For more recent thoughts on this topic, see “‘Autonomous Evolution’ Revisited: A Declaration of Intellectual Independence” (published July 4, 2024 on one of my Substacks).
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Download the article in pdf format: Ecocentrism is Underspecified
I think of this piece as the first instalment of an ongoing project of analysing and articulating a plausible moral foundation for rewilding. In it, I lay out the motivation and groundwork of my proposal: an ethic of respecting the creative potential of “self-willed” evolutionary processes, which I will develop in a manner partially inspired by moral sentimentalism and virtue ethics. This perspective is ecocentric; however, it is also importantly different from other possible ecocentric perspectives. For one, it’s “process-focused” instead of “product-focused” in locating the key bearer of intrinsic value (i.e. focusing on evolution instead of ecosystems, the biosphere, or biodiversity). For another, it aspires to reclaim a robust enough sense of a “human/nature distinction” to allow us to conceptualise these processes as autonomous, and thus to respect and protect them as such. In later work, I intend to contrast my position with other analyses of “respecting Nature’s autonomy” in the literature, and I’ll look more closely at potential practical consequences for restoration and rewilding.
Synopsis
Rewilding, in the first instance, must be ecocentric (§1). This follows from the fact that ecocentrism is true, and thus it must guide our policies impacting the more-than-human world just as much as respect for human dignity must guide our policies impacting members of our own species. At the same time, however, ecocentrism per se is insufficient as a moral basis for rewilding. What is missing is a means to adjudicate the extent to which human intervention is morally appropriate on behalf of the more-than-human world (§2). While I do not deny that humans can intentionally intervene in nature on nature’s behalf, we must be wary of the risk of paternalism – just as when we presume to intervene in other people’s affairs for their own good. For the paternalism worry to be coherent, we need a concept of wild nature as autonomous, which possibly would not sit well with ecocentrists who attempt to deny “human-nature dualism.” However, I argue that the latter ignores human agency and our ability to consciously choose how (and how much) to impact the rest of nature (§3).
On the account that I propose, an ecological ethic must foreground the importance of respect for evolutionary processes (§4). Even under this specification, however, there remains an important question as to what this moral demand entails in practice, and it returns to similar questions regarding the appropriate nature and degree of human intervention (§5). I claim that respect for evolution, properly construed, is constituted not only by the acceptance of certain beliefs but also by the cultivation of certain sentiments toward natural evolutionary processes – such as wonder, reverence, and humility – and that the fitting sentiments are ones that tend to dispose us to favour actions that minimise intervention in natural processes (§6). While the account offered here is ultimately subjectivist, it offers a (possibly) novel starting point from which to approach questions of our moral obligations to wild nature and their implementation.
To read the rest of the paper, you must download in pdf form (because I prefer to format pdfs than u.osu.edu webpage posts).
Here it is: Ecocentrism is Underspecified