Abstract
Science has always been tightly associated with environmental ethics in a way traditional ethics has not. However, despite this proximity, science has had a merely informational role, where it must inform ethics but not intervene in ethical judgment. Science is seen as an amoral enterprise, requiring an ethics rather than recommending one. In this paper I try to go against this common view. First, I give a critique of the naturalistic fallacy following the lines of Frankena. Then I go on to describe the two possible roles science can have in ethical though, and in environmental ethics in particular. As it turns out, science does not only inform ethics, but can actually have moral import and intervene in moral judgment. Finally, from an ecocentric point of view, I try to illustrate this last point by construing the ecological notion of resilience as a moral boundary—a scientifically determined boundary between right and wrong.
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Notes
See Leopold (1949).
Leopold (1949, pp. 224–225).
Taylor (1981, p. 198).
Leopold (1949, p. 221).
Callicott (1980, p. 321).
See Frankena (1939).
Here I am adopting a position according to which a source of the normative force of our moral concepts comes from our conception of the good. One reason why we ought to do things is because they are good. I don´t claim this is the only source of normativity, but it seems to me to be definitely a source. This means in the present context that in order to conclude that we ought to do something, one could say that such a thing is good.
Roslton (1997, p. 137).
Of course, I am assuming that Doug is not a philosopher either—at least not a good one. Some biocentric philosophers would claim that the killing of the deer is wrong, even if it is done for the good of the ecosystem—Tom Regan for instance would probably claim this (see Regan 1983).
IPCC (2014, p. vii).
IPCC (2014, p. ix).
I submit that this increase in normative power is not only due to the fact that George appears as some kind of public figure of authority. This is surely a component in his normative authority, but it is not the only one. We could imagine for instance that no one knows that George is the great scientists he is. Still, his judgment will have more power that Doug´s. And, the fact that George appears as having authority is certainly due partly to the fact that he has the knowledge that he has.
“A biologist who does not respect life is just as much a contradiction in terms as is an ethicist who does not” (Roslton 1997, p. 151).
Roslton (1997, p. 142).
See for instance Folke et al. (2016).
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Bravo Osorio, F. Environmental Ethics and Science: Resilience as a Moral Boundary. J Agric Environ Ethics 30, 121–134 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10806-017-9657-8
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10806-017-9657-8