The Ethic of Life: Process Philosophy and Environmental Stewardship

According to His Holiness the Dalai Lama, “when we view reality in terms of dependent origination… [i]t challenges us to see things and events less in terms of black and white and more in terms of a complex interlinking of relationships” (41). Dependent origination, and process philosophy in general, forces us to look beyond the egoism and anthropocentrism so rampant in our world today and instead recognize the intrinsic value of all life. This recognition is more than just an intellectual endeavor, however, as it must become a driving force behind a new ethical system, an ethic of life. If events are defined by relationships and if relationships are defined by life, then the entirety of the world and of our own, individual experiences are predicated upon life existing. By exploring the notion of dependent origination and process philosophy’s take on life, I will begin an investigation of a new ethical system. This ethical system will certainly apply to all parts of our lives, but I will specifically look at the impact on environmental ethics and animal rights in order to give a perception of just how much of a change this process ethic would be from our current system.

The concept of dependent origination, which is espoused by many Buddhist thinkers, namely from the Madhyamika school, is based on Alfred North Whitehead’s philosophy (Lama 36). This concept allows us to explain how things and events come to be through three different lenses. First is the principle of cause and effect, whereby all things and events arise in dependence on a complex web of interrelated causes and conditions (Lama 36-37). This is similar to Whitehead’s notion of occasions, whereby one occasion can have an infinite number of contemporary occasions as well as possessing in itself the causal objectification of the past and the modal presence of the future. All of these aspects help to shape the specific occasion, as well as the occasion shaping itself through its self-aspect. Nevertheless, there is a very complex web driving every event in the world, shaping it via relationships. This notion is not simply cause and effect in the old substance philosophy form, its not that the past necessary causes the future which is an effect, but rather that causes and conditions do exist which have an impact on occasions and push it in one way or another, while it also pushes itself. The main point here, however, is that no thing or event can be thought of as coming into or remaining in existence by itself. (Lama 37)

The second level upon which the world is understood via dependent origination is called by His Holiness the Dalai Lama ten del, which can best be understood in terms of the mutual dependence which exists between parts and whole. (Lama 37) The term creative synthesis as used by many process philosophers represents this same idea, whereby the past and the parts come together to form a novel whole, and this whole is both reliant upon the parts as well as the parts upon the whole, yet this dependence is what creates something entirely new.1 Moreover, this conception of ten del also means that while a whole is unintelligible without the parts, the parts are also unintelligible unless they are conceived of as wholes themselves. Charles Hartshorne’s discussion of organism, a building upon of Whitehead’s philosophy, is important here. As he explains, “any whole which has less unity than its most unified parts is not an organism in the pregnant sense… though.. its most unified parts, and some unified whole of which it is itself a part, must in all cases be organisms.” (Hartshorne 409) What this then means is that each part has some intrinsic worth while at the same time having an instrumental value to the greater whole.

The final lens under which dependent origination enlightens the world to us is through the notion that all phenomena, which analyzed, come to be known as lacking independent identity. (Lama 37) Examples of this include the notion of a doctor, or a farmer, because a person cannot be identified as a doctor (in the medical sense anyway) without having patients to practice on.2 A farmer, similarly, is only identified as a farmer so long as she has land to farm. Thus her identity is dependent upon the identity and origination of other organisms and events.

The importance of this concept of dependent origination will of course be important later as I explore a specific application, but in general it is importance arises from a few points. According to His Holiness the Dalai Lama, the first important implication is that it makes us take experience serious. The current trend is to exaggerate one or two aspects of our experience and make them representative of the whole, but through the conception of dependent origination we are drawn away from the tendency to “see things and events in terms of solid, independent, discrete entities.” (Lama 41) The conception also makes it harder to speak in terms of absolutes, which is important for societal reasons – as Whitehead would explain it is the belief that the civilization has hit its pinnacle and that the civilization is perfect, absolutely perfect, that drives a civilization towards self-destruction.3 The final implication, and most important for this exploration, that can be drawn from dependent origination is the recognition that our “individual well-being is intimately connected both with that of all others and with the environment within which we live.” (Lama 41) It is to this implication that we now turn.

