Racial Climates, Ecological Indifference offers a powerful intervention to the field of climate justice scholarship by addressing a neglected aspect of the field of climate justice, namely systemic racisms. Building on the work of Black feminist theorists, the work develops an ecointersectional approach designed to reveal the depth and complexities of racial climates overlooked even in the environmental justice literature. The book’s conception of ecological indifference underscores the disposition of seeing the environment as a resource for (...) human consumption and enjoyment, a resource that is usable, fungible, disposable, and without intrinsic worth or standing. The many examples in the book offer new insights demonstrating that systemic racisms emerge out of and give rise to environmental degradation; that is, they are often mutually constitutive. The ecointersectional analyses provided throughout the book reveal that ecological indifference and climate injustice are two sides of the same coin. Three distinctive but interrelated domains in which the intersections between systemic racisms and ecological indifference are manifest are identified: (1) differential distribution of harms/benefits due to systemic racisms, (2) racist institutions and practices fueling or causing environmental degradation, and (3) the basic social structures that generate environmental degradation being the same ones that generate systemic oppression of certain groups of people. One of the aims of Racial Climates, Ecological Indifference is to underscore that any effort to protect the environment must also be a fight against systemic racisms and other forms of systemic inequity. (shrink)

The ecological crisis demonstrates the inadequacy of current modes of thought to grasp the nature of reality and to act accordingly. A more sophisticated metaphysical system is necessary. Arran Gare, a prominent Australian philosopher, has produced such a system, which takes into account the post modern sciences of non-linear thermodynamics, quantum mechanics, and complexity theory. The present article promotes a cosmology based on Gare's metaphysics. In contrast to modern science, the postmodern account offered here will come to terms with (...) a world governed by indifference, which is the same indifference that Albert Camus describes as "absurd". Camus will be interpreted in light of Gare's metaphysics. (shrink)

Recent work in animal ethics has advanced principles that are too individualistic to be compatible with a holistic environmental ethic such as the land ethic proposed by Aldo Leopold. J. Baird Callicott, on the other hand, has attempted to reconcile the two ethics by suggesting that sympathy, natural among humanity, as he claims on Humean grounds, does not necessarily terminate at the species barrier. His argument shows minimally that it is not necessary that we abandon ecological ethics in order (...) to view nonhuman animals as morally considerable. I argue instead that it is not sympathy, but hostility/indifference that manifests the reality of life in wild nature, and as such forms a better basis for an all-encompassing ethic. If one accepts that the factual realm suggests the limits of norms and establishes the background and context of normative judgments in this context (as Holmes Roiston, III, for instance, does), then a different line of argument can be developed. I argue that intraspecies and interspecies ethics ought to be different for us because behavior in the wild is different within and without a species. Further, I argue that hostility/indifference coupled with respect form the basis of an approach which embraces a holistic environmental ethic as weil as one concemed with nonhuman animals. (shrink)

The natural world’s myriad differences from human beings, and its apparent indifference to human purposes and ends, are often regarded as problems an environmental ethics must overcome. Perhaps, though, ecological ethics might instead be re-envisaged as a form of other-directed concern that responds to just this situation. That is, the recognition of worldly (in)difference might actually be regarded as a precondition for, and opening on, any contemporary ethics, whether human or ecological. What is more, the task of (...) ethics might be regarded as one of conserving (at least some) such differences. The work of Iris Murdoch and the “difference ethics” of Emmanuel Levinas seem to offer possible ways to express such understandings. However, their ecological potential and theoretical limits, especially in terms oftheir metaphysical presuppositions, remain relatively under-explored. A closer examination of their work is presented in order to illustrate some of the possibilities and difficulties facing an ecological form of difference ethics. (shrink)

Almost one-third of all U.S. Americans believe that Jesus Christ will return to Earth in the next 40 years, thereby signaling the end of the world. The prevalence of this end-times theology has meant that sustainability initiatives are often met with indifference, resistance, or even hostility from a significant portion of the American population. One of the ways that the scientific community can respond to this is by making scientific discourse, particularly as related to sustainability, more palatable to end-times (...) believers. In this paper, I apply a historical–ecological framework, which emphasizes the interdisciplinary study of landscapes to understand long-term human–environment interactions, to three millennial religious groups that formed communes in nineteenth century America. The Shakers, Inspirationalists, and Mormons all blended deep beliefs in end-times theology with agricultural practices that were arguably more sustainable than those in use in the mainstream, and their ability to reconcile eschatology with sustainability provides us with potential lessons. By examining the history, doctrines, and agroecology of these nineteenth century communes, I propose communication strategies based in autonomy, institutional support, multigenerational narratives, and anthropocentricism as potential pathways for a more productive dialogue between advocates of sustainability initiatives and end-times believers in the modern United States. (shrink)

(1994). From Cassandra to Gaia: The limits of civic humanism in a post‐ecological world. Social Epistemology: Vol. 8, Public Indifference to Population Issues, pp. 243-259.

We argue that a conceptual tension exists between “diversity” and “heterogeneity” and that glossing over their differences has practical, moral, and epistemic costs. We examine how these terms are used in ecology and the social sciences; articulate a deeper linguistic intuition; and test it with the Corpus of Contemporary American English. The results reveal that ‘diversity’ and ‘heterogeneity’ have conflicting rather than interchangeable meanings: heterogeneity implies a collective entity that interactively integrates different entities, whereas diversity implies divergence, not integration. Consequently, (...) striving for diversity alone may increase social injustice and reduce epistemic outcomes of academic institutions and governance structures. (shrink)

