Links between ecology and ecophilosophy,ethics and the requirements of environmental management

Abstract This paper concerns the ways that our philosophical attitudes to the environment can influence the appropriateness of methodologies for solving environmental problems. Sometimes a public perception is expressed that science takes scant regard of the concerns of the people affected. Is it possible for scientists and managers to respond to such concerns and still fulfil the logical and methodological rigour that their discipline demands? I believe we have to address fundamental issues of definitions and meaning before useful debate can occur among parties interested in environmental decision-making. Delving into the ideas behind our everyday practices of environmental management should promote re-evaluation of our beliefs, attitudes and concerns about nature. I examine environmental science from both ethical and managerial perspectives. I explore how our assumptions and attitudes might influence ecology, in particular issues raised by environmental impacts and conservation. The major points argued here are:

• 1 Any legal requirements of environmental investigations must be met, but perhaps we should act more in line with the spirit of legislation.
• 2 The managerial imperatives of environmental investigations need to be examined closely because of widely perceived problems with the use of science in impact assessment. We must change either our methods of assessment or the regulations and administration of environmental impact assessment (EIA).
• 3 Science is not paramount in the processes of environmental decision-making. We need to be aware of how psychosocial factors affect the ultimately political decisions about environmental problems.
• 4 Philosophy and ethics offer a range of perspectives that may benefit ecology. Scientists need to be aware of these just as they should be of their own leanings about how we treat nature.
• 5 Scientists need to translate social concerns or demands about the environment into properly defined scientific questions, and then study them as a matter of urgency.
• 6 Ecology needs to guide ecophilosophers and environmental ethicists as to how nature works, why we expect variability in ecosystems, what is naturalness, and other issues where a scientific understanding of nature has progressed beyond the point where these observers of ecology have so far taken inspiration.

     

Do the evolutionary origins of our moral beliefs undermine moral knowledge?

According to some recent arguments, (Joyce in The evolution of morality, MIT Press, Cambridge, 2006; Ruse and Wilson in Conceptual issues in evolutionary biology, MIT Press, Cambridge, 1995; Street in Philos Studies 127: 109–166, 2006) if our moral beliefs are products of natural selection, then we do not have moral knowledge. In defense of this inference, its proponents argue that natural selection is a process that fails to track moral facts. In this paper, I argue that our having moral knowledge is consistent with, (a) the hypothesis that our moral beliefs are products of natural selection, and (b) the claim (or a certain interpretation of the claim) that natural selection fails to track moral facts. I also argue that natural selection is a process that could track moral facts, albeit imperfectly. I do not argue that we do have moral knowledge. I argue instead that Darwinian considerations provide us with no reason to doubt that we do, and with some reasons to suppose that we might.     

Hope and deception

Convinced of hope's therapeutic benefits, physicians routinely support patients' false hopes, often with family collusion and vague, euphemistic diagnoses and prognoses, if not overt lies. Bioethicists charge them with paternalistic violations of Patient Autonomy.
There are, I think, too many morally significant exceptions to accept the physician's rationales or the bioethicist's criticisms, stated sweepingly. Physicians need to take account of the harms caused by loss of hopes, especially false hopes due to deception, as well, as of the harms of successfully maintained deceptive hopes. As for autonomy, hopes – even if based on deception – can protect and enhance autonomy, understood broadly as the capacity to lead a chosen or embraced life.
Deception aside, patients' hopes often rest on beliefs about possible rather than probable outcomes – beliefs themselves supported by optimism, 'denial', or self-deception. Such 'possibility-hopes' may conflict with physicians' often more fact-sensitive 'probability-hopes.' To resolve such conflicts physicians may try to 'down-shift' patients' or parents' hopes to lesser, more realistic hopes. Alternatively, physicians may alter or enlarge their own professional hopes to include the 'vital hopes' that define the lives of patients or parents, as well as 'survival hopes' needed to face and bear the loss of loved ones, especially children.
A principle of Hope-giving might help guide such sympathetic hope-accommodations. More generally, it would give Hope a distinct place among Beneficence, Autonomy, and the other moral factors already high-lighted by canonical principles of Medical Ethics. To formulate such a principle, however, we will need a collective Project Hope to pursue deeper philosophical and psychological studies.     

