate causes. The cause of the
pollution may be a factory that the agent installed, to produce more flim-flam. That too may be
the physical source of the immediate problem. But deeper questioning seeks the reasons for
such production and such factories. While there may be problems with ideas and idea
structures as causes, as causally efficacious, these problems do not transfer to reasons and
sources. (But there are buried metaphors, and linkages, to be unscrambled: how are “A is
source of B” and “A is a root of B” to be explicated? In terms of directional explanatory and
other rational transmission connections.6)
explanation, of them.
History too is not singular, but plural, as has occasionally been recognized; at the very least there
are plausible alternative histories.
While there is much written on roots and sources of environmental problems or developments
virtually none of it addresses die question of what is meant by the partially buried metaphors ot
roots and sources (the metaphors are evidently different; more literally, plants have roots,
normally below them, streams rise from sources, not roots, normally above them, and so on).
A striking example is supplied by Pepper's useful introductory text. Although this text, The
4
These deeper sources are important. Without locating them, perhaps all of them (if they
resemble blackberry), problems may not get properly addressed. Should we wrongly locate
roots, then proposed resolutions directed at ±ese, cutting them off or replacing them, will also
go astray, wrongly directed or whatever.
There are several parts to the approach sketched, if it is to be properly elaborated—
including a working classification of environmental problems and their proximate solutions,
and an account of paradigms and their roles—before getting to paradigmatic answers to focal
questions. But we can be brief on the necessary preliminaries, because they have been
addressed elsewhere.
1. Problems and paradigms.
Although these will be duly connected, paradigms implicated in problems, they are different
components, and admit and deserve separate explanation.
la. Environmental problems and proximate solutions.
A definition of ‘environmental problem’, and a classification of such problems, has already
been proposed.7 Observe that the final sets of problems that emerge are not value-framework
independent. What constitutes a major problem on deeper perceptions may be but a minor
problem, or written off as not a problem at all, on shallower perspectives. Among such
indicator problems, that it is here presumed are serious problems, are those of
• sustaining biodiversity and
• maintaining significant wilderness.8
Even if the broad impact of human enterprise is sufficiently reduced to guarantee comfortable
survival of future humans, these, desiderata may not be guaranteed. There will be outstanding
problems.
In any event, it is not too difficult to say more or less what environmental problems are
(at worst by furnishing familiar lists), and in many cases to indicate at least in principle how
they are to be resolved. Impact equations, emerging immediately from a classification of
Roots of Modem Environmentalism, presents itself specifically as concerning roots, there is in
fact no explication offered of the crucial roots metaphor, and for that matter no direct account of
what the roots of environmentalism—still less, though quite different, of environmental
problems to which environmentalism answers—are supposed to be (granted there is much
oblique material). It is apparent that Pepper has become rather carried away with the roots
metaphor, throwing it into several chapter headings and applying it pretty indiscriminately to
mean simply elements (from some earlier occurrence); thus for instance, ‘the roots of the theme
of reconciliation of freedom and authority’ (p.193). Such a usage is unsound. Because
rudiments of some idea make an earlier appearance in some authority or work, later workers may
not have arrived at such an idea by expanding on these rudiments; they may have arrived where
they did quite independently or by a different route. The mistake is that of reading a source or
(genetic) causal linkage into a mere temporal injunction: post hoc, propter hoc.
Dictionaries do better, with a short listing for the figurature use of root running: the basis,
bottom, the fundamental part, or that which supplies origin, sustenance, means of development,
etc.’ (Concise English Dictionary). That will serve, for a start.
7
See Sylvan and Bennett, GE.
8
As to the extent of the problem in North America, and a proposed remedy, see The Wildlands
Project.
5
problems, reveal how they are to be resolved.9 Namely, by altering relevant impact parameters.
Given this why are they proving so intractable? Why is so little done? Why is so very
little spent, despite all the talk.10 Proximate solutions, about as far as positive science conveys
us, are not a satisfactory stopping point. How is it, given so much scientific information and
expertise, that humans are continuing to sharply degrade, and risk substantially destroying, their
habitats.
To these, the focal questions of this exercise, there is an array of competing answers on
offer. As we will soon see, most of these answers too simple, and taken as intended as
comprehensive, they are wrong. The questions however are important, because if we fail to get
to bottom of these, there is even less prospect of satisfactory action to turn around a very
difficult situation.
That these issues do not matter, that casual human relationships or how many dollars
uncaring humans can stuff in their pockets, matter more than whole islands of habitats—these
sorts of value judgements (after all matter is a value term par excellence) derive from and are
supported by particular ideologies.
lb. Model-like objects: paradigms, ideologies, cultures ,and so on.
A paradigm was explicated, in previous work, as a model in precisely a generous logical
sense.11 That is, a paradigm amounts to a structure supplied by an elaborate interpretation
function on a general system, i.e. on an integrated relational structure. Naturally it is required
to
faithful to what it models, the social forms and norms, scientific research programs, etc.
A social paradigm, in contrast to a scientific paradigm, is a paradigm where the propositional
and imperatival theory, the socio-political themes and value judgements, is that of a social
group. A pure culture is but a comprehensive social paradigm, where by “comprehensive” is
meant that it covers a sufficiently comprehensive part of the life-styles and life-forms of the
community concerned. There are now many examples of capsule formulations of the themes
delivered under rival social paradigms and under different cultures; from these formulations we
can work back towards the underlying models.
The basic vehicle, a situations or worlds model, is a semantical object, an item like a
complex universal12 similarly open to a range of construals and reduction attempts, e.g.
metaphysical, conceptual, epistemic, linguistic and so on. Once this is realised, it can be seen
that successive cohorts of philosophers and sociologists have repeated one another in vaguely
discerning essentially the same sorts of underlying structures under different categorisations:
thus, for instance, forms of understanding (Kant), of consciousness (Marx), of life
(Wittgenstein), conceptual schemes
(Conant),
presuppositions
(Collingwood),
For details see again Greening of Ethics.
See e.g. The cost ofpast environmental policy in OECD countries, Box 1.7, in Pearce et al, p.24.
See Routley, where many environmentally relevant examples are documented. For an analogous
account of culture see Sylvan 86.
It resembles a structured universal, e.g. Plato’s system of forms, Locke’s of complex ideas.
6
Weltanschauungs, total views (Naess), perspectives, outlooks, ideologies, programs, ... . An
ideology, for instance, in the nonderogatory (non-Marxist) sense is an ideas-system, initially a
propositional system or theory with a relevant domain of ideas operative, from which a
paradigm can be discerned and elaborated.
Paradigms are now regularly presented, in extremely truncated form, through a tabulation
of capsule themes. Here is a combination example:
TABLE 2: Elements of Taoism as contrasted with Deep Ecology and with the dominant
paradigm: an initial capsule formulation ,13
Taoism
Deep Ecology
Dominant (Western)
Paradigm
Harmony with nature,
±rough Tao
Harmony with nature
Domination over nature
Nature valuable in itself;
“humanism” rejected
Natural environment
valued for itself
Nature a resource;
intrinsic value confined
to humans
Levelling of differences;
wide impartiality
Biocentric egalitarianism
Human supremacy
Supplies ample
Earth supplies limited
Ample resources with
substitutes
Following Tao-te
Spiritual goals,
especially self-realisation
Material economic growth
a predominant goal
Enlightenment
Self-realisation
Personal (material)
enrichment
Doing with enough
(recycling inappropriate)
Doing with enough;
recycling
Consumerism
Non-competitive lifestyle;
voluntary simplicity
Cooperative lifestyle
Competitive lifestyle
Decentralised/neighbourhood and village focus
Decentralised/bioregional
/neighbourhood focus
Centralised/urban centred/
national focus
Hierarchy without
power structure;
anarchoid
Non-hierarchical/
grassroots democracy
Power structure
hierarchical
Limited technology
Appropriate technology
High technology
Considerable caution
Precautionary practice
Risking taking (verging
upon adventurism)
13
This tripartite example is adapted from UTD, where capsule elements of Taoism are duly
expanded.
7
I
As observed, paradigms control action space by some equivalent of directives; red and green
lights duly interpreted. They may not supply direct commands, general obligations and
prohibitions, but may operate more indirectly. For instance an enlightened person, a role
model, a person following Tao, would act this way, not that. (Taoism, like certain modem
ideosystems, eschews deontics.)
Paradigms are absorbed and they guide practice. They commonly form part of actors'
worlds; they are certainly part of actors' programs for practice and considered action in a world.
In a sense then, they are things, programs actors carry round in their heads; so heads have to be
changed, not rolled.
2. Proposed answers to focal questions; a preliminary classification of inadequate answers
and suggested remedies.
Most of the wide range of answers proposed supply a single source, and are defective.
Roughly, virtually everything you have read on this (or may read elsewhere) is wrong.
TABLE 3. Main tabulation of answers and remedies
Source
Defective
practice answers
Remedy
Objections
DI.
Ignorance
Relevant
information
Information
now available
D2.
Unintended consequences
Relevant
information
Information
now available
D2a
Faulty technique,
or technology
Repairs
Repairs already
made
D3
Deviation (from
theory, etc.)
Education (for failure
to limit deviance)
Adherence
a. Deviation
uneliminable, or
b. Adherence
no remedy
D4.
Systemic lock-in
(through poverty,
ensnarement in
market forces, etc.)
Trap removal
a. Explains
only certain
cases, and
b. Due to
paradigmatic
features
D5.
Insensitivity or
insensibility
Problem
apprised
Remedy tried;
background
ideological
blockage
Source single paradigm
Remedies proposed (among others)
Christianity (mainstream
Catholicism)
Scientific enlightenment, or
alternative (Eastern) religion
D3a
Defective paradigm
answers
Pl.
i
8
Pla.
Protestantism and its ethic
P2.
P2a
Cartesianism
Dualism
P2b
Mechanism
Monism
Anti-dualism
Modified holism
Substance metaphysics
P3.
P3a Possessive individualism
P3aa Personalism
Organicism
Process metaphysics
Non-reductionism
Transpersonalism
P4.
Capitalism
Socialism
P5.
Industrialism
Pre-industrialism (romanticism)
Post-industrialism
P5a Technocratic bureaucracy
P5aa. Transnational business
Enlightenment
Anti-enlightenment
P6a
Materialism
Anti-materialism
Spiritualism
P8.
P8a
Patriarchy, Masculinism
Human domination
of humans
Feminism
Anti-domination
(anti-hierarchy)
P6.
Further sample listings of this paradigmatic sort (but with the paradigms often subject specific
or partial) include:
Source
Typical remedy suggested
Platonism
New metaphysics
Leibnitzianism
New metaphysics
Kantianism
C onsequentialism
Mainstrand Anglo-American philosophy:
reductive empiricism-cum-utilitarianism
Continental philosophy
Utilitarianism
Economism
New social science, or ethics
Contractarianism
Consequentialism
Domination transfer
Domination removal
Adolescencism
Infantilism (from Freudian physchology)
Maturation
Maturation
And so on.
A very rough recipe runs as follows: draw up a potted list of major movements and factors in
dominant Western thought. Then most elements in that list will have been nominated, likely
9
separately but perhaps only in combination, by someone as the source of the problems.
That list accordingly continues (even including sometimes entries like Taylorism), but
what is included is representative of the important and more interesting answers to be
encountered. There are other answers however, some varying from interesting to crazy, that we
should also take into account, for instance Shepard's answers. Although Shepard dismisses
ideologies, what he offers is a further ideosystem, of similar dubious or false cast. Strange
answers include pushing it back to human psychology (thus not only Shepard, but also Fox, and
Ehrlich with talk of ‘mental maladaptation’).
Basically, there is something wrong with a society that does that to its habitat. It is sick
— in a popular sense, yes, it is sick. It is the slides that follow, however, that are to be resisted.
The slide begins invitingly: As it is not literally sick, well not physically usually, it must be
mentally sick; that is, sliding further and fast, insane or mad.
But the sources of mental
sickness lie in childhood (as Freudianism erroneously insists). The slide continues to: what we
have are immature societies, frozen at an early stage of development. No doubt there is
something to theme that dominant societies, USA especially (which influences so much now in
other cultures), are locked into youth culture, a sort of late consumptive adolescence.1415No
doubt, too, that maturity — but a environmental maturity — is desirable, even mandatory.
Meanwhile, immaturity is fostered right through human life. Considerable effort is put
into trying to induct older people, who are often marginalised, into active consumptive society,
to spend their money through tourism, on new housing, in those most wasteful of modern
institutions such as airliners and hotels, hospitals and old-age homes, and so forth.
3. Documentation as to some of the acclaimed purer sources.
Like the lists of proposals and intricated paradigms, the documentation too is somewhat
perfunctory, tending towards notes. While whole theses could be spun out on several of these
topics, already beginning to elicit such treatment, a prime objective here is different from usual:
neither to convict, nor to clear or excuse, but to partially implicate most items cited in the main
tabulation above. Consider, in brief, some of the usually accredited sources:
• Western religion, above all Christianity. The theme that the source of ecological problems,
‘the historical roots of our ecological crisis’, are to be found in Western religion, and
specifically in ‘the Judaeo-Christian belief that mankind was created to have dominion over
nature’, was advanced in a particularly pointed and subsequently influential way by White.
One useful summary of White's line of argument runs as follows:
Allied with technological and scientific developments, orthodox Christianity
has produced arrogant exploitation of nature, and a contemporary ecological
crisis. White's thesis is that the West's successful science and technology
14
15
It interestingly matches the locking of primary production systems into pioneering stages such as
preclimax formations. Shepard’s dialectic is investigated in more detail in Appendix 3.
White's article has generated an enormous defensive literature, primarily from Christian
apologists, but also from softer environmentalists and from testy historians of ideas. The whole
area looks in danger of disappearing from intellectual view under a heavy blanketing snowfall,
snowed.
10
developed between the 8th and 12th centuries — it is much older than the
scientific revolution though it was not until about 1850 — following the
democratic revolutions — that the science and technology were combined to
produce truly immense powers to change nature. The early development,
however, was paralleled by the development of exploitative attitudes to
nature which seemed to be ‘in harmony with larger intellectual patterns’,
namely the victory of Christianity over paganism. This destroyed the
animistic beliefs whereby men thought twice before they plundered and
destroyed natural objects. It substituted instead a faith in perpetual progress,
a belief that God designed nature for man's benefit and rule, and that action,
not contemplation, was the correct Christian behaviour. Science formed an
extension of theology (for to know God you had to find out how his creation
worked), and technology provided the active means to carry out God's will.
Because today’s attitudes are essentially inherited from Christianity, then it
‘bears the burden of guilt’ for contemporary ecological disruption.16
What has happened with the divisive charge, advanced by White, that Christianity was
the prime source of environmental problems, is particularly instructive. In an attempt to diffuse
the charge Christian apologists pointed to, what there undoubtedly were, recessive strands or
isolated seeds in Christianity which were much more environmentally benign (though some
such as stewardship, which has evolved toward total managerialism and sustainable
development, have proved increasingly problematic). That does little or nothing to meet a more
sensitive criticism that mainstream (or dominant) Christianity has much to answer for as
regards destruction and degradation of natural environments.17 Similar responses are apposite
for attempts to exonerate their wider sources, such as Western philosophy.
Against the sheeting of responsibility to religion, dominant forms of which should
undoubtedly cop some heavy criticism, it has been contended that
philosophy ... is the primary source of most Western ideas [and] is ...
responsible for the ideas and attitudes that inhibit environmental protection
today.... Religion... though often criticized ... as the chief culprit, has played
a much less fundamental role. Most of the environmentally offensive ideas in
Western religion originated not in religion but in Western philosophy.18
• Classical Greek philosophy, above all the peak philosophies of Plato and Aristotle.
Greek philosophers approached natural phenomena in a way that (1)
prevented the development of an ecological perspective, (2) discouraged the
aesthetic appreciation of the natural world, and (3) promoted a conception of
reality that made the idea of nature preservation conceptually difficult, if not
impossible.19
16
17
18
19
Pepper pp.44-5. Pepper then embarks upon the murky story of alternative interpretations of
Biblical data and the Christian tradition, dredged up by a series of White's critiques. The issue
continues to be debated; for an interesting recent contribution see Callicott.
Each religion is multistranded. But we should look hardest at dominant operative forms. Ask,
first, not what they say, but what they do, and would do.
Hargrove p.15. Certainly the sort of message that Pentecostal missionaries even now try to
preach to resistant Australian Aboriginals, that the earth is just filth, mere rubbish, can be traced
back in direct line to Plato’s attitude to the land, an attitude Hargrove and Plumwood help
expose.
Hargrove p.21. Hargrove’s claims may appear to have been confuted by Attfield, but really,
while they have been subject to minor qualification, they have been highlighted: see Appendix 1.
There is a much fuller story still to be told about classical Greek philosophy reassessed
environmentally, of the very different roles and impacts ot Plato (with his unearthly philosophy),
of Aristotle (with his earthier chauvinism), of Stoics and of Epicureans. For a modest beginning,
11
More sweepingly, they set Western philosophy on a ruinous environmental course, a course
accentuated with the appearance of modem rationalist and empiricist philosophies.
• Cartesian philosophy. The dominant modern environmental approach is sometimes
denominated Cartesianism, or the Cartesian Technocratic paradigm, in honour of Descartes,
upon whom (as a conveniently select individual from a swag of like-minded people) several of
the leading themes and ideas can be pinned.20
While Descartes was undoubtedly
extraordinarily influential, so were others; Newton for one, Locke for another. The paradigm is
accordingly better denominated the Atomist-Empiricist-Technocratic paradigm, or some such.
Evidently it substantially overlaps other modem ideologies, such as that of the Enlightenment,
widely implicated as major sources of environmental problems.
• Western metaphysics. While some conglomeration of the preceding sources and others (some
potted history of Western metaphysics, so to say) may be offered, more often what is presented
is some selection of Western metaphysical elements. Here is one example, plainly exhibiting a
heavy Heideggerean influence:
The root of our environmental problems lie in Western metaphysics. For
metaphysics, Being is presencing; no allowance is made for any other mode
(sheltering, declining, concealing). Once metaphysics has established the
absolute dominion of the present over the not-present or no-longer-present,
the way is paved for the scientific method, with its emphasis on replicability
of results, predicability, quantification, and control. Nature becomes a
“natural resource” —and people become “human resources”. The sources of
anthropocentricism, -imperialism, colonialism, sexism and consumerism can
all be traced back to metaphysics.
Western metaphysics has more or less conquered the world, and there is no
going back. Western metaphysics is more than simply a false consciousness
overlaid on top of “authentic” experience. Being changes historically, and
metaphysics is the index of that change... Metaphysics has a conquering,
exclusive imperative, ... and different [former] modes now exist only as
vestigial trances. They cannot be resurrected through ancient wisdom, native
healing, goddess worship, or any other supposedly intact, dormant system.
We cannot create a “new order”. That would simply be another form of the
Will to Power... We can—and must—turn away from the dominant rhythms
of western metaphysics if we are to avoid the nihilism of a perpetually
ensconced technocratic rationalism.21
An alternative to turning entirely away from Western metaphysics, consists in combining
20
21
see Plumwood on Plato, Toulmin on Stoics as contrasted with Epicureans, and Glacken on lesser
or lost Greek strands.
For encapsulation of the Cartesianism paradigm (a dominant dualistic form), summarising
Drengson’s exposition, see Routley, table 5. For certain critical elements of Descartes
contribution, see Appendix 2. Drengson, for one, has helped portray Descartes as the
environmentally evil genius (or demiurge). That some orthodox philosophers, not merely
maverick philosophers, are now rushing to the defence of Descartes should be seen as entirely in
keeping with the character and roles of Western philosophy.
Undisclosed source. Amusingly, I have seen myself accused of ‘reject[ing] in its entirety
mainstream western philosophy and science, ... seen as the cause of the [environmental]
problem’ and instead basing my ‘ecocentric values on Eastern philosophies (thus Bellett). This
charge was levelled on the strength of a peripheral exercise on classical Taoism and Deep
Ecology (now included in UTD).
12
rejection of standard Western metaphysics (or, less sweepingly, of dominant metaphysics,
characteristically individualistic and atomistic) in favour of development of recessive traditions
or mere Western seeds.
Such a more sophisticated approach, also critical of Western
metaphysics, with atomism a main villain, is pursued by those who promote instead process or
plenum metaphysics.22
• Enlightenment. The source of problems lies in ‘the intellectual heritage of the Enlightenment’
(e.g. Dobson). Of course the main doctrines of the Enlightenment substantially overlap those
of modem mainstream philosophy and of Descartes’ philosophy (but they shed dualistic and
theistic scholastic hang-overs).
• Capitalism. The assumption that capitalism is responsible for environmental as well as social
evils, widespread until recently in state-socialist countries (when their own records were
revealed) can be traced back to Marx. According to Marx, with capitalism
for the first time, nature becomes purely an object for humankind, purely a
matter of utility; ceases to be recognised as a power for itself; and the
theoretical discovery of its autonomous laws appears merely as a ruse so as to
subject it under human needs, whether as an object of consumption or as a
means of production.23
But, as observed, the main theme had appeared in earlier philosophy; for instance, the idea of
nature as purely an object for humankind, was advanced in Aristotle: ‘Now if nature makes
nothing incomplete and nothing in vain, the inference must be that she has made all animals for
the sake of man’.24 Aristotle adopted a similar stance on nature as on other species. The theme
was to be oft repeated in subsequent Aristotelianism, and reiterated apparently in shallower
Stoicism. But the subjection of everything to utility appears to be a distinctively modem
contribution.
♦ Modem industrial society. Modem industrialism (‘the smooth-superhighway of industrial
progress’) is the source, such is an extraordinarily popular theme: ‘... the root causes of the
present crisis lie deep with the very foundations of the industrial paradigm’.25 Similarly ‘roots
[of] the environment crisis ... go deeper to the foundations of modem industrial society .26
Again, ‘the structural roots of the environmental crises [are found in] industrialism, in
commoditization, in commercialism, and in competition and greed’27 The popular theme, that
industrialism is the source, tends to confuse mere means— industrial technology can without
22
23
24
25
26
27
For the first process option, see Gare; for the second, where the plenum is that of a holistic
relativity theory (more exactly holistic relativistic geometrodynamics), see Mathews.
Grundrisse p.409f.
Aristotle, Politics, Book 1, ch.8. What an inference, you might well exclaim. See further
Hargrove p.25.
M. Gabriel, ‘How “attitudes and implements” have brought us to “the end of nature , a paper
presented at UNE Environmental Paradigms Conference, April 1993. Gabriel proposes a
managerial resolution: ‘for us to learn to manage both our relationship to our environment, and
more broadly the environment itself (quotes from abstract of paper). This amounts to the flip
side of an old problematic record. For the “solution” derives from the same defective box as the
evident problem.
Gabriel ibid. Similarly in McLauglin.
Editorial in The Ecologist, Jan-Feb 1992, p.2.
13
any doubt at all vastly facilitate environmental degradation (as well as, less satisfactorily,
subsequent clean-up and environmental repair)— with sources and causes, what directs and
powers those uses of industrial technique and practice.
• Patriarchy. The source is patriarchy, and androgyny; problems derive from mistreatment of
women. ‘Our troubles begin with the invention of male deities located off the planet’.28
‘patriarchy is the source of the environmental crisis’.29 One sample linkage statement runs as
follows:
... there is a huge denial ... of the violence perpetrated on women both
historically and ... presently] and ... this the same energy that, turned against
the Earth, is destroying the very life-support systems and rapidly destroying
the conditions that makes complex life possible. The fires that consume the
Amazon are the very same fires that burned 9 million witches and I believe
that there can be no solution of our ecological problems unless we
simultaneously address our gender issues.30
Patriarchy, as source, is evidently a special case of long invoked domination transfer themes:
• Human domination and exploitation of humans: It is an extraordinarily widespread
assumption that the impact of humans (or, until recently, of Man!) on the environment, or
creatures or things in it, is a product of that of humans with each other, typically of groups or
classes. In misleadingly brief form, the source is social: Man’s inhumanity to Man; and the
solution correspondingly is social. Unremarkably, this unlikely assumption comes in a variety
of different forms: early, concerning the mistreatment of animals as an (inevitable) spill-over
from mistreatment of humans, recently concerning maltreatment of nature spilling over from, or
being one with, that of women. The fashionable assumption runs, in one form or another, from
Aquinas through Kant to a range of recent trend setters, including Marcuse, Ulich, Passmore,
Bookchin ... and some leading feminists. In particular, it is part of the very meaning of social
ecology, an ideology shaped and championed by Bookchin: ‘ecological problems arise from
deep-seated social problems’.31 On this theme among others, Bookchin simply follows a
prominent trend in social anarchism set by Kropotkin and his contemporary Reclus:
all see that the domination and exploitation of nature by man is but an
extension of the domination of man by man. Thus, ‘Both Kropotkin and
Reclus ... laid the foundations of a radical theory of human ecology.
Ecological despoliation was seen to reflect imbalances in human relationships
—domination of nature thus following from human domination’.... It follows
that if domineering and exploitative human relationships can be avoided in
small-scale decentralised societies then such societies are also best for a
Quoted in Eckersley p.64, who develops and begins to assess patriarchical source themes. For a
more critical assessment see GEF.
See Seed, quoted in GEF; also Salleh (see e.g. EP3).
John Seed’s Workshop Schedule 1992, Rainforest Information Centre, Lismore, 12. 12.91.
Seed’s extravagant identity claims are but a dramatic extension of that popular tendency to
transform comparison and similarity statements into identity claims. Indeed reductionism often
reaches further, with attempted conversion of all relational statements into identity ones, along
with unrelational property claims.
Bookchin sometimes qualifies this central claim, with ‘nearly all present’, e.g. EP3 p.354. But
he is not strictly entitled to any such qualification, given his invariant theme that the domination
of nature always results from die humans domination ot other humans (see e.g. Clark EP3,
p.346). The text EP3 contains a big section providing a useful introduction to social ecology.
14
harmonious man-nature relationship.32
Domination and exploitation of one division by another can in turn be seen as a case of
dualism at work, between the one, the dominator or dominating class, and the other, the
dominated.
• A snare of dualisms. Environmental problems derive from operation of a set of connected
ideologically-entrenched and defective dualisms.33
• Modern educational systems: Roots of environmental problems lie in educational systems.
Or if roots don't, solutions do. However, roots of environmental or social problems do not lie in
educational systems. Parts of their solutions may however. For education is critical, for
instance, in correcting insufficient adherence to established satisfactory arrangements, such as,
so it is claimed, Enlightenment ideals or traditional ethical systems.34 Therewith we are
transported full circle back to defective practice answers.
4. Commentary on, and objections to, proposed answers
A main part of this exercise consists in a detailed critical commentary on the entries in the
main tabulation, and on proposals like them. Small beginnings are made on the exercise, in two
stages reflecting the major division in the main tabulation.
D.
Defective practice answers tend to come from those who presume we are already in
possession of adequate theories, or what approximates them or supplies main elements of them.
(Such answers are also more liable to emanate from conservatives, opposed to new or radical
theories, advanced on the basis of inadequacy of prevailing theories in practice.)
Defective practice answers are especially popular in economic reaches. There was a time,
perhaps not past yet, when all market failures in the shape of negative externalities were passed
off as unintended consequences of economic activity. While outputs or “consequences” such
matters as pollution certainly are, unintended they mostly are not now, without emptying
‘unintended’ of its normal sense. For example, industrialists, apprised of conservation laws and
unsurprised by polluted wastes, who dump their waste where and when regulators and waste
watchers are not looking, can hardly pretend that that output is an unintended consequence of
their industry. That should now be a bad joke.
Accordingly new green economics insists that we dig deeper—without however
exceeding economic settings—to discover why markets may foreseeably fail and why
environmentally rectifying technology is not delivered.35 Where they usually arrive, travelling
32
33
34
35
Pepper p.192, with internal quotation from Breitbart. Unfortunately it is all too evident, given
humans could so socially organise, that they could setde into harmonious small-scale
communities which retained but little of pristine natural environments.
Such a proposition, outlined in V. and R. Routley, obtains a much fuller elaboration within
Plumwood. In an interesting way, such a proposal can hardly be wrong, given the conclusion
reached below that a set of defective paradigms in at work. For evidently paradigms can be
covered by dualisms, represented by set of diem in each case, somewhat as numbers can be
represented in binary terms, generated from a basic two-oneness duality.
Thus Passmore, Attfield, and others. For a critical assessment of education, see Sylvan and
Bennett.
Thus e.g. Jacobs, p.24.
a
15
within such unduly confined settings, is, like welfare economics before green, at better
regulated markets, with business set as before within frameworks of plans and incentives,
controls and penalties. Environmentally, however, such approaches do not reach very deep, or
tap into underlying paradigmatic problem-sources.
But these sorts of defective practice answers do not always derive from standard
economic sources. A deviation-style answer is much favoured by Marxists to explain failure,
environmental and other, of the former Soviet Union and other Eastern block countries; namely
that true Marxism was not practiced. Unfortunately, even if it had been, environmental
consequences would be no better, given the heavy industrial commitments and environmental
shallowness, at best, of true Marxism.36 Differently, enlightenment liberals like Passmore try
to ascribe failures in Western environmental practice, not to any deficiencies in mainstream
theory, but to deviation from well established principles. Unfortunately adherence to these
“well established principles” is just one way in which the Earth will lose what remains of its
wilderness and remarkable diversity.
Now there are no doubt cases, past especially but also present, some resulting
(collectively) in extensive environmental degradation, where defective practice answers may be
correct. For example, there is harrowing case after harrowing case (brought together in texts
like Topsoil and Civilization ) of degradation of prime agricultural lands by imposed farming
practices, where at least early on (before damage became visible) ignorance and unintended
consequences could be legitimately claimed. In most historical cases we do not have enough
information to be able to say with much assurance that agriculture proceeded until effective
collapse because of continuing ignorance, or because practices were locked-in in one way or
another, or because of sheer obduracy. But we do know more about present agricultural
practices, for example in more arid parts of Australia, concerning both irrigated and dry-land
agriculture.
Many of these practices are undoubtedly sharply degrading lands, and the
consequences of the practices, which cannot plead or pretend ignorance, are sufficiently
appreciated.
But the practices persist, and are encouraged by a sweep of subsidies or
concessions. No doubt some of the practitioners can reasonably claim that they are locked into
bad practices through circumstance, circumstances now beyond their control such as financial
pressures, unfavourable terms-of-trade, and so on, coupled with the need to make a living. But
some, such as companies controlling large tracts of land, can make no such claims or excuses,
nor can claim such things as family precedence, attachment to place, and similar. Their
obdurate practice has to be attributed to something else, most obviously not deviation from
theory, but commitment to an environmentally defective paradigm.
P.
Dealing with defective paradigm answers is an even more complex, and vexed,
36
It is surprising how much of the practice of later Socialist states is prefigured in texts like The
Communist Manifesto. Thus “industrial armies” are to be set up; credit, communications and
transport are to become state monopolies; “migrants and rebels” are to have dieir property
confiscated; and so on. All this runs contrary to much Marxist apologetics (as A. Urquhart, who
made those points, also observed).
16
business. Let us try to condense main matters to a few themes:
1.
Many of the (incomplete) paradigms listed are not even sufficient for environmental
impasses. They may be seriously mistaken, they may have undesirable intellectual and perhaps
social effects, but a society could persist sustainably with those drawbacks. Thus, for example,
substance metaphysics (under modified Spinozism), dualisms, even patriarchy. The same
might even hold for materialism and mechanism, (assuming these practices can be coherently
made out, that depending on how differentiated ideologies and values are accommodated, and
so forth).
To illustrate: a metaphysics, of any sort, cannot be the whole story, because it does not,
on it own, account for action, anti-environmental or other. Without special bridges from
metaphysics to value-intricating action theory, a sort of naturalistic fallacy operates. Thus
subverted, in essentially Hume’s way, are all the vulgar sources of environmental problems
which take them as derived from metaphysics.
2.
While several—not just one—of the paradigms listed are sufficient—in the right
circumstances (given long historical development, accumulation, and so on37)—none are
necessary. Similar impasses could arise, and locally have arisen, given significantly different
paradigms;
for example given, instead of main Western trouble-making paradigms,
Confucianism or advanced Polynesianism.
At this stage in dialectic, green history or ecohistory, and related virtual histories, enter
decisively. Ponting's Green History of the World begins with a graphic account of the rise and
ecological fall of Easter Island under the impact of Polynesian projects. The work also
conveniently documents many other examples, well-known to biohistorians, of ecological
degradation or collapse, far from the influence of Western paradigms. An important example
(much less speculative than some of the examples because of a comparative wealth of primary
documentation) outlines the destruction of accessible Chinese ecosystems under Confucian
dynasties. What several of these examples also reveal is that no very high level of technology
is needed to inflict serious environmental damage; persistence in pursuit of an ideological
project (with nothing directly to do with basic needs) will suffice.
Other cultures did, or would have (given the technology and numbers), wrecked similar
damage. For instance, deforestation, salination, megafaunal elimination, and so on, were well
established before rise of modem Western paradigms, or in regions outside their influence.
3.
The list of paradigms, as so far presented, is entirely Western in orientation. Moreover
environmental woes are regularly ascribed to Western sources — wrongly. For non-Western
paradigms have led, or would lead given the opportunities (including access to the
technologies), to outcomes as undesirable as under dominant Western paradigm. Witness
37
While it is easy to imagine ineffectual or incompetent tribes which live benignly
environmentally, by just muddling along, under even the worst of paradigms, that is not really to
the point. A pertinent tribe needs to have developed the structure which leads to problems, to
have the means, and so on.
17
again Confucianism, for instance, and its role and influence in Asian regions. Confucianism
incorporates human chauvinism par excellence (as well as, some might say, Chinese
chauvinism).38 Or Islam, with its reach across the Middle East.
The main tabulation (of table 3) should accordingly be extended to take due account of
non-Westem paradigms, including for example:
Other Abrahamic religions
Islam
(Judaism
Confucianism
Shintoism
Polynesianism, at least in advanced forms as on Easter Island.
What is “Western” is tending to blur also. Is Judaism Western, how western, or Islam? There
is also a tendency to suppose that more Western religions, Abrahamic religions, with their
intense monotheism, are significantly ideologically worse than non-Westem. But the contrasts
are different and much more complex than that. A better divide is into monistic and pluralistic.
Even so, many undesirable social and environmental features are incorporated in or encouraged
by religious pluralisms from the Indian subcontinent.
4.
All the single paradigm answers are inadequate, all are too simple. Even so some are
less inadequate than others. It is the same, more or less, for the combined answers, often to be
encountered. For generally they represent but one thin cross-section of Western paradigms.
While all the single one-source one-shot paradigmatic answers, occur on their own, often
they are combined. For instance, although Descartes is often cited as a villain, more often
criticism of Cartesianism is combined with criticism of other concurrent ideological elements,
such as Baconian empiricism (less incompatibly, Drengson, for one, regularly combines
criticism of the technocratic paradigm with criticism of Cartesianism—though Descartes, for all
his rich and appalling thought, contributed little to the rise of technocratic organisation.)
Similarly Hargrove combines Greek philosophy, as original source, with modern rationalism
and much else.
5. Towards a more satisfactory explanation.
Not only are the paradigmatic roots seriously intertangled (because of connections of one
paradigm with another, because for instance of heavy philosophical inputs into religious
paradigms), but further there is not a single defective paradigm. Rather there is a family or
sheaf of paradigms, commitment to any of which, or any suitable combination of which, in
requisite circumstances, appears to have yielded environmentally untoward outcomes (requisite
circumstances including availability of technology, extent of social support, and so on). Within
that plurality there are of course gradations—and not only gradations but major differences—in
calibre, in environmental friendliness. A Cartesianism which regards animals as mere auto
38
Its net of effects extends widely. Consider, e.g., the role of Chinese medicine in decline of large
fauna.
18
mata incapable of feeling genuine pain, is significantly worse as regards other life-forms and
their decent treatment than a utilitarianism which positively values animal sentience.
The family is not exclusively Western, or Northern, though (through colonialism and
cultural imperialism) paradigm of these sorts now predominate. Paradigms and cultures of less
“advanced” and third world communities have also operated to enhance environmental
vandalism and degradation locally and regionally.
Industrialization and technological advance are, without doubt, what have inflated
environmental problems from rather localised ones, damaging islands and river catchments, to
grander and global ones. They are the engines, powerhouses, of major problems/9
They did not however run on their own, nor do they continue on their own. Such engines
were not designed and built, fuelled and tended, independently.39
40 They evolved primarily in
the specially favoured culture of capitalism, though parallel developments could have occurred,
and later did, in other prepared and heavily controlled surroundings, such as state socialism.
Now however these engines have been rendered more reliable and less dependent on careful
cultural support, and have been transferred to run in less favourable settings.
TABLE 4: Connected continuing sources of global environmental problems
Transfer
of technology,
industry and
problems to
other regions
Inflation
intensification
and spread of
problems to
larger regions
Technologicalindustrial
development
within
ideological
cultural
framework
development
within another ,
\ or different /
• framework
/
Multiple
sources
of
various regional
problems
39
40
The picture of development of environmental problems preferred accordingly bears passing
resemblance to that now tendered for development of the early Universe, where a source event,
the Big Bang, was followed by a huge inflationary phenomenon. Naturally the resemblance has
limitations; for instance, universe inflation is not terrestrially replicable in the way
industrialization now is (hired or delivered off the shelf, pollution problems and all, with a big
price tag).
Lacking such favourable ideological surroundings, earlier technological “break throughs were
not duly developed: thus early wheels, steam engines, gunpowder, etc.
19
Even if the whole “West” went into a terminal decline, and its paradigms disappeared into
history, serious environmental exploitation and degradation would continue, driven by other
cultures. For instance, the West could collapse through protracted war, through choking on its
own toxic wastes, or whatever (there are many routes to catastrophic decline, outlined for
instance in “Limits to Growth” scenarios, that could differentially impact on the West).
Degradation would now continue, however; there would be only temporary respite from
environmental crises.
While most of the problems, awfully aggregated in contemporary environmental crises,
are produced or accelerated by — what connects them — contemporary industrial society, not
all environmental problems are or have been of this sort. But many of the other problems, such
as destruction of rainforests by itinerant peasants, can be seen as by-products, or similar; thus,
in the example, the peasants displaced by agribusiness, absentee wealth-holders or similar,
arrived there on industrially-made roads opening the forests, and often wrecked this damage
using industrial machinery.
An environmental friendly culture has to be much more critical concerning certain types
of industrialization, and much more selective regarding technology than present dominant
cultures, Western or non-Westem. While there are such paradigms, on the ideas market, they
mostly lack sophisticated contemporary elaboration.
Examples of more friendly paradigms, that do not lead of themselves to massive
environmental problems and crises include those now tabulated:
TABLE 5: Examples, several flawed, of environmentally friendly paradigms.
Oriental ideologies:
Taoism (classical)
Jainism
recessive traditions,
now with tiny
followings and little
political influence.
Indigenous cultures:
Australian Aboriginals (e.g. Aranda)
Amazonian Indians, etc.
Western philosophies:
old
Stoicism
Spinozism
new
Deep green theories, such as deep ecology.
under certain
favourable
interpretations
Given the remoteness of most of these examples from contemporary life, and difficulties with
their wide adaptability, it is a short step to a familiar conclusion that new paradigms need to be
worked out. Much more intellectual effort should be devoted to such enterprise.
What we have arrived at, then, is a rough classification of paradigms into two large
20
families: environmentally friendly and unfriendly. No doubt there is a fuzzy residue class
(neither, and perhaps both).
DIAGRAM 6: Broad environmental division of paradigms.
To questions as to why agents adhere, or continue to adhere, to environmentally unfriendly
paradigms, the answers are likewise plural, and diverse (and some match answers in Table 3).
Reasons are psychological, social and cultural (with circularity here encountered), and include
considerations of the following sorts and others: because that is how things are done, or have
always been done; because needs can be met, perhaps only met, in that way, so it is believed;
because there are no alternatives, or none seen, perhaps because none have been sought;
because negative outcomes can be overcome, or do not really matter; and so on.
It is not difficult to indicate, more or less, which paradigms will, if duly, diligently or
religiously practiced, lead to environmental problems and impasse.
Some family
characteristics, then, of unfriendly paradigms:
* Combination effects, illustrated through Leibnitzianism. Any which guarantees satisfaction
of all or enough elements of the consumption impact equation, and so would generate excessive
impacts. To illustrate, consider what might be called Leibnitzianism, in honour of Leibnitz
(though Leibnitz's fragmentary work did not initiate any genuine historic school). Leibnitz was
heavily committed to all of human population growth, unfettered technological advance, and
human lifestyles of consumption, in short, to precisely those factors that combine in the impact
recipe to produce excessive human impacts upon environments. There is fair evidence for these
contentions. First, Leibnitz was an early exponent of utilitarianism, indeed he was all-round an
enthusiastic maximizer. From his formulation of utilitarianism, he drew an immediate obvious
corollary: the directive to increase human population (maximizing on aggregate human pleasure
is most obviously achieved by production of more happy humans, other aspects of which
technology and affluence can assure).41 Secondly, Leibnitz was a technology enthusiast; he
was heavily committed to the developments and use of scientific technology, for which he had
all sorts of schemes (e.g. the characteristic universalis intended to encapsulate all of knowledge
in an accessible useable form, a complete calculus duly mechanised, as well as numerous
technological projects.42). Thirdly, he was committed to an affluent lifestyle for himself and
(through symmetry and basic assumptions of utilitarianism) for others. For his own part, he
For Leibnitz’s anticipation of utilitarianism, see Hruschka. For Leibnitz’s immediate application
of the principle, to support human population increase, see p.172.
‘Leibnitz's interest in machinery is illustrated by his complicated plan to drain the Harz mines,
which involved the construction of a new type of windmill, and a virtually friction-free pump’,
Cottingham p.193. For a detailed account of Leibnitz’s extensive entrepreneurial and
technological activities, see Aiton.
21
abandoned an academic career at an obscure German university ‘in favour of the more active
and lucrative pursuits of the courtier and diplomat’ and, so it turned out, the bright lights of
major European cities and grand tours of Europe.43
Leibnitz has sometimes been accounted environmentally friendly. Some of that apparent
friendliness was due to scholastic conservativism. Thus he was opposed to mechanism; he was
sympathetic to the organic and teleological, which did not contract to isolated human and
superhuman loci. His metaphysical theory of monads, which are centres of living energy,
effectively distributed life everywhere, though not equally. Harmony and order too prevailed
throughout the universe, though under God's maximizing management, the presence of which
they duly established! But even this life-expanding harmonious order, variants of which are
now familiar from Whiteheadian and deep ecological quarters, was not as benign as it has
superficially appeared.
Leibnitz supposed that, by virtue of pre-established harmony and final causes governing
inevitable progress, humans would not go wrong in the longer term in their environmental
activities, that they could not 'cumulatively make undesirable changes in nature’.44 Leibnitz
joyfully foresaw more and more of the Earth coming under cultivation, and its long-term
advancement to a complete intensive garden, even if there were occasional relapses where parts
deteriorated back temporarily towards wild state. Leibnitz even criticised Cartesianism, now
widely regarded as prime villain of the environmental piece, as failing ‘to provide the modal
stimulus .... to the control of nature’ ... ‘to scientific advance’. The idea of control, advancing
to total control, total management, is prophesized in Leibnitz (in a sort of chauvinistic Gaia
hypothesis). He saw ‘order as progressively increasing, with the help of man [as] a finisher of
nature. He boldly applauded the idea of progress to the earth as a unit, assuming both an
orderliness on earth and an orderliness in the changes it had undergone by man’.45 No doubt
Leibnitz’s lifestyle commitments need not (and may not) be reflected in his philosophy, which
may have independent environmental merit, for example as stimulation or input for later
developments. There is unfortunately little evidence that that is so. Nonetheless, substantial
fragments of Leibnitz’s philosophy do admit environmental bending and adaptation, in a way
that Descartes’ philosophy does not at all easily.
An important corollary does emerge: that a promising new metaphysics is no panacea for
improved environmental performance or paradigms. Not merely neutral metaphysics, but even
positive metaphysics, such as certain organic and process theories, are compatible with, and can
be coupled with, damaging social theories and life-styles. It is almost enough to consider the
theories, practices and lifestyles of Aristotle, Leibnitz and Whitehead.46
43
44
45
46
Cottingham p.24, p.26.
Glacken p.478. As he remarks, these bold assumptions made by Leibnitz have proved wrong.
Glacken p.506.
Leibnitz’s standing in die history of philosophy is somewhat curious. His main achievement,
setting aside his reputation as an intellectual wizard with lots of ideas, appears to be spasmodic
work upon a beautiful ruin, an incomplete (and incompletable) metaphysics, of which only
22
* Direct untoward effects, illustrated through Cartesianism and Confucianism, or indeed any
system which attributes little or no value to natural items, and perhaps much value to nature
transforming or interfering human (or elite) projects. So it is with Confucianism, which is
entirely human focussed. ‘Centering his attention on man in his present life, Confucius had as
his goal the achievement of a good society characterized by harmonious social relations.’47
The outside world, the nature environment, was of no moral significance. It mattered only
instrumentally, to humans. Descartes went further. Human bodies too were automata, complex
machinery. ‘The exception is [mind, or specifically] thought, and its external manifestation
language: this alone cannot be explained mechanistically—a thesis which leads Descartes to
assert a fundamental divide between human beings and “the beasts”’.48 The remaining world,
the natural environment—lacking humanity, thought, mind—was again of no moral
significance. It possessed derivatively only what value and meaning humans, or minds, chose
to confer or project upon it.
Since, either way, any way, a natural environment devoid of humans had no thoughts,
purposes or interests, no value or meaning of its own, it could not matter what happened to it.
It could be regarded, justifiably, as nothing but a reservoir of resources for humans.49
Cartesians drew just such conclusions; similar conclusions derive from Platonism and
Pentecostalism, and are implicit at least in Confucianism. Descartes again went further. His
practices and methods, like those of Bacon, were ‘aimed at making men the masters and
possessors of nature’.50
* devaluation of natural items as against human elements or artefacts (typically exhibiting
human chauvinism);51 as a corollary,
* entitlement to domination, dominion over nature;
* short-term framework;
* maximization assumptions, coupled with grand projects.
Family characteristic of friendly paradigms will tend to invert (in effect negate) these
features. An environmentally friendly paradigm can be expected to yield environmentally
significant corollaries, such as:
* an end to degrading primary production, wherever it prevails.
47
48
49
50
51
Instead ecological forestry
tantalizing fragmentary structures were ever available.
It is not even as if there is a surviving supply of challenging bad arguments that can be put
before baffled students, as with Descartes and Berkeley for instance.
Reese p. 102.
Cottingham p.15. The utter invalidity of Descartes' argument to this divide (cited by
Cottingham) is now comparatively easy to expose, given almost 400 years of hindsight. There
are no such status divides. See further Appendix 2.
Borrowing some nice phraseology from F. Mathews.
See Discourse VI.
Shallow will work out only with right mix ol humans. But in any case, it is implausible. An
appealing ecological dieorem insinuates itself hereabouts: Given certain conditions (such as
short-term vision, techno-fix, ...), shallowness is necessary and sulficient for environmental
crisis.
23
and ecological agriculture will come to prevail.
• a calling off of grand ideologically-grounded projects, interfering with or damaging natural
environments, such as major dams, river diversions, demolished islands (e.g. for airports), new
mountains, terraforming, extensive rainmaking, climatic interference, and generally the sweep
of “playing God” projects. A little of this sort of technology can go a very long way.
A short answer can now be ventured to the focal questions: Because most agents are
bound to (locked into, committed to, or captively go along with) environmentally unfriendly
paradigms. As a result the (long-term) health of the rest of environments does not matter, or
matter enough.
6. Resulting unfavourable report on dominant philosophy.
It will hardly have escaped notice that virtually all dominant philosophical roads lead to
Rome, to environmentally unfriendly paradigms.
Stripped of metaphor, there are
environmental conditions of adequacy, which most philosophical systems fail to meet In an
environmentally friendly new world, most philosophy that is remembered, indeed most of the
humanities, is destined for scrapping. Prevailing philosophy is a serious impediment to
satisfactory environmental outcomes. Philosophy, not just Western philosophy, has by and
large been bad environmental news.52 It has supplied, or mightily assisted in supplying, main
unfriendly paradigms under which environments labour. Of course not everything has to be
tipped; much can be salvaged, arguments, subtheories and so on (and with intellectual tipping
there need be little material waste). Nor therefore is it as if an entirely fresh start has to be
made. As well as salvaged bits and pieces (which need to be carefully tested for soundness),
there are recessive paradigms and neglected traditions to look to for suggestions, and
inspiration, and perhaps to rehabilitate.
Richard Sylvan*
via Bungendore, OZ.
APPENDIX 1. Dominant philosophy has aided and abetted ruination of terrestrial
environments.
That dominant intellectual paradigms are dismal news for deep (nonchauvinistic)
environmental theory has been previously argued, in contraposed form.53 More recently
Hargrove has investigated, in detail, negative implications of the main philosophical tradition
53
It may be insisted that philosophy can make no difference, for instance to environmental
practice. It is not an expression of basic needs, or of any such practical matters. Exceptions to
such practical bravado have however to be recognised almost immediately; philosophy soon
enters for organizational, justificatory and explanatory ends. That concession still grossly under
estimates the extent to which ideas, and more generally paradigms, influence and even govern
action and practice, especially reflective and rational action.
On the substantial point, not dierefore removed through the alleged practical impotence ot
philosophy, see Appendix 1.
An earlier version of this article was presented at die Environmental Paradigms Conference,
University of New England, Armidale, April 93. It would not have been written otherwise.
Notably at the end of EE, pp. 188-9.
24
for environmental theory and practice, especially/or environmental attitudes concerned with
nature and creature preservation, with nature appreciation and development of a proper
ecological perspective.54 However Hargrove has ventured some of his particularly challenging
themes in insufficiently careful form, thereby leaving himself unnecessarily vulnerable to
criticism and counter-claims. These include the criticisms assembled by Attfield, who, though
not unsympathetic to Hargrove’s case, has excessively weakened the themes. For example,
what Attfield presents as ‘substantially correct’ is Hargrove’s ‘verdict that the history of
philosophy has discouraged preservationist attitudes’, vastly less than Hargrove’s actual
negative verdict which comprehended considerably more than just “preservationist attitudes”,
and recorded a situation conspicuously worse than mere “discouragement” of nature and
creature preservation, as well as much else. Indeed it is worse than Hargrove has charged;
Hargrove’s indictment of mainstream philosophy is itself weaker than that here ventured, which
takes mainstream philosophy as thoroughly implicated in the present escalating environmental
mess, through its roles as a major source and supplier of operative ideas and paradigms.
There is a single qualification, invoked incidentally by Attfield himself, that would
remove much of Attfield’s criticism: a restriction to mainstream philosophy (or differently, to
dominant philosophy). Consider Attfield’s exceptions to ‘the adverse impacts of Western
philosophy’, those alleged ‘philosophical traditions that have encouraged taking nature
seriously’. Firstly, insofar as the Church Fathers, medieval Christians and others Attfield
alludes to are philosophers at all, they are entirely minor figures, unlikely to be known to many
philosophers, and but rarely or never referred to in regular philosophy courses; they do not form
part of mainstream philosophy.55 Secondly, these minor figures do not afford the clear support
for his claims that Attfield has regularly assumed.56 Many of the statements supposed to offer
support are ambivalent, or environmentally dubious, supporting some form of managerialism
(e.g. perfectionism or stewardship); and in any case they have to be set against the remainder of
what a figure says and does (so far as can be ascertained). After all, as regards the latter matter,
there are isolated claims in major philosophers (Plato is regularly cited in this regard) which
may make them appear environmentally aware and even sympathetic.
Although Plato’s philosophy generally suggests that he neither knew or cared
about environmental problems, one passage in the Critias shows that he was
very much aware of at least one problem: the effect of deforestation on soil
See e.g. Hargrove, p.21.
Consider the sorts of exceptions:
• minor philosophers, many of whom we know very little about, outside gossip and speculation,
such as Ilieophrastus, early Stoics, and lesser Epicureans.
• figures who are only secondarily or marginally philosophers, such as Hooke, Boyle, Ray and
Evelyn.
• medieval and early modem Christians, who typically are not significant philosophers, and
were usually committed not the nature preservation and the like, but to nature management or
perfection.
In work referred to on p. 127. The main historical claims, many of them based on secondary
sources, are stated in his The Ethics of Environmental Concern A more detailed criticism of
these claims will be made elsewhere.
25
♦
quality in Greece during his own lifetime.57
Unfortunately Hargrove does but a comparatively poor job in accounting for what he
alleges, Plato’s indifference and lack of ecological concern.58 The reasons for Plato’s
indifference to serious ecological degradation of forests and soils in Greece can be ascribed to
a combination of several elements of Plato’s philosophy (a natural-world-dismissive ideology)
including: elevation of transcendental forms as what was truly real and really of value,
denigration and dismissal of the everyday natural world as utterly inferior, of entirely lower
existence or even illusory and certainly not of rational concern. This dualistic ontology and
axiology—a wonderfully valuable world of forms standing in complete contrast with the
illusory material world of perception—was supplemented and reinforced by a corresponding
epistemology. Under a tripartite theory of mind, the higher rational part, which gave epistemic
access to the forms, a part exhibited only by humans and more elevated beings, was sharply
separated from the two lower animal parts. Thus under Plato’s conception of the human,
humans and especially the important rational component of the human, stood in opposition to
nature; the distinctively human task is completely separate from nature and concerned with
control of it and its unruly elements. It is because what really has value—rational selves
cavorting among the forms—is separate from nature, transcending it, with nature at best
comprising very inferior copies, of lower existence, that it does not matter what happens to the
earth and earthly things, to mere matter, that is a matter of indifference. 59
APPENDIX 2. On the prominent roles of dominant philosophy in the inferiorization and
mistreatment of (mere) animals.
Although the attitudes concerned reach back to antiquity, and were rationalized in
classical Greek philosophy (through a theory of separate parts, “highest” of which was a soul or
rational component), the whole appalling affair was given an enormous stimulus by Cartesian
philosophy.
Descartes cherished a scheme
for a purely mechanistic science of physiology. Descartes compares the
human body to an ‘automaton’ and argues that had we sufficient knowledge
of the structure of its working parts we could explain even highly complex
behavioural responses in purely mechanical terms. The exception is thought,
and its external manifestation, language: this leads Descartes to assert a
fundamental divide between human beings and ‘the beasts’:
There are no men so dull-witted or stupid—and this includes even madmen—
that they are incapable of arranging various words together and forming an
utterance in order to make their thoughts understood, whereas no animal,
however perfect, can do the like. This is not because they lack the necessary
organs, for we see that magpies and parrots can utter words as we do, and yet
cannot speak as we do (i.e. show that they are thinking what they are saying).
By contrast, even men born deaf and dumb, and thus deprived of speech organs
as much as the beasts, or more so, normally invent their own signs to make
59
Hargrove, p.29.
This sort of problem arises not merely in regard to Plato, as Attfield observes, with decided
relish. There is little doubt but that Hargrove’s historical excess needs to be sharpened and much
elaborated, and, in some critical areas, rectified.
On this classical polarisation of nature and higher humanity, see Plumwood.
26
themselves understood ... This shows that the beasts do not merely have less
reason than man, but have no reason at all ...^®
These sorts of considerations have been immensely influential in establishing a received
fundamental ontological divide, not merely between humans and (other) animals, but between
humans and nature. But, as we should now appreciate, they are all subtly, or less subtly, astray,
and do not sustain the conclusion drawn.
Firstly, investigation reveals internal incoherence. No men are incapable of stringing
words together and forming utterances, yet many men are so incapable, not least those who are
dumb. As his differential objective demands, Descartes exaggerates what those bom deaf and
dumb may do—they do not ‘normally invent their own signs’, but may painstakingly learn a
sign language—by contrast with ‘the beasts’. But, as we are now learning, many animals,
whose organs are not well adapted to speech, can also painstakingly learn sign language.
Indeed they may communicate by signs and sounds (though not usually speech) “in the wild”.
There is no sharp cut-off, such as a fundamental divide presumes, between creatures that can, or
do, communicate by signs and sounds, and those who cannot, or do not.
Secondly, even less is there a significant boundary between those that can understand
inputs and reason, and those that cannot, or do not.
None of reasoning, thought and
understanding are inextricably or inexorably tied to speech, nor, more broadly, to language.60
61
For example, dogs, whose speech is rather limited (though they certainly communicate,
including to humans, by a range of different sounds, as well as signs), can understand and
respond to several hundred commands and the like (that is, to a number of the same order as the
vocabulary of basic languages). As for reasoning, the problem-solving capabilities of many
sorts of animals, especially laboratory rats, are now well (even excessively, for primal comfort)
documented.
Regrettably, Descartes has not been on his own, or out on an exceptional limb. Virtually
all past great philosophers insisted, if not on an unbridgeable gap, certainly on a difference in
kind of supreme philosophical importance, between humans and other animals. Only Hume
afforded a conspicuous exception to unedifying philosophical orthodoxy. Worse with other
supposedly fundamental divides, such as that partitioning off nonsentients, there appear to have
been no exceptions. The world was and is sharply divided, so it was and is imagined, into fixed
inflexible categories. Furthermore, despite Hume, Cartesian inputs have persisted, for instance
in the widespread philosophical idea—running contrary to an enormous body of evidence—that
animals have no interests, preferences or intentions, that they receive no satisfaction from what
they do or choose to do, and so on.
Cartesianism certainly assisted, not merely in changing philosophical method importantly,
60
61
Cottingham, Three Rationalists, p.15, also quoting Descartes.
For this reason, the “language of thought” conception, pervading much cognitive science, is
decidedly regressive. Nor is it necessary: combinatorial operations, which can perform a fine
representational job, provide an improved replacement for such a “language”: see DP chapter
11.