According to Professor Jay McDaniel there has been a constant battle between land ethicists and animal rightists over where the real moral responsibility lies. For the land ethicists the importance is placed on the system, they are concerned with the stability, integrity and beauty of ecosystems and therefore focus more on flora, rivers and mountains. Animal rightists, on the other hand, focus more on the individual and the suffering of these individuals and therefore focus on fauna more than flora or other parts of the environment. (McDaniel 94) Of course both put emphasis on the other, but only insofar as they had instrumental value to the focus. One cannot promote animal rights while clear cutting a forest, certainly, and one cannot espouse the importance of the ecosystem of a coral reef while killing or capturing all the fish that make their home there. But nonetheless, members of both groups come into conflict because of where their true ethical considerations lie. Immanuel Kant’s ethical view of animals gives a good example of this sort of conflict. He doesn’t believe animals have any inherent moral value, but would certainly agree that harm to an animal can also harm a human being and thus actions against animals can be immoral, but not because the animal matters at all. Just as animal rightists argue that even if this decreases the harm against animals, or could even possibly stop a person entirely from using animals (at least physically), it is still not an approach that respects animals, land ethicists and animal rightists criticize each other for lacking direct respect to either the individual or the system. Moreover, Kantian ethics gives us a real interesting perspective on this by arguing that the consequences of our actions matter not in determining the morality (or immorality) of a specific act. Acts must be done out of a sense of duty and the consequences may turn out the way we want or may not, it doesn’t matter, so long as it was done out of a sense of duty. As such, even if the land ethicist succeeds in preserving individual animals, it is still an immoral act as it regards the respect for duty to promote the life of that animal.

All this discussion of the competition between these two groups is important for process philosophy and the conception of dependent origination because it is through Whitehead’s philosophy and dependent origination that the land ethicists and the animal rightists can find common ground. According to John B. Cobb, Jr. and L. Charles Birch4 a single environmental ethic can be formed by taking the ideas of both the animal rightists and the land ethicists. (McDaniel 94) As both of these authors were influenced by Whitehead’s philosophy, it becomes possible to take on their notion of a single environmental ethic via understanding dependent origination and Whitehead. With process philosophy’s “emphasis on nature as a vast web of interdependence that is alive through and through” as well as its recognition that no organism exists in isolation it allows for human beings to find intrinsic value in both the individual creature and the environment in which it exists. (McDaniel 94)

Through this “creative synthesis” of ideas we are able to finally recognize a true process environmental ethic. As was explained previously, the concept of dependent origination offers up three main ideas: (1) Complex web of causes and conditions, (2) mutual dependence between the parts and the whole, and (3) dependent identity. Via the synthesis of land ethics and animal rights we can establish a process environmental ethic that fits all three of these, first by realizing that no animal can exist at all, nor continue to exist in the way it is, without the complex web that makes up other individual creatures as well as the ecosystem. Second, an ecosystem is only as good as the creatures that make it up – both animal and plant – and therefore the mutual dependence is clear from the whole to the parts, but moreover the animals need their ecosystem in order to survive and therefore the parts are dependent upon the whole. Finally, the identity of an ecosystem doesn’t come out of a simple name, because when we call something a temperate ecosystem it doesn’t just mean it has temperate weather, but that it contains trees and creatures that live in temperate areas. Furthermore, the term ecosystem itself necessitates it containing life, and therefore the identity is certainly not independent.

Moreover, this environmental ethic provides a very concise general principle, which for Birch and Cobb is the notion that “we should respect every entity for its intrinsic value as well as for its instrumental value to others, including ourselves.” (Birch 152) On top of this process ethic offered up by Birch and Cobb, we can explore the importance of relationships and how because of these relationships an environmental ethic becomes necessary.

John Dewey explains that the most basic element of reality is a transaction, which he explains to be a whole such that it is conditioned by its elements and its elements are conditioned by it.5 Furthermore, he – along with many process philosophers – recognize that each and every relationship, every transaction, is unique. Because each whole is conditioned by its parts, and each whole conditions its part to create something totally new (a creative synthesis) then the loss of any one life is necessarily the loss of possible novelty that will never come back. Under this notion, the basic constituent of any ethical theory must be life above all else. This may sound pretty obvious, but not all ethical systems take this approach. Don’t lie, says Kant, even if lying would save a person’s life. There is, in Kant, a duty to some higher moral code not to any form of life. Therefore, this ethic based on a process metaphysics does take a new approach to moral actions than most substance-based approaches.

