PHIL 2270 Lecture Notes - Lecture 13: Val Plumwood, False Dilemma, Environmental Ethics
14 Jun 2018
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Department
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Professor
“Environmental Philosophy and the Critique of Rationalism” Val Plumwood
Val Plumwood argues that philosophers in the past have tried to understand both
nature & women from a rationalist tradition that ignored emotions.
The claims that the approaches to developing environmental ethics tend to be
rationalistic.
Plumwood VS. Taylor
• She argues that Taylor emphasizes (like Kant) that reason must always be in
control and that emotion can never be allowed to get the upper hand.
• Plumwood says that according to Taylor, emotion is irrelevant to ethics – only
cognition matters, only rationality matters.
• Plumwood’s criticism of basing an ethics of nature on rationalism is that
1) It creates a false dichotomy between reason and emotion
2) It is gender-biased (ignoring women’s perspective of caring and concern).
• The reason/emotion dualism treats emotion as being inferior to reason. Since
there is an association made between women and emotion, the inference is
that women are also inferior as well as nature.
• Plumwood sees the abstract rationalism of Kantian-based ethics and the
concept of duty as being incomplete since it ignores relations with others. Since
Taylor’s ethics is Kantian, then his ethics of respect suffers from this flaw
Plumwood VS. Regan
• She argues that if we adhere to Regan’s views that animals have rights, then it
follows that each human has limitless obligations towards animals which entails
contradictory interventions in nature.
• E.g. – if a wolf attacks a sheep, then we have an obligation to protect the sheep
since it has a right to life. But in protecting the right to life of the sheep, we are
interfering in the right to life of the wolf since it needs to eat the sheep in order to
live.
• Plumwood suggests that a more fruitful approach to an ethics of nature is to
move rights and duties off the center stage and instead focus on concepts that
aren’t as ‘dualistic’ such as respect, caring, sympathy, concern, friendship,
responsibility, gratitude, etc.
The Discontinuity Problem
• This view entails that humans are alien to nature, or outside of nature which gives
rise to a false dualism: human/nature
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Document Summary
Environmental philosophy and the critique of rationalism val plumwood. Val plumwood argues that philosophers in the past have tried to understand both nature & women from a rationalist tradition that ignored emotions. The claims that the approaches to developing environmental ethics tend to be rationalistic. The reason/emotion dualism treats emotion as being inferior to reason. Taylor"s ethics is kantian, then his ethics of respect suffers from this flaw. She argues that if we adhere to regan"s views that animals have rights, then it follows that each human has limitless obligations towards animals which entails contradictory interventions in nature: e. g. If a wolf attacks a sheep, then we have an obligation to protect the sheep since it has a right to life. This view entails that humans are alien to nature, or outside of nature which gives rise to a false dualism: human/nature.