27
but in altering metaphysics irrevocably, above all as regards human place in nature. As an
outcome of rectified method,
Philosophy, including physical science, becomes in Descartes a selfcontained discipline, guided by the light of reason; it has no need to be
supplemented by revelation, scripture, or ecclesiastic teaching.62
As to the new physics and its outcome in metaphysics,
despite a certain amount of judicious fudging over whether the earth ‘really’
moves, Descartes was firmly committed to the new Copernican cosmology,
whereby the Earth is dethroned from its central position. The Earth is simply
a planet, it has the same status as Mars and Saturn—‘bodies we do not make
so much of’... . What is more, the sun itself is only one star among
innumerable others, each of which is the centre of its own celestial ‘vortex’.
Descartes [rightly] saw all this as having important implications for human
life. The universe, as conceived of in medieval and scholastic cosmology,
was one which revealed, in all its details, the purposes of a benevolent
creator. In the words of Paracelsus, writing some hundred years before
Descartes ‘all things belonging to nature exist for the benefit of man’. For
Descartes the vastly expanded size of the post-Copernican universe, the
possibility of innumerable other worlds, and the insignificance of our planet
in comparison with the hugeness of the whole, made it impossible to continue
to regard man as the ‘dearest of God’s creatures’.... The belief that all things
exist for our benefit alone, says Descartes ..., involves a presumptuous view
of our status and a failure to recognize the unlimited vastness of God’s
creation....63
So, in important respects, Cartesianism offered improvements and a way forward.
environmentally. But the message was mixed and muffled, as with that concerning final
causes, hostility to which Descartes justified as a corollary. No doubt final causes were used to
smuggle in divine purposes, specifically God’s special concern for the welfare of humans (no
doubt the Church and Church fathers who engaged in this smuggling were not to be trusted).
However undesirable practices could be weeded out, without eradicating respectable ones.
Over-zealous in just this fashion was the common 17th Century slogan, ‘Abandon final causes
and look for underlying structures’, which affords another example of explanatory skimping.64
Sound methodology can admit both internal structures and final causes.
Nonetheless,
dethroning, relegating or abandoning final causes was a major movement within modern
deanthropocentrization, so far as it has yet proceeded. Lovejoy has highlighted the matter. For,
according to him,
...physico-theological ideas came to rest on the assumption that all other
elements of nature were created for man’s sake, and therefore put man and
nature into an unequal relationship:
Tout est cree pour Thomme is at once the tacit premise and the triumphant
conclusion of that long series of teleological arguments which ... is one of the
62
63
64
Cottingham pp. 176-177. Unfortunately for Descartes’ grand systematic-doubt project, reason
was far from sufficient, and did need supplementation, though not through reinstatement of
established prejudice. Though judiciously shedding some ancient conventional wisdom (e.g.
concerning humans’ privileged control place in nature), Descartes was either forced or else felt
obliged to reinstate much received wisdom, through poorly concealed subterfuges, in order to get
his rationalistic roadshow moving.
Cottingham, ibid.
On the slogan, and the Church, see Cottingham p. 178. On skimping, see DP chapter 11.
most curious moments of human imbecility.65
APPENDIX 3. On Shepard’s approach to focal questions.
A remarkably sustained investigation of the focal questions is found in Shepard’s books.
In his Nature and Madness, he considers and quickly dismisses many of the stock responses to
focal questions suggested by contemporary luminaries (or by himself in earlier work), such as
lack of information, faulty technique, insensibility, greed, political inertia, change to agriculture
and settlement,66.... He would (and should, for his eliminative argument) have also dismissed
industrialization, state and corporate control, and so on.
More disconcertingly, for present purposes, Shepard claims that ‘a history of ideas’—
similarly no doubt a story of paradigms—will not serve; for it ‘is not enough to explain human
behaviour’ (p.3), it ‘seems too easy and academic’ (p.3), itself an easy and superficial criticism.
But if, for instance, the ‘dictum that nature should serve man’ and ‘insistence that animals feels
no pain’ should become widely entrenched, then they may well impact heavily on practice, as
accordingly appears to be the case. His slight further argument appears to miss the intended
target: ‘The meticulous analysis of these philosophies and the discovery that they articulate an
ethos beg the question’ (p.3). How, it can reasonably be inquired? What is offered is but the
facile, false, ‘ideas are impotent’ consideration, fostered by thinking and operating in terms of
causes (e.g. lower p.3), rather than reasons and (rational) explanation, and encouraged through
an attempted move to (what is explanatorily inadequate) pure behaviour. For a simple example
of the familiar explanatory roles of ideas and paradigms, consider an alternative explanation
through them. The admittedly bizarre (“crazy”) ‘turning everything into something man-made
and [or] man-used’ (p.5) is readily explained through dominant paradigms: that is the way it
acquires value, otherwise it is worthless. There is no need at all for psychopathology here.
Correspondingly Shepard briefly reviews and rejects several of the very partial, and often
hopeless, solutions suggested under stock responses to focal questions such as making
information, or better information, more widely available, bringing people from all walks of
like together, encouraging conviviality, hitting problems with smart technology, practicing
conservation, and so on.
Shepard’s own resolution is more readily reached from a further (meta-focal) question
that he proceeds to ask: why do humans persist in degrading their habitats once sources and
solutions are made transparent? He effectively argues by elimination: other sources (read as
causes) do not succeed in providing an answer; but ‘the idea of a sick society’ (which he leaps
to, without argument, p.4) does. Wrong on both counts: On the first because a non-causal
explanation in terms of ideological wiring can provide answers (listen to politicians,
65
66
Pepper p.44, quoting Lovejoy.
No doubt a popular picture of human social changes with agriculture and settlement ir simplistic:
that before societies lived in harmony, afterwards they did not. But it is also too simple to go on
to claim, as Shepard does, that ‘the economic and material demands of growing villages and
towns are ... not causes but results of this change’ (p.3). Some demands appear to derive from
factors, such as population pressures, which were among causes of the changes.
29
representative of the people, again, just a little time). On the second because some industrial
societies are not sick in a normal sense (though some may be), rather sickness has to be so
redefined (such low redefinitions are among underlying subplots67) that having certain
ideological commitments that are carried into practice counts as “sickness”.
So it is that Shepard arrives at his theme of ‘general, culturally-ratified distortions of
childhood, of massive disablement of ontogeny as the basis of irrational and self-destructive
attitudes towards the natural environment’ (p.ix). Succinctly, ‘there are profound psychic
dislocation at the root of modem society’ (p.xii). Psychic disorders have evolved: ‘over the
centuries major institutions and metaphysics might finally celebrate attitudes and ideas
originating in the normal context of immaturity [or]... adolescence ...’ (p. 15).
Having glided easily and invalidly to the idea of sick societies, in a mere three pages,
Shepard proceeds to diagnose in more detail the nature of the alleged sickness.68 It supposedly
arises, like other psychopathy with which it is immediately associated, in infancy, and is
manifest in life-long immaturity, with whole societies stuck in a kind of destractive
adolescence. No doubt there is something to some of what Shepard describes in child and
person development (not the ‘private demons’ and so on) or might well have described. There
is evidently, conspicuously in “new world” societies, wide commitment to a shallow juvenile
culture, adulation or imitation of immature media and sport models and flawed authority
figures, marginalization of the elderly, and so on, coupled with hyper-activity, violence and
vandalism. But, like political commitment to extensive economic activity, this is hardly
satisfactorily accounted for through psychopathological reduction, concentrating the whole
social problematic in the ontogeny of individuals.69 A superior explanation to widespread
individual psychic disorder proceeds through ideological commitment, that industrial human
are raised and educated in, inducted into and committed to, defective ideologies without
coming to know or properly experience alternatives.
The ‘portraits of maturity’ alluded to likewise appear individualistic and culture-bound,
resembling those of deep ecology, directed at embroidery of person and self, through personal
For trickery through redefinition of sickness and madness, Wisdom has already prepared us.
Observe that Shepard’s redefinition of sickness to include sick (i.e. debasing and devaluing)
practices with regard to natural habitats (and conjoined therewith, to, older people) does not
leave no contrast classes. For there remain benign ‘relic tribal’ societies, such as the Manus,
Crow and Comanche, Aranda and !Kung San (p.xii), ‘people who feel themselves to be guests
rather than masters’ (p.6 empasis added)—an elegant analogy.
‘The idea of a sick society’, which as Shepard confesses (on p.4) is hardly new, is reached on the
third page of the main text.
A psychopathic reduction is in part made plausible by reexpression in medical or psychological
terms of what would better be otherwise expressed. Consider, for instance the language of the
following clever paragraph, which infiltrates much with no argument:
‘The person himself is, of course, caught between his inner calendar and the surgeries of
society. His momentum for further growth may be twisted or amputated according to the
hostilities, fears, or fantasies required of him, as his retardation is silently engineered to
domesticate his integrity or to allow him to share in the collective dream of mastery (p.16).
But the trapping of agents between inner directives and social conditions and demands, or
between rival ideologies, can be retold in different, less medical and metaphorical terms.
30
growth and identity, wider identification and relatedness, self-realization.70 They are not
exactly those of older and ecologically wiser societies. They do not reveal ecologically mature
mixed communities.
Furthermore, comparisons with relic tribal societies, which are important, can be
decoupled from psychopathological analysis and reduction. Different lifeways, commitments
and ideologies, are what they are and do not all reduce to matters of mental health.
Undoubtedly we can learn of and from these different societies. We can still witness ‘smallgroup, leisured, foraging life-ways with[in] natural surroundings.... there is the rub—... for us,
now, that world no longer exists’ (p. 14 rearranged). Nor is it really true that such a world is no
longer accessible to most of us; more leisured small-group ways can be retrieved, some natural
surrounding can even now be restored.
In a curious fashion, Shepard has managed to invert likely causal relations. While a
certain interaction can no doubt be conceded, it is not so much human ill-health that is leading
to environmental degradation, but rather environmental degradation, generally brought about
for other reasons, that is increasingly leading to human ill-health, and in the longer term causing
erosion of life-support systems.
REFERENCES
E.J. Aiton, Leibnitz A Biography, Adam Hilger, Bristol, 1985.
R. Attfield, ‘Has the history of philosophy ruined the environment?’ Environmental Ethics
13(1991) 127-137.
A. Bellett, ‘The evaluation of values compatible with ecological sustainability’, Fundamental
Questions Papers, No.2 CRES, Australian National University, 1990.
J. Callicott, ‘Genesis and John Muir’ Re Vision 12(3) (1990) 31-41.
J. Cottingham, The Rationalists, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1988.
C. Dale, V.G. Carter, Topsoil and Civilization, Rev ed. Norman; University of Oklahama Press,
1974.
A Dobson, Green Reader, Routledge, London, 1991?
A. Drengson, ‘Ecosophy’, Positive Vibrations, (1990?) 8-10.
R. Eckersley, Environmentalism and Political Theory, UCL Press, London, 1992.
A. Gare, Beyond European Civilization, Eco-logical Press, Bun gendore, 1993.
C.J. Glacken, Traces on the Rhodian Shore, University of California Press, Berkeley, 1967.
E.C. Hargrove, Foundations of Environmental Ethics, Prentice Hall, N.J., 1989.
J. Hruschka, ‘The greatest happiness principle and other early German anticipations of
utilitarian theory’, Utilitas 3(2)(1991) 165-177
M. Jacobs, The Green Economy, Pluto, London, 1991.
Cf pp.12-14. Likewise there is a conservative underlay, more oppressive than that of deep
ecology: insistence on ‘one particular mother’ (p.7) even suggestion of unsatisfactoriness in
‘taking mothers off to work’ (p.l5)!
31
A. McLaughlin, Regarding Nature'. Industrialism and Deep Ecology SUNY Press, Albany
N.Y., 1993.
F. Mathews, The Ecological Self, Bames and Noble, Maryland, 1991.
J. Passmore, Man’s Responsibility for Nature, Duckworth, London, 1974
D. Pearce and others, Blueprintfor a Green Economy, Earthscan Publications, London, 1989.
D. Pepper, The Roots of Modern Environmentalism, Ed: Tom Colveson London; Dover N.H.
Croom Helm 1984.
V. Plumwood, Feminism and the Master of Nature, Routledge, London, 1993.
C. Ponting, A Green History of the World, Sinclair-Stevenson, London, 1991.
V. and R. Routley, The Fight for the Forests, RSSS, Australian National University, 1973;
referred to as FF.
R. and V. Routley, ‘Social themes, self-management and environmental problems’, in
Environmental Philosophy (eds. D. Mannison and others) RSSS, Australian National
University, 1980.
R. and V. Routley ‘Human chauvinism and environmental ethics’, in Environmental
Philosophy (eds. D. Mannison and others), RSSS Australian National University, 1980;
referred to as EE.
R. Routley, ‘Roles and limits of paradigms in environmental thought and action’, Discussion
papers in environmental philosophy #1, RSSS, Australian National University, 1982.
P. Shephard, Nature and Madness, Sierra Club Books, San Francisco, 1982.
R. Sylvan and D. Bennett, The Greening of Ethics, White Horse Press, Cambridge, 1994.
R. Sylvan with D. Bennett, Of Utopias, Tao and Deep Ecology, Green Series #19, RSSS
Australian National University, 1990; referred to as UTD.
R. Sylvan, Culture and the Roots of Political Divergence, mimeographed, Canberra, 1986.
R. Sylvan, Deep Pluralism, University of Edinburgh Press, 1994; referred to as DP.
The Wildlands Project, World Earth, special issue, Canton NY, 1993.
S. Toulmin, The Return to Cosmology, University of California, Berkeley, 1982.
J. Wisdom, Philosophy and Psychoanalysis. Blackwell, Oxford, 1953.
M. Zimmerman and others (eds.) Environmental Philosophy, Prentice Hall, N.J. 1993; referred
to as EP3.
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DEEP-GREEN ETHICS
Contents
PARTS
CHAPTERS
0
I
II
III
IV
Prologue
DEEP, GREEN, ETHICS, and PHILOSOPHICAL BACKGROUND
1
Deep [and] green fundamentals
2
Ethics without humans; philosophy without humans
3
Philosophical setting: deep-green plurallisms
4
Inhibiting presumptions and myths
AXIOLOGY: value core
5
Value and its varieities: basic theory and its development
6
Alternative primitives and theoretical beginnings
DEONTOLOGY: necessary moral structure
7
Obligation and its deontic circle, and moral dilemmas
8
Rights, and justice
VIRTUE and INACTION
9
Environmental virtues: what they are and
something of their theory
10
V
Environmental ethical practice
NATURE of ETHICS
11
Ethics, its new character and revised foundations
12
Principal questions of reoriented ethics, and proposed answers
13
Epilogue
�17 .5.96
DEEP-GREEN ETHICS
PROLOGUE
Philosophy and its branches, ethics especially, are among the last places where prejudice
would be found, found alive and thriving, so it might be imagined. Wrong. In the first place,
prevailing ethics all exhibit heavy prejudice in favour of humans, human chauvinism. So they
are one and all defective, wrong in a deep way. An adequate ethic will remove the prejudices
involved. That means, in turn, a radical transformation of prevailing ethics, from the bottom
up. Such a transformation constitutes a main objective of this book. Deep-green ethics aims
not simply to reform present arrangements and systematizations, but to replace them. Abolition
of prejudice has early priority.
Prejudice in philosophy, privelege in prevailing ethics.
There are only about two and half millenia of recorded philosophy on Earth. To a
disconcerting extent, those millenia represent two and half thousand years of prejudice-partial
exceptions occurring and prejudice subsiding somewhat only when ideological empires were
fractured (e.g. fruitful periods of "warring states" in ancient China and Greece). Ethics is far
from alone within philosophy in exhibiting serious deficiencies, in incorporating prejudices that
should not figure so prominently in what is ideally an impartial subject. Much the same holds
for other branches: politics obviously (partly through its interdependence with ethics),
metaphysics and logic perhaps less obviously. Yet prevailing metaphysics display a deep
prejudice in favour of the actual, against what does not exist. In logic the prejudical situation
has in fact been accentuated through the rise of modern symbolic logic. Regrettably mainstream
symbolic logic is wrong. All its forms validate incorrect principles (such as implicational
paradoxes), these results flowing primarily from an underlying prejudice in favour of the
consistent, against the impossible. 1
Several of the systematic prejudices embedded elsewhere in philosophy impact upon
ethics. The prejudice in favour of the actual has served to distort, very seriously, the issue of
obligations to future creatures for example, in this fashion:- Remoter future creatures do not
exist, and therefore, according to prevailing prejudice, cannot have any relevant features, any
preferences or desires, self-traits or satisfactions, to be taken into ethical account. Therefore
All the themes are presented and defended in detail elsewhere. As regards metaphysics, see JB; as
regards logic, see e.g. BGB and generally in philosophy , see TM. There are several coupled
prejudices and prejudical drives, as will appear; for instance the drives to power and to maximization,
strongly manifested in logic, see e.g. RLR.
Prejudice in ethics was explicitly recognised by Bentham, almost two centuries ago; unfortunately
however he imported his own very influential prejudical framework.
�2
"they" can be discounted entirely. The same prejudice also enters in a very different way. All
the standard positions concerning universals, all of which reflect the metaphysical
presupposition that discourse concerns existent objects, show up in ethics. They appear in
vexing issues as to the ontological status of values, such as the good, and of deontic notions,
such as obligations and the right. These are not only difficult items to discover in the world, but
they do not seem adequately housed in conceptual or linguistic apparatus: where are they
located? Whence derives immediate pressure for many mostly bizarre reduction exercises; for
instance of values to human constructs, contructs from social preferences or from
sociobiological drives, and of obligations from veiled contracts. The initial question of location
makes, however, the defective metaphysical presupposition, and lapses therewith. Values,
though significant items, do not exist; so they are not located, anywhere.
Prejudice rooted in established logic has impacted differently, upon a variety of issues in
ethics. The absolute requirement of consistency upsets a straightforward treatment of
obligations, general sets of which are typically inconsistent, thereby leading for instance to
awkward theories of hierarchies of obligation or of merely prima facie obligations. Running
parallel with this, the requirement utterly distorted an initially straightforward theory of ethical
dilemmas, treatment of which is a significant part of any comprehensive ethical theory.
Established logic has also impacted heavily on such different issues as fact-value inferences
(e.g. the prescriptive fallacy) and regarding the extent of pluralism in ethics. The assumption
behind the rationalistic critique of relativism is that there is a single correct logic, governed by
requirements of consistency, namely standard logical theory, which (when combined with the
facts) will eliminate various ethical stances as incorrect, indeed which may, given sufficient
critical thought, lead to a single correct ethics. 2 But the assumption fails; for it too depends on
ancient prejudice.
Pluralism is one most important component in removing prejudice generally, certainly in
reducing it generally, by admitting alternatives, and allowing some to flourish. 3 Elaboration of
deep-green theory is another important direction in removing prejudice, in favour of humans,
persons, or like agents from ethics especially but not only. The main development that follows
will take both these directions, though focussed upon ethics: it will track and investigate
pluralistic deep-green ethics.
Human chauvinism is not the only major prejudice damaging ethics. An extraordinarily
privileged position given to egoistical considerations is another. Western ethics in particular has
2
3
The approach involved, that of traditional rationalistic ethics, is regularly deployed by Singer (e.g.
his Encyclopedia conclusion to Companion to Ethics); the strengthened version features in Regan.
Of course how it is supposed to proceed, the details of how reason works this miracle, is never
revealed.
See esp. TM, epilogue.
�3
recently been deformed through a substantially unquestioned axiom of self concern, that agents
are interested in and motivated by their own (self) concerns and only by them. (Of course an
agent's self, or extended self, may be grander than the agent's soul or person or body or
whatever; it may include the agent's family or even the agent's tribe, or differently it may
comprehend the agent's land or environment. But under such extensions the axiom is already
beginning to disintegrate.) Such an ubiquitous, but largely unquestioned, presumption has lain
behind reductionistic exercises that have distorted much of modem ethical (and political) theory.
The leading idea is simple enough: given that action is justified through human self-interest, and
only thus, if ethical theory (and likewise political superstructure) can be justified through some
construction or modelling on that basis (bringing in only indifference and like neutral
assumptions) , then justification will be transmitted, it too will be justified. Thus those
contractual and utilitarian exercises which have loomed so large in recent theory. 4 The same
dubious presumption also features large elsewhere, for instance in the acclaimed derivation of
Deep Ecology from the ultimate norm of Self-realization!
It is not just prejudice and allied presumption that have damaged and distorted ethics.
Narrow ethics, parading as universal or absolute in defiance of pluralism, ethics often
underwritten by religious or papal presumption, have severely disadvantage d ethics.
Furthermore, connected therewith, ethics has been destabilized, and cast in an unfavourable
light, by
•
a quest for absolute foundations, and in tum connected therewith
•
an invidious comparison with science, which is supposed to have such foundations.
The quest is quixote: there are no such foundations. Nor does science have such foundations,
so the comparison is misplaced. Not only is absoluteness for science increasingly disputed, but
it is becoming apparent that science is in the same sort of pluralistic situation-pre dicament
some, still questing for the old false certainties, would say-as ethics. 5
Through the assumption, or pretence, that it can deliver (whether from religious, rational
or other resources) certainties of a type that it cannot deliver, ethics has become discredited. But
that is only part among reasons why on the contemporary scene ethics is not the force that it has
mostly been in bygone times. At least as important as such intellectual reasons are matters like
removal of social and political pressures to conform, redirection of indoctrination practices (into
consumerism, etc.), and so on, some welcome and some definitely not.
4
5
Roughly, ethics, knocked down to what's in it for everyone (some aggregated base class), is justified
through what's in it for each me. Prima facie the grand construction is based on a simpler fallacy of
aggregation: an invalid each to all inference.
The theme is argued in detail in TM chapter 10.
The quixote quest is strikingly engaged in by Williams, for a entertaining criticism of which see
'Bernard Williams and the Absolute Conception of the World' in Putnam 92.
�4
Aspects of the discreditation have in turn been exaggerated. Ethics, it is said, makes no
difference, even can never make a difference; it never effects change. Such claims are seriously
astray, as examination of elementary examples like human slavery and treatment of animals
quickly reveals. Environmental ethics too can make a difference (perhaps, when coupled with
other practices, a major difference), and they are beginning to do so. But naturally they cannot
compel change; nor should they be capable of doing so, as that would exceed proper roles of
ethics (and other proper practices). 6
Rectification of ethics requires, then, not merely removal of now conspicuous prejudice
and presumptions, but deflation of pretensions. What results-hardly unique naturally, but one
selected for good reasons among many, hardly entirely exclusive but overlapping and admitting
others-is an ethics which differs from standard ethics in the following respects at least: Such
an ethics is:
• deep-green, removing prejudice in favour of humans, and in favour of certain (egoistic)
agents, in an affirmative fashion; and
• Pluralistic in a thorough-going way, accordingly not pretending to absolute or objective
status.
The run of prevailing ethics, including so-called "applied ethics" and "environmental ethics" are
chauvinistic; a satisfactory (environmental) ethic is not. The run of prevailing ethics are
absolutist, or otherwise relativist; a satisfactory ethic is neither.
However the conditions so far presented are but necessary conditions; they are not jointly
sufficient for adequacy. Even among theories that are nonchauvinistic and duly pluralistic,
reductionism may persist. Such reductionisms come in striking variety; thus, on just one
dimension, individualisms, sentientisms, vitalisms, (i.e. all that has value is alive, somehow),
and so on. To avoid such reductionisms, another blanket condition of adequacy is:
• non-reductionistic.
The main task consists in elaborating in detail an ethic, with other preferred features, that meets
these conditions of adequacy.
Regrettably, removal of prejudice cannot be accomplished in ethics alone, as a separate
pollution-free zone. Prejudice in ethics flows through from other regions, religion especially,
but also from psychology (which in the past made little gods of humans with sacred souls of
their own, justifying very differential treatment for them in the world), and from elsewhere.
Removal of these latter sorts of prejudices requires a severe erosion of belief, in regions strictly
outside ethics, but heavily exporting into it; of beliefs fostering intellectual prejudice.
Nonetheless ethics has a role in removal of prejudices elsewhere, because, very simply,
these prejudices ought to be removed. The basic principle, which can also be presented as one
6
These points are developed at some decent length in GE part IL
�5
of rationality, runs as follows: belief ought not to exceed warranting evidence, but should be
appropriate to it.
None of this is as clean and clear-cut as it may initially appear, because source waters
have become very muddied. Sources for instance take a range of forms (this is part of the
ancient issue of the criterion reput in more contemporary terms). Sources include not merely
empirical evidence, perception especially, the favoured, or even exclusive, source of
empiricism. They also include such sources as: emotional presentation, or emotion; postulation
or presumption; reason; authority; a range of psychic and extra sensory perception (ESP) forms;
and, differently, a range of intuitions. Some of these sources overlap; consider for instance
divine relevation. Plainly those sources are very different kinds, quality and calibre. Some
such as reason, which includes itself a disputed variety of forms, are more processing of
information kinds than sources (thought reason becomes a source, of sorts, in pure rationalism,
and a degenerate source of necessary truths in classical logical theory where theorems are
proved, by paradoxical means, from nothing so to say).
While some of these kind of sources are not important or at issue in ethics, for instance
controversial kinds of ESP giving information on remote (spatially distant or past or future)
items, several are. It is not going too far to say that ethics is severely vexed as regards sources,
and many distortions such as naturalism can be seen as coming about as ways of trying to
secure reliable sources (if some naturalistic reduction were correct then ethics would be brought
within the orbit of science and even empirical perceptual bases could be adopted, as in science).
But ethics does not resemble science; its sources are not (except incidentally) primarily
perceptual, thus breaking any very close analogy between epistemology and ethics.
A major source in ethics is emotion, by contrast with epistemology where the major
source is perception. From there already derives a major difference between the fields, as
perception tends to be less variable, more intersubjective, less culturally dependent across the
range of subjects usually taken into account. Accordingly, in any quest for a more objective
ethics, more has to be drawn out, out of the processing substructure, whence the emphasis on
coherence, good reasons, ethical on coherence, good reasons, ethical argumentation. Ethical
inputs, sources, and processing are assessed in detail in the text.
Although this work is focussed upon ethics, it does not, and evidently cannot, merely
concern ethics. Since the ethical theory is itself approached primarily (though not exclusively)
by way of value, it bears upon other areas, such as normative-infected social sciences, where
value theory features. For another example, it also impacts upon aesthetics, heavily. For,
according to the theory advanced, there is no sharp boundary, indeed really no division at all,
between what has been dubbed "aesthetic value" and "ethical value". Value is value, without
these artificial divides. Evidently too, as will appear, the work intrudes in normative reaches
�6
merging into ethics, in particular, wherever normative or deontic dilemmas are encountered,
such as reaches of social choice theory and legal theory. Differently, the work includes much,
though indirectly, upon philosophy of nature. For it is especially concerned to supersede an old
defective philosophy of nature, which included a heavy devaluation of nature, and aided and
abetted a manifestly chauvinistic ethics. The ethical theory to be elaborated fits with, and in
significant respects presupposes, a·different theory of nature. 7
Although investigations in this text are primarily theoretical, they have significant practical
implications. Putting the theory to work in various environmental fields is something that
happens elsewhere (see further in the Epilogue). Some of this has already occurred, in essays
in the Green Series, and some is reserved for other texts on field ethics. 8
Notes on terminology In this text several familiar terms, such as 'green' and 'deep', are
converted into quasi-technical terms. That is to say, special uses of the terms already in
currency, such as the use of 'green' to mean environmentally committed, are further refined.
The result could be signalled by deloyment of appropriate new terminology. Something like
that is assumed done, except that the familiar terms will be retained-onl y now they are to be
read in the quasi-technical way. To put the point differently. Let 'grene' (Olde English) or
'gre-een, (Newe English), for example, be the quasi-technical explication of 'green' in the
relevant sense. Then in the subsequent text, 'green' will normally signify gre-een, or
equivalently 'green' operates as (effectively abbreviates) 'gre-een. Why such a strategem? One
reason is that people are now rather conservative regarding terminology. Indeed they are often
turned off by new terminology (despite regular ruination of established terminology). As a
result, established terminology gets revised for all sorts of new purposes (witness the bizarre
high-school reuses in advanced physics), with a resultant overloading of senses. By contrast,
recycling of old terminology (words or spellings), that has fallen into disuse would be rather
more commendable. Here, rather than pressing our luck with explicit recyclings like diep and
chalowe, we resort to the fiction that the terms 'deep' and 'shallow' deployed throughout the
text stand in for the technical recyclings. As a result 'deep', as figuring in deep approaches,
deep green, deep theory and so on, has no connection with profundity, or 'shallow' with
superficiality.
As several have said, in several respects deep/shallow terminology is unsatisfactory,
execrable it is sometimes said. Founder N aess did a disservice introducing it, and subsequently
7
8
Such an appropriate underlying theory of nature is advanced in the companion work on metaphysics,
namely TM.
Green Series is a popular label for discussion papers in environmental philosophy, published from
Research School of Social Sciences, Australian National University. One of the other texts is
tentatively entitled Green Ethical Fields ..
�7
in explaining it, so slackly. While it is too late to easily change the terminology, some
undesirable associations may be shaken off by resorting to older or variant spellings, and
simultaneous ly refining senses intended. That we do. But then we concede to the general
intellectual will, by the substitution or "abbreviations" strategem.
Even so, we have risked a few neologisms, and we shall chance, just here, one or two
more. One we risk, is euthics, for universalizab le ethics, that is an ethics meeting
universalizability requirements (in some appropriate fashion). This bit of terminology helps in
resolving a significant ambiguity in philosophical usage of 'ethics', and making an improved
start on the vexed issue of why an agent should adhere to an ethics, or differently to an euthics?
One we chance is viridology (from Latin virides, green, and Greek logos, study of, in modern
palance) for: theory, principles and practices of deep-green; that is, a single classical word for
diep-grene theory. A purer alternative we contemplated, from among many, was prasinology
(or should it be prasinomics) from Greek (and Latin) prasinus, dark green, leek green.
Acknowledg ements and antecendents: personal development and conceit.
The production of this work owes much to other humans, with of whom I have little or no
acquaintance. The debts are both intellectual and practical. On the heavily practical side, I am
most grateful to Frances Redrup for the processing of reems of rough scribble. On the broad
practical front I am pleased to acknowledge the continuing support of my research endeavours
by the Australian National University. That academic support, while generous by often
niggardly world standards, has recently declined, through contraction of research support and
expansion of alleged accountability practices. In this little respect, there has regettably been
interference in my research, dur the earlier stages of work on this book, by no doubt wellintentioned academics occupying supervisary roles who have deemed by performance less than
satisfactory. It is with regret too that I record that, in part owing to biassed appointment
practices within the University, there has been negligible imput to the present work from any of
my academic colleagues there.
But outside imput there has been of course, of two main sorts: from recent activity in
environmental philosophy and from past exercises in value theory. While environmental issues
have operated as a main stimulus in my recent work in ethics, my own interest in and
investigations in ethics reach back to my graduate work in Wellington, New Zealand, where I
produced a characteristic ally initative work on ethics, entitled Moral Scepticism (I do not
suggest that anyone read that work, which it is far too late to suppress).
In New Zealand, I was educated in the 20th century British type and style of ethical
theory, primarily Oxbridge material, with not antipodean influence of any significance what
cover, except in the obscure background Prior' s quocit little book Logic and the Basis of Ethics
(although my professor at Wellington, George Styles, had ethics as a manfield, I learnt only a
�8
certain technigue from him; I do not recall one position, little theorem argument or there I must
attribute to him, for the very simple reason, (suspect, that he never advanced very much).
Among Oxbridge characters, Moore revoided the dominant influence though much of Hume and
his near contemporaries-N eurall-Smith Tomlesia and others-was scround up to a tiny circle
of ethical enthusiants and fellow academic travellers. Moore is still an influence in this book; in
my occasional more conceited moments, I like to envisage the book as an appropriately greenish
update of Principia Ethica. At least it may be as near as I ever come to producing such a work:
Principa Ethica Virida. What on excessively ambitious idea, sheer hubris! Yet, for all the fuss,
Principia Ethica is not really such a good book; rather it enjoys other advantageous features. A
few companions with Principa Ethica will be ventured.
But, by and large, other ethical theories will not be investigated in much detail. For one
reason, that has been done, to a sufficient extent elsewhere (in others' work more than my
own). For another, in the wake of accumulating evidence, notably from environmental
awakenings, revealing their narrowness and prejudice, they scarcely justify further post
mortems.
More than Moore and Priest, the present work is indebted to Meinong, and through him to
the tradition of Austrian value theory. The theory elaborated in fact fits, more or less, into what
has been called critical cognitivism ..
The evil of ingratitude, for example, ...
Here and there, the present text draws, heavily sometimes, on my own past work,
especially concerning environmental ethics. As much of the work, for example in the local
Green Series in Canberra, is rather inaccessible, such borrowing may not matter much. There
remains a small overlap-ideally vanishingly small as revision proceeds-betwee n this text and
better circulated complementary works, notably essays in Environmental Philosophy and parts
of The Greening of Ethics.
�INTRODU CING DEEP-GR EEN THEORY
Deep-green theory aims eventually to supply a comprehensive alternative environmental
philosophy. While it stands on its own, it is alternative because it stands in radical ideological
opposition to dominant ways, nowadays predominantly industrial. It offers a philosophy both
in the contemporary narrower sense, and in the older sense of an intellectually informed and
critical way of life. That philosophy is centred on an ethical theory (upon which this issue
concentrates), which is in form centred upon a value theory. But the ethic issues, in a fashion
broadly associated since Aristotle, in a politics and political economy. But the output of the
value theory in fact reaches much further, into practical decision making in a range of
environmentally impacting areas such as fishing, forestry and agriculture. The value theory is
also intertwined with philosophical issues which are often considered more fundamental, those
of astophyism and epistemology. Indeed there is no part of philosophy that remains untouched.
Therein lies part of the claim to comprehensiveness.
The particular form of deep-green theory elaborated is by no means independent of
(acclaimed) advances recently made elsewhere in philosophy (those in object-theory, and
relevant and paraconsistent logics especially). But though the theory given is influenced and
sometimes in fact shaped through these developments, deep-green theory more generally can
avoid them (The type of theory given could easily enough be recast in a more classical
Platonistic form - undoubtedly a much less plausible form. Nor will these background advances
intrude, it is hoped, in the given elaboration of deep-green theory; the background will remain,
fairly directly in the background, and not come to dominate proceedings or know proceedings
depend upon special new controversial features of it. Where more technical agreements are
required, they will be relegated to appendices.
1. As to deep theory.
Deep-green theory is the environmental branch of a much larger affair, deep theory. There
is a point, in fact a real expository need, to place deep-green theory in the larger setting of deep
theory. For deep theory influences several of the choices made in deciding upon the way deepgreen theory goes, the shape it takes. Although the influence will become evident, particularly
with the intertwining of truth and value that .... , it is worth giving an example. Too much of the
Anglo-American discussion of intrinsic value and of obligations to future generations is taken up
with - hung up upon - ontological questions, about universal items in the first case, and as how
there can be obligations regarding future items which do not (yet) exist in "suitable" determinate
�2
form in the second. Deep object-theo ry slices straight through these issues, removing the
problem generating ontological assumptions.
Deep-theor y is a grander theory lying in the background , which significantl y influences
the philosophic al approach taken in deep-green theory, as well as being influenced by it. There
is no reason why that grand backdrop should remain hidden; there is no hidden agenda. The
backgroun d theory, of which deep-green theory is a part, is called simply deep theory. For it
represents the confluence of several deep positions with deep-green theory: deep pluralism,
depth relevant theory, deep item-theory, and so on. As a theoretical endeavor, deep theory aims
to pull together, into a unified coherent theory these various deep positions. It thus draws
together and integrates as well, several other interrelated efforts (on dialethism, process theory,
anakyrie, etc. With deep theory I aim to supply eventually a fairly comprehen sive philosophical
package. I used to imagine that with moderate comprehen siveness as regards present
philosophic al problems would come a certain completene ss; but I've come to think that a total
philosophy is an illusion, like pots of gold at the ends of rainbows, and rainboweri a themselves.
Deep theory is no doubt a presumptu ous title (there are worse about, e.g. 'total
philosophy ', 'ecosophy' ), not it is altogether satisfactory given the problems and obscurities, to
be encountere d, lacking in the notion of depth. My main excuse is that I did no exactly choose
the title myself, but had it thrust upon me: problemati c, presumptuo us, it looks to good to
refuse. It emerged from a terminolog ical confluence of several areas in which I'd been
struggling to assemble ac. capirred theory - deep-green theory (itself a union of green thought,
or environmen tal philosophy with a revised deep ecology), deep relevant theory, deep pluralism
(which deepened radical pluralism), and deep item-theory (which deepens object-theory).
To give a picture of deep theory, it suffices for present purposes to indicate some main
features of deep positions, some of their integrating interrelatio ns, and some of their
revolutiona ry potential. Deep theory overturns or subverts very much of what has been
assumed or presuppos ed in Western philosophy , and particularl y in Enlightenm ented
contempora ry philosophy.
For example, it overturns the following widespread assumptions:• the Ontologica l Assumptio n, that truth, and also, meaning, are functions of reference, and
thereby presuppose existence. On the contrary according to (deep) item theory, we can perfectly
well talk and think truly about items that do not exist, and also about items that are not individual
but are complex but perhaps indetermin ate wholes, and finally what items are impossible .
Therewith repudiated also then is an occasionall y favoured full-back from onticalism, namely
possibilism , which assumes
�3
• the Possibilist Reduction, of everything that counts in discourse to possible individuals; there
are no other genuine subjects, all else can be analysed (or thrown) away.
Bound up with possibilism are
• the assumptions of modalism, of the correctness of classical logic, and of the absolute
requirement of consistency. Under more throughgoing transconsistency (or paraconsistency)
these connected assumptions are one and all repudiated. The transconsistent connection
assumes an important role in the straightforward treatment of moral and other dilemmas, in
showing for example how an agent may coherently operate under inconsistent obligations or
with incompatible needs.
Important special cases of modalism are such theories as that
• entailment is strict implication (or its metalinguistic analogical) and that conditionality amounts
to a modal function of material implication 1. The rejection of such themes and their courses is
part of what motivates deep relevant logic.
While the parts of deep theory are integrated and are intended to be materially reinforcing,
nothing prevents their fairly independent elaborations. The holism conceded does not exclude
separation or analysis. In particular, deep-green theory is amenable to independent development
and analysis.
Material implication is the implication defined in terms of truth-functions thus: A materially implies
B iff not last A and not B, or equivalently, iff either not A or B. Strict implication is the
necessitation of material obligatory i.e. A strictly implies B iff necessarily A materially implies B, or
equivalently, iff it is not possible that not A and not B.
�ON THE VALUE CORE OF DEEP-GR EEN THEORY
This essay aims to uncover the value theory of deep-green theory, exposing thereby a
central area of that theory. Though the value theory is (inevitably) abstract, it issues in what is
more concrete, such as an applicable system and practical ecological directives, potentially
destabilizing for prevailing policies and institutions.
Deep-green theory which stands in significant ideological opposition to dominant
industrial ways, is intended to supply a comprehensive alternative environmental philosophy.
At the core of deep-green theory lies a value theory. A fundamental theme thereof, part of what
makes the structure deep, is that a range of environmental items are valuable in themselves,
directly and irreducibly so, so that their value does not somehow reduce to or emerge from
something else, such as features of certain valuers or what matters for them. Thus value does
not answer back in some way to humans, or sentient creatures (or other value-responsive
classes), their interests, uses, preferences, or such like. Many natural items, such as forests
and rivers, mountains and seashores, are intrinsically valuable. They are valuable in their own
right - irrespective of whether they are interesting or useful (to any intentional operators,
themselves interesting or useful or not), indeed whether or not there exist any valuers. Value
spreads through and reaches across the natural domain; it is not bounded by mind, or linkages
with subjective states; nor does it stop with sentience, or associated pyschological features like
satisfaction; nor does it end at life; it observes no such compromising bounds. Although value
is distributed richly if irregularly throughout nature, it is not then encapsulated in some isolable
natural feature, such as life or sentience, or even in defeasible ecological values such as
richness, diversity and variety (and so open to a different, naturalistic, reduction). But of
course such ecologically important features afford criteria for value, and should be represented
in recipes (such as "objective functions") for assessing overall value.
From the presence of natural things of value, and accordingly of natural values, it is a
short, though controversial, step to the important conclusion that there can be values without
valuers. For valuers are sentient creatures with appropriate capacities, but things of value may
precede and succeed all such valuers; that is, these things can persist, their values intact,
without any valuers. As there can be shapes without any shape-perceivers, so there can be
values without valuers. (The theme, like others advanced, can be backed up by more detailed
argument and by formal proof, neither attempted here.) In valuational relations then, which
relate valuers as subjects with values as objects, both ends of relations have independent
standing; though interrelated, as the descriptions are deliberately chosen to suggest, either can
stand without the other. It is a fashionable mistake to try to collapse this relation - usually to
endeavour to soak up values into a modification of valuing subjects (e.g. as a predicate
�'relation-to-values', in which inconvenielt values are locked away). The mistaken procedure
is in fact just one important example of an archetypal modern reduction of relations to
functions; other examples, locking undesired objects away within functions, are those
rendering wholes (such as ecosystems and organised structures) functions of their parts, and,
under functionalism, minds and types of intentionality, including value-direction, as functions
of bodies or their parts such as brains. Values are not, and do not disappear into, functions of
valuers.
A connected corollary is that values are not apart from the actual world, something
"projected" or imposed on it by a favoured class of valuers, something colouring (and even
emotionall y clouding) the otherwise valueless physical world, in rather the way that
reductionistic materialism tries (erroneously) to construe colour itself as projected onto a
colourless physical world. Of course this projection effort, never adequately explicated, does
not succeed, on its own, in removing values. For they remain, left as some function of the
valuers. To try to bulldoze through this difficulty, a second reduction is invoked, of evaluative
features of valuers to "natural" features, commonly preferences, consumer desires or such like.
The second reduction runs into obstacles that halt even the naturalistic bulldozers (e.g.
naturalistic and related fallacies), but the first reduction is the critical one in removing key
environmental values, such as those of wilderness and wild things, which become valuable
only in the focus of certain sentient beholders, and not in and for themselves. This reduction
too is blocked by insuperable difficulties. On the one side, like the parallel proposed
phenomenalist reduction of material objects to sensations, the reduction never achieves
satisfactory support or even a satisfactory statement. On the other, it is counterexampled by
various modellings or thought-experiments revealing intuitively-assessed value in situations
devoid of valuers (as e.g. in the well-known Last Person argument). Values remain then part
of the still rich actual world; they are objects in the domain of actual and other worlds. But
they are not of course material objects; creatures will not fall over them any more than they will
trip over shadows or mere shapes.
Value, like shape, is an attribute, which things have or may lack, and which furthermore
creatures can recognise or may fail to discern. Thus value is, like shape and colour and their
determinate forms (round, red, etc), a universal , distributed across things, individuals and
wholes. The comparison of value with shape is decidedly more helpful than the regular, but
exhausted, comparison of value with colour, or of goodness with colour determinates such as
yellow. For example, shape is not bound by a set of determinates as colour is in the specific
colours, but comes in a spectacular variety of forms, not totally or linearly ordered (as in a
rainbow), or contracted to some primary set (as in colour triangles); shape which pertains to
wholes as well as particulars, links with gestalts better than colour; shape discrimination is
more culture dependent and sensitive; yet shape is, or was, a primary property, and thereby
�3
more immune to reductionist strategies than secondary properties such as colour. Again shapes
like values, can be vague, indeterminate; that does not prevent things, perhaps unique things,
exemplifying them. But naturally the analogy can only be extended so far. Shapes can be
approxima ted by polygons, values cannot; shapes are regularly perceived through sense
perception, by vision or touch especially, values are not, but are differently apprised. Value is
its own thing, not something else; it is what it is and does what is does; it is not something
else, like some quantitative mathematical or economic function. Nor does it contract into some
mark of value, or to what it comes down to in highly restricted settings; most important, it does
not disappear in the style of modern economics into (expected) utility, or into just two
economic forms, value-in-use monetarily and value-in-exchange (price), neither of which may
reflect worth. Value means what it means, and has meant: worth ; and it ties with general
assessments of merit and demerit, goodness or badness, not an economic or other truncation
thereof.
The powerful drive to reduce or deny values has several sources. Part of the motivation
for reduction of value springs from epistemological worries, concerning how values can be
ascertained and known, so far as they are (subjective translation proposals are then a direct
evaluative counterpart of phenomenalism). Part derives from supposedly problematic cultural
relativity (whence the attempt to impose values by identification of value with some favoured
assessible feature, and with it cultural or economic imperialism). Part of the motivation comes
from more sweeping ideological commitments, such as varieties of materialism or scientism,
which leave no space for immaterial values.
As already apparent, attempted reductions of value come in a dazzling variety of forms • subjective, which make use of psychological features, such as desires, interests, emotions,
and the like; or more objective aggregations of these, such as community preferences or utility;
or objectively naturalistic, which enrol single track value-making characteristics such as
richness or evolutionary development as value;
• consequential, which consider only outcomes; or purely motivational, which consider only
attitudes and ignore leads and outcomes;
• straightforward, as in translation proposals for translating value judgement s into reducing
statements; or oblique, as in supervenience propositions (no variations in value without
underwriting variations in reducing features); or obscure, as in unarticulated projection claims.
Values are not well accommodated within these reductionistic schemes, or accommodated at all.
Deep-green value theory, which is thoroughly nonreductive, repudiates all these reductionistic
options. They are not so difficult to avoid, as the options are neither exhaustive nor exclusive.
In particular, value reduces neither in subjective nor objective fashion; it does not reduce.
Evaluative judgements are nonjective, that is, neither subjective nor objective (in any absolutist
�4
fashion). Obversely, evaluation of an act does not reduce to assessing consequences; nor does
it come down to an assessment of motives; both may matter.
The virulent idea is abroad however that science can offer a reduction, can sweep up
value along with all other information, where philosophy has conspicuou sly failed.
Unfortunately for such optimistic ideas, fortunately perhaps for deeper thought, current basic
science does not have much to say at all, or of merit, about values, and if it did reductions
through it would be circular. But, to the contrary, there is a long-standing pretence that science
gets along "well" without values, in appropriate value-free fashion. Nowadays it is
increasingly realised that the positivistic assumption of such value-freedom is a myth, that
much of what passes as science is heavily value-penetrated. While the residual ideal of pure
engagement in pure science may offer the illusion of an escape from value, there is no escape.
For, in any case, reductions do not succeed, as a copious literature, littered with failed
attempts, meanderingly establishes. Nor are they generally desirable, since mostly shallow,
aiming at a reduction to features of some privileged class presented as ideal (i.e. core value is
covertly assumed, so there is no real reduction). Nor are they needed; explanation and
assessment do not require reduction. Evaluations may be arrived at, and value frameworks
expanded, by enhancement methods, which organise and expand emotional presentation by
coherence methods.
The enhancement methodology in fact resembles that sometimes proposed for further
acquisition of scientific information. As accumulated empirical information can be further
extended through presentational input and assessment for overall coherence, so further
evaluations may be arrived at and assessed through a combination of presentational and
coherence procedures. At the (marginal) stage where the next round of evaluations is
undertaken, the following active ingredients figure, in an idealised breakdown:- Firstly, a
background stock of judgements and value experience will have been accumulated or inherited;
in principle all of this is revisable, and some may be up for reassessment. Apart from the
background, which enters in assessing overall coherence of system, what is involved is,
secondly, emotional presentation, which corresponds to further perceptional and sense data
input, and, thirdly and not independe nt, coherence processing , which supplies the
interpretational and rationalisational components. At bottom, parallelling perception in the case
of empirical information, is emotional presentation, gut or visceral reaction in starker forms of
acceptance or rejection, but more generally comprehending a variety of sentiments, including
overall well-being, and also relational impressions, such as empathy, identification, and so on.
As a perceiver perceives shapes, so a valuer feels raw value and disvalue. The basis of
perception is sensation, the basis of valuation is emotion. Apprehension of value is seated in
emotional, and especially visceral, presentation; but what is apprehended is not to be confused
with its apprehension any more than what is perceived. All the warnings about sensation as an
�information source have to be repeat~d, with heavy emphasis, as regards emotional
presentation; for example, reliability cannot be guaranteed, interference with presentation
through drugs, alcohol, temporary excitement or other inputs may render it dubious or
unacceptable, conditioning may have occurred, including substantial cultural conditioning (so
that a person is terrified by harmless spiders but not sickened by bloody massacres of dolphins
or seals). As with perception, there are checks on emotional presentation, such as constancy
over time and after reflection.
Emotional presentation, supplying primarily inclusions and exclusions or prohibitions, is
but the basis of reflective evaluation and value apprehension. The further critical part,
coherence processing, builds on the basis taking account of other inputs or controls including
background (which supplies relevant components of already adopted judgements, assimilated
subculture and so forth) and constraints (such as moral substitutional requirements like
impartiality, e.g. whether considered judgements hold for substitute valuers, and uniformity,
e.g. whether similar acts are judged in similar ways). Essentially, the coherence procedure
consists in asking whether the next or a relevant judgement fits together with what has been
accepted, while meeting constraints, without leading to what has been rejected or excluded. If
it does fit it is added to the included side, otherwise it is sent to the excluded side. Because an
aim of this rationalisation procedure is achievement of some sort of equilibrium such coherence
procedures have gained currency under the rubric "reflective equilibrium". Observe, however,
that equilibrium reached at some stage may be lost as new types of problems arise and further
information enters. No doubt the whole methodology (like the parallel methodology of an
empirically-based coherence theory of truth) is highly idealised, and only practicably applicable
in rudimentary parts. It does however surmount a major theoretical obstacle for environmental
value theory; it reveals how in principle a nonreductionistic value theory can function, and
deliver a tenable value system. Whether what results is however an appropriate deep
environmental system will depend above all on the presentational input, the extent to which
environmental sensitivity enters and is not suppressed.
Enhancement methods reveal too that value systems are not uniquely determined, any
more than other comprehensive theoretical frameworks. There evidently are rival value
systems measuring up to rigorous rationality requirements, much as there are rival logics and
rival physical and biological systems. In particular chauvinistic systems, narrow or shallow
value systems, which are unresponsive to and take no account of environmental items and
values, cannot be excluded on rational or straight logical grounds. Unfortunately such systems
remain in ascendancy, and tend to dominate social and political practice; in recent times
economism, a narrow type of utilitarianism, has all too obviously dominated much terrestial
practice.
While such value frameworks are open to severe criticism, for instance as
chauvinistic, as violating universality requirements of morality in the case of economism, they
�do not succumb to definitive refutatiog (for the reason that requirements of morality,
universalizability of principle, impartiality and so on, can simply be repudiated; immoral or
amoral frameworks are still value systems). Even so, much can be done to shift or alter
values, though as usual effectiveness cannot be guaranteed. A range of argumentative,
educational and persuasive techniques, of varying quality, can be put to work to move valuers
indoctrinated in old damaging structures, often enough successfully. Important among these
are positive presentations of environments, their habitats and creatures, by way of new
information and experience.
The availability of rival value systems, while it implies a certain desirable (and also
troublesome) pluralism, does not mean relativism. From a deep-green viewpoint, rival
narrower and shallower systems are definitely inferior, and criticised accordingly, while
economism is an anathema which does not even make the moral grade (e.g. too many
principles stop at class or state boundaries). However a critical pluralism does acknowledge
and offer a place in the wider scheme of things for other systems, even if as less favoured or
satisfactory. One political upshot is evident; deep-green theory promotes, what matters in these
irrational times of numbers, alliances - in particular, a green alliance, organising green
positions, against prevailing forces of environmental degradation.
The systematic pluralism of deep-green value theory interpenetrates not only social and
political domains above, but also metaphysics traditionally placed below. In the underlying
metaphysical pluralism of deep-green theory, value runs very deep - so deep that even truth
depends in part upon it. For not merely selection of a correct comprehensive theory or worldview is a value dependent choice, but choice of associated actual world is also. That choice,
insofar as it is consciously made, of world structure and conceptualisation, is a constrained
choice, constrained by informational inputs, such as those of refined perception. But inasmuch
as it is rationally accomplished, that choice, like other choices of structure, proceeds according
to a standard value-information analysis (regularly oversimplified however to a preferenceinformation or even desire-belief modelling); that is, to extract the salient point, it involves
value essentially.
Truth and value are then intertwined; truth, though naturally different from value, is value
dependent. Both are plural, and differently so. So, unremarkably deep-green metaphysics
resembles the value theory in significant respects. For example, as the value theory is
nonreductionistic, so also is the metaphysics; in particular, there is a no-reduction theme that
neither parts nor wholes reduce eliminably to one another, as opposed to atomistic and holistic
views of environmental interrelations. As the value theory is pluralistic, so also is the
metaphysics; in place of established absolutism, a plurality of worlds, with associated truth
definitions is discerned. Indeed a main aim of deep-green theory is to dislodge dominant
�7
destructive ideologies, which (each of them)
assume an absolute truth, from their positions thereby providing intellectual living-space for natural environments.
Much of deep-green theory devolves then from the abstract value theory. As with the
metaphysical way sketched, so it is with the fuller ethical theory, which includes as well as a
specific axiological system, elaborating deep environmental values and virtues, a deontic
framework, supplying obligations, rights, taboos, and similar. For example, given that a
certain wild river is intrinsically valuable, as we can verify by on-site experience and
enhancement methods, and given that we duly respect that value, as deontic principles will tell
us we should, then we are not free to do as we like with that river, to dam it with concrete, to
channel it within concrete, stripping it of its riverine ecosystems. But that does not preclude
respectful use of the river, swimming or sailing quietly in its waters, and the like. Value thus
guides action, practice, and use; it is the ground also upon which principles are formulated,
principles that are assessed and validated by way of enhancement methods. Important among
these are non-interference principles, which exclude unwarranted interference with other
preference-havers and unwarranted damage, ill-treatment, or devaluation of items of value.
Such deontic principles circumscribe environmentally-limited freedom of action. Given noninterference principles, a major shift in onus of proof from homocentricethics takes place.
What is required now is that reasons be givenfor interfering with the environment, rather than
reasons for not doing so. Also direct responsibility for environmental interference or
modification falls upon those who would seriously interfere or significantly modify, who
would tread heavily on the land. Non-interference does not preclude use - only too much use
and use of too much. What it does lead to is the theme that, where use occurs, it should be
careful and respectful use.
An important respect thesis regarding environmental items is founded on such non-interference
principles and the no-reduction theme: namely,
• not to put others (other preference havers) into a dispreferred state for no good reason;
• not to jeopardise the well-being of natural objects or systems without good reason;
• not to damage or destroy items which, while they cannot literally be put into a dispreferred
state, can be damaged or destroyed or have their value eroded or impaired.
These apply to ecosystems, their surrounds, their parts, and so on. The mere making of
further excess profits, or similar economic excuses, are not good reasons. Such a respect
thesis forms part of the ecological outlook of deep-green theory.
Deep-green ethical theory amounts to much more than just another non-reductionist
ethical theory, which highlights ecological values and virtues, and so forth. It changes the
character and shape of ethical enterprise. Perhaps most strikingly, it removes humans as such
�from the centre of the ethical stage (or ~xclusive occupation of the stage). The biological
concept of being human ceases to be a significant ethical category. To elevate it to such is to
fall into human chauvinism, a type of class chauvinism which unwarrantedly discriminates in
favour of the human species. The prevailing chauvinism is not inevitable; it is very logically
avoided by directly connecting ethical characteristics with the categories of items that can have
them. Relevant categories include those marked out by features like: having well-being,
preference-having, rights-holding, contractual-capability, and so on, categories not necessarily
connected with any particular species. Hitherto virtually all Wes tern ethical theories, and the
institutional arrangements they help support, have not merely limited ethical matters to interhuman affairs, but have been blatantly chauvinistic, exhibiting substantial and unjustifiable
discrimination in favour of humans (or certain privileged humans).
Deep-green theory thus implies the inadequacy of prevailing social, political and
economic arrangements and institutions. These structures are the defective products of inferior
value frameworks which take quite insufficient account of environmental desiderata and values.
Richard Sylvan*
RMB 683
Bungendore NSW 2621
*
Thanks to David Bennett for comments on an earlier draft. For more on deep-green theory, see
essays in and work referred to in the Green Series, i.e. Discussion Papers in Environmental
Philosophy, RSSS, Australian National University, Canberra.
This compressed essay was solicited by and written for Island Magazine (Tasmania). Upon receiving
it however, the editors decided that it was too dense, and insufficiently journalistic and popular (not
features they had at any time requested), for their magazine.
�I
\. '1
11.10.95
CHAPTER 1
DEEP AND GREEN
AND PRESUPPOSED FUNDAMENTALS
It soon emerges from preliminary exploration that, under natural characterisations,
relevant notion of both ethics and green presuppose the notion of agency. So with something
on agency, enough to get started, we shall begin. In terms of agency and proclivities to
environments, green can be characterized, and in turn green approaches. Then, within green
approaches, three relevantly different types can be distinguished: shallow, intermediate, and
deep. It is the last, and really only the last, that matters for the ethical theory that follows.
1. Action, agency and agents: a summary . 1
Action theory is grounded in process theory. For actions are types of processes, agentascribed processes. processes are directed functions, ordinarily time-directed functions, 2 ?
framing of certain functional sorts. All the ordinary sorts of processes-ec lipses, transits,
removals, reflections, and so on and on-are processes (and ordinary processes can be
separated out logically, such as by applicability and inapplicability of certain predicates, e.g.
they take place, they are not facts, etc.)
Processes themselves in no way require agents. Actions, however, as distinguished
within goings-ons and taking-places, do require agency, and so agents. There is no reason at
all why these agents should be humans. Many agents are not humans, some humans are not
agents. But it is often quite erroneously assumed agents are humans, or persons. Excess
requirements on agency are partly to blame, the mistaken idea that agents have to be purposeful,
responsible, rational-feat ures that can be added to distinguish subtypes of agents. Rather,
actions can be roughly delineated through answers to questions like What is so and so (the
relevant agent) doing? How is so and so acting? The result reached following through this
route is this: process a is an action iff for some agent x, a is properly ascribed to x, it is x' s
doing. To break residual circularity, it remains to define agency. Agency is defined, such is the
proposal, in terms of exercising a causal role (which may be misdirected or similar), through the
following circuit. First, x is and agent as agents a iff, for some p directly partinent to a, x
causes Pbut x is not caused to cause p. In terms of agency-regarding, other notions can be
defined as follows: x is a sometime-agent, someties an agent, iff for some a, x is an agent as
2
As full an account of processes as so far worked up from notes appears in 'Process and actions',
which does provide detailed background for this section.
