Environmental Ethics. Группа авторов

of fulfilled human nature). We first have to accept that the construction of our worldview is within our control. What I suggest is a set of practical guidelines for the construction of our worldview: “All people must develop a single comprehensive and internally coherent worldview that is good and that we strive to act out in our daily lives.” I call this the personal worldview imperative. Now one’s personal worldview is a very basic concept. One’s personal worldview contains all that we hold good, true, and beautiful about existence in the world. There are four parts to the personal worldview imperative: completeness, coherence, connection to a theory of ethics, and practicality. Let us briefly say something about each.

      First, completeness. Completeness is a formal term that refers to a theory being able to handle all cases put before it, and being able to determine an answer based upon the system’s recommendations. In this case, I think that the notion of the good will provides completeness to everyone who develops one. There are two senses of the good will. The first is the rational good will. The rational good will means that each agent will develop an understanding about what reason requires of one as we go about our business in the world. In the various domains in which we engage this may require the development of different sorts of skills. In the case of ethics, it would require engaging in a rationally-based philosophical ethics and abiding by what reason demands.

Another sort of goodwill is the affective good will. We are more than just rational machines. We have an affective nature too. Our feelings are important, but just as was the case with reason, some guidelines are in order. For ethics we begin with sympathy. Sympathy will be taken to be the emotional connection that one forms with other humans. This emotional connection must be one in which the parties are considered to be on a level basis. The sort of emotional connection I am talking about is open and between equals. It is not that of a superior “feeling sorry” for an inferior. It is my conjecture that those who engage in interactive human sympathy that is open and level will respond to another with care. Care is an action-guiding response that gives moral motivation to acting properly. Together sympathy, openness, and care constitute love.

When confronted with any novel situation one should utilize the two dimensions of the good will to generate a response. Because these two orientations act differently, it is possible that they may contradict each other. When this is the case, I would allot the tiebreaker to reason. Others, however, demur.² Each reader should take a moment to think about his or her own response to such an occurrence.

      Second, coherence. People should have coherent worldviews. This also has two varieties: deductive and inductive. Deductive coherence speaks to our not having overt contradictions in our worldview. An example of an overt contradiction in one’s worldview would be for Sasha to tell her friend Sharad that she has no prejudice against Muslims and yet in another context she tells anti-Muslim jokes. The coherence provision of the personal worldview imperative states that you should not change who you are and what you stand for depending upon the context in which you happen to be.

      Inductive coherence is different. It is about adopting different life strategies that work against each other. In inductive logic this is called a sure loss contract. For example, if a person wanted to be a devoted husband and family man and yet also engaged in extramarital affairs, he would involve himself in inductive incoherence. The very traits that make him a good family man—loyalty, keeping your word, sincere interest in the well-being of others—would hurt one in being a philanderer, which requires selfish manipulation of others for one’s own pleasure. The good family man will be a bad philanderer and vice versa. To try to do both well involves a sure loss contract. Such an individual will fail at both. This is what inductive incoherence means.

      Third, connection to a theory of being good, that is, ethics. The personal worldview imperative enjoins that we consider and adopt an ethical theory. It does not give us direction, as such, as to which theory to choose except that the chosen theory must not violate any of the other three conditions (completeness, coherence, and practicability). What is demanded is that one connects to a theory of ethics and uses its action guiding force to control action.

Fourth, practicability. In this case there are two senses to the command. The first sense refers to the fact that we actually carry out what we say we will do. If we did otherwise, we would be hypocrites and also deductively incoherent. But, second, it is important that the demands of ethics and social/political philosophy be doable. One cannot command another to do the impossible! The way that I have chosen to describe this is the distinction between the utopian and the aspirational. The utopian is a command that may have logically valid arguments behind it, but are existentially unsound (meaning that some of the premises in the action-guiding argument are untrue by virtue of their being impractical). In a theory of global ethics, if we required that everyone in a rich country gave up three-quarters of their income so that they might support the legitimate plight of the poor, this would be a utopian vision. Philosophers are very attracted to utopian visions. However, unless philosophers want to be marginalized, we must situate our prescriptions in terms that can actually be used by policymakers. Beautiful visions that can never be should be transferred to artists and poets.

      How to Construct Your Own Model

      The first step in creating your own model for which you are responsible is to go through personal introspection concerning the four steps in the personal worldview imperative. The first two are types of global analyses in which an individual thinks about who he or she is right now in terms of consistency and completeness. These criteria are amenable to the prudential model. They are instrumental to making whatever worldview one chooses to be the most effective possible. This is a prudential standard of excellence. What constitutes the moral turn is the connection to a theory of the good: ethics.

      Thus, the third step is to consider the principal moral theories and to make a choice as to which theory best represents your own considered position. To assist readers in this task, I provide a brief gloss of the major theories of ethics.

      Theories of Ethics

There are various ways to parse theories of ethics. I will parse theories of ethics according to what they see as the ontological status of their objects. There are two principal categories: (1) the realist theories that assert that theories of ethics speak to actual realities that exist³ and (2) the anti-realists who assert that theories of ethics are merely conventional and do not speak about ontological objects.

      Realist Theories

      Utilitarianism. Utilitarianism is a theory that suggests that an action is morally right when that action produces more total utility for the group as a consequence than any other alternative. Sometimes this has been shortened to the slogan: “The greatest good for the greatest number.” This emphasis upon calculating quantitatively the general population’s projected consequential utility among competing alternatives appeals to many of the same principles that underlie democracy and capitalism (which is why this theory has always been very popular in the United States and other Western capitalistic democracies). Because the measurement device is natural (people’s expected pleasures as outcomes of some decision or policy), it is a realist theory. The normative connection with aggregate happiness and the good is a factual claim. Advocates of utilitarianism point to the definite outcomes that it can produce by an external and transparent mechanism. Critics cite the fact that the interests of minorities may be overridden.

Deontology. Deontology is a moral theory that emphasizes one’s duty to do a particular action, because the action itself is inherently right and not through any other sort of calculations, such as the consequences of the action. Because of this non-consequentialist bent, deontology is often contrasted with utilitarianism, which defines the right action in terms of its ability to bring about the greatest aggregate utility. In contradistinction to utilitarianism, deontology will recommend an action based upon principle. “Principle” is justified through an understanding of the structure of action, the nature of reason, and the operation of the will. Because its measures deal with the nature of human reason or the externalist measures of the possibility of human agency, the theory is realist.