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I have yet to see a coherent philosophy that is able to differentiate between human communities and “the natural world” in a way that isn’t totally arbitrary T

I have yet to see a coherent philosophy that is able to differentiate between human communities and “the natural world” in a way that isn’t totally arbitrary The distinction between wild or natural is completely arbitrary human made, and has no actual reflection on reality that I can tell Humans are not the only set of organisms to radically change landscapes - Ants, wasps, locusts and beavers perfectly demonstrate that. Humans are not the only set of organisms to be altruistic or communal Humans are the only animal who have the ability to destroy all other animals, and that seems to be the only distinction that we make - eg boils down to might makes right, So I would love to hear somebody give me a proof of why this distinction in scale rather than kind, is actually a worthwhile ETHICAL differentiator, such so we can actually reason about what that difference implies in a way that doesn’t make artificial or arbitrary distinctions or appeal to self interests alone

jszymborski 2y ago
There are healthy, sustainable ecosystems, and there are unhealthy, unsustainable ecosystems. While ants, wasps, and beavers can change a landscape to benefit them in an unsustainable, unhealthy way that will lead to their destruction, I think you have to indulge a bit of wishful thinking to not realize they are less likely and less capable of doing so than humans. We'll need to set order in our own home before we look to the ants, the wasps, and the beavers.
- AndrewKemendo 2y ago
  This doesn’t address my question whatsoever In fact, it muddies the question itself by distracting away from measurable criteria towards vague and general, broad sweeping conceptual ideas of “Unhealthy” “Unsustainable”
  - francisofascii 2y ago
    The absence of a defined criteria does not imply an ideal criteria does not exist. The ideal is somewhere between the two extremes, ants, wasps, etc. taking over the entire planet and ants vs ants/wasps becoming extinct. Through reason, analysis, etc. we can get closer to defining a more measurable criteria.
    - AndrewKemendo 2y ago
      That’s literally what I’m saying doesn’t exist, so we’re in agreement?
- tastyfreeze 2y ago
  We can engineer more sustainable food production systems at multiple levels. Would you consider terracing a whole mountain to maximize water use to be sustainable? The initial impact is quite destructive but the result is a more sustainable and persistent food producing ecosystem. We can also use the natural landscape but cultivate the species that grow in the ecosystem (food forest). I believe we are meant to be the gardeners of the planet. Improving available food in an ecosystem invites more living things. It is a positive feedback loop. If we focused on building closed loop ecosystems that also provide food and materials we could be a benefit to all life. Focusing on not changing the "wild" is a negative view. We are the expert species at forming our environment. We should shape it so it provides for us and the rest of the critters.
francisofascii 2y ago
It is simple as, biodiversity is preferable to a monoculture. The specifics of achieving that is murky and may seem arbitrary, but the overall goal is pretty clear. Humans are the only organisms that can reason about it, so human should act like the "adults in the room" and practice stewardship to maintain some level of biodiversity, regardless of what was human caused or non-human caused.
- AndrewKemendo 2y ago
  Why is biodiversity preferable to monoculture?
  - wiether 2y ago
    https://time.com/5730790/banana-panama-disease/ https://time.com/5730790/banana-panama-disease/
7952 2y ago
I think there are more precise definitions, but it requires more understanding. You can talk about protecting native species and there are moral arguments for that. Although I am not sure how much that actually drives people. For many nature seems to be an almost religious topic with binary views routed in self interest. You just have to talk to solar or wind objectors to realise that. I live in the UK and the situation is pretty extreme. People love nature passionately. But most of what people view as natural is degraded farmland. The National Parks are all landscapes that only exist directly from human intervention (usually sheep, grouse, mining, forestry). And many of the protected areas have people living in them that get outsized property prices and endless tourism.
13of40 2y ago
I'm on the fence about whether I agree with this. The way I see it, if you look at beavers, ants, or trees, they change the landscape but they do it based on behaviors that are encoded in their genes. That means a beaver can create a lake, but its descendants have to be able to live with that using the same slow-changing genetic programming, otherwise they die off. With humans, we can adapt new ways to live in the altered environment, even if it would have been incompatible with the lives of our ancestors. If we kill off all the salmon and whales, for example, within a generation or two we can pivot to factory-farmed chicken and petroleum. Once we've tapped that out we can do soy protein and windfarms. I say I'm on the fence because on a longer time scale, that kind of mental adaptation might not be that much different from genetic adaptation and we'll still have to find equilibrium or die out. As far as the ethics question goes, if we use the most basic model and say that the ethical thing is that which promotes the most "good-life-years per capita" versus "bad-life-years per capita", where capita means one of the sentient residents of the planet, there are a few ways to look at it: 1. Ethics is just a fiction that humans have made up to support the prisoners' dilemma style of cooperation game we play, and there's no real answer. 2. The billon or two twilight years of our planet are better spent in rough equilibrium, where tigers exist, but most animals get some time to stretch in the sun, nuzzle their young, etc. 3. Life in equilibrium is actually cold, brutal, and short for most of the sentient animals involved, so providing a higher level of comfort for a population of ten billion people is better, even if it eventually crashes. 4. The experience of a human counts more than that of an animal, so a high human population with a decent standard of living for a long enough time pushes the needle past what a much longer natural equilibrium would achieve.
- throwanem 2y ago
  I saw you palm that card! Utilitarianism is anything but "the most basic model" of ethics. If you want to argue from it, do so honestly rather than try to smuggle it in as an unexamined postulate.
  - 13of40 2y ago
    Do you have another model that changes the answers?
autoexec 2y ago
No one cares that humans and wasps and beavers all change the landscape over time. What makes humans exceptional is that we can decide how we change the landscape, understand the impacts, and can choose which impacts on nature are desirable. Animals don't have the ability to really consider the impacts of their actions on the world around them, but we do which imparts onto us a higher level of responsibility. We've already poisoned every living thing and every source of water on the planet with toxic "forever" chemicals we created. They're in the rain that falls. The body of every newborn creature is polluted by them before they draw their first breath. That's just so fundamentally different from "But look at this ant hill" that it's hard to imagine why anyone can't see what sets humanity apart or would consider that difference to be an arbitrary distinction. We're capable of causing more harm. We're capable of understanding the harms that we cause in ways other animals simply aren't. We're also capable of deciding not to cause harm. We're capable of intentionally making different choices that can help protect and preserve the environments we live in. Our deliberate choices and their impacts on the world compared to the actions and outcomes of every other animal on the plant is about as far from an arbitrary distinction as it gets.
- AndrewKemendo 2y ago
  This is a rant that just agrees with my position At no point does it actually contain any kind of coherency as a philosophy This is some kind of vague paternalistic naturalism with no real foundational epistemology
vundercind 2y ago
> The distinction between wild or natural is completely arbitrary human made Well—the distinction seems perfectly natural, then.
gspencley 2y ago
> Humans are the only animal who have the ability to destroy all other animals, Even that is only theoretical. Let's say that we were to wipe out a great amount of life on earth with a thermonuclear war or something, a lot of life would remain, even if we are talking about bacteria and other microorganisms. But even deep sea life that exists below a certain depth would likely remain largely unaffected.

