Summary on Chapter from Modules 05-08 philosophy

M07Lec02: Elliot on the Restoration Thesis

This lecture will help you understand: • The Restoration Thesis • Conservation vs. Preservation • Early 20th-Century American

Environmentalism • Parallels between Art and Nature • Differences between Art and

Nature

Torrey Pines

• The question is: – Would it be morally right to lease the

area to the mining company? – Would it make a difference to your

answer that the money the state received from the company would be used to build better schools, hire better teachers at higher salaries, and generally promote the living conditions of the poor?

– What do you think?

The Restoration Thesis

• “The destruction of something of value is compensated for by the later creation (actually, ‘recreation’) of something of equal value.”

Conservation

• Anthropocentric conservationists accept the restoration thesis as good stewardship of the wilderness. – They would agree to the offer. The prospects of

promoting the human good would outweigh the value the wilderness had as a habitat for other living beings and the pleasure it provided to nature lovers.

– Besides, only part of the coastline would be closed down and then for only a year--or a few years, if we consider the time to restore it.

Preservation • Most preservationists, including deep ecologists,

biocentrists, and restoration ecologists, would no doubt reject the offer as sacrificing something of inestimable intrinsic worth. Nature-the wild-is irreplaceable. It has deep intrinsic value. The new-growth forest would be the product of human control and management, so not really a wilderness.

• At least two things are missing: I. the natural process that produced the natural entity in the

first place II. an appreciation for the wilderness as valuable in itself

• Preservationist biocentrists object to the restoration thesis and to the kind of reasoning used by conservationists. A "restored" nature is not natural. At least two things are missing: – the natural process that produced the natural

entity in the first place – an appreciation for the wilderness as valuable in

itself

Conservation

• Gifford Pinchot (1865-1946) • First head of the United

States Forest Service and a leading spokesman for the sustainable use of natural resources for the benefit of the people.

Preservation

• John Muir (1838-1914) • Leading spokesman for the

American wilderness movement at the beginning of the 20th century and found it the Sierra Club.

Hetch Hetchy Valley

Early 1900s Today

Robert Elliot, “Faking Nature”

• Natural areas such as a wilderness are compared to works of art.

• Knowing that the experience you are having is only a replica of the natural original lowers the value of that experience.

• Fakes lack the value of the original entity. – Note that according to Elliot “’natural’ means

something like 'unmodified by human activity.”

Scenario 1 • You have a piece of sculpture in your

garden which is too fragile to be moved. The local council plan to lay sewerage pipes just where the sculpture happens to be. The council engineer tells you of this and explains that your sculpture will have to go. However, he promises to replace it with an exactly similar artifact.

• Reply: It is utterly improbable that you would accept it as full compensation for the original.

• Reason: Your reluctance springs from the fact that you value the original as an aesthetic object, as an object with a specific genesis and history.

Scenario 2 • You have been promised a Vermeer

for your birthday. However, when the day arrives your given a painting which looks like a Vermeer but which you later discover is a fake.

• Reply: You’re disappointed. It is no good being told there is no difference between the replica and the original.

• Reason: There is a difference and it is one which affects my perception, and consequent valuation, of the painting. The difference of course lies in the painting's genesis.

Johanness Vermeer 1632-1675, Dutch

painter)

Han van Meegeren

The Supper at Emmaus by Han van Meegeren (1936)

During the trial of Han van Meegeren, which took place in 1947, the forger demonstrated the techniques he had used to create several

convincing Vermeer forgeries. Before the court and under police guard, he painted his

last "Vermeer", Jesus among the Doctors.

Meegeren, The Fawn

Scenario 3 • You given a rather beautiful, delicately

constructed, object. It is something I treasure and admire, something in which I find considerable aesthetic value. However he later discover that he is carved out of the bone of someone killed especially for that purpose. You regard it as in some sense sullied, spoilt by the facts of its origin. The object itself has not changed but my perceptions of it have. I now know that it is not quite the kind of thing I thought it was, and that my prior valuation of it was mistaken.

• Reply: The discovery about the object's origin changes the valuation made of it.

• Reason: it reveals that the object is not of the kind that I value

Conclusion

• “Origin is important as an integral part of the evaluation process."

Muir on the Hetch Hetchy

• “a part of the world that had not been shaped by human hand .... The news that it was a carefully contrived elaborate ecological artifact would have transformed that valuation immediately and radically .... We value the forest and river in part because they are representative of the world outside our dominion, because their existence is independent of us.”

A Possible Objection

• It might be thought that naturalness only matters insofar as it is perceived. If an environmentalist engineer could perform the restoration quickly and secretly, then there would be no room for complaint.

• According to Elliot, all this shows is that there can be a loss of value without the loss being perceived. But, there is still a loss of value. Just because I do not know that my Vermeer has been removed and secretly replaced with a fake, does not mean to say that I have not lost something of value.

3 Examples

1. John is hooked up to an “experience machine.” 2. John is abducted, blindfolded and taken to a

simulated, plastic wilderness area. At first John thrilled by what he sees; however, John would be profoundly disappointed if he were to find out that he were living in a plastic environment.

3. John is taken to a place which was once devastated by strip mining. John, however, does not know this, and thinks he is in a pristine forest. Once again he has been deceived, presented with a less than what he values most.

Nature Is Not Art

• “for one thing an apparently integral part of aesthetic evaluation depends on viewing the aesthetic object as an intentional object, as an artifact, as something that is shaped by the purposes and designs of its author. Evaluating works of art involves explaining them, and judging them, in terms of their author’s intentions; it involves placing them within the author’s corpus of work; it involves locating them in some tradition and in some special milieu. Nature is not a work of art though works of art may look very much like natural objects.”

Cognitive Dimension

• “Knowing that the forest is not a naturally evolved forest causes me to feel differently about it: it causes me to perceive the forest differently and to assign it less value than naturally evolved forests.”

Duck or Rabbit?

Conclusion

• “natural” areas have values that “artificial” or “restored” ones lack and that our “wilderness valuations depend in part on the presence of properties which cannot survive the disruption/restoration process.”

A Word of Caution . . .

• “This is the strongest argument against restoration ploys. . . . Showing that the good won’t be delivered is thus a useful move to make.”

Thought Experiment • “Consider this thought experiment: God creates an incredibly

beautiful ecosystem, one that surpasses in stability and integrity the Grand Canyon, Yellowstone, and the Brazilian rain forest all put together. But it would not be natural in the sense of being a product of biological processes or wild in the sense of being untouched by intentional purposes. It would be like the Garden of Eden with the Grand Canyon thrown in. We'll call it Super Grand Canyon II. Suppose God has to maintain it by His power. Would it be any less valuable for not being natural or wild? If you say no, then imagine that by the year 2150 humans acquire the knowledge and power to construct Super Grand Canyon III, almost as glorious as Super Grand Canyon II but far more beautiful than the Grand Canyon. Would it be less valuable for not being wild or natural (that is, produced by natural causes, rather than human ‘artificial’ causes)?” (Louis Pojman)