Research integrity and rights of indigenous peoples: appropriating Foucault's critique of knowledge/power

In this paper I appropriate the philosophical critique of Michel Foucault as it applies to the engagement of Western science and indigenous peoples in the context of biomedical research. The science of population genetics, specifically as pursued in the Human Genome Diversity Project, is the obvious example to illustrate (a) the contraposition of modern science and 'indigenous science', (b) the tendency to depreciate and marginalize indigenous knowledge systems, and (c) the subsumption of indigenous moral preferences in the juridical armature of international human rights law. I suggest that international bioethicists may learn from Foucault's critique, specifically of the need for vigilance about the knowledge/power relation expressed by the contraposition of modern science and 'indigeneity'.     

Basic problems of diversely reported biological effects of radio frequency fields

The large differences in RF safety standards are due to different philosophical approaches to public health standards development, different scientific approaches and interpretations of the scientific data, and different jurisdictions in various countries. In this paper, the origin of these differences is explored. The emphases are on the basic problems of why reported biological effects of RF fields are controversial, and how the general public can be misinformed. While there are differences in approaches and methods, science should converge and not diverge in finding the threshold level for exposure to EMF that is not adverse to human health. As the progress in technology continues and human beings are enjoying an increased quality of life, it is essential for scientists to ensure that safety is not compromised. More importantly, it is the responsibility and moral obligation of scientists and the media to bring "verified" information to the public. Scientists must conduct well-designed studies and to report the results in a clear and detailed manner, so other independent investigators can repeat the study or explore further. Mistakes must be minimized and stopped at the first level of scientific research.     

Evolution Versus Creationism: A matter of acceptance versus belief

Scientists are often challenged about their ‘belief’ in evolution. Many creationists try to convince people that evolution is more of a ‘faith-based’ position or belief system than ‘real science’. This article examines the notion of acceptance versus belief and the relationship between knowledge, understanding and belief. It argues that adopting the acceptance of evolution over belief in evolution will help teachers deal with the challenges that inevitably arise in lessons on evolution in high school. Studies in philosophy show beliefs are often held without evidence, may be illogical and are difficult to change. Acceptance of a scientific explanation for a natural phenomenon, however, is based on evidence and allows for a change in disposition should new evidence come to light. With this in mind, removing the idea of ‘belief’ in evolution and talking about acceptance provides a sensible way to manage talk of creationism versus evolution, if and when it arises in the classroom.     

Critical bioethics: beyond the social science critique of applied ethics

This article attempts to show a way in which social science research can contribute in a meaningful and equitable way to philosophical bioethics. It builds on the social science critique of bioethics present in the work of authors such as Renee Fox, Barry Hoffmaster and Charles Bosk, proposing the characteristics of a critical bioethics that would take social science seriously. The social science critique claims that traditional philosophical bioethics gives a dominant role to idealised, rational thought, and tends to exclude social and cultural factors, relegating them to the status of irrelevancies. Another problem is they way in which bioethics assumes social reality divides down the same lines/categories as philosophical theories. Critical bioethics requires bioethicists to root their enquiries in empirical research, to challenge theories using evidence, to be reflexive and to be sceptical about the claims of other bioethicists, scientists and clinicians. The aim is to produce a rigorous normative analysis of lived moral experience.     

Potential hazards of biotechnology: the viewpoint from the United Kingdom

(1) There is a danger that our science may be severely restricted in the future if we do not as scientists take action to inform the public. (2) Scientists are agreed that some governmental controls are essential, but there is an urgent need that these should be applied uniformly worldwide. (3) The situation has changed rapidly now that the scientists are poised to demonstrate that genetic engineering has advanced to the stage where it can be applied to the field. Only in that way can we, as scientists, demonstrate that biotechnology can help humanity to overcome the problems of health, disease, and decent living which threaten to get progressively worse.     

