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.

Ethical Elitism

Individuals choose to act ethically or not.
Unethical behaviour is unacceptable and it has its victims.
Ethical theories are normative theories and propose how we ought to, or should, behave.
Such theories, known as moral philosophies, are intended to assist in explaining why a person believes one action is right but another action is wrong.
In developing an understanding of how individuals make ethical decisions, it is useful to have an understanding of ethical theories.

Normative ethical theories do not explain how we actually act or behave.
Rather, they seek to establish principles that guide peoples’ behaviour.
Ethical elitism is one of the classes of the teleological theories of ethical behaviour.
Ethical elitism - under this class of theories, society is viewed as being stratified and ethical behaviour should maximise the interests of only the top stratum, or the so-called elite
The dismissal of the accounts clerk in order to protect the reputation of the CEO would be seen as ethical behaviour by a society which subscribed to ethical elitism

Professor Garry Carnegie - FINANCIAL ACCOUNTING

Social Ecology's Niche

Social ecology sees society’s problems as the root cause of our current ecological problems. Industrial societies’ hierarchical view of nature - with humankind at the pinnacle is a reflection of social relations. If we remove the latter, the former will also disappear.

Societies driven by competition, conflicts, consumption, market-driven production and technologies, industrial capitalism, and the widely accepted notion of progress identified by economic growth, preclude any meaningful ecological orientation in the marketplace, in society, or in the shared environment. The by-product of these systems of social development are ecological problems.

What I like about social ecology is that it focuses on the etiology of ecological problems. It provides concrete historic references to the root of our environmental crises. Murray Bookchin says, "human beings not only belong in nature, they are products of a long natural evolutionary process." He refers to the development of technology and science - our "seemingly 'unnatural' activities" as the natural evolution of human traits expanding on our first nature or nonhuman traits.

I really liked the way Bookchin views "the human and nonhuman as aspects of an evolutionary continuum, with the emergence of the human located in the evolution of the nonhuman - without advancing naive claims that one is either 'superior to' or 'made for' the other."

Natural, non-hierarchical, acceptable view of evolution.