�'2
regards a. Agency is a characterizing attribute of sometime-agents. An agent is a sometimesagent that establishes a history of agency (a small reputation therefore).
2.
Explaining Green.
In characterizing green we start with agency. Such relevant features, of greens (or
environmentalists), as being positively concerned about nature of natural things, supporting
environmental causes and similar, are closely tied to practice and action; they are features of
agents. In an original central sense of 'green' so redeployed, an agent was green if that agent
firstly believed that some parts of the natural environment should be protected, and secondly
took some relevant action. 3 In short, a belief-action analysis emerges, which can be recast as a
standard belief-desire-resultant action account. For instance, the agent believes that some
natural environment is worth protection, desires that it should be, and acts (in some way,
perhaps feebly) accordingly. All the parts of this sort of account call, however, for some
elaboration. To remove a certain circularity, resulting from characterising "green" through
terms like "environmen t", 'natural environment' can be replaced by 'parts (surface
configurations) of the Earth substantially uninterfered with by humans'. To specify protection
satisfactorily, protection/ra m what should be indicated. And so on. But there is a little point
in elaborating this already weak characterisation, which can be satisfied by an agent interested in
saving a few square metres of the Earth's surface from exploitation. For the notion has been
further weakened, almost from its inception.
To characterise this laxer, but ubiquitous notion, let us insert the intermediary notion of an
environmental cause. Such causes include not merely protecting natural environments, but
limiting impacts on environments, which may not be pristine, for instance by pouring less
sewage or detergents, CFCS or Greenhouse gases, into them, or conserving items, which could
be exploited or consumed now for future use or for future human generations (to use or
conserve, etc.). The first of these further causes beyond protection, original green, is a largely
consumerist notion of green, the second, an economistic notion (it takes in such beloved
constraints as intergerational equity). There are other related causes of importance also, such as
restoration of something that has been over-exploited or damaged, such as agricultural lands,
waterways, urban air, soils (soil conservation), or even human artefacts such as monuments or
buildings. The shallow green cause of fighting pollution, for human health reasons, can fit in
here. Needless to add the restoration may not be to pristine conditions, but to quite low
3
Although we are explicating terms that are now in widespread usage, in a way substantially
faithful to that usage (but not some of its dilute or corrupt expansions), we shall regard the terms
as quasi-technical. We see these terms, as the discerning reader also may, as spelt not with a
double 'e' but a triple 'e', as 'greeen' and 'greeening' (insert hyphens as need be for appropriate
pronunciation, e.g. 'gre-een' _. The effect is to peel off dilution and corruption of 'green' (e.g. so
to include every politician, at least when any confronts concerned constituents) and to discard all
those unwanted and often undesirable senses the colour term green has accumulated.
�standards. In sum, causes include as well as protection, such matters as nondestruction,
conservation, maintenance, restoration, and so on.
Now substitute supporting an environmental cause for protecting a natural environment.
Then an agent is green in this expanded laxer sense if the agent believes in supporting an
environmental cause and takes some relevant action in that direction. Such an action component
is essential: green does imply some practical, if utterly token, involvement.
The lax account connects in the right ways with testable sociological criteria. For
instance, believing in supporting a cause can be cashed out in terms of joining an organisation
working for that cause, or even, reducing the slight action component still further, considering
joining such an organisation. 4 The appellation green applies not only to individual agents, but
also to groups, coalitions, institutions, even corporations and governments. As a green
government can, meet similar lax conditions, it is evident that there really are very few
requirements, even weak sponsorship may serve.
Many there are now trying to take advantage of green movements-adve rtisers, vendors,
politicians, professors, merchants, even generals (with "defence forces" retooling as
environmental defence forces). Cashing i in on the movement by producing a goods or services
presented as environmentally friendly does not thereby make parties doing so green, especially
if what is supplied adds to overall environmental impacts (as do "environmental markets"
delivering environmental junk, sometimes portrayed as "green goods"). The requirement of
serving environmental causes has been lost.
The excessive generosity of the account arrived at, which allows agents with only passing
or slight active beliefs in some cause to count as green, does not matter. For firstly, it
corresponds moderately well to current lax usage, which allows almost any sort of concern for
environments, coupled with an action component as slight as paying a token subscription, to
serve. Secondly, it still exercises quite enough exclusive power. Many agents are not green.
For instance all those exclusively tuned into possessive individualism, mainstream economics,
or similar creeds are not green (i.e. not even lax green). Thirdly, needed discriminations can be
made within the class of (lax) green. An important subclass of green comprises ecological
green, where the causes include maintenance and protection of natural ecosystems (including
wilderness) and these causes enjoy some primacy. "Ecological green" is by no means a
tautology.
4
In a study entitled 'GREEN PACKAGES IN AUSTRALIA', greens were picked out from the whole
sample of respondents to the Australian Election Study of 1990 in terms of answer to question:
How likely are you to join groups campaigning to protect the environment, or are you alrady a
member? Permitted answers: (1) I am a member, (2) I am not a member but I have considered
joining (3) I am not a member and I haven't considered joining, and (4) I certainly would not
consider joining. Those giving answer (2), perhaps token greens, were accounted green.
�4
To be green in more than a token fashion is to have some commitment to containing or
reducing the environmental impact of humans on the Earth or regions of it. By virtue of the
environmental impact equation (for a given region) that means commitment in the immediate
future term to either
•
human population reduction, or
•
less impacting lifestyles for many humans, or
•
improvements in technology to reduce overall impact.
Most humans in a region can do little to implement the third requirement, except to hope.
Accordingly they cannot satisfactorily demonstrate their commitment in this way. A genuine
green will meet both the other conditions. But since as big coalition as feasible is sought for a
green coalition, marginal greens who meet only one of the requirements, perhaps in weak form,
will not usually be excluded (from almost any green church). Issues of population afford a
simple test (a necessary condition) for a genuine green in Australia; for that agent fails who
suppoes that while efforts (including the agent's contribution) to effect human population
reduction should be invested elsewhere, as in parts of Asia or Africa, Australia can keep on
growmg.
From filling out the conditions delimiting green commitments, a green platform can be
derived. Specifically it will include, along with the action clause, derivative directives as
regards curtailing population, refining and limiting consumption, adjusting technologies, and
consequent thereupon altering administrative, political and economic arrangements and
institutions accordingly. What so results is a proper subplatform of the Deep Ecology platform.
A fair approximation to the full Deep Ecology platform can be derived by adjoining
requirements for depth to those for genine greenness of the action platform; so result themes
concerning intrinsic value in nature, and commitments deriving therefrom. In short, the wellknown Deep Ecology platform accounts (as a fair approximation) to a deep green platformwhich can accordingly supplant it.
As genuine green and green platform can be characterized given the initial notion of green,
that is lax green, so similarly can other green compounds and modified forms be explained (in a
preliminary way). For example, a green ideosystem is an ideosystem (an ideology, in the
unbiassed sense) that coheres with green commitments, and typically organizes and guides
them. As genuinely green, it is a system that includes a green platform, and it could be defined
in that way, as an ideo-system coherently extending a green platform. Similarly for green
ethics, and for green philosophy (and also for other green notions that could be defined but are
not presently needed, e.g. green goods, green consumers, green parties, green ideas and so
forth). A green ethical system is a green ideosystem which is an ethic. Green ethics comprises
�5
such green ethical systems and their theory. 5 Green ethics thus comprise a decidedly restricted
subset of environmental ethics. For an environmental ethic in the broad usage, an ethics that
addresses environmental issues, among others, may well contain themes that could not be
adopted by a green agent, that may even operate against environmental causes. In consequence,
a green ethics is an ethic that could be coherently adopted by a green agent, that does not run
counter to environmental causes.
3. Different approaches to the environment: shallower and deeper.
People can do more or less what they like with the environment, with the land and the sea,
and with what grows and lives there-such was and, in only slightly modified form, remains a
dominant theme of Wes tern cultural heritage. It was not the view of other cultures, such as
some of the American Indians or Australian Aborigines; nor was it the only view included in the
Western cultural package. But it has dominated, especially in colonial and imperial expansion.
It is only recently, for example, that some social or governmental restrictions with teeth have
been imposed upon what Australians can do with the land they occupy or claim, and these lag
far behind advanced green thinking as to what is required. For the most part there has been little
weakening in the Wes tern assumption that people own the land, that it is their possession, to
mould to their purposes and whims. 6
This unrestrained approach proved damaging enough while the land was wide and
humans comparatively few; now that human populations are expanding more rapidly, perhaps
to critical limits, now that much land is damaged and less fragile land is in increasingly short
supply, it is time to re-examine older attitudes and the accompanying practices. Any deeper
reassessment has to look at the presupposed land ethic, and more generally at the underlying
ethical and ideological assumptions.
A land ethic, according to Leopold, who introduced the term, is 'an ethic dealing with
man's relation to land and to the animals and plants which grow upon it' .7 Thus a land ethic
amounts to a nature (or environmental) ethic, with land a symbol for the whole of nature (or the
more comprehensive environment), and man a symbol for all relevant agents. The unrestrained
position, which imposes few or no constraints upon treatment of the environment, affords a
land ethic of only a degenerate sort. The unrestrained position would, for example, have little
5
6
7
Although we are anticipating here-as ethics and ethical systems are explained essentially
reportively however, in the next chapter, there is no circularity. For ethics is separately and
independently characterised.
Indeed, with the renewed libertarian movement emanating from industrial north-eastern America,
this assumption has gained in strength. Foreign "resources" are not to be hoarded but should be
saleable to the highest bidders for "free" economic use. And sometimes it is broadly hinted: or
else!
A. Leopold, A Sand Country Almanac with other essays on Conversation, New York, 1966,
p.238.
�6
compunction about using up materials, forests, pristine environments and so on, immediately or
even destroying them.
In the end the unrestrained position can be excluded from properly ethical positions. 8 For
it fails to meet the basic universality requirement on moral principles, of independence of
person, place or time, a requirement which iplies that persons of different races, colours, sexes
or ages, or at different places or times are not treated unfairly or seriously disadvantaged.
Insofar as the unrestrained position would permit the exploitation, degradation and even
destruction, of all present resources and environments, it places future humans at a very serious
disadvantage. The position is thus one of expediency, not morality, typically yielding, like
economics, evaluative assessments based on short-term narrow local interets, rather than
appropriately based on long-range values.
Opposed to the unrestrained position are various conservation ethics; what Leopold saw
as the land ethic is just one of these. Conservation ethics can be classified, conveniently for
subsequent development, into three groups: shallow, intermediate and deep. 9 Unlike the
unrestrained position, all these politions would conserve and maintain certain things-materials,
creatures, forests, etc. The shallow conservation position differs from the unrestrained position
primarily in taking a longer-term view and taking account of future humans, their welfare and so
forth. It is more enlightened than the unrestrained position in taking a longer-term perspective:
hence its alternative description as resource conservation. Though this conservation position is
only a small step away from the unrestrained position, it does pass one test for morality proper
in that future people are not treated unfairly. Most of the big rush into fashionable
environmentalism does not get beyond shallowness.
The shallow and unrestricted positions are closely related by an important feature they
share-and which justifies lumping them together as shallower positions. They are both highly
anthropocentric; they do not move outside a human-centred framework, which construes nature
and the environment instrumentally, that is, simply as a means to human ends and values. Thus
they take account ultimately only of human interests and concerns; all environmental values
reduce to these or similar human on closed notions. It is in this respect especially that these
shallower positions differ from deeper, less resource and exploitation oriented, positions.
8
9
This is a substantial, and controversial claim, especially since it accounts much economic activity
unethical, as involving practices of expediency, not morality. For the fuller case for obligations
and commitments to future humans, see e.g. R. and V. Routley, 'Nuclear energy and obligations
to the future' in Responsibilities to Future Generations: Environmental ethics, (ed. E. Partridge),
Prometheus Books, Buffalo, 1981, and other essays in this book.
This classification refines Naess's non-exhaustive distinction of shallow and deep ecology, and
extends it to render it exhaustive. For the original distinction, see A. Naess, 'The shallow and the
deep, long-range ecology movement' Inquiry 16 (1973) 95-100. An elaboration on Aess's
position, to which this discussion has some debts, may be found in his 'Philosophical aspects of
the deep ecological momvement', Environmental Ethics, to appear.
�According to deeper positions humans are not the sole items of value or bestowing value
in the world, and not all things of value are valuable because they answer back in some way to
human concerns. But deeper positions differ in the weight or relative importance they assign to
human concerns. According to the intermediate position serious human concerns always come
first; and while other things, such as higher animals, have value or utility in their own right,
their value is outranked by that of humans. The deep position rejects this assumption, and
maintains that even serious human concerns should sometimes lose out to environmental values.
FIGURE 1. THE POSITIONS SEPARATED, AND SEPARATING PRINCIPLES
SHALLOWER
UNRESTRAINED
DEEPER
SHALLOW
INTERMEDIATE
I
I
I
I
J,
J,
J,
DEEP
MORALITY
SOLE VALUE
GREATER VALUE
REQUIREMENT
ASSUMPTION
ASSUMPTION
(of human apartheid)
(of human supremacy)
The watershed principle which divides the shallower from deeper positions is the sole
value assumption. According to this major assumption, which underlies prevailing Western
social theory, humans are the only things of irreducible (or intrinsic) value in the universe, the
value of all other things reducing to or answering back to that of humans in one way or another.
This assumption is built into most present political and economic arrangements; for example,
only aggregated preferences or interests of certain (present) humans are considered in
democratic political choice, and likewise in economic decision making; other creatures and
natural items are represented at best through the preferences or votes of interested humans.
Similar assumptions are made in mainstream ethical theories. Typical are reductive
theories which endeavour to derive ethical judgements from features of closed systems of
humans.
Examples are provided by presently fashionable ethical theories, such as
utilitarianism. 10 According to utilitarianism what ought to be done, as well as what is best, is
determined through what affords maximum satisfaction to the greatest number of individual
humans. In theories like utilitarianism, the outside world of nature does not enter through direct
inputs or outputs, but only insofar as it is reflected in the psychological states of individuals.
Such ethical theories are appropriately described as those of apartness or human apartheid. Man
10
But the same holds for other fashionable theories on the American-dominated ethical scene, namely
contractualism and libertarianism. These theories, along with utilitarianism, are explained in most
modern American introductions to ethical theories or moral problems.
�is, or is treated as, apart from Nature; there is virtually total segregation. Nature or the land
enters only as a remote experiential backdrop, and onstage is the drama of human affairs and
interests.
However, humans cannot be entirely insulated from their environment; for example,
volcanoes affect temperatures thus affecting climate thus affecting crop yield and food supplies.
At least limited intercourse with the environment has to be admitted as a result. So, in
economics, ethics, and political theory, secondary theories, dealing with linkages to the
environment, have been appended (thus, for example, extemality theory in economics, some
allowance for "side" constraints in more sophisticated utilitarianism, and so on). But the land
remains treated as an awkward or tiresome afterthought, when it is considered at all.
There is, however, another approach, also with historical standing, vying with (and
indeed often confused with) human apartheid which can accommodate secondary theories a little
more satisfactorily. That is the position of superiority or human supremacy, according to which
Man, though included in Nature, is above the rest of Nature, meaning ethically superior to it.
While human supremacist positions can incorporate the sole value assumption and thus remain
in the shallow ethical area, they have the option of rejecting it in favour of the less objectionable
greater value assumption:: other things being equal, the value of humans is greater than that of
other things; the value of humans surpasses that of all other things in the universe. This
assumption allows that other objects, such as some higher animals, may have irreducible value;
what it insists upon is that, at least for "normal" members of respective species, this value never
exceeds that of humans. What is generally presupposed is that other objects-animals, plants
and their communities-are never of much importance compared with humans. Though human
supremacy has appeared in versions of utilitarianism where animal pain is taken into
consideration along with human, Western ethics and associated social sciences such as
demography, economics and political theory, remain predominantly apartheid in form.
It is the repudiation of the greater value assumption that separates deep from intermediate
positions. Perhaps the most familiar example of an intermediate position is that of Animal
Liberation, in the form in which animals are taken to have value in their own right, though in
any playoff with humans, humans win. Under the deep position such an outcome is by no
means inevitable; in cases of conflict of animal or natural systems with humans, humans
sometimes lose. I I
There are various arguments designed to show that the deep assessment is right, that
humans should sometimes lose out. A typical one takes the following form:- Some humans
lead worthless or negative lives, lives without net value. The point, though not uncontroversial,
11
So too for some men and some sparrow. So we should reject the intermediate ...... : A man is
worth more than a sparrow! (Drungson/ Ralston etc.)
�9
can be argued even from a shallow utilitarianism.1 2 Take for instance a life of pain and
suffering and little or no happiness: it has a substantial net negative utility. But some small
natural systems do have net value; one example would be an uninhabited undisturbed island (a
live example might be a tropical island before Club Mediterranee depredation). Now consider
the situation where the considerable value of a small natural system is to be sacrificed (in a way
that shallowly affords no ethical impropriety) on behalf of a set of humans whose lives each
have no positive net value. For instance, the system is to be exploited, just for the continued
maintena nce of these humans, or for their addition (as new settlers) to an establish ed
population. Then in such circumstances, these humans lose out; the natural system takes
precedence. Similarly, trivial satisfactions of humans do not dominate over the integrity of rich
natural environments.13
Let us look ahead to glimpse paradimatic expansions of the positions indicated (in figure
1). For the positions soon expand, when applied to real life issues, to more comprehensive
positions; indeed they have expanded all the way to what are now called social paradigms, that
is to full social perspectives. For example, the deep position has expanded from the two core
theses-a s initially reformulated, values in nature, which is a positive counterpart of the sole
value assumption, and biospecies impartiality, which is a positive elaboration of greater value
assumption 14-to fuller deep ecological positions which involve as well many other themes.
12
13
The point is argued in detail in R. Routley and N. Griffin, 'Unravelling the meanings of life?'
Discussion Papers in Environme ntal Philosophy #3, Research School of social Sciences,
Australian National University, 1982.
There are significant cross-classifications of environmental positions. Some further dimensions
are included in the following diagram.
Environment not taken
I
Environments is taken
into account
I
into account
p
14
--------- --------- --------- --------- --------- ---
shallow
intermediate
I dogs
I //////
I
I
E
I
individual
I
I
H
I
holistic
I
I
Another dimension is the static/dynamic. But no one want to be just stauc, really.
According to the values in nature theme natural items other than humans and human artefacts have
intrinsic value; while according to biospecies impartiality members of one species, humans in
particular, are not favoured or valued over members of another simply on the basis of species. The
danger of favouring one species is encouraged by the species fallacy, commonly invoked in
favouring humans. This is the mistake of concluding that because a few members of the species
have accomplish ed something of (immense) value, all members of the species therefore are
(highly) valuable; all members of the species manage to free-load for the ride, obtained by a few
members, so to say. The assumption, once challenged, usually falls back on an argument that
goes by way of capacities: the remaining members of the species have the capacity to achieve these
sorts of things also. But, firstly, that isn't true: intelligence, skills, and the like, vary somewhat
within species, and from our narrow perspective, very considerably among humans, some of whom
have no capacity for advanced mathematics or music. Secondly, it requires more than capacity: it
requires circumstances, a favourable environment to exercise them, (hence, in part, the folly of
�lU
The expansion is not uniquely determined; there can be various different deeper paradigms.
However it characteristically includes a fuller statement of themes recognised as in the spirit of
"deep ecology", in particular ecological themes, but also interconnected economic and political
themes. In a similar way shallower positions are subsumed in shallower perspectives, and
principally in what is called the dominant social paradigm, some relevant themes of which are
indicated in figure 2.1s
FIGURE 2. RELEVANT COMPONENTS OF THE ENCOMPASSING PARADIGMS.
DOMINANT SOCIAL
PARADIGM
DEEP ECOLOGICAL
ALTERNATIVE
Dominance over nature
Natural environment a resource
Harmony with nature
Values in nature/biospecies
impartiality
Less material goals/less growth
orientation
Earth supplies limited
AJ?propriate technology/limits to
science
Doing with enough/recycling
Regional/decentralised/small-scale
Material/economic growth
Ample reserves/perfect substitutes
High technological progress/
scientific solutions
Consumerism
National/centralised/large-scale
SHALLOW
f----------------------------- ➔
DEEP
4.
Criticisms of these beginnings and other beginnings
A main challenge we shall have to meet is that there can be no deep ethics, ethics and
axiology are inevitably shallow, because they must answer back to human valuers. This
challenge we presently set aside (until the next chapter). But it should already be apparent how
we can start to upset the challenge (already taken up by deeper utilitarianism), namely by
displacing humans by relevant agents.
Other challenges grant that something might answer to deeper ethics, but contend that
nothing should-objectio ns of substance-or that making anything much out of it is
unwarranted, for example because preliminaries in making out the distinctions have not been
15
more humans in decidedly suboptimal cities), together with a will and drive actually to follow
through appropriately on capacities.
Much fuller accounts of the dominant social paradigm and environmental alternatives are given in
S. Cotgrove, Catastrophe or Cornucopia, Wiley, New York, 1982, and in R. Routley 'Roles and
limits of paradigms in environmental thought and action' in Environmental Philosophy (ed. R.
Elliot and A. Gare), University of Queensland Press, 1983. The linkage of the dominant paradigm
with maximizing, and the deep alternative with sufficing, is elaborated in R. Routley,
'Maximizing, satisficing, satisizing: the difference in real and rational behaviour under rival
paradigms', Discussion Papers in Environmental Philosophy #10, Research School of Social
Sciences, Australian National University, 1984.
�11
properly accomplished-objections of form and from technicalities (cf. challenges to the
analytic/synthetic distinction). We consider examples of both sorts of challenge.
The misanthropy charge. Deep environmentalism has been criticised for what it does, so it is
alleged, to ethical treatment of other humans; it leads, it has been alleged, to neglectful,
negligent, or downright callous treatment of other humans, to inhumanity. The actual impact of
deep environmentalism affords but little ground for such allegations. Nor does the theory.
Deep environmentalism could leave intrahuman ethics, standard morality virtually entirely intact.
If it did so, deep environmental ethics would provide a conservative extension (in the familiar
technical sense) of standard intrahuman ethics. In this event the allegations would fall; for the
ethical treatment of humans would be in principle just the same as before.
But it is unlikely that any deeper environmentalism will leave standard morality entirely
intact in its own prime sphere of operations, that restricted to humans. For instance the
evolution of humans, and attributions of virtues or vices to them, is bound to be influenced by
how they act or respond towards nonhumans and the environment. A virtuous puritanical oldstyle industrialist who makes his affluent living through environmentally damaging practices
will no longer obtain the virtuous ranking that would have been accorded to him on the older
prevailing morality. (Of course that morality too is changing, but it hardly changes rapidly
enough to keep pace with a deeper ethic). The change in the evaluation of and moral standing
accorded to hard-working but environmentally exploitative business people, technologists and
engineers reflects a more far-reaching adjustment; that of removal of special privilege for
humans (or persons). Even in the more austere of standard ethical positions, such as duty
ethics in the Kantian mould, it is very easy to gain the impression of persons (usually males on
traditional ethics) as kings. There will be a club of kings, that was where more egalitarian
industrialism was proceeding also, to make us all kings - with the rest of nature as subjects.
While the unwarranted privilege accorded to humans under conventional ethical wisdom
will topple then, the treatment of humans by humans need not. To the contrary, if people
develop a more respectful and careful attitude to the environment, then they may well develop a
better, different and more careful, approach to other people as well. Here the awful Kantianstyle theme that decent treatment of animals will trickle down from a decent treatment of other
humans is partially reversed; a better treatment of other humans (a decent treatment is already
ethically required) will percolate up from a more gently and respectful treatment of natural
environments.
Nor finally then need a deeper environmentalism abandon the quest for social justice. 16
Deep-green theory certainly does not; the ethical-change agenda is much wider than social
16
There are two American groups where the quest for terrestial social justice appears to have been
abandoned or comprised: eco-fascists and nature greens, as they are sometimes called from outside.
�12
change alone, but social and human concerns do not thereby fall off the agenda. They remain,
but no longer in such isolations. What they do lose their unchallenged preeminence, and they
may also lose priority.
Problems with the Greater Value assumption (after Attfield).
A prime alternative to a shallow/deep distinction is (what is sometimes considered no
alternative, but a variant on it) the anthropocentric/ecologic distinction.
Notes: 1. Not the same distinction. While shallow positions are normally anthropocentr ic,
converse does not obtain.
2. Distinction never made out properly (really degree issues), and leads to typical 4-fold
outcome.
5.
Domination and chauvininism.
The greater or sole value accorded to humans, as compared with (other) valuations,
justify the domination of nature by humans. The main argument is simply that what has lesser
or no value should give away to what has greater value, the conventional assumption being that
what has greater value is better (analytic) than what has less, and should prevail over it
(substantive assumptions of conventional ethical themes such as utilitarianism).
Domination and associated class chauvinism are justified not only directly through
consideration s of greater or supreme value, but also less directly by pointing to highly valued
features possessed by the favoured class. Similar appeals to prized features are of course
likewise used to justify class chauvinism.
Appendices :
1.
Deep ethics are not automatically acceptable as satisfactory.
Consider e.g.whole chauvinism, where Wholes are intrinsically valuable, each and every
one, and their value much exceeds that of everything else, humans included. So wholes come
first. (This is a doctrical some superwholes may hold).
Two rough comparisions: cows in India, humans on earth.
Other unsatisfactory deep ethics, apart from those that aberate one species, are those that
focus exclusively on certain elements. Those e.g. individualisms, strong holisms, etc.
2.
Arguments to shallowness.
1. Simplistic (from one James O'Connor of Canada).
' ... the word "value" is a human word, with human meanings, in this case transposed to
non-human nature. Hence to say that nature is inherently valuable means that it is inherently
valuable to humans'.
Ecofascists, who follow a route pioneered by Hardin, call for a triage of nations on lifeboat earth
and abandonment of those nations, such as Bangladesh, seen without prospect of recovery. But the
position is not deep, it is certainly not a properly moral position; for due criticism see Griffin and
Bennett.
�u
2. Problem with shallow/deep terminology, e.g. acquired too many associations for comfort.
Intellectual offensiveness shallow, etc.
3. Shallowness involves a reductionist exercise. Making (trying to make) environmental issues
in all that matter environmentally-answer back to shallow concerns.
Series of arguments advanced to try to establish ..... .
Counter argument. These do not succeed and can be counter-evolelled.
3. Cross-classifications reformism/revolation is, like anthropocentrism, a poor
classification. It can be shallow without reformism and unethical economism with reformism.
DE itself is largely reformist in character (and excessively personal).: Anthropo-/ecocentric.
No doubt 'anthropocentricsm' meaning what its etymology implies 'centring in man'
(OED), is a useful term. Theories such as Coperican and Copenhagen quantum theory can be
criticised (or praised) as anthropocentric. What is in doubt is the new contrast of antropocentric
with ecocentric.
While the vague anthropocentric-ecocentric distinction is alright, so far as it goes, as a
starting stage, it is no place to stop. For there is a need for a value specific distinction,
antrhopocentr can be any sort of human centredness.
'Anthropocentric' is a poor choice of contrasting terminology, for several reasons. One,
which may be convenient to some, lies in its vagueness. There is no sharp cut-off in what is
human centred. Similarly for its supposed contrast term 'ecocentric', which presumably
expandents to 'ecologically centred'. Second, it becomes apparent that no proper contrast is
made in many cases. University textbooks on natural ecology, for instance are both ecocentric
because about ecology and anthropocentric because set and supplied for humans. Human
ecology, a subject increasingly encountered in universities, is directly both (not both under
different aspects). Were the classification satisfactory, it would provide a nice contradiction.
But the classification is far from satisfactory. It is not exclusive: nor is it exhaustive, but the
remainder obscure. But worse, any practical ethics, no matter how deep, is bound to be
anthropocentric, not ecocentric, even though duly concerned with ecology. The reason comes
to this: any adequate ethics is bound to be heavily concerned with agents, their obligations and
responsibilities, and for all practical purposes (on earth) these agents are generally certain
humans. This is, an adequate practical ethics is, as a contingent matter, anthropocentric. Of
course such an ethic, by contrast with main traditional ethics, may also be presented as an
ecocentric ethic, inasmuch as it may be focussed upon ethical agents' relations to ecological
items, human treatment of nature.
�14
Problems with the anthropocentric/ecocentric contrast do not mean that something like the
contrast cannot be made good. But it would involve redefinition of the critical terms, and could
accordingly be better accomplished with adjusted terminology.
Anthropocentrism is implausible, once a modern pict "of universe" becomes available.
(Scuh a sufficiently modern picture was already available to Descartes.)
The sun is a medium sized star of very common sort even within its galaxy. The
probability of planets like the Earth within this university is extraordinarly high. The probability
of other agents is also very high. Even the probability of other ..... ./competent agents is high.
But even if it were not, or even if there were other agents, the discourse to be embarked
upon would be significant. It is also pointful, for instance in disposeing of much philosophy.
If anthropocentrism is so implausible as regards "main place in nature", why is it not
implausible as regards intuitionality, value, etc.
Ironically, the swing away from anthropocentrism in the sciences in modern times (with
the advert of Copenhagen quantum theory and anthropic principles) was overpinged by
increasing anthropocentrism in what are misleadingly distinguished as the humanities. Above
all intentionality and value were emptied out of the wider universe and concentrated in the
exclusive focus of humanities, humans.
To adopt Freud:
Humanity has in the course of time had to endure from the hands of science two great
humiliations to its chauvinism .17 The first was when it was realised that our earth was not the
centre of the universe, but only a speck in the world system of a magnitude hardly
conceivible ... . The second was when his logical science robbed man of his particular privilege
of having been specially created and relegated him to a descent from the animal world' (puoted
in Unozco Ev ..... May 1982 p.3)
There are further shocks in store for humans-poor old humans!
3. Explaining depth [contrasts pale/pallid].
For a good sort of depth, what is needed a deep structure, extraction or format that lies
(partially) hidden from the surface. E.G. plate ponites in geology, strata in archasology, logical
form in grammar. Deep = penetrating to fundamentals in several ways and nonchauvinistic, not
shallow. [Mention also pluralism-so only a framework aimed for, on which grew various
detailled positions.]
Part of depth of Deep Green theory lies in its penetration below the surface of classrestricted or interested humanism to a genuine nonchauvinistic ethical structure: the (ill-named)
annular structure, which ties moral principles to nonhumanistic categorestion. Annular structure
17
Freud says: to great outrages upon it naive serif love.
�15
is a deep structure. A deep structure. Maybe can produce one for deep green theory (see Critiq
p.93, bottom halt) Start as above other measures of depth (pp.44-5) misconceived.
1'. Extent of searching of perception of value; depth of (value) perception.
1. Extent to which humanism (h.ch) abandoned for econvisonmental perspective.
2. Extent to which conventional moral and value judgements put op for reassessment.
(Naess's depth of questioning conventional wisdom) 2 is tied to 1; for abandoning heh
involves much reassessment.
Note differs from usual reflective equilibrium, which takes many generally accepted
judgements for granted.
More on what depth means (pragmetinally): Many environmental outcomes sought in deep
grounds can be supported in shallow ways (of course). But there are differences, as examples
show:
• pesticides (in forestry) should not be used, despite insect damage. For pesticides violate
natural succession and healing processes. Toxicity questions, though important, are secondary.
On shallow view: the main problem becomes not the use of pesticides, but whether they are
safe.
• natural world appears as a resource. Life forms which interfere with uses are pests.
2. Reformist/Transformist Variations upon Shallow/Deep Ecology
Unhappy with the derogatory implications of "shallow", Devall and Sessions tried to
convert shallow ecology in ecological reformism. While there was certainly a basis for this
conversion in Naess's original brief account of shallow ecology (which almost invited such
reconstrual), the result has been that something different has emerged, notably in green politics.
For what such conversions, along with associated imagery accompanying reformism,
achieve is not elucidation, but introduction of new contrasts, and therewith political crossclassification of the shallow-deep ecology contrasts. There are various contrasts with (mere)
reformist adjustment on political theory, for instance revolutionary change and radical change.
A revolutionary direction appears inappropriate as regards deep ecology (as revealed both by the
literature and political stances of leading members of the movement), but a politically radical
direction on environmental issues does emerge from later developments in N aess' s work.
Accordingly a rough contrast, which admits sharpening, can be made out between green
reformism and green radicalism. A machine image, which often operates not far from view in
such contrasts, is initially helpful in indicating the differences. Reformism does not interfere
with the main operation of the machine, its motor, though it may alter the adjustments, retune or
fine tune it, add filters or mufflers or converters, alter its appearance cosmetically, and so on.
By contrast radicalism would alter the machine, would interfere with its motor to some extent,
depending on the level of radicalism.
�16
In political terms reformism is exemplified in such measures as limiting pollution by
emission devices, further treatment of sewerage, small reserves and roadside veneers of trees
amid clear-cutting operations, tidying up of litter, and so on. The main motor of liberal
democratic market capitalism, the economic engine designed to deliver maximum economic
growth, and its main institutions, remain untouched and uncriticised; no change is proposed for
them. For radicals such measures and like reforms do not proceed far enough, towards the
sources of the problems. To tackle the range of environmental problems more radical change in
economic, social and perhaps political machinery is required. But evidently the extent of change
envisaged can vary, very considerably. For example, a frugal conservation program, directed at
limiting economic growth through removing conspicuous and excessive consumption, need
carry no accompanying program for radical social and political change. Again, deep ecology,
which offers no well worked out, or even well signposted, radical program or radical
restructuring, does not appear to be politically radical. Alternatives to liberal democratic
arrangements are not really advanced or investigated. By contrast some anarchist and marxist
influenced ecological positions are politically radical, for instance, social ecology. In short,
there is room for a classification of green radicalism, as shown by a preliminary grouping
according to whether the radicalism affects which of separate (though overlapping) economic,
social, or political matters.
The reformist-radical distinction is a vague one, without a sharp boundary. Reforms can
so accumulate that what was a difference in degree becomes a difference in kind, what was
extensive reformism turns out to be radicalism. In such an incremental fashion, positions which
were reformist can find themselves radical, without having undergone any conspicuus
radicalisation.
The contrast between reformism and radicalism can be sharpened somewhat within a (an
improved) theory of social paradigms. Then reformism is intra-paradigmatic, whereas
radicalism is not (but is extra-paradigmatic). That is a reformist works, like a normal scientist,
within the operational paradigm (the given political motor) and does not seek to change it,
whereas the radical does; success of radicalism resembles abnormal (even revolutionary)
periods in science. As there are many ways of deviating from a paradigm, which typically
involves a complex set of presumptions, so there are many sorts of radicalism.
The extent to which the political conversion of the shallow-deep contrast into green
reformism-radical contrast affords not a restatement, but a different classification, may now be
evident though perhaps not to its full extent. The most notable further feature is that green
radicalism may be utterly shallow, entirely anthropocentric. 18 Green Marxism affords a useful
18
In these terms Naess conflated two contrasts in his original 1973 article; shallow-deep and
reformist-radical. Different followers have latched onto different contrasts.
�l'/
example; it is socially and politically radical while shallow (of course it can be argued that it is
environmentally incoherent, though not in the mentioned features, but in its plan to supercharge
the economic motor and make it run even faster, with evident environmental fall-out). Social
ecology offers another example; for while more radical than deep ecology, it is certainy not
deep. Something of the rich variety we have come upon can be glimpsed from the following
table.
All the positions enumerated, except 9, are occupied, we suspect (though positions are often so
poorly or incompletely presented that is difficult to be sure ). 19 Positions 9 is practically
excluded for committed deep parties who duly care about the demise of what is of intrinsic value
under mere reformism. Position 5 is however occupied, by those who want (or believe they
have achieved) improved arrangements for and treatment of animals (e.g., no circuses, no
ordinary zoos, no cruel contests, etc.) but are not committed to a radical animal liberation
agenda. Green party territory is usually shallow, but some of the proposals presented may
extend to position 4, for instance in demands for participatory democratic restructuring. Of
course, many supporters of green parties may adhere to deeper positions.
19
It is worth noting that such positions will in principle supply their own forms of sustainability,
sustainable societies, and so on.
�24.10.95
Chapter 2
ETHICS WITHOUT HUMANS,
PHILOSOPHY WITHOUT HUMANS,
and COROLLARIES
It is a commonplace that ethics has proceeded not merely as if humans were on centre
stage, but as if humans really were all there is, all that mattered in ethics, as if nothing else
enters into morals and ethics, or does through only through them. That commonplace is
moreover commonly strengthened to a claim of necessity, that this must be so, that nothing
else can enter, except indirectly by way of humans. Ethics has to be thus anthropocentric.
Since environmental ethics began to shift humans, if ever so little, off centre stage, there has
been a heavy philosophical reaction, a sometimes bitter blacklash against greener ethics that
would background humans, or dare sometimes to remove humans, from the scene altogether.
Among many other things, it has been contended that by the very meaning of ethics and
morals, these subjects must be human-centred.
A crucial argument for necessary anthropocentricism of ethics makes human centrality
a matter of definition. This crucial argument will be broken, in the first of several stages,
through a detailed characterisation of morals and ethics in a way that is independent of
humans. The characterizations adopted depart in only minor and justified (though highly
consequential) ways from received dictionary definitions; that is the characterisations are
substantially reportive, as they have to be if they are to serve their iconoclastic purposes. The
matter of characterising ethics is in any case part of our business. Where would deep-green
ethics be left, as a subject of investigation, without an appropriate account of ethics?
1. On inadeqacies of what prevails: a sheaf of defective accounts.
It takes but little effort to discover severe shortcomings in most preceding investigations, and
that most accounts, many of them far too casual, are inappropriate for what they are intended
to cover, still less for environmental ends. There is no end to bad and defective definitions to
dissect and discard.
Even textbooks and guidebooks on ethics often make no attempt at a definition, and
often have little or nothing of due generality to offer on what ethics is about. 1 Unremarkably
then, many of those presenting or teaching ethics, perhaps well enough, have no adequate idea
of what ethics is about. This is revealed by the sorts of definitions they slop down and by
what they say ethics is about. The slop presented indicates they did not even bother to consult
their dictionaries with any care. It is an elementary exercise to show deficiencies in most
proposals.
A striking recent example is Singer (ed.) Companion to Ethics, supposedly an encyclopaedic work
on ethics.
�2
A few sample definitions recently encountered will help confirm our claims. Utterly
defective is the account of ethics as 'the relation between you and other people' .2 Such
connections as the spatial relations between people, for instance where they sit at a seminar,
do not belong to ethics. Narrowing relations to those of treatment, as in 'how you treat other
people' improves the account a bit, but not enough. Decent treatment of relevant kinds no
doubt comprises part of ethics, but a small part. Nor is such treatment confined, especially as
regards receivers, to people; animals, nature and more, all matter.
A more interesting account, presumably designed to encompass applied ethics, takes this
remarkable form: "'ethics" [is] defined as disciplined reflection by persons in all walks of life
on moral ideas and ideals'. 3 As a definition, this too fails entirely, appearing circular, and
converting ethics away from, what is essential, practice into head stuff, into something like
meditation, a kind of widely practiced theorizing, though practised on certain parts of ethics!
There are too some unfortunate side-effects of the insertion, aimed at making ethics applicable
to all walks of (human) life: namely, as there are walks of life which have no room for
disciplined reflection, so there is in fact no ethics. Back again to the drawing board.
Similarly for Russell's fuller attempt:
The study of Ethics is perhaps most commonly conceived as being
concerned with the questions "What sort of actions ought men to perform?"
and "What sort of actions ought men to avoid?" It is conceived, that is to
say[!], as dealing with human conduct, and as dividing what is virtuous and
what is vicious among the kinds of conduct between which, in practice,
people are called upon to choose. 4
Owing to feminist criticism of male chauvinism, many now wince at Russell's; piquant use of
term like 'men' (in fact throughout his numerous works). Environmental criticism of human
chauvinism has not been so (terminologically) successful, sad to report.
Back to the board.
It takes little effort to assemble a sheaf of inadequate definitions and accounts of ethics. Many
include too little, for example the popular account of ethics as "how we should live", which as
well as being too narrow is parochial. 5 Similarly, though fractionally better; a coherent set of
values to live by is enough for an ethic. For that appears to omit a deontic component,
obligations and permissions, and certainly leaves out ethical virtues. A major shortcoming,
even in fuller characterisations, concerns the concentration on humans and their parochial
affairs. For, as will soon appear, ethics does not essentially concern humans. An adequate
ethics says nothing about humans, members of species Homo sapiens, their obligations and
rights, values or virtues. It applies but contingently to humans; it applies similarly to
hominids, humanoids, and to persons generally, and functions in the absence of persons
altogether. As a result, the following familiar sorts of pronouncements on what ethics amount
2
3
4
5
John Langford, on ABC radio, 22 February 1993.
Engels, 6.
Russell p.1, F & S, from Elements of Ethics 1910.
For such an account see e.g. Single [Encyl. Brit.]
�3
to are seriously defective: 'An ethic may be thought of as an ideal of human behaviour, an
environmental ethics as ideal human behaviour with respect to the environment, natural and
built" _6 Not everyone got it quite so wrong. For instance, Brandt gets away to a nice neutral
start, even if he does not cover the spread of ethics. Consider his opening:
Moral philosophy has traditionally been a systematic attempt to answer
some questions of apparently universal interest [!] about: what is worth
wanting or working for (what is worthwhile, of worth); what is the best
thing for an agent to do from his own point of view; what is morally right,
and what is morally just). [Also what is rational in these regards.]7
The nice start does not last. Agents turn out to be humans; utilitarianism soon begins to effect
an ugly intrusion, and so on.
2. On how to define ethics and morals more satisfactorily.
It is not difficult to do noticeably better than ethics teachers and writers have managed,
simply by consulting better dictionaries. But it is also not so difficult to re-organize and
improve upon what dictionaries offer. It is significant that dictionary definitions of moral and
ethic contain no essential allusion to humans, nothing essential concerning humans, man, or
we, us and co. (andwhere 'human' does enter, as in 'principles of human duty', it can simply
be elided, it is inessential). But the dictionary accounts do harbour some problems.
For one thing, like some of the preceding definitions, the dictionaries seem mired in a
common and damaging circularity: ethics is defined in terms of morality (and its adjuncts,
decent treatment, and similar); but then morality is itself defined through ethics. Fortunately
the loop back to ethics can be broken.
A particularly satisfactory way to workable definitions of notions in the ethics orbitethic, ethical, ethics, to take direct cases-is through those in the presupposed moral orbitdirectly, moral, morality, morals. For all these ethical notions are regularly defined, in better
dictionaries, through moral notions. This approach reverses the difficult and so far
unsuccessful strategy, sometimes tried in ethical theory, of attempting to define morality (e.g.
through universalizability conditions) inside a somehow independently characterized ethics. 8
The bases, upon which moral notions are carried, lie in turn in the action orbit, in
features of actions and their agents. 9 As agents are entailed by actions-beca use actions just
6
7
8
9
See 'A universal environmental ethics' Connect, UNESCO-UNE P Environmental Education
Newsletter XVI(2)(June 1991). pl.
Brandt p.l.
Long ago I used to think this was now it had to be done, through some singling out of morals
within ethics by way of a combination features of humans and requirements of morality (such as,
variously, consideration of others, universalizability). Not recognising the virtues of agency, I too
erroneously supposed that morality had to pertain to humanity.
No doubt the main definitional enterprise can be carried out, more or less, the other way around,
beginning with ethics, then cutting down to morals within, through agency. Moreover, such an
alternative route (starting out easily enough from the notion of ethics as the theory and
systematization of the good and the right, valuable and permissible, the virtuous and responsible,
and so on) should arrive at the same place, at a similar end result.
These action basics can in turn be explained, as before, within process theory, see Sylvan 1993. A
classification of agents can be drawn from there. It is not claimed that this is how we have to start
or that action nexus affords unique starting point. But its features have to be included sooner or
�4
are agent-ascribed processe s-actions , more generally processes, form bedrock here. Neither
processes nor actions have any essential connection with humans. Relevant elements of
action nexus, upon which moral actions are carried, are now indicated: Single action
snapshot, capturing agent-acts -in-environment nexus:
AGENT
has
motives
emotions
volitions
objectives and goals
of
prior causes
ACTION
has
subsequent consequences
impacts upon (relevant items within) environment
The breakdown of actions, into types, will straightaway yield much that has long been taken
as central in moral theory, such as agonising (as Socrates did) over choices. Choice-making is
a morally critical type of action. Plural actions expose further relevant features, including
conduct, dispositions and character of agents, and suggest typologies (or moral relevance) of
actions and of impacts. Virtue ethics, but part of moral theory, fit here.
Whereas morality -the new ecologically sensitive morality that is-begin s from certain
features of an agent in its environment, ecology begins from investigation of an organism in
its environment. 'From the outset ecology was clearly understood to be the appreciation of
the organism (any organism, note) in and as part of its environment' . 10 'Something along the
lines of "the study of organisms in relation to their environment" is the basis of most ...
attempts ... [at] working definition of ecology ... over [which] there has been little dispute' . 11
Despite initial appearances, the upshot is not (the perhaps appealing one) that morality is a
branch of ecology. For the features investigated are very different (and a satisfactory
definition of 'ecology ' has to be sharpened to indicate what features of organism-inenvironments are studied). Whereas in morality there is much interest in the virtues and vices
of agents for instance, a parallel interest is outside the scope of ecology (and indeed not a
significant question for most organism or for many agents).
Interestingly, the ethical theory being advanced begins in precisely the way Deep
Ecology, in its pristine formulation, implies that no theory should operate, with an agent-inenvironment image. Under the total-field approach of Deep Ecology all such images dividing
up fields should be rejected, in particula r any man-in-e nvironme nt image, a special
chauvinistic case of what our theory operates with. Similarly no doubt for organism-inenvironment images of ecology. Unremarkably no arguments are offered for these rejections;
10
11
later, and it has virtues as a start, including familarity and naturalness.
R. Kitching [New Education], p.39
Ibid p.40 rearranged.
�5
cogent arguments would be hard to find, or articulate. In any case, Deep Ecology strictures do
not prevent preliminary or limited uses of field analysis. As it will soon turn out, for more
general purposes, what is needed is removal of agents, not dissolving the image.
These action-theoretic preliminaries admit of much elaboration and variation, both
expansion and contraction most of which however we can pick up as we proceed. For
example, an illuminating expansion would expose the setting, of constraints and incentives,
within which an agents acts; no doubt some of these features, incentives for instance, can be
absorbed into what is already depicted, such as motives, and the remainder could be included
in under a prior-influences category. Striking contractions are those afforded by prevailing
ethical theories, consequentialism and Kantianism, which would erase, respectively, all but
consequences or all but motives. The parable of the Blindman and the Elephant is not only a
clever analogy for a implausible perspectivism; it can serve as a telling indictment of much
analytic philosophical practice. Moral philosophical practice, especially that of analytic
philosophy, consists in only sensing part of a whole (constellation) and failing to see the
rest. 12 Moral and action theory afford good examples of such skimping; for instance,
consequentialism fails to see anything but consequences.
The term moral, generously construed, covers the assessment of agent-intricated
elements of the action nexus depicted, in all the following sorts of respects (as applicable):
excellent, good, indifferent, bad, evil; approved, disapproved;
valuable, of value, or not
axiological
right or wrong (or alright), fair or unfair, proper or improper
obligatory, forbidden, permissible
deontic
responsible, irresponsible;
it also covers principles concerning such assessments. Morality concerns both appreciation
and assessment of agents-acting-in-environments as regards those sorts of features and
resulting systematization. Parallels with ecology should be evident. X's conduct or the like is
moral, broadly so, iff it is a matter for moral appraisal. In short, what is moral is marked out
by classes of functors in an action nexus.
Plainly some of the features, which perform the distinguishin g work, are not
significantly applicable to all elements in the nexus; for instance, impacts of frogs are not
significantly responsible. Responsibility applies primarily to certain agents, their conduct and
character. The sorts of respects cited are, furthermore, more general forms. But many more
specific evaluations are thereby encompassed; for instance, honourable, dishonourable;
decent, indecent, again as applicable.
In terms of the sorts of respects, certain important subtypes can be distinguished. The
first group (given by the first two lines) covers axiological. The second group (given by the
next two lines) covers deontic. The third group (not usually distinguished in "the logic of
12
For a detailed treatment of skimping in philosophy, see DP, chapter 11.
�6
ethics") comprises accountability notions.
Such, formerly important, terms as virtuous and vicious-regu larly, but wrongly
included in dictionary listings of respects defining moral (e.g., "of or pertaining to character
or disposition considered as ... virtuous or vicious")-ar e axiological. They can be
characterized in terms of what is already available, thereby avoiding further circularity vexing
dictionary definitions (which define 'moral' using 'virtuous', and 'virtuous' deploying
'moral'). 13 For example, to adjust the dictionaries, virtuous [action] is [that] exhibiting moral
excellence or quality, vicious that distinguished as morally evil. Much the same supervenient
story gets told for duty in the deontic class. For while a duty just amounts to a certain sort, a
rigorous sort, of moral obligation, duty is not among the respects listed in defining the term
moral.
There are several, loosely consequential , attachments often made to what counts as
moral(s), notably: issues of punishments and rewards, with a view to altering proper conduct;
of freedom and determinism, as the latter may appear to place moral enterprise in jeopardy; of
justification of moral principles, which do not stand on its own without moral justification;
and so on, for other theoretical topics that consequently arise. While these further issues do
not form part of dictionary definitions of moral, they are stock textbook fare in moral
philosophy. But that, moral philosophy and moral theory, is where they can comfortably stay.
While the issues that result could be called moral, or distinguished as textbook moral, they
might as well simply be accommodate d more accurately, within philosophy of morality (metamorals).
Morality is, at base, the attribute of being moral. 14 Thus, basically, an item exhibits
morality if and only if that item is moral. In wider compass, morality comprehends a larger
package concerning what is moral; it consists in the theory and appreciation, practice and
principles of what is moral. It follows, from the account of moral given, that morality is all
about certain features of agency, features of theory and practice of agency, namely evaluative
and assessment features and principles concerning these, such as conduct and choice.
Several other significant corollaries also emerge. Firstly morality has nothing
essentially to do with humans. A similar but still more striking result will follow for ethics,
which is characterised, also in a human independent way, by way of morality. Ethics too has
nothing essentially to do with humans (or even with humanoids). Morality turns on features
of agency. Humans, some of them, simply happen to supply, presently, prime terrestrial
examples of full moral agents, those actors who do not merely conduct themselves well or
badly (a kangaroo can be a good or poor mother, a dog can behave badly and know it) but
who make promises, recognise obligations, accept responsibilities, and so forth.
Humans were almost certainly not the only full terrestrial agents; other humanoid
13
14
Thus too much of "virtue ethics" can be absorbed, see further, later chapters.
In logical terms it is defined through attribute abstraction.
�7
species that have become extinct (perhaps with human assistance) very likely were also.
Certain humans are probably not the only full moral agents even now in this universe. It is
unlikely that humans will exemplify the only moral agents, perhaps even terrestrially. 15 The
prominen t role of competen t humans in morality, and so as regards ethics, is utterly
contingent. It follows, now quite generally, that those familiar definitions of morality and
ethics in terms of humans and their features are one and all defective. For all the (green)
ethical theory to be developed, humans can drop out altogether. But competent humans are
useful for illustrative purposes; it helps to have some demonstrably actual examples.
Moreove r, in such practical terms as terrestrial ethical impact, they are now almost
unavoidable.
Before explaining how to escape damaging agent centredness, or actocentricity, in ethics
that would result from equating ethics with morals (i.e. morality in this sense), there are loose
ends to be tied up and certain advantages, worth recording, accruing from having actocentrism
as a staging post. One advantage is that unwanted senses of evaluative notions are peeled off
automatically, because they do not apply regards agency. For example, so removed are not
only merely "aesthetic" uses but all those quasi-descriptive uses of commendatory terms such
as good (e.g. 'good car' 'good sort', 'good sox', 'good ox'). Aesthetic uses of evaluative
terms, as in 'fine painting' or 'good book', do not concern, except in oblique ways, action or
conduct of agents. It may well be objected that even so not enough non-moral uses are peeled
off, as various uses like those of mere expediency or practicality are left standing. A countercase will be developed that these should be left standing. For a smarter strategy than
attempting exclusion, includes moralities of expedience, of practicality, egoism and the like
within the moral orbit-so enabling a straightforward answer to such otherwise vexing
questions as Why be moral?- whilst subsequently differentiating within morals a distinuished
subclass (to be called meurals) which does function exclusively through meeting more
exacting requirements of morality.
There is a subsense that should be picked up immediately. Though a vicious or evil
agent is certainly a matter for morality, and within its compass, such an agent would not
normally be accounted moral (as a naive reading of the dictionaries would suggest), but
immoral. What is moral, morality, concerns the span of moral, immoral and indifferent
procedures. Plainly moral in the narrower sense comprehends the definitely positive part of
the span, as good does of the wide value span. Generally, an item (such as an agent, practice,
conduct, or whatever) is strictly moral, moral in this stricter sense, if it is moral, a matter of
15
There are arguments to other moral agents, other full agents even, from evolusionary theory.
According to an expanded theory, every niche is eventually occupied. (In a way, this interesting
theme carries over from the earlier doctrine of a great chain of being, which similarly onto every
position in the chain as potentially occupied.) By a statistical argument (copying those for
intelligent life elswhere in this vast universe), there are, or will be, niches for agents, with requisite
capabilities, wlsewhere in the universe. Therefore, by the theory, these niches will eventually be
occupied.
�8
moral concern, and its appraisal is decidedly positive. Naturally for a full account, positive
within the moral span, has also to be defined. However here the strict sense is picked up only
to be set aside.
Focussing upon morality would be unduly limiting from the perspective of
environment al ethics. For although anthropocent ricism has been avoided, easily
circumvented through agency, though humans play no essential role, still morality is
undoubtedly agent-centred. Morality foregrounds agents and assessments of them and their
actions, and backgrounds environments of agents, and environments more generally (those
without agents in them do not even enter into consideration). The environment remains, so to
say, mere backdrop to actions of agents.
Escape is through an intermediary, which is substituted in place of morality in the
account proposed of ethics. That intermediary is an expanded morality, in convenient
shorthand ectomorality. 16 ('Ectomoralit y' is close enough for the present to 'ecomorality' ,
which is of course part of the main focus.) Expanded morality takes into account also
evaluative settings, perhaps devoid of agents; whatever of value that agents, or agent-like
subjects, agentoids, might in principle impact upon, interfere with, disturb, effect, change,
dislodge, or similar. That is, to say, it encompasses all items of relevant value, of worth,
significant items, including many wholes, such as habitats, ecosystems, the Earth itself; and so
also whatever applies morally with respect to these, for instance permission to disturb or to
improve, principles of letting be, and so on. Such ecosignificant items are also called, in the
literature, morally considerable items (a nicely ambiguous term, both sides of which have
unfortunate features, one because a considerable item may not have large significance, the
other because what it is supposed to respond to is some restricting class of considerers). In yet
other and more satisfactory terms, they have ethical standing. Naturally items of significance
other than agentoids may have other ethically relevant features (which they perhaps accrue
through their significance). For instance they may hold entitlements of various sorts, such as
to be left alone, to be represented, and so on.
In order to characterize core notions in the ethics orbit, the basic strategy consists in
plugging in "expanded morality" where the dictionaries give "morality"; similarly substitute
"ectomoral" for "moral". For the adjectival forms 'ethical' , and (equivalently) 'ethic', that is
all that is required. For the form concerned means: pertaining to ectomorality, or
(equivalently) treating of or relating to ectomorals. For the noun forms it is not so simple,
because there are problems with the dictionary accounts (for instance in 'the science of
morality' owing to misplaced definiteness, and dated uses of the term 'science'). Always
ethics(s) is an abstract, signifying features of being ethical; more exactly, always concerning
ectomoral theories or systems. More specifically, ethic( s) signifies
firstly, in both singular or plural though usually plural, the whole field of ectomoral theory
16
Greek ektos, outside. We include the inside with the expansion which incorporates the outside.
�9
(the "science" of ectomorals), or derivatively, the department of (philosophical) study
concerned therewith;
secondly, in the singular but pluralising, a system or schematization of ectomorality, that is, at
least rudiments of a system, or of a theory, comprising values, ectomoral principles, and rules
of proper conduct.17
Like stock textbook ethics, most environmental ethics so far are in fact truncated; they
are very rudimentar y schemes, leaving out much that would be expected in a fatter
systematization. Hence in part the vagueness of characterization. So far the vagueness
(which does not exceed that of dictionaries or of ordinary usage), is immaterial, as the
characterisation is workable. But further exactness could be obtained through a technical
upgrade of system and a more detailed specification of what such a proposition system
contains. 18
What are sometimes cited as further restricted senses of 'ethic' are not further senses.
Rather they are restrictions, or designations, of what is already presented. Thus for instance,
the 'moral principles of a particular leader or school of thought' as in Buddhist ethics or
Kantian ethics. Similarly for field indications or application restrictions, as in medical ethics
or bioethics. So much for "senses" of 'ethics'.