Against reduction

In Molecular Models: Philosophical Papers on Molecular Biology, Sahotra Sarkar presents a historical and philosophical analysis of four important themes in philosophy of science that have been influenced by discoveries in molecular biology. These are: reduction, function, information and directed mutation. I argue that there is an important difference between the cases of function and information and the more complex case of scientific reduction. In the former cases it makes sense to taxonomise important variations in scientific and philosophical usage of the terms “function” and “information”. However, the variety of usage of “reduction” across scientific disciplines (and across philosophy of science) makes such taxonomy inappropriate. Sarkar presents reduction as a set of facts about the world that science has discovered, but the facts in question are remarkably disparate; variously semantic, epistemic and ontological. I argue that the more natural conclusion of Sarkar’s analysis is eliminativism about reduction as a scientific concept.     

The Importance of the History of Science to the American Society of Zoologists

As the history of science has developed as a professional intellectualdiscipline, it has had and will continue to have an importantrole in defining science and its place in our culture. Suchdefinitions should be based on as much information as possible.Scientists can help supply some of this information throughparticipation in symposia on the history of science. In addition,scientists can learn much about the nature of their disciplineby becoming aware of the concepts of science which are derivedfrom the careful analysis of its history. Efforts should bemade to bring historians of science and scientists togetherfor their mutual benefit.     

Pain, paradox, and value

The author argues that "as soon as one begins to study the understanding and management of pain in science, human medicine, and veterinary medicine, one begins to encounter a variety of apparent paradoxes." He contends that these paradoxes, ten of which he identifies and discusses in this essay, are based on flawed philosophical and valuational assumptions underlying science and medicine. Rollins concludes that, as social morality increasingly has an impact on science, a new ideology will evolve that is more receptive to the moral universe and more capable of a "coherent vision of pain, one which acknowledges that the medical notion of adequacy of anaesthesia is as much a moral as a scientific one."     

EPIDEMIOLOGY AND SOCIAL JUSTICE IN LIGHT OF SOCIAL DETERMINANTS OF HEALTH RESEARCH

The present article identifies how social determinants of health raise two categories of philosophical problems that also fall within the smaller domain of ethics; one set pertains to the philosophy of epidemiology, and the second set pertains to the philosophy of health and social justice. After reviewing these two categories of ethical concerns, the limited conclusion made is that identifying and responding to social determinants of health requires inter-disciplinary reasoning across epidemiology and philosophy. For the reasoning used in epidemiology to be sound, for its scope and (moral) purpose as a science to be clarified as well as for social justice theory to be relevant and coherent, epidemiology and philosophy need to forge a meaningful exchange of ideas that happens in both directions.     

The crucial experiment of Wilhelm Johannsen

I call an experiment “crucial” when it makes possible a decisive choice between conflicting hypotheses. Joharmsen's selection for size and weight within pure lines of beans played a central role in the controversy over continuity or discontinuity in hereditary change, often known as the Biometrician-Mendelian controversy. The “crucial” effect of this experiment was not an instantaneous event, but an extended process of repeating similar experiments and discussing possible objections. It took years before Johannsen's claim about the genetic stability of pure lines was accepted as conclusively demonstrated by the community of geneticists. The paper also argues that crucial experiments thus interpreted contradict certain ideas about the underdetermination of theories by facts and the theory-ladenness of facts which have been influential in recent history and sociology of science. The acceptance of stability in the pure lines did not rest on prior preference for continuity or discontinuity. And this fact permitted a final choice between the two theories. When such choice is characterized as “decisive” or “final”, this is not meant in an absolute philosophical sense. What we achive in these cases is highly reliable empirical knowledge. The philosophical possibility of drawing (almost) any conclusion in doubt should be distinguished from reasonable doubt in empirical science.     

The Medawar Lecture 1998 is science dangerous?

The idea that science is dangerous is deeply embedded in our culture, particularly in literature, yet science provides the best way of understanding the world. Science is not the same as technology. In contrast to technology, reliable scientific knowledge is value-free and has no moral or ethical value. Scientists are not responsible for the technological applications of science; the very nature of science is that it is not possible to predict what will be discovered or how these discoveries could be applied. The obligation of scientists is to make public both any social implications of their work and its technological applications. A rare case of immoral science was eugenics. The image of Frankenstein has been turned by the media into genetic pornography, but neither cloning nor stem cells or gene therapy raise new ethical issues. There are no areas of research that are so socially sensitive that research into them should be proscribed. We have to rely on the many institutions of a democratic society: parliament, a free and vigorous press, affected groups and the scientists themselves. That is why programmes for the public understanding of science are so important. Alas, we still do not know how best to do this.     

