How To Construe Nature: Environmental Ethics and the Interpretation of Nature

status of Nature is determined by the contexts within which non-human entities are incorporated into human cultural understanding. Since our ability to value the non-human world is mediated by this understanding of what Nature is, a contextualist environmental ethics would direct our attention to the social and political matrices within which human beings become cognizant of that world. At a time when contemporary philosophy increasingly turns toward contextualist strategies of inquiry, writers in environmental ethics still seem to prefer the direct investigation of Nature itself. The (1) strategy ofcontemporary environmental ethics remains predominately foundationalist By this I mean that it Does Nature have moral value? The belief that it defends its criticisms of human intervention in Nature does lies at the heart of environmental ethics. Yet two by an appeal to a standard ofconduct which lies outside very different conceptions ofenvironmental ethics reveal human thought and culture. It is supposed that if we themselves when we consider how an answer to such a construe Nature as it really is in itself, then it will be question mightbejustified. Themostcommonapproach possible to apprehend the obligations which Nature would have us investigate the properties which natural imposes upon human beings with the necessary beings possess. The assumption here is that when we philosophical certainty. The foundationalist strategy know what these properties are, we will be in a position presupposes timeless criteria of moral relevance which to deduce the value of Nature from a determination of forever remain free of the vicissitudes of cultural the moral relevance of these properties. Appeals to interpretation. sentience, self-consciousness, or lifeas criteria ofmoral But this strategy no longer seems philosophically considerability are examples resulting from this type plausible. Lying at the heart of this enterprise is the of inquiry. assumption that we can be clear about what Nature An alternative approach to environmental ethics, which I shall call "contextualist," would have us investigate the processes whereby Nature is construed as something which either possesses or fails to possess moral value. On this view, the value we should place on PHILOSOPHY Naturecannotbe deduced from the way Nature is itself; itdepends on the placewhich Nature has acquired in our discourses with one another. In other words, the moral