jszymborski 2y ago

There are healthy, sustainable ecosystems, and there are unhealthy, unsustainable ecosystems. While ants, wasps, and beavers can change a landscape to benefit them in an unsustainable, unhealthy way that will lead to their destruction, I think you have to indulge a bit of wishful thinking to not realize they are less likely and less capable of doing so than humans. We'll need to set order in our own home before we look to the ants, the wasps, and the beavers.

AndrewKemendo 2y ago
This doesn’t address my question whatsoever In fact, it muddies the question itself by distracting away from measurable criteria towards vague and general, broad sweeping conceptual ideas of “Unhealthy” “Unsustainable”
- francisofascii 2y ago
  The absence of a defined criteria does not imply an ideal criteria does not exist. The ideal is somewhere between the two extremes, ants, wasps, etc. taking over the entire planet and ants vs ants/wasps becoming extinct. Through reason, analysis, etc. we can get closer to defining a more measurable criteria.
  - AndrewKemendo 2y ago
    That’s literally what I’m saying doesn’t exist, so we’re in agreement?
tastyfreeze 2y ago
We can engineer more sustainable food production systems at multiple levels. Would you consider terracing a whole mountain to maximize water use to be sustainable? The initial impact is quite destructive but the result is a more sustainable and persistent food producing ecosystem. We can also use the natural landscape but cultivate the species that grow in the ecosystem (food forest). I believe we are meant to be the gardeners of the planet. Improving available food in an ecosystem invites more living things. It is a positive feedback loop. If we focused on building closed loop ecosystems that also provide food and materials we could be a benefit to all life. Focusing on not changing the "wild" is a negative view. We are the expert species at forming our environment. We should shape it so it provides for us and the rest of the critters.

francisofascii 2y ago

It is simple as, biodiversity is preferable to a monoculture. The specifics of achieving that is murky and may seem arbitrary, but the overall goal is pretty clear. Humans are the only organisms that can reason about it, so human should act like the "adults in the room" and practice stewardship to maintain some level of biodiversity, regardless of what was human caused or non-human caused.