Christian ethics are usually based on a theology of love. In the case of Christian relationships to nature, Christian environmental writers have either suggested eros as a primary source for Christian love, without dealing with traditional Christian arguments against eros, or have assumed agape (spiritual love or sacrificial love) is the appropriate mode, without defining how agape should function in human relationships with the nonhuman portion of the universe. I demonstrate that God’s love for nature has the same form and (...) characteristics as God’s love for human beings, and that because agape is self-giving, it is preferable to eros in relationships with the environment. Agape concerning nature (I) is spontaneous and unmotivated, (2) is indifferent to value, (3) creates value, (4) initiates relationships with the divine, (5) recognizes individuality, (6) provides freedom, and (7) produces action and suffering. Agape might best be defined, not as Platonic ascent above the world, but as completely self-giving engagement with the world. Human love for nature is often limited by a human inability to accept love, including divine love, from nature. Flowing from God, agape cannot require reciprocity; yet agape understands what “the other has to give and can offer it complete valuation. Agape is the ideal form of human interaction with nature, because agape does not require equal status or ability, or common goals or needs. Love between humans and members of the land (or sea) community can be sacrificial, and should be distinguished by a loss of self-regard and a willingness to suffer. Further philosophical and theological discussion of the role of reciprocity and sacrifice in love for nature is highly desirable. (shrink)

By putting forward the notions of “eco-sensibilities” and “eco-permeable relationalities,” this paper explores a non-instrumentalizing mode of relation with the “non-human.” On this basis, it shows the possibility of affectively disempowering the hold of “ecological indifference” as Nancy Tuana describes it. It focuses on “animal becoming” and “elemental architecture” as “eco-sensibilities” that effect such a disempowerment.

Environmentalism has relentlessly warned about the dire consequences of abusing and exploiting the planet's natural resources, imagining future wastelands of ecological depletion and social chaos. But it has also generated rich new ideas about how humans might live better with nature. Green Utopias explores these ideas of environmental hope in the post-war period, from the environmental crisis to the end of nature. Using a broad definition of Utopia as it exists in Western policy, theory and literature, Lisa Garforth explains (...) how its developing entanglement with popular culture and mainstream politics has shaped successive green future visions and initiatives. In the face of apocalyptic, despairing or indifferent responses to contemporary ecological dilemmas, utopias and the utopian method seem more necessary than ever. This distinctive reading of green political thought and culture will appeal across the social sciences and humanities to all interested in why green utopias continue to matter in the cultivation of ecological values and the emergence of new forms of human and non-human well-being. (shrink)

Holmes Rolston's case for holding that it is sometimes right to let people starve in order to save nature is argued to be inconclusive at best; some alternative responses to population growth are also presented. The very concept of development implies that authentic development, being socially and ecologically sustainable, will seldom conflict with saving nature (sections 1 and 2). While Rolston's argument about excessive capture of net primary product is fallacious, his view should be endorsed about the wrongness of 'development' (...) in areas where sustainable development is impossible, but not unqualifiedly endorsed about those areas where it is feasible (section 3). Important as policies promoting sustainable levels of population are, representing population growth as a cancer is misguided, and could engender indifference to suffering (sections 4 and 5). The neo-Malthusian paradigm (which makes population growth the cause of both poverty and environmental degradation) appears to conflict with a considerable body of empirical evidence; the kind of policies needed in Third World countries are ones which enlist people's energies for producing food and preserving nature alike (section 6). (shrink)

Urbanization is the mechanism for the entanglement of things and experiences as commodities, an interminable restlessness of disorientation, a suspended state, where the capacity to maintain a hold on things and attain a sense of emplacement increasingly necessitates enforced resilience, of people embracing rather than warding off their imminent expendability. As such, what are the possibilities for the city to become a space of communing as an intersection of complex ecologies, common sensibilities and new forms of provision and care? This (...) response to Adrian Parr’s reflections on these issues in her article, ‘Urban Debt, Neoliberalism and the Politics of the Commons’, draws upon various African American practices for inhabiting the city as a vehicle of strategic indifference to efforts to render collective life expendable. This indifference has long been deployed to insulate experimental practices of care, economic and social collaboration, and to ‘honour the city differently’. (shrink)

FEATURED IN EVENTAL AESTHETICS RETROSPECTIVE 1. LOOKING BACK AT 10 ISSUES OF EVENTAL AESTHETICS. In this article I ask: how to rescue “magical thinking” (a notion I inherit from Max Horkheimer and Theodor Adorno) in and from Hegel and imagine its possibilities for posthuman society, ethics, and aesthetics? To address this question, I read Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit through Horkheimer and Adorno, who argue that Enlightenment’s program is “the disenchantment of the world”: with the end of magical thinking and the (...) beginning of enlightened thinking came chasm and disparity between subject and object and, for Horkheimer and Adorno, the onset of barbarism. Hegel himself speaks directly to the danger of failed recognition between two consciousnesses, a failure followed by a duel to the death, in which the two figures leave each other indifferently, like things. After reading a distinctly “magical thinking” into the shape of Hegel’s dialectic, I show how contemporary posthumanism and ecopoetics make use of Hegel’s thought in order to reimagine subject-object relations in and as response to ecological crisis. I discuss how Donna Haraway, following in the traditions of Hegel and Adorno, magically thinks her way toward new models for relating more ethically (to borrow Haraway’s own terminology) to human and other-than-human others in the new century. Then, I look at how such models are being adapted in and by aesthetic practice — specifically, in the experimental ecopoetics of contemporary poet Brenda Hillman. In the end, I argue that contemporary posthumanisms and ecopoetics in fact need magical thinking in order to begin reimagining the social and the ecological and resuscitate a devastatingly enlightened world. (shrink)

Maxwell's deduction of the probability distribution over the velocity of gas molecules—one of the most important passages in physics (Truesdell)—presents a riddle: a physical discovery of the first importance was made in a single inferential leap without any apparent recourse to empirical evidence. -/- Tychomancy proposes that Maxwell's derivation was not made a priori; rather, he inferred his distribution from non-probabilistic facts about the dynamics of intermolecular collisions. Further, the inference is of the same sort as everyday reasoning about the (...) physical probabilities attached to such canonical chance setups as tossed coins or rolled dice. The structure of this reasoning is investigated and some simple rules for inferring physical probabilities from symmetries and other causally relevant properties of physical systems are proposed. -/- Not only physics but evolutionary biology and population ecology, the science of measurement error, and climate modeling have benefited enormously from the same kind of reasoning, the book goes on to argue. Inferences from dynamics to probability are so obvious to us, however, that their methodological importance has been largely overlooked. (shrink)

