Challenges of a New Ethics in Ecology (ENEE)

Is nature^[1] knowledgeable? Challenges of a New Ethics in Ecology

Context

Current biodiversity is the culmination of a process made up of chance and necessity according to the modalities of innovation and adaptation. However, the details of this slow procedure are forever unknown, having disappeared. The archives of time do not allow us to reconstruct the richness of these events shrouded in an impenetrable opacity which is due to the erasure that has marked the journey of life on planet earth since the earliest times. If there is erasure, the situation of the biosphere today is a trace, in itself, of all past experiences, successful or failed attempts in the past. It is the witness to all these accumulated experiences, and as such, gives nature a “knowledge” that scientists are unable to know in its entirety.

Why talk about “knowledge” of nature? What we designate as knowledge of nature relates to its capacity to find answers to the problems it poses itself. The reaction to disturbances and its ability to adapt to evolutionary changes are the result of an experience that escapes us. Nature, on the other hand, retains a memory of its evolution, for example that which is part of the immune system of living beings, which gain knowledge from each contagious exposure. It is above all the “coevolution” of different beings which is the basis of this procedure leading to knowledge of nature, witness to this common knowledge. This can be illustrated by a network of links involving a multitude of other living beings and a non-living environment or habitat. This inaccessible knowledge imposes a form of respect (from the Lat. respicere “to look back, ability to take the past into account"). And the current lack of respect for nature results in its degradation, even its destruction, all over the globe. It is thus possible to highlight certain features: the new risks represented by xenobiotic molecules (from the gr. nature does not know and which it has not been able to take into account in its experience accumulated over the ages); on the other hand, she “knows” an immensity of things that we cannot know. This is why believing that all experiments are legitimate by a sort of negative freedom^[2] of the researcher who would do “like nature” is to believe that the environment will find the adjustments and responses that will preserve the ecosystems. Even in the presence of artifacts that nature has never encountered or even less manufactured in the past. From now on, science presupposes a new ethics, and the environment becomes an international issue: “it is in the superior interest of all since contemporary ethics joined the camp of the defenders of nature^[3]”.

It remains to be seen how this situation has gradually become widespread until ecology, in the broad sense, is a determining factor for those wishing to adopt responsible behavior. How then in this context can we associate the question of ethics with a renewed ecology which is active in the world of tomorrow? It appears urgent to return to basic ethical principles, it being understood, according to Hans Jonas, that the vulnerability of nature must be the subject of a theory of responsibility^[4], which poses this principle, that, for the first time, technology that attempts to master nature can lead to self-destruction which could lead to the disappearance of humanity.

Goals

As part of the work that we propose to undertake on ethics and ecology, it is a question of guiding and developing a reflection on “global knowledge” echoing the knowledge of nature mentioned above. Based on the concept borrowed from Bouleau, 2021^[5] of the “knowledge effect” of nature, by analyzing more particularly the functioning of science and the “destabilization of ethics” that it can produce by inadequacy between technoscientific culture and ethical requirements^[6], we wish to study the relevance of founding an eco-ethics around the metaphor of knowledge of nature, through which man can belong to a world which makes him exist.

This study on the “knowledge effects” of nature will develop along two axes:

We want first of all to question the Gaia hypothesis of Lovelock Margulis, not so much in its scientific relevance which is strongly debated elsewhere, but rather as a global framework for thinking about ethics in its possible contribution to a renewed ethics in ecology through self-regulatory character that it introduces, a source of controversy due to its positivist dimension, and the “power of action” of living organisms on their environment which refers to the idea of coevolution, and therefore to relationships between organisms. As Lovelock writes: “If humans change their environment so radically in such a short time, then other living things may have done so, too, over hundreds of millions of years. » According to Latour, “the Gaia hypothesis of Lovelock and Margulis represents the effort to recognize that the Earth is a subject that acts and intervenes forcefully in our history^[7]”.

Secondly, we wish to show that the ethics of “relationality” can be a philosophical system that can be mobilized for ecology by the very foundation of its approach which is based on a network of relationships including knowledge effects. By emphasizing the links of coevolution, we cannot see human actions detached from nature: “…[A]s human beings, we are embodied in the functions of being related to the processes of natural resource degradation, by being an efficient cause. »^[8] Consequently, such ethics emphasizes the care of relationships and bonds.

These two lines of work aim to develop the principles of a new ethics in ecology, based both on the commitment of responsibility towards “nature”, the recognition of the links we have with it, and establishing new relationships to strengthen them. The originality of the approach of this “philosophy of nature” lies both in its philosophical dimension and in the taking into account of the evolutionary paradigm [through the prism of coevolution in the evolution of living things], but in opposition to the positivist epistemology of contemporary evolutionary ethics.

^[1] We are well aware that this concept is polysemous and that there is no clear definition of the concept. Despite this, and for the sake of simplification, the term “nature” will be used to designate living things and the physical universe that surrounds them.

[2] Hobbes, T. (1997): Leviathan, or, the matter, form and power of a commonwealth ecclesiastical and civil, New York.

[3]. Ricoeur, Ethics, politics and ecology, 2018, Comments collected by Edith Deléage-Perstunski and Jean-Paul Deléage, Ed. Le bord de l’eau, No. 56, p. 35-46.