AndrewKemendo 2y ago
Why is biodiversity preferable to monoculture?
- wiether 2y ago
  https://time.com/5730790/banana-panama-disease/ https://time.com/5730790/banana-panama-disease/

7952 2y ago

I think there are more precise definitions, but it requires more understanding. You can talk about protecting native species and there are moral arguments for that. Although I am not sure how much that actually drives people. For many nature seems to be an almost religious topic with binary views routed in self interest. You just have to talk to solar or wind objectors to realise that. I live in the UK and the situation is pretty extreme. People love nature passionately. But most of what people view as natural is degraded farmland. The National Parks are all landscapes that only exist directly from human intervention (usually sheep, grouse, mining, forestry). And many of the protected areas have people living in them that get outsized property prices and endless tourism.

13of40 2y ago

I'm on the fence about whether I agree with this. The way I see it, if you look at beavers, ants, or trees, they change the landscape but they do it based on behaviors that are encoded in their genes. That means a beaver can create a lake, but its descendants have to be able to live with that using the same slow-changing genetic programming, otherwise they die off. With humans, we can adapt new ways to live in the altered environment, even if it would have been incompatible with the lives of our ancestors. If we kill off all the salmon and whales, for example, within a generation or two we can pivot to factory-farmed chicken and petroleum. Once we've tapped that out we can do soy protein and windfarms. I say I'm on the fence because on a longer time scale, that kind of mental adaptation might not be that much different from genetic adaptation and we'll still have to find equilibrium or die out. As far as the ethics question goes, if we use the most basic model and say that the ethical thing is that which promotes the most "good-life-years per capita" versus "bad-life-years per capita", where capita means one of the sentient residents of the planet, there are a few ways to look at it: 1. Ethics is just a fiction that humans have made up to support the prisoners' dilemma style of cooperation game we play, and there's no real answer. 2. The billon or two twilight years of our planet are better spent in rough equilibrium, where tigers exist, but most animals get some time to stretch in the sun, nuzzle their young, etc. 3. Life in equilibrium is actually cold, brutal, and short for most of the sentient animals involved, so providing a higher level of comfort for a population of ten billion people is better, even if it eventually crashes. 4. The experience of a human counts more than that of an animal, so a high human population with a decent standard of living for a long enough time pushes the needle past what a much longer natural equilibrium would achieve.

throwanem 2y ago
I saw you palm that card! Utilitarianism is anything but "the most basic model" of ethics. If you want to argue from it, do so honestly rather than try to smuggle it in as an unexamined postulate.
- 13of40 2y ago
  Do you have another model that changes the answers?

autoexec 2y ago

No one cares that humans and wasps and beavers all change the landscape over time. What makes humans exceptional is that we can decide how we change the landscape, understand the impacts, and can choose which impacts on nature are desirable. Animals don't have the ability to really consider the impacts of their actions on the world around them, but we do which imparts onto us a higher level of responsibility. We've already poisoned every living thing and every source of water on the planet with toxic "forever" chemicals we created. They're in the rain that falls. The body of every newborn creature is polluted by them before they draw their first breath. That's just so fundamentally different from "But look at this ant hill" that it's hard to imagine why anyone can't see what sets humanity apart or would consider that difference to be an arbitrary distinction. We're capable of causing more harm. We're capable of understanding the harms that we cause in ways other animals simply aren't. We're also capable of deciding not to cause harm. We're capable of intentionally making different choices that can help protect and preserve the environments we live in. Our deliberate choices and their impacts on the world compared to the actions and outcomes of every other animal on the plant is about as far from an arbitrary distinction as it gets.

AndrewKemendo 2y ago
This is a rant that just agrees with my position At no point does it actually contain any kind of coherency as a philosophy This is some kind of vague paternalistic naturalism with no real foundational epistemology

vundercind 2y ago

> The distinction between wild or natural is completely arbitrary human made Well—the distinction seems perfectly natural, then.

gspencley 2y ago

> Humans are the only animal who have the ability to destroy all other animals, Even that is only theoretical. Let's say that we were to wipe out a great amount of life on earth with a thermonuclear war or something, a lot of life would remain, even if we are talking about bacteria and other microorganisms. But even deep sea life that exists below a certain depth would likely remain largely unaffected.