In order to reach an adequate definition of ethics, not merely for intended environmental
purposes, but for historical purposes as well (so as to include Stoic ethics, Taoist ethics,
romantic nature ethics and the like as ethics) we have been obliged to adjust (if in an
inconspicuous way) dictionary definitions of ethics. That adjustment was made through
"expanded morality", but could have been accomplished in other equivalent ways (Leopold's
expansion of 'community' is another, though less satisfactory, way of achieving the same sort
of thing). Granted that we have adjusted dictionary definitions, have we changed the very
notion of ethics, or did the dictionaries, not for the first item, get it wrong, getting caught with
chauvinistic definitions? We claim that we have not changed the notion. Rather we captured
what some meant, more or less, by ethics all along-fro m Stoics, Epicureans and others on. It
has never been a very precise notion. In this case (by contrast with terms like right) not too
much hangs on the term, and we could simply divide ethics up, for instance, into wide and
narrow. However, we intend to keep the nice term ethics but to give the dictionaries and
modem opposition the expressions, standard ethics, or conventional ethics.
Our inconspicuous but all important adjustment is both good and bad news. It is bad
news, insofar as it appears to assist the charge that [deeper] environmental philosophy is doing
something different from ethics, that it is guilty of changing the subject (i.e., effectively
committing ignoratio elenchi). However we can freely grant, without incurring damage, that
17
18
Thus ethics include what it has to include, as expanded environment ally: philosophy of
ecomorality, and therewith of morality.
A system is a relational structure of a certain sort. An ethic is a propositional system, since it has
to include principles and the like; thus it involves a theory of strict logical sort. For an illustration
of the use of systems formulations in ethics, see e.g. Routley 1973.
�10
standard ethics was, as a matter of definition, at least actocentric, and that, insofar as agents
were identified with humans, it was, therefore, anthropocentric. Even so ethics, as redefined,
includes standard ethics, so it is more satisfactorily seen not a different but a larger subject,
expanded through an expanded morality. It is good news, not merely because it facilitates
environmental ethics and accords with more satisfactory (greener) accounts of the subject, but
because it helps in getting around a snarl of objections to the effect that ethics has to be
homocentric, or at least actocentric. Removing these objections will recur throughout what
follows.
Among corollaries of note, a first one is that plurality of ethics falls out of the
characterisation. An ethic is not unique. Nor (through such a result does not follow as
environmental ethics form a subclass of ethics) are environmental ethics. Nor are military or
professional ethics. Failure of uniqueness is not a deficiency, but a virtue. For, one thing, it
gives places to go in cases of breakdown of an ethic, namely to other nearby ethics. Plurality
is tied up with nonuniqueness and other features of merit: noncomprehensiveness, openness,
flexibility, and so on.19
Secondly, there is more news on what an ethics is; and what an environmental one is. It
is widely claimed that an ethics requires a communit y, in an environme ntal ethic the
community (of concern etc.) is a wide environmental one. Ethics enlarges the community, a
scope of values. Ethics (partaking of ethos ~ the evaluative frame(or spirit) of a community.
While these ideas are popular they are astray.
Environmental ethics shifts the frame of reference for ethical consideration from purely
human concerns to ecological communities. 1-B Human beings as moral agents are not
ethically privileged.
An environmental ethic must be compatible with ecological principles and with life, i.e.
be livable.
3. Within ethics and morals, as so far generously constured: decent and dud distinctions.
Something like the division between the first and second specifics above has been
quasi-technicalized within ethics, and distorted through merger with a theory-metatheory
distinction borrowed from outside ethics. Engagement with the second (as in systematisation,
constructing and working within systems, etc.) has been dubbed normative ethics, or
sometimes to increase the confusion just ethics, or condescendingly, casuistry. Metaethics has
been taken however to be not what the logical analogy, and borrowing, would suggest metanormative ethics, the (positivistically correct) study of such systems, but instead a brand of
analytic philosophy, analysing the meanings and uses of key ethical terms. Taken as
exhaustive, there is much of importance, that the normative-metaethical distinction leaves out.
Nor is the distinction exhaustive. As well, the labels are misleading. In short, the distinction
is ill-made out and rather unsatisfactory, a handicap, not an asset; it can be abandoned without
19
See EEHC p.57.
�11
loss and to advantage. Let us do so (so forget this paragraph, if you prefer). Many other
distinctions from standard ethics are also defective, in one way or another. It will be advisable
to resurvey and rechart ethical terrain.
Among other standard, but often dud, distinctions from ethical theory that have to
reexamined after environmental impact, to be duly salvaged or scrapped, are all the following:
• objective/subjective. That the objective/subjective distinction provides a false dichotomy is
easily seen from usual explanations of the terms: 'either objective, standing for a real factor in
things, or subjective, simply standing for a human proposal' 20
• Cognitive/non-cognitive. 2 1
To be retained are some distinctions which certain forces have worked hard to eliminate, such
as that of
• Fact/value (and earlier demise).
• Expedient/moral.
There is an elasticity in the notion of ethics, and a neglected distinction, that it is
important to take into account.. In contemporary ethical theory there is a concerted attempt to
build a universalizability requirement or some sort of equivalent into the very notion of ethics.
The evident result is that selfish systems of evaluation and conduct, systematic egoisms for
instance, are refused the title of ethics, and as an important corollary questions like Why be
ethical? become vexed. 22 Given, in particular, that any such "universality" requirement is
problematic in its formulation, and typically limited, chauvinistically to persons, a superior
course proceeds to distinguish: between ethics as already characterised (reportively) and its
subclass, universalizable ethics. As impartial ethics do have much to recommend them, let us
coin a convenient portmanteau term condensing the clumsy "universalizable ethics", namely
euthics. (Conveniently then un-euthical suggests unethical, which is what from a properly
ethical stance it is!)
There is undoubtedly some pressure to have ethics and morality extend beyond a single
or isolated individual 23 ( even so, a Crusoe ethics is intelligible and feasible, as regrettably is
egoistic morality). But that pressure does not extend very far; and such notions as those of a
tribal morality and an upper-class ethics are not defective on significance or semantic grounds,
even if they are wide open to objections on substantive grounds.
Such restricted ethics are not however immediately ruled out, as ethics, by such
requirements as that like cases be assessed alike, and that differences of assessment be based
on relevant differences. 24 For a tribalist or racist can respond that a foreigner is not like a
20
21
22
23
24
Reese p.157.
See also Reese.
On both, narrowing and vexing, see Singer Impractical ethics (Singer equates moral with ethical).
Singer does not really have an answer to the question Why be moral? though he thinks it not a bad
idea; mainly he tries to put down shuffles that have been presented as decisive.
Pettit reworking a rough route hacked out by Wittgenstein, tries to expand this across into a
philosophical forest denominated "holism", no-dwelling place for an isolated individual.
These requirements are presented by Attfield as basic formal requirements of reason (p.6). No
�12
Greek, or that there are relevant differences between whites and blacks (intelligence has been
proposed as such a difference, when skin pigmentation appeared a merely superficial
difference). These sorts of responses, which were long accepted, are no longer acceptable,
because the differences put up are not considered ethically relevant differences (correctly
enough, though ethical relevance itself lacks an adequate explanation). Egoism, for instance,
exhibits rationality failure, as it does not treat likes alike. There are no relevant differences
justifying different treatment.
Singer's main argument for a much wider point of view,for universality, rests upon an
extensive appeal to authority (p.11). What else is offered is but an appeal to usage.
the notion of ethics carries with it the idea of something bigger than the
individual'. [It often does, but it may not.] 'If I am to defend my conduct
on ethical grounds, I cannot point only to the benefits it brings me. I must
address myself to a larger audience'(p.10).
That depends on the conduct concerned. More important, the audience does not need to be so
large, certainly not universal: my family or clan will suffice often enough. Nonetheless there
is this of use 'ethics', especially in such criticisms as 'unethical'.
• due consideration of others, all others;
Parallel to the distinction of euthics within ethics is a distinction of neurals within morals,
neurality within morality. Again the subclass, reflecting widespread philosophical usage of
the term morality, is separated through some requirement of morality, such as
• universalizability, which is a strong way of ensuring the first (do unto others etc.).
Insofar as these principles all allude to others, they often admit easy extension (to other
others). 25
4. Environmental and greener ethics.
As prevailing accounts of ethics are for the most part defective, so are what builds upon
them, recent accounts of environmental ethics. But there are also other grounds for
dissatisfaction with these.
Issues in the characterizat ion of ethics, especially removal of actocentrism and
homocentrism, naturally get transmitted to critical types, such as environmental ethics. But it
might be imagined, rashly, that disagreement ends there. After all, all decent environmental
ethics make the non-human world a proper object of concern, either directly or indirectly.
Differences between explications offered can be ascribed to ordinary philosophica l
incompleteness. "An environmental ethic, broadly, is a set of values to live by which takes
due account of the value of the non-human world". 26 Stated differently, the aim of
environmental ethics 'is to understand and act appropriately in relation of our ecological-i n
25
26
doubt they are, though they appear to figure in no logic of ethics yet formulated.
The distinctions can be filled out (and made to work-verify!) by a strategy like the earlier. Again
the list of moral predicates is deliberately wide. But once again we can later separate off certain
uses e.g. instrumenal, aesthetic uses of good.
Gunn 1987, 3.
�13
the broad sense-circum stances". 27 Differently again, " ... sets of principles, which would
guide our treatment of wild nature, constitute an environmental ethic in the most general
sense". 28 The first of these slack explanations leaves out what is essential for an ethics,
principles; the second is unduly actocentric, leaving out what is not, as well as main
paraphernalia of ethics; the third not only neglects values, but excessively narrows scope so
that such an ethics is inapplicable in places devoid of wild nature or to other issues. A better
explication, which avoids these obvious pitfalls runs: An environmental ethics is an ethics, as
defined, which, among other concerns, takes specific account, through its values and
principles, of (significant) environmental items, of parts of nonhuman nature.
But obviously it too leaves much to be explained. How the non-human world is made
the object of concern, how it is moral concern, to what degree it is made the object of moral
concern, what forms of moral concern are applicable to what elements of the environment,
and how to achieve the aim of acting appropriately - all are matters that make environmental
ethics one of the most controversial areas of philosophy and also one of the most exciting,
although many professional philosophers still regard it as a peripheral area. Yet there now is
broad agreement among most of those active in the area that some change is needed and that
environmental matters need much more attention and action.
An environmental ethics is an ethics concerned, usually among other ethical things, with
parts of the environment. Coal-face or factory-floor environmenta l ethics bears on
environmental issues, problems and causes, and can be expected to say something about
environment s or some of their nonhuman components. Academic or board-room
environmental ethics is frequently, however, a remove from direct ethical work, comprising
discussion of environmental ethics, its features, its methods, its variability, its presumed
merely derived and applied character, and so on. Much of this academic environmental ethics
is directed against coal-face environmental ethics, especially that of a genuinely committed
sort aimed at advancing environmental sources.
It is almost immediate that there is an important elasticity -ambiguity, in a slack sense
-in the notion of environmental ethics, between an ethics which considers environmental
matters, whether positively or negatively, and an ethics which is positive about some
environmental elements, which evinces concern about environmental items (as 18th century
sympathy ethics did about other humans). A superficial environmental ethics need not say
anything particularly positive or sympathetic about environments; indeed productions on the
topic may try to dismiss or defeat environmenta l causes and to defuse or dissolve
environmental problems, for instance as not worth bothering about. 29 It may be argued that
27
28
29
Drengson 1989, 15.
Elliot, in Singer, 284.
That is, fashionable contemporary practice with respect to philosophy is transferred to parts of
enviromental philosophy (e.g. by Eco Wittgenstein and AppliedQuine). Environmental philosophy
may in no way interfere with industry and business. To an astonishing extent American academic
environmental ethics tends to conform to such ridiculous strictures (often encouraged by a fawning
�14
natural environme nts should serve highest economic causes, which means in practice
becoming reserves for city folks, city corporations and consumers. Under such environmental
ethics ("environmental ethics" it is tempting to say, contravening usage) many an environme nt
should be razed, levelled, and paved over, to become a grand parking lot, shopping mall or
urban escarpmen t of a concrete jungle. What rural environment remains will, also serve those
"high" purposes, be tamed and managed, like much of Western Europe. Witness the
enthusiasm in productions on environmental ethics for landscapes like that of Tuscany, where
virtually everything is under tight human control and no bird moves (else it is shot).
Environm ental ethics and environme ntal philosophy may well prove to be
disappointm ents for enthusiastic environmentalists. For there may be little that is materially
green about them, no commitme nt to changes in old attitudes and practices, no offers of
improved standing and ethical treatment for environme ntal items. As an environme ntal
economics may be no green economics , but (very likely) some part or application of
mainstream economics , some sweep of resource or land economics , so an environme ntal
ethics or environme ntal ethic may not be particularly or at all green, but, for instance, simply
part of establishm ent ethics or an "application" of it to environmental items. Fortunately not
all environmental ethics is like this; beyond environmental is genuinely green ethics.
The elasticity in environmental ethics between superficial and material forms, parallels
that of the term concern (and rather similarly of matter), and can be substantially constricted
to that: an environme ntal ethics is one concerned with environmental items or matter. Thus,
on the one construal, such an ethics may be simply about such topics, it may be a standard
ethics "applied" to such topics, in which case environmental ethics does become just so-called
applied ethics. Alternatively, however, such an ethic may be one evincing concern, worry,
about the treatment of some environmental items on other, and directed at obtaining improved
treatment. Such an ethic is not negative or indifferent towards environme ntal matters, but is
advancing environme ntal causes. They matter. With such ethics, environme ntal ethics
cannot possibly be an applied ethics, for the framework of standard ethics and their
application s, is exceeded. (At best such ethics can be approxima ted by standard ethics by
assuming enlightened agents holding appropriate sorts of values. 30)
5. Human chauvinism and its detailed removal.
Deep-green theory is, unambiguously, a green ethical theory, of deep kind: that is, there
is intrinsic value in nature, natural items have intrinsic value, which may predomina te over
human-bas ed value. In short, the theory rejects both the 'Sole Value Assumptio n' and the
'Greater Value Assumptio n'. The theory finds all standard ethics mired in heavy prejudice, in
30
pragmatism).
Compare also Naess (in Engel 1990) on utilitarian approximation to Deep Ecology, made by
assuming availability of enough agents holding deep ecological values or, more or less
equivalently, having deep ecological consciousness.
�15
favour of things human and against things non-human. The distinctive, still pervasive,
prejudice concerned is that encapsulated as human chauvinism, which is itself a special case
of class chauvinism (for the class, human 31 ). Removal of human chauvinism dovetails with
displacement of humans.
Class chauvinism consists in substantia lly differentia l treatment, typically
discriminatory and inferior treatment, of items outside the class, by sufficiently many
members of the class concerned, for which there is no sufficient justification. Human
chauvinism is a feature, a cardinal weakness, of virtually all ethical systems hitherto, so deepgreen theory contends. The main argument takes the following form: there is no
characteristic, such as those tendered in ethical theories as justifying differential treatment in
favour of humans (characteristics such as rationality, language possession, tool making
abilities, needs, preferences, sentience, etc.) which first is held by all and only humans, as
distinct from not all humans and some non-humans, and which second does justify differential
treatment.3 2
Signs and manifestations of chauvinism are many and various, some conspicuous, some
subtle, and so on. For instance, a dead giveaway is any allusion to all outside certain human
concerns that may have a value as resources. For that assigns to the items so referred to mere
instrumental value. A little less obvious is the discriminative mode when individual humans
are counted, but only species of other living things (or a step down, individual sentients but
only species of others).
The thorough-going rejection of human chauvinism itself sets a program: that of
reworking ethics, and indeed much of philosophy, in a way free of chauvinism and humanism,
without any specially privileged place for humans. A first part of such a program has already
been outlined, that of suitably characterising ethics in a way that does not make essential
appeal to humans or their features, or to other favoured groups such as sentients. A further
important part of the program, formulation of ethical theory in a way which avoids entirely
group chauvinism. Such a desirable outcome can be achieved simply through formulation of
ethical theory in terms of ethically relevant categories, assembled in what is called an annular
theory. 33
31
32
33
Insofar as an account of human is required, it can be some improvement on the biological species
definitions, a reworking to remove past biasses (superioristic, rationalistic, masceulinist, etc.) and
to dislodge appeals to aspects of human nature. But, despite the preponderance of human agents
hereabouts, on planet Earth, such an account is not required for ethics, or for philosophy.
Theorizing in these and many other areas can proceed perfectly well without allusion to humans.
The detailed argument for this proposition is presented in Routley and Routley 1980a 97-108,
where chauvinism is spelled out a bit further. A truncated version of this argument appears in Fox
1990, 16-17.
Though the theory is so labelled in several publications, the label, which presumably should stay,
is misleading, because some ethical relevant categories may overlap one another. The concentric
theory (developed in Wenz 1988 and others, perhaps in steps of Leopold), which incorporates a
similar mistake, can be seen as a subversion of the annular model.
�16
The annular picture helps show how to redo ethics and philosophy with ideal types, or
with some equivalent thereof. No simple species or subspecies , such as humans or
superhumans, no single feature, such as sentience or life, serves as a reference benchmark, a
base class, for determinin g moral relevance and other ethical dimensions . 34 No ethical
irrelevant distinctions and classes, such as those of humans or base class, are required. What
is required instead is a major shift in perspective , a new focus upon morally relevant
categorical distinctions:
it is not possible to provide criteria which would justify distinguishing, in the
sharp way standard Western ethics do, between humans and certain
nonhuman creatures, and particularly those creatures which have preferences
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 arbitrarily -determine d and loaded
tests for membershi p of a privileged class (essentially an elitist view),
instead of upon, say, respect for the preference s of other creatures.
According ly the sharp moral distinction, commonly accepted in ethics by
philosophe rs and other alike, between all humans and all other animal
species, lacks a satisfactory coherent basis (Routley and Routley 80a, 103).
The categorical distinctions thereby proposed do not reject traditional ethical notions such as
rationality, self-awaren ess, having interests; but they do reject the automatic use of the
characteristics of one species, or some base class as the model upon which the characteristics
of all other species or classes are judged. They also reject as unjustified distinctions that are
not "categorical distinctions which tie analytically with ethical notions". 35 For instance, they
hold that the human/nonhuman distinction is not ethically significant. Humans enter only in a
contingent way into general ethical theory, as holders of these or those features, which
34
35
Another common mistake which annular theory helps dispel and avoid is that of trying to stretch
community (or moral commuity) to include webs, mountains, Earth, land etc.-a trend Leopold
started with his land ethic. An agent can have an obligation to care for earth, and soil without
there being part of community. (The Land ethic is misguided). What ethics covers diverges from
any moral community. (Contra Dobson's suggestion p.47).
Routley and Routley 1980a, 108.
�17
depending upon their respective capabilities and competence.
It is also desirable to have available some more positive principles corresponding to the
negative rejection of class chauvinism, principles so to say, of anti-chauvinism. Principles
like the biospherical egalitarianism of Deep Ecology represent an unsatisfactory attempt in
this direction. The deep-green improvement on this principle is the powerful principle of ecoimpartiality, according to which there should be no substantially differential treatment of
items outside any favoured class or species of discriminatory sort that lacks sufficient
justification. The appropriate impartial treatment is substantially independent of the
comparative value of the item treated. Most important, impartial treatment does not entail
equal treatment, or equal consideration, and does not require equal intrinsic or other value.
Other distinctive principles of deep-green theory will emerge as the ethical theory
accumulates.
One major conclusion is that human is not a significant ethical category. The outcome
is not anti-human; humans enter to the extent that they respectively deserve to enter. It is not
being claimed that humans lack value, that none of them have much or any value. Quite the
contrary, some humans have great value, some have established themselves as having great
propensity for evil, many lead quite indifferent lives. What is being rejected is the elevated,
often exaggerated, frequently exclusive, value assigned to humans, too often uniform value.
What are being contested are received distributions of values, and the heavy concentration of
value in humans and things and features human, the relative importance of which has been
grossly exaggerated. 36
Be in no doubt: many humans have positive value, some remarkable value. That is one
reason why it matters that humans should not vanish off the planet (for all that many of they
have sinned against it), to leave an impoverished earth, for instance a microbe planet. For that
would involve a huge reduction in value. Nor is it enough, adequate compensation, that
something like humans would evolve again at some remote future time. For, even if it
happened (in fact the probability of such replacement looks rather small), there would still be
a huge and extended dip in value. Similar points tell against a range of similar arguments to
the effect that it does not matter what happens to, or is done to, the Earth, because evolution
will eventually restore richness. 37 Even if richness were to return (much evidence indicates
36
37
Moral consideration and intrinsic value are not limited to humans; similarly these are not confined
to any other favoured or "improved" class closely overlapping humans, such as (it is supposed)
persons or rational creatures. Moral principles can be applied to all species and to the natural
environment in general. (A corollary concerns the characterisation of morality. ) Evolutionary
space is thereby afforded for other species, other systems other things.
An associated feature is stereotyping. Stereotyping is characteristic of speciesism/chauvinism as it
is in exploitation. To stereotype an item is to see it purely as a member of a class and as having
conventional feature of the class as a whole.
Recently there have been some attempts to have things ethical both ways: a special role for
humans without privilege or prejudice. There is a latent incoherence in Rachel's text, between his
initial and final proposals regarding ethics and morals-which are essentially human intricatedand regarding morals without hubris (MWH)-where human hubris is supposed to be removed.
Such an argument has been advanced by, among others, William Grey in 'Anthropocentrism and
�18
that extinction and destruction is for ever, permanent), there would still be serious loss of
value. So it does matter.
6. Philosophy without humans.
It is hard to move and operate philosophically without encountering humans and human
chauvinism. Chauvinism is written deep into all prevailing Western (and Eastern) ideological
forms, common to what, at a more superficial level, are rival positions. But while human
chauvinism transcends parochial differences, it is more conspicuous and brazen in some
philosophical locales than others, notably idealism and empiricism, existentialism and
phenomenology. In short, it is particularly prominent where matters answer back to subjects,
those who have the ideas, do the observing, assemble the phenomena, do the living, and so
on-back to subjects that are invariably assumed to be human. Thus it is human existence,
human Being, human ideas and impressions, that count, those and none others. Such
chauvinism, nauseatingly strong, pervades not only Continental philosophy (esp. French and
German varieties)-but also Anglo-American empiricism and pragmatism (esp. anti-realist
varieties). 38
Once the main strategies of ethics-without-humans have been grasped, it is easy to see
how analogous moves can be made the deanthropize other reaches of philosophy, notably
some of the more chauvinistic enterprises. In general there are two stages: Firstly, as with
morality, replacing humans and human subjects by agents and ideal subjects. And secondly,
as with ethics, delineating significant reaches-philosop hical wildernesses-wh ere agents are
removed, not just off-stage but altogether.
While a few examples of each stage only will be given, it will become evident that the
procedures are general. Consider as an example of the first stage, existentialism, a philosophy
celebrating humans, and their exclusive freedom, and shot through with human chauvinism.
Existentialism is (to quote a convenient caricature)
a philosophy which emphasises man's freedom to act independently of any
laws, natural or otherwise, and according to his own choice. It is a free will
philosophy which can be seen as 'a protest against views of the world and
policies ... in which humans are regarded as the helpless playthings of
historical forces, or as wholly determined by the regular operation of natural
38
Deep Ecology', Australasian Journal of Philosophy vol.71, No 4: December 1993.
There is a residual serious problem here, as to why existence is so important. Why do actual
humans and existent tigers matter, not merely virtual ones or possible ones. What is it about
existence? There are many items which it would be better did not exist, such as devils, helicopters
(for the most part), pollution, erosion and so on. Existence, of favoured sorts, makes for richness,
which is a high (if defeasible) virtue.
Sartre's philosophy is rendolent with human chauvinism: e.g. Critique of Dialectical Reason p.8.
as regards destruction and destroy, is an amazing piece of human chauvinism. While humans
may have a greater potentiality for production of value than most other animals, many humans
also have a far greater potentiality for evil than most other animals. Historically, the evil
producing capacity has dominated. Another example of Sartre's anthropocentism is his
"philosophy of the present".
Marx's philosophy is similarly rendolent. Productivity is human productivity... . For almost
random examples from anti-realism, see DP.
�19
processes' (Encyclopaedia Britannica 1978). This anti-determinist
perspective is, again, connected with the question of objectivity.
Existentialists hold that the only objective external fact independent of the
control of human beings is the fact of their being brought into existence, and
that death will one day come to terminate that existence. In all other
respects it is they who are in control. There are no outside independent
laws, of economics, history, nature or whatever, which they cannot deny or
shape for themselves. Thus we are all free to choose how we will behave
and develop and how we will shape society and nature. It follows that the
consequences of our actions are down to us, and therefore if they are
unpleasant that is our fault-not the fault of outside forces or external laws.
There are no excuses for our not thinking and acting for ourselves and we
are 'condemned' to be free because everything is theoretically permitted to
us and we therefore carry a heavy burden of responsibility for what we do.
As Sartre put it, 'Man is responsible for what he is. The first effect of
existentialism is that it puts every man in possession of himself as he is, and
places the entire responsibility for existence squarely on his shoulders' ....
We have a duty to face up to this, and not to base our actions thoughtlessly
on what is said to be prescribed/or us ('laws' of society, of economics, of
nature). That is abdicating responsibility.39
Note the heavy concentration throughout on humans, variously appearing as human beings,
we, us, they, and (in singular musculine form) man and he. But, as before 40 , on the one
boundary, many humans are incapable of what is presumed, the heavy burden of
responsibility and so forth; and, on the other, other agents are, in principle at least, capable of
achieving those relevant sorts of freedom that humans can obtain. It is already apparent that
once the synthetic setting of highly competent humans is exceeded, notions invoked by
existentialism begin to fall apart. For instance, some "wild" animals may enjoy considerable
levels of unreflective unagonised freedom while lacking capacity to bear much responsibility.
Conversely, there are fairly responsible agents, such as some trapped in determined or
deterministic situations, who have no opportunity to exercise freedom.
Accordingly too, though human should be replaced by agent of appropriate sort in
dechauvinized existentialism, it would hardly suffice to substitute for 'human' any of
'responsible agent', 'freedom exercising agent' or similar-though these substitutions effect
some of what was intended, such as exclusion of children, many animals, dementeds and so
on. What sort of agent is appropriate? That existentialism can be seen as trying to explain.
And for the present we can leave it at that, replacing human throughout by the dummy term,
existential agent. This is existentialism partly rectified.
At the same primary stage of dechauvinizing existentialism, connected improvements
could well be sought in existentialism, such as reducing the driven and elitist ethos. In part
this ethos is encouraged by the response of existentialism to what motivates and shapes it,
deterministic arguments; for it sees only such "strong" agents as evading deterministic forces.
The whole business is rather ironic, as the first driven feature is incompatible with full
39
40
Pepper (Roots) pp.118-9; itals in original. Pepper refers to Sartre 1943 and 1946.
As at the beginning of EE, where standard privileged treatment for humans is reviewed and found
wanting.
�20
freedom, while the second elitist feature is incompatible with the stress on things human, as
(like elitist religions) only exceptional agents escape. A promising alternative tries direct
confrontation with deterministic arguments, undercutting their scope and grip, and thereby
making room for free action in a range of situations (not everywhere between birth and
death!) for a wide variety of agents, including lesser, less elite, less stressed and sensitive
agents. For the arguments prove vulnerable to selective undermining by careful logical and
analytic procedures, 41 methods existentialism itself is loath to deploy (for all that its approach
rests upon past entrenched argumentation). Insofar as a main motivation for existentialism in
its prevailing ironic form is undiscriminating antideterminism, that motivation too is thereby
collapsed, and room is made for a less demanding more relaxed dechauvinized existentialism.
As for existentialism, so for a range of other subjects inclined to intrude humans as
central to world functioning or intelligibility, a range as apparently diverse as phenomenology
and quantum theory, empiricism and theology, pragmatism and cosmology. Quantum theory
fits into this range because of its received Copenhagen interpretation, cosmology because of
its return to anthropocentrism through adoption of anthropic principles. Both are however
readily freed of human shackles, first by replacing humans by "observers" (which for the most
part can simply be recording devices), and better, secondly to deagentize completely, by
amending interpretation s to dislodge both Copenhagen phenomenolo gy and anthropic
principles. 42 For a larger illustration, consider a popular mixture of versions of
phenomenology (a fuller elaboration again would disentangle versions, all of which however
require similar detoxification).
Phenomenol ogy to which existentialism is related .. .is summed up by
Nietzsche, who said, 'Objectivity is the main enemy of understanding. It
means the myth that there are hard observable facts ... but all the concepts we
employ in describing the world and predicting its behaviour are imposed on
it by ourselves. We have a choice about what view of the world we adopt.'
... Phenomenology is not just a philosophy which implies that we are not
subject to external laws, imposed by and through forces independent of
ourselves. It holds that there actually is no world external to and separate
from ourselves. There is no 'reality' in the sense of there being an external
'real world' divorced from our own consciousness and capable of existing if
we did not exist. Nature cannot exist without ourselves also existing-if we
ceased to be, so would it cease, and vice-versa. Therefore what 'the
environment' is, and is like, is a function of our own subjective construction
of it. The very use of such terms as 'ourselves' and 'human consciousness'
in opposition to terms like 'nature' and 'the environment' is inappropriate
and shows the extent to which we are immersed in positivist science as our
way of seeing the world. For the phenomenologists these terms are
meaningless because there is no separation between ourselves and a 'nature'
or a 'reality'. We and the world are one-a single united entity.
Phenomenology is thus anti-positivist science, opposing ... Cartesian dualism.
It does not deal in laws, or in cause-effect relationships consequent on the
dualism and neither can it be concerned with analysis-brea king the world
into parts ... If we want to know and understand nature we must, as Hume
41
42
For technical details, see Sylvan FWD.
On satisfactory ways of accomplishing this second stage see Sylvan (Cosm. Syn).
�21
{
said in his Treatise on Human Nature in 1737, come to full comprehension
of man. For if there is no nature except as structured through human
consciousness, knowledge and truth cannot exist independently of man. 43
As with existentialism, there is a similar enormous exorbitant emphases on humans and things
humans; humans carry everything. But insofar as humans can perform those feats, so better
can a class a appropriate agents, phenomenolo gical agents, who include no incompetents
(who might let this world flicker out of existence, or worse).
Phenomenolo gy is a full immersion human chauvinism. Fashionable contemporary
empiricisms, normally taken as rivals to phenomenolo gy, are incomplete immersion
analogues. While a few properties, primary properties of basic physics, are separated out as
human independent, the rest, the phenomenolo gical mass, are categorised as responsedependent, and treated phenomenologically. 44 Take, for example, aesthetic features, which
include certain ecological features. Nowadays humans can grow up with the assumption that
aesthetic qualities, indeed all "response dependent" qualities, are features of humans, not in
any way objective.
So it can be seriously, if ridiculously, hypothesized that what is
(considered) beautiful, for instance of depends on how the human gene-pool is composed. As
before, humans are readily displaced in favour of appropriate agents. But, for the most part,
these agents too are otiose.
While the first stage 1s the main stage with agentocentric philosophies like
extistentialism, there is a second stage, which comprises significantly more than pointing out
how much, how much of importance, such philosophies leave out by their narrow
concentration. What is left out includes, to begin, all those times and places where there are
no agents, rich worlds, devoid of relevant agents, and the like. But that is only the beginning
of the business. For agents have been infiltrated or inserted in all sorts of settings where they
have no business to be or to transact.
Against the ancient and formerly honorable practice of agent invocation, pushed
primarily for explanatory purposes, 45 agent detachment and agent elimination campaigns have
periodically been mounted (e.g. conspicuously , but not only, in classic Greece, when it
became clearly appreciated that there could be causes without agents, during the
Enlightenmen t, and in Frege' s propositional ization program). Deagentizatio n, typically
coupled with deanthropization, can be, and should be, pushed much further. Agents, often
evidence of immature, even primitive, philosophy, still lurk everywhere in philosophy.
Agent-detach ment themes, still struggling against an unenlightened opposition, include:
objects, including worlds, without perceivers or sensors, nonexistent items without
conceivers, propositions without proposers, assumptions without assumers, values without
43
44
45
Pepper p.199 (where references are supplied). We shall not stop off for expository adjustment or
for any critique of this material. For main elements of such a critique, see however DP chapter 11
and JB.
Thus thesis that all properties are response dependent merges empiricism with European
phenomenology.
Deluded explanatory purposes, for agents themselves have in turn to be explained.
�I
22
t
valuers, causation without causers (or intentional agents), organisation without organisers,
wilderness without wilderness managers, land (or property) without owners or stewards,
regulation without regulators, selection without selectors, and purposes without purposers. 46
But without humans who does philosophy? Well, in the old days, God of course, most
gods, the Devil, demiurges, gifted spirits and so on. At any time duly accomplished agents.
While it is easy to see how ethics and philosophy could in principle flourish given only
suitably accomplished agents, and no humans, namely the agents do something like what a
few humans hereabouts do, still it may be less easy for many to see how these subjects can
function without agents. But it is straightforward, is it not? A philosophy stands as a system
of propositions. And propositions do not need agents, proposers, or whatever. Nor do
systems.
It is here that blockage may occur, for two reasons: First, because of the idealistic idea
that there are no statements without staters. Second, because of the mistaken assumption that
a system of propositions standing on its own involves an obnoxious platonism. No such
assumption is made. Third, part of the struggle has been conducted before, in the tussle
between psychologism and its opposite in logic and associated regions (e.g. mathematics,
philosophy of mathematics etc.), in the tussle between Husserl and Frege (to name two
prominent parties). Although the issues have been rejoined more recently, it is still widely
supposed that anti-psychologism triumphed. Its success is, to some extent, mere appearance.
For all that, anti-psychologism is here extended much further, right across philosophy.
Appendix. 1. Examples showing divergence of utilitarianism from consequentialism.
Consider two different actions with some set of consequence s, one (A) done
deliberately, one (B) unintended. Then suppose, for one sort of case, the outcome is
disastrous. Not only is A normally regarded as much worse than B, e.g. arson than a naturally
occurring fire such as lightening strike, but further fuller utility assessments should give
analogous results, e.g. the satisfaction of the arsonist could be given a high negative rating.
Utilitarianism itself is but a well-tempered egoism: egoism extended to substituting
others. That cannot so plausibly be charged of consequentialism.
Utilitarianism has been associated with the "greed is good" ideology of the 1980s. The
association has point (so Singer tries, desperately, to disassociate utilitarianism). Suppose it is
said that the 80s, were a decade of greed (as so depicted in many movies) but the 90s is a
decade of ethics (despite counterevidence). But nothing has changed in underlying ideologies,
in ethics or economics!
Appendix 2. Inadequacy of standard ethics.
The inadequacy of standard ethics for green purposes has been recognised, if obliquely
and perversely, by many critics of the idea of (deep) green ethics (e.g. McCloskey). They
46
The very controversial tlast theme is argued in Sylvan 90 [purpose], where most of these various
detachment themes are assembled. Obviously there are many more such themes.
�23
l
have proceeded to argue that there couldn't be such an ethics because none of the standard
ethics would serve. But the argument fails because standard ethics does not exhaust ethics.
There are some prospects of a general proof of inadequacy from what has been
developed so far. Standard forms are restricted to proper subsets of agents, whereas ethics in
full flower applies to all agents. Standard ethics leaves out much of the subject, all the deep
part.
References
William Grey in 'Anthropocentrism and Deep Ecology', Australasian Journal of Philosophy
vol.71, No 4: December 1993.
�ON THE VALUE CORE OF DEEP-GREEN THEORY
Deep-green theory is a deep environmental theory, with much in common with deep
ecology. Like deep ecology, it stands in significant ideological opposition to the dominant
technocratic-industrial way. But, even more than deep ecology, deep-green theory aims to
supply a comprehensive alternative environmental philosophy (in the full senses of those
atrophied terms, esp philosophy ). It seeks to accomplish this, furthermore, without
accumulating the amount of philosophical rubbish deep ecology regularly attracts. For, to
insert a key difference between these ecocentric theories in a deliberately prejudical way: deepgreen theory resembles a deep ecology with the pseudo-scientific garbage removed,
reorganised into a tight, coherent and more comprehensive theory. Deep-green theory, which
has roots that stretch back about as far as its much publicized neighbour, accordingly merits
elaboration separate from deep ecology, which in any case lacks a well-thought-through
valuational and ethical basis. This essay aims to uncover the value theory of deep-green
theory, exposing thereby one central area of deep-green theory. Though the value theory is
(inevitably) abstract, it issues in what is more concrete, such as practical ecological directives,
potentially destabilizing prevailing policies and institutions.
At the core of deep-green theory, as of authentic deep ecology, lies a value theory. A
fundamental theme thereof, part of what makes these positions deep, is that a range of
environmental items are valuable in themselves, directly and irreducibly so, so that their value
does not somehow reduce to or emerge from something else, such as features of certain valuers
or what counts for them. Value then does not answer back in some way to humans, or sentient
creatures (or other value-responsive classes), their interests, uses, preferences, or such like.
Many natural items such as forests and rivers, mountains and seashores, are, as it is often put
(without however any commitment thereby to dubious essentialist or absolute objectivist
positions), intrinsically valuable. They are valuable in their own right - irrespective of whether
they are interesting or useful (to any intentional operators, themselves interesting or useful or
not), indeed whether or not there exist any valuers. Value spreads through and reaches across
the natural domain; it is not bounded by mind or linkages with subjective states; nor does it
stop with sentience, or associated pyschological features like satisfaction; nor (pace deep
ecology) does it end at life; it observes no such compromising bounds. Although value is
distributed richly if irregularly throughout nature, and accordingly may be found in nature, it is
not encapsulated in some isolable natural feature, such as life or sentience, or even in defeasible
ecological values such as richness, diversity and variety (and so subject to a different,
naturalistic, reduction). But of course such ecological features afford criteria for value, and
should be represented in recipes (such as "objective functions") for assessing total value.
From the presence of natural things of value, and accordingly of natural values, it is a
short, though controversial, step to the important conclusion that there can be values without
valuers. For valuers are sentient creatures with appropriate capacities, but things of value may
�precede and succeed all such valuers; tfiat is, these things can persist, their values intact,
without any valuers. As there can be shapes without any shape-perceivers, and concepts with
conceivers, so there can be values without valuers. (The theme, like others advanced, can be
backed up by more detailed argument and by formal proof, neither attempted here.) In
valuational relations then, relating valuers as subjects with values as objects, both ends of
relations have independent standing; though interrelated, as the descriptions deliberately chosen
suggest, either can stand without the other. It is a fashionable mistake, which cannot however
be got away with, to try to collapse this relation - usually to endeavour to soak up values into a
modification of valuing subjects (e.g. as a predicate 'relation-to-values', in which inconvenient
values are locked away), not to remove valuers, considered unproblematic, from view. The
mistaken procedure is in fact just one important example of an archetypal reduction of
mainstream modern philosophy, of relations to functions; other examples, locking undesired
objects away within functions, are those rendering wholes (such as ecosystems and organised
structures) functions of their parts, and, under functionalism, minds and types of intentionality,
including value direction, as functions of bodies or their parts such as brains. Values are not,
and do not disappear into, functions of valuers.
A connected corollary is that values are not apart from the actual world, something
"projected" or imposed on it by a favoured class of valuers, something colouring (and even
emotionall y clouding) the otherwise valueless physical world, in rather the way that
reductionistic materialism tries (erroneously) to construe colour itself as projected onto a
colourless physical world. Of course this projection effort, never adequately explicated, does
not succeed, on its own, in removing values. For they remain, left as some function of the
valuers. To try to bulldoze through this difficulty, a second reduction is invoked, of evaluative
features of valuers to "natural" features, commonly preferences, desires or such like. The
second reduction runs into obstacles that halt even the naturalistic bulldozers (e.g. naturalistic
and related fallacies), but the first reduction is the critical one in removing key environmental
values, such as those of wilderness and wild things, which become valuable only in the focus
of certain sentient beholders, and not in and for them self. This reduction too is blocked by
insuperable difficulties. On the one side, like the parallel proposed phenomonalist reduction of
material objects to sensations, the reduction never achievers satisfactory support or even a
satisfactory statement. On the other, it is counterexampled by various modellings or thoughtexperiments revealing intuitively-assessed value in situations devoid of valuers (as e.g. in the
well-known Last Person argument). Values are not apart from the actual world, then, merely
projected onto it by valuers, or else locked up in certain valuers (in the fashion of Carterian
intensions ). Values are part of the world; they are objects in the domain of actual and other
worlds. But they are not of course material objects; creatures will not fall over them any more
than they will trip over shadows or shapes.
�Value like the shape and taste, is an3attribute, which things have or may lack, and which
furthermore creatures can recognise or may fail to discern. Thus value is, like colour and taste
and their determinate forms (red, acidic, etc), a universa l , distributed across things,
individuals and wholes. Like shape and colour, value is a high-level universal. The
comparison of value with shape is decidedly more helpful than the standard, but exhausted,
comparison of value with colour, or of goodness with colour determinates such as redness or
yellow. For example, shape is not bound by a set of determinates as colour is in the specific
colours, but comes in a spectacular variety of forms, not totally or linearly ordered (as in a
rainbow), or contracted to some primary set (as in colour traingles); shapes like value pertain to
wholes as well as particulars, and links with gestalts rather better than colour; shape
discrimination is more culture dependent and sensitive; shape is, or was, a primary property,
and thereby more immune to reductionist strategies than secondary properties such as colour,
which is, under physicalism, prized off objects and allegedly relocated in creatures or in their
interrelation with colourless physical things. Shapes like values, can be vague, indeterminate;
that does not prevent things, perhaps unique things, exemplifying them. But naturally the
anology can only be extended so far. Shapes can be approximated by polygons, values cannot;
shapes are regularly perceived through sense perception, by vision or touch especially, values
are not, but are differently apprised. Value is its own thing, not something else; it is what it is
and does what is does, and not something else, like some specialised mathematical or economic
thing. It does not contract to some mark of value or to what it comes down to in highly
restricted settings; most important, it does not disappear in the style of modem economics into
(expected) utility or into just two economic forms, value-in-use monetarily and value-inexchange (price). Value means what it means, and has meant: worth; and it ties with general
assessments of merit and demerit, goodness or badness, not an economic or other cut-down
thereof. Price, for example, may fail entirely to reflect worth, it may have little to do with
goodness of product.
The powerful drive to reduce or deny values has several sources. part of the motivation
for reduction of value springs from epistemological worries, concerning how values can be
ascertained and known, so far as they are (subjective translation proposals are than a direct
evaluative counterpart of phenomenalism). Part derives from supposedly problematic cultural
and subcultural relativity (whence the attempt to impose values by identification of value with
some favoured feature, and cultural or economic imperialism). Part of the motivation comes
from more sweeping ideologic al commitments, such as the varieties of materiali sm
(physicalism esp.) or scientism.
As has become apparent, attempted reductions of value come too in a variety of forms subjective, which made use of psychological features, such as desires, interests, emotions, and
the like or subjective aggregations, such as community preferences or utility; or objectiviely
naturalistic, which enrol value-making characteristics such as richness or evolutionary
�development as value - consequential, w~ch consider only outcomes, or purely motivational,
which consider only attitudes and ignore leads and outcomes - straightforward, as in translation
proposals for translating value judgements into reducing statements; or oblique, as in
supervenience propositions (no variations in value without underwriting variations in reducing
features), or obscure, as in unarticulated projection claims. Values are not well accommodated
within theses schemes, or accommodated at all. The idea is abroad however that science can
offer a reduction, can sweep up value along with all other knowledge, where philosophy has
conspicuously failed. Unfortunately for such optimistic ideas, fortunately perhaps for deeper
thought, current science, physics especially, does not have much to say at all, or of merit,
about values, and if it did reductions through it would be circular. But, to the contrary, there is
a long-standing pretence that science gets along "well" without values, in appropriate value-free
fashion. Nowadays it is increasingly realised that such value-freedom is a myth, that much of
what passes as science is heavily value-penetrated. While those engaged purely in purer
science may have the illusion of an escape from value, there is no escape.
Though deep-green value theory is thoroughly nonreductive, it does not sacrifice
warranted claims to scientific and logical adequacy thereby. The reductionistic dichotomies are
avoided and repudiated. Value reduces neither in subjective nor objective fashion; it does not
reduce. Evaluative judgements are certainly not subjective; but nor are they objection in an
absolutist sense; they are nonjective, that is, neither. Somewhat similarly, evaluation of an act
does not reduce to assessing consequences; nor does it come down to an assessment of
motives; both may matter.
In any case, reductions do not succeed, as a copious literature, littered with failed
attempts, meanderingly establishes. Nor are they generally desirable, since mostly shallow,
aiming at a reduction to features of some privileged class presented as ideal (i.e. core value is
covertly assumed). Nor are they needed; explanation and assessment do not require reduction.
Evaluations may be arrived at, and value systems expanded, by enhancement methods, which
consists in emotional presentation (as under Meinong's phenomenological account) organised
by coherence methods. The methodology in fact resembles that sometimes proposed for
acquisition of scientific information. As with accumulated empirial information, which can be
extended through presentational input and assessment for overall coherence, so further
evaluations may be arrived at and assessed through a combination of presentational and
coherence procedures. At the (marginal) stage where the next round of evaluations is
undertaken, the following active ingredients figure, in an idealised breakdown:- Firstly, a
background stock of judgements and experience will have been accumulated or inherited; in
principle all of this is revisable, and some may be up for reassessment. Apart from the
background, which enters in assessing overall coherence of system, what is involved is,
secondly, emotional presentation, which corresponds to further perceptional and sense data
input, and, thirdly and not independent, coherence processing , which supplies the
�interpretational and rationalisational comp~nents. At bottom, parallelling perception in the case
of empirical information, is emotional presentation, gut or visceral reaction in starker forms of
acceptance or rejection, but more generally comprehending a variety of sentiments, including
overall well-being, and also relational impressions, such as empathy, identification, and so on.
As a perceiver perceives shapes and taster tastes and goodness, so a valuer feels value and
disvalue.
The basis of perceptio n is sensation , the basis of valuation is emotion.
Apprehension of value is seated in emotional, and especially visceral, presentation; but what is
apprehended is not to be confused with its apprehension any more than what is perceived. All
the warnings about sensation as an information source have to be repeated with heavy
emphasis as regards emotional presentation; for example, reliability cannot be guaranteed,
interference with presentation through drugs, alcohol, temporary excitement or other inputs
may render it dubious or unacceptable, conditioning may have occurred, including substantial
cultural conditioning (so that a person is terrified by huntsmen spiders but not sickened by
bloody massacres of dolphins or seals). As with perception, there are checks on emotional
presentation, such as constancy over time and after reflection.
Emotional presentation, supplying in particular inclusions and exclusions or prohibitions,
is but the basis of reflective evaluation and value apprehension. The further critical part,
coherence processing, builds on the basis taking account of other inputs or controls including
background (which supplies relevant components of already adopted judgements, assimilated
subculture and so forth) and constraints (such as substitutional requirements like impartiality,
e.g. whether considered judgements hold for substitute valuers, and uniformity, e.g. whether
similar acts are judged in similar ways). The coherence procedure consists, in essence, of
asking whether the next or a relevant judgemen t fits together with what has been accepted,
while meeting constraints, without leading to what has been rejected or excluded. If it does fit
it is added to the included side, otherwise it is sent to the excluded side. (The familiar ethical
practice of devising cases and comparing them with the cases in hand can be worked in under
this procedure.) Because an aim of this rationalisation procedure is achievement of some sort
of equilibrium - admitting what is included, while excluding what is unsupported, fails to gain
support, is emotionally spoken against - such coherence procedures have gained currency in
North America under the rubric "reflectiv e equilibrium". Observe, however, that any
equilibriu m gained at some stage may be quickly lost, as new types of problems arise and
further information enters. To be sure, the whole methodology (like the parallel methodology
of a coherence theory of truth) is highly idealised, and only practicably usable in rudimentary
parts. It does however surmount a major obstacle for value theory; it reveals how in principle a
nonreduc tionistic value theory can function. Whether that theory is an appropria te
environmental one or not will depend however above all on the presentational input, the extent
to which environmental sensitivity enters and is not dismissed.
�Enhancement methods reveal too tRat value systems are not uniquely determined, any
more than other comprehensive theoretical frameworks, such as those intended to reflect truth.
There can be, there evidently are, rival value systems, measuring up to rigorous rationality
requirements, much as there are rival logics, rival physical and biological theories, and rival
coherent religions. Chauvinistic systems, narrow or shallow value systems, which take no
requisite account of many environmental items, likewise cannot be excluded on rational or
straight logical grounds. Unfortunately such systems remain in ascendancy, and tend to
dominate social practices; in recent times economism, a narrow type of utilitarianism, has all
too obviously dominated much terrestial practice. While such value frameworks are open to
severe criticism, for instance as chauvinistic, as violating universality requirements of morality
in the case of economism, they do not succumb to definitive refutation (for the reason that
requirements of morality, of universalizability of principle, impartiality and so on, can be
repudiated; immoral or amoral frameworks are still value systems). Of course a range of
argumentative, educational and persuasive techniques, of varying equality, can be put to work
to move valuers who adhere to other structures, often enough successfully. Emotional
presentation of environmental items, by way of new experience and information, is important
among these. In short, much can be done to shift or alter values, though as usual effectiveness
cannot be guaranteed.
The availability of rival value systems and prospect of yet others, while it implies a
certain desirable (and also troublesome) pluralism, does not mean relativism. Neither deep
green theory nor authentic deep ecology espouse any superficially easy relativism. From their
viewpoint, rival narrower and shallower systems are definitely inferior , and marked down
accordingly, while economism is an onathema which does not even make the moral grade (e.g.
too many principles stop at state boundaries). However a critical pluralism does acknowledge,
and offer a place, in the wider scheme of things for other positions, even if as less favoured or
satisfactory. Politically then, deep positions can allow for, what makes good sense in these
times of numbers, alliances. Hence the point of a green alliance, combining green positions,
against still prevailing anti-environmentalism and economism.
The value system pluralism of deep-green theory interpenetrates not only social and
political domains above, but also metaphysics traditionally placed below. In the underlying
metaphysical pluralism of deep-green theory, value runs very deep - so deep that even truth
depends in part upon it. For not merely selection of a correct comprehensive theory or worldview, but choice of associated actual world, is a value dependent choice. That choice, insofar
as it is consciously made, of world conceptualisation and structure, is a constrained choice,
constrained by informational inputs, such as those of refined perception. But in as much as it
is rationally accomplished, that choice, like other choices of structure, proceeds according to a
standard value-information analysis (regularly oversimplified however to a preference-
�information or even desire-belief modellin1); that is, to get to the salient point, it involves value
essentially.
Truth and value are then intertwined. Their relation, not one of identity (for contrary to
idealism, there are many relations not identical with identity), can now be stated more
accurately than the poets have managed. Neither is one; both are plural, and differently so. In
certain significant respects the metaphysics resembles the value theory. For example, as the
value theory is nonreductionistic, so also is the metaphysics; in particular, there is a noreduction theme that neither parts nor wholes reduce eliminably to one another, as opposed to
atomistic and holistic views of environmental interrelations. As the value theory is pluralistic
so also is the metaphysics; what needs to be discerned, in place of absolutism, is a plurality of
worlds and of associated truth characterisations. A main aim of a thoroughgoing
environmental theory is to displace very destructive dominant ideasystems, regularly presented
as absolute, which incorporate both value and truth themes concerning the environment and its
organisation.
Much of deep-green theory devolves then from the abstract value theory, beginning (to
take a more accessible route than the metaphysical way) with a more comprehensive ethical
theory, which includes as well as a specific axiological theory, elaborating environmental
values and virtues, a deontic theory, supplying obligations, rights, taboos, and similar. For
example, given that a certain wild river is intrinsically valuable, as we can verify by on-site
experience and enhancement methods, and given that we duly respect that value, as deontic
principles will tell us we should, then we are not free to do as we like with that river, to dam it
with concrete, to channel it within concrete, stripping it of its riverine ecosystems. But that
does not preclude respectful use of the river, swimming or sailing quitely in its waters, and so
on. Value thus guides action, practice, and use; it is the ground also upon which principles are
formulated, principles that are assessed and validated by way of enhancement methods.
Important among these are non-interference principles, which exclude unwarranted interference
with other preference-havers and unwarranted damage, ill-treatment, or devaluation of items of
value. Such deontic principles circumscribe environmentally-limited freedom of action. Given
non-interference principles, a major shift in onus of proof from homocentricthics takes place.
What is required now is that reasons be givenfor interfering with the environment, rather than
reasons for not doing so.
Also direct responsibility for environmental interference or
modification falls upon those who would interfere or significantly modify, who would tread
heavily on the land. Non-interference does not preclude use, only too much use and use of too
much. What it does lead to is the theme that, where use occurs, it should be careful and
respectful use.
An important respect thesis regarding environmental items is founded on such
interference principles and the no-reduction theme: namely
�•
•
8
not to put others (other preference havers) into a dispreferred state for no good reason;
not to jeopardis e the well being of natural objects or systems without good reason;
•
not to damage or destroy items which, while they cannot literally be put into a
dispreferred state, can be damaged or destroyed or have their value eroded or impaired.
These apply to ecosystem s, their surrounds, their parts, and so on. The mere making of
further excess profits, or similar economic excuses, are not good reasons. Such a respect
thesis form part of the ecological outlook of deep-green theory.
As permissib ility, obligatio n and respect principles can be explained through the
valuations reached on the theory, so too can rights and other significant components of morality
be explained and justified through, but again not reduced to, values. For example, a creature
has a right to something if it has a valid title thereto established from correct moral principles.
Candidates for the parameter "something" provide a familiar list: freedom from unnecessary
suffering, respectful treatment, satisfaction of basic needs, and so on. Such rights accordingly
derive from and reinforce corresponding deontic principles.
Deep-gre en ethical theory is much more than just another non-redu ctionist ethical
theory, which highlights ecological values and virtues, and so forth. It changes the character
and shape of ethical enterprise. Perhaps most strikingly, it removes humans as such from the
centre of the ethical stage (or exclusive occupation of the stage). The biological concept of
being human is not, contrary to prevailing humanism, a highly significant ethical category. To
elevate it to such is to fall into human chauvinis m, a type of class chauvini sm which
unwarrantedly discriminates in favour of the human species. The prevailing chauvinis m is
avoided through a natural annular model, which connects ethical characteristics directly with the
categorie s of items that can have them. Relevant categories include those marked out by
features like: having well-being, preference-having, rights-holding, contractual-capability, and
so on, categories not necessarily connected with any particular species. Hitherto virtually all
Western ethical theories have not merely so limited ethical matters predominately to inter-human
affairs, but have been blantantly chauvinistic, exhibiting a substantial, discrimin ately and
unjustifiably bias in favour of humans (of certain privileged humans). These sorts of systems
should be superseded; it is not a matter of simple adjustments or extensions.
Deep-gre en value theory, as developed, implies the inadequacy of prevailing social,
political and economic arrangements and institutions, both those of a mixed capitalistic kind and
those of a more state socialistic cast. They are the (devious) product of inferior value
frameworks which take quite insufficient account of environmental considerations and values.
But explainin g their deficiencies, and indicating more satisfactory green alternatives and
replacements, is another chapter in the elaboration of deep-green theory.
�9
*
Richard Sylvan*
RMB 683
B ungendore NSW 2621
For more on deep-green theory and deep ecology, see for instance essays in and work referred to in the
Green Series, i.e. Discussion Papers in Environme ntal Philosophy, RSSS, Australian National
University, Canberra.
�Annex
1. Most people inherit their value framework along with their culture. Many never do any
substantial overhaul. Many indeed are not active or responsible valuers. But in these respects,
values are not so different from other things. Some people are poor judges of shape; many
never learn to distinguish plants, or to discriminate among wines.
Likewise for other choices, options, major changes, metaphysical and even political.
Mostly that a choice has been made or inherited and is incorporated in the subculture is not
noticed, along with its not been observed how arbitrary many of the choices and resulting
structures are (in Foucault has emphasized). Of course it is often not in the interests of the
power elite, who control media outlets, etc., that this sort of arbitrariness should be widely
known, and alternative structures considered and perhaps experimented with.
Choices occur where distinctive circumstance prevail. For instance, there is serious
scarcity; food supplies in particular are threatened (e.g. with being out of reach is price, with
pollution, etc.). Differently, circumstances lead to conversions, as when a new ideology
sweeps through, enthusiam generated by some charismatic figures.
�/
bits from chapter 2
There is another important elasticity. In contemporary ethical theory there is a concerted
attempt to build on universalizability requirement or the equivalent into the very motion of ethics.
The evident result is that selfish systems of induction and conduct, systematic egoisms for
instance are refused the title of ethics, and as an important corollary questions like Why be
ethical? become vexed. 1 Given, in particular, that any such "universality" requirement is
problematic in this formulation, and typically limited, chauvinistically to persons, a superior
course proceeds to distinguish: between ethics as already characterised (reportively) and its
subclass, universalizable ethics. As impartial ethical do have much to recommend them, let us
coin a convenient portmonteau term condensing the chancy "universalerable ethics", namely
euthics. (Conveniently then an euthical supports unethical, which is what from a properly
ethical stance it is!)
There is undoubtedly some pressure to have ethics and morality extend beyond a single or
isolated individual (even so, a Causal ethics is understood, as is egoisticmorality). But that
pressure does not extend very far; and such notions as those of a tribal morality and an
upperclass ethics are not defective on significance grounds, even if they are objectional on
substantive grounds.
Such restricted ethics are not however immediately ruled out by such requirements as that
like cases be assessed alike, and that differences of assessment be based on relevant
differences. 2 For a tribalist or racist can respond that a foreigner is not like a Greek, or that there
are relevant differences between whites and blacks (intelligence has been proposed as such a
difference, when skin pigmentation appeared a merely superficial difference). These sorts of
responses, which were longer accepted, are no longer acceptable, because the differences put up
are not considered ethically relevant differences (correctly enough, though ethical relevance itself
lacks an adequate explanation).
Singer's main argument for a much wider point of view, universality, commits in a
extensive appel to authority (p.11).
What is offered: an appeal to usage.
'the notion of ethics carries with it the idea of something bigger than the individual'. [It
often does, but it may not.] 'If I am to defend my conduct in ethical grounds, I cannot point
only to the benefits it brings me. I wont address myself to a larger audience' (p.10). That
On both, narrowing and vexing, see Singer lmpractual ethics (Singer aquates moral with
ethical). Singer does not really have an answer to Why be moral? though he thinks it not a bad idea; mainly he
tries to put down shuffles that have been presented or decisive.
