Further Inquiries on Value Incrementalism

We know some viruses and bacteria can be very difficult to eradicate. Could this be representative of an impassioned will to continue their existence? Do they value their existence so highly that they fight and mutate so tenaciously to ensure their genetic material will continue to manifest? Or is it just the inherent biological drive to survive as an individual and as a species that all life shares? Or can Peirce’s principle of self-perpetuating order be expanded to accurately represent the orderly physical manifestation of the evolutionary process of life forms?

I think many nonhuman animals display equal and at times greater attention spans, patience, and nurturance than human animals. I also believe that many nonhuman animals, particularly mammals and birds, have complex and social relationships and communication systems.
We know many species of birds and mammals as well as crocodiles and alligators store food at caches for future use when food is scarce. Would we categorize this as long-term planning?

I agree that forms of empathetic friendships are more useful for informing our understanding of moral relations than the parent-child nurturance paradigm, particularly in relationships between human animals. I think the empathetic friendship paradigm can be easily applied to all inter-species workable social relationships.

Inquiries on Value Incrementalism, Perfectionism, and Sentient Nonhumans

When you (DKJ) said, “I am concerned to show continuity in the natural development of value that eventually emerges as moral in character, but until it shows active volition, value is only a metaphor.”

Who or what is the “it” showing active volition? Are you speaking about moral value or particular sorts of valuers? What is the criteria being used to determine what constitutes “active” volition? Who is the “determiner” of what constitutes “active” volition?

You used the examples of a plant turning its leaves to the sun and an amoeba absorbing nutrients but recoiling from toxins to illustrate a purely automatic “self-valuing.” How do you distinguish this as different than animals with complex, integrated nervous systems (who also avoid dangerous situations) having a sense of the world? How can you be certain that the plants and the amoeba, like animals, do not care what happens to them?

Interspecies Communication - possible or probable?

Wood said, “Consciousness is a networked awareness, a with-knowing, a knowing that even as it is separated into different modalities, draws on those others. Something similar could be said about the relation between individual awareness and the connection this establishes, or sustains with others.” And “our being able to focus on one particular domain or object is quite compatible with that capacity being in fact dependent on the same being having many other capacities, and with there ultimately being an integrative basis for this connectedness in our embodied existence.”

Was he saying that living beings are capable of individual consciousness plus the capacity to network with others in a consciously aware manner?

Is Woods saying he believes interspecies communication is possible and even probable?

David Wood, "What is Ecophenomenology?"

Wood says, “Nature is too important to be left to the natural sciences. There are considerations cutting across the different sciences that can be productively contemplated together.” He believes, and I agree with him, that all things exist by containing their existence or what he refers to as integrity. Wood recognizes that while every thing requires integrity to exist, it does not exist in a vacuum. Therefore, while all things must maintain their unique integrity in order to exist, they must do so while simultaneously spooning with their immediate neighbors, and their neighbors' neighbors, ad infinitum. Woods wants us to acknowledge the reality of how existence manifests on this planet in both time and space. And how each consideration, individually and integratedly raises ecological and economic issues, and according to Wood,"is best approached through a certain kind of phenomenology.”

He views ecology, like other sciences, as being limited, restricted, and overly invested in the interconnectedness of life, or where the imperative focus is on relating the parts to the whole – how relationality and interconnectedness can turn into an “overly rigid holism.” He sees ecophenomenology as a way to honor the complexity of natural phenomena, respecting the unique parts of a biosystem as well as the whole system. He voices his concern that our ordinary experience obscures the true nature of living things from our awareness. Wood claims, “there are categories and concepts importantly at work in any science that are not its distinctive property, but also that sciences themselves operate as boundary-generating systems. If so individual sciences are not in the best position to talk about science as such. At least part of the role traditionally played by metaphysics is here played by ecophenomenology’s concern with the fabric of time and with the events that occur at boundaries - phenomena that are not the proper purview of any one science.” All this is not the subject matter of one science, but thinking through these liminological events is something that an ecophenomenology could protect and encourage.” I found these aspects of Wood's views valid and sound.

Considering the Origin of Ethics

Does an organism living their life entirely separate from other sentient beings require an ethic?

Are ethics only needed for interpersonal, inter-being, or inter-group interactions?

Is the development of ethics dependent on a being’s ability to communicate - either linguistically or non-linguistically?

Are nonhuman animals capable of developing and maintaining ethical standards as an evolutionary tool?

In considering the origin of ethics, I began to wonder if it is one of the natural stages in a being’s or specie's evolution. Ethics or morality could have developed in response to a particular set of environmental circumstances, or out of a being’s evolutionary need, or choice to exist within some form of society, community, or ecosystem.
Obviously, the group, as well as any new, incoming individuals would have to benefit from their inclusion and the creation and maintenance of shared ethical standards.

Our readings and class discussions caused me to think of our multiple species home environment- in relation to ethics and how they might evolve. Since 1999, our home environment has consisted of at least 2, but not more than 3 neutered male dogs, plus at least 12, but not more than 23 felines. Our family group contained human beings, canines and felines. The group dynamic influenced individual members so much that they acted outside of the boundaries of what is considered normal breed, or species behaviour. The malamute swims across rivers and ponds- his breed is known for their extreme dislike of water. His breed atypical behaviour is probably the result of his lifelong association with our chocolate lab - a breed that loves water.

Between 1999-2007 I bred siamese cats. During that period, I had 4 different veterinarians repeatedly tell me they had never encountered a group dynamic similar to ours. I had 3 active adult studs and 3-5 active queens. Whenever they were not paired up to mate, the cats had free reign of the house and their 25' long, 10' wide, 8' high cat pen. My studs never fought with each other, never sprayed in the house - and they would babysit and assume protective duties over kittens they had not fathered. Normal male behaviour is to fight any other males, spray urine everywhere to define territory and kill any kittens they had not fathered - and sometimes even those they had sired.

Also beyond the norm is how the dogs helped out with the kittens. They helped clean off (by licking) newborn kittens. They were very tolerant of kittens use of their bodies and turf. If a 5 week old kitten went to the dog's food dish, the lab would keep eating along with the kitten, the 115 pound malamute backed up, and stood by watching the kittens eat his food. He would not approach his bowl until the kittens left. Malamutes, like huskies, are well known as hunters/killers of cats.

I've watched my 2 dogs and 5 cats hunt together as one pack. The dogs defend the cats from cats outside of our group.

Murray Bookchin describes nonhuman beings as generally living in ecological niches, and their communities as noted as for their fixity in general terms or by clearly preset, often genetically imprinted , rhythms. He says, "Human communities are guided in part by ideological factors and are subject to changes conditioned by those factors. Human beings emerging from an organic evolutionary process, initiate, by the sheer force of their biology and survival needs, a social evolutionary development that profoundly involves their organic evolutionary process. Owing to their naturally endowed intelligence, powers of communication, capacity for institutional organization, and relative freedom from instinctive behaviour, they refashion their environment-as do nonhuman beings-to the full extent of their biological equipment."

Has our multi-species family come together to form a "society" of sorts - and established its own ethics? Is this how morals and ethics developed, as a natural evolution of dynamic biological relationships? Clearly communication is occurring between family members. Clearly there is a level of intelligence and cooperative intent.

Are morals necessary for healthy (non-combative) societal functioning? If providing nonhumans with an environment free from their species' normal, taxing, limiting, biological structures and instinctual imperatives allows them to evolve beyond normal species constraints; then perhaps some capable nonhumans can establish healthy, societal, moral structures.