Normally, during modernity, critical thinking and anti-systemic movements have countered the ruling institutions by envisaging not only new values and ideals, but mainly new ‘forms’ of social regulation. The current crisis reveals that, contrary to this tradition, the institutions in office and the antagonistic way of thinking now share the same basic ‘horizontal’ form. The degrowth project represents a paradigmatic example of this structural homology. The ecological and social crises, standing at the origins of the political engagement for degrowth, (...) are not the outcome of execrable ‘values’ but mainly of the ‘horizontal’ form adopted by current institutions. In fact, the horizontal regime is uninterested in the promotion of specific values or ideas of justice. It only ensures that each singularity (the citizen and their networks) can freely play their game on the basis of their own values. This indifference is the basic reason for ecological, social and economic deregulation. The paradox of degrowth is that, on the one hand, it evokes the necessity of a return to ‘vertical’ regulation (i.e. collective sovereignty), while on the other, it is deeply subaltern to the paradigm of horizontalism (the same that frames the growth regime). (shrink)

A contribution to the sixth installment of the Common Knowledge symposium “Apology for Quietism,” this article explores the possibilities for quietist narrative. Since quietism suggests resistance or condescension to telos, suspense, will, and the kinds of spirituality, politics, and ways of being associated with them, it seems unlikely that a narrative would be written or read by a practitioner of “ideal indifference” or by anyone averse on principle to initiative. But Gilbert White's text of 1789, The Natural History and (...) Antiquities of Selborne comes as close to being a quietist narrative as is conceivable. Describing the environment of a single English parish, White's text places stillness on exhibit as an indication of commitment to an ethics of self-unregarding attentiveness. But the stillness of Selborne, King argues, is a conspicuous stillness—a practice of being still in face of the natural world. As an Anglican minister, White explicitly demonstrates the arguments of eighteenth-century natural theology. Having stilled his will to interfere, he can observe the activity of God's creations; and White does so in order to understand God better. Thus, White's desisting or withdrawal is in no way based in defeatism, indolence, or aimlessness. Moreover, King argues, White aims to produce stillness as a formal quality of his text and, through it, to produce a like stillness and attentiveness in the reader. Quietist narrative is meant to help the reader still his or her acquisitiveness and develop instead observational capabilities, a capacity simply to admire (or stand apart, in awe), and, above all, patience. To the extent that it fosters in us a principled “do nothing” stance with respect to our natural ecology, King concludes, quietism of Gilbert White's kind may represent the most radical of environmental politics. (shrink)

At this historical moment, few terms are as charged and powerful as the omnipresent term environment. It has become a strategic tool for politics and theories alike, crossed the borders of the disciplines of biology and ecology, and left the manifold field of environmentalism. This article explores the first steps on this path of expansion, in which the term becomes an argumentative resource and achieves a plausibility that transforms it into a universal tool. It is not self-evident to describe ubiquitous (...) media, cinematic spaces, or augmented realities as environments. To understand how the term gained this plausibility, it is necessary to distinguish it from two other terms: the French milieu and the German Umwelt. When these three terms substitute one another and are used as translations, they lose their historical specificity and depth, and three different theoretical and philosophical traditions merge into indifference. Consequently, a conceptual history of the term environment and its relation to milieu and Umwelt—as well as terms such as medium, atmosphere, ambiance, and climate—can help us to understand the potentials and dangers of the term’s plausibility. In this sense, the article argues for a new perspective on epistemologies of surrounding that relate that which surrounds to that which is surrounded. (shrink)

The growth of environmental ethics as an academic discipline has not been accompanied by any cultural movement toward sustainability. Indices of ecological degradation steadily increase, and many of the legislative gains made during the 1970s have been lost during the Reagan-Bush anti-environmental revolution. This situation gives rise to questions about the efficacy of ecophilosophical discourse. We argue (1) that these setbacks reflect, on the one hand, the skillful use of rhetorical tools by anti-environmental factions and, on the other, the (...) indifference (even hostility) of the ecophilosophical communitytoward rhetoric, (2) that since the linguistic turn in philosophy, no rigid line of demarcation can be maintained between rhetoric and philosophy, and (3) that rhetoric offers resources to the ecophilosophical community that increase its potential to effect change in society. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:PrefaceScott Paeth and Kevin CarnahanThis issue of the Journal of the Society of Christian Ethics is organized around the theme of structural evil. Each of the essays deals with some dimension of the problem of how we can conceive of evil beyond the question of simple human volition, and understand it as embedded in the institutions and cultural assumptions that we often take for granted as societal givens.Cristina Traina's (...) presidential address, "This Is the Year," takes as its starting point the aftermath of the 2016 US presidential election, arguing that it exposes the way in which liberal narratives of progress have failed to address the deeply embedded structural evil within American society. She argues that this political moment provides an opportunity for liberals to engage in a critical self-examination with respect to their complicity in these structures by embracing a form of "utopian praxis."Ryan Darr's essay considers the intersection of structural evil and individual responsibility, arguing, on the one hand, for a distinction between sin and moral wrongdoing and, on the other, for an approach to both concepts that is social in form. Esther Reed's essay, meanwhile, offers an analysis of responsibility in light of the question of structural evil, using the theology of Dietrich Bonhoeffer to aid in understanding the connection between individual responsibility and distant harm.David Cloutier continues the examination of the tension between individual agency and structural evil in his critique of the "neo-Franciscan" and "Junian" approaches to issues of violence and racism, arguing that a "critical realist" approach to structural evil provides greater resources for Christian ethics.Elizabeth Sweeny Block offers a different approach to the question in her consideration of the role of conscience in grappling with crises on a global scale, such as climate change and the Zika virus. She contrasts the "reflexive conscience" predominant in Christian ethics with a model of "engaged conscience," which may provide a better approach to large-scale structural evil and its consequences.Stewart Clem uses Thomas Aquinas's conception of virtue to understand the problems inherent in striving for moral clarity in a "post-truth" context. In [End Page vii] light of Harry Frankfurt's philosophical analysis of the concept of "bullshit," he argues that Christian ethics needs to develop a way of speaking about truth as a virtue in order to respond to the structural problem of truth indifference in contemporary political discourse.Looking at the problem from a different perspective, Christopher Jones and Conor Kelly examine the sin of sloth from a structural point of view. Critiquing individualist conceptions of the idea, they make the case for retrieving the classical definition of sloth as a vice against charity and consider how sloth can be overcome through a reinvigoration of forms of civic virtue.Another dimension of structural evil is considered by Ryan Newson in his examination of the role that Confederate monuments play in the American South. For many, they stand as a symbol of the glorification of evil that should be removed, but Newson suggests that there may be reasons to keep at least some of these monuments as reminders of the failure of justice and the judgment of God.Wonchul Shin and Elizabeth Bounds consider these questions from the perspective of how "ordinary" experiences of moral harm need to be analyzed as dimensions of structural evil, and they call for an examination of structural responsibility and the ethics of repair as a means of addressing these questions.Finally, Willa Swenson-Lengyel looks at the connection between structural evil and environmental ethics, arguing that the "moral paralysis" often experienced in light of the ecological crisis exposes certain forms of privilege that need to be addressed from the perspective of Christian ethics. In many ways, she argues, privileged inaction can be a manifestation of "works righteousness" that can be addressed through a Lutheran conception of the doctrine of justification.________This year the JSCE is retiring the demographic survey that has been used since 2008 and adopting a new demographic survey. With the transition comes an apt time for reflection on what the data from the last nine years show.The first piece of data to... (shrink)