The impact to this recognition of the novelty in relationships is more than just ensuring you don’t take a life of an animal, it also applies to ecosystems. It is not enough to act as though human beings can continue to live even if ninety-nine percent of biodiversity is lost, because that ninety-nine percent is not only a loss of biodiversity but also a loss potential novelty. As such, the environmental ethic based on a process metaphysics is, at its heart, an ethic of life. All things considered, according to McDaniel, “it is always best to allow life to flourish in its diverse expressions”. (95)

So the framework for this environmental ethics has been formulated, but to wholly understand what it means in our lives it is important to begin to apply the ethics. Of course moral decisions aren’t always going to be clear cut between life or no life, but rather between one life or another. Accordingly, Birch and Cobb argue that this ethical system supported by Whitehead offers a criteria for judging these sorts of moral qualms. Since all life has intrinsic and instrumental value, it is not a simple matter of comparing two organisms with totally different worth, but it can be a matter of comparing two organisms with different degrees of worth. Because evolution displays a gradual trend toward more complex forms of organization, those organisms that are more complex, and presumptively have greater capacities for sentience or awareness, also have greater degrees of intrinsic values. (McDaniel 95)
This approach provides a method for judging the majority of environmental moral issues in our times. For instance, animal testing becomes a very clear instance of immorality in nearly every case. Because the majority of testing is done on products that are (1) completely unnecessary for humans such as make-up and/or (2) products that could just as easily be tested without the use of animals, which is pretty much everything. Only in the case, possibly, of medicines that promise to cure deadly diseases can animal testing be justified. However, the morality of these cases could still be questioned because one must factor in the probability of the drug’s success. For, hopefully, a clearer example, one can take a situation of a burning building with both a person and a dog inside. Now, of course, the majority of people would react by saving the person first (or only) but this is often done out of a built in prejudice, done out of speciesism in the words of bio-ethicist Peter Singer. But to find a moral grounding for this action, one can look no further then the intrinsic value of the human and the dog, whereby the human certainly possesses a greater capacity for sentience and awareness and therefore a greater degree of intrinsic value. These examples, thus far, have been relatively simple changes to make in ones life, if they require a change at all. While companies will continue to refuse to stop animal testing for various reasons, the truth of the matter is it is an easy change.

But for an application of this ethic that would great harsh ripples throughout people’s lives we can turn to the issue of vegetarianism. The ethic behind vegetarianism fits all molds of a process ethic. First, it combines the concern for the individual with the concern for the ecosystem. Of course the killing of an animal for consumption is a destruction of an individual life, and furthermore even if the animal isn’t killed harshly the life it is forced to live is destructive. Secondly, the production of animals for consumption is devastating to the environment. It is less efficient than vegetable production, as one must feed a cow ten pounds of grain to receive one pound of meat, as well as being overly destructive to the ecosystem. As such, this fits the mold of a systems-based approach that recognizes that even if the individual cow or whatever doesn’t matter, its production creates horrible pollution on the land, in the water and in the air that destroys ecosystems. (Singer 166-167) Moreover, the issue takes into consideration other human beings and their intrinsic worth by realizing that it is abhorrent to use a more inefficient model of food production that cannot feed as many people in the world as possible. To say it is okay to starve people throughout the world so one may have the remnants of life on their plate is to use that person as a means to your ends, an action that even Kant would argue is immoral.6 Therefore, to accept a process ethic as it applies to the environment is to recognize that all actions we take, specifically in this context of consumption, affect every other creature on earth. Therefore, to live an ethical life we must take into consideration all life and not simply the life that we can see or touch.

Through this exploration of ethics as it comes to be through process philosophy, I intend for there to be a few quick implications that can be taken away and carried with you. First, life is key – this is for multiple reasons which not necessarily be remembered – and as such all life ought to be maintained if at all possible. Second, by taking dependent origination and process philosophy seriously, we are forced to understand that relationships matter and that each one is unique and as such diversity is one of the most important components of the world. Finally, both the system and the individual matter and to put one above the other is to simplify and pervert morality to the point of uselessness.7 Process ethics is a burgeoning field and one that could go in many ways, but at its heart it is an ethic of life and it must always be understood that all life matters, regardless of its ability to speak or wage war.

Bibliography

Birch, C., & Cobb, J. B. (1981). The Liberation of life. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Browning, D., & W. T. Myers (Ed.). (1998). Philosophers of process. New York: Fordham University Press.

Cauthen, K. (1984). Process ethics: A Constructive system. New York: The Edwin Mellen Press.

Dewey, J. “Nature, Life and Body-Mind.” In Philosophers of process. 251-267.

Hartshorne, C. “A World of Organisms.” In Philosophers of process. 408-427.

Lama, D. (1999). Ethics for the new millennium. New York: Riverhead Books.

McDaniel, J. (1988).Land Ethics, Animal Rights and Process Theology. Process Studies. 17, 88-102.

Singer, Peter (1975). Animal liberation. New York: Harper Collins.