lecture 21: ecological restoration: nature vs....

Lecture 21: Ecological Restoration: Nature vs. Artifact

• Elliot’s argument: Restorations as “counterfeits”

• Katz’s argument: Restorations as “artifacts”

• Critique of Katz

Friday, December 6, 2013

Topics





Nature vs. Artifact• Elliot, Robert. 1982. ‘Faking Nature’. Inquiry 25: 81-93

• Katz, Eric. 1992. ‘The Big Lie: Human Restoration of Nature’. Research in Philosophy and Technology 12: 231-241

• Both Elliot and Katz believe that a “restored” ecosystem will never possess the value of the original, and, in some cases, it may simply denigrate it further


Critics of Restoration

• Elliot, Robert. 1982. ‘Faking Nature’. Inquiry 25: 81-93

• Analogy between restored ecosystem and art forgery


Starry NightVan Gogh

1889


Starry NightVan Gogh

1889

PerfectReplica


Disney Wilderness Lodge



• Elliot, Robert. 1982. ‘Faking Nature’. Inquiry 25: 81-93

• The value of a natural landscape is not only in the features that are immediately visible to us, but rather, in its continuity with the past and its freedom from human manipulation

• No matter how ‘perfect’ a restoration, the value of the original nature can’t be recovered


Topics






• Katz, Eric. 1992. ‘The Big Lie: Human Restoration of Nature’. Research in Philosophy and Technology 12: 231-241

• “Nature restoration” is a contradiction in terms

Natural System Artifact

Human Manipulation


ConservationBiology

RestorationEcology

EnvironmentalManagement

Conservation and Restoration

Merely protecting habitats Artificially changing habitats


Katz on Restoration

• “Natural individuals were not designed for a purpose. They lack intrinsic functions, making them different from human-created artifacts.”

Katz, E. 1992. “The Big Lie: Human Restoration of Nature”. Research in Philosophy and Technology 12:231-241, p. 235.


Katz on Restoration

• “As Andrew Brennan has argued, natural entities have no ‘intrinsic functions,’ as he calls them, for they were not the result of design. They were not created for a particular purpose; they have no set manner of use.”



Katz on Restoration

• “Although we often speak as if natural individuals (for example, predators) have roles to play [functions to perform] in ecosystemic well-being (the maintenance of optimum population levels), this kind of talk is either metaphorical or fallacious. No one created or designed the mountain lion as a regulator of the deer population.”



Concept of Function in Katz

• The concept of function plays a dual role:

• Tells us what is philosophically distinctive about artifacts

• Explains how the realms of artifact and nature are mutually exclusive


Katz on Restoration• “But once we begin to redesign

natural systems and processes, once we begin to create restored natural environments, we impose our anthropocentric purposes on areas that exist outside human society...Depending on the adequacy of our technology, these restored and redesigned natural areas will appear more or less natural, but they will never be natural - they will be anthropocentrically designed human artifacts. ”



Topics





Two problems

1. Just because something is the product of intention, that doesn’t mean it’s merely an ‘artifact’.

• Babies

• Friendships

• Show poodles and fighting dogs


Two problems

2. Even if a restored ecosystem is just an ‘artifact’, does that mean its worthless, or that it has less value than the natural ecosystem?

• My wedding ring

• A thriving ecosystem that can harbor diversity seems better than a destroyed one that can’t.


ConservationBiology

RestorationEcology

EnvironmentalManagement


Merely protecting habitats Artificially changing habitats



• This view is theoretically problematic as well as counterproductive.

• Theoretically, it relies on a questionable ‘dualism’ between human action and the natural processes (or ‘nature’ and ‘artifact’).

• Practically, it would rob environmental planners of crucial tools for meeting challenges. Mid-October 2010; Bay Jimmy, Louisiana


lecture 21: ecological restoration: nature vs....

Documents