The problem of tolerance is analyzed against the background of the acute challenges of today and transformation of humanities from antiquity to postmodernism. Tolerance-related definitions arose in philosophy are examined retrospectively: patience, tolerance, respect, trust, harmony in diversity. The methodological significance of the integrative interdisciplinary prism in consideration of the phenomenon of tolerance is shown. Three leading sociocultural and communicative strategies of tolerance in social agreements have been identified: tolerant internal dialogue, tolerant communication with the world, tolerant interpersonal communication. The (...) limits of tolerance are outlined, beyond which it becomes quasi-tolerance, because behind the simulacrum of tolerance hides indifference, conformism of communicators, or sprouts of intolerance, aggression, mobbing. With the help of sociological and synergetic theories the idea of balance of tolerance in psychological, mental and spiritual, physical aspects of human existence is defended. Autotolerance is due to human self-knowledge, sound self-esteem, developed mental and emotional quotient, and under such conditions it strategically determines a tolerant dialogue with the world, a constructive worldview. In turn, it needs critical thinking and an ecological attitude to information, especially in the context of media manipulation and phubbing. The simulacrum of modern pop literature on positive thinking is outlined, in contrast to which the life-creating potential of practical philosophy is revealed, which contributes to creation of socio-cultural and communicative communities. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Philosophy and Literature 27.2 (2003) 255-268 [Access article in PDF] The Tree of Knowledge and Darwinian Literary Study Jonathan Gottscha I THE BRANCHES OF KNOWLEDGE are not strewn randomly on the ground; they are part of a coherent, interconnected tree. Physics is the most fundamental of all the sciences, so it is the trunk of the tree. The branch of chemistry emerges from physics, because the laws of chemistry (...) depend on the laws of physics: chemical reactions occur the way they do because of the physical properties of atoms. Biology's branch splits off from chemistry's: the molecules that comprise living things are bound by the rules of chemistry. Scientists, while grasping this fundamental interconnection of the broad boughs of the natural sciences, 1 have rarely craned their necks sufficiently to glimpse the upper reaches of the tree of knowledge: the green canopy of human culture that is the traditional jurisdiction of the social sciences and humanities. In fact, scholars from all disciplines have mostly proceeded as though the greenery above was the outgrowth of a neighboring tree from a fundamentally different species.Since the 1960s, however, a maverick band of Darwinian neck-craners have been demonstrating that the stuff of human culture, studied in the humanities and social sciences, is a contiguous part of the tree of knowledge: human culture and behavior grow out of human biology. 2 These scholars and scientists continue to define themselves by different names depending on subtleties in their particular approaches: Darwinian psychology, sociobiology, Darwinian anthropology, biosociology, human behavioral ecology, human ethology, and evolutionary psychology. 3 However, sacrificing some precision on the alter of clarity, I will refer to all of the above approaches with the umbrella term of human [End Page 255] behavioral biology, understood in its most expansive sense as the study of how millions of years of evolution shaped the human mind, and thus human behavior, and thus human culture. No matter how human behavioral biologists define their work, they all share the conviction that human behavior, psychology, and culture cannot be fully understood separate from human bio-evolutionary history.Darwinian excavation of the foundations of human nature has inspired a revolutionary movement in the social sciences that proceeds to this day. Like most revolutions, this one has seen its share of rolling heads and intellectual bloodshed. Starting with the "sociobiology debates" of the late 1970s through mid-80s and continuing through the "science wars" of the early-mid 1990s allegations and recriminations of the most serious sort have been almost casually poured into the air: racism, sexism, Social Darwinism, biological determinism, disciplinary colonialism, disciplinary xenophobia, and "biophobia." 4 However, despite entrenched, sometimes zealous opposition, evolutionary thinking has firmly established itself in the social sciences. Thumbing through leading social science journals, it is no longer a shock to encounter articles exploring traditional topics with shiny new Darwinian tools. This stands in stark contrast to the situation in the decades immediately following World War II, where applying biology to human behavior and culture was virtually taboo. In fact, the UNESCO statement of 1952 explicitly tabooed human behavioral biology as scientifically and politically incorrect. Moreover, this phenomenon is in marked contrast to the mainstream social science of the late 1970s and early 1980s, which was in the midst of a wicked backlash against the resurgence of biological inquiry into behavior represented in sociobiology.Currently, while human behavioral biology retains many social scientist critics, and while certain social science fields remain largely hostile or indifferent, invoking biology to explain social behavior is moving toward the mainstream. Almost thirty years after E. O. Wilson made, in Sociobiology (1975), his first call for a merger of disciplines under a new biological synthesis, biology-savvy social scientists and social-science-savvy biologists have provided startling new insights into a host of topics traditionally examined in isolation from biology: gender differences, criteria for mate choice, resource acquisition and allocation, aggression, cooperation, xenophobia, ethnocentrism, sexual politics, religious sensibilities, social hierarchy, moral codes, etc. 5Though one must be careful not to overstate the progress, we are [End Page 256] witnessing... (shrink)

