Prompt 09

I found this text to connect a lot of ideas that I had floating around in my head about the environment and ethics and merge them together.  The class to this point has discussed at length this idea of inherent worth, and while I understand it as an idea.  I don't have the same fundamental understanding of it as I do physical laws such as Newton's Laws of Motion.  Despite seeing the merits of the idea of inherent worth all of the previous text have done very little to contextualize the idea for me.  I feared after the first section that this article would also only present more questions about this idea by presenting more abstract concepts such the idea of well being of creatures to be an end itself.  However, this text began to dig deeper into this concept by acknowledging that creatures do not necessarily understand any of these ideas but that this is not necessary for a creature to possess this worth.  I also liked that Taylor was able to stray from this need to attach sentience to the idea of worth and rather that these two ideas are unrelated.  It goes on further to ascribe inherent worth to not only individuals but their connection to populations and biotic communities.  This value is not related to anything else but rather that this value is an end of itself.

What made me like Taylor's idea is that he did not abandon his ideas here.  He goes on to start connecting this idea to nature as a whole, connecting the idea of respecting and acknowledging all organisms inherent worth collectively is the idea of 'Respect for Nature' and equates this idea to being an ultimate like human ethics and is not derived from any higher idea.  This was a connection that I had failed to make yet.  I have kept trying to attach respect for nature to human ethics which when we are able to understand that they are unrelated we can understand the importance.  At which point Taylor goes on to explain how that this idea cannot be proven deductively and that rather this idea that respect for nature is a belief system.  While some are displeased by this justification I am able to relate it because I also possess spiritual beliefs that I cannot go out defend using fact but rather I know their significance to myself.

I think that the next issue that I have seen a lot of my peers also struggle with is where humans stand among all of these ideas.  A lot of posts that I have read (my own included), reflect that we all feel superior in some regards and have a perception of anthropocentricity.  The biological example I find to be a little bit tough, because we have shown that we have the ability to alter interconnected elements for our own liking.  I was also not satisfied by the idea of saying that humans have only been here for a short period of time and that the earth would exist (perhaps better) with out us.  I don't think any logical person will refute those claims but it doesn't stop me from thinking and feeling some sort of entitlement.

However, Taylor went on to dismantle the anthropocentric argument entirely by attacking it from many angles.  Taylor explains that just as we have the ability to create these characteristics that make us superior by the enrichment of civilization and goes to point out that nonhumans have equally as important characteristics that are inconsequential to us, as our characteristics are to them, that have helped their species prosper.  Also just asserting that we have more inherent worth is inadequate as well and does this by presenting the ideas of upper and lower classes in classic times were clearly defined however, we now possess the ability to see that these were nothing but distinctions created by humans as well.  Finally, and perhaps my favorite argument was that pertaining to religion and how is affects our perceptions.  Taylor is able to break down how we our ideas of personal value have been fostered by classical ideas that have come to be taken as more or less objective which are; Greek humanism, Cartesian dualism and the Judeo-Christian concept of the Great Chain of Being.  These cultural relativist ideas as result of time and acceptance I feel have become seen as an almost objective idea (extreme realist), until we really start to break down how we have endowed all of these ideas upon ourselves.  Whether it ben the idea of man being a rational creature and that being our superiority, or the idea that we possess a soul, or even that god created us in his image and that we are part of a chain of being.  Regardless all of the defenses that we can come up with seem to have been fabricated by us to help us understand our position on the Earth.  Now that we have the ability to see this and have started to noticeably alter the world around us, we must shed this superiority and acknowledge that we are just one element in the world and that we must respect all other elements that make up our ecological community.  I apologize for the long post but I enjoyed this reading and felt that it covered alot of material.