Freya Mathews on Panpsychism

Thinking from Within the Calyx of Nature

Is philosophy an appropriate means for inducing the “moral point of view” with respect to nature? The moral point of view involves a feeling for the inner reality of others, a feeling which, it is argued, is induced more by processes of synergistic interaction than by the kind of rational deliberation that classically constituted philosophy. But how are we to engage synergistically with other-than-human life forms and systems? While synergy with animals presents no in-principle difficulty, synergy with larger life systems takes us into epistemological realms explored only in the margins of the Western tradition, such as in Goethe’s Romantic alternative to science. These “alternative” epistemological realms are however the very province of the Daoist arts of China, and these arts accordingly furnish us with practices conducive to a moral consciousness of nature.

The  question  I  shall  be  pondering  in  this  paper is,  how  are  we  to  induce the  moral  point  of  view  with  respect  to  the  natural  world?  Working  out how to induce this point of view is obviously relevant to, even if it is far from  the  whole  substance  of,  environmental  education,  but  I  am  not intending  it  as a  question  specifically  about  environmental  education.  I want to explore rather the kind of knowing or thinking that is involved in the  attainment  of  a  moral  consciousness  of  nature.  For  some  kind  or knowing  or  thinking -  something  beyond  mere  unreflective  experience  of natural  environments –  does  seem  to  be  involved:  rural  people unreflectively  immersed  in  nature  are  often,  after  all,  amongst  the  most oblivious  of  its  moral  significance.  And  mere conditioning is hardly satisfactory: while children may simply be instructed to internalise certain moral  values,  adults  normally  cannot  be  inducted  in  this  way,  and  it  is clearly  not  desirable  to  attempt  so  to  induct  them:  moral  consciousness should be based on understanding rather than on external authority. But what    kind    of    understanding    will    serve    the    purpose? Scientific understanding  of  life-systems  is  obviously  not  enough:  science  has traditionally  been  the  prime  tool  for  the  wholesale  instrumentalization  of nature.  But  what  other  kinds  of  understanding  are  there?  Is  it  through rational deliberation, careful rational consideration of questions about the moral  considerability  of  nature,  that  a  moral  viewpoint  with  respect  to nature  can  be  fostered?  Is  it,  in  other  words,  via philosophical  thinking, specifically environmental  ethics,  that  this  moral  viewpoint  is  attained? Many  environmental  philosophers  evidently  assume  that  thinking  about nature in a philosophical way is a necessary step towards achieving moral reorientation vis a vis the environment.

But is this so?...