In this article we discuss Adorno’s and Horkheimer’s hermeneutical interpretation of Odysseus’ encounter with Circe in their Dialectic of Enlightenment. This encounter is further interpreted – via the ecofeminist homology between women and nature – as an answer to “the siren song of nature,” in which the elements of attraction and threat to human subjectivity are deeply intertwined. Whereas his crew gives in to the siren song and experiences the pleasure of being swine, enlightened Odysseus himself resists the temptation by (...) forcing Circe to establish a contract with him, the prototypical marriage that leads to the schizophrenic mythification of housewife and prostitute. It will be argued that there exists towards nature in late-modernity a homologous stance – that of environment and wilderness.Based on these assumptions, we are able to draw a few conclusions that are relevant for the wilderness-debate in general and the plea for wilderness restoration in particular. First of all, I accept the social-constructivist argument of the inaccessibility of pristine, wild nature, as I argue there is an ontological alienation from nature that cannot be overcome. Indeed, it appears that the Marxist distinction between first nature and second nature affiliates with social-constructivist assumptions. Nevertheless, I seek to avoid the moral indifference often implied by social-constructivism by employing Adorno and Horkheimer’s eudaemonist critique of enlightenment, and argue that another, historically determined form of alienation from nature operates in the background.Although Adorno and Horkheimer do not provide us with practical measures to effect a reconciliation of humanity and nature, they do provide us with a conceptual instrument to critique certain tendencies within our society’s ecological policy. (shrink)

The prevailing view of Advaita Vedānta as world negating and disengaged with worldly activity provides little space for an ethic of environmental care, or a psychology for eco-resilience beyond passive indifference. However, many sources for environmentalism within the Advaita Vedānta tradition and its canon of texts remain untapped. In this paper, I explore the ritual ecology found in chapter three of the Bhagavadgītā as the ground to construct an Advaitin ecotheology and ecopsychology. This all-encompassing ritual ecology, described as a (...) sacrificial wheel, provides meaning to the world and views individuals as essential causative participants within it. Individuals have the religious and moral responsibility to perpetuate the wheel through a relationship of mutual reciprocity with the gods based on an economy of food. I extend this ritual ecology to include moral responsibility to the environment and explain how it provides a religious psychology and practice for handling our anxiety of imminent ecological catastrophe. (shrink)

Drawing on philosophy, theology, comparative religion, spirituality, Holocaust studies, physics, biology, psychology, and personal experience, I argue that continued human existence depends on our willingness to reject nihilism–not as an expedient “noble lie” but because faith in a meaningful cosmos and the power of love is at least as validly grounded in human experience as insistence on cosmic indifference and ultimate futility. I maintain that hope will free us to develop nonimperialistic methods of bridging cultural differences by forming a (...) mutually intelligible vocabulary that celebrates diversity, enters the worlds of others in respectful dialogue, and fosters a postmechanistic, organic, ecological, holistic, dynamic, interactive, open‐ended model of reality. I lay the foundation for a “hermeneutics of love” to complement Paul Ricoeur's “hermeneutics of suspicion” and invite speculation on the ways science, technology, and society would be transformed if those “glasses of friendship” were widely applied. (shrink)

Two conflicting tendencies may be discerned in Pythagorean ethics as applied to the environment: on the one hand, a sense of reverence for nature and kinship with all life that opposed killing and other forms of interference in the natural world, and on the other hand, a doctrine of the separability of soul and body which denigrates the body and the external world of which it is apart. The prescriptive content of Pythagorean ethics includes prohibitions against taking life, even in (...) sacrifices to the gods, and against eating anything that has been killed. Pollution of certain kinds is forbidden. These strictures were based on an organic, cyclical view of the world, emphasizing its harmony and balance. The Pythagoreans investigated some questions that would today be called ecological. Perhaps most importantly, they evinced a genuine respect for living things, deriving in part from the belief that animals and plants contain the reborn souls of human beings. These doctrines may have been derived from the attitudes and practices of ancestral hunters and gatherers in southeast Europe, with traditional Greek religion serving as the means of transmission from tribaI cultures to c1assical philosophy. The followers of Pythagoras split into two schools: a “scientific” school that neglected biology and therefore ecology, and a “religious” school that emphasized purity of soul and rejected any concern with physical nature. The more “environmentalist”teachings were gradually abandoned as the Pythagoreans accommodated themselves to the general attitudes of Greco-Roman culture. For instance, the objections to animal sacrifice, and to most plants as food, were dropped. The divorce of body and soul in later Pythagorean thought, wherever its influence was strong, brought with it indifference not only to the body, but to all the rest of the natural environment. (shrink)

David Ehrenfeld argues that humanism emphasizes reason at the expense of emotion, and that its narrow focus on the use of reason to serve human interests leads to a dichotomy between man and nature in which ecological factors are subordinated to the satisfaction of human wants. In response, I argue that: (1) humanists stress employment of reflective reason and reason’s interrelations with other aspectsofthe human personality, (2) humanism’s typical commitment to naturalism locates man as part of nature and does (...) not entail an exclusive focus on human interests, and (3) humanism’s commitment to the legitimate sphere of human interests does not entail indifference to nonhuman nature, for a healthy environment is necessary for the long-term satisfaction of human interests. (shrink)