2
These requirements are presented byu Attfield as basic formal requirements of reason (p.6). No
doubt they are, though they appear to figure in no logic of ethics yet formulated.
�depends on the conduct concerned. More important the audience does not need to be much
larger, certainly not universal: my family or law will suffice often enough.
�J.
From Chap 4
Evaluations may be arrived at, and value systems expanded, by enhancement methods,
which consists in emotional presentation (as under Meinong's phenomenological account)
organised by coherence methods. The methodology in fact resembles that sometimes proposed
for acquisition of scientific information. As with accumulated empirial information, which can
be extended through presentational input and assessment for overall coherence, so further
evaluations may be arrived at and assessed through a combination of presentational and
coherence procedures. At the (marginal) stage where the next round of evaluations is
undertaken, the following active ingredients figure, in an idealised breakdown:- Firstly, a
background stock of judgements and experience will have been accumulated or inherited; in
principle all of this is revisable, and some may be up for reassessment. Apart from the
background, which enters in assessing overall coherence of system, what is involved is,
secondly, emotional presentation, which corresponds to further perceptional and sense data
input, and, thirdly and not independent, coherence processing, which supplies the
interpretational and rationalisational components. At bottom, parallelling perception in the case
of empirical information, is emotional presentation, gut or visceral reaction in starker forms of
acceptance or rejection, but more generally comprehending a variety of sentiments, including
overall well-being, and also relational impressions, such as empathy, identification, and so on.
As a perceiver perceives shapes and taster tastes and goodness, so a valuer feels value and
disvalue. The basis of perception is sensation, the basis of valuation is emotion. Apprehension
of value is seated in emotional, and especially visceral, presentation; but what is apprehended is
not to be confused with its apprehension any more than what is perceived. All the warnings
about sensation as an information source have to be repeated with heavy emphasis as regards
emotional presentation; for example, reliability cannot be guaranteed, interference with
presentation through drugs, alcohol, temporary excitement or other inputs may render it
dubious or unacceptable, conditioning may have occurred, including substantial cultural
conditioning (so that a person is terrified by huntsmen spiders but not sickened by bloody
massacres of dolphins or seals). As with perception, there are checks on emotional
presentation, such as constancy over time and after reflection.
Emotional presentation, supplying in particular inclusions and exclusions or prohibitions,
is but the basis of reflective evaluation and value apprehension. The further critical part,
coherence processing, builds on the basis taking account of other inputs or controls including
background (which supplies relevant components of already adopted judgements, assimilated
subculture and so forth) and constraints (such as substitutional requirements like impartiality,
e.g. whether considered judgements hold for substitute valuers, and uniformity, e.g. whether
similar acts are judged in similar ways). The coherence procedure consists, in essence, of
asking whether the next or a relevant judgement fits together with what has been accepted, while
�meeting constraints, without leading to what has been rejected or excluded. If it does
fit it is
added to the included side, otherwise it is sent to the excluded side. (The familiar ethical
practice
of devising cases and compari ng them with the cases in hand can be worked in under
this
procedure.) Because an aim of this rationalisation procedure is achievement of some
sort of
equilibr ium - admitting what is included, while excluding what is unsupported, fails
to gain
support, is emotionally spoken against - such coherence procedures have gained currency
in
North Americ a under the rubric "reflect ive equilibr ium". Observe , howeve r, that
any
equilibr ium gained at some stage may be quickly lost, as new types of problem s arise
and
further information enters. To be sure, the whole methodology (like the parallel methodo
logy of
a coherence theory of truth) is highly idealised, and only practicably usable in rudimentary
parts.
It does howeve r surmou nt a major obstacle for value theory; it reveals how in principl
e a
nonredu ctionist ic value theory can function . Whethe r that theory is an appropr
iate
environmental one or not will depend however above all on the presentational input, the extent
to
which environmental sensitivity enters and is not dismissed.
end
The availability of rival value systems and prospect of yet others, while it implies a certain
desirabl e (and also troublesome) pluralism, does not mean relativism. Neither deep
green
theory nor authenti c deep ecology espouse any superficially easy relativism. From
their
viewpoint, rival narrowe r and shallow er systems are definitely inferior , and marked
down
accordingly, while econom ism is an onathema which does not even make the moral grade
(e.g.
too many principles stop at state bo':lndaries). However a critical pluralism does acknow
ledge,
and offer a place, in the wider scheme of things for other positions, even if as less favoured
or
satisfactory. Politically then, deep positions can allow for, what makes good sense in
these
times of numbers, alliances. Hence the point of a green alliance, combining green position
s,
against still prevailing anti-environmentalism and economism.
The value system pluralis m of deep-green theory interpenetrates not only social and
political domains above, but also metaphysics traditionally placed below. In the underly
ing
metaphysical pluralis m of deep-green theory, value runs very deep - so deep that even
truth
depends in part upon it. For not merely selection of a correct comprehensive theory or
worldview, but choice of associated actual world, is a value dependent choice. That choice,
insofar
as it is conscio usly made, of world conceptualisation and structure, is a constrai ned
choice,
constrained by informational inputs, such as those of refined perception. But in as much
as it is
rationally accomplished, that choice, like other choices of structure, proceeds accordin
g to a
standard value-in formati on analysis (regular ly oversim plified howeve r to a preferen
ceinformation or even desire-belief modelling); that is, to get to the salient point, it involves
value
essentially.
�Truth and value are then intertwined. Their relation, not one of identity (for contrary to
idealism, there are many relations not identical with identity), can now be stated more accurately
than the poets have managed. Neither is one; both are plural, and differently so. In certain
significant respects the metaphysics resembles the value theory. For example, as the value
theory is nonreductionistic, so also is the metaphysics; in particular, there is a no-reduction
theme that neither parts nor wholes reduce eliminably to one another, as opposed to atomistic
and holistic views of environmental interrelations. As the value theory is pluralistic so also is
the metaphysics; what needs to be discerned, in place of absolutism, is a plurality of worlds and
of associated truth characterisations. A main aim of a thoroughgoing environmental theory is to
displace very destructive dominant ideasystems, regularly presented as absolute, which
incorporate both value and truth themes concerning the environment and its organisation.
Much of deep-green theory devolves then from the abstract value theory, beginning (to
take a more accessible route than the metaphysical way) with a more comprehensive ethical
theory, which includes as well as a specific axiological theory, elaborating environmental values
and virtues, a deontic theory, supplying· obligations, rights, taboos, and similar. For example,
given that a certain wild river is intrinsically valuable, as we can verify by on-site experience and
enhancement methods, and given that we duly respect that value, as deontic principles will tell
us we should, then we are not free to do as we like with that river, to dam it with concrete, to
channel it within concrete, stripping it of its riverine ecosystems. But that does not preclude
respectful use of the river, swimming or sailing quitely in its waters, and so on. Value thus
guides action, practice, and use; it is the ground also upon which principles are formulated,
principles that are assessed and validated by way of enhancement methods. Important among
these are non-interference principles, which exclude unwarranted interference with other
preference-havers and unwarranted damage, ill-treatment, or devaluation of items of value.
Such deontic principles circumscribe environmentally-limited freedom of action. Given noninterference principles, a major shift in onus of proof from homocentricthics takes place. What
is required now is that reasons be given for interfering with the environment, rather than
reasons for not doing so. Also direct responsibility for environme ntal interferenc e or
modification falls upon those who would interfere or significantly modify, who would tread
heavily on the land. Non-interference does not preclude use, only too much use and use of too
much. What it does lead to is the theme that, where use occurs, it should be careful and
respectful use.
An important respect thesis regarding environme ntal items is founded on such
interference principles and the no-reduction theme: namely
•
not to put others (other preference havers) into a dis preferred state for no good reason;
•
not to jeopardise the well being of natural objects or systems without good reason;
�•
not to damage or destroy items which, while they cannot literally be put into a
dispreferred state, can be damaged or destroyed or have their value eroded or impaired.
These apply to ecosystems, their surrounds, their parts, and so on. The mere making of further
excess profits, or similar economic excuses, are not good reasons. Such a respect thesis form
part of the ecological outlook of deep-green theory.
As permissibility, obligation and respect principles can be explained through the
valuations reached on the theory, so too can rights and other significant components of morality
be explained and justified through, but again not reduced to, values. For example, a creature
has a right to something if it has a valid title thereto established from correct moral principles.
Candidates for the parameter "something" provide a familiar list: freedom from unnecessary
suffering, respectful treatment, satisfaction of basic needs, and so on. Such rights accordingly
derive from and reinforce corresponding deontic principles.
Deep-green ethical theory is much more than just another non-reductionist ethical theory,
which highlights ecological values and virtues, and so forth. It changes the character and shape
of ethical enterprise. Perhaps most strikingly, it removes humans as such from the centre of the
ethical stage (or exclusive occupation of the stage). The biological concept of being human is
not, contrary to prevailing humanism, a highly significant ethical category. To elevate it to such
is to fall into human chauvinism, a type of class chauvinism which unwarrantedly discriminates
in favour of the human species. The prevailing chauvinism is avoided through a natural annular
model, which connects ethical characteristics directly with the categories of items that can have
them. Relevant categories include those marked out by features like: having well-being,
preference-having, rights-holding, contractual-capability, and so on, categories not necessarily
connected with any particular species. Hitherto virtually all Wes tern ethical theories have not
merely so limited ethical matters predominately to inter-human affairs, but have been blantantly
chauvinistic, exhibiting a substantial, discriminately and unjustifiably bias in favour of humans
(of certain privileged humans). These sorts of systems should be superseded; it is not a matter
of simple adjustments or extensions.
Deep-green value theory, as developed, implies the inadequacy of prevailing social,
political and economic arrangements and institutions, both those of a mixed capitalistic kind and
those of a more state socialistic cast. They are the (devious) product of inferior value
frameworks which take quite insufficient account of environmental considerations and values.
But explaining their deficiencies, and indicating more satisfactory green alternatives and
replacements, is another chapter in the elaboration of deep-green theory.
Deep-green theory is a deep environmental theory, with much in common with deep
ecology. Like deep ecology, it stands in significant ideological opposition to the dominant
technocratic-industrial way. But, even more than deep ecology, deep-green theory aims to
supply a comprehensive alternative environmental philosophy (in the full senses of those
�atrophied terms, esp philosophy ). It seeks to accomplish this, furthermore, without
accumulating the amount of philosophical rubbish deep ecology regularly attracts. For, to insert
a key difference between these ecocentric theories in a deliberately prejudical way: deep-green
theory resembles a deep ecology with the pseudo-scientific garbage removed, reorganised into a
tight, coherent and more comprehensive theory. Deep-green theory, which has roots that stretch
back about as far as its much publicized neighbour, accordingly merits elaboration separate from
deep ecology, which in any case lacks a well-thought-through valuational and ethical basis.
This essay aims to uncover the value theory of deep-green theory, exposing thereby one central
area of deep-green theory. Though the value theory is (inevitably) abstract, it issues in what is
more concrete, such as practical ecological directives, potentially destabilizing prevailing policies
and institutions.
�ETHICS AND METAPHYSICS:
their relevance to one another
There is rich range of incompatible claims about the mutual interelations of the two
ancient subjects. Most of these claims appear mistaken. Sorting out something of what looks
right is a daunting task, a small beginning on which is attempted here.
Initial severe difficulties derive from the vagueness, in determinacy and problematicality
of the relata, both of which are ill-understood by philosophers metaphysics especially. Many
there are who think that metaphyscis coincides with ontology, the study (description,
explanation and understanding) of what exists. 1 The general study of what there is, sistology,
which includes ontology as a very proper part, is only one facet of metaphysics (unless it is
presumed that items somehow supply also all propositions concerning them). For sistology is
the totality of things side of metaphysics, there is also the totality of true propositions side
(propositionology, for a nice term). Metaphysics also comprises the study of the very general
attributes of this and other universe and of what accounts for these attributes (or propositional
functions). In technical terms, then, a metaphysics amount to a very general and
comprehensi ve constrained model; and metaphysics to the plural assembly of these
metaphysics. 2 Each metaphysics will be constrained (as will become clear through examples
given below) through modelling conditions or postulates (which delimit how "altimate reality"
is according to that system).
Metaphysics is sometimes construed more comprehencisvely to include some or all of
epistemology (knowledge of "ultimate reality" for instance), some of or all of other branches of
philosophy, perhaps all of philosophy. Plainly, if metaphysics, so expansively construed,
includes ethics, then their relation is straightforward, metaphysics includes ethics. But we shall
not adopt such construals.
Whereas metaphysics concerns features of universes, ethics is a study of moral values and
principles, and of rules and practices of conduct. A case can be made out that an ethic is
outlined through its distributions of values, in terms of which both deontic features (rights,
obligations, etc) and axiological features (goodness, etc) can be discerned. (Utilitarian can
afford a crude exemplar). So, without loss of generality, I can concentrate on the relation of
value theory to metaphysics.
Now a value theory does not derive from a purely naturalistic metaphysic, by virtue of a
rectified naturalistic fallacy. But, firstly even is a value theory may be influenced or even
construed by such a metaphysics. For example if the theory rules out all but primary qualities
2
What there is according to most Western philosophers, still labouring under the probleminducing Ontological Assumption. For such a confusion of ontology with metaphysics see
Forrest p.3.
For the bsis of this large (and estrageous) technical leap, see DP.
�2
as some sort of constructs, the value qualities will have to be explained as constructs,
projections or similar. Secondly, a metaphysics is unlikely to be purely naturalistic.
Metaphysics is not a value-free enterprise; a metaphysics typically presumes a range of
presumptions, including archivative ones (deeper examples include assumptions of primary,
e.g. of certain sorts of objects, of importance, e.g. of what exists, of implicit world selection,
e.g. the world is Newtonian, Copenhagen quantum, or obitives).
An ethics does not determine a meta-ethics or therefore a metaphysics. Nor does the
converse hold. A metaphysics does not in general determine an ethics, but is compatible with
many.
Against the stock determination and priority claims, I want to oppose interaction and no
priority themes. Determination claims are commonplace in philosophers who wish to wield the
big stock of dominant science to settle ethics (or mataethics). For instance Collicott asserts that
"intrinsic value in nature ... remains ... painfully inconsistent with the ... modern scientific
world-view' (Celbration of Robton p.14, similarly p.22, whence
CD 1. Modern scientific metaphysics entails there are no intrinsic values in nature.
This is not a lapse (though soon Collicott will weaken his determination claims) because almost
immediately Collicott goes on to assert
CD2. 'A value neutral nature is ... an immediate inference from the institutionalised
metaphysical foundations of modern science' (p.15).
Given some large assumptions, most conspiciously that the metaphysics involved is that of
British empiricism, the claim CD2 become incontestable. For under that empiricism, as
elaborated by Locke and Hurve, non primary qualities like value and colour are not part of or in
nature, but substantially subjective in character. However insitutionalized those foundations an important issue -
it has since become apparent that there are at least several parts of
operative sciences, such a classical and quantum; namely a core calculus or formalism;
operational rules for connecting the formalism with testable data and making in ..... applications;
and layers of interpretation. It is in these separable, and variable, larger of interpretation that
metaphysical and elaborative princi;es begin to enter conspicuously.
The "institutionalized" interpretation is but one among the interpretations that can be
fitted to classical formalism. It is an interpretation incorperating some major and controverisial
philosophical theories, such as the reference theory and verificationism. Rival interpretations
are feasible and were developed, for instance by the Scottish comon-sense school. Such rival
foundations do not yield a value-free value neutral nature. Collicott calls upon Rolston 'to
provide a persuasive alternative to the integral set of Carterian-Gohblein-Humean assumptions
that render the subjective provenance of value so fundamental to the modern scientific outlook'
(p.16). But Rolston hardly needs to do any such thing 3 : it has already been done, in various
3
Rolston makes giving an appropriate interpretation for more difficult than he need by conceeding
"seconddoary" qualities to the reductionistic opposition.
Thus, regressively: 'the greenness of the tree is in my hand, but it looks as though the tree is
�3
ways, and, in any case, as Collicott soon observes, 'the modern scientific worldview is
obsolete' (p.19). The property for a full value-in-nature theory are little better under postmodern quantum theory, Collicott however insinuates, then they were before. Under a
Copenhagen interpretations, which he adopts, prospects look worse.
Abruptly too Collicott switches from a determination thesis, such as CD, to a slacker and
more plausible if vaguer linkage. The linkage appears in different nonequivalent forms:
CL 1. A science, such as 'the new physics might play an architectonic role in our eventual
thinking about nature (and human society)' (p.23 itals added).
Subsequently, 'architectonic role' is replaced through the as vague 'inspired by' and more
specific 'mapped out'.
CL2. 'A value thoery [may be] inspired by, and mapped on, ... quantum physics (p.25, where
reduction and derviation are now explicitly repudiated!).
Such a value theory is, it is claimed, 'particularly congenial to an ecologically informed
environmental ethics' (p.25). Whether it is, or not, depends on other-things, such as the sort of
interpretation of quantum theory, the congeniality of that with ecology. No doubt values in
nature without values is excluded under the Copenhagen interpretation, so is much else that
makes good sense. Fortunately there are congenial alternatives.
REFERENCES
P.R.H. Forrest, Speculation and Experience the New Metaphysics, Inaugural Public Lecture,
University of New England, N.S.W., 1987.
J.B. Callicott, 'Ralston's Environmental Ethics: A critical celbration', critical response at APA,
Oakland, March 1989.
R. Sylvan, Deep Plurallism, Australian National University, Research School of Social Science,
1993.
green. OUt there are only ....... waves... . The greenness is projected, more factural in my head
and apparently hung on the tree'. What a ridiculous idea.
�'
,,.
ON THE VALUE CORE OF DEEP-GREEN THEORY
This essay aims to uncover the value theory of deep-green theory, exposing thereby a
central area of that theory. Though the value theory is (inevitably) abstract, it issues in what is
more concrete, such as an applicable system and practical ecological directives, potentially
destabilizing for prevailing policies and institutions.
Deep-green theory which stands in significant ideological opposition to dominant
industrial ways, is intended to supply a comprehensive alternative environmental philosophy.
At the core of deep-green theory lies a value theory. A fundamental theme thereof, part of what
makes the structure deep, is that a range of environmental items are valuable in themselves,
directly and irreducibly so, so that their value does not somehow reduce to or emerge from
something else, such as features of certain valuers or what matters for them. Thus value does
not answer back in some way to humans, or sentient creatures (or other value-responsive
classes), their interests, uses, preferences, or such like. Many natural items, such as forests
and rivers, mountains and seashores, are intrinsically valuable. They are valuable in their own
right - irrespective of whether they are interesting or useful (to any intentional operators,
themselves interesting or useful or not), indeed whether or not there exist any valuers. Value
spreads through and reaches across the natural domain; it is not bounded by mind, or linkages
with subjective states; nor does it stop with sentience, or associated pyschological features like
satisfaction; nor does it end at life; it observes no such compromising bounds. Although value
is distributed richly if irregularly throughout nature, it is not then encapsulated in some isolable
natural feature, such as life or sentience, or even in defeasible ecological values such as
richness, diversity and variety (and so open to a different, naturalistic, reduction). But of
course such ecologically important features afford criteria for value, and should be represented
in recipes (such as "objective functions") for assessing overall value.
From the presence of natural things of value, and accordingly of natural values, it is a
short, though controversial, step to the important conclusion that there can be values without
valuers. For valuers are sentient creatures with appropriate capacities, but things of value may
precede and succeed all such valuers; that is, these things can persist, their values intact,
without any valuers. As there can be shapes without any shape.:.perceivers, so there can be
values without valuers. (The theme, like others advanced, can be backed up by more detailed
argument and by formal proof, neither attempted here.) In valuational relations then, which
relate valuers as subjects with values as objects, both ends of relations have independent
standing; though interrelated, as the descriptions are deliberately chosen to suggest, either can
stand without the other. It is a fashionable mistake to try to collapse this relation - usually to
endeavour to soak up values into a modification of valuing subjects (e.g. as a predicate
�'relation-to-values', in which inconvenierZt values are locked away). The mistaken procedure
is in fact just one important example of an archetypal modern reduction of relations to
functions; other examples, locking undesired objects away within functions, are those
rendering wholes (such as ecosystems and organised structures) functions of their parts, and,
under functionalism, minds and types of intentionality, including value-direction, as functions
of bodies or their parts such as brains. Values are not, and do not disappear into, functions of
valuers.
A connected corollary is that values are not apart from the actual world, something
"projected" or imposed on it by a favoured class of valuers, something colouring (and even
emotionally clouding) the otherwise valueless physical world, in rather the way that
reductionistic materialism tries (erroneously) to construe colour itself as projected onto a
colourless physical world. Of course this projection effort, never adequately explicated, does
not succeed, on its own, in removing values. For they remain, left as some function of the
valuers. To try to bulldoze through this difficulty, a second reduction is invoked, of evaluative
features of valuers to "natural" features, commonly preferences, consumer desires or such like.
The second reduction runs into obstacles that halt even the naturalistic bulldozers (e.g.
naturalistic and related fallacies), but the first reduction is the critical one in removing key
environmental values, such as those of wilderness and wild things, which become valuable
only in the focus of certain sentient beholders, and not in and for themselves. This reduction
too is blocked by insuperable difficulties. On the one side, like the parallel proposed
phenomenalist reduction of material objects to sensations, the reduction never achieves
satisfactory support or even a satisfactory statement. On the other, it is counterexampled by
various modellings or thought-experiments revealing intuitively-assessed value in situations
devoid of valuers (as e.g. in the well-known Last Person argument). Values remain then part
of the still rich actual world; they are objects in the domain of actual and other worlds. But
they are not of course material objects; creatures will not fall over them any more than they will
trip over shadows or mere shapes.
Value, like shape, is an attribute, which things have or may lack, and which furthermore
creatures can recognise or may fail to discern. Thus value is, like shape and colour and their
determinate forms (round, red, etc), a universal , distributed across things, individuals and
wholes. The comparison of value with shape is decidedly more helpful than the regular, but
exhausted, comparison of value with colour, or of goodness with colour determinates such as
yellow. For example, shape is not bound by a set of determinates as colour is in the specific
colours, but comes in a spectacular variety of forms, not totally or linearly ordered (as in a
rainbow), or contracted to some primary set (as in colour triangles); shape which pertains to
wholes as well as particulars, links with gestalts better than colour; shape discrimination is
more culture dependent and sensitive; yet shape is, or was, a primary property, and thereby
�more immune to reductionist strategies thJn secondary properties such as colour. Again shapes
like values, can be vague, indeterminate; that does not prevent things, perhaps unique things,
exemplifying them. But naturally the analogy can only be extended so far. Shapes can be
approximated by polygons, values cannot; shapes are regularly perceived through sense
perception, by vision or touch especially, values are not, but are differently apprised. Value is
its own thing, not something else; it is what it is and does what is does; it is not something
else, like some quantitative mathematical or economic function. Nor does it contract into some
mark of value, or to what it comes down to in highly restricted settings; most important, it does
not disappear in the style of modern economics into (expected) utility, or into just two
economic forms, value-in-use monetarily and value-in-exchange (price), neither of which may
reflect worth. Value means what it means, and has meant: worth ; and it ties with general
assessments of merit and demerit, goodness or badness, not an economic or other truncation
thereof.
The powerful drive to reduce or deny values has several sources. Part of the motivation
for reduction of value springs from epistemological worries, concerning how values can be
ascertained and known, so far as they are (subjective translation proposals are then a direct
evaluative counterpart of phenomenalism). Part derives from supposedly problematic cultural
relativity (whence the attempt to impose values by identification of value with some favoured
assessible feature, and with it cultural or economic imperialism). Part of the motivation comes
from more sweeping ideological commitments, such as varieties of materialism or scientism,
which leave no space for immaterial values.
As already apparent, attempted reductions of value come in a dazzling variety of forms • subjective, which make use of psychological features, such as desires, interests, emotions,
and the like; or more objective aggregations of these, such as community preferences or utility;
or objectively naturalistic, which enrol single track value-making characteristics such as
richness or evolutionary development as value;
• consequential, which consider only outcomes; or purely motivational, which consider only
attitudes and ignore leads and outcomes;
• straightforward, as in translation proposals for translating value judgements into reducing
statements; or oblique, as in supervenience propositions (no variations in value without
underwriting variations in reducing features); or obscure, as in unarticulated projection claims.
Values are not well accommodated within these reductionistic schemes, or accommodated at all.
Deep-green value theory, which is thoroughly nonreductive, repudiates all these reductionistic
options. They are not so difficult to avoid, as the options are neither exhaustive nor exclusive.
In particular, value reduces neither in subjective nor objective fashion; it does not reduce.
Evaluative judgements are nonjective, that is, neither subjective nor objective (in any absolutist
�4
fashion). Obversely, evaluation of an act does not reduce to assessing consequences; nor does
it come down to an assessment of motives; both may matter.
The virulent idea is abroad however that science can offer a reduction, can sweep up
value along with all other information, where philosophy has conspicuously failed.
Unfortunately for such optimistic ideas, fortunately perhaps for deeper thought, current basic
science does not have much to say at all, or of merit, about values, and if it did reductions
through it would be circular. But, to the contrary, there is a long-standing pretence that science
gets along "well" without values, in appropriate value-free fashion. Nowadays it is
increasingly realised that the positivistic assumption of such value-freedom is a myth, that
much of what passes as science is heavily value-penetrated. While the residual ideal of pure
engagement in pure science may offer the illusion of an escape from value, there is no escape.
For, in any case, reductions do not succeed, as a copious literature, littered with failed
attempts, meanderingly establishes. Nor are they generally desirable, since mostly shallow,
aiming at a reduction to features of some privileged class presented as ideal (i.e. core value is
covertly assumed, so there is no real reduction). Nor are they needed; explanation and
assessment do not require reduction. Evaluations may be arrived at, and value frameworks
expanded, by enhancement methods, which organise and expand emotional presentation by
coherence methods.
The enhancement methodology in fact resembles that sometimes proposed for further
acquisition of scientific information. As accumulated empirical information can be further
extended through presentational input and assessment for overall coherence, so further
evaluations may be arrived at and assessed through a combination of presentational and
coherence procedures. At the (marginal) stage where the next round of evaluations is
undertaken, the following active ingredients figure, in an idealised breakdown:- Firstly, a
background stock of judgements and value experience will have been accumulated or inherited;
in principle all of this is revisable, and some may be up for reassessment. Apart from the
background, which enters in assessing overall coherence of system, what is involved is,
secondly, emotional presentation, which corresponds to further perceptional and sense data
input, and, thirdly and not independent, coherence processing, which supplies the
interpretational and rationalisational components. At bottom, parallelling perception in the case
of empirical information, is emotional presentation, gut or visceral reaction in starker forms of
acceptance or rejection, but more generally comprehending a variety of sentiments, including
overall well-being, and also relational impressions, such as empathy, identification, and so on.
As a perceiver perceives shapes, so a valuer feels raw value and disvalue. The basis of
perception is sensation, the basis of valuation is emotion. Apprehension of value is seated in
emotional, and especially visceral, presentation; but what is apprehended is not to be confused
with its apprehension any more than what is perceived. All the warnings about sensation as an
�information source have to be repeat~d, with heavy emphasis, as regards emotional
presentation; for example, reliability cannot be guaranteed, interference with presentation
through drugs, alcohol, temporary excitement or other inputs may render it dubious or
unacceptable, conditioning may have occurred, including substantial cultural conditioning (so
that a person is terrified by harmless spiders but not sickened by bloody massacres of dolphins
or seals). As with perception, there are checks on emotional presentation, such as constancy
over time and after reflection.
Emotional presentation, supplying primarily inclusions and exclusions or prohibitions, is
but the basis of reflective evaluation and value apprehension. The further critical part,
coherence processing, builds on the basis taking account of other inputs or controls including
background (which supplies relevant components of already adopted judgements, assimilated
subculture and so forth) and constraints (such as moral substitutional requirements like
impartiality, e.g. whether considered judgements hold for substitute valuers, and uniformity,
e.g. whether similar acts are judged in similar ways). Essentially, the coherence procedure
consists in asking whether the next or a relevant judgement fits together with what has been
accepted, while meeting constraints, without leading to what has been rejected or excluded. If
it does fit it is added to the included side, otherwise it is sent to the excluded side. Because an
aim of this rationalisation procedure is achievement of some sort of equilibrium such coherence
procedures have gained currency under the rubric "reflective equilibrium". Observe, however,
that equilibrium reached at some stage may be lost as new types of problems arise and further
information enters. No doubt the whole methodology (like the parallel methodology of an
empirically-based coherence theory of truth) is highly idealised, and only practicably applicable
in rudimentary parts. It does however surmount a major theoretical obstacle for environmental
value theory; it reveals how in principle a nonreductionistic value theory can function, and
deliver a tenable value system. Whether what results is however an appropriate deep
environmental system will depend above all on the presentational input, the extent to which
environmental sensitivity enters and is not suppressed.
Enhancement methods reveal too that value systems are not uniquely determined, any
more than other comprehensive theoretical frameworks. There evidently are rival value
systems measuring up to rigorous rationality requirements, much as there are rival logics and
rival physical and biological systems. In particular chauvinistic systems, narrow or shallow
value systems, which are unresponsive to and take no account of environmental items and
values, cannot be excluded on rational or straight logical grounds. Unfortunately such systems
remain in ascendancy, and tend to dominate social and political practice; in recent times
economism, a narrow type of utilitarianism, has all too obviously dominated much terrestial
practice. While such value frameworks are open to severe criticism, for instance as
chauvinistic, as violating universality requirements of morality in the case of economism, they
�do not succumb to definitive refutatiog (for the reason that requirements of morality,
universalizability of principle, impartiality and so on, can simply be repudiated; immoral or
amoral frameworks are still value systems). Even so, much can be done to shift or alter
values, though as usual effectiveness cannot be guaranteed. A range of argumentative,
educational and persuasive techniques, of varying quality, can be put to work to move valuers
indoctrinated in old damaging structures, often enough successfully. Important among these
are positive presentations of environments, their habitats and creatures, by way of new
information and experience.
The availability of rival value systems, while it implies a certain desirable (and also
troublesome) pluralism, does not mean relativism. From a deep-green viewpoint, rival
narrower and shallower systems are definitely inferior, and criticised accordingly, while
economism is an anathema which does not even make the moral grade (e.g. too many
principles stop at class or state boundaries). However a critical pluralism does acknowledge
and offer a place in the wider scheme of things for other systems, even if as less favoured or
satisfactory. One political upshot is evident; deep-green theory promotes, what matters in these
irrational times of numbers, alliances - in particular, a green alliance, organising green
positions, against prevailing forces of environmental degradation.
The systematic pluralism of deep-green value theory interpenetrates not only social and
political domains above, but also metaphysics traditionally placed below. In the underlying
metaphysical pluralism of deep-green theory, value runs very deep - so deep that even truth
depends in part upon it. For not merely selection of a correct comprehensive theory or worldview is a value dependent choice, but choice of associated actual world is also. That choice,
insofar as it is consciously made, of world structure and conceptualisation, is a constrained
choice, constrained by informational inputs, such as those of refined perception. But inasmuch
as it is rationally accomplished, that choice, like other choices of structure, proceeds according
to a standard value-information analysis (regularly oversimplified however to a preferenceinformation or even desire-belief modelling); that is, to extract the salient point, it involves
value essentially.
Truth and value are then intertwined; truth, though naturally different from value, is value
dependent. Both are plural, and differently so. So, unremarkably deep-green metaphysics
resembles the value theory in significant respects. For example, as the value theory is
nonreductionistic, so also is the metaphysics; in particular, there is a no-reduction theme that
neither parts nor wholes reduce eliminably to one another, as opposed to atomistic and holistic
views of environmental interrelations. As the value theory is pluralistic, so also is the
metaphysics; in place of established absolutism, a plurality of worlds, with associated truth
definitions is discerned. Indeed a main aim of deep-green theory is to dislodge dominant
�destructive ideologies, which (each of th]m) assume an absolute truth, from their positions thereby providing intellectual living-space for natural environments.
Much of deep-green theory devolves then from the abstract value theory. As with the
metaphysical way sketched, so it is with the fuller ethical theory, which includes as well as a
specific axiological system, elaborating deep environmental values and virtues, a deontic
framework, supplying obligations, rights, taboos, and similar. For example, given that a
certain wild river is intrinsically valuable, as we can verify by on-site experience and
enhancement methods, and given that we duly respect that value, as deontic principles will tell
us we should, then we are not free to do as we like with that river, to dam it with concrete, to
channel it within concrete, stripping it of its riverine ecosystems. But that does not preclude
respectful use of the river, swimming or sailing quietly in its waters, and the like. Value thus
guides action, practice, and use; it is the ground also upon which principles are formulated,
principles that are assessed and validated by way of enhancement methods. Important among
these are non-interference principles, which exclude unwarranted interference with other
preference-havers and unwarranted damage, ill-treatment, or devaluation of items of value.
Such deontic principles circumscribe environmentally-limited freedom of action. Given noninterference principles, a major shift in onus of proof from homocentricethics takes place.
What is required now is that reasons be givenfor interfering with the environment, rather than
reasons for not doing so. Also direct responsibility for environmental interference or
modification falls upon those who would seriously interfere or significantly modify, who
would tread heavily on the land. Non-interference does not preclude use - only too much use
and use of too much. What it does lead to is the theme that, where use occurs, it should be
careful and respectful use.
An important respect thesis regarding environmental items is founded on such non-interference
principles and the no-reduction theme: namely,
• not to put others (other preference havers) into a dispreferred state for no good reason;
• not to jeopardise the well-being of natural objects or systems without good reason;
• not to damage or destroy items which, while they cannot literally be put into a dispreferred
state, can be damaged or destroyed or have their value eroded or impaired.
These apply to ecosystems, their surrounds, their parts, and so on. The mere making of
further excess profits, or similar economic excuses, are not good reasons. Such a respect
thesis forms part of the ecological outlook of deep-green theory.
Deep-green ethical theory amounts to much more than just another non-reductionist
ethical theory, which highlights ecological values and virtues, and so forth. It changes the
character and shape of ethical enterprise. Perhaps most strikingly, it removes humans as such
�from the centre of the ethical stage (or :xclusive occupation of the stage). The biological
concept of being human ceases to be a significant ethical category. To elevate it to such is to
fall into human chauvinism, a type of class chauvinism which unwarrantedly discriminates in
favour of the human species. The prevailing chauvinism is not inevitable; it is very logically
avoided by directly connecting ethical characteristics with the categories of items that can have
them. Relevant categories include those marked out by features like: having well-being,
preference-having, rights-holding, contractual-capability, and so on, categories not necessarily
connected with any particular species. Hitherto virtually all Western ethical theories, and the
institutional arrangements they help support, have not merely limited ethical matters to interhuman affairs, but have been blatantly chauvinistic, exhibiting substantial and unjustifiable
discrimination in favour of humans (or certain privileged humans).
Deep-green theory thus implies the inadequacy of prevailing social, political and
economic arrangements and institutions. These structures are the defective products of inferior
value frameworks which take quite insufficient account of environmental desiderata and values.
Richard Sylvan*
RMB 683
Bungendore NSW 2621
*
Thanks to David Bennett for comments on an earlier draft. For more on deep-green theory, see
essays in and work referred to in the Green Series, i.e. Discussion Papers in Environmental
Philosophy, RSSS, Australian National University, Canberra.
This compressed essay was solicited by and written for Island Magazine (Tasmania). Upon receiving
it however, the editors decided that it was too dense, and insufficiently journalistic and popular (not
features they had at any time requested), for their magazine.
�
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DEEP-GREEN ETHICS
Contents
PARTS
CHAPTERS
0
I
II
III
IV
Prologue
DEEP, GREEN, ETHICS, and PHILOSOPHICAL BACKGROUND
1
Deep [and] green fundamentals
2
Ethics without humans; philosophy without humans
3
Philosophical setting: deep-green plurallisms
4
Inhibiting presumptions and myths
AXIOLOGY: value core
5
Value and its varieities: basic theory and its development
6
Alternative primitives and theoretical beginnings
DEONTOLOGY: necessary moral structure
7
Obligation and its deontic circle, and moral dilemmas
8
Rights, and justice
VIRTUE and INACTION
9
Environmental virtues: what they are and
something of their theory
10
V
Environmental ethical practice
NATURE of ETHICS
11
Ethics, its new character and revised foundations
12
Principal questions of reoriented ethics, and proposed answers
13
Epilogue
17 .5.96
DEEP-GREEN ETHICS
PROLOGUE
Philosophy and its branches, ethics especially, are among the last places where prejudice
would be found, found alive and thriving, so it might be imagined. Wrong. In the first place,
prevailing ethics all exhibit heavy prejudice in favour of humans, human chauvinism. So they
are one and all defective, wrong in a deep way. An adequate ethic will remove the prejudices
involved. That means, in turn, a radical transformation of prevailing ethics, from the bottom
up. Such a transformation constitutes a main objective of this book. Deep-green ethics aims
not simply to reform present arrangements and systematizations, but to replace them. Abolition
of prejudice has early priority.
Prejudice in philosophy, privelege in prevailing ethics.
There are only about two and half millenia of recorded philosophy on Earth. To a
disconcerting extent, those millenia represent two and half thousand years of prejudice-partial
exceptions occurring and prejudice subsiding somewhat only when ideological empires were
fractured (e.g. fruitful periods of "warring states" in ancient China and Greece). Ethics is far
from alone within philosophy in exhibiting serious deficiencies, in incorporating prejudices that
should not figure so prominently in what is ideally an impartial subject. Much the same holds
for other branches: politics obviously (partly through its interdependence with ethics),
metaphysics and logic perhaps less obviously. Yet prevailing metaphysics display a deep
prejudice in favour of the actual, against what does not exist. In logic the prejudical situation
has in fact been accentuated through the rise of modern symbolic logic. Regrettably mainstream
symbolic logic is wrong. All its forms validate incorrect principles (such as implicational
paradoxes), these results flowing primarily from an underlying prejudice in favour of the
consistent, against the impossible. 1
Several of the systematic prejudices embedded elsewhere in philosophy impact upon
ethics. The prejudice in favour of the actual has served to distort, very seriously, the issue of
obligations to future creatures for example, in this fashion:- Remoter future creatures do not
exist, and therefore, according to prevailing prejudice, cannot have any relevant features, any
preferences or desires, self-traits or satisfactions, to be taken into ethical account. Therefore
All the themes are presented and defended in detail elsewhere. As regards metaphysics, see JB; as
regards logic, see e.g. BGB and generally in philosophy , see TM. There are several coupled
prejudices and prejudical drives, as will appear; for instance the drives to power and to maximization,
strongly manifested in logic, see e.g. RLR.
Prejudice in ethics was explicitly recognised by Bentham, almost two centuries ago; unfortunately
however he imported his own very influential prejudical framework.
2
"they" can be discounted entirely. The same prejudice also enters in a very different way. All
the standard positions concerning universals, all of which reflect the metaphysical
presupposition that discourse concerns existent objects, show up in ethics. They appear in
vexing issues as to the ontological status of values, such as the good, and of deontic notions,
such as obligations and the right. These are not only difficult items to discover in the world, but
they do not seem adequately housed in conceptual or linguistic apparatus: where are they
located? Whence derives immediate pressure for many mostly bizarre reduction exercises; for
instance of values to human constructs, contructs from social preferences or from
sociobiological drives, and of obligations from veiled contracts. The initial question of location
makes, however, the defective metaphysical presupposition, and lapses therewith. Values,
though significant items, do not exist; so they are not located, anywhere.
Prejudice rooted in established logic has impacted differently, upon a variety of issues in
ethics. The absolute requirement of consistency upsets a straightforward treatment of
obligations, general sets of which are typically inconsistent, thereby leading for instance to
awkward theories of hierarchies of obligation or of merely prima facie obligations. Running
parallel with this, the requirement utterly distorted an initially straightforward theory of ethical
dilemmas, treatment of which is a significant part of any comprehensive ethical theory.
Established logic has also impacted heavily on such different issues as fact-value inferences
(e.g. the prescriptive fallacy) and regarding the extent of pluralism in ethics. The assumption
behind the rationalistic critique of relativism is that there is a single correct logic, governed by
requirements of consistency, namely standard logical theory, which (when combined with the
facts) will eliminate various ethical stances as incorrect, indeed which may, given sufficient
critical thought, lead to a single correct ethics. 2 But the assumption fails; for it too depends on
ancient prejudice.
Pluralism is one most important component in removing prejudice generally, certainly in
reducing it generally, by admitting alternatives, and allowing some to flourish. 3 Elaboration of
deep-green theory is another important direction in removing prejudice, in favour of humans,
persons, or like agents from ethics especially but not only. The main development that follows
will take both these directions, though focussed upon ethics: it will track and investigate
pluralistic deep-green ethics.
Human chauvinism is not the only major prejudice damaging ethics. An extraordinarily
privileged position given to egoistical considerations is another. Western ethics in particular has
2
3
The approach involved, that of traditional rationalistic ethics, is regularly deployed by Singer (e.g.
his Encyclopedia conclusion to Companion to Ethics); the strengthened version features in Regan.
Of course how it is supposed to proceed, the details of how reason works this miracle, is never
revealed.
See esp. TM, epilogue.
3
recently been deformed through a substantially unquestioned axiom of self concern, that agents
are interested in and motivated by their own (self) concerns and only by them. (Of course an
agent's self, or extended self, may be grander than the agent's soul or person or body or
whatever; it may include the agent's family or even the agent's tribe, or differently it may
comprehend the agent's land or environment. But under such extensions the axiom is already
beginning to disintegrate.) Such an ubiquitous, but largely unquestioned, presumption has lain
behind reductionistic exercises that have distorted much of modem ethical (and political) theory.
The leading idea is simple enough: given that action is justified through human self-interest, and
only thus, if ethical theory (and likewise political superstructure) can be justified through some
construction or modelling on that basis (bringing in only indifference and like neutral
assumptions) , then justification will be transmitted, it too will be justified. Thus those
contractual and utilitarian exercises which have loomed so large in recent theory. 4 The same
dubious presumption also features large elsewhere, for instance in the acclaimed derivation of
Deep Ecology from the ultimate norm of Self-realization!
It is not just prejudice and allied presumption that have damaged and distorted ethics.
Narrow ethics, parading as universal or absolute in defiance of pluralism, ethics often
underwritten by religious or papal presumption, have severely disadvantage d ethics.
Furthermore, connected therewith, ethics has been destabilized, and cast in an unfavourable
light, by
•
a quest for absolute foundations, and in tum connected therewith
•
an invidious comparison with science, which is supposed to have such foundations.
The quest is quixote: there are no such foundations. Nor does science have such foundations,
so the comparison is misplaced. Not only is absoluteness for science increasingly disputed, but
it is becoming apparent that science is in the same sort of pluralistic situation-pre dicament
some, still questing for the old false certainties, would say-as ethics. 5
Through the assumption, or pretence, that it can deliver (whether from religious, rational
or other resources) certainties of a type that it cannot deliver, ethics has become discredited. But
that is only part among reasons why on the contemporary scene ethics is not the force that it has
mostly been in bygone times. At least as important as such intellectual reasons are matters like
removal of social and political pressures to conform, redirection of indoctrination practices (into
consumerism, etc.), and so on, some welcome and some definitely not.
4
5
Roughly, ethics, knocked down to what's in it for everyone (some aggregated base class), is justified
through what's in it for each me. Prima facie the grand construction is based on a simpler fallacy of
aggregation: an invalid each to all inference.
The theme is argued in detail in TM chapter 10.
The quixote quest is strikingly engaged in by Williams, for a entertaining criticism of which see
'Bernard Williams and the Absolute Conception of the World' in Putnam 92.
4
Aspects of the discreditation have in turn been exaggerated. Ethics, it is said, makes no
difference, even can never make a difference; it never effects change. Such claims are seriously
astray, as examination of elementary examples like human slavery and treatment of animals
quickly reveals. Environmental ethics too can make a difference (perhaps, when coupled with
other practices, a major difference), and they are beginning to do so. But naturally they cannot
compel change; nor should they be capable of doing so, as that would exceed proper roles of
ethics (and other proper practices). 6
Rectification of ethics requires, then, not merely removal of now conspicuous prejudice
and presumptions, but deflation of pretensions. What results-hardly unique naturally, but one
selected for good reasons among many, hardly entirely exclusive but overlapping and admitting
others-is an ethics which differs from standard ethics in the following respects at least: Such
an ethics is:
• deep-green, removing prejudice in favour of humans, and in favour of certain (egoistic)
agents, in an affirmative fashion; and
• Pluralistic in a thorough-going way, accordingly not pretending to absolute or objective
status.
The run of prevailing ethics, including so-called "applied ethics" and "environmental ethics" are
chauvinistic; a satisfactory (environmental) ethic is not. The run of prevailing ethics are
absolutist, or otherwise relativist; a satisfactory ethic is neither.
However the conditions so far presented are but necessary conditions; they are not jointly
sufficient for adequacy. Even among theories that are nonchauvinistic and duly pluralistic,
reductionism may persist. Such reductionisms come in striking variety; thus, on just one
dimension, individualisms, sentientisms, vitalisms, (i.e. all that has value is alive, somehow),
and so on. To avoid such reductionisms, another blanket condition of adequacy is:
• non-reductionistic.
The main task consists in elaborating in detail an ethic, with other preferred features, that meets
these conditions of adequacy.
Regrettably, removal of prejudice cannot be accomplished in ethics alone, as a separate
pollution-free zone. Prejudice in ethics flows through from other regions, religion especially,
but also from psychology (which in the past made little gods of humans with sacred souls of
their own, justifying very differential treatment for them in the world), and from elsewhere.
Removal of these latter sorts of prejudices requires a severe erosion of belief, in regions strictly
outside ethics, but heavily exporting into it; of beliefs fostering intellectual prejudice.
Nonetheless ethics has a role in removal of prejudices elsewhere, because, very simply,
these prejudices ought to be removed. The basic principle, which can also be presented as one
6
These points are developed at some decent length in GE part IL
5
of rationality, runs as follows: belief ought not to exceed warranting evidence, but should be
appropriate to it.
None of this is as clean and clear-cut as it may initially appear, because source waters
have become very muddied. Sources for instance take a range of forms (this is part of the
ancient issue of the criterion reput in more contemporary terms). Sources include not merely
empirical evidence, perception especially, the favoured, or even exclusive, source of
empiricism. They also include such sources as: emotional presentation, or emotion; postulation
or presumption; reason; authority; a range of psychic and extra sensory perception (ESP) forms;
and, differently, a range of intuitions. Some of these sources overlap; consider for instance
divine relevation. Plainly those sources are very different kinds, quality and calibre. Some
such as reason, which includes itself a disputed variety of forms, are more processing of
information kinds than sources (thought reason becomes a source, of sorts, in pure rationalism,
and a degenerate source of necessary truths in classical logical theory where theorems are
proved, by paradoxical means, from nothing so to say).
While some of these kind of sources are not important or at issue in ethics, for instance
controversial kinds of ESP giving information on remote (spatially distant or past or future)
items, several are. It is not going too far to say that ethics is severely vexed as regards sources,
and many distortions such as naturalism can be seen as coming about as ways of trying to
secure reliable sources (if some naturalistic reduction were correct then ethics would be brought
within the orbit of science and even empirical perceptual bases could be adopted, as in science).
But ethics does not resemble science; its sources are not (except incidentally) primarily
perceptual, thus breaking any very close analogy between epistemology and ethics.
A major source in ethics is emotion, by contrast with epistemology where the major
source is perception. From there already derives a major difference between the fields, as
perception tends to be less variable, more intersubjective, less culturally dependent across the
range of subjects usually taken into account. Accordingly, in any quest for a more objective
ethics, more has to be drawn out, out of the processing substructure, whence the emphasis on
coherence, good reasons, ethical on coherence, good reasons, ethical argumentation. Ethical
inputs, sources, and processing are assessed in detail in the text.
Although this work is focussed upon ethics, it does not, and evidently cannot, merely
concern ethics. Since the ethical theory is itself approached primarily (though not exclusively)
by way of value, it bears upon other areas, such as normative-infected social sciences, where
value theory features. For another example, it also impacts upon aesthetics, heavily. For,
according to the theory advanced, there is no sharp boundary, indeed really no division at all,
between what has been dubbed "aesthetic value" and "ethical value". Value is value, without
these artificial divides. Evidently too, as will appear, the work intrudes in normative reaches
6
merging into ethics, in particular, wherever normative or deontic dilemmas are encountered,
such as reaches of social choice theory and legal theory. Differently, the work includes much,
though indirectly, upon philosophy of nature. For it is especially concerned to supersede an old
defective philosophy of nature, which included a heavy devaluation of nature, and aided and
abetted a manifestly chauvinistic ethics. The ethical theory to be elaborated fits with, and in
significant respects presupposes, a·different theory of nature. 7
Although investigations in this text are primarily theoretical, they have significant practical
implications. Putting the theory to work in various environmental fields is something that
happens elsewhere (see further in the Epilogue). Some of this has already occurred, in essays
in the Green Series, and some is reserved for other texts on field ethics. 8
Notes on terminology In this text several familiar terms, such as 'green' and 'deep', are
converted into quasi-technical terms. That is to say, special uses of the terms already in
currency, such as the use of 'green' to mean environmentally committed, are further refined.
The result could be signalled by deloyment of appropriate new terminology. Something like
that is assumed done, except that the familiar terms will be retained-onl y now they are to be
read in the quasi-technical way. To put the point differently. Let 'grene' (Olde English) or
'gre-een, (Newe English), for example, be the quasi-technical explication of 'green' in the
relevant sense. Then in the subsequent text, 'green' will normally signify gre-een, or
equivalently 'green' operates as (effectively abbreviates) 'gre-een. Why such a strategem? One
reason is that people are now rather conservative regarding terminology. Indeed they are often
turned off by new terminology (despite regular ruination of established terminology). As a
result, established terminology gets revised for all sorts of new purposes (witness the bizarre
high-school reuses in advanced physics), with a resultant overloading of senses. By contrast,
recycling of old terminology (words or spellings), that has fallen into disuse would be rather
more commendable. Here, rather than pressing our luck with explicit recyclings like diep and
chalowe, we resort to the fiction that the terms 'deep' and 'shallow' deployed throughout the
text stand in for the technical recyclings. As a result 'deep', as figuring in deep approaches,
deep green, deep theory and so on, has no connection with profundity, or 'shallow' with
superficiality.
As several have said, in several respects deep/shallow terminology is unsatisfactory,
execrable it is sometimes said. Founder N aess did a disservice introducing it, and subsequently
7
8
Such an appropriate underlying theory of nature is advanced in the companion work on metaphysics,
namely TM.
Green Series is a popular label for discussion papers in environmental philosophy, published from
Research School of Social Sciences, Australian National University. One of the other texts is
tentatively entitled Green Ethical Fields ..
7
in explaining it, so slackly. While it is too late to easily change the terminology, some
undesirable associations may be shaken off by resorting to older or variant spellings, and
simultaneous ly refining senses intended. That we do. But then we concede to the general
intellectual will, by the substitution or "abbreviations" strategem.
Even so, we have risked a few neologisms, and we shall chance, just here, one or two
more. One we risk, is euthics, for universalizab le ethics, that is an ethics meeting
universalizability requirements (in some appropriate fashion). This bit of terminology helps in
resolving a significant ambiguity in philosophical usage of 'ethics', and making an improved
start on the vexed issue of why an agent should adhere to an ethics, or differently to an euthics?
One we chance is viridology (from Latin virides, green, and Greek logos, study of, in modern
palance) for: theory, principles and practices of deep-green; that is, a single classical word for
diep-grene theory. A purer alternative we contemplated, from among many, was prasinology
(or should it be prasinomics) from Greek (and Latin) prasinus, dark green, leek green.
Acknowledg ements and antecendents: personal development and conceit.
The production of this work owes much to other humans, with of whom I have little or no
acquaintance. The debts are both intellectual and practical. On the heavily practical side, I am
most grateful to Frances Redrup for the processing of reems of rough scribble. On the broad
practical front I am pleased to acknowledge the continuing support of my research endeavours
by the Australian National University. That academic support, while generous by often
niggardly world standards, has recently declined, through contraction of research support and
expansion of alleged accountability practices. In this little respect, there has regettably been
interference in my research, dur the earlier stages of work on this book, by no doubt wellintentioned academics occupying supervisary roles who have deemed by performance less than
satisfactory. It is with regret too that I record that, in part owing to biassed appointment
practices within the University, there has been negligible imput to the present work from any of
my academic colleagues there.
But outside imput there has been of course, of two main sorts: from recent activity in
environmental philosophy and from past exercises in value theory. While environmental issues
have operated as a main stimulus in my recent work in ethics, my own interest in and
investigations in ethics reach back to my graduate work in Wellington, New Zealand, where I
produced a characteristic ally initative work on ethics, entitled Moral Scepticism (I do not
suggest that anyone read that work, which it is far too late to suppress).
In New Zealand, I was educated in the 20th century British type and style of ethical
theory, primarily Oxbridge material, with not antipodean influence of any significance what
cover, except in the obscure background Prior' s quocit little book Logic and the Basis of Ethics
(although my professor at Wellington, George Styles, had ethics as a manfield, I learnt only a
8
certain technigue from him; I do not recall one position, little theorem argument or there I must
attribute to him, for the very simple reason, (suspect, that he never advanced very much).
Among Oxbridge characters, Moore revoided the dominant influence though much of Hume and
his near contemporaries-N eurall-Smith Tomlesia and others-was scround up to a tiny circle
of ethical enthusiants and fellow academic travellers. Moore is still an influence in this book; in
my occasional more conceited moments, I like to envisage the book as an appropriately greenish
update of Principia Ethica. At least it may be as near as I ever come to producing such a work:
Principa Ethica Virida. What on excessively ambitious idea, sheer hubris! Yet, for all the fuss,
Principia Ethica is not really such a good book; rather it enjoys other advantageous features. A
few companions with Principa Ethica will be ventured.
But, by and large, other ethical theories will not be investigated in much detail. For one
reason, that has been done, to a sufficient extent elsewhere (in others' work more than my
own). For another, in the wake of accumulating evidence, notably from environmental
awakenings, revealing their narrowness and prejudice, they scarcely justify further post
mortems.
More than Moore and Priest, the present work is indebted to Meinong, and through him to
the tradition of Austrian value theory. The theory elaborated in fact fits, more or less, into what
has been called critical cognitivism ..
The evil of ingratitude, for example, ...
Here and there, the present text draws, heavily sometimes, on my own past work,
especially concerning environmental ethics. As much of the work, for example in the local
Green Series in Canberra, is rather inaccessible, such borrowing may not matter much. There
remains a small overlap-ideally vanishingly small as revision proceeds-betwee n this text and
better circulated complementary works, notably essays in Environmental Philosophy and parts
of The Greening of Ethics.
INTRODU CING DEEP-GR EEN THEORY
Deep-green theory aims eventually to supply a comprehensive alternative environmental
philosophy. While it stands on its own, it is alternative because it stands in radical ideological
opposition to dominant ways, nowadays predominantly industrial. It offers a philosophy both
in the contemporary narrower sense, and in the older sense of an intellectually informed and
critical way of life. That philosophy is centred on an ethical theory (upon which this issue
concentrates), which is in form centred upon a value theory. But the ethic issues, in a fashion
broadly associated since Aristotle, in a politics and political economy. But the output of the
value theory in fact reaches much further, into practical decision making in a range of
environmentally impacting areas such as fishing, forestry and agriculture. The value theory is
also intertwined with philosophical issues which are often considered more fundamental, those
of astophyism and epistemology. Indeed there is no part of philosophy that remains untouched.
Therein lies part of the claim to comprehensiveness.
The particular form of deep-green theory elaborated is by no means independent of
(acclaimed) advances recently made elsewhere in philosophy (those in object-theory, and
relevant and paraconsistent logics especially). But though the theory given is influenced and
sometimes in fact shaped through these developments, deep-green theory more generally can
avoid them (The type of theory given could easily enough be recast in a more classical
Platonistic form - undoubtedly a much less plausible form. Nor will these background advances
intrude, it is hoped, in the given elaboration of deep-green theory; the background will remain,
fairly directly in the background, and not come to dominate proceedings or know proceedings
depend upon special new controversial features of it. Where more technical agreements are
required, they will be relegated to appendices.
1. As to deep theory.
Deep-green theory is the environmental branch of a much larger affair, deep theory. There
is a point, in fact a real expository need, to place deep-green theory in the larger setting of deep
theory. For deep theory influences several of the choices made in deciding upon the way deepgreen theory goes, the shape it takes. Although the influence will become evident, particularly
with the intertwining of truth and value that .... , it is worth giving an example. Too much of the
Anglo-American discussion of intrinsic value and of obligations to future generations is taken up
with - hung up upon - ontological questions, about universal items in the first case, and as how
there can be obligations regarding future items which do not (yet) exist in "suitable" determinate
2
form in the second. Deep object-theo ry slices straight through these issues, removing the
problem generating ontological assumptions.
Deep-theor y is a grander theory lying in the background , which significantl y influences
the philosophic al approach taken in deep-green theory, as well as being influenced by it. There
is no reason why that grand backdrop should remain hidden; there is no hidden agenda. The
backgroun d theory, of which deep-green theory is a part, is called simply deep theory. For it
represents the confluence of several deep positions with deep-green theory: deep pluralism,
depth relevant theory, deep item-theory, and so on. As a theoretical endeavor, deep theory aims
to pull together, into a unified coherent theory these various deep positions. It thus draws
together and integrates as well, several other interrelated efforts (on dialethism, process theory,
anakyrie, etc. With deep theory I aim to supply eventually a fairly comprehen sive philosophical
package. I used to imagine that with moderate comprehen siveness as regards present
philosophic al problems would come a certain completene ss; but I've come to think that a total
philosophy is an illusion, like pots of gold at the ends of rainbows, and rainboweri a themselves.
