Hey steemers. So I have posted a bunch of lectures from my Ethics courses, but I have not really posted anything from the Environmentalist courses.
Considering how dependent all "life" is on "environments", makes me sometimes amazed how little attention we really give the issue in Higher Ed. Don't get me wrong, you can focus on environmental issues at tons of schools, many of which do some interesting work. My point is that in a "general" education we do not really spill a lot of ink trying to explain the problems of talking about an "environment".
In this lecture/discussion there is some good back and forth between the students and I. The basic issue at play in this lecture is HOW we define "life" and what role "value" has in said definition. And let me just say, there is no easy answer here, especially in terms of the "human" relationship to life as such. Clearly humans ARE alive, but does that mean all value should be limited to "universals" common to ALL life? That seems to ignore the development of "consciousness"--however we understand that term--as a tool for living; similar to claws and sonar in tigers and dolphins respectively.
Biocentricity focuses on something along those lines, arguing that human consciousness is simply a natural evolution of life, and as such remains tethered to at least some "universals". The problem lies in just WHICH universals we choose to focus upon. That "hard problem of consciousness" is how David Chalmers puts it. You should Google him. Deep Ecology attempts to "hide" something within the problem of consciousness, "spiritual" perhaps? Scholars of DE attempt to avoid the spiritual argument, but their reliance on consciousness as somehow "different" in humans than say dogs, commits them to some type of mystery.
In short it boils down to how we understand the role of values--linked directly to consciousness on the fundamental level of attention--in how we talk about an environment. A merely "biological" account remains limited to which species we want to thrive and why. If we blindly assume humanism, we begin to float toward something more akin to Deep Ecology than simple biology. And if we do assume humans are "special", we are committed to some account of why beyond mere egoism. If egoism is all that remains, than Nietzsche was more or less correct and will to power bitches.
So check out the lecture/discussion, it is pretty fun. And feel free to make any and all comments.