A central thesis of Chap. 8 is that aesthetics, via bioempathy, provides a bridge between “is” and “ought”. Without it, there cannot be an ecologically informed ethics or ecological justice. The final chapter of this book seeks to both illustrate and argue for such a bridge—or what is perhaps more accurately described as a circumvention of the problem. The author provides an illustration from his own experience illustrating how the “is” and “ought” gap is circumvented in real life. Experiences of (...) beauty in nature (an intrinsic value) can result in bioempathy (a subjective affect), which in turn produces good citizenship in the biotic community. This avoids the naturalistic fallacy by (1) providing for rational inferences from descriptions to prescriptions (and proscriptions), and (2) providing a motive for adhering to the same. Experiences of natural beauty, particularly of living beings and systems, induce bioempathy, which moves us to show appropriate respect and restraint in our treatment of nature. At the same time, recognition of beauty as an intrinsic value provides a rational ground for pertinent prescriptions and proscriptions. Thus, inferences from description to prescription, from “is” to “ought”, don’t have to be metaphysical leaps of faith. One can argue that we human beings have a moral duty to each other to conserve natural ecosystems and biota because our lives and our well-being require them. But a big part of the argument of this book is that we also have a duty to conserve ecosystems and biota for their own sake; and furthermore, that this is a practical necessity for fulfilling our duty of care to each other and to future generations—that is, to being good citizens of the biotic community. Supposing this is correct, what is there to ground our duty to conserve ecosystems and biota for their own sake? Why should we care? If the argument is not to be wholly anthropocentric, then it seems we must grant intrinsic value to non-human nature, or at least to much of it. The intrinsic value of nature, then, is the ground of our duty to be good citizens of the biotic community. Furthermore, this is not posited merely for the sake of the conclusion and in defiance of the naturalistic fallacy. Both Keller and the author of the Chap. 10 argue, in different ways, that nature possesses intrinsic value and that this value is beauty. Because this beauty is objective and real, it provides both a rational justification and a motive for conservation that is independent of strictly anthropocentric considerations. (shrink)

In Chapter One it is argued that three famous epistemologies, labeled foundationalism, radical skepticism and mitigated skepticism, all presuppose metaphysical realism, or the ontological division between mind and world . Then it is argued that each of these three epistemologies is false and that metaphysical realism cannot be made comprehensible apart from one or the other of them. If this is true then it follows that truth cannot be a matter of correspondence between sentences, statements, propositions, judgments, etc. and some (...) absolutely independent reality. This, however, leaves the author with the task in Chapter Two of developing the basics of a new epistemology--one that does not presuppose metaphysical realism, yet which allows for the possibility of a genuine truth and knowledge that are in a particular way dependent on conceptualization. The phrase "genuine truth and knowledge" is crucial because part of the task is to present a view that does not reduce truth and knowledge to mere belief by relativizing them to conceptual schemes. In Chapter Three it is argued that a unique form of metaphysical realism, which I call the objectification of ideas, is present in the philosophies of Descartes, Hume and Kant, simultaneously creating for them a need to account both for the external world and personal identity, and making them impotent to do so. (shrink)