In recent years, the trend in environmental ethics has been to criticize the traditional Western anthropocentric attitude toward nature. Many environmentalists have looked toward some of the views held by indigenous peoples in various parts of the world and argue that important ecological lessons can be learned by studying their beliefs and attitudes toward nature. The traditional Western viewpoint has been labeled as a form of shallow environmentalism, allowing few rights for anything other than human life. In contrast, indigenous (...) peoples are seen as respecting all things. Thus, the claim is made that the latter’secological views are deeper than those of Western views. John Locke is often placed at the center of this tradition that is associated with indifference to the environment. Yet, a comparison of the fundamental beliefs that drive the environmental ethics of the Maori people with those of John Locke reveals surprising similaries. It may well be the case that any adoption by the West of another culture’s view would be too difficult given that there are so many foundational beliefs that are alien to the West, but which are nevertheless required to drive such an ethic. Nevertheless, if we can find similarities between various views, such as those of the Maori and Locke, we may have a greater appreciation of one another’s beliefs and hence less reluctance to adopt them if they will benefit the environment. Our efforts could then perhaps be directed toward putting environmental ethics into practice rather than fighting over which doctrine is the correct one. (shrink)

This essay confronts Ray Brassier’s vindication of nihilism with other two important but frequently underexamined philosophical attempts to overcome nihilism: Hans Jonas’ and Keiji Nishitani’s. By putting these different takes on nihilism into dialogue, it explores some blind spots in Brassier’s position, as well as some of the practical consequences, for our current planetary situation, of undertaking a radical divorce between the normative and the natural that results from his radical nihilism. The article opts for a more moderate acceptance and (...) eventual self-overcoming of nihilism, according to which, even if natural entities are indifferent to human reasons and meanings, this does not entail that nature is bereft of a human-independent normative dimension. In other words, the essay argues that care must be taken not to confuse criticisms of an anthropocentric conception of reasons and meanings with the belief that meaning is completely absent from the natural world. Thus, the central contention of the article is that, given our current climate and ecological catastrophe, one of the most pressing tasks of contemporary philosophy is to understand normativity in non-anthropocentric ways, so that humans are no longer considered as the only entities that respond to normativity. Such an attitude conceives humans as estranged normative creatures amidst a meaningless, indifferent natural world, toward which they would have no ethical responsibilities. The essay finishes by suggesting ways in which to develop an account that does not fall into this ethical vacuum. (shrink)

James Hansen, the world’s leading climate scientist, argues that global climate destabilization could totally destroy the conditions for life on Earth, and further, that politicians are not taking effective action. Instead, they are using their power to cripple science. This situation is explained in this paper as the outcome of the successful alliance between a global class of predators and people who must be recognized as idiots taking over the institutions of government, research and education and transforming governments into governments (...) of occupation. The predators are either indifferent to the suffering they will cause, or have an agenda to use the effects of global warming to cull the world’s human population. In either case, their views are legitimated by social Darwinism. By revealing their true nature, this alliance has exposed a rift in the civilization of modernity, revealing the suppressed tradition and trajectory of the Radical Enlightenment. With its roots in the Renaissance, the Radical Enlightenment is opposed to reductionist materialism and committed to truth, liberty, justice and democracy. To revive the grand narrative of the Radical Enlightenment it will be necessary to reemplot this grand narrative as a project for creating an Ecological Civilization. This will be a civilization based on process metaphysics and a fusion of science and the humanities in human ecology. The goal projected by this narrative should be to save life on Earth from this alliance of predators and idiots. (shrink)

This essay argues that phenomenology is uniquely suited to critique naturalism without lapsing into a romantic, anti-scientific, or dystopian view of modern science. This argument situates Husserl’s retrieval of the environmental relation in the Vienna Lecture between two alternative tendencies in contemporary ecological phenomenology: 1) the rejection of or indifference to the positive sciences, and 2) the adoption of naturalism in phenomenological methodology. On the one hand, the claim is that the phenomenological return to the environment should not (...) imply a rejection of methodological naturalism. On the other hand, while an ecological phenomenology is consistent with naturalistic investigation, there is nevertheless a heterogeneity between the two. In short, phenomenology need not become naturalized in order for it to be ecological. (shrink)

The recent proliferation of human-plant studies are informed by understandings of how plants live. Philosopher Michael Marder has developed a philosophy of plant ontology, founded on notions of modular independence, radical openness and ontological indifference. This paper critiques, and ultimately rejects, Marder’s key concepts, using a swathe of empirical evidence and theory from the plant sciences and evolutionary ecology. It posits a number of positive statements about these aspects of plant being that better align with the scientific evidence base. (...) The implications for plant ethics are also briefly explored. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Gandhi's Hope: Learning from Other Religions as a Path to PeaceChristopher Key ChappleGandhi's Hope: Learning from Other Religions as a Path to Peace. By Jay McDaniel. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 2005. 134 + viii pp.This book by prominent Protestant theologian Jay McDaniel suggests that Mahatma Gandhi challenged the modern world by publicly revealing that which he learned from other faith traditions and advocating this path as a way (...) for intercultural understanding. The wisdom of Gandhi holds special poignancy today, when the processes of globalization and migration have placed followers of different faiths in closer proximity than can be remembered in the past five hundred years.Jay McDaniel writes with crisp clarity and organizes his insights into bite-sized pieces. He lays out five challenges that face all the world's faiths: compassion, self-criticism, simple living, ecological awareness, and welcoming religious diversity. In approaching this decidedly postmodern list of issues, McDaniel draws from two primary resources: the experiences shared by his students at Hendrix College and the writings of Alfred North Whitehead. Along the way, he invokes the Buddhist teacher and leader Thich Nhat Hanh and several progressive Catholics, including Sister Joan Chittester and theologians Hans Küng and Paul Knitter.Continuing with a style developed in his earlier books, McDaniel latches onto a [End Page 237] metaphor and extends it to illustrate his central point—in this case, the value of diversity. In past books, he has used the image of the hunter and the hunted to underscore the need to respect animals. In Gandhi's Hope, the metaphor he employs is that of a jazz concert, with all different manner of instruments pooling their resources to create a tapestry of diverse yet harmonious music.Although the title of the book may seem to indicate that Gandhi will serve as thefocus, in fact, Whitehead anchors McDaniel's approach. Through an updated approach to Whitehead, McDaniel seeks to answer the questions regarding diversity and compassion that he has posed. He suggests that an experience of concrescence will result in the sort of heightened awareness needed to increase one's conscience and to make the ethical changes needed to respond to the current state of the world. McDaniel identifies twelve "planks" that will usher Whitehead's vision into the contemporary world. These twelve aspects seem also to be heavily influenced by McDaniel's own encounter with Buddhism: interdependence, impermanence, indeterminism, mind/matter, deep listening, value, God, creativity, persuasive power, divine empathy, many forms of salvation, and life after death. These broad categories embrace key notions found in all religious traditions. Some traditions emphasize certain aspects more than others. Buddhists cleave to impermanence and Jews to establishing a covenant with God, but Jews also recognize that all things will pass, and Buddhists revere their great teacher and many strive to emulate his experience through techniques akin to those who worship God.In order for religious traditions to maintain their urgency and relevance, McDaniel suggests that they must respond actively to the looming threat of environmental degradation. Consumer culture drives people into a state of indifference about natural resources, and arrogance prevents people from taking an interest in the life patterns and cultures of others. These tendencies lie at the root of the world's troubles. McDaniel suggests that process theology can remedy these ills by calling people into a state of compassion and can help guide people toward adopting thoughtful self-criticism, to living a more simple life, to recognizing the importance of other living beings and ecosystems, and to celebrating diversity of cultures. Echoing a refrain long associated with process thought, McDaniel writes "the universe is a creative and creating process of interdependent events, lured by but not controlled by God, such that the future is not yet decided, not even by God" (p. 71). To the extent that religions sustain themselves by reinforcing separateness and promoting a narrow cultural identity and/or an unthinking fundamentalism, they can be an impediment to peace, which, for McDaniel, is an important goal of the world's religions.When attempting to theologize about ultimate matters, McDaniel posits "four faces of the sacred," which he lists as the Abyss... (shrink)

