Aesthetic and Environmental- Ethical Values of Urban Greenspace Biodiversity doc

Strangeness of CONTENTHere’s an example of one philosophical account of what value is [call it V ]: ‘Value is the second-order property of a thing’s having first-order, non-evaluative pr

Aesthetic and

Environmental-Ethical Values of Urban Greenspace Biodiversity

Christopher Stevens, M.A

Subproject 1 of

Urban Nature: the Aesthetic, Recreational

and Ecological Aspects of Urban

Greenspace Biodiversity

Philosophy provides answers to the most fundamental questions we can ask about the concepts we use, concepts like ‘value

of urban greenspace biodiversity’.

Subproject 1 is the conceptual part of the

overall project, i.e., the philosophical part…

(1) Semantic E.g., What can we plausibly be thought to mean

when we use the phrase ‘value of urban greenspace biodiversity’?

(2) Metaphysical Metaphysics is the theory of what exists and the

sorts of properties that particularly puzzling existent things have

Note that only if we have some understanding of what valuemight plausibly be, do we really now what we mean when wespeak of the ‘value of urban greenspace biodiversity’

(3) Epistemological Epistemology is the theory of knowledge.

We might ask, “How do we know that biodiversity has the

value person P is claiming for it?” I.e., we might ask, “What

justifies P’s claim that value is something biodiversity has?”

We can break the field of these fundamental questions into three

main categories:

• The answer to the metaphysical question helps us deal withthe semantic question.

• Semantic considerations affect the metaphysical inquiry: wewant our metaphysical account to capture as much as possible

of the everyday, informed use of the phrase ‘value of urbangreenspace biodiversity’

• Epistemological considerations affect the metaphysical

inquiry: we want our metaphysical account to render valuesomething that can be accessed, and assessed, i.e., somethingwhich can in principle be known about, rather than somethingmysterious

Note that those three sorts of question are related…

Strangeness: the way it answers them can seem strange to

those in the natural sciences and empirical social sciences

So those are the kinds of fundamental questions philosophy asks,

but…

Strangeness of METHOD:

(i) How to determine if conceptual analysis is correct?

(ii) Question is non-empirical (no empirical test will determine the answer).

I.e., wrt the concept ‘value’, the question ‘What is value?’ can be re-phrased as ‘How ought we conceive of value?’

(iii) But we can’t pretend problem of clarifying concepts isn’t

pressing—we repeatedly, and centrally, use these concepts.

(iv) Method: Reflective Equilibrium

Strangeness of CONTENT

Here’s an example of one philosophical account of

what value is [call it V ]:

‘Value is the second-order property of a thing’s having first-order, non-evaluative

properties that, when referred to in reasons,

render the thing a fitting object of a particular

pro-attitude’

• Second-order property = property of properties

• Non-evaluative property = natural property

• Pro-attitude = favorable attitude directed toward the object

‘Value is the second-order property of a thing’s having first-order, non-evaluative properties

that, when referred to in reasons, render the thing

a fitting object of a particular pro-attitude’

• Fitting object of a pro-attitude = object that, because of its non-evaluative properties, merits the pro-attitude.

Reference to phenotypic properties, when consideredagainst the background of knowledge about naturalselection, justifies a response of awe and wonder at any ofthe vast array of biological organisms which have evolvedthrough natural selection to fit the multitude of nichesthey’ve come to occupy.

Here’s an example of how V works:

Value is explained here as a relation, between the object and

a perceiver, such that, in virtue of some of its non-evaluative

properties, the object merits the pro-response.

Likewise, we can say, instead, that the pro-response

is fitting, given what the object really is.

• Location of Value: anthropocentrism VS nonanthropocentrism

• Epistemology of value attributions

• Moral psychology (connections between value claims &

motivation)

• Objectivity of value attributions

1 Philosophically, V solves a number of problems typically

thought to plague accounts of value:

• ‘Landscape X is aesthetically valuable’ means ‘X has natural,

non-evaluative properties that render it a fitting object of aesthetics-related pro-attitude Y’ [Y = pro-attitude motivating the value attribution]

• If asked, “How does one know that X is aesthetically valuable?”, we point to the response-grounding properties which justify the response, i.e., which render it fitting.

V is a metaphysics of value that suggests answers to the

semantic and epistemological questions:

But further aspects of the epistemological answer are the mostinteresting—they relate to the practical worth of V…

Key to answering these questions is the epistemological notion of

2 Practicality of Abstract Theorizing: is V too abstract to

be helpful wrt practical matters?

Can V be helpful…

• … as part of an answer to the urban-ecological, aesthetics-related question “Is landscape X particularly aesthetically valuable?”

• … as part of an answer to the environmental-ethical question

“Why ought we value nature?”

