I legitimately think there is value in deep ecology. One of my favorite phrases associated with it is "ecology without nature", it's all about radically rethinking our relationship with and place within the world. Also, for a second I thought you were about to jump into panpsychism, which could be interesting for another video some time.
I think there is an issue that appears here and Zoocentricism, which is this idea of something being wrong "intuitively." It may be intuitive to us that cutting down a tree for no reason is wrong, but that is predicated on the assumption that we find such an action wrong. We can imagine a society that "intuitively" believes in the opposite case. That whatever a man may do to a tree in its final moments, whether out of ethics or being in a bad mood, is entirely "justifiable" or perhaps equally as meaningless as keeping it alive. The notion of people "already caring about nature" is interesting though, in that we seem to be at least sympathetic towards living things. Or we find them intriguing. But it also seems that we "already *don't* care about nature" in the sense that almost every culture on Earth eats some form of animal and plants (with the latter I think would be more lenient towards; there is an Indian religion called Jainism that values all life and upon eating plants for survival asks for forgiveness). We destroy many ecosystems and directly (and at times inadvertently) put many species into extinction. So I guess I find myself lost with some of the precursors towards this kind of ethical theory, though I am not without my sympathy towards it. I think the philosophical zombie problem is very compelling against those who claim animals only appear to have thoughts/identity. Perhaps genetic engineering will make it possible to "grow" meat and thus remove the need to slaughter animals, though that is more of a resolution that does not address the ethical issues still. I think I am more intrigued by the radical ecological position simply because I find that the "hierarchical" structure the previous position provides to be vague and unhelpful.
Hi again, Great video trilogy! Glad to view such content, I also recall the philosophical sketches with characters taking the roles of ethical players, specifically different utilitarians. I find those sketches unique and a "Creme de la Creme " of philosophy Videos on RUclips, hope there will be more of them ))
Personally, i think that what makes some live beings have value is their capability of feeling pain, and we should try to minimize that pain, but i do think the alone man shouldnt cut the tree. I think Is because that man will inevitaly die, but the tree can survive and that can make, through evolution and a lot of time, others species and animals.
I feel like I want to say that this line of argumentation feels like it might be confabulation, but I don't mean this in a rude or condescending way. Instead, I think I find my thoughts pattern-matching to your comment here, so really I am talking about myself. Similar to you, I believe that reducing suffering and increasing utility for conscious beings is what matters. But I also have the urge to say that the alone man shouldn't cut the tree, even though I seem to otherwise be zoocentric rather than biocentric. My explanation to myself is not the future evolution that you mentioned, but instead the idea that conscious beings can have desires that extend past their own lives; so I value that final tree instrumentally for the value it provides to vast numbers of people who are long dead at that point. I don't think it is contradictory to say that someone dead can have had desires that concern with events in the future from their point of view, and under a B-theory of time, they still exist in the past to have those desires about events in their future. However, I find myself asking: is this just confabulation? It seems to me that I've encountered a situation that I didn't expect (wanting the alone man to not cut the tree, even though I thought I only valued conscious beings), and rather than seriously considering that I might have biocentric tendencies, I instead immediately came up with a logical reason why I can continue to be zoocentric and yet still desire the man not to cut down that tree. I am reminded of the adage that, if you can come up with an explanation for any scenario, then that's as intellectually useful as if you _couldn't_ come up with an explanation for any scenario. The strength of our ability to rationally parse reality lies in our capacity to distinguish truth from fiction, and this means that we should ideally find it easier to explain the true things and harder to explain the false things. So if I am so easily confabulating a reason why X is the case, even though minutes before I would have guessed that X would not be the case, that tells me that I am probably not calibrated correctly in my thinking about this. (Lesswrong calls this "noticing confusion".)
Thank youfor your videos. Subscribed and going to watch another records! You have a mistake in the description, where it says "second part" instead of "third part"
Great series, thank you for it! I would recommend anyone who enjoyed this series to read Daniel Quinn's novel "Ishmael". One of my favorite books ever.
![5. Approach 2: Respect for Life: A Biocentric Ethic [Environmental Ethics]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/b-m0no5hQbY/mqdefault.jpg)
I legitimately think there is value in deep ecology. One of my favorite phrases associated with it is "ecology without nature", it's all about radically rethinking our relationship with and place within the world.
Also, for a second I thought you were about to jump into panpsychism, which could be interesting for another video some time.