[4] H. Jonas, The principle of responsibility, An ethics for technological civilization, 1979. Ed. Flammarion (2013), 480 p.

[5] N. Bouleau, What Nature Knows, 2021, Puf, 538 p.

[6] J. Ladrière, Ethics in the universe of rationality, 1997. (Catalyses) A vol. 22 x 14.5 of 334 pp. Namur, Artel; Quebec, Fides, p. 82.

[7] B. Latour, 2021, The cry of Gaïa, Thinking about the earth with Bruno Latour, under the direction of Aït-Touati and Emanuele Coccia, Ed. Preventers from going around in circles, 222 p.

[8] Baindur, M. (2015): Nature in Indian Philosophy and Cultural Traditions, New Delhi (Sophia Studies in Cross-cultural Philosophy of Traditions and Cultures). P.207.

Ethics and Ecology Seminar – The Gaia hypothesis and its ethical implications: Does nature have rights?

Current biodiversity is the culmination of a process made up of chance and necessity within the modalities of innovation and adaptation. However, the details of this slow procedure are forever unknown, having disappeared. The archives of time do not allow us to reconstruct the richness of these events shrouded in an impenetrable opacity which is due to the erasure that marked the journey of life on planet earth since the earliest times. If there is erasure, the situation of the biosphere today is a trace, in itself, of all past experiences, successful or failed attempts in the past. It is the witness to all these accumulated experiences, and as such, gives nature a “knowledge” that scientists are unable to know in its entirety.

Why talk about “knowledge” of nature? What we designate as knowledge of nature relates to its capacity to find answers to the problems it poses itself. The reaction to disturbances and its ability to adapt to evolutionary changes are the result of an experience that escapes us. Nature, on the other hand, retains a memory of its evolution, for example that which is part of the immune system of living beings, which gain knowledge from each contagious exposure. It is above all the “coevolution” of different beings which is the basis of this procedure leading to the knowledge of nature, witness to this common knowledge. This can be illustrated by a network of links involving a multitude of other living beings and a non-living environment or habitat.

In a first workshop organized at the University of Aix-en-Provence, we have questioned the Gaia hypothesis of Lovelock Margulis, not so much in its scientific relevance which is strongly debated elsewhere, but rather as a global framework for thinking about new costs, renewed ethics in ecology. By the self-regulatory character that it introduces, a source of controversy in its positivist dimension, and the “power of action” of living organisms on their environment which refers to the idea of co-evolution, and therefore of relationships between organisms, this Gaia hypothesis, as Latour writes, “represents the effort to recognize that the Earth is a subject that acts and intervenes forcefully in our history” or, according to Lovelock: “If humans modify their environment so radically in such a short time, then other living things may have done it, too, over hundreds of millions of years.”

Ethics and Ecology Seminar – The ethics of relationality and its implications for ecology

Following an initial workshop in Aix-en-Provence, which examined Lovelock Margulis's Gaia hypothesis as a global framework for thinking about a renewed environmental ethic, we now want to illustrate the theoretical debate taking place in this disciplinary field by analyzing different environmental ethics, and in particular addressing those of "relationality". Based on a network of relations including knowledges, is  this relational vision able to represent a philosophical system that can be mobilized for ecology? Environmental ethics is concerned with human conduct towards nature, and seeks to provide concrete answers to the questions posed by nature. The issues at stake in today's ecological crisis are certainly political and economic. But more fundamentally, they are a question of values and relationships with living beings.  By emphasizing the relationship with living beings, humans cannot be dissociated from the historical web of links woven by co-evolution, and their actions cannot be detached from nature: “[A]s human beings, we are embodied in the functions of being related to the processes of natural resource degradation, by being an efficient cause.”[1] Consequently, an ethics of relationality emphasizes the care of relationships and bonds as part of the answer to the question of values raised by the ecological crisis.

Within this framework, the various questions we would like to discuss revolve around (but are not limited to) the following topics:

- First and foremost, how can a relational vision respond to the problems of ecological philosophy we are currently facing?

- What about other ethical visions of nature and ecology?

- With the loss of biodiversity and climate change, ecology has become a factor in determining responsible behavior. In this context, how can we link the question of ethics to a renewed ecology that will be effective in tomorrow's world?

- If nature is knowledgeable, how can there be an exchange of knowledge between it and humans, and how can a relational vision account for this?

- Can the idea that nature is the holder of knowledge be applied or extended to a relational ethic?

- What are the ethical implications of such an assumption? What are the advantages/disadvantages in relation to other ethics?

- ... ?

We look forward to receiving contributions from different scientific fields and to an interdisciplinary exchange.

The workshop is part of the project Enjeux d'une Nouvelle Éthique en Écologie (ENEE) co-directed by Thierry Rolland (AMU), Vanessa Weihgold (IZEW, UT) and Thomas Potthast, funded by IUT, CGGG, ZfW and IZEW.

Date and venue: 06/06 to 07/06/2024 at the University of Tübingen

Travel and accommodation expenses can be reimbursed under the usual conditions. Please send us an estimate.

For further information, please contact vanessa.weihgold@izew.uni-tuebingen.de

[1] Baindur, M. (2015): Nature in Indian Philosophy and Cultural Traditions, New Delhi (Sophia Studies in Cross-cultural Philosophy of Traditions and Cultures), p. 207.