Scholars have often criticized Hinduism for being an ecologically unfriendly religion, due to being too “other worldly” and “indifferent” toward the natural world. According to Hindus, they argue that the natural world is simply māyā—“ephemeral,” “illusory,” and “unreal.” The Bhāgavata Purāṇa, for example, features over 60 passages that reduce the material world to nothing more than a passing dream. ). Meanwhile, other scholars have tried to correct this image by pointing to passages in Indian sacred literature that highlight the divinity (...) of nature, as well as Hindu rituals that involve worshiping the earth, plants, animals, trees, water, sun, and sky. This paper will argue, however, that both the scholarly criticisms and responses are problematic for two reasons. First, these discussions often assume that a religious practitioner’s beliefs concerning the world and environment directly correspond to her attitude toward, and treatment of, the environment. Second, the scholarly criticisms and responses are based on a narrow interpretation and understanding of the concept of māyā. The word “māyā” has held a variety of meanings in Indian sacred literature. This paper focuses on conceptions of māyā found within the Bhāgavata Purāṇa and explores resources in the Bhāgavata that may be useful for developing a Vaiṣṇava ecotheology. (shrink)

Drawing on a scene in J.M.G. Le Clézio's novel Terra Amata, which tells the story of the instincts of a small boy, the minute sensoria of some bugs and a cosmic catastrophe, this essay demonstrates the ambivalence around insects in animal studies, their contingent location in psychoanalysis and the conundrums they place in ethical philosophy. By reading Le Clézio's tale through Uexküll, Freud, Dodds and Stengers we argue for more nuanced, imbricated and critical connections between ethology, psychoanalysis and ethics. These (...) connections become imperatives in the face of the current environmental crisis, where we urgently need to attend to co-affecting relations that are too distant or proximate, tiny or vast to register as familiar sentient states or ethical feelings. In the process we demonstrate the performative dimensions of what we call the entomological imagination – present in the strange proximity of child and bugs, the powerful unthinking god, the indifference of the insects to human commands, and the infinitesimal catastrophe in Le Clézio's story – that facilitates an epistemic fluidity required for a contemporary understanding of ecologies. (shrink)

The question of whether there are laws in ecology is important for a number of reasons. If, as some have suggested, there are no ecological laws, this would seem to distinguish ecology from other branches of science, such as physics. It could also make a difference to the methodology of ecology. If there are no laws to be discovered, ecologists would seem to be in the business of merely supplying a suite of useful models. These models would need to (...) be assessed for their empirical adequacy but not for their ability to capture fundamental truths, or the like. If, on the other hand, ecology does have laws, this prompts further questions about what these laws are and why even the best candidates for ecological laws fall short of what might be expected of laws. (shrink)

We have become estranged from the cosmic movements, according to Bataille. We are confined by the error linked to the representation of ‘the stationary earth’. We have negated the immersive immanence of the whole and made nature into a fixed world of tools and things. How then do we recognise ourselves as part of the ‘rapture of the heavens’? Bataille urges us to consider life as a solar phenomenon, the free play of solar energy on the earth. This paper argues (...) how Bataille’s cosmic vision anticipates both planetary and ecological thinking. This entails a base materialism of difference based on a radical Nietzschean and Heraclitean theory of becoming and flux. This thought is developed along Bataillean concepts such as the movement of the whole, the labyrinthine, and compound beings, ipseity, as well as the concept of a communifying movement. This materialism paired with Vladimir Vernadsky’s biosphere lays the foundation for the laws of the general economy, which also constitutes an economy inclusive of a general ecology: a tragic vision of Gaia and Dionysos. Finally, poetry is considered, as a way we might reconnect with the universe and stimulate ecological imagination. (shrink)

There is growing philosophical interest in “affective injustice”: injustice faced by individuals specifically in their capacity as affective beings. Current debates tend to focus on affective injustice at the psychological level. In this paper, I argue that the built environment can be a vehicle for affective injustice — specifically, what Wildman et al. (2022) term “affective powerlessness”. I use resources from ecological psychology to develop this claim. I consider two cases where certain kinds of bodies are, either intentionally or (...) unintentionally, deprived of access to goods affording the development and maintenance of their subjective well-being: hostile architecture and masking practices in autism. This deprivation, I argue further, leads to a significant weakening and diminishment of their spatial agency, hinders their well-being, and in so doing gives rise to a pervasive experience of affective powerlessness. By drawing attention to these themes, I show that an ecological approach helpfully supplements existing approaches. It highlights how affective injustice can emerge via the way bodies are positioned in space, and the central role that built environments play in determining this positioning. (shrink)