I think there is an issue that appears here and Zoocentricism, which is this idea of something being wrong "intuitively." It may be intuitive to us that cutting down a tree for no reason is wrong, but that is predicated on the assumption that we find such an action wrong. We can imagine a society that "intuitively" believes in the opposite case. That whatever a man may do to a tree in its final moments, whether out of ethics or being in a bad mood, is entirely "justifiable" or perhaps equally as meaningless as keeping it alive.
The notion of people "already caring about nature" is interesting though, in that we seem to be at least sympathetic towards living things. Or we find them intriguing. But it also seems that we "already *don't* care about nature" in the sense that almost every culture on Earth eats some form of animal and plants (with the latter I think would be more lenient towards; there is an Indian religion called Jainism that values all life and upon eating plants for survival asks for forgiveness). We destroy many ecosystems and directly (and at times inadvertently) put many species into extinction.
So I guess I find myself lost with some of the precursors towards this kind of ethical theory, though I am not without my sympathy towards it. I think the philosophical zombie problem is very compelling against those who claim animals only appear to have thoughts/identity. Perhaps genetic engineering will make it possible to "grow" meat and thus remove the need to slaughter animals, though that is more of a resolution that does not address the ethical issues still. I think I am more intrigued by the radical ecological position simply because I find that the "hierarchical" structure the previous position provides to be vague and unhelpful.
Hi again,
Great video trilogy! Glad to view such content, I also recall the philosophical sketches with characters taking the roles of ethical players, specifically different utilitarians.
I find those sketches unique and a "Creme de la Creme " of philosophy Videos on RUclips, hope there will be more of them ))
Thank you, this video is really got the attention of my anthropological interest.
Love videos like this. They are an amazing introduction to these ideas that I can keep referring to
Thank you, hopefully I'll do.more like these in the future 😊 as you see, my videos are a bit all over the place haha
@@Bebeflapula Love it all! You have such a great variety of smart and funny content
Personally, i think that what makes some live beings have value is their capability of feeling pain, and we should try to minimize that pain, but i do think the alone man shouldnt cut the tree.
I think Is because that man will inevitaly die, but the tree can survive and that can make, through evolution and a lot of time, others species and animals.
I feel like I want to say that this line of argumentation feels like it might be confabulation, but I don't mean this in a rude or condescending way. Instead, I think I find my thoughts pattern-matching to your comment here, so really I am talking about myself. Similar to you, I believe that reducing suffering and increasing utility for conscious beings is what matters. But I also have the urge to say that the alone man shouldn't cut the tree, even though I seem to otherwise be zoocentric rather than biocentric.
My explanation to myself is not the future evolution that you mentioned, but instead the idea that conscious beings can have desires that extend past their own lives; so I value that final tree instrumentally for the value it provides to vast numbers of people who are long dead at that point. I don't think it is contradictory to say that someone dead can have had desires that concern with events in the future from their point of view, and under a B-theory of time, they still exist in the past to have those desires about events in their future.
However, I find myself asking: is this just confabulation? It seems to me that I've encountered a situation that I didn't expect (wanting the alone man to not cut the tree, even though I thought I only valued conscious beings), and rather than seriously considering that I might have biocentric tendencies, I instead immediately came up with a logical reason why I can continue to be zoocentric and yet still desire the man not to cut down that tree.
I am reminded of the adage that, if you can come up with an explanation for any scenario, then that's as intellectually useful as if you _couldn't_ come up with an explanation for any scenario. The strength of our ability to rationally parse reality lies in our capacity to distinguish truth from fiction, and this means that we should ideally find it easier to explain the true things and harder to explain the false things. So if I am so easily confabulating a reason why X is the case, even though minutes before I would have guessed that X would not be the case, that tells me that I am probably not calibrated correctly in my thinking about this. (Lesswrong calls this "noticing confusion".)
Good information 👍👍 lots of love from Bharat 🎉
Thank youfor your videos. Subscribed and going to watch another records!
You have a mistake in the description, where it says "second part" instead of "third part"
Thanks, fixed it!
really helpful THANK YOU
Beautiful....
how about ecocentrism?
Great series, thank you for it! I would recommend anyone who enjoyed this series to read Daniel Quinn's novel "Ishmael". One of my favorite books ever.
Sorry I don't know it, how is it related to biocentrism?
@@Bebeflapula uses Socratic dialogue to present new viewpoints to the viewer on biocentrism