Deep theory is no doubt a presumptu ous title (there are worse about, e.g. 'total
philosophy ', 'ecosophy' ), not it is altogether satisfactory given the problems and obscurities, to
be encountere d, lacking in the notion of depth. My main excuse is that I did no exactly choose
the title myself, but had it thrust upon me: problemati c, presumptuo us, it looks to good to
refuse. It emerged from a terminolog ical confluence of several areas in which I'd been
struggling to assemble ac. capirred theory - deep-green theory (itself a union of green thought,
or environmen tal philosophy with a revised deep ecology), deep relevant theory, deep pluralism
(which deepened radical pluralism), and deep item-theory (which deepens object-theory).
To give a picture of deep theory, it suffices for present purposes to indicate some main
features of deep positions, some of their integrating interrelatio ns, and some of their
revolutiona ry potential. Deep theory overturns or subverts very much of what has been
assumed or presuppos ed in Western philosophy , and particularl y in Enlightenm ented
contempora ry philosophy.
For example, it overturns the following widespread assumptions:• the Ontologica l Assumptio n, that truth, and also, meaning, are functions of reference, and
thereby presuppose existence. On the contrary according to (deep) item theory, we can perfectly
well talk and think truly about items that do not exist, and also about items that are not individual
but are complex but perhaps indetermin ate wholes, and finally what items are impossible .
Therewith repudiated also then is an occasionall y favoured full-back from onticalism, namely
possibilism , which assumes
3
• the Possibilist Reduction, of everything that counts in discourse to possible individuals; there
are no other genuine subjects, all else can be analysed (or thrown) away.
Bound up with possibilism are
• the assumptions of modalism, of the correctness of classical logic, and of the absolute
requirement of consistency. Under more throughgoing transconsistency (or paraconsistency)
these connected assumptions are one and all repudiated. The transconsistent connection
assumes an important role in the straightforward treatment of moral and other dilemmas, in
showing for example how an agent may coherently operate under inconsistent obligations or
with incompatible needs.
Important special cases of modalism are such theories as that
• entailment is strict implication (or its metalinguistic analogical) and that conditionality amounts
to a modal function of material implication 1. The rejection of such themes and their courses is
part of what motivates deep relevant logic.
While the parts of deep theory are integrated and are intended to be materially reinforcing,
nothing prevents their fairly independent elaborations. The holism conceded does not exclude
separation or analysis. In particular, deep-green theory is amenable to independent development
and analysis.
Material implication is the implication defined in terms of truth-functions thus: A materially implies
B iff not last A and not B, or equivalently, iff either not A or B. Strict implication is the
necessitation of material obligatory i.e. A strictly implies B iff necessarily A materially implies B, or
equivalently, iff it is not possible that not A and not B.
ON THE VALUE CORE OF DEEP-GR EEN THEORY
This essay aims to uncover the value theory of deep-green theory, exposing thereby a
central area of that theory. Though the value theory is (inevitably) abstract, it issues in what is
more concrete, such as an applicable system and practical ecological directives, potentially
destabilizing for prevailing policies and institutions.
Deep-green theory which stands in significant ideological opposition to dominant
industrial ways, is intended to supply a comprehensive alternative environmental philosophy.
At the core of deep-green theory lies a value theory. A fundamental theme thereof, part of what
makes the structure deep, is that a range of environmental items are valuable in themselves,
directly and irreducibly so, so that their value does not somehow reduce to or emerge from
something else, such as features of certain valuers or what matters for them. Thus value does
not answer back in some way to humans, or sentient creatures (or other value-responsive
classes), their interests, uses, preferences, or such like. Many natural items, such as forests
and rivers, mountains and seashores, are intrinsically valuable. They are valuable in their own
right - irrespective of whether they are interesting or useful (to any intentional operators,
themselves interesting or useful or not), indeed whether or not there exist any valuers. Value
spreads through and reaches across the natural domain; it is not bounded by mind, or linkages
with subjective states; nor does it stop with sentience, or associated pyschological features like
satisfaction; nor does it end at life; it observes no such compromising bounds. Although value
is distributed richly if irregularly throughout nature, it is not then encapsulated in some isolable
natural feature, such as life or sentience, or even in defeasible ecological values such as
richness, diversity and variety (and so open to a different, naturalistic, reduction). But of
course such ecologically important features afford criteria for value, and should be represented
in recipes (such as "objective functions") for assessing overall value.
From the presence of natural things of value, and accordingly of natural values, it is a
short, though controversial, step to the important conclusion that there can be values without
valuers. For valuers are sentient creatures with appropriate capacities, but things of value may
precede and succeed all such valuers; that is, these things can persist, their values intact,
without any valuers. As there can be shapes without any shape-perceivers, so there can be
values without valuers. (The theme, like others advanced, can be backed up by more detailed
argument and by formal proof, neither attempted here.) In valuational relations then, which
relate valuers as subjects with values as objects, both ends of relations have independent
standing; though interrelated, as the descriptions are deliberately chosen to suggest, either can
stand without the other. It is a fashionable mistake to try to collapse this relation - usually to
endeavour to soak up values into a modification of valuing subjects (e.g. as a predicate
'relation-to-values', in which inconvenielt values are locked away). The mistaken procedure
is in fact just one important example of an archetypal modern reduction of relations to
functions; other examples, locking undesired objects away within functions, are those
rendering wholes (such as ecosystems and organised structures) functions of their parts, and,
under functionalism, minds and types of intentionality, including value-direction, as functions
of bodies or their parts such as brains. Values are not, and do not disappear into, functions of
valuers.
A connected corollary is that values are not apart from the actual world, something
"projected" or imposed on it by a favoured class of valuers, something colouring (and even
emotionall y clouding) the otherwise valueless physical world, in rather the way that
reductionistic materialism tries (erroneously) to construe colour itself as projected onto a
colourless physical world. Of course this projection effort, never adequately explicated, does
not succeed, on its own, in removing values. For they remain, left as some function of the
valuers. To try to bulldoze through this difficulty, a second reduction is invoked, of evaluative
features of valuers to "natural" features, commonly preferences, consumer desires or such like.
The second reduction runs into obstacles that halt even the naturalistic bulldozers (e.g.
naturalistic and related fallacies), but the first reduction is the critical one in removing key
environmental values, such as those of wilderness and wild things, which become valuable
only in the focus of certain sentient beholders, and not in and for themselves. This reduction
too is blocked by insuperable difficulties. On the one side, like the parallel proposed
phenomenalist reduction of material objects to sensations, the reduction never achieves
satisfactory support or even a satisfactory statement. On the other, it is counterexampled by
various modellings or thought-experiments revealing intuitively-assessed value in situations
devoid of valuers (as e.g. in the well-known Last Person argument). Values remain then part
of the still rich actual world; they are objects in the domain of actual and other worlds. But
they are not of course material objects; creatures will not fall over them any more than they will
trip over shadows or mere shapes.
Value, like shape, is an attribute, which things have or may lack, and which furthermore
creatures can recognise or may fail to discern. Thus value is, like shape and colour and their
determinate forms (round, red, etc), a universal , distributed across things, individuals and
wholes. The comparison of value with shape is decidedly more helpful than the regular, but
exhausted, comparison of value with colour, or of goodness with colour determinates such as
yellow. For example, shape is not bound by a set of determinates as colour is in the specific
colours, but comes in a spectacular variety of forms, not totally or linearly ordered (as in a
rainbow), or contracted to some primary set (as in colour triangles); shape which pertains to
wholes as well as particulars, links with gestalts better than colour; shape discrimination is
more culture dependent and sensitive; yet shape is, or was, a primary property, and thereby
3
more immune to reductionist strategies than secondary properties such as colour. Again shapes
like values, can be vague, indeterminate; that does not prevent things, perhaps unique things,
exemplifying them. But naturally the analogy can only be extended so far. Shapes can be
approxima ted by polygons, values cannot; shapes are regularly perceived through sense
perception, by vision or touch especially, values are not, but are differently apprised. Value is
its own thing, not something else; it is what it is and does what is does; it is not something
else, like some quantitative mathematical or economic function. Nor does it contract into some
mark of value, or to what it comes down to in highly restricted settings; most important, it does
not disappear in the style of modern economics into (expected) utility, or into just two
economic forms, value-in-use monetarily and value-in-exchange (price), neither of which may
reflect worth. Value means what it means, and has meant: worth ; and it ties with general
assessments of merit and demerit, goodness or badness, not an economic or other truncation
thereof.
The powerful drive to reduce or deny values has several sources. Part of the motivation
for reduction of value springs from epistemological worries, concerning how values can be
ascertained and known, so far as they are (subjective translation proposals are then a direct
evaluative counterpart of phenomenalism). Part derives from supposedly problematic cultural
relativity (whence the attempt to impose values by identification of value with some favoured
assessible feature, and with it cultural or economic imperialism). Part of the motivation comes
from more sweeping ideological commitments, such as varieties of materialism or scientism,
which leave no space for immaterial values.
As already apparent, attempted reductions of value come in a dazzling variety of forms • subjective, which make use of psychological features, such as desires, interests, emotions,
and the like; or more objective aggregations of these, such as community preferences or utility;
or objectively naturalistic, which enrol single track value-making characteristics such as
richness or evolutionary development as value;
• consequential, which consider only outcomes; or purely motivational, which consider only
attitudes and ignore leads and outcomes;
• straightforward, as in translation proposals for translating value judgement s into reducing
statements; or oblique, as in supervenience propositions (no variations in value without
underwriting variations in reducing features); or obscure, as in unarticulated projection claims.
Values are not well accommodated within these reductionistic schemes, or accommodated at all.
Deep-green value theory, which is thoroughly nonreductive, repudiates all these reductionistic
options. They are not so difficult to avoid, as the options are neither exhaustive nor exclusive.
In particular, value reduces neither in subjective nor objective fashion; it does not reduce.
Evaluative judgements are nonjective, that is, neither subjective nor objective (in any absolutist
4
fashion). Obversely, evaluation of an act does not reduce to assessing consequences; nor does
it come down to an assessment of motives; both may matter.
The virulent idea is abroad however that science can offer a reduction, can sweep up
value along with all other information, where philosophy has conspicuou sly failed.
Unfortunately for such optimistic ideas, fortunately perhaps for deeper thought, current basic
science does not have much to say at all, or of merit, about values, and if it did reductions
through it would be circular. But, to the contrary, there is a long-standing pretence that science
gets along "well" without values, in appropriate value-free fashion. Nowadays it is
increasingly realised that the positivistic assumption of such value-freedom is a myth, that
much of what passes as science is heavily value-penetrated. While the residual ideal of pure
engagement in pure science may offer the illusion of an escape from value, there is no escape.
For, in any case, reductions do not succeed, as a copious literature, littered with failed
attempts, meanderingly establishes. Nor are they generally desirable, since mostly shallow,
aiming at a reduction to features of some privileged class presented as ideal (i.e. core value is
covertly assumed, so there is no real reduction). Nor are they needed; explanation and
assessment do not require reduction. Evaluations may be arrived at, and value frameworks
expanded, by enhancement methods, which organise and expand emotional presentation by
coherence methods.
The enhancement methodology in fact resembles that sometimes proposed for further
acquisition of scientific information. As accumulated empirical information can be further
extended through presentational input and assessment for overall coherence, so further
evaluations may be arrived at and assessed through a combination of presentational and
coherence procedures. At the (marginal) stage where the next round of evaluations is
undertaken, the following active ingredients figure, in an idealised breakdown:- Firstly, a
background stock of judgements and value experience will have been accumulated or inherited;
in principle all of this is revisable, and some may be up for reassessment. Apart from the
background, which enters in assessing overall coherence of system, what is involved is,
secondly, emotional presentation, which corresponds to further perceptional and sense data
input, and, thirdly and not independe nt, coherence processing , which supplies the
interpretational and rationalisational components. At bottom, parallelling perception in the case
of empirical information, is emotional presentation, gut or visceral reaction in starker forms of
acceptance or rejection, but more generally comprehending a variety of sentiments, including
overall well-being, and also relational impressions, such as empathy, identification, and so on.
As a perceiver perceives shapes, so a valuer feels raw value and disvalue. The basis of
perception is sensation, the basis of valuation is emotion. Apprehension of value is seated in
emotional, and especially visceral, presentation; but what is apprehended is not to be confused
with its apprehension any more than what is perceived. All the warnings about sensation as an
information source have to be repeat~d, with heavy emphasis, as regards emotional
presentation; for example, reliability cannot be guaranteed, interference with presentation
through drugs, alcohol, temporary excitement or other inputs may render it dubious or
unacceptable, conditioning may have occurred, including substantial cultural conditioning (so
that a person is terrified by harmless spiders but not sickened by bloody massacres of dolphins
or seals). As with perception, there are checks on emotional presentation, such as constancy
over time and after reflection.
Emotional presentation, supplying primarily inclusions and exclusions or prohibitions, is
but the basis of reflective evaluation and value apprehension. The further critical part,
coherence processing, builds on the basis taking account of other inputs or controls including
background (which supplies relevant components of already adopted judgements, assimilated
subculture and so forth) and constraints (such as moral substitutional requirements like
impartiality, e.g. whether considered judgements hold for substitute valuers, and uniformity,
e.g. whether similar acts are judged in similar ways). Essentially, the coherence procedure
consists in asking whether the next or a relevant judgement fits together with what has been
accepted, while meeting constraints, without leading to what has been rejected or excluded. If
it does fit it is added to the included side, otherwise it is sent to the excluded side. Because an
aim of this rationalisation procedure is achievement of some sort of equilibrium such coherence
procedures have gained currency under the rubric "reflective equilibrium". Observe, however,
that equilibrium reached at some stage may be lost as new types of problems arise and further
information enters. No doubt the whole methodology (like the parallel methodology of an
empirically-based coherence theory of truth) is highly idealised, and only practicably applicable
in rudimentary parts. It does however surmount a major theoretical obstacle for environmental
value theory; it reveals how in principle a nonreductionistic value theory can function, and
deliver a tenable value system. Whether what results is however an appropriate deep
environmental system will depend above all on the presentational input, the extent to which
environmental sensitivity enters and is not suppressed.
Enhancement methods reveal too that value systems are not uniquely determined, any
more than other comprehensive theoretical frameworks. There evidently are rival value
systems measuring up to rigorous rationality requirements, much as there are rival logics and
rival physical and biological systems. In particular chauvinistic systems, narrow or shallow
value systems, which are unresponsive to and take no account of environmental items and
values, cannot be excluded on rational or straight logical grounds. Unfortunately such systems
remain in ascendancy, and tend to dominate social and political practice; in recent times
economism, a narrow type of utilitarianism, has all too obviously dominated much terrestial
practice.
While such value frameworks are open to severe criticism, for instance as
chauvinistic, as violating universality requirements of morality in the case of economism, they
do not succumb to definitive refutatiog (for the reason that requirements of morality,
universalizability of principle, impartiality and so on, can simply be repudiated; immoral or
amoral frameworks are still value systems). Even so, much can be done to shift or alter
values, though as usual effectiveness cannot be guaranteed. A range of argumentative,
educational and persuasive techniques, of varying quality, can be put to work to move valuers
indoctrinated in old damaging structures, often enough successfully. Important among these
are positive presentations of environments, their habitats and creatures, by way of new
information and experience.
The availability of rival value systems, while it implies a certain desirable (and also
troublesome) pluralism, does not mean relativism. From a deep-green viewpoint, rival
narrower and shallower systems are definitely inferior, and criticised accordingly, while
economism is an anathema which does not even make the moral grade (e.g. too many
principles stop at class or state boundaries). However a critical pluralism does acknowledge
and offer a place in the wider scheme of things for other systems, even if as less favoured or
satisfactory. One political upshot is evident; deep-green theory promotes, what matters in these
irrational times of numbers, alliances - in particular, a green alliance, organising green
positions, against prevailing forces of environmental degradation.
The systematic pluralism of deep-green value theory interpenetrates not only social and
political domains above, but also metaphysics traditionally placed below. In the underlying
metaphysical pluralism of deep-green theory, value runs very deep - so deep that even truth
depends in part upon it. For not merely selection of a correct comprehensive theory or worldview is a value dependent choice, but choice of associated actual world is also. That choice,
insofar as it is consciously made, of world structure and conceptualisation, is a constrained
choice, constrained by informational inputs, such as those of refined perception. But inasmuch
as it is rationally accomplished, that choice, like other choices of structure, proceeds according
to a standard value-information analysis (regularly oversimplified however to a preferenceinformation or even desire-belief modelling); that is, to extract the salient point, it involves
value essentially.
Truth and value are then intertwined; truth, though naturally different from value, is value
dependent. Both are plural, and differently so. So, unremarkably deep-green metaphysics
resembles the value theory in significant respects. For example, as the value theory is
nonreductionistic, so also is the metaphysics; in particular, there is a no-reduction theme that
neither parts nor wholes reduce eliminably to one another, as opposed to atomistic and holistic
views of environmental interrelations. As the value theory is pluralistic, so also is the
metaphysics; in place of established absolutism, a plurality of worlds, with associated truth
definitions is discerned. Indeed a main aim of deep-green theory is to dislodge dominant
7
destructive ideologies, which (each of them)
assume an absolute truth, from their positions thereby providing intellectual living-space for natural environments.
Much of deep-green theory devolves then from the abstract value theory. As with the
metaphysical way sketched, so it is with the fuller ethical theory, which includes as well as a
specific axiological system, elaborating deep environmental values and virtues, a deontic
framework, supplying obligations, rights, taboos, and similar. For example, given that a
certain wild river is intrinsically valuable, as we can verify by on-site experience and
enhancement methods, and given that we duly respect that value, as deontic principles will tell
us we should, then we are not free to do as we like with that river, to dam it with concrete, to
channel it within concrete, stripping it of its riverine ecosystems. But that does not preclude
respectful use of the river, swimming or sailing quietly in its waters, and the like. Value thus
guides action, practice, and use; it is the ground also upon which principles are formulated,
principles that are assessed and validated by way of enhancement methods. Important among
these are non-interference principles, which exclude unwarranted interference with other
preference-havers and unwarranted damage, ill-treatment, or devaluation of items of value.
Such deontic principles circumscribe environmentally-limited freedom of action. Given noninterference principles, a major shift in onus of proof from homocentricethics takes place.
What is required now is that reasons be givenfor interfering with the environment, rather than
reasons for not doing so. Also direct responsibility for environmental interference or
modification falls upon those who would seriously interfere or significantly modify, who
would tread heavily on the land. Non-interference does not preclude use - only too much use
and use of too much. What it does lead to is the theme that, where use occurs, it should be
careful and respectful use.
An important respect thesis regarding environmental items is founded on such non-interference
principles and the no-reduction theme: namely,
• not to put others (other preference havers) into a dispreferred state for no good reason;
• not to jeopardise the well-being of natural objects or systems without good reason;
• not to damage or destroy items which, while they cannot literally be put into a dispreferred
state, can be damaged or destroyed or have their value eroded or impaired.
These apply to ecosystems, their surrounds, their parts, and so on. The mere making of
further excess profits, or similar economic excuses, are not good reasons. Such a respect
thesis forms part of the ecological outlook of deep-green theory.
Deep-green ethical theory amounts to much more than just another non-reductionist
ethical theory, which highlights ecological values and virtues, and so forth. It changes the
character and shape of ethical enterprise. Perhaps most strikingly, it removes humans as such
from the centre of the ethical stage (or ~xclusive occupation of the stage). The biological
concept of being human ceases to be a significant ethical category. To elevate it to such is to
fall into human chauvinism, a type of class chauvinism which unwarrantedly discriminates in
favour of the human species. The prevailing chauvinism is not inevitable; it is very logically
avoided by directly connecting ethical characteristics with the categories of items that can have
them. Relevant categories include those marked out by features like: having well-being,
preference-having, rights-holding, contractual-capability, and so on, categories not necessarily
connected with any particular species. Hitherto virtually all Wes tern ethical theories, and the
institutional arrangements they help support, have not merely limited ethical matters to interhuman affairs, but have been blatantly chauvinistic, exhibiting substantial and unjustifiable
discrimination in favour of humans (or certain privileged humans).
Deep-green theory thus implies the inadequacy of prevailing social, political and
economic arrangements and institutions. These structures are the defective products of inferior
value frameworks which take quite insufficient account of environmental desiderata and values.
Richard Sylvan*
RMB 683
Bungendore NSW 2621
*
Thanks to David Bennett for comments on an earlier draft. For more on deep-green theory, see
essays in and work referred to in the Green Series, i.e. Discussion Papers in Environmental
Philosophy, RSSS, Australian National University, Canberra.
This compressed essay was solicited by and written for Island Magazine (Tasmania). Upon receiving
it however, the editors decided that it was too dense, and insufficiently journalistic and popular (not
features they had at any time requested), for their magazine.
I
\. '1
11.10.95
CHAPTER 1
DEEP AND GREEN
AND PRESUPPOSED FUNDAMENTALS
It soon emerges from preliminary exploration that, under natural characterisations,
relevant notion of both ethics and green presuppose the notion of agency. So with something
on agency, enough to get started, we shall begin. In terms of agency and proclivities to
environments, green can be characterized, and in turn green approaches. Then, within green
approaches, three relevantly different types can be distinguished: shallow, intermediate, and
deep. It is the last, and really only the last, that matters for the ethical theory that follows.
1. Action, agency and agents: a summary . 1
Action theory is grounded in process theory. For actions are types of processes, agentascribed processes. processes are directed functions, ordinarily time-directed functions, 2 ?
framing of certain functional sorts. All the ordinary sorts of processes-ec lipses, transits,
removals, reflections, and so on and on-are processes (and ordinary processes can be
separated out logically, such as by applicability and inapplicability of certain predicates, e.g.
they take place, they are not facts, etc.)
Processes themselves in no way require agents. Actions, however, as distinguished
within goings-ons and taking-places, do require agency, and so agents. There is no reason at
all why these agents should be humans. Many agents are not humans, some humans are not
agents. But it is often quite erroneously assumed agents are humans, or persons. Excess
requirements on agency are partly to blame, the mistaken idea that agents have to be purposeful,
responsible, rational-feat ures that can be added to distinguish subtypes of agents. Rather,
actions can be roughly delineated through answers to questions like What is so and so (the
relevant agent) doing? How is so and so acting? The result reached following through this
route is this: process a is an action iff for some agent x, a is properly ascribed to x, it is x' s
doing. To break residual circularity, it remains to define agency. Agency is defined, such is the
proposal, in terms of exercising a causal role (which may be misdirected or similar), through the
following circuit. First, x is and agent as agents a iff, for some p directly partinent to a, x
causes Pbut x is not caused to cause p. In terms of agency-regarding, other notions can be
defined as follows: x is a sometime-agent, someties an agent, iff for some a, x is an agent as
2
As full an account of processes as so far worked up from notes appears in 'Process and actions',
which does provide detailed background for this section.
'2
regards a. Agency is a characterizing attribute of sometime-agents. An agent is a sometimesagent that establishes a history of agency (a small reputation therefore).
2.
Explaining Green.
In characterizing green we start with agency. Such relevant features, of greens (or
environmentalists), as being positively concerned about nature of natural things, supporting
environmental causes and similar, are closely tied to practice and action; they are features of
agents. In an original central sense of 'green' so redeployed, an agent was green if that agent
firstly believed that some parts of the natural environment should be protected, and secondly
took some relevant action. 3 In short, a belief-action analysis emerges, which can be recast as a
standard belief-desire-resultant action account. For instance, the agent believes that some
natural environment is worth protection, desires that it should be, and acts (in some way,
perhaps feebly) accordingly. All the parts of this sort of account call, however, for some
elaboration. To remove a certain circularity, resulting from characterising "green" through
terms like "environmen t", 'natural environment' can be replaced by 'parts (surface
configurations) of the Earth substantially uninterfered with by humans'. To specify protection
satisfactorily, protection/ra m what should be indicated. And so on. But there is a little point
in elaborating this already weak characterisation, which can be satisfied by an agent interested in
saving a few square metres of the Earth's surface from exploitation. For the notion has been
further weakened, almost from its inception.
To characterise this laxer, but ubiquitous notion, let us insert the intermediary notion of an
environmental cause. Such causes include not merely protecting natural environments, but
limiting impacts on environments, which may not be pristine, for instance by pouring less
sewage or detergents, CFCS or Greenhouse gases, into them, or conserving items, which could
be exploited or consumed now for future use or for future human generations (to use or
conserve, etc.). The first of these further causes beyond protection, original green, is a largely
consumerist notion of green, the second, an economistic notion (it takes in such beloved
constraints as intergerational equity). There are other related causes of importance also, such as
restoration of something that has been over-exploited or damaged, such as agricultural lands,
waterways, urban air, soils (soil conservation), or even human artefacts such as monuments or
buildings. The shallow green cause of fighting pollution, for human health reasons, can fit in
here. Needless to add the restoration may not be to pristine conditions, but to quite low
3
Although we are explicating terms that are now in widespread usage, in a way substantially
faithful to that usage (but not some of its dilute or corrupt expansions), we shall regard the terms
as quasi-technical. We see these terms, as the discerning reader also may, as spelt not with a
double 'e' but a triple 'e', as 'greeen' and 'greeening' (insert hyphens as need be for appropriate
pronunciation, e.g. 'gre-een' _. The effect is to peel off dilution and corruption of 'green' (e.g. so
to include every politician, at least when any confronts concerned constituents) and to discard all
those unwanted and often undesirable senses the colour term green has accumulated.
standards. In sum, causes include as well as protection, such matters as nondestruction,
conservation, maintenance, restoration, and so on.
Now substitute supporting an environmental cause for protecting a natural environment.
Then an agent is green in this expanded laxer sense if the agent believes in supporting an
environmental cause and takes some relevant action in that direction. Such an action component
is essential: green does imply some practical, if utterly token, involvement.
The lax account connects in the right ways with testable sociological criteria. For
instance, believing in supporting a cause can be cashed out in terms of joining an organisation
working for that cause, or even, reducing the slight action component still further, considering
joining such an organisation. 4 The appellation green applies not only to individual agents, but
also to groups, coalitions, institutions, even corporations and governments. As a green
government can, meet similar lax conditions, it is evident that there really are very few
requirements, even weak sponsorship may serve.
Many there are now trying to take advantage of green movements-adve rtisers, vendors,
politicians, professors, merchants, even generals (with "defence forces" retooling as
environmental defence forces). Cashing i in on the movement by producing a goods or services
presented as environmentally friendly does not thereby make parties doing so green, especially
if what is supplied adds to overall environmental impacts (as do "environmental markets"
delivering environmental junk, sometimes portrayed as "green goods"). The requirement of
serving environmental causes has been lost.
The excessive generosity of the account arrived at, which allows agents with only passing
or slight active beliefs in some cause to count as green, does not matter. For firstly, it
corresponds moderately well to current lax usage, which allows almost any sort of concern for
environments, coupled with an action component as slight as paying a token subscription, to
serve. Secondly, it still exercises quite enough exclusive power. Many agents are not green.
For instance all those exclusively tuned into possessive individualism, mainstream economics,
or similar creeds are not green (i.e. not even lax green). Thirdly, needed discriminations can be
made within the class of (lax) green. An important subclass of green comprises ecological
green, where the causes include maintenance and protection of natural ecosystems (including
wilderness) and these causes enjoy some primacy. "Ecological green" is by no means a
tautology.
4
In a study entitled 'GREEN PACKAGES IN AUSTRALIA', greens were picked out from the whole
sample of respondents to the Australian Election Study of 1990 in terms of answer to question:
How likely are you to join groups campaigning to protect the environment, or are you alrady a
member? Permitted answers: (1) I am a member, (2) I am not a member but I have considered
joining (3) I am not a member and I haven't considered joining, and (4) I certainly would not
consider joining. Those giving answer (2), perhaps token greens, were accounted green.
4
To be green in more than a token fashion is to have some commitment to containing or
reducing the environmental impact of humans on the Earth or regions of it. By virtue of the
environmental impact equation (for a given region) that means commitment in the immediate
future term to either
•
human population reduction, or
•
less impacting lifestyles for many humans, or
•
improvements in technology to reduce overall impact.
Most humans in a region can do little to implement the third requirement, except to hope.
Accordingly they cannot satisfactorily demonstrate their commitment in this way. A genuine
green will meet both the other conditions. But since as big coalition as feasible is sought for a
green coalition, marginal greens who meet only one of the requirements, perhaps in weak form,
will not usually be excluded (from almost any green church). Issues of population afford a
simple test (a necessary condition) for a genuine green in Australia; for that agent fails who
suppoes that while efforts (including the agent's contribution) to effect human population
reduction should be invested elsewhere, as in parts of Asia or Africa, Australia can keep on
growmg.
From filling out the conditions delimiting green commitments, a green platform can be
derived. Specifically it will include, along with the action clause, derivative directives as
regards curtailing population, refining and limiting consumption, adjusting technologies, and
consequent thereupon altering administrative, political and economic arrangements and
institutions accordingly. What so results is a proper subplatform of the Deep Ecology platform.
A fair approximation to the full Deep Ecology platform can be derived by adjoining
requirements for depth to those for genine greenness of the action platform; so result themes
concerning intrinsic value in nature, and commitments deriving therefrom. In short, the wellknown Deep Ecology platform accounts (as a fair approximation) to a deep green platformwhich can accordingly supplant it.
As genuine green and green platform can be characterized given the initial notion of green,
that is lax green, so similarly can other green compounds and modified forms be explained (in a
preliminary way). For example, a green ideosystem is an ideosystem (an ideology, in the
unbiassed sense) that coheres with green commitments, and typically organizes and guides
them. As genuinely green, it is a system that includes a green platform, and it could be defined
in that way, as an ideo-system coherently extending a green platform. Similarly for green
ethics, and for green philosophy (and also for other green notions that could be defined but are
not presently needed, e.g. green goods, green consumers, green parties, green ideas and so
forth). A green ethical system is a green ideosystem which is an ethic. Green ethics comprises
5
such green ethical systems and their theory. 5 Green ethics thus comprise a decidedly restricted
subset of environmental ethics. For an environmental ethic in the broad usage, an ethics that
addresses environmental issues, among others, may well contain themes that could not be
adopted by a green agent, that may even operate against environmental causes. In consequence,
a green ethics is an ethic that could be coherently adopted by a green agent, that does not run
counter to environmental causes.
3. Different approaches to the environment: shallower and deeper.
People can do more or less what they like with the environment, with the land and the sea,
and with what grows and lives there-such was and, in only slightly modified form, remains a
dominant theme of Wes tern cultural heritage. It was not the view of other cultures, such as
some of the American Indians or Australian Aborigines; nor was it the only view included in the
Western cultural package. But it has dominated, especially in colonial and imperial expansion.
It is only recently, for example, that some social or governmental restrictions with teeth have
been imposed upon what Australians can do with the land they occupy or claim, and these lag
far behind advanced green thinking as to what is required. For the most part there has been little
weakening in the Wes tern assumption that people own the land, that it is their possession, to
mould to their purposes and whims. 6
This unrestrained approach proved damaging enough while the land was wide and
humans comparatively few; now that human populations are expanding more rapidly, perhaps
to critical limits, now that much land is damaged and less fragile land is in increasingly short
supply, it is time to re-examine older attitudes and the accompanying practices. Any deeper
reassessment has to look at the presupposed land ethic, and more generally at the underlying
ethical and ideological assumptions.
A land ethic, according to Leopold, who introduced the term, is 'an ethic dealing with
man's relation to land and to the animals and plants which grow upon it' .7 Thus a land ethic
amounts to a nature (or environmental) ethic, with land a symbol for the whole of nature (or the
more comprehensive environment), and man a symbol for all relevant agents. The unrestrained
position, which imposes few or no constraints upon treatment of the environment, affords a
land ethic of only a degenerate sort. The unrestrained position would, for example, have little
5
6
7
Although we are anticipating here-as ethics and ethical systems are explained essentially
reportively however, in the next chapter, there is no circularity. For ethics is separately and
independently characterised.
Indeed, with the renewed libertarian movement emanating from industrial north-eastern America,
this assumption has gained in strength. Foreign "resources" are not to be hoarded but should be
saleable to the highest bidders for "free" economic use. And sometimes it is broadly hinted: or
else!
A. Leopold, A Sand Country Almanac with other essays on Conversation, New York, 1966,
p.238.
6
compunction about using up materials, forests, pristine environments and so on, immediately or
even destroying them.
In the end the unrestrained position can be excluded from properly ethical positions. 8 For
it fails to meet the basic universality requirement on moral principles, of independence of
person, place or time, a requirement which iplies that persons of different races, colours, sexes
or ages, or at different places or times are not treated unfairly or seriously disadvantaged.
Insofar as the unrestrained position would permit the exploitation, degradation and even
destruction, of all present resources and environments, it places future humans at a very serious
disadvantage. The position is thus one of expediency, not morality, typically yielding, like
economics, evaluative assessments based on short-term narrow local interets, rather than
appropriately based on long-range values.
Opposed to the unrestrained position are various conservation ethics; what Leopold saw
as the land ethic is just one of these. Conservation ethics can be classified, conveniently for
subsequent development, into three groups: shallow, intermediate and deep. 9 Unlike the
unrestrained position, all these politions would conserve and maintain certain things-materials,
creatures, forests, etc. The shallow conservation position differs from the unrestrained position
primarily in taking a longer-term view and taking account of future humans, their welfare and so
forth. It is more enlightened than the unrestrained position in taking a longer-term perspective:
hence its alternative description as resource conservation. Though this conservation position is
only a small step away from the unrestrained position, it does pass one test for morality proper
in that future people are not treated unfairly. Most of the big rush into fashionable
environmentalism does not get beyond shallowness.
The shallow and unrestricted positions are closely related by an important feature they
share-and which justifies lumping them together as shallower positions. They are both highly
anthropocentric; they do not move outside a human-centred framework, which construes nature
and the environment instrumentally, that is, simply as a means to human ends and values. Thus
they take account ultimately only of human interests and concerns; all environmental values
reduce to these or similar human on closed notions. It is in this respect especially that these
shallower positions differ from deeper, less resource and exploitation oriented, positions.
8
9
This is a substantial, and controversial claim, especially since it accounts much economic activity
unethical, as involving practices of expediency, not morality. For the fuller case for obligations
and commitments to future humans, see e.g. R. and V. Routley, 'Nuclear energy and obligations
to the future' in Responsibilities to Future Generations: Environmental ethics, (ed. E. Partridge),
Prometheus Books, Buffalo, 1981, and other essays in this book.
This classification refines Naess's non-exhaustive distinction of shallow and deep ecology, and
extends it to render it exhaustive. For the original distinction, see A. Naess, 'The shallow and the
deep, long-range ecology movement' Inquiry 16 (1973) 95-100. An elaboration on Aess's
position, to which this discussion has some debts, may be found in his 'Philosophical aspects of
the deep ecological momvement', Environmental Ethics, to appear.
According to deeper positions humans are not the sole items of value or bestowing value
in the world, and not all things of value are valuable because they answer back in some way to
human concerns. But deeper positions differ in the weight or relative importance they assign to
human concerns. According to the intermediate position serious human concerns always come
first; and while other things, such as higher animals, have value or utility in their own right,
their value is outranked by that of humans. The deep position rejects this assumption, and
maintains that even serious human concerns should sometimes lose out to environmental values.
FIGURE 1. THE POSITIONS SEPARATED, AND SEPARATING PRINCIPLES
SHALLOWER
UNRESTRAINED
DEEPER
SHALLOW
INTERMEDIATE
I
I
I
I
J,
J,
J,
DEEP
MORALITY
SOLE VALUE
GREATER VALUE
REQUIREMENT
ASSUMPTION
ASSUMPTION
(of human apartheid)
(of human supremacy)
The watershed principle which divides the shallower from deeper positions is the sole
value assumption. According to this major assumption, which underlies prevailing Western
social theory, humans are the only things of irreducible (or intrinsic) value in the universe, the
value of all other things reducing to or answering back to that of humans in one way or another.
This assumption is built into most present political and economic arrangements; for example,
only aggregated preferences or interests of certain (present) humans are considered in
democratic political choice, and likewise in economic decision making; other creatures and
natural items are represented at best through the preferences or votes of interested humans.
Similar assumptions are made in mainstream ethical theories. Typical are reductive
theories which endeavour to derive ethical judgements from features of closed systems of
humans.
Examples are provided by presently fashionable ethical theories, such as
utilitarianism. 10 According to utilitarianism what ought to be done, as well as what is best, is
determined through what affords maximum satisfaction to the greatest number of individual
humans. In theories like utilitarianism, the outside world of nature does not enter through direct
inputs or outputs, but only insofar as it is reflected in the psychological states of individuals.
Such ethical theories are appropriately described as those of apartness or human apartheid. Man
10
But the same holds for other fashionable theories on the American-dominated ethical scene, namely
contractualism and libertarianism. These theories, along with utilitarianism, are explained in most
modern American introductions to ethical theories or moral problems.
is, or is treated as, apart from Nature; there is virtually total segregation. Nature or the land
enters only as a remote experiential backdrop, and onstage is the drama of human affairs and
interests.
However, humans cannot be entirely insulated from their environment; for example,
volcanoes affect temperatures thus affecting climate thus affecting crop yield and food supplies.
At least limited intercourse with the environment has to be admitted as a result. So, in
economics, ethics, and political theory, secondary theories, dealing with linkages to the
environment, have been appended (thus, for example, extemality theory in economics, some
allowance for "side" constraints in more sophisticated utilitarianism, and so on). But the land
remains treated as an awkward or tiresome afterthought, when it is considered at all.
There is, however, another approach, also with historical standing, vying with (and
indeed often confused with) human apartheid which can accommodate secondary theories a little
more satisfactorily. That is the position of superiority or human supremacy, according to which
Man, though included in Nature, is above the rest of Nature, meaning ethically superior to it.
While human supremacist positions can incorporate the sole value assumption and thus remain
in the shallow ethical area, they have the option of rejecting it in favour of the less objectionable
greater value assumption:: other things being equal, the value of humans is greater than that of
other things; the value of humans surpasses that of all other things in the universe. This
assumption allows that other objects, such as some higher animals, may have irreducible value;
what it insists upon is that, at least for "normal" members of respective species, this value never
exceeds that of humans. What is generally presupposed is that other objects-animals, plants
and their communities-are never of much importance compared with humans. Though human
supremacy has appeared in versions of utilitarianism where animal pain is taken into
consideration along with human, Western ethics and associated social sciences such as
demography, economics and political theory, remain predominantly apartheid in form.
It is the repudiation of the greater value assumption that separates deep from intermediate
positions. Perhaps the most familiar example of an intermediate position is that of Animal
Liberation, in the form in which animals are taken to have value in their own right, though in
any playoff with humans, humans win. Under the deep position such an outcome is by no
means inevitable; in cases of conflict of animal or natural systems with humans, humans
sometimes lose. I I
There are various arguments designed to show that the deep assessment is right, that
humans should sometimes lose out. A typical one takes the following form:- Some humans
lead worthless or negative lives, lives without net value. The point, though not uncontroversial,
11
So too for some men and some sparrow. So we should reject the intermediate ...... : A man is
worth more than a sparrow! (Drungson/ Ralston etc.)
9
can be argued even from a shallow utilitarianism.1 2 Take for instance a life of pain and
suffering and little or no happiness: it has a substantial net negative utility. But some small
natural systems do have net value; one example would be an uninhabited undisturbed island (a
live example might be a tropical island before Club Mediterranee depredation). Now consider
the situation where the considerable value of a small natural system is to be sacrificed (in a way
that shallowly affords no ethical impropriety) on behalf of a set of humans whose lives each
have no positive net value. For instance, the system is to be exploited, just for the continued
maintena nce of these humans, or for their addition (as new settlers) to an establish ed
population. Then in such circumstances, these humans lose out; the natural system takes
precedence. Similarly, trivial satisfactions of humans do not dominate over the integrity of rich
natural environments.13
Let us look ahead to glimpse paradimatic expansions of the positions indicated (in figure
1). For the positions soon expand, when applied to real life issues, to more comprehensive
positions; indeed they have expanded all the way to what are now called social paradigms, that
is to full social perspectives. For example, the deep position has expanded from the two core
theses-a s initially reformulated, values in nature, which is a positive counterpart of the sole
value assumption, and biospecies impartiality, which is a positive elaboration of greater value
assumption 14-to fuller deep ecological positions which involve as well many other themes.
12
13
The point is argued in detail in R. Routley and N. Griffin, 'Unravelling the meanings of life?'
Discussion Papers in Environme ntal Philosophy #3, Research School of social Sciences,
Australian National University, 1982.
There are significant cross-classifications of environmental positions. Some further dimensions
are included in the following diagram.
Environment not taken
I
Environments is taken
into account
I
into account
p
14
--------- --------- --------- --------- --------- ---
shallow
intermediate
I dogs
I //////
I
I
E
I
individual
I
I
H
I
holistic
I
I
Another dimension is the static/dynamic. But no one want to be just stauc, really.
According to the values in nature theme natural items other than humans and human artefacts have
intrinsic value; while according to biospecies impartiality members of one species, humans in
particular, are not favoured or valued over members of another simply on the basis of species. The
danger of favouring one species is encouraged by the species fallacy, commonly invoked in
favouring humans. This is the mistake of concluding that because a few members of the species
have accomplish ed something of (immense) value, all members of the species therefore are
(highly) valuable; all members of the species manage to free-load for the ride, obtained by a few
members, so to say. The assumption, once challenged, usually falls back on an argument that
goes by way of capacities: the remaining members of the species have the capacity to achieve these
sorts of things also. But, firstly, that isn't true: intelligence, skills, and the like, vary somewhat
within species, and from our narrow perspective, very considerably among humans, some of whom
have no capacity for advanced mathematics or music. Secondly, it requires more than capacity: it
requires circumstances, a favourable environment to exercise them, (hence, in part, the folly of
lU
The expansion is not uniquely determined; there can be various different deeper paradigms.
However it characteristically includes a fuller statement of themes recognised as in the spirit of
"deep ecology", in particular ecological themes, but also interconnected economic and political
themes. In a similar way shallower positions are subsumed in shallower perspectives, and
principally in what is called the dominant social paradigm, some relevant themes of which are
indicated in figure 2.1s
FIGURE 2. RELEVANT COMPONENTS OF THE ENCOMPASSING PARADIGMS.
DOMINANT SOCIAL
PARADIGM
DEEP ECOLOGICAL
ALTERNATIVE
Dominance over nature
Natural environment a resource
Harmony with nature
Values in nature/biospecies
impartiality
Less material goals/less growth
orientation
Earth supplies limited
AJ?propriate technology/limits to
science
Doing with enough/recycling
Regional/decentralised/small-scale
Material/economic growth
Ample reserves/perfect substitutes
High technological progress/
scientific solutions
Consumerism
National/centralised/large-scale
SHALLOW
f----------------------------- ➔
DEEP
4.
Criticisms of these beginnings and other beginnings
A main challenge we shall have to meet is that there can be no deep ethics, ethics and
axiology are inevitably shallow, because they must answer back to human valuers. This
challenge we presently set aside (until the next chapter). But it should already be apparent how
we can start to upset the challenge (already taken up by deeper utilitarianism), namely by
displacing humans by relevant agents.
Other challenges grant that something might answer to deeper ethics, but contend that
nothing should-objectio ns of substance-or that making anything much out of it is
unwarranted, for example because preliminaries in making out the distinctions have not been
15
more humans in decidedly suboptimal cities), together with a will and drive actually to follow
through appropriately on capacities.
Much fuller accounts of the dominant social paradigm and environmental alternatives are given in
S. Cotgrove, Catastrophe or Cornucopia, Wiley, New York, 1982, and in R. Routley 'Roles and
limits of paradigms in environmental thought and action' in Environmental Philosophy (ed. R.
Elliot and A. Gare), University of Queensland Press, 1983. The linkage of the dominant paradigm
with maximizing, and the deep alternative with sufficing, is elaborated in R. Routley,
'Maximizing, satisficing, satisizing: the difference in real and rational behaviour under rival
paradigms', Discussion Papers in Environmental Philosophy #10, Research School of Social
Sciences, Australian National University, 1984.
11
properly accomplished-objections of form and from technicalities (cf. challenges to the
analytic/synthetic distinction). We consider examples of both sorts of challenge.
The misanthropy charge. Deep environmentalism has been criticised for what it does, so it is
alleged, to ethical treatment of other humans; it leads, it has been alleged, to neglectful,
negligent, or downright callous treatment of other humans, to inhumanity. The actual impact of
deep environmentalism affords but little ground for such allegations. Nor does the theory.
Deep environmentalism could leave intrahuman ethics, standard morality virtually entirely intact.
If it did so, deep environmental ethics would provide a conservative extension (in the familiar
technical sense) of standard intrahuman ethics. In this event the allegations would fall; for the
ethical treatment of humans would be in principle just the same as before.
But it is unlikely that any deeper environmentalism will leave standard morality entirely
intact in its own prime sphere of operations, that restricted to humans. For instance the
evolution of humans, and attributions of virtues or vices to them, is bound to be influenced by
how they act or respond towards nonhumans and the environment. A virtuous puritanical oldstyle industrialist who makes his affluent living through environmentally damaging practices
will no longer obtain the virtuous ranking that would have been accorded to him on the older
prevailing morality. (Of course that morality too is changing, but it hardly changes rapidly
enough to keep pace with a deeper ethic). The change in the evaluation of and moral standing
accorded to hard-working but environmentally exploitative business people, technologists and
engineers reflects a more far-reaching adjustment; that of removal of special privilege for
humans (or persons). Even in the more austere of standard ethical positions, such as duty
ethics in the Kantian mould, it is very easy to gain the impression of persons (usually males on
traditional ethics) as kings. There will be a club of kings, that was where more egalitarian
industrialism was proceeding also, to make us all kings - with the rest of nature as subjects.
While the unwarranted privilege accorded to humans under conventional ethical wisdom
will topple then, the treatment of humans by humans need not. To the contrary, if people
develop a more respectful and careful attitude to the environment, then they may well develop a
better, different and more careful, approach to other people as well. Here the awful Kantianstyle theme that decent treatment of animals will trickle down from a decent treatment of other
humans is partially reversed; a better treatment of other humans (a decent treatment is already
ethically required) will percolate up from a more gently and respectful treatment of natural
environments.
Nor finally then need a deeper environmentalism abandon the quest for social justice. 16
Deep-green theory certainly does not; the ethical-change agenda is much wider than social
16
There are two American groups where the quest for terrestial social justice appears to have been
abandoned or comprised: eco-fascists and nature greens, as they are sometimes called from outside.
12
change alone, but social and human concerns do not thereby fall off the agenda. They remain,
but no longer in such isolations. What they do lose their unchallenged preeminence, and they
may also lose priority.
Problems with the Greater Value assumption (after Attfield).
A prime alternative to a shallow/deep distinction is (what is sometimes considered no
alternative, but a variant on it) the anthropocentric/ecologic distinction.
Notes: 1. Not the same distinction. While shallow positions are normally anthropocentr ic,
converse does not obtain.
2. Distinction never made out properly (really degree issues), and leads to typical 4-fold
outcome.
5.
Domination and chauvininism.
The greater or sole value accorded to humans, as compared with (other) valuations,
justify the domination of nature by humans. The main argument is simply that what has lesser
or no value should give away to what has greater value, the conventional assumption being that
what has greater value is better (analytic) than what has less, and should prevail over it
(substantive assumptions of conventional ethical themes such as utilitarianism).
Domination and associated class chauvinism are justified not only directly through
consideration s of greater or supreme value, but also less directly by pointing to highly valued
features possessed by the favoured class. Similar appeals to prized features are of course
likewise used to justify class chauvinism.
Appendices :
1.
Deep ethics are not automatically acceptable as satisfactory.
Consider e.g.whole chauvinism, where Wholes are intrinsically valuable, each and every
one, and their value much exceeds that of everything else, humans included. So wholes come
first. (This is a doctrical some superwholes may hold).
Two rough comparisions: cows in India, humans on earth.
Other unsatisfactory deep ethics, apart from those that aberate one species, are those that
focus exclusively on certain elements. Those e.g. individualisms, strong holisms, etc.
2.
Arguments to shallowness.
1. Simplistic (from one James O'Connor of Canada).
' ... the word "value" is a human word, with human meanings, in this case transposed to
non-human nature. Hence to say that nature is inherently valuable means that it is inherently
valuable to humans'.
Ecofascists, who follow a route pioneered by Hardin, call for a triage of nations on lifeboat earth
and abandonment of those nations, such as Bangladesh, seen without prospect of recovery. But the
position is not deep, it is certainly not a properly moral position; for due criticism see Griffin and
Bennett.
u
2. Problem with shallow/deep terminology, e.g. acquired too many associations for comfort.
Intellectual offensiveness shallow, etc.
3. Shallowness involves a reductionist exercise. Making (trying to make) environmental issues
in all that matter environmentally-answer back to shallow concerns.
Series of arguments advanced to try to establish ..... .
Counter argument. These do not succeed and can be counter-evolelled.
3. Cross-classifications reformism/revolation is, like anthropocentrism, a poor
classification. It can be shallow without reformism and unethical economism with reformism.
DE itself is largely reformist in character (and excessively personal).: Anthropo-/ecocentric.
No doubt 'anthropocentricsm' meaning what its etymology implies 'centring in man'
(OED), is a useful term. Theories such as Coperican and Copenhagen quantum theory can be
criticised (or praised) as anthropocentric. What is in doubt is the new contrast of antropocentric
with ecocentric.
While the vague anthropocentric-ecocentric distinction is alright, so far as it goes, as a
starting stage, it is no place to stop. For there is a need for a value specific distinction,
antrhopocentr can be any sort of human centredness.
'Anthropocentric' is a poor choice of contrasting terminology, for several reasons. One,
which may be convenient to some, lies in its vagueness. There is no sharp cut-off in what is
human centred. Similarly for its supposed contrast term 'ecocentric', which presumably
expandents to 'ecologically centred'. Second, it becomes apparent that no proper contrast is
made in many cases. University textbooks on natural ecology, for instance are both ecocentric
because about ecology and anthropocentric because set and supplied for humans. Human
ecology, a subject increasingly encountered in universities, is directly both (not both under
different aspects). Were the classification satisfactory, it would provide a nice contradiction.
But the classification is far from satisfactory. It is not exclusive: nor is it exhaustive, but the
remainder obscure. But worse, any practical ethics, no matter how deep, is bound to be
anthropocentric, not ecocentric, even though duly concerned with ecology. The reason comes
to this: any adequate ethics is bound to be heavily concerned with agents, their obligations and
responsibilities, and for all practical purposes (on earth) these agents are generally certain
humans. This is, an adequate practical ethics is, as a contingent matter, anthropocentric. Of
course such an ethic, by contrast with main traditional ethics, may also be presented as an
ecocentric ethic, inasmuch as it may be focussed upon ethical agents' relations to ecological
items, human treatment of nature.
14
Problems with the anthropocentric/ecocentric contrast do not mean that something like the
contrast cannot be made good. But it would involve redefinition of the critical terms, and could
accordingly be better accomplished with adjusted terminology.
Anthropocentrism is implausible, once a modern pict "of universe" becomes available.
(Scuh a sufficiently modern picture was already available to Descartes.)
The sun is a medium sized star of very common sort even within its galaxy. The
probability of planets like the Earth within this university is extraordinarly high. The probability
of other agents is also very high. Even the probability of other ..... ./competent agents is high.
But even if it were not, or even if there were other agents, the discourse to be embarked
upon would be significant. It is also pointful, for instance in disposeing of much philosophy.
If anthropocentrism is so implausible as regards "main place in nature", why is it not
implausible as regards intuitionality, value, etc.
Ironically, the swing away from anthropocentrism in the sciences in modern times (with
the advert of Copenhagen quantum theory and anthropic principles) was overpinged by
increasing anthropocentrism in what are misleadingly distinguished as the humanities. Above
all intentionality and value were emptied out of the wider universe and concentrated in the
exclusive focus of humanities, humans.
To adopt Freud:
Humanity has in the course of time had to endure from the hands of science two great
humiliations to its chauvinism .17 The first was when it was realised that our earth was not the
centre of the universe, but only a speck in the world system of a magnitude hardly
conceivible ... . The second was when his logical science robbed man of his particular privilege
of having been specially created and relegated him to a descent from the animal world' (puoted
in Unozco Ev ..... May 1982 p.3)
There are further shocks in store for humans-poor old humans!
3. Explaining depth [contrasts pale/pallid].
For a good sort of depth, what is needed a deep structure, extraction or format that lies
(partially) hidden from the surface. E.G. plate ponites in geology, strata in archasology, logical
form in grammar. Deep = penetrating to fundamentals in several ways and nonchauvinistic, not
shallow. [Mention also pluralism-so only a framework aimed for, on which grew various
detailled positions.]
Part of depth of Deep Green theory lies in its penetration below the surface of classrestricted or interested humanism to a genuine nonchauvinistic ethical structure: the (ill-named)
annular structure, which ties moral principles to nonhumanistic categorestion. Annular structure
17
Freud says: to great outrages upon it naive serif love.
15
is a deep structure. A deep structure. Maybe can produce one for deep green theory (see Critiq
p.93, bottom halt) Start as above other measures of depth (pp.44-5) misconceived.
1'. Extent of searching of perception of value; depth of (value) perception.
1. Extent to which humanism (h.ch) abandoned for econvisonmental perspective.
2. Extent to which conventional moral and value judgements put op for reassessment.
(Naess's depth of questioning conventional wisdom) 2 is tied to 1; for abandoning heh
involves much reassessment.
Note differs from usual reflective equilibrium, which takes many generally accepted
judgements for granted.
More on what depth means (pragmetinally): Many environmental outcomes sought in deep
grounds can be supported in shallow ways (of course). But there are differences, as examples
show:
• pesticides (in forestry) should not be used, despite insect damage. For pesticides violate
natural succession and healing processes. Toxicity questions, though important, are secondary.
On shallow view: the main problem becomes not the use of pesticides, but whether they are
safe.
• natural world appears as a resource. Life forms which interfere with uses are pests.
2. Reformist/Transformist Variations upon Shallow/Deep Ecology
Unhappy with the derogatory implications of "shallow", Devall and Sessions tried to
convert shallow ecology in ecological reformism. While there was certainly a basis for this
conversion in Naess's original brief account of shallow ecology (which almost invited such
reconstrual), the result has been that something different has emerged, notably in green politics.
For what such conversions, along with associated imagery accompanying reformism,
achieve is not elucidation, but introduction of new contrasts, and therewith political crossclassification of the shallow-deep ecology contrasts. There are various contrasts with (mere)
reformist adjustment on political theory, for instance revolutionary change and radical change.
A revolutionary direction appears inappropriate as regards deep ecology (as revealed both by the
literature and political stances of leading members of the movement), but a politically radical
direction on environmental issues does emerge from later developments in N aess' s work.
Accordingly a rough contrast, which admits sharpening, can be made out between green
reformism and green radicalism. A machine image, which often operates not far from view in
such contrasts, is initially helpful in indicating the differences. Reformism does not interfere
with the main operation of the machine, its motor, though it may alter the adjustments, retune or
fine tune it, add filters or mufflers or converters, alter its appearance cosmetically, and so on.
By contrast radicalism would alter the machine, would interfere with its motor to some extent,
depending on the level of radicalism.
16
In political terms reformism is exemplified in such measures as limiting pollution by
emission devices, further treatment of sewerage, small reserves and roadside veneers of trees
amid clear-cutting operations, tidying up of litter, and so on. The main motor of liberal
democratic market capitalism, the economic engine designed to deliver maximum economic
growth, and its main institutions, remain untouched and uncriticised; no change is proposed for
them. For radicals such measures and like reforms do not proceed far enough, towards the
sources of the problems. To tackle the range of environmental problems more radical change in
economic, social and perhaps political machinery is required. But evidently the extent of change
envisaged can vary, very considerably. For example, a frugal conservation program, directed at
limiting economic growth through removing conspicuous and excessive consumption, need
carry no accompanying program for radical social and political change. Again, deep ecology,
which offers no well worked out, or even well signposted, radical program or radical
restructuring, does not appear to be politically radical. Alternatives to liberal democratic
arrangements are not really advanced or investigated. By contrast some anarchist and marxist
influenced ecological positions are politically radical, for instance, social ecology. In short,
there is room for a classification of green radicalism, as shown by a preliminary grouping
according to whether the radicalism affects which of separate (though overlapping) economic,
social, or political matters.
The reformist-radical distinction is a vague one, without a sharp boundary. Reforms can
so accumulate that what was a difference in degree becomes a difference in kind, what was
extensive reformism turns out to be radicalism. In such an incremental fashion, positions which
were reformist can find themselves radical, without having undergone any conspicuus
radicalisation.
The contrast between reformism and radicalism can be sharpened somewhat within a (an
improved) theory of social paradigms. Then reformism is intra-paradigmatic, whereas
radicalism is not (but is extra-paradigmatic). That is a reformist works, like a normal scientist,
within the operational paradigm (the given political motor) and does not seek to change it,
whereas the radical does; success of radicalism resembles abnormal (even revolutionary)
periods in science. As there are many ways of deviating from a paradigm, which typically
involves a complex set of presumptions, so there are many sorts of radicalism.
The extent to which the political conversion of the shallow-deep contrast into green
reformism-radical contrast affords not a restatement, but a different classification, may now be
evident though perhaps not to its full extent. The most notable further feature is that green
radicalism may be utterly shallow, entirely anthropocentric. 18 Green Marxism affords a useful
18
In these terms Naess conflated two contrasts in his original 1973 article; shallow-deep and
reformist-radical. Different followers have latched onto different contrasts.
l'/
example; it is socially and politically radical while shallow (of course it can be argued that it is
environmentally incoherent, though not in the mentioned features, but in its plan to supercharge
the economic motor and make it run even faster, with evident environmental fall-out). Social
ecology offers another example; for while more radical than deep ecology, it is certainy not
deep. Something of the rich variety we have come upon can be glimpsed from the following
table.
