Philosophy Now Forum

i blame blame wrote:I reject the false dichotomy.
Lifeforms are organic machines.

What is an organic machine?

In order to come to this conclusion, we would have to have time in nature without thought, in order to make a comparison. Meditation, or maybe just some heavy drinking? Seriously, though, I think we give thought too much credit. That is, I think it's something people escape from on a regular basis,...

If direct contact with nature is required for the nature respecting philosophies we are referring to, perhaps the question becomes, how is that direct contact maintained in vast urban populations which are the defining characteristic of 21st century civilization? By protecting natural and wildernes...

Whew, okay, a lot to try to reply to. Second, my guess is that the nature respecting cultures you refer to were/are rooted in a direct daily experience of nature. I think this is a big issue. It's almost hypocritical to talk about nature if one hasn't really been in it. Our modern ethics really do r...

I'm not ignoring you, I'll give you a reply within a week. I'm finishing up a thesis on top of attending a few events this weekend, so I'm really short on time.

Whew, beware, this is a long post. There's a side of me that loves what you write, and what inspires you. I too grew up playing in nature and it was discovering Thoreau as a teenager (he's not well known in the UK) that got me thinking. But there is a huge, huge problem with so much of what you writ...

Just the two links: Ecosophy, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ecosophy . Deep ecology, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deep_ecology . Note especially, "4. The flourishing of human life and cultures is compatible with a substantial decrease of the human population. The flourishing of nonhuman life re...

Welcome! Philosophers always have shaky relationships with religion (at least orthodox religion), so I can understand the reevaluation. I can also understand your disappointment at finding philosophy reduced to linguistics (it was still recovering from several decades of being reduced to analytic lo...

Ok, I likely don't understand the term metaphysical very well, and so stand corrected. Perhaps you can help me understand the term better? I think there's a lot of confusion about metaphysics these days. I think it's a reaction against superstition and religion, both of which rely strongly on metap...

Somebody said that energy is never created or destroyed, it just changes form. One perspective could be that the boundary line between life and non-life is more conceptual than real, another invention of our divisive dualistic minds. Environmental ethics seems an attempt to cling to a particular pa...

Not those particular species, but some other species. Let's recall, the same process that created life out of non-life is still at work. This is true, but what are the chances of it happening again? Who knows? Do we want to find out? Well, at some point in our species destruction spree, we will be ...

I take him to mean that from the perspective of the whole, there is no basis upon which to value life over non-life. Thus, there is no basis upon which to build any kind of ethics. Yes, of course, but to do so ad absurdum isn't going to address any form of holism that anyone would tend to adhere to...

But the ecocentric view is no view at all! When you take the perspective of the whole there is no way of distinguishing the ethical from the unethical. From this holistic view, Mankind's destruction of the planet is not destruction, but the natural (but temporary) flourishing of one species to the ...

is the whole more than the sum of its parts? The holistic approach assumes precisely that the whole is more than the sum of its parts. The opposite being the individualist approach, which you could also call reductionist or even atomist. no? that swarm of fleas has more life than all that reside in...

I just think that when one starts usng the word ethics and considers an animal or a plant as equal to or more important than a person then one has lost touch with the foundations of ethics. There is absolutely room within a human centred framework of ethics for consideration of the environment and ...