Apps can help bridge restoration science and restoration practice

Scientists need to find innovative ways to communicate their findings with restoration practitioners in an era of global change. Apps are a promising bridge between restoration science and practice because they apply broad scientific concepts to specific situations. For example, habitat connectivity promotes ecological function, but practitioners lack ways to incorporate connectivity into decision‐making. We created an app where users calculate how habitat restoration or loss affects connectivity. By providing our app as an example and discussing the benefits and challenges in creating apps for practitioners, we encourage other restoration ecologists to similarly create apps that bridge science with practice.     

Objectivity and Illusion in Evolutionary Ethics: Comments on Waller

In this paper I argue that any adequate evolutionary ethical theory needs to account for moral belief as well as for dispositions to behave altruistically. It also needs to be clear whether it is offering us an account of the motivating reasons behind human behaviour or whether it is giving justifying reasons for a particular set of behaviours or, if both, to distinguish them clearly. I also argue that, unless there are some objective moral truths, the evolutionary ethicist cannot offer justifying reasons for a set of behaviours. I use these points to refute Waller's claims that the illusion of objectivity plays a dispensable role in Ruse's theory, that my critique of Ruse's Darwinian metaethics is built on a false dilemma, that there is nothing to be distressed about if morality is not objective, and that ethical beliefs are subject to a kind of causal explanation that undermines their objectivity in a way that scientific beliefs are not.     

An evolutionary theory of moral injury with insight from Turkana warriors

Clinicians in Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, and Democratic (WEIRD) societies are rethinking whether Post-traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) is caused solely by exposure to life-threatening experiences, or also by moral injury—witnessing or participating in acts that violate moral beliefs. However, while there are evolutionary hypotheses explaining PTSD as a response to physical danger, the evolutionary roots of moral injury lack an explanation. We posit that a subset of symptoms of combat-related PTSD is associated with moral injury and that these symptoms evolved in tandem with human's norm-psychology. We can examine this hypothesis by comparing societies with different moral beliefs about warfare, norm enforcement mechanisms, and spheres of moral concern. To illustrate the utility of this framework, we describe combat trauma, war norms, and norm enforcement among Turkana pastoralist warriors in Kenya who participate in highly lethal raids of neighboring ethnic groups. We previously showed that depressive PTSD symptoms in Turkana warriors are more strongly associated with experiencing moral violations in combat, and that Turkana warriors with comparably high overall PTSD symptom-severity experience lower rates of depressive symptoms than US combat veterans. Here we detail aspects of Turkana warfare, moral beliefs, and post-battle rituals that differ from WEIRD societies, and that may ameliorate the symptoms of moral injury in Turkana warriors. Our findings highlight how further studies of combat trauma outside of WEIRD militaries can help evaluate this theory and illustrate the importance of cross-cultural research for identifying the evolutionary roots of combat stress and best practices for prevention and recovery.     

An African theory of bioethics: reply to MacPherson and Macklin

In a prior issue of Developing World Bioethics, Cheryl Macpherson and Ruth Macklin critically engaged with an article of mine, where I articulated a moral theory grounded on indigenous values salient in the sub-Saharan region, and then applied it to four major issues in bioethics, comparing and contrasting its implications with those of the dominant Western moral theories, utilitarianism and Kantianism. In response to my essay, Macpherson and Macklin have posed questions about: whether philosophical justifications are something with which bioethicists ought to be concerned; why something counts as 'African'; how medicine is a moral enterprise; whether an individual right to informed consent is consistent with sub-Saharan values; and when thought experiments help to establish firm conclusions about moral status. These are important issues for the field, and I use this reply to take discussion of them a step or two farther, defending my initial article from Macpherson's and Macklin's critical questions and objections.