Scientists—including urban ecologists—have typically relied on

public preference surveys to arrive at claims about the aesthetic

value of particular landscapes

Members of the public are asked to rate—in variousways—the aesthetic quality of the landscape, and various methodsare used to arrive at results via aggregation

The Social-scientific Story about (a) and (b)

Sometimes the questions are direct: “Did you find A or B morevisually interesting?”

Sometimes the questions are less direct wrt aesthetic value:

“Did you feel more pleasure from being in landscape A orlandscape B?” And given a premise that correlates aesthetic valuewith pleasure, we can, it’s believed, arrive at claims about thelandscape’s aesthetic value

Assessing the Social-scientific Story

It’s true, of course, that this social-scientific way of determiningnature’s aesthetic value sidesteps the difficulties involved in

thinking about abstract matters like V

But it suffers for doing that.

To see why it suffers, consider the Museum Case…

On V, fittingness is built into the account of value, and therefore so is the need for justification.

I.e., the account makes plain that preferences may beindicators of value, but are so only to the extent that the

preferences have the properties rendering them reliable

indicators of the fit between the object appreciated and

particular responses

In considering the ramifications of the Museum Case, note

the following:

What might the properties of the preferences be that are, in this way,reliable indicators of fit between object and response?

In the Museum Case, the answer is art-historical knowledge and

aesthetic sensitivity We wouldn’t think it appropriate to allow just

anyone to choose the works most worthy of being saved

Why not? Because not just anyone has sufficient knowledgefor the kind of thorough appreciation that’s necessary for the reliabledetermination of their worth

Consideration of the Museum Case presents us with the followingquestion:

‘Why would someone trying to determine the aestheticvalue of a natural landscape ask just anyone to assess itsworth, and then aggregate the responses of many suchanyones, then think these findings indicative of thelandscape’s value, when, as the Museum Case shows,preferences are reliable indicators of value only to theextent that the preferences are informed ones?’

Why would someone do that?

Why would someone do that?

1 Here’s one of the answers most typically offered:

• Claims not backed by hard data are not convincing

2 Here’s a common objection to the notion that we should rely

in this way on experts:

• But it’s the public whose benefits from contact withnature’s beauty most matter, so it’s their preferences we shouldseek to satisfy

Note, though, that I’m not suggesting preference surveys beavoided, but that the people surveyed are the relevantones—the ones with sufficient knowledge for us to believetheir preferences reliable indicators of value

While it’s true that the public welfare is what’s largely atstake in questions of the aesthetic quality of urban greenspace, thatthought isn’t incompatible with reliance on experts for worthwhilequality assessments.

Why not?…

Recall the Museum Case We believe that the most worthy worksought to be the ones on display, even though the most worthyworks are nearly always the most challenging—the ones that oftenrequire the most background knowledge to be able to appropriately

or significantly appreciate But we don’t think that museums areinegalitarian Instead, we believe that only by offering the bestworks can people have the opportunity to get the most that art has

to offer, by stretching their minds, by pursuing the acquisition ofrelevant, aesthetic-experience-enhancing knowledge

MAIN POINT: we should give the public the same sort of

opportunity wrt natural landscapes, but that will not happen if

public preference surveys continue to be used in landscape qualityassessment

CONCLUSION OF PART ONE: the abstract conception of value,

V, and other such abstract theorizing, can in this way and others be

a helpful tool in thinking about such practical matters as landscapequality assessment, including the determination of the features ofparticularly aesthetically valuable urban greenspace

PART TWO : Environmental-Ethical

Values of Urban Greenspace

Biodiversity

Consider again those people with knowledge and sensitivity that renders their preferences for the beauty of natural environments reliable in a way analogous to art critics Call these people

‘environmental critics’ [EC].

Key question: ‘Upon what type of landscapes do the preferences

of ECs converge?’

Answer: on the wildest ones, i.e., the ones whose mix of

indigenous flora and fauna is maximal in degree of diversity,

given the constraints imposed by the conditions of climate,

terrain, etc

Notice that the relation between (i) the conditions which markecosystem health—overall balances of various kinds—and (ii)the notion of ‘maximal diversity given constraints on that

balance’, is analogous to a relation central to aesthetics, namely,

the maximization of unity and diversity.

[Music Example]

So it’s no surprise that…

• ECs’ aesthetic preferences correlate to the biological

preferences of ecologists

• The most beautiful environment is the healthy, wild one

The view that wild nature is aesthetically positive—that negative aesthetic evaluations of it

are inappropriate—is called Positive Aesthetics.

Increasingly, some urban ecologists and environmental ethicists arebecoming concerned with statistics which show that the

environmental sensitivity of city dwellers is, on the whole, decreasing.

This has been explained by (i):

(i) Lifestyles are changing, so that city dwellers are spendingincreasingly lower amounts of time outside the city, in wildnature

But consider also that,

(ii) Cities are growing in the size of their populations, as moreand more people leave rural lives for economic and other

reasons

Together, (i) and (ii) suggest the following:

(i) Lifestyles are changing, