For this prompt I have chosen Asa's Post
I chose to write about Asa's post because it was one of the few that I read that dealt with the issue of preserving the forests. What intrigued me but also made me shy away from this statement initially was the aspect about for human enjoyment. I am not realizing that this post was phrased this way perhaps so that after this lecture we could go back and identify that this view was anthropocentric in terms of the relation with the environment.
After reading through this post several times I have determined that the moral standard used by Asa was whether or not preserving the forests will have a positive effect on humanity. This reflects an anthropocentric because it reflects the importance of the preserving the forests for their instrumental value. I am a little hazy on defining exactly what the moral units are but the two that I was able to come up with were humans ability to use nature for leisure and humans ability to use resources from the forests to perpetuate our survival. I think that from his moral standard both of these uses of nature are morally justified. Asa's beliefs reflect heavily the instrumental value of the forests and why they should be preserved. This belief probably stems from his upbringing and values about the forest that were presented to him while he was young and clearly through his development because of the reference of using resources from forest ecosystems as cures. I think that there is nothing wrong with his belief and I think it is a belief that is shared by many. One issue that was not really touched on was the intrinsic value of the forests themselves. I tend to subscribe to the idea of value objectivity meaning the forests themselves have their own value apart from what value we place upon them. It took a good bit of thinking for me to decide why I felt like this, because I realized that my initial perception of value stemmed solely from my fear that perpetual damage to the world around will eventually be perilous for the human race which comes back to the anthropocentric view.
However, upon further thinking I tried to think about the value of forests in other terms that instrumental value for humans. I thought of value such as beauty but determined that this is probably something that is only appreciated by humans so I kept thinking. What changed my train of thought was thinking about the relation that trees have in nature. Trees hold quit a bit of responsibility in nature, while they may not think, have grounded goals or feel pain they serve an integral part of an ecosystem. They take carbon dioxide and convert it to oxygen which makes earth inhabitable. There roots help to preserve the landscape by preventing erosion. They have the ability to convert inorganic matter into organic matter by using the suns energy. Their components also break down into rich organic soil that can then serve as a location for new life to prosper. However, even beyond these measurable quantities the passage in the text regarding location of intrinsic value leads me to believe that there is even deeper values such as richness and diversity that humans have no metric for but are perhaps integral in the natural world. This idea has made me realize that our limited perception of the world around us is what makes exploitation of these resources so easy.
I also think that while a view of forests and the environment in general as instrumental goods is plausible and completely normal, that there is a feeling of necessity attached to trying to find an intrinsic value in it as well. Maybe it's because we as humans don't want to simply assume that everything can be beneficial to us as a means, but I think you're right about there existing intrinsic value in nature as well. I would like to think that since our lives are intrinsically valuable because they are an end in themselves, that trees and the like also can be just as intrinsically valuable for the simple reason that they also live and use materials to maintain their own lives. Their survival is their end in itself. Being beneficial to others along the way doesn't make their own survival less important to them, right?
ReplyDeleteI agree with your comments. The question does make us think about forests from an anthropocentric perspective, which is always I think the way were are ingrained to evaluate everything initially. I like that you took it farther and made it a point to find the intrinsic value of the forests themselves. They do serve fundamental rolls for life as we know it, for our existence, theirs, and the rest of the ecosystem in which they reside.
ReplyDeleteI enjoyed reading how you felt framed to be anthropocentric and I completely agreed! Something as seemingly simple as preserving the forests turned into human exploitation by the following lecture. Then you carried on through your prompt to the end where you brought up that the trees have value, because they contribute to the ecosystem. Ultimately, your post had me reflect on how difficult it is for humans to step away from anthropocentrism, even with the best of intentions. Although you thought long and hard about what value trees have beyond humans, still you brought up a value that ultimately benefits humans: trees contribution to healthy air.
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