In Bayesian epistemology, the problem of the priors is this: How should we set our credences (or degrees of belief) in the absence of evidence? That is, how should we set our prior or initial credences, the credences with which we begin our credal life? David Lewis liked to call an agent at the beginning of her credal journey a superbaby. The problem of the priors asks for the norms that govern these superbabies. -/- The Principle of Indifference gives (...) a very restrictive answer. It demands that such an agent divide her credences equally over all possibilities. That is, according to the Principle of Indifference, only one initial credence function is permissible, namely, the uniform distribution. In this paper, we offer a novel argument for the Principle of Indifference. I call it the Argument from Accuracy. (shrink)

A powerful work of moral and political philosophy.The idea which I shall present here came to me more or less out of the blue. I was on a train some five years ago, on my way to spend a day at Headingley and I was reading a book about the death camp at Sobibor... The particular, not very appropriate, conjunction involved for me in this train journey... had the effect of fixing my thoughts on one of the more dreadful features (...) of human coexistence, when in the shape of a simple five-word phrase the idea occurred to me. In The Contract of Mutual Indifference, Norman Geras discusses a central aspect of the experience of the Holocaust with a view to exploring its most important contemporary implications. In a bold and powerful synthesis of memorial, literary record, historical reflection and political theory, he focuses on the figure of the bystander -- the bystander to the destruction of the Jews of Europe and the bystander to more recent atrocities -- to consider the moral consequences of looking on without active response at persecution and great suffering. Geras argues that the tragedy of European Jewry, so widely pondered by historians, social scientists, psychologists, theologians and others, has not yet found its proper reflection within political philosophy. Attempting to fill the gap, he adapts an old idea from within that tradition of enquiry, the idea of the social contract, to the task of thinking about the triangular relation between perpetrators, victims and bystanders, and draws a somber conclusion from it. Geras goes on to ask how far this conclusion may be offset by the hypothesis of a universal duty to bring aid. The Contract of Mutual Indifference is an original and challenging work, aimed at the complacent abstraction of much contemporary theory. It is supplemented by three shorter essays on the implications of the Jewish catastrophe for conceptions of human nature and progress and for certain types of Marxist explanation. (shrink)

Adolescence is an important developmental period marked by a transition from primarily parental-controlled eating to self-directed and peer-influenced eating. During this period, adolescents gain autonomy over their individual food choices and eating behavior in general. While parent-feeding practices have been shown to influence eating behaviors in children, little is known about how these relationships track across adolescent development as autonomy expands. The purpose of this qualitative study was to identify factors that impact food decisions and eating autonomy among adolescents. Using (...) the food choice process model as a guide, four focus groups were conducted with 34 adolescents. Focus group discussion was semi-structured, asking teens about influences on their food choices across different food environments, their involvement with food purchasing and preparation, and perceived control over food their choices. Focus group transcripts were analyzed using deductive and inductive code creation and thematic analysis. This study found six leading influences on adolescents' food choices and identified additional factors with prominence within specific environmental contexts. This study distinguished a broader spectrum of factors influencing adolescent food choice that extend beyond “convenience” and “taste” which have previously been identified as significant contributors. The degree of control that teens reported differed by eating location, occasion, and social context. Finally, adolescents demonstrated various levels of engagement in behaviors related to their eating autonomy. Identifying the emergent themes related to adolescent autonomy was the first step toward the goal of developing a scale to evaluate adolescent eating autonomy. (shrink)

Open peer commentary on the article “Perception-Action Mutuality Obviates Mental Construction” by Martin Flament Fultot, Lin Nie & Claudia Carello. Upshot: The authors of the target article seem on the one hand to want to reprimand enactivists for not embracing ecological psychology, and on the other, to criticise them for taking on board some - but not all - of the principles of ecological psychology. In this commentary, I argue that the claim that enactivists have not embraced (...) class='Hi'>ecological psychology is false, and that it is coherent for enactivists to take on only some of the principles of ecological psychology, as the two research frameworks have different overall projects. Furthermore, I argue that there is an enactivism-friendly stream of ecological psychology research that is currently yielding exciting results that both broaden the depth of ecological psychology research and bring it into dialogue with enactivism-inspired approaches to understanding perception and experience. (shrink)

Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is a psychopathological condition characterized by persistent deficits in social interaction and communication, and restricted, repetitive patterns of behavior and interests. To build an ecological-enactive account of autism, I propose we should endorse the affordance-based approach of the skilled intentionality framework (SIF). In SIF, embodied cognition is understood as skilled engagement with affordances in the sociomaterial environment of the ecological niche by which an individual tends toward the optimal grip. The human econiche offers a (...) whole landscape of affordances, and situated individuals respond to a field of relevant affordances. An important part of SIF is an ecological-enactive interpretation of the free energy principle and predictive processing. Predictive processing accounts indicate that in ASD too much precision is assigned to prediction errors. Autistic persons depend heavily on current sensory information and less on prior beliefs and cannot attune to stable regularities. To reduce uncertainty, they over-rely on routines, strict habits, and a familiar environment—a predictable ecological niche they construct. I argue that skilled intentionality gives us the framework from which to analyze the autistic field of affordances. Autistic patterns of affordance-related bodily states of action readiness are only sensitive to very specific solicitations in the environment and achieve optimal grip in well-known situations. Autism is to be understood as a disorder of bodily normativity. Taking this approach helps us figure out what neurotypical people can do to attune their environment in order to scaffold the needs of autistic individuals by redesigning the landscape of affordances. (shrink)

Topics in Cognitive Science, Volume 14, Issue 3, Page 467-491, July 2022.

We argue that David Lewis’s principal principle implies a version of the principle of indifference. The same is true for similar principles that need to appeal to the concept of admissibility. Such principles are thus in accord with objective Bayesianism, but in tension with subjective Bayesianism. 1 The Argument2 Some Objections Met.