All the positions enumerated, except 9, are occupied, we suspect (though positions are often so
poorly or incompletely presented that is difficult to be sure ). 19 Positions 9 is practically
excluded for committed deep parties who duly care about the demise of what is of intrinsic value
under mere reformism. Position 5 is however occupied, by those who want (or believe they
have achieved) improved arrangements for and treatment of animals (e.g., no circuses, no
ordinary zoos, no cruel contests, etc.) but are not committed to a radical animal liberation
agenda. Green party territory is usually shallow, but some of the proposals presented may
extend to position 4, for instance in demands for participatory democratic restructuring. Of
course, many supporters of green parties may adhere to deeper positions.
19
It is worth noting that such positions will in principle supply their own forms of sustainability,
sustainable societies, and so on.
24.10.95
Chapter 2
ETHICS WITHOUT HUMANS,
PHILOSOPHY WITHOUT HUMANS,
and COROLLARIES
It is a commonplace that ethics has proceeded not merely as if humans were on centre
stage, but as if humans really were all there is, all that mattered in ethics, as if nothing else
enters into morals and ethics, or does through only through them. That commonplace is
moreover commonly strengthened to a claim of necessity, that this must be so, that nothing
else can enter, except indirectly by way of humans. Ethics has to be thus anthropocentric.
Since environmental ethics began to shift humans, if ever so little, off centre stage, there has
been a heavy philosophical reaction, a sometimes bitter blacklash against greener ethics that
would background humans, or dare sometimes to remove humans, from the scene altogether.
Among many other things, it has been contended that by the very meaning of ethics and
morals, these subjects must be human-centred.
A crucial argument for necessary anthropocentricism of ethics makes human centrality
a matter of definition. This crucial argument will be broken, in the first of several stages,
through a detailed characterisation of morals and ethics in a way that is independent of
humans. The characterizations adopted depart in only minor and justified (though highly
consequential) ways from received dictionary definitions; that is the characterisations are
substantially reportive, as they have to be if they are to serve their iconoclastic purposes. The
matter of characterising ethics is in any case part of our business. Where would deep-green
ethics be left, as a subject of investigation, without an appropriate account of ethics?
1. On inadeqacies of what prevails: a sheaf of defective accounts.
It takes but little effort to discover severe shortcomings in most preceding investigations, and
that most accounts, many of them far too casual, are inappropriate for what they are intended
to cover, still less for environmental ends. There is no end to bad and defective definitions to
dissect and discard.
Even textbooks and guidebooks on ethics often make no attempt at a definition, and
often have little or nothing of due generality to offer on what ethics is about. 1 Unremarkably
then, many of those presenting or teaching ethics, perhaps well enough, have no adequate idea
of what ethics is about. This is revealed by the sorts of definitions they slop down and by
what they say ethics is about. The slop presented indicates they did not even bother to consult
their dictionaries with any care. It is an elementary exercise to show deficiencies in most
proposals.
A striking recent example is Singer (ed.) Companion to Ethics, supposedly an encyclopaedic work
on ethics.
2
A few sample definitions recently encountered will help confirm our claims. Utterly
defective is the account of ethics as 'the relation between you and other people' .2 Such
connections as the spatial relations between people, for instance where they sit at a seminar,
do not belong to ethics. Narrowing relations to those of treatment, as in 'how you treat other
people' improves the account a bit, but not enough. Decent treatment of relevant kinds no
doubt comprises part of ethics, but a small part. Nor is such treatment confined, especially as
regards receivers, to people; animals, nature and more, all matter.
A more interesting account, presumably designed to encompass applied ethics, takes this
remarkable form: "'ethics" [is] defined as disciplined reflection by persons in all walks of life
on moral ideas and ideals'. 3 As a definition, this too fails entirely, appearing circular, and
converting ethics away from, what is essential, practice into head stuff, into something like
meditation, a kind of widely practiced theorizing, though practised on certain parts of ethics!
There are too some unfortunate side-effects of the insertion, aimed at making ethics applicable
to all walks of (human) life: namely, as there are walks of life which have no room for
disciplined reflection, so there is in fact no ethics. Back again to the drawing board.
Similarly for Russell's fuller attempt:
The study of Ethics is perhaps most commonly conceived as being
concerned with the questions "What sort of actions ought men to perform?"
and "What sort of actions ought men to avoid?" It is conceived, that is to
say[!], as dealing with human conduct, and as dividing what is virtuous and
what is vicious among the kinds of conduct between which, in practice,
people are called upon to choose. 4
Owing to feminist criticism of male chauvinism, many now wince at Russell's; piquant use of
term like 'men' (in fact throughout his numerous works). Environmental criticism of human
chauvinism has not been so (terminologically) successful, sad to report.
Back to the board.
It takes little effort to assemble a sheaf of inadequate definitions and accounts of ethics. Many
include too little, for example the popular account of ethics as "how we should live", which as
well as being too narrow is parochial. 5 Similarly, though fractionally better; a coherent set of
values to live by is enough for an ethic. For that appears to omit a deontic component,
obligations and permissions, and certainly leaves out ethical virtues. A major shortcoming,
even in fuller characterisations, concerns the concentration on humans and their parochial
affairs. For, as will soon appear, ethics does not essentially concern humans. An adequate
ethics says nothing about humans, members of species Homo sapiens, their obligations and
rights, values or virtues. It applies but contingently to humans; it applies similarly to
hominids, humanoids, and to persons generally, and functions in the absence of persons
altogether. As a result, the following familiar sorts of pronouncements on what ethics amount
2
3
4
5
John Langford, on ABC radio, 22 February 1993.
Engels, 6.
Russell p.1, F & S, from Elements of Ethics 1910.
For such an account see e.g. Single [Encyl. Brit.]
3
to are seriously defective: 'An ethic may be thought of as an ideal of human behaviour, an
environmental ethics as ideal human behaviour with respect to the environment, natural and
built" _6 Not everyone got it quite so wrong. For instance, Brandt gets away to a nice neutral
start, even if he does not cover the spread of ethics. Consider his opening:
Moral philosophy has traditionally been a systematic attempt to answer
some questions of apparently universal interest [!] about: what is worth
wanting or working for (what is worthwhile, of worth); what is the best
thing for an agent to do from his own point of view; what is morally right,
and what is morally just). [Also what is rational in these regards.]7
The nice start does not last. Agents turn out to be humans; utilitarianism soon begins to effect
an ugly intrusion, and so on.
2. On how to define ethics and morals more satisfactorily.
It is not difficult to do noticeably better than ethics teachers and writers have managed,
simply by consulting better dictionaries. But it is also not so difficult to re-organize and
improve upon what dictionaries offer. It is significant that dictionary definitions of moral and
ethic contain no essential allusion to humans, nothing essential concerning humans, man, or
we, us and co. (andwhere 'human' does enter, as in 'principles of human duty', it can simply
be elided, it is inessential). But the dictionary accounts do harbour some problems.
For one thing, like some of the preceding definitions, the dictionaries seem mired in a
common and damaging circularity: ethics is defined in terms of morality (and its adjuncts,
decent treatment, and similar); but then morality is itself defined through ethics. Fortunately
the loop back to ethics can be broken.
A particularly satisfactory way to workable definitions of notions in the ethics orbitethic, ethical, ethics, to take direct cases-is through those in the presupposed moral orbitdirectly, moral, morality, morals. For all these ethical notions are regularly defined, in better
dictionaries, through moral notions. This approach reverses the difficult and so far
unsuccessful strategy, sometimes tried in ethical theory, of attempting to define morality (e.g.
through universalizability conditions) inside a somehow independently characterized ethics. 8
The bases, upon which moral notions are carried, lie in turn in the action orbit, in
features of actions and their agents. 9 As agents are entailed by actions-beca use actions just
6
7
8
9
See 'A universal environmental ethics' Connect, UNESCO-UNE P Environmental Education
Newsletter XVI(2)(June 1991). pl.
Brandt p.l.
Long ago I used to think this was now it had to be done, through some singling out of morals
within ethics by way of a combination features of humans and requirements of morality (such as,
variously, consideration of others, universalizability). Not recognising the virtues of agency, I too
erroneously supposed that morality had to pertain to humanity.
No doubt the main definitional enterprise can be carried out, more or less, the other way around,
beginning with ethics, then cutting down to morals within, through agency. Moreover, such an
alternative route (starting out easily enough from the notion of ethics as the theory and
systematization of the good and the right, valuable and permissible, the virtuous and responsible,
and so on) should arrive at the same place, at a similar end result.
These action basics can in turn be explained, as before, within process theory, see Sylvan 1993. A
classification of agents can be drawn from there. It is not claimed that this is how we have to start
or that action nexus affords unique starting point. But its features have to be included sooner or
4
are agent-ascribed processe s-actions , more generally processes, form bedrock here. Neither
processes nor actions have any essential connection with humans. Relevant elements of
action nexus, upon which moral actions are carried, are now indicated: Single action
snapshot, capturing agent-acts -in-environment nexus:
AGENT
has
motives
emotions
volitions
objectives and goals
of
prior causes
ACTION
has
subsequent consequences
impacts upon (relevant items within) environment
The breakdown of actions, into types, will straightaway yield much that has long been taken
as central in moral theory, such as agonising (as Socrates did) over choices. Choice-making is
a morally critical type of action. Plural actions expose further relevant features, including
conduct, dispositions and character of agents, and suggest typologies (or moral relevance) of
actions and of impacts. Virtue ethics, but part of moral theory, fit here.
Whereas morality -the new ecologically sensitive morality that is-begin s from certain
features of an agent in its environment, ecology begins from investigation of an organism in
its environment. 'From the outset ecology was clearly understood to be the appreciation of
the organism (any organism, note) in and as part of its environment' . 10 'Something along the
lines of "the study of organisms in relation to their environment" is the basis of most ...
attempts ... [at] working definition of ecology ... over [which] there has been little dispute' . 11
Despite initial appearances, the upshot is not (the perhaps appealing one) that morality is a
branch of ecology. For the features investigated are very different (and a satisfactory
definition of 'ecology ' has to be sharpened to indicate what features of organism-inenvironments are studied). Whereas in morality there is much interest in the virtues and vices
of agents for instance, a parallel interest is outside the scope of ecology (and indeed not a
significant question for most organism or for many agents).
Interestingly, the ethical theory being advanced begins in precisely the way Deep
Ecology, in its pristine formulation, implies that no theory should operate, with an agent-inenvironment image. Under the total-field approach of Deep Ecology all such images dividing
up fields should be rejected, in particula r any man-in-e nvironme nt image, a special
chauvinistic case of what our theory operates with. Similarly no doubt for organism-inenvironment images of ecology. Unremarkably no arguments are offered for these rejections;
10
11
later, and it has virtues as a start, including familarity and naturalness.
R. Kitching [New Education], p.39
Ibid p.40 rearranged.
5
cogent arguments would be hard to find, or articulate. In any case, Deep Ecology strictures do
not prevent preliminary or limited uses of field analysis. As it will soon turn out, for more
general purposes, what is needed is removal of agents, not dissolving the image.
These action-theoretic preliminaries admit of much elaboration and variation, both
expansion and contraction most of which however we can pick up as we proceed. For
example, an illuminating expansion would expose the setting, of constraints and incentives,
within which an agents acts; no doubt some of these features, incentives for instance, can be
absorbed into what is already depicted, such as motives, and the remainder could be included
in under a prior-influences category. Striking contractions are those afforded by prevailing
ethical theories, consequentialism and Kantianism, which would erase, respectively, all but
consequences or all but motives. The parable of the Blindman and the Elephant is not only a
clever analogy for a implausible perspectivism; it can serve as a telling indictment of much
analytic philosophical practice. Moral philosophical practice, especially that of analytic
philosophy, consists in only sensing part of a whole (constellation) and failing to see the
rest. 12 Moral and action theory afford good examples of such skimping; for instance,
consequentialism fails to see anything but consequences.
The term moral, generously construed, covers the assessment of agent-intricated
elements of the action nexus depicted, in all the following sorts of respects (as applicable):
excellent, good, indifferent, bad, evil; approved, disapproved;
valuable, of value, or not
axiological
right or wrong (or alright), fair or unfair, proper or improper
obligatory, forbidden, permissible
deontic
responsible, irresponsible;
it also covers principles concerning such assessments. Morality concerns both appreciation
and assessment of agents-acting-in-environments as regards those sorts of features and
resulting systematization. Parallels with ecology should be evident. X's conduct or the like is
moral, broadly so, iff it is a matter for moral appraisal. In short, what is moral is marked out
by classes of functors in an action nexus.
Plainly some of the features, which perform the distinguishin g work, are not
significantly applicable to all elements in the nexus; for instance, impacts of frogs are not
significantly responsible. Responsibility applies primarily to certain agents, their conduct and
character. The sorts of respects cited are, furthermore, more general forms. But many more
specific evaluations are thereby encompassed; for instance, honourable, dishonourable;
decent, indecent, again as applicable.
In terms of the sorts of respects, certain important subtypes can be distinguished. The
first group (given by the first two lines) covers axiological. The second group (given by the
next two lines) covers deontic. The third group (not usually distinguished in "the logic of
12
For a detailed treatment of skimping in philosophy, see DP, chapter 11.
6
ethics") comprises accountability notions.
Such, formerly important, terms as virtuous and vicious-regu larly, but wrongly
included in dictionary listings of respects defining moral (e.g., "of or pertaining to character
or disposition considered as ... virtuous or vicious")-ar e axiological. They can be
characterized in terms of what is already available, thereby avoiding further circularity vexing
dictionary definitions (which define 'moral' using 'virtuous', and 'virtuous' deploying
'moral'). 13 For example, to adjust the dictionaries, virtuous [action] is [that] exhibiting moral
excellence or quality, vicious that distinguished as morally evil. Much the same supervenient
story gets told for duty in the deontic class. For while a duty just amounts to a certain sort, a
rigorous sort, of moral obligation, duty is not among the respects listed in defining the term
moral.
There are several, loosely consequential , attachments often made to what counts as
moral(s), notably: issues of punishments and rewards, with a view to altering proper conduct;
of freedom and determinism, as the latter may appear to place moral enterprise in jeopardy; of
justification of moral principles, which do not stand on its own without moral justification;
and so on, for other theoretical topics that consequently arise. While these further issues do
not form part of dictionary definitions of moral, they are stock textbook fare in moral
philosophy. But that, moral philosophy and moral theory, is where they can comfortably stay.
While the issues that result could be called moral, or distinguished as textbook moral, they
might as well simply be accommodate d more accurately, within philosophy of morality (metamorals).
Morality is, at base, the attribute of being moral. 14 Thus, basically, an item exhibits
morality if and only if that item is moral. In wider compass, morality comprehends a larger
package concerning what is moral; it consists in the theory and appreciation, practice and
principles of what is moral. It follows, from the account of moral given, that morality is all
about certain features of agency, features of theory and practice of agency, namely evaluative
and assessment features and principles concerning these, such as conduct and choice.
Several other significant corollaries also emerge. Firstly morality has nothing
essentially to do with humans. A similar but still more striking result will follow for ethics,
which is characterised, also in a human independent way, by way of morality. Ethics too has
nothing essentially to do with humans (or even with humanoids). Morality turns on features
of agency. Humans, some of them, simply happen to supply, presently, prime terrestrial
examples of full moral agents, those actors who do not merely conduct themselves well or
badly (a kangaroo can be a good or poor mother, a dog can behave badly and know it) but
who make promises, recognise obligations, accept responsibilities, and so forth.
Humans were almost certainly not the only full terrestrial agents; other humanoid
13
14
Thus too much of "virtue ethics" can be absorbed, see further, later chapters.
In logical terms it is defined through attribute abstraction.
7
species that have become extinct (perhaps with human assistance) very likely were also.
Certain humans are probably not the only full moral agents even now in this universe. It is
unlikely that humans will exemplify the only moral agents, perhaps even terrestrially. 15 The
prominen t role of competen t humans in morality, and so as regards ethics, is utterly
contingent. It follows, now quite generally, that those familiar definitions of morality and
ethics in terms of humans and their features are one and all defective. For all the (green)
ethical theory to be developed, humans can drop out altogether. But competent humans are
useful for illustrative purposes; it helps to have some demonstrably actual examples.
Moreove r, in such practical terms as terrestrial ethical impact, they are now almost
unavoidable.
Before explaining how to escape damaging agent centredness, or actocentricity, in ethics
that would result from equating ethics with morals (i.e. morality in this sense), there are loose
ends to be tied up and certain advantages, worth recording, accruing from having actocentrism
as a staging post. One advantage is that unwanted senses of evaluative notions are peeled off
automatically, because they do not apply regards agency. For example, so removed are not
only merely "aesthetic" uses but all those quasi-descriptive uses of commendatory terms such
as good (e.g. 'good car' 'good sort', 'good sox', 'good ox'). Aesthetic uses of evaluative
terms, as in 'fine painting' or 'good book', do not concern, except in oblique ways, action or
conduct of agents. It may well be objected that even so not enough non-moral uses are peeled
off, as various uses like those of mere expediency or practicality are left standing. A countercase will be developed that these should be left standing. For a smarter strategy than
attempting exclusion, includes moralities of expedience, of practicality, egoism and the like
within the moral orbit-so enabling a straightforward answer to such otherwise vexing
questions as Why be moral?- whilst subsequently differentiating within morals a distinuished
subclass (to be called meurals) which does function exclusively through meeting more
exacting requirements of morality.
There is a subsense that should be picked up immediately. Though a vicious or evil
agent is certainly a matter for morality, and within its compass, such an agent would not
normally be accounted moral (as a naive reading of the dictionaries would suggest), but
immoral. What is moral, morality, concerns the span of moral, immoral and indifferent
procedures. Plainly moral in the narrower sense comprehends the definitely positive part of
the span, as good does of the wide value span. Generally, an item (such as an agent, practice,
conduct, or whatever) is strictly moral, moral in this stricter sense, if it is moral, a matter of
15
There are arguments to other moral agents, other full agents even, from evolusionary theory.
According to an expanded theory, every niche is eventually occupied. (In a way, this interesting
theme carries over from the earlier doctrine of a great chain of being, which similarly onto every
position in the chain as potentially occupied.) By a statistical argument (copying those for
intelligent life elswhere in this vast universe), there are, or will be, niches for agents, with requisite
capabilities, wlsewhere in the universe. Therefore, by the theory, these niches will eventually be
occupied.
8
moral concern, and its appraisal is decidedly positive. Naturally for a full account, positive
within the moral span, has also to be defined. However here the strict sense is picked up only
to be set aside.
Focussing upon morality would be unduly limiting from the perspective of
environment al ethics. For although anthropocent ricism has been avoided, easily
circumvented through agency, though humans play no essential role, still morality is
undoubtedly agent-centred. Morality foregrounds agents and assessments of them and their
actions, and backgrounds environments of agents, and environments more generally (those
without agents in them do not even enter into consideration). The environment remains, so to
say, mere backdrop to actions of agents.
Escape is through an intermediary, which is substituted in place of morality in the
account proposed of ethics. That intermediary is an expanded morality, in convenient
shorthand ectomorality. 16 ('Ectomoralit y' is close enough for the present to 'ecomorality' ,
which is of course part of the main focus.) Expanded morality takes into account also
evaluative settings, perhaps devoid of agents; whatever of value that agents, or agent-like
subjects, agentoids, might in principle impact upon, interfere with, disturb, effect, change,
dislodge, or similar. That is, to say, it encompasses all items of relevant value, of worth,
significant items, including many wholes, such as habitats, ecosystems, the Earth itself; and so
also whatever applies morally with respect to these, for instance permission to disturb or to
improve, principles of letting be, and so on. Such ecosignificant items are also called, in the
literature, morally considerable items (a nicely ambiguous term, both sides of which have
unfortunate features, one because a considerable item may not have large significance, the
other because what it is supposed to respond to is some restricting class of considerers). In yet
other and more satisfactory terms, they have ethical standing. Naturally items of significance
other than agentoids may have other ethically relevant features (which they perhaps accrue
through their significance). For instance they may hold entitlements of various sorts, such as
to be left alone, to be represented, and so on.
In order to characterize core notions in the ethics orbit, the basic strategy consists in
plugging in "expanded morality" where the dictionaries give "morality"; similarly substitute
"ectomoral" for "moral". For the adjectival forms 'ethical' , and (equivalently) 'ethic', that is
all that is required. For the form concerned means: pertaining to ectomorality, or
(equivalently) treating of or relating to ectomorals. For the noun forms it is not so simple,
because there are problems with the dictionary accounts (for instance in 'the science of
morality' owing to misplaced definiteness, and dated uses of the term 'science'). Always
ethics(s) is an abstract, signifying features of being ethical; more exactly, always concerning
ectomoral theories or systems. More specifically, ethic( s) signifies
firstly, in both singular or plural though usually plural, the whole field of ectomoral theory
16
Greek ektos, outside. We include the inside with the expansion which incorporates the outside.
9
(the "science" of ectomorals), or derivatively, the department of (philosophical) study
concerned therewith;
secondly, in the singular but pluralising, a system or schematization of ectomorality, that is, at
least rudiments of a system, or of a theory, comprising values, ectomoral principles, and rules
of proper conduct.17
Like stock textbook ethics, most environmental ethics so far are in fact truncated; they
are very rudimentar y schemes, leaving out much that would be expected in a fatter
systematization. Hence in part the vagueness of characterization. So far the vagueness
(which does not exceed that of dictionaries or of ordinary usage), is immaterial, as the
characterisation is workable. But further exactness could be obtained through a technical
upgrade of system and a more detailed specification of what such a proposition system
contains. 18
What are sometimes cited as further restricted senses of 'ethic' are not further senses.
Rather they are restrictions, or designations, of what is already presented. Thus for instance,
the 'moral principles of a particular leader or school of thought' as in Buddhist ethics or
Kantian ethics. Similarly for field indications or application restrictions, as in medical ethics
or bioethics. So much for "senses" of 'ethics'.
In order to reach an adequate definition of ethics, not merely for intended environmental
purposes, but for historical purposes as well (so as to include Stoic ethics, Taoist ethics,
romantic nature ethics and the like as ethics) we have been obliged to adjust (if in an
inconspicuous way) dictionary definitions of ethics. That adjustment was made through
"expanded morality", but could have been accomplished in other equivalent ways (Leopold's
expansion of 'community' is another, though less satisfactory, way of achieving the same sort
of thing). Granted that we have adjusted dictionary definitions, have we changed the very
notion of ethics, or did the dictionaries, not for the first item, get it wrong, getting caught with
chauvinistic definitions? We claim that we have not changed the notion. Rather we captured
what some meant, more or less, by ethics all along-fro m Stoics, Epicureans and others on. It
has never been a very precise notion. In this case (by contrast with terms like right) not too
much hangs on the term, and we could simply divide ethics up, for instance, into wide and
narrow. However, we intend to keep the nice term ethics but to give the dictionaries and
modem opposition the expressions, standard ethics, or conventional ethics.
Our inconspicuous but all important adjustment is both good and bad news. It is bad
news, insofar as it appears to assist the charge that [deeper] environmental philosophy is doing
something different from ethics, that it is guilty of changing the subject (i.e., effectively
committing ignoratio elenchi). However we can freely grant, without incurring damage, that
17
18
Thus ethics include what it has to include, as expanded environment ally: philosophy of
ecomorality, and therewith of morality.
A system is a relational structure of a certain sort. An ethic is a propositional system, since it has
to include principles and the like; thus it involves a theory of strict logical sort. For an illustration
of the use of systems formulations in ethics, see e.g. Routley 1973.
10
standard ethics was, as a matter of definition, at least actocentric, and that, insofar as agents
were identified with humans, it was, therefore, anthropocentric. Even so ethics, as redefined,
includes standard ethics, so it is more satisfactorily seen not a different but a larger subject,
expanded through an expanded morality. It is good news, not merely because it facilitates
environmental ethics and accords with more satisfactory (greener) accounts of the subject, but
because it helps in getting around a snarl of objections to the effect that ethics has to be
homocentric, or at least actocentric. Removing these objections will recur throughout what
follows.
Among corollaries of note, a first one is that plurality of ethics falls out of the
characterisation. An ethic is not unique. Nor (through such a result does not follow as
environmental ethics form a subclass of ethics) are environmental ethics. Nor are military or
professional ethics. Failure of uniqueness is not a deficiency, but a virtue. For, one thing, it
gives places to go in cases of breakdown of an ethic, namely to other nearby ethics. Plurality
is tied up with nonuniqueness and other features of merit: noncomprehensiveness, openness,
flexibility, and so on.19
Secondly, there is more news on what an ethics is; and what an environmental one is. It
is widely claimed that an ethics requires a communit y, in an environme ntal ethic the
community (of concern etc.) is a wide environmental one. Ethics enlarges the community, a
scope of values. Ethics (partaking of ethos ~ the evaluative frame(or spirit) of a community.
While these ideas are popular they are astray.
Environmental ethics shifts the frame of reference for ethical consideration from purely
human concerns to ecological communities. 1-B Human beings as moral agents are not
ethically privileged.
An environmental ethic must be compatible with ecological principles and with life, i.e.
be livable.
3. Within ethics and morals, as so far generously constured: decent and dud distinctions.
Something like the division between the first and second specifics above has been
quasi-technicalized within ethics, and distorted through merger with a theory-metatheory
distinction borrowed from outside ethics. Engagement with the second (as in systematisation,
constructing and working within systems, etc.) has been dubbed normative ethics, or
sometimes to increase the confusion just ethics, or condescendingly, casuistry. Metaethics has
been taken however to be not what the logical analogy, and borrowing, would suggest metanormative ethics, the (positivistically correct) study of such systems, but instead a brand of
analytic philosophy, analysing the meanings and uses of key ethical terms. Taken as
exhaustive, there is much of importance, that the normative-metaethical distinction leaves out.
Nor is the distinction exhaustive. As well, the labels are misleading. In short, the distinction
is ill-made out and rather unsatisfactory, a handicap, not an asset; it can be abandoned without
19
See EEHC p.57.
11
loss and to advantage. Let us do so (so forget this paragraph, if you prefer). Many other
distinctions from standard ethics are also defective, in one way or another. It will be advisable
to resurvey and rechart ethical terrain.
Among other standard, but often dud, distinctions from ethical theory that have to
reexamined after environmental impact, to be duly salvaged or scrapped, are all the following:
• objective/subjective. That the objective/subjective distinction provides a false dichotomy is
easily seen from usual explanations of the terms: 'either objective, standing for a real factor in
things, or subjective, simply standing for a human proposal' 20
• Cognitive/non-cognitive. 2 1
To be retained are some distinctions which certain forces have worked hard to eliminate, such
as that of
• Fact/value (and earlier demise).
• Expedient/moral.
There is an elasticity in the notion of ethics, and a neglected distinction, that it is
important to take into account.. In contemporary ethical theory there is a concerted attempt to
build a universalizability requirement or some sort of equivalent into the very notion of ethics.
The evident result is that selfish systems of evaluation and conduct, systematic egoisms for
instance, are refused the title of ethics, and as an important corollary questions like Why be
ethical? become vexed. 22 Given, in particular, that any such "universality" requirement is
problematic in its formulation, and typically limited, chauvinistically to persons, a superior
course proceeds to distinguish: between ethics as already characterised (reportively) and its
subclass, universalizable ethics. As impartial ethics do have much to recommend them, let us
coin a convenient portmanteau term condensing the clumsy "universalizable ethics", namely
euthics. (Conveniently then un-euthical suggests unethical, which is what from a properly
ethical stance it is!)
There is undoubtedly some pressure to have ethics and morality extend beyond a single
or isolated individual 23 ( even so, a Crusoe ethics is intelligible and feasible, as regrettably is
egoistic morality). But that pressure does not extend very far; and such notions as those of a
tribal morality and an upper-class ethics are not defective on significance or semantic grounds,
even if they are wide open to objections on substantive grounds.
Such restricted ethics are not however immediately ruled out, as ethics, by such
requirements as that like cases be assessed alike, and that differences of assessment be based
on relevant differences. 24 For a tribalist or racist can respond that a foreigner is not like a
20
21
22
23
24
Reese p.157.
See also Reese.
On both, narrowing and vexing, see Singer Impractical ethics (Singer equates moral with ethical).
Singer does not really have an answer to the question Why be moral? though he thinks it not a bad
idea; mainly he tries to put down shuffles that have been presented as decisive.
Pettit reworking a rough route hacked out by Wittgenstein, tries to expand this across into a
philosophical forest denominated "holism", no-dwelling place for an isolated individual.
These requirements are presented by Attfield as basic formal requirements of reason (p.6). No
12
Greek, or that there are relevant differences between whites and blacks (intelligence has been
proposed as such a difference, when skin pigmentation appeared a merely superficial
difference). These sorts of responses, which were long accepted, are no longer acceptable,
because the differences put up are not considered ethically relevant differences (correctly
enough, though ethical relevance itself lacks an adequate explanation). Egoism, for instance,
exhibits rationality failure, as it does not treat likes alike. There are no relevant differences
justifying different treatment.
Singer's main argument for a much wider point of view,for universality, rests upon an
extensive appeal to authority (p.11). What else is offered is but an appeal to usage.
the notion of ethics carries with it the idea of something bigger than the
individual'. [It often does, but it may not.] 'If I am to defend my conduct
on ethical grounds, I cannot point only to the benefits it brings me. I must
address myself to a larger audience'(p.10).
That depends on the conduct concerned. More important, the audience does not need to be so
large, certainly not universal: my family or clan will suffice often enough. Nonetheless there
is this of use 'ethics', especially in such criticisms as 'unethical'.
• due consideration of others, all others;
Parallel to the distinction of euthics within ethics is a distinction of neurals within morals,
neurality within morality. Again the subclass, reflecting widespread philosophical usage of
the term morality, is separated through some requirement of morality, such as
• universalizability, which is a strong way of ensuring the first (do unto others etc.).
Insofar as these principles all allude to others, they often admit easy extension (to other
others). 25
4. Environmental and greener ethics.
As prevailing accounts of ethics are for the most part defective, so are what builds upon
them, recent accounts of environmental ethics. But there are also other grounds for
dissatisfaction with these.
Issues in the characterizat ion of ethics, especially removal of actocentrism and
homocentrism, naturally get transmitted to critical types, such as environmental ethics. But it
might be imagined, rashly, that disagreement ends there. After all, all decent environmental
ethics make the non-human world a proper object of concern, either directly or indirectly.
Differences between explications offered can be ascribed to ordinary philosophica l
incompleteness. "An environmental ethic, broadly, is a set of values to live by which takes
due account of the value of the non-human world". 26 Stated differently, the aim of
environmental ethics 'is to understand and act appropriately in relation of our ecological-i n
25
26
doubt they are, though they appear to figure in no logic of ethics yet formulated.
The distinctions can be filled out (and made to work-verify!) by a strategy like the earlier. Again
the list of moral predicates is deliberately wide. But once again we can later separate off certain
uses e.g. instrumenal, aesthetic uses of good.
Gunn 1987, 3.
13
the broad sense-circum stances". 27 Differently again, " ... sets of principles, which would
guide our treatment of wild nature, constitute an environmental ethic in the most general
sense". 28 The first of these slack explanations leaves out what is essential for an ethics,
principles; the second is unduly actocentric, leaving out what is not, as well as main
paraphernalia of ethics; the third not only neglects values, but excessively narrows scope so
that such an ethics is inapplicable in places devoid of wild nature or to other issues. A better
explication, which avoids these obvious pitfalls runs: An environmental ethics is an ethics, as
defined, which, among other concerns, takes specific account, through its values and
principles, of (significant) environmental items, of parts of nonhuman nature.
But obviously it too leaves much to be explained. How the non-human world is made
the object of concern, how it is moral concern, to what degree it is made the object of moral
concern, what forms of moral concern are applicable to what elements of the environment,
and how to achieve the aim of acting appropriately - all are matters that make environmental
ethics one of the most controversial areas of philosophy and also one of the most exciting,
although many professional philosophers still regard it as a peripheral area. Yet there now is
broad agreement among most of those active in the area that some change is needed and that
environmental matters need much more attention and action.
An environmental ethics is an ethics concerned, usually among other ethical things, with
parts of the environment. Coal-face or factory-floor environmenta l ethics bears on
environmental issues, problems and causes, and can be expected to say something about
environment s or some of their nonhuman components. Academic or board-room
environmental ethics is frequently, however, a remove from direct ethical work, comprising
discussion of environmental ethics, its features, its methods, its variability, its presumed
merely derived and applied character, and so on. Much of this academic environmental ethics
is directed against coal-face environmental ethics, especially that of a genuinely committed
sort aimed at advancing environmental sources.
It is almost immediate that there is an important elasticity -ambiguity, in a slack sense
-in the notion of environmental ethics, between an ethics which considers environmental
matters, whether positively or negatively, and an ethics which is positive about some
environmental elements, which evinces concern about environmental items (as 18th century
sympathy ethics did about other humans). A superficial environmental ethics need not say
anything particularly positive or sympathetic about environments; indeed productions on the
topic may try to dismiss or defeat environmenta l causes and to defuse or dissolve
environmental problems, for instance as not worth bothering about. 29 It may be argued that
27
28
29
Drengson 1989, 15.
Elliot, in Singer, 284.
That is, fashionable contemporary practice with respect to philosophy is transferred to parts of
enviromental philosophy (e.g. by Eco Wittgenstein and AppliedQuine). Environmental philosophy
may in no way interfere with industry and business. To an astonishing extent American academic
environmental ethics tends to conform to such ridiculous strictures (often encouraged by a fawning
14
natural environme nts should serve highest economic causes, which means in practice
becoming reserves for city folks, city corporations and consumers. Under such environmental
ethics ("environmental ethics" it is tempting to say, contravening usage) many an environme nt
should be razed, levelled, and paved over, to become a grand parking lot, shopping mall or
urban escarpmen t of a concrete jungle. What rural environment remains will, also serve those
"high" purposes, be tamed and managed, like much of Western Europe. Witness the
enthusiasm in productions on environmental ethics for landscapes like that of Tuscany, where
virtually everything is under tight human control and no bird moves (else it is shot).
Environm ental ethics and environme ntal philosophy may well prove to be
disappointm ents for enthusiastic environmentalists. For there may be little that is materially
green about them, no commitme nt to changes in old attitudes and practices, no offers of
improved standing and ethical treatment for environme ntal items. As an environme ntal
economics may be no green economics , but (very likely) some part or application of
mainstream economics , some sweep of resource or land economics , so an environme ntal
ethics or environme ntal ethic may not be particularly or at all green, but, for instance, simply
part of establishm ent ethics or an "application" of it to environmental items. Fortunately not
all environmental ethics is like this; beyond environmental is genuinely green ethics.
The elasticity in environmental ethics between superficial and material forms, parallels
that of the term concern (and rather similarly of matter), and can be substantially constricted
to that: an environme ntal ethics is one concerned with environmental items or matter. Thus,
on the one construal, such an ethics may be simply about such topics, it may be a standard
ethics "applied" to such topics, in which case environmental ethics does become just so-called
applied ethics. Alternatively, however, such an ethic may be one evincing concern, worry,
about the treatment of some environmental items on other, and directed at obtaining improved
treatment. Such an ethic is not negative or indifferent towards environme ntal matters, but is
advancing environme ntal causes. They matter. With such ethics, environme ntal ethics
cannot possibly be an applied ethics, for the framework of standard ethics and their
application s, is exceeded. (At best such ethics can be approxima ted by standard ethics by
assuming enlightened agents holding appropriate sorts of values. 30)
5. Human chauvinism and its detailed removal.
Deep-green theory is, unambiguously, a green ethical theory, of deep kind: that is, there
is intrinsic value in nature, natural items have intrinsic value, which may predomina te over
human-bas ed value. In short, the theory rejects both the 'Sole Value Assumptio n' and the
'Greater Value Assumptio n'. The theory finds all standard ethics mired in heavy prejudice, in
30
pragmatism).
Compare also Naess (in Engel 1990) on utilitarian approximation to Deep Ecology, made by
assuming availability of enough agents holding deep ecological values or, more or less
equivalently, having deep ecological consciousness.
15
favour of things human and against things non-human. The distinctive, still pervasive,
prejudice concerned is that encapsulated as human chauvinism, which is itself a special case
of class chauvinism (for the class, human 31 ). Removal of human chauvinism dovetails with
displacement of humans.
Class chauvinism consists in substantia lly differentia l treatment, typically
discriminatory and inferior treatment, of items outside the class, by sufficiently many
members of the class concerned, for which there is no sufficient justification. Human
chauvinism is a feature, a cardinal weakness, of virtually all ethical systems hitherto, so deepgreen theory contends. The main argument takes the following form: there is no
characteristic, such as those tendered in ethical theories as justifying differential treatment in
favour of humans (characteristics such as rationality, language possession, tool making
abilities, needs, preferences, sentience, etc.) which first is held by all and only humans, as
distinct from not all humans and some non-humans, and which second does justify differential
treatment.3 2
Signs and manifestations of chauvinism are many and various, some conspicuous, some
subtle, and so on. For instance, a dead giveaway is any allusion to all outside certain human
concerns that may have a value as resources. For that assigns to the items so referred to mere
instrumental value. A little less obvious is the discriminative mode when individual humans
are counted, but only species of other living things (or a step down, individual sentients but
only species of others).
The thorough-going rejection of human chauvinism itself sets a program: that of
reworking ethics, and indeed much of philosophy, in a way free of chauvinism and humanism,
without any specially privileged place for humans. A first part of such a program has already
been outlined, that of suitably characterising ethics in a way that does not make essential
appeal to humans or their features, or to other favoured groups such as sentients. A further
important part of the program, formulation of ethical theory in a way which avoids entirely
group chauvinism. Such a desirable outcome can be achieved simply through formulation of
ethical theory in terms of ethically relevant categories, assembled in what is called an annular
theory. 33
31
32
33
Insofar as an account of human is required, it can be some improvement on the biological species
definitions, a reworking to remove past biasses (superioristic, rationalistic, masceulinist, etc.) and
to dislodge appeals to aspects of human nature. But, despite the preponderance of human agents
hereabouts, on planet Earth, such an account is not required for ethics, or for philosophy.
Theorizing in these and many other areas can proceed perfectly well without allusion to humans.
The detailed argument for this proposition is presented in Routley and Routley 1980a 97-108,
where chauvinism is spelled out a bit further. A truncated version of this argument appears in Fox
1990, 16-17.
Though the theory is so labelled in several publications, the label, which presumably should stay,
is misleading, because some ethical relevant categories may overlap one another. The concentric
theory (developed in Wenz 1988 and others, perhaps in steps of Leopold), which incorporates a
similar mistake, can be seen as a subversion of the annular model.
16
The annular picture helps show how to redo ethics and philosophy with ideal types, or
with some equivalent thereof. No simple species or subspecies , such as humans or
superhumans, no single feature, such as sentience or life, serves as a reference benchmark, a
base class, for determinin g moral relevance and other ethical dimensions . 34 No ethical
irrelevant distinctions and classes, such as those of humans or base class, are required. What
is required instead is a major shift in perspective , a new focus upon morally relevant
categorical distinctions:
it is not possible to provide criteria which would justify distinguishing, in the
sharp way standard Western ethics do, between humans and certain
nonhuman creatures, and particularly those creatures which have preferences
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 arbitrarily -determine d and loaded
tests for membershi p of a privileged class (essentially an elitist view),
instead of upon, say, respect for the preference s of other creatures.
According ly the sharp moral distinction, commonly accepted in ethics by
philosophe rs and other alike, between all humans and all other animal
species, lacks a satisfactory coherent basis (Routley and Routley 80a, 103).
The categorical distinctions thereby proposed do not reject traditional ethical notions such as
rationality, self-awaren ess, having interests; but they do reject the automatic use of the
characteristics of one species, or some base class as the model upon which the characteristics
of all other species or classes are judged. They also reject as unjustified distinctions that are
not "categorical distinctions which tie analytically with ethical notions". 35 For instance, they
hold that the human/nonhuman distinction is not ethically significant. Humans enter only in a
contingent way into general ethical theory, as holders of these or those features, which
34
35
Another common mistake which annular theory helps dispel and avoid is that of trying to stretch
community (or moral commuity) to include webs, mountains, Earth, land etc.-a trend Leopold
started with his land ethic. An agent can have an obligation to care for earth, and soil without
there being part of community. (The Land ethic is misguided). What ethics covers diverges from
any moral community. (Contra Dobson's suggestion p.47).
Routley and Routley 1980a, 108.
17
depending upon their respective capabilities and competence.
It is also desirable to have available some more positive principles corresponding to the
negative rejection of class chauvinism, principles so to say, of anti-chauvinism. Principles
like the biospherical egalitarianism of Deep Ecology represent an unsatisfactory attempt in
this direction. The deep-green improvement on this principle is the powerful principle of ecoimpartiality, according to which there should be no substantially differential treatment of
items outside any favoured class or species of discriminatory sort that lacks sufficient
justification. The appropriate impartial treatment is substantially independent of the
comparative value of the item treated. Most important, impartial treatment does not entail
equal treatment, or equal consideration, and does not require equal intrinsic or other value.
Other distinctive principles of deep-green theory will emerge as the ethical theory
accumulates.
One major conclusion is that human is not a significant ethical category. The outcome
is not anti-human; humans enter to the extent that they respectively deserve to enter. It is not
being claimed that humans lack value, that none of them have much or any value. Quite the
contrary, some humans have great value, some have established themselves as having great
propensity for evil, many lead quite indifferent lives. What is being rejected is the elevated,
often exaggerated, frequently exclusive, value assigned to humans, too often uniform value.
What are being contested are received distributions of values, and the heavy concentration of
value in humans and things and features human, the relative importance of which has been
grossly exaggerated. 36
Be in no doubt: many humans have positive value, some remarkable value. That is one
reason why it matters that humans should not vanish off the planet (for all that many of they
have sinned against it), to leave an impoverished earth, for instance a microbe planet. For that
would involve a huge reduction in value. Nor is it enough, adequate compensation, that
something like humans would evolve again at some remote future time. For, even if it
happened (in fact the probability of such replacement looks rather small), there would still be
a huge and extended dip in value. Similar points tell against a range of similar arguments to
the effect that it does not matter what happens to, or is done to, the Earth, because evolution
will eventually restore richness. 37 Even if richness were to return (much evidence indicates
36
37
Moral consideration and intrinsic value are not limited to humans; similarly these are not confined
to any other favoured or "improved" class closely overlapping humans, such as (it is supposed)
persons or rational creatures. Moral principles can be applied to all species and to the natural
environment in general. (A corollary concerns the characterisation of morality. ) Evolutionary
space is thereby afforded for other species, other systems other things.
An associated feature is stereotyping. Stereotyping is characteristic of speciesism/chauvinism as it
is in exploitation. To stereotype an item is to see it purely as a member of a class and as having
conventional feature of the class as a whole.
Recently there have been some attempts to have things ethical both ways: a special role for
humans without privilege or prejudice. There is a latent incoherence in Rachel's text, between his
initial and final proposals regarding ethics and morals-which are essentially human intricatedand regarding morals without hubris (MWH)-where human hubris is supposed to be removed.
Such an argument has been advanced by, among others, William Grey in 'Anthropocentrism and
18
that extinction and destruction is for ever, permanent), there would still be serious loss of
value. So it does matter.
6. Philosophy without humans.
It is hard to move and operate philosophically without encountering humans and human
chauvinism. Chauvinism is written deep into all prevailing Western (and Eastern) ideological
forms, common to what, at a more superficial level, are rival positions. But while human
chauvinism transcends parochial differences, it is more conspicuous and brazen in some
philosophical locales than others, notably idealism and empiricism, existentialism and
phenomenology. In short, it is particularly prominent where matters answer back to subjects,
those who have the ideas, do the observing, assemble the phenomena, do the living, and so
on-back to subjects that are invariably assumed to be human. Thus it is human existence,
human Being, human ideas and impressions, that count, those and none others. Such
chauvinism, nauseatingly strong, pervades not only Continental philosophy (esp. French and
German varieties)-but also Anglo-American empiricism and pragmatism (esp. anti-realist
varieties). 38
Once the main strategies of ethics-without-humans have been grasped, it is easy to see
how analogous moves can be made the deanthropize other reaches of philosophy, notably
some of the more chauvinistic enterprises. In general there are two stages: Firstly, as with
morality, replacing humans and human subjects by agents and ideal subjects. And secondly,
as with ethics, delineating significant reaches-philosop hical wildernesses-wh ere agents are
removed, not just off-stage but altogether.
While a few examples of each stage only will be given, it will become evident that the
procedures are general. Consider as an example of the first stage, existentialism, a philosophy
celebrating humans, and their exclusive freedom, and shot through with human chauvinism.
Existentialism is (to quote a convenient caricature)
a philosophy which emphasises man's freedom to act independently of any
laws, natural or otherwise, and according to his own choice. It is a free will
philosophy which can be seen as 'a protest against views of the world and
policies ... in which humans are regarded as the helpless playthings of
historical forces, or as wholly determined by the regular operation of natural
38
Deep Ecology', Australasian Journal of Philosophy vol.71, No 4: December 1993.
There is a residual serious problem here, as to why existence is so important. Why do actual
humans and existent tigers matter, not merely virtual ones or possible ones. What is it about
existence? There are many items which it would be better did not exist, such as devils, helicopters
(for the most part), pollution, erosion and so on. Existence, of favoured sorts, makes for richness,
which is a high (if defeasible) virtue.
Sartre's philosophy is rendolent with human chauvinism: e.g. Critique of Dialectical Reason p.8.
as regards destruction and destroy, is an amazing piece of human chauvinism. While humans
may have a greater potentiality for production of value than most other animals, many humans
also have a far greater potentiality for evil than most other animals. Historically, the evil
producing capacity has dominated. Another example of Sartre's anthropocentism is his
"philosophy of the present".
Marx's philosophy is similarly rendolent. Productivity is human productivity... . For almost
random examples from anti-realism, see DP.
19
processes' (Encyclopaedia Britannica 1978). This anti-determinist
perspective is, again, connected with the question of objectivity.
Existentialists hold that the only objective external fact independent of the
control of human beings is the fact of their being brought into existence, and
that death will one day come to terminate that existence. In all other
respects it is they who are in control. There are no outside independent
laws, of economics, history, nature or whatever, which they cannot deny or
shape for themselves. Thus we are all free to choose how we will behave
and develop and how we will shape society and nature. It follows that the
consequences of our actions are down to us, and therefore if they are
unpleasant that is our fault-not the fault of outside forces or external laws.
There are no excuses for our not thinking and acting for ourselves and we
are 'condemned' to be free because everything is theoretically permitted to
us and we therefore carry a heavy burden of responsibility for what we do.
As Sartre put it, 'Man is responsible for what he is. The first effect of
existentialism is that it puts every man in possession of himself as he is, and
places the entire responsibility for existence squarely on his shoulders' ....
We have a duty to face up to this, and not to base our actions thoughtlessly
on what is said to be prescribed/or us ('laws' of society, of economics, of
nature). That is abdicating responsibility.39
Note the heavy concentration throughout on humans, variously appearing as human beings,
we, us, they, and (in singular musculine form) man and he. But, as before 40 , on the one
boundary, many humans are incapable of what is presumed, the heavy burden of
responsibility and so forth; and, on the other, other agents are, in principle at least, capable of
achieving those relevant sorts of freedom that humans can obtain. It is already apparent that
once the synthetic setting of highly competent humans is exceeded, notions invoked by
existentialism begin to fall apart. For instance, some "wild" animals may enjoy considerable
levels of unreflective unagonised freedom while lacking capacity to bear much responsibility.
Conversely, there are fairly responsible agents, such as some trapped in determined or
deterministic situations, who have no opportunity to exercise freedom.
Accordingly too, though human should be replaced by agent of appropriate sort in
dechauvinized existentialism, it would hardly suffice to substitute for 'human' any of
'responsible agent', 'freedom exercising agent' or similar-though these substitutions effect
some of what was intended, such as exclusion of children, many animals, dementeds and so
on. What sort of agent is appropriate? That existentialism can be seen as trying to explain.
And for the present we can leave it at that, replacing human throughout by the dummy term,
existential agent. This is existentialism partly rectified.
At the same primary stage of dechauvinizing existentialism, connected improvements
could well be sought in existentialism, such as reducing the driven and elitist ethos. In part
this ethos is encouraged by the response of existentialism to what motivates and shapes it,
deterministic arguments; for it sees only such "strong" agents as evading deterministic forces.
The whole business is rather ironic, as the first driven feature is incompatible with full
39
40
Pepper (Roots) pp.118-9; itals in original. Pepper refers to Sartre 1943 and 1946.
As at the beginning of EE, where standard privileged treatment for humans is reviewed and found
wanting.
20
freedom, while the second elitist feature is incompatible with the stress on things human, as
(like elitist religions) only exceptional agents escape. A promising alternative tries direct
confrontation with deterministic arguments, undercutting their scope and grip, and thereby
making room for free action in a range of situations (not everywhere between birth and
death!) for a wide variety of agents, including lesser, less elite, less stressed and sensitive
agents. For the arguments prove vulnerable to selective undermining by careful logical and
analytic procedures, 41 methods existentialism itself is loath to deploy (for all that its approach
rests upon past entrenched argumentation). Insofar as a main motivation for existentialism in
its prevailing ironic form is undiscriminating antideterminism, that motivation too is thereby
collapsed, and room is made for a less demanding more relaxed dechauvinized existentialism.
As for existentialism, so for a range of other subjects inclined to intrude humans as
central to world functioning or intelligibility, a range as apparently diverse as phenomenology
and quantum theory, empiricism and theology, pragmatism and cosmology. Quantum theory
fits into this range because of its received Copenhagen interpretation, cosmology because of
its return to anthropocentrism through adoption of anthropic principles. Both are however
readily freed of human shackles, first by replacing humans by "observers" (which for the most
part can simply be recording devices), and better, secondly to deagentize completely, by
amending interpretation s to dislodge both Copenhagen phenomenolo gy and anthropic
principles. 42 For a larger illustration, consider a popular mixture of versions of
phenomenology (a fuller elaboration again would disentangle versions, all of which however
require similar detoxification).
Phenomenol ogy to which existentialism is related .. .is summed up by
Nietzsche, who said, 'Objectivity is the main enemy of understanding. It
means the myth that there are hard observable facts ... but all the concepts we
employ in describing the world and predicting its behaviour are imposed on
it by ourselves. We have a choice about what view of the world we adopt.'
... Phenomenology is not just a philosophy which implies that we are not
subject to external laws, imposed by and through forces independent of
ourselves. It holds that there actually is no world external to and separate
from ourselves. There is no 'reality' in the sense of there being an external
'real world' divorced from our own consciousness and capable of existing if
we did not exist. Nature cannot exist without ourselves also existing-if we
ceased to be, so would it cease, and vice-versa. Therefore what 'the
environment' is, and is like, is a function of our own subjective construction
of it. The very use of such terms as 'ourselves' and 'human consciousness'
in opposition to terms like 'nature' and 'the environment' is inappropriate
and shows the extent to which we are immersed in positivist science as our
way of seeing the world. For the phenomenologists these terms are
meaningless because there is no separation between ourselves and a 'nature'
or a 'reality'. We and the world are one-a single united entity.
Phenomenology is thus anti-positivist science, opposing ... Cartesian dualism.
It does not deal in laws, or in cause-effect relationships consequent on the
dualism and neither can it be concerned with analysis-brea king the world
into parts ... If we want to know and understand nature we must, as Hume
41
42
For technical details, see Sylvan FWD.
On satisfactory ways of accomplishing this second stage see Sylvan (Cosm. Syn).
21
{
said in his Treatise on Human Nature in 1737, come to full comprehension
of man. For if there is no nature except as structured through human
consciousness, knowledge and truth cannot exist independently of man. 43
As with existentialism, there is a similar enormous exorbitant emphases on humans and things
humans; humans carry everything. But insofar as humans can perform those feats, so better
can a class a appropriate agents, phenomenolo gical agents, who include no incompetents
(who might let this world flicker out of existence, or worse).
Phenomenolo gy is a full immersion human chauvinism. Fashionable contemporary
empiricisms, normally taken as rivals to phenomenolo gy, are incomplete immersion
analogues. While a few properties, primary properties of basic physics, are separated out as
human independent, the rest, the phenomenolo gical mass, are categorised as responsedependent, and treated phenomenologically. 44 Take, for example, aesthetic features, which
include certain ecological features. Nowadays humans can grow up with the assumption that
aesthetic qualities, indeed all "response dependent" qualities, are features of humans, not in
any way objective.
So it can be seriously, if ridiculously, hypothesized that what is
(considered) beautiful, for instance of depends on how the human gene-pool is composed. As
before, humans are readily displaced in favour of appropriate agents. But, for the most part,
these agents too are otiose.
While the first stage 1s the main stage with agentocentric philosophies like
extistentialism, there is a second stage, which comprises significantly more than pointing out
how much, how much of importance, such philosophies leave out by their narrow
concentration. What is left out includes, to begin, all those times and places where there are
no agents, rich worlds, devoid of relevant agents, and the like. But that is only the beginning
of the business. For agents have been infiltrated or inserted in all sorts of settings where they
have no business to be or to transact.
Against the ancient and formerly honorable practice of agent invocation, pushed
primarily for explanatory purposes, 45 agent detachment and agent elimination campaigns have
periodically been mounted (e.g. conspicuously , but not only, in classic Greece, when it
became clearly appreciated that there could be causes without agents, during the
Enlightenmen t, and in Frege' s propositional ization program). Deagentizatio n, typically
coupled with deanthropization, can be, and should be, pushed much further. Agents, often
evidence of immature, even primitive, philosophy, still lurk everywhere in philosophy.
Agent-detach ment themes, still struggling against an unenlightened opposition, include:
objects, including worlds, without perceivers or sensors, nonexistent items without
conceivers, propositions without proposers, assumptions without assumers, values without
43
44
45
Pepper p.199 (where references are supplied). We shall not stop off for expository adjustment or
for any critique of this material. For main elements of such a critique, see however DP chapter 11
and JB.
Thus thesis that all properties are response dependent merges empiricism with European
phenomenology.
Deluded explanatory purposes, for agents themselves have in turn to be explained.
I
22
t
valuers, causation without causers (or intentional agents), organisation without organisers,
wilderness without wilderness managers, land (or property) without owners or stewards,
regulation without regulators, selection without selectors, and purposes without purposers. 46
But without humans who does philosophy? Well, in the old days, God of course, most
gods, the Devil, demiurges, gifted spirits and so on. At any time duly accomplished agents.
While it is easy to see how ethics and philosophy could in principle flourish given only
suitably accomplished agents, and no humans, namely the agents do something like what a
few humans hereabouts do, still it may be less easy for many to see how these subjects can
function without agents. But it is straightforward, is it not? A philosophy stands as a system
of propositions. And propositions do not need agents, proposers, or whatever. Nor do
systems.
It is here that blockage may occur, for two reasons: First, because of the idealistic idea
that there are no statements without staters. Second, because of the mistaken assumption that
a system of propositions standing on its own involves an obnoxious platonism. No such
assumption is made. Third, part of the struggle has been conducted before, in the tussle
between psychologism and its opposite in logic and associated regions (e.g. mathematics,
philosophy of mathematics etc.), in the tussle between Husserl and Frege (to name two
prominent parties). Although the issues have been rejoined more recently, it is still widely
supposed that anti-psychologism triumphed. Its success is, to some extent, mere appearance.
For all that, anti-psychologism is here extended much further, right across philosophy.
Appendix. 1. Examples showing divergence of utilitarianism from consequentialism.
Consider two different actions with some set of consequence s, one (A) done
deliberately, one (B) unintended. Then suppose, for one sort of case, the outcome is
disastrous. Not only is A normally regarded as much worse than B, e.g. arson than a naturally
occurring fire such as lightening strike, but further fuller utility assessments should give
analogous results, e.g. the satisfaction of the arsonist could be given a high negative rating.
Utilitarianism itself is but a well-tempered egoism: egoism extended to substituting
others. That cannot so plausibly be charged of consequentialism.
Utilitarianism has been associated with the "greed is good" ideology of the 1980s. The
association has point (so Singer tries, desperately, to disassociate utilitarianism). Suppose it is
said that the 80s, were a decade of greed (as so depicted in many movies) but the 90s is a
decade of ethics (despite counterevidence). But nothing has changed in underlying ideologies,
in ethics or economics!
Appendix 2. Inadequacy of standard ethics.
The inadequacy of standard ethics for green purposes has been recognised, if obliquely
and perversely, by many critics of the idea of (deep) green ethics (e.g. McCloskey). They
46
The very controversial tlast theme is argued in Sylvan 90 [purpose], where most of these various
detachment themes are assembled. Obviously there are many more such themes.
23
l
have proceeded to argue that there couldn't be such an ethics because none of the standard
ethics would serve. But the argument fails because standard ethics does not exhaust ethics.
There are some prospects of a general proof of inadequacy from what has been
developed so far. Standard forms are restricted to proper subsets of agents, whereas ethics in
full flower applies to all agents. Standard ethics leaves out much of the subject, all the deep
part.
References
William Grey in 'Anthropocentrism and Deep Ecology', Australasian Journal of Philosophy
vol.71, No 4: December 1993.
ON THE VALUE CORE OF DEEP-GREEN THEORY
Deep-green theory is a deep environmental theory, with much in common with deep
ecology. Like deep ecology, it stands in significant ideological opposition to the dominant
technocratic-industrial way. But, even more than deep ecology, deep-green theory aims to
supply a comprehensive alternative environmental philosophy (in the full senses of those
atrophied terms, esp philosophy ). It seeks to accomplish this, furthermore, without
accumulating the amount of philosophical rubbish deep ecology regularly attracts. For, to
insert a key difference between these ecocentric theories in a deliberately prejudical way: deepgreen theory resembles a deep ecology with the pseudo-scientific garbage removed,
reorganised into a tight, coherent and more comprehensive theory. Deep-green theory, which
has roots that stretch back about as far as its much publicized neighbour, accordingly merits
elaboration separate from deep ecology, which in any case lacks a well-thought-through
valuational and ethical basis. This essay aims to uncover the value theory of deep-green
theory, exposing thereby one central area of deep-green theory. Though the value theory is
(inevitably) abstract, it issues in what is more concrete, such as practical ecological directives,
potentially destabilizing prevailing policies and institutions.
At the core of deep-green theory, as of authentic deep ecology, lies a value theory. A
fundamental theme thereof, part of what makes these positions deep, is that a range of
environmental items are valuable in themselves, directly and irreducibly so, so that their value
does not somehow reduce to or emerge from something else, such as features of certain valuers
or what counts for them. Value then does not answer back in some way to humans, or sentient
creatures (or other value-responsive classes), their interests, uses, preferences, or such like.
Many natural items such as forests and rivers, mountains and seashores, are, as it is often put
(without however any commitment thereby to dubious essentialist or absolute objectivist
positions), intrinsically valuable. They are valuable in their own right - irrespective of whether
they are interesting or useful (to any intentional operators, themselves interesting or useful or
not), indeed whether or not there exist any valuers. Value spreads through and reaches across
the natural domain; it is not bounded by mind or linkages with subjective states; nor does it
stop with sentience, or associated pyschological features like satisfaction; nor (pace deep
ecology) does it end at life; it observes no such compromising bounds. Although value is
distributed richly if irregularly throughout nature, and accordingly may be found in nature, it is
not encapsulated in some isolable natural feature, such as life or sentience, or even in defeasible
ecological values such as richness, diversity and variety (and so subject to a different,
naturalistic, reduction). But of course such ecological features afford criteria for value, and
should be represented in recipes (such as "objective functions") for assessing total value.
From the presence of natural things of value, and accordingly of natural values, it is a
short, though controversial, step to the important conclusion that there can be values without
valuers. For valuers are sentient creatures with appropriate capacities, but things of value may
precede and succeed all such valuers; tfiat is, these things can persist, their values intact,
without any valuers. As there can be shapes without any shape-perceivers, and concepts with
conceivers, so there can be values without valuers. (The theme, like others advanced, can be
backed up by more detailed argument and by formal proof, neither attempted here.) In
valuational relations then, relating valuers as subjects with values as objects, both ends of
relations have independent standing; though interrelated, as the descriptions deliberately chosen
suggest, either can stand without the other. It is a fashionable mistake, which cannot however
be got away with, to try to collapse this relation - usually to endeavour to soak up values into a
modification of valuing subjects (e.g. as a predicate 'relation-to-values', in which inconvenient
values are locked away), not to remove valuers, considered unproblematic, from view. The
mistaken procedure is in fact just one important example of an archetypal reduction of
mainstream modern philosophy, of relations to functions; other examples, locking undesired
objects away within functions, are those rendering wholes (such as ecosystems and organised
structures) functions of their parts, and, under functionalism, minds and types of intentionality,
including value direction, as functions of bodies or their parts such as brains. Values are not,
and do not disappear into, functions of valuers.
A connected corollary is that values are not apart from the actual world, something
"projected" or imposed on it by a favoured class of valuers, something colouring (and even
emotionall y clouding) the otherwise valueless physical world, in rather the way that
reductionistic materialism tries (erroneously) to construe colour itself as projected onto a
colourless physical world. Of course this projection effort, never adequately explicated, does
not succeed, on its own, in removing values. For they remain, left as some function of the
valuers. To try to bulldoze through this difficulty, a second reduction is invoked, of evaluative
features of valuers to "natural" features, commonly preferences, desires or such like. The
second reduction runs into obstacles that halt even the naturalistic bulldozers (e.g. naturalistic
and related fallacies), but the first reduction is the critical one in removing key environmental
values, such as those of wilderness and wild things, which become valuable only in the focus
of certain sentient beholders, and not in and for them self. This reduction too is blocked by
insuperable difficulties. On the one side, like the parallel proposed phenomonalist reduction of
material objects to sensations, the reduction never achievers satisfactory support or even a
satisfactory statement. On the other, it is counterexampled by various modellings or thoughtexperiments revealing intuitively-assessed value in situations devoid of valuers (as e.g. in the
well-known Last Person argument). Values are not apart from the actual world, then, merely
projected onto it by valuers, or else locked up in certain valuers (in the fashion of Carterian
intensions ). Values are part of the world; they are objects in the domain of actual and other
worlds. But they are not of course material objects; creatures will not fall over them any more
than they will trip over shadows or shapes.
Value like the shape and taste, is an3attribute, which things have or may lack, and which
furthermore creatures can recognise or may fail to discern. Thus value is, like colour and taste
and their determinate forms (red, acidic, etc), a universa l , distributed across things,
individuals and wholes. Like shape and colour, value is a high-level universal. The
comparison of value with shape is decidedly more helpful than the standard, but exhausted,
comparison of value with colour, or of goodness with colour determinates such as redness or
yellow. For example, shape is not bound by a set of determinates as colour is in the specific
colours, but comes in a spectacular variety of forms, not totally or linearly ordered (as in a
rainbow), or contracted to some primary set (as in colour traingles); shapes like value pertain to
wholes as well as particulars, and links with gestalts rather better than colour; shape
discrimination is more culture dependent and sensitive; shape is, or was, a primary property,
and thereby more immune to reductionist strategies than secondary properties such as colour,
which is, under physicalism, prized off objects and allegedly relocated in creatures or in their
interrelation with colourless physical things. Shapes like values, can be vague, indeterminate;
that does not prevent things, perhaps unique things, exemplifying them. But naturally the
anology can only be extended so far. Shapes can be approximated by polygons, values cannot;
shapes are regularly perceived through sense perception, by vision or touch especially, values
are not, but are differently apprised. Value is its own thing, not something else; it is what it is
and does what is does, and not something else, like some specialised mathematical or economic
thing. It does not contract to some mark of value or to what it comes down to in highly
restricted settings; most important, it does not disappear in the style of modem economics into
(expected) utility or into just two economic forms, value-in-use monetarily and value-inexchange (price). Value means what it means, and has meant: worth; and it ties with general
assessments of merit and demerit, goodness or badness, not an economic or other cut-down
thereof. Price, for example, may fail entirely to reflect worth, it may have little to do with
goodness of product.
The powerful drive to reduce or deny values has several sources. part of the motivation
for reduction of value springs from epistemological worries, concerning how values can be
ascertained and known, so far as they are (subjective translation proposals are than a direct
evaluative counterpart of phenomenalism). Part derives from supposedly problematic cultural
and subcultural relativity (whence the attempt to impose values by identification of value with
some favoured feature, and cultural or economic imperialism). Part of the motivation comes
from more sweeping ideologic al commitments, such as the varieties of materiali sm
(physicalism esp.) or scientism.
As has become apparent, attempted reductions of value come too in a variety of forms subjective, which made use of psychological features, such as desires, interests, emotions, and
the like or subjective aggregations, such as community preferences or utility; or objectiviely
naturalistic, which enrol value-making characteristics such as richness or evolutionary
development as value - consequential, w~ch consider only outcomes, or purely motivational,
which consider only attitudes and ignore leads and outcomes - straightforward, as in translation
proposals for translating value judgements into reducing statements; or oblique, as in
supervenience propositions (no variations in value without underwriting variations in reducing
features), or obscure, as in unarticulated projection claims. Values are not well accommodated
within theses schemes, or accommodated at all. The idea is abroad however that science can
offer a reduction, can sweep up value along with all other knowledge, where philosophy has
conspicuously failed. Unfortunately for such optimistic ideas, fortunately perhaps for deeper
thought, current science, physics especially, does not have much to say at all, or of merit,
about values, and if it did reductions through it would be circular. But, to the contrary, there is
a long-standing pretence that science gets along "well" without values, in appropriate value-free
fashion. Nowadays it is increasingly realised that such value-freedom is a myth, that much of
what passes as science is heavily value-penetrated. While those engaged purely in purer
science may have the illusion of an escape from value, there is no escape.
Though deep-green value theory is thoroughly nonreductive, it does not sacrifice
warranted claims to scientific and logical adequacy thereby. The reductionistic dichotomies are
avoided and repudiated. Value reduces neither in subjective nor objective fashion; it does not
reduce. Evaluative judgements are certainly not subjective; but nor are they objection in an
absolutist sense; they are nonjective, that is, neither. Somewhat similarly, evaluation of an act
does not reduce to assessing consequences; nor does it come down to an assessment of
motives; both may matter.
In any case, reductions do not succeed, as a copious literature, littered with failed
attempts, meanderingly establishes. Nor are they generally desirable, since mostly shallow,
aiming at a reduction to features of some privileged class presented as ideal (i.e. core value is
covertly assumed). Nor are they needed; explanation and assessment do not require reduction.
Evaluations may be arrived at, and value systems expanded, by enhancement methods, which
consists in emotional presentation (as under Meinong's phenomenological account) organised
by coherence methods. The methodology in fact resembles that sometimes proposed for
acquisition of scientific information. As with accumulated empirial information, which can be
extended through presentational input and assessment for overall coherence, so further
evaluations may be arrived at and assessed through a combination of presentational and
coherence procedures. At the (marginal) stage where the next round of evaluations is
undertaken, the following active ingredients figure, in an idealised breakdown:- Firstly, a
background stock of judgements and experience will have been accumulated or inherited; in
principle all of this is revisable, and some may be up for reassessment. Apart from the
background, which enters in assessing overall coherence of system, what is involved is,
secondly, emotional presentation, which corresponds to further perceptional and sense data
input, and, thirdly and not independent, coherence processing , which supplies the
interpretational and rationalisational comp~nents. At bottom, parallelling perception in the case
of empirical information, is emotional presentation, gut or visceral reaction in starker forms of
acceptance or rejection, but more generally comprehending a variety of sentiments, including
overall well-being, and also relational impressions, such as empathy, identification, and so on.
As a perceiver perceives shapes and taster tastes and goodness, so a valuer feels value and
disvalue.
The basis of perceptio n is sensation , the basis of valuation is emotion.
Apprehension of value is seated in emotional, and especially visceral, presentation; but what is
apprehended is not to be confused with its apprehension any more than what is perceived. All
the warnings about sensation as an information source have to be repeated with heavy
emphasis as regards emotional presentation; for example, reliability cannot be guaranteed,
interference with presentation through drugs, alcohol, temporary excitement or other inputs
may render it dubious or unacceptable, conditioning may have occurred, including substantial
cultural conditioning (so that a person is terrified by huntsmen spiders but not sickened by
bloody massacres of dolphins or seals). As with perception, there are checks on emotional
presentation, such as constancy over time and after reflection.
Emotional presentation, supplying in particular inclusions and exclusions or prohibitions,
is but the basis of reflective evaluation and value apprehension. The further critical part,
coherence processing, builds on the basis taking account of other inputs or controls including
background (which supplies relevant components of already adopted judgements, assimilated
subculture and so forth) and constraints (such as substitutional requirements like impartiality,
e.g. whether considered judgements hold for substitute valuers, and uniformity, e.g. whether
similar acts are judged in similar ways). The coherence procedure consists, in essence, of
asking whether the next or a relevant judgemen t fits together with what has been accepted,
while meeting constraints, without leading to what has been rejected or excluded. If it does fit
it is added to the included side, otherwise it is sent to the excluded side. (The familiar ethical
practice of devising cases and comparing them with the cases in hand can be worked in under
this procedure.) Because an aim of this rationalisation procedure is achievement of some sort
of equilibrium - admitting what is included, while excluding what is unsupported, fails to gain
support, is emotionally spoken against - such coherence procedures have gained currency in
North America under the rubric "reflectiv e equilibrium". Observe, however, that any
equilibriu m gained at some stage may be quickly lost, as new types of problems arise and
further information enters. To be sure, the whole methodology (like the parallel methodology
of a coherence theory of truth) is highly idealised, and only practicably usable in rudimentary
parts. It does however surmount a major obstacle for value theory; it reveals how in principle a
nonreduc tionistic value theory can function. Whether that theory is an appropria te
environmental one or not will depend however above all on the presentational input, the extent
to which environmental sensitivity enters and is not dismissed.
Enhancement methods reveal too tRat value systems are not uniquely determined, any
more than other comprehensive theoretical frameworks, such as those intended to reflect truth.
There can be, there evidently are, rival value systems, measuring up to rigorous rationality
requirements, much as there are rival logics, rival physical and biological theories, and rival
coherent religions. Chauvinistic systems, narrow or shallow value systems, which take no
requisite account of many environmental items, likewise cannot be excluded on rational or
straight logical grounds. Unfortunately such systems remain in ascendancy, and tend to
dominate social practices; in recent times economism, a narrow type of utilitarianism, has all
too obviously dominated much terrestial practice. While such value frameworks are open to
severe criticism, for instance as chauvinistic, as violating universality requirements of morality
in the case of economism, they do not succumb to definitive refutation (for the reason that
requirements of morality, of universalizability of principle, impartiality and so on, can be
repudiated; immoral or amoral frameworks are still value systems). Of course a range of
argumentative, educational and persuasive techniques, of varying equality, can be put to work
to move valuers who adhere to other structures, often enough successfully. Emotional
presentation of environmental items, by way of new experience and information, is important
among these. In short, much can be done to shift or alter values, though as usual effectiveness
cannot be guaranteed.
The availability of rival value systems and prospect of yet others, while it implies a
certain desirable (and also troublesome) pluralism, does not mean relativism. Neither deep
green theory nor authentic deep ecology espouse any superficially easy relativism. From their
viewpoint, rival narrower and shallower systems are definitely inferior , and marked down
accordingly, while economism is an onathema which does not even make the moral grade (e.g.
too many principles stop at state boundaries). However a critical pluralism does acknowledge,
and offer a place, in the wider scheme of things for other positions, even if as less favoured or
satisfactory. Politically then, deep positions can allow for, what makes good sense in these
times of numbers, alliances. Hence the point of a green alliance, combining green positions,
against still prevailing anti-environmentalism and economism.
The value system pluralism of deep-green theory interpenetrates not only social and
political domains above, but also metaphysics traditionally placed below. In the underlying
metaphysical pluralism of deep-green theory, value runs very deep - so deep that even truth
depends in part upon it. For not merely selection of a correct comprehensive theory or worldview, but choice of associated actual world, is a value dependent choice. That choice, insofar
as it is consciously made, of world conceptualisation and structure, is a constrained choice,
constrained by informational inputs, such as those of refined perception. But in as much as it
is rationally accomplished, that choice, like other choices of structure, proceeds according to a
standard value-information analysis (regularly oversimplified however to a preference-
information or even desire-belief modellin1); that is, to get to the salient point, it involves value
essentially.
Truth and value are then intertwined. Their relation, not one of identity (for contrary to
idealism, there are many relations not identical with identity), can now be stated more
accurately than the poets have managed. Neither is one; both are plural, and differently so. In
certain significant respects the metaphysics resembles the value theory. For example, as the
value theory is nonreductionistic, so also is the metaphysics; in particular, there is a noreduction theme that neither parts nor wholes reduce eliminably to one another, as opposed to
atomistic and holistic views of environmental interrelations. As the value theory is pluralistic
so also is the metaphysics; what needs to be discerned, in place of absolutism, is a plurality of
worlds and of associated truth characterisations. A main aim of a thoroughgoing
environmental theory is to displace very destructive dominant ideasystems, regularly presented
as absolute, which incorporate both value and truth themes concerning the environment and its
organisation.
Much of deep-green theory devolves then from the abstract value theory, beginning (to
take a more accessible route than the metaphysical way) with a more comprehensive ethical
theory, which includes as well as a specific axiological theory, elaborating environmental
values and virtues, a deontic theory, supplying obligations, rights, taboos, and similar. For
example, given that a certain wild river is intrinsically valuable, as we can verify by on-site
experience and enhancement methods, and given that we duly respect that value, as deontic
principles will tell us we should, then we are not free to do as we like with that river, to dam it
with concrete, to channel it within concrete, stripping it of its riverine ecosystems. But that
does not preclude respectful use of the river, swimming or sailing quitely in its waters, and so
on. Value thus guides action, practice, and use; it is the ground also upon which principles are
formulated, principles that are assessed and validated by way of enhancement methods.
Important among these are non-interference principles, which exclude unwarranted interference
with other preference-havers and unwarranted damage, ill-treatment, or devaluation of items of
value. Such deontic principles circumscribe environmentally-limited freedom of action. Given
non-interference principles, a major shift in onus of proof from homocentricthics takes place.
What is required now is that reasons be givenfor interfering with the environment, rather than
reasons for not doing so.
Also direct responsibility for environmental interference or
modification falls upon those who would interfere or significantly modify, who would tread
heavily on the land. Non-interference does not preclude use, only too much use and use of too
much. What it does lead to is the theme that, where use occurs, it should be careful and
respectful use.
An important respect thesis regarding environmental items is founded on such
interference principles and the no-reduction theme: namely
•
•
8
not to put others (other preference havers) into a dispreferred state for no good reason;
not to jeopardis e the well being of natural objects or systems without good reason;
•
not to damage or destroy items which, while they cannot literally be put into a
dispreferred state, can be damaged or destroyed or have their value eroded or impaired.
These apply to ecosystem s, their surrounds, their parts, and so on. The mere making of
further excess profits, or similar economic excuses, are not good reasons. Such a respect
thesis form part of the ecological outlook of deep-green theory.
As permissib ility, obligatio n and respect principles can be explained through the
valuations reached on the theory, so too can rights and other significant components of morality
be explained and justified through, but again not reduced to, values. For example, a creature
has a right to something if it has a valid title thereto established from correct moral principles.
Candidates for the parameter "something" provide a familiar list: freedom from unnecessary
suffering, respectful treatment, satisfaction of basic needs, and so on. Such rights accordingly
derive from and reinforce corresponding deontic principles.
Deep-gre en ethical theory is much more than just another non-redu ctionist ethical
theory, which highlights ecological values and virtues, and so forth. It changes the character
and shape of ethical enterprise. Perhaps most strikingly, it removes humans as such from the
centre of the ethical stage (or exclusive occupation of the stage). The biological concept of
being human is not, contrary to prevailing humanism, a highly significant ethical category. To
elevate it to such is to fall into human chauvinis m, a type of class chauvini sm which
unwarrantedly discriminates in favour of the human species. The prevailing chauvinis m is
avoided through a natural annular model, which connects ethical characteristics directly with the
categorie s of items that can have them. Relevant categories include those marked out by
features like: having well-being, preference-having, rights-holding, contractual-capability, and
so on, categories not necessarily connected with any particular species. Hitherto virtually all
Western ethical theories have not merely so limited ethical matters predominately to inter-human
affairs, but have been blantantly chauvinistic, exhibiting a substantial, discrimin ately and
unjustifiably bias in favour of humans (of certain privileged humans). These sorts of systems
should be superseded; it is not a matter of simple adjustments or extensions.
Deep-gre en value theory, as developed, implies the inadequacy of prevailing social,
political and economic arrangements and institutions, both those of a mixed capitalistic kind and
those of a more state socialistic cast. They are the (devious) product of inferior value
frameworks which take quite insufficient account of environmental considerations and values.
But explainin g their deficiencies, and indicating more satisfactory green alternatives and
replacements, is another chapter in the elaboration of deep-green theory.
9
*
Richard Sylvan*
RMB 683
B ungendore NSW 2621
For more on deep-green theory and deep ecology, see for instance essays in and work referred to in the
Green Series, i.e. Discussion Papers in Environme ntal Philosophy, RSSS, Australian National
University, Canberra.
Annex
1. Most people inherit their value framework along with their culture. Many never do any
substantial overhaul. Many indeed are not active or responsible valuers. But in these respects,
values are not so different from other things. Some people are poor judges of shape; many
never learn to distinguish plants, or to discriminate among wines.
Likewise for other choices, options, major changes, metaphysical and even political.
Mostly that a choice has been made or inherited and is incorporated in the subculture is not
noticed, along with its not been observed how arbitrary many of the choices and resulting
structures are (in Foucault has emphasized). Of course it is often not in the interests of the
power elite, who control media outlets, etc., that this sort of arbitrariness should be widely
known, and alternative structures considered and perhaps experimented with.
Choices occur where distinctive circumstance prevail. For instance, there is serious
scarcity; food supplies in particular are threatened (e.g. with being out of reach is price, with
pollution, etc.). Differently, circumstances lead to conversions, as when a new ideology
sweeps through, enthusiam generated by some charismatic figures.
/
bits from chapter 2
There is another important elasticity. In contemporary ethical theory there is a concerted
attempt to build on universalizability requirement or the equivalent into the very motion of ethics.
The evident result is that selfish systems of induction and conduct, systematic egoisms for
instance are refused the title of ethics, and as an important corollary questions like Why be
ethical? become vexed. 1 Given, in particular, that any such "universality" requirement is
problematic in this formulation, and typically limited, chauvinistically to persons, a superior
course proceeds to distinguish: between ethics as already characterised (reportively) and its
subclass, universalizable ethics. As impartial ethical do have much to recommend them, let us
coin a convenient portmonteau term condensing the chancy "universalerable ethics", namely
euthics. (Conveniently then an euthical supports unethical, which is what from a properly
ethical stance it is!)
There is undoubtedly some pressure to have ethics and morality extend beyond a single or
isolated individual (even so, a Causal ethics is understood, as is egoisticmorality). But that
pressure does not extend very far; and such notions as those of a tribal morality and an
upperclass ethics are not defective on significance grounds, even if they are objectional on
substantive grounds.
Such restricted ethics are not however immediately ruled out by such requirements as that
like cases be assessed alike, and that differences of assessment be based on relevant
differences. 2 For a tribalist or racist can respond that a foreigner is not like a Greek, or that there
are relevant differences between whites and blacks (intelligence has been proposed as such a
difference, when skin pigmentation appeared a merely superficial difference). These sorts of
responses, which were longer accepted, are no longer acceptable, because the differences put up
are not considered ethically relevant differences (correctly enough, though ethical relevance itself
lacks an adequate explanation).
Singer's main argument for a much wider point of view, universality, commits in a
extensive appel to authority (p.11).
What is offered: an appeal to usage.
'the notion of ethics carries with it the idea of something bigger than the individual'. [It
often does, but it may not.] 'If I am to defend my conduct in ethical grounds, I cannot point
only to the benefits it brings me. I wont address myself to a larger audience' (p.10). That
On both, narrowing and vexing, see Singer lmpractual ethics (Singer aquates moral with
ethical). Singer does not really have an answer to Why be moral? though he thinks it not a bad idea; mainly he
tries to put down shuffles that have been presented or decisive.
2
These requirements are presented byu Attfield as basic formal requirements of reason (p.6). No
doubt they are, though they appear to figure in no logic of ethics yet formulated.
depends on the conduct concerned. More important the audience does not need to be much
larger, certainly not universal: my family or law will suffice often enough.
J.
From Chap 4
Evaluations may be arrived at, and value systems expanded, by enhancement methods,
which consists in emotional presentation (as under Meinong's phenomenological account)
organised by coherence methods. The methodology in fact resembles that sometimes proposed
for acquisition of scientific information. As with accumulated empirial information, which can
be extended through presentational input and assessment for overall coherence, so further
evaluations may be arrived at and assessed through a combination of presentational and
coherence procedures. At the (marginal) stage where the next round of evaluations is
undertaken, the following active ingredients figure, in an idealised breakdown:- Firstly, a
background stock of judgements and experience will have been accumulated or inherited; in
principle all of this is revisable, and some may be up for reassessment. Apart from the
background, which enters in assessing overall coherence of system, what is involved is,
secondly, emotional presentation, which corresponds to further perceptional and sense data
input, and, thirdly and not independent, coherence processing, which supplies the
interpretational and rationalisational components. At bottom, parallelling perception in the case
of empirical information, is emotional presentation, gut or visceral reaction in starker forms of
acceptance or rejection, but more generally comprehending a variety of sentiments, including
overall well-being, and also relational impressions, such as empathy, identification, and so on.
As a perceiver perceives shapes and taster tastes and goodness, so a valuer feels value and
disvalue. The basis of perception is sensation, the basis of valuation is emotion. Apprehension
of value is seated in emotional, and especially visceral, presentation; but what is apprehended is
not to be confused with its apprehension any more than what is perceived. All the warnings
about sensation as an information source have to be repeated with heavy emphasis as regards
emotional presentation; for example, reliability cannot be guaranteed, interference with
presentation through drugs, alcohol, temporary excitement or other inputs may render it
dubious or unacceptable, conditioning may have occurred, including substantial cultural
conditioning (so that a person is terrified by huntsmen spiders but not sickened by bloody
massacres of dolphins or seals). As with perception, there are checks on emotional
presentation, such as constancy over time and after reflection.
Emotional presentation, supplying in particular inclusions and exclusions or prohibitions,
is but the basis of reflective evaluation and value apprehension. The further critical part,
coherence processing, builds on the basis taking account of other inputs or controls including
background (which supplies relevant components of already adopted judgements, assimilated
subculture and so forth) and constraints (such as substitutional requirements like impartiality,
e.g. whether considered judgements hold for substitute valuers, and uniformity, e.g. whether
similar acts are judged in similar ways). The coherence procedure consists, in essence, of
asking whether the next or a relevant judgement fits together with what has been accepted, while
meeting constraints, without leading to what has been rejected or excluded. If it does
fit it is
added to the included side, otherwise it is sent to the excluded side. (The familiar ethical
practice
of devising cases and compari ng them with the cases in hand can be worked in under
this
procedure.) Because an aim of this rationalisation procedure is achievement of some
sort of
equilibr ium - admitting what is included, while excluding what is unsupported, fails
to gain
support, is emotionally spoken against - such coherence procedures have gained currency
in
North Americ a under the rubric "reflect ive equilibr ium". Observe , howeve r, that
any
equilibr ium gained at some stage may be quickly lost, as new types of problem s arise
and
further information enters. To be sure, the whole methodology (like the parallel methodo
logy of
a coherence theory of truth) is highly idealised, and only practicably usable in rudimentary
parts.
It does howeve r surmou nt a major obstacle for value theory; it reveals how in principl
e a
nonredu ctionist ic value theory can function . Whethe r that theory is an appropr
iate
environmental one or not will depend however above all on the presentational input, the extent
to
which environmental sensitivity enters and is not dismissed.
end
The availability of rival value systems and prospect of yet others, while it implies a certain
desirabl e (and also troublesome) pluralism, does not mean relativism. Neither deep
green
theory nor authenti c deep ecology espouse any superficially easy relativism. From
their
viewpoint, rival narrowe r and shallow er systems are definitely inferior , and marked
down
accordingly, while econom ism is an onathema which does not even make the moral grade
(e.g.
too many principles stop at state bo':lndaries). However a critical pluralism does acknow
ledge,
and offer a place, in the wider scheme of things for other positions, even if as less favoured
or
satisfactory. Politically then, deep positions can allow for, what makes good sense in
these
times of numbers, alliances. Hence the point of a green alliance, combining green position
s,
against still prevailing anti-environmentalism and economism.
The value system pluralis m of deep-green theory interpenetrates not only social and
political domains above, but also metaphysics traditionally placed below. In the underly
ing
metaphysical pluralis m of deep-green theory, value runs very deep - so deep that even
truth
depends in part upon it. For not merely selection of a correct comprehensive theory or
worldview, but choice of associated actual world, is a value dependent choice. That choice,
insofar
as it is conscio usly made, of world conceptualisation and structure, is a constrai ned
choice,
constrained by informational inputs, such as those of refined perception. But in as much
as it is
rationally accomplished, that choice, like other choices of structure, proceeds accordin
g to a
standard value-in formati on analysis (regular ly oversim plified howeve r to a preferen
ceinformation or even desire-belief modelling); that is, to get to the salient point, it involves
value
essentially.
Truth and value are then intertwined. Their relation, not one of identity (for contrary to
idealism, there are many relations not identical with identity), can now be stated more accurately
than the poets have managed. Neither is one; both are plural, and differently so. In certain
significant respects the metaphysics resembles the value theory. For example, as the value
theory is nonreductionistic, so also is the metaphysics; in particular, there is a no-reduction
theme that neither parts nor wholes reduce eliminably to one another, as opposed to atomistic
and holistic views of environmental interrelations. As the value theory is pluralistic so also is
the metaphysics; what needs to be discerned, in place of absolutism, is a plurality of worlds and
of associated truth characterisations. A main aim of a thoroughgoing environmental theory is to
displace very destructive dominant ideasystems, regularly presented as absolute, which
incorporate both value and truth themes concerning the environment and its organisation.
Much of deep-green theory devolves then from the abstract value theory, beginning (to
take a more accessible route than the metaphysical way) with a more comprehensive ethical
theory, which includes as well as a specific axiological theory, elaborating environmental values
and virtues, a deontic theory, supplying· obligations, rights, taboos, and similar. For example,
given that a certain wild river is intrinsically valuable, as we can verify by on-site experience and
enhancement methods, and given that we duly respect that value, as deontic principles will tell
us we should, then we are not free to do as we like with that river, to dam it with concrete, to
channel it within concrete, stripping it of its riverine ecosystems. But that does not preclude
respectful use of the river, swimming or sailing quitely in its waters, and so on. Value thus
guides action, practice, and use; it is the ground also upon which principles are formulated,
principles that are assessed and validated by way of enhancement methods. Important among
these are non-interference principles, which exclude unwarranted interference with other
preference-havers and unwarranted damage, ill-treatment, or devaluation of items of value.
Such deontic principles circumscribe environmentally-limited freedom of action. Given noninterference principles, a major shift in onus of proof from homocentricthics takes place. What
is required now is that reasons be given for interfering with the environment, rather than
reasons for not doing so. Also direct responsibility for environme ntal interferenc e or
modification falls upon those who would interfere or significantly modify, who would tread
heavily on the land. Non-interference does not preclude use, only too much use and use of too
much. What it does lead to is the theme that, where use occurs, it should be careful and
respectful use.
An important respect thesis regarding environme ntal items is founded on such
interference principles and the no-reduction theme: namely
•
not to put others (other preference havers) into a dis preferred state for no good reason;
•
not to jeopardise the well being of natural objects or systems without good reason;
•
not to damage or destroy items which, while they cannot literally be put into a
dispreferred state, can be damaged or destroyed or have their value eroded or impaired.
These apply to ecosystems, their surrounds, their parts, and so on. The mere making of further
excess profits, or similar economic excuses, are not good reasons. Such a respect thesis form
part of the ecological outlook of deep-green theory.
As permissibility, obligation and respect principles can be explained through the
valuations reached on the theory, so too can rights and other significant components of morality
be explained and justified through, but again not reduced to, values. For example, a creature
has a right to something if it has a valid title thereto established from correct moral principles.
Candidates for the parameter "something" provide a familiar list: freedom from unnecessary
suffering, respectful treatment, satisfaction of basic needs, and so on. Such rights accordingly
derive from and reinforce corresponding deontic principles.
Deep-green ethical theory is much more than just another non-reductionist ethical theory,
which highlights ecological values and virtues, and so forth. It changes the character and shape
of ethical enterprise. Perhaps most strikingly, it removes humans as such from the centre of the
ethical stage (or exclusive occupation of the stage). The biological concept of being human is
not, contrary to prevailing humanism, a highly significant ethical category. To elevate it to such
is to fall into human chauvinism, a type of class chauvinism which unwarrantedly discriminates
in favour of the human species. The prevailing chauvinism is avoided through a natural annular
model, which connects ethical characteristics directly with the categories of items that can have
them. Relevant categories include those marked out by features like: having well-being,
preference-having, rights-holding, contractual-capability, and so on, categories not necessarily
connected with any particular species. Hitherto virtually all Wes tern ethical theories have not
merely so limited ethical matters predominately to inter-human affairs, but have been blantantly
chauvinistic, exhibiting a substantial, discriminately and unjustifiably bias in favour of humans
(of certain privileged humans). These sorts of systems should be superseded; it is not a matter
of simple adjustments or extensions.
Deep-green value theory, as developed, implies the inadequacy of prevailing social,
political and economic arrangements and institutions, both those of a mixed capitalistic kind and
those of a more state socialistic cast. They are the (devious) product of inferior value
frameworks which take quite insufficient account of environmental considerations and values.
But explaining their deficiencies, and indicating more satisfactory green alternatives and
replacements, is another chapter in the elaboration of deep-green theory.
Deep-green theory is a deep environmental theory, with much in common with deep
ecology. Like deep ecology, it stands in significant ideological opposition to the dominant
technocratic-industrial way. But, even more than deep ecology, deep-green theory aims to
supply a comprehensive alternative environmental philosophy (in the full senses of those
atrophied terms, esp philosophy ). It seeks to accomplish this, furthermore, without
accumulating the amount of philosophical rubbish deep ecology regularly attracts. For, to insert
a key difference between these ecocentric theories in a deliberately prejudical way: deep-green
theory resembles a deep ecology with the pseudo-scientific garbage removed, reorganised into a
tight, coherent and more comprehensive theory. Deep-green theory, which has roots that stretch
back about as far as its much publicized neighbour, accordingly merits elaboration separate from
deep ecology, which in any case lacks a well-thought-through valuational and ethical basis.
This essay aims to uncover the value theory of deep-green theory, exposing thereby one central
area of deep-green theory. Though the value theory is (inevitably) abstract, it issues in what is
more concrete, such as practical ecological directives, potentially destabilizing prevailing policies
and institutions.
ETHICS AND METAPHYSICS:
their relevance to one another
There is rich range of incompatible claims about the mutual interelations of the two
ancient subjects. Most of these claims appear mistaken. Sorting out something of what looks
right is a daunting task, a small beginning on which is attempted here.
Initial severe difficulties derive from the vagueness, in determinacy and problematicality
of the relata, both of which are ill-understood by philosophers metaphysics especially. Many
there are who think that metaphyscis coincides with ontology, the study (description,
explanation and understanding) of what exists. 1 The general study of what there is, sistology,
which includes ontology as a very proper part, is only one facet of metaphysics (unless it is
presumed that items somehow supply also all propositions concerning them). For sistology is
the totality of things side of metaphysics, there is also the totality of true propositions side
(propositionology, for a nice term). Metaphysics also comprises the study of the very general
attributes of this and other universe and of what accounts for these attributes (or propositional
functions). In technical terms, then, a metaphysics amount to a very general and
comprehensi ve constrained model; and metaphysics to the plural assembly of these
metaphysics. 2 Each metaphysics will be constrained (as will become clear through examples
given below) through modelling conditions or postulates (which delimit how "altimate reality"
is according to that system).
Metaphysics is sometimes construed more comprehencisvely to include some or all of
epistemology (knowledge of "ultimate reality" for instance), some of or all of other branches of
philosophy, perhaps all of philosophy. Plainly, if metaphysics, so expansively construed,
includes ethics, then their relation is straightforward, metaphysics includes ethics. But we shall
not adopt such construals.
Whereas metaphysics concerns features of universes, ethics is a study of moral values and
principles, and of rules and practices of conduct. A case can be made out that an ethic is
outlined through its distributions of values, in terms of which both deontic features (rights,
obligations, etc) and axiological features (goodness, etc) can be discerned. (Utilitarian can
afford a crude exemplar). So, without loss of generality, I can concentrate on the relation of
value theory to metaphysics.
Now a value theory does not derive from a purely naturalistic metaphysic, by virtue of a
rectified naturalistic fallacy. But, firstly even is a value theory may be influenced or even
construed by such a metaphysics. For example if the theory rules out all but primary qualities
2
What there is according to most Western philosophers, still labouring under the probleminducing Ontological Assumption. For such a confusion of ontology with metaphysics see
Forrest p.3.
For the bsis of this large (and estrageous) technical leap, see DP.
2
as some sort of constructs, the value qualities will have to be explained as constructs,
projections or similar. Secondly, a metaphysics is unlikely to be purely naturalistic.
Metaphysics is not a value-free enterprise; a metaphysics typically presumes a range of
presumptions, including archivative ones (deeper examples include assumptions of primary,
e.g. of certain sorts of objects, of importance, e.g. of what exists, of implicit world selection,
e.g. the world is Newtonian, Copenhagen quantum, or obitives).
An ethics does not determine a meta-ethics or therefore a metaphysics. Nor does the
converse hold. A metaphysics does not in general determine an ethics, but is compatible with
many.
Against the stock determination and priority claims, I want to oppose interaction and no
priority themes. Determination claims are commonplace in philosophers who wish to wield the
big stock of dominant science to settle ethics (or mataethics). For instance Collicott asserts that
"intrinsic value in nature ... remains ... painfully inconsistent with the ... modern scientific
world-view' (Celbration of Robton p.14, similarly p.22, whence
CD 1. Modern scientific metaphysics entails there are no intrinsic values in nature.
This is not a lapse (though soon Collicott will weaken his determination claims) because almost
immediately Collicott goes on to assert
CD2. 'A value neutral nature is ... an immediate inference from the institutionalised
metaphysical foundations of modern science' (p.15).
Given some large assumptions, most conspiciously that the metaphysics involved is that of
British empiricism, the claim CD2 become incontestable. For under that empiricism, as
elaborated by Locke and Hurve, non primary qualities like value and colour are not part of or in
nature, but substantially subjective in character. However insitutionalized those foundations an important issue -
it has since become apparent that there are at least several parts of
operative sciences, such a classical and quantum; namely a core calculus or formalism;
operational rules for connecting the formalism with testable data and making in ..... applications;
and layers of interpretation. It is in these separable, and variable, larger of interpretation that
metaphysical and elaborative princi;es begin to enter conspicuously.
The "institutionalized" interpretation is but one among the interpretations that can be
fitted to classical formalism. It is an interpretation incorperating some major and controverisial
philosophical theories, such as the reference theory and verificationism. Rival interpretations
are feasible and were developed, for instance by the Scottish comon-sense school. Such rival
foundations do not yield a value-free value neutral nature. Collicott calls upon Rolston 'to
provide a persuasive alternative to the integral set of Carterian-Gohblein-Humean assumptions
that render the subjective provenance of value so fundamental to the modern scientific outlook'
(p.16). But Rolston hardly needs to do any such thing 3 : it has already been done, in various
3
Rolston makes giving an appropriate interpretation for more difficult than he need by conceeding
"seconddoary" qualities to the reductionistic opposition.
Thus, regressively: 'the greenness of the tree is in my hand, but it looks as though the tree is
3
ways, and, in any case, as Collicott soon observes, 'the modern scientific worldview is
obsolete' (p.19). The property for a full value-in-nature theory are little better under postmodern quantum theory, Collicott however insinuates, then they were before. Under a
Copenhagen interpretations, which he adopts, prospects look worse.
Abruptly too Collicott switches from a determination thesis, such as CD, to a slacker and
more plausible if vaguer linkage. The linkage appears in different nonequivalent forms:
CL 1. A science, such as 'the new physics might play an architectonic role in our eventual
thinking about nature (and human society)' (p.23 itals added).
Subsequently, 'architectonic role' is replaced through the as vague 'inspired by' and more
specific 'mapped out'.
CL2. 'A value thoery [may be] inspired by, and mapped on, ... quantum physics (p.25, where
reduction and derviation are now explicitly repudiated!).
Such a value theory is, it is claimed, 'particularly congenial to an ecologically informed
environmental ethics' (p.25). Whether it is, or not, depends on other-things, such as the sort of
interpretation of quantum theory, the congeniality of that with ecology. No doubt values in
nature without values is excluded under the Copenhagen interpretation, so is much else that
makes good sense. Fortunately there are congenial alternatives.
REFERENCES
P.R.H. Forrest, Speculation and Experience the New Metaphysics, Inaugural Public Lecture,
University of New England, N.S.W., 1987.
J.B. Callicott, 'Ralston's Environmental Ethics: A critical celbration', critical response at APA,
Oakland, March 1989.
R. Sylvan, Deep Plurallism, Australian National University, Research School of Social Science,
1993.
green. OUt there are only ....... waves... . The greenness is projected, more factural in my head
and apparently hung on the tree'. What a ridiculous idea.
'
,,.
ON THE VALUE CORE OF DEEP-GREEN THEORY
This essay aims to uncover the value theory of deep-green theory, exposing thereby a
central area of that theory. Though the value theory is (inevitably) abstract, it issues in what is
more concrete, such as an applicable system and practical ecological directives, potentially
destabilizing for prevailing policies and institutions.
Deep-green theory which stands in significant ideological opposition to dominant
industrial ways, is intended to supply a comprehensive alternative environmental philosophy.
At the core of deep-green theory lies a value theory. A fundamental theme thereof, part of what
makes the structure deep, is that a range of environmental items are valuable in themselves,
directly and irreducibly so, so that their value does not somehow reduce to or emerge from
something else, such as features of certain valuers or what matters for them. Thus value does
not answer back in some way to humans, or sentient creatures (or other value-responsive
classes), their interests, uses, preferences, or such like. Many natural items, such as forests
and rivers, mountains and seashores, are intrinsically valuable. They are valuable in their own
right - irrespective of whether they are interesting or useful (to any intentional operators,
themselves interesting or useful or not), indeed whether or not there exist any valuers. Value
spreads through and reaches across the natural domain; it is not bounded by mind, or linkages
with subjective states; nor does it stop with sentience, or associated pyschological features like
satisfaction; nor does it end at life; it observes no such compromising bounds. Although value
is distributed richly if irregularly throughout nature, it is not then encapsulated in some isolable
natural feature, such as life or sentience, or even in defeasible ecological values such as
richness, diversity and variety (and so open to a different, naturalistic, reduction). But of
course such ecologically important features afford criteria for value, and should be represented
in recipes (such as "objective functions") for assessing overall value.
From the presence of natural things of value, and accordingly of natural values, it is a
short, though controversial, step to the important conclusion that there can be values without
valuers. For valuers are sentient creatures with appropriate capacities, but things of value may
precede and succeed all such valuers; that is, these things can persist, their values intact,
without any valuers. As there can be shapes without any shape.:.perceivers, so there can be
values without valuers. (The theme, like others advanced, can be backed up by more detailed
argument and by formal proof, neither attempted here.) In valuational relations then, which
relate valuers as subjects with values as objects, both ends of relations have independent
standing; though interrelated, as the descriptions are deliberately chosen to suggest, either can
stand without the other. It is a fashionable mistake to try to collapse this relation - usually to
endeavour to soak up values into a modification of valuing subjects (e.g. as a predicate
'relation-to-values', in which inconvenierZt values are locked away). The mistaken procedure
is in fact just one important example of an archetypal modern reduction of relations to
functions; other examples, locking undesired objects away within functions, are those
rendering wholes (such as ecosystems and organised structures) functions of their parts, and,
under functionalism, minds and types of intentionality, including value-direction, as functions
of bodies or their parts such as brains. Values are not, and do not disappear into, functions of
valuers.
A connected corollary is that values are not apart from the actual world, something
"projected" or imposed on it by a favoured class of valuers, something colouring (and even
emotionally clouding) the otherwise valueless physical world, in rather the way that
reductionistic materialism tries (erroneously) to construe colour itself as projected onto a
colourless physical world. Of course this projection effort, never adequately explicated, does
not succeed, on its own, in removing values. For they remain, left as some function of the
valuers. To try to bulldoze through this difficulty, a second reduction is invoked, of evaluative
features of valuers to "natural" features, commonly preferences, consumer desires or such like.
The second reduction runs into obstacles that halt even the naturalistic bulldozers (e.g.
naturalistic and related fallacies), but the first reduction is the critical one in removing key
environmental values, such as those of wilderness and wild things, which become valuable
only in the focus of certain sentient beholders, and not in and for themselves. This reduction
too is blocked by insuperable difficulties. On the one side, like the parallel proposed
phenomenalist reduction of material objects to sensations, the reduction never achieves
satisfactory support or even a satisfactory statement. On the other, it is counterexampled by
various modellings or thought-experiments revealing intuitively-assessed value in situations
devoid of valuers (as e.g. in the well-known Last Person argument). Values remain then part
of the still rich actual world; they are objects in the domain of actual and other worlds. But
they are not of course material objects; creatures will not fall over them any more than they will
trip over shadows or mere shapes.
Value, like shape, is an attribute, which things have or may lack, and which furthermore
creatures can recognise or may fail to discern. Thus value is, like shape and colour and their
determinate forms (round, red, etc), a universal , distributed across things, individuals and
wholes. The comparison of value with shape is decidedly more helpful than the regular, but
exhausted, comparison of value with colour, or of goodness with colour determinates such as
yellow. For example, shape is not bound by a set of determinates as colour is in the specific
colours, but comes in a spectacular variety of forms, not totally or linearly ordered (as in a
rainbow), or contracted to some primary set (as in colour triangles); shape which pertains to
wholes as well as particulars, links with gestalts better than colour; shape discrimination is
more culture dependent and sensitive; yet shape is, or was, a primary property, and thereby
more immune to reductionist strategies thJn secondary properties such as colour. Again shapes
like values, can be vague, indeterminate; that does not prevent things, perhaps unique things,
exemplifying them. But naturally the analogy can only be extended so far. Shapes can be
approximated by polygons, values cannot; shapes are regularly perceived through sense
perception, by vision or touch especially, values are not, but are differently apprised. Value is
its own thing, not something else; it is what it is and does what is does; it is not something
else, like some quantitative mathematical or economic function. Nor does it contract into some
mark of value, or to what it comes down to in highly restricted settings; most important, it does
not disappear in the style of modern economics into (expected) utility, or into just two
economic forms, value-in-use monetarily and value-in-exchange (price), neither of which may
reflect worth. Value means what it means, and has meant: worth ; and it ties with general
assessments of merit and demerit, goodness or badness, not an economic or other truncation
thereof.
The powerful drive to reduce or deny values has several sources. Part of the motivation
for reduction of value springs from epistemological worries, concerning how values can be
ascertained and known, so far as they are (subjective translation proposals are then a direct
evaluative counterpart of phenomenalism). Part derives from supposedly problematic cultural
relativity (whence the attempt to impose values by identification of value with some favoured
assessible feature, and with it cultural or economic imperialism). Part of the motivation comes
from more sweeping ideological commitments, such as varieties of materialism or scientism,
which leave no space for immaterial values.
As already apparent, attempted reductions of value come in a dazzling variety of forms • subjective, which make use of psychological features, such as desires, interests, emotions,
and the like; or more objective aggregations of these, such as community preferences or utility;
or objectively naturalistic, which enrol single track value-making characteristics such as
richness or evolutionary development as value;
• consequential, which consider only outcomes; or purely motivational, which consider only
attitudes and ignore leads and outcomes;
• straightforward, as in translation proposals for translating value judgements into reducing
statements; or oblique, as in supervenience propositions (no variations in value without
underwriting variations in reducing features); or obscure, as in unarticulated projection claims.
Values are not well accommodated within these reductionistic schemes, or accommodated at all.
Deep-green value theory, which is thoroughly nonreductive, repudiates all these reductionistic
options. They are not so difficult to avoid, as the options are neither exhaustive nor exclusive.
In particular, value reduces neither in subjective nor objective fashion; it does not reduce.
Evaluative judgements are nonjective, that is, neither subjective nor objective (in any absolutist
4
fashion). Obversely, evaluation of an act does not reduce to assessing consequences; nor does
it come down to an assessment of motives; both may matter.
The virulent idea is abroad however that science can offer a reduction, can sweep up
value along with all other information, where philosophy has conspicuously failed.
Unfortunately for such optimistic ideas, fortunately perhaps for deeper thought, current basic
science does not have much to say at all, or of merit, about values, and if it did reductions
through it would be circular. But, to the contrary, there is a long-standing pretence that science
gets along "well" without values, in appropriate value-free fashion. Nowadays it is
increasingly realised that the positivistic assumption of such value-freedom is a myth, that
much of what passes as science is heavily value-penetrated. While the residual ideal of pure
engagement in pure science may offer the illusion of an escape from value, there is no escape.
For, in any case, reductions do not succeed, as a copious literature, littered with failed
attempts, meanderingly establishes. Nor are they generally desirable, since mostly shallow,
aiming at a reduction to features of some privileged class presented as ideal (i.e. core value is
covertly assumed, so there is no real reduction). Nor are they needed; explanation and
assessment do not require reduction. Evaluations may be arrived at, and value frameworks
expanded, by enhancement methods, which organise and expand emotional presentation by
coherence methods.
The enhancement methodology in fact resembles that sometimes proposed for further
acquisition of scientific information. As accumulated empirical information can be further
extended through presentational input and assessment for overall coherence, so further
evaluations may be arrived at and assessed through a combination of presentational and
coherence procedures. At the (marginal) stage where the next round of evaluations is
undertaken, the following active ingredients figure, in an idealised breakdown:- Firstly, a
background stock of judgements and value experience will have been accumulated or inherited;
in principle all of this is revisable, and some may be up for reassessment. Apart from the
background, which enters in assessing overall coherence of system, what is involved is,
secondly, emotional presentation, which corresponds to further perceptional and sense data
input, and, thirdly and not independent, coherence processing, which supplies the
interpretational and rationalisational components. At bottom, parallelling perception in the case
of empirical information, is emotional presentation, gut or visceral reaction in starker forms of
acceptance or rejection, but more generally comprehending a variety of sentiments, including
overall well-being, and also relational impressions, such as empathy, identification, and so on.
As a perceiver perceives shapes, so a valuer feels raw value and disvalue. The basis of
perception is sensation, the basis of valuation is emotion. Apprehension of value is seated in
emotional, and especially visceral, presentation; but what is apprehended is not to be confused
with its apprehension any more than what is perceived. All the warnings about sensation as an
information source have to be repeat~d, with heavy emphasis, as regards emotional
presentation; for example, reliability cannot be guaranteed, interference with presentation
through drugs, alcohol, temporary excitement or other inputs may render it dubious or
unacceptable, conditioning may have occurred, including substantial cultural conditioning (so
that a person is terrified by harmless spiders but not sickened by bloody massacres of dolphins
or seals). As with perception, there are checks on emotional presentation, such as constancy
over time and after reflection.
Emotional presentation, supplying primarily inclusions and exclusions or prohibitions, is
but the basis of reflective evaluation and value apprehension. The further critical part,
coherence processing, builds on the basis taking account of other inputs or controls including
background (which supplies relevant components of already adopted judgements, assimilated
subculture and so forth) and constraints (such as moral substitutional requirements like
impartiality, e.g. whether considered judgements hold for substitute valuers, and uniformity,
e.g. whether similar acts are judged in similar ways). Essentially, the coherence procedure
consists in asking whether the next or a relevant judgement fits together with what has been
accepted, while meeting constraints, without leading to what has been rejected or excluded. If
it does fit it is added to the included side, otherwise it is sent to the excluded side. Because an
aim of this rationalisation procedure is achievement of some sort of equilibrium such coherence
procedures have gained currency under the rubric "reflective equilibrium". Observe, however,
that equilibrium reached at some stage may be lost as new types of problems arise and further
information enters. No doubt the whole methodology (like the parallel methodology of an
empirically-based coherence theory of truth) is highly idealised, and only practicably applicable
in rudimentary parts. It does however surmount a major theoretical obstacle for environmental
value theory; it reveals how in principle a nonreductionistic value theory can function, and
deliver a tenable value system. Whether what results is however an appropriate deep
environmental system will depend above all on the presentational input, the extent to which
environmental sensitivity enters and is not suppressed.
Enhancement methods reveal too that value systems are not uniquely determined, any
more than other comprehensive theoretical frameworks. There evidently are rival value
systems measuring up to rigorous rationality requirements, much as there are rival logics and
rival physical and biological systems. In particular chauvinistic systems, narrow or shallow
value systems, which are unresponsive to and take no account of environmental items and
values, cannot be excluded on rational or straight logical grounds. Unfortunately such systems
remain in ascendancy, and tend to dominate social and political practice; in recent times
economism, a narrow type of utilitarianism, has all too obviously dominated much terrestial
practice. While such value frameworks are open to severe criticism, for instance as
chauvinistic, as violating universality requirements of morality in the case of economism, they
do not succumb to definitive refutatiog (for the reason that requirements of morality,
universalizability of principle, impartiality and so on, can simply be repudiated; immoral or
amoral frameworks are still value systems). Even so, much can be done to shift or alter
values, though as usual effectiveness cannot be guaranteed. A range of argumentative,
educational and persuasive techniques, of varying quality, can be put to work to move valuers
indoctrinated in old damaging structures, often enough successfully. Important among these
are positive presentations of environments, their habitats and creatures, by way of new
information and experience.
The availability of rival value systems, while it implies a certain desirable (and also
troublesome) pluralism, does not mean relativism. From a deep-green viewpoint, rival
narrower and shallower systems are definitely inferior, and criticised accordingly, while
economism is an anathema which does not even make the moral grade (e.g. too many
principles stop at class or state boundaries). However a critical pluralism does acknowledge
and offer a place in the wider scheme of things for other systems, even if as less favoured or
satisfactory. One political upshot is evident; deep-green theory promotes, what matters in these
irrational times of numbers, alliances - in particular, a green alliance, organising green
positions, against prevailing forces of environmental degradation.
The systematic pluralism of deep-green value theory interpenetrates not only social and
political domains above, but also metaphysics traditionally placed below. In the underlying
metaphysical pluralism of deep-green theory, value runs very deep - so deep that even truth
depends in part upon it. For not merely selection of a correct comprehensive theory or worldview is a value dependent choice, but choice of associated actual world is also. That choice,
insofar as it is consciously made, of world structure and conceptualisation, is a constrained
choice, constrained by informational inputs, such as those of refined perception. But inasmuch
as it is rationally accomplished, that choice, like other choices of structure, proceeds according
to a standard value-information analysis (regularly oversimplified however to a preferenceinformation or even desire-belief modelling); that is, to extract the salient point, it involves
value essentially.
Truth and value are then intertwined; truth, though naturally different from value, is value
dependent. Both are plural, and differently so. So, unremarkably deep-green metaphysics
resembles the value theory in significant respects. For example, as the value theory is
nonreductionistic, so also is the metaphysics; in particular, there is a no-reduction theme that
neither parts nor wholes reduce eliminably to one another, as opposed to atomistic and holistic
views of environmental interrelations. As the value theory is pluralistic, so also is the
metaphysics; in place of established absolutism, a plurality of worlds, with associated truth
definitions is discerned. Indeed a main aim of deep-green theory is to dislodge dominant
destructive ideologies, which (each of th]m) assume an absolute truth, from their positions thereby providing intellectual living-space for natural environments.
Much of deep-green theory devolves then from the abstract value theory. As with the
metaphysical way sketched, so it is with the fuller ethical theory, which includes as well as a
specific axiological system, elaborating deep environmental values and virtues, a deontic
framework, supplying obligations, rights, taboos, and similar. For example, given that a
certain wild river is intrinsically valuable, as we can verify by on-site experience and
enhancement methods, and given that we duly respect that value, as deontic principles will tell
us we should, then we are not free to do as we like with that river, to dam it with concrete, to
channel it within concrete, stripping it of its riverine ecosystems. But that does not preclude
respectful use of the river, swimming or sailing quietly in its waters, and the like. Value thus
guides action, practice, and use; it is the ground also upon which principles are formulated,
principles that are assessed and validated by way of enhancement methods. Important among
these are non-interference principles, which exclude unwarranted interference with other
preference-havers and unwarranted damage, ill-treatment, or devaluation of items of value.
Such deontic principles circumscribe environmentally-limited freedom of action. Given noninterference principles, a major shift in onus of proof from homocentricethics takes place.
What is required now is that reasons be givenfor interfering with the environment, rather than
reasons for not doing so. Also direct responsibility for environmental interference or
modification falls upon those who would seriously interfere or significantly modify, who
would tread heavily on the land. Non-interference does not preclude use - only too much use
and use of too much. What it does lead to is the theme that, where use occurs, it should be
careful and respectful use.
An important respect thesis regarding environmental items is founded on such non-interference
principles and the no-reduction theme: namely,
• not to put others (other preference havers) into a dispreferred state for no good reason;
• not to jeopardise the well-being of natural objects or systems without good reason;
• not to damage or destroy items which, while they cannot literally be put into a dispreferred
state, can be damaged or destroyed or have their value eroded or impaired.
These apply to ecosystems, their surrounds, their parts, and so on. The mere making of
further excess profits, or similar economic excuses, are not good reasons. Such a respect
thesis forms part of the ecological outlook of deep-green theory.
Deep-green ethical theory amounts to much more than just another non-reductionist
ethical theory, which highlights ecological values and virtues, and so forth. It changes the
character and shape of ethical enterprise. Perhaps most strikingly, it removes humans as such
from the centre of the ethical stage (or :xclusive occupation of the stage). The biological
concept of being human ceases to be a significant ethical category. To elevate it to such is to
fall into human chauvinism, a type of class chauvinism which unwarrantedly discriminates in
favour of the human species. The prevailing chauvinism is not inevitable; it is very logically
avoided by directly connecting ethical characteristics with the categories of items that can have
them. Relevant categories include those marked out by features like: having well-being,
preference-having, rights-holding, contractual-capability, and so on, categories not necessarily
connected with any particular species. Hitherto virtually all Western ethical theories, and the
institutional arrangements they help support, have not merely limited ethical matters to interhuman affairs, but have been blatantly chauvinistic, exhibiting substantial and unjustifiable
discrimination in favour of humans (or certain privileged humans).
Deep-green theory thus implies the inadequacy of prevailing social, political and
economic arrangements and institutions. These structures are the defective products of inferior
value frameworks which take quite insufficient account of environmental desiderata and values.
Richard Sylvan*
RMB 683
Bungendore NSW 2621
*
Thanks to David Bennett for comments on an earlier draft. For more on deep-green theory, see
essays in and work referred to in the Green Series, i.e. Discussion Papers in Environmental
Philosophy, RSSS, Australian National University, Canberra.
This compressed essay was solicited by and written for Island Magazine (Tasmania). Upon receiving
it however, the editors decided that it was too dense, and insufficiently journalistic and popular (not
features they had at any time requested), for their magazine.
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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 16, Item 1223
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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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<span>This item was identified for digitisation at the request of The University of Queensland's 2020 Fryer Library Fellow, </span><a href="https://najtaylor.com" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Dr. N.A.J. Taylor</a><span>.</span>
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For all enquiries about this work, please contact the Fryer Library, The University of Queensland Library.
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[88] leaves. 90.34 MB.
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Manuscript
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<a href="https://espace.library.uq.edu.au/view/UQ:14a9695">https://espace.library.uq.edu.au/view/UQ:14a9695</a>
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Australian National University Office - Typing Table at End of Desk
Australian National University Office
Australian National University Office > Typing Table at End of Desk
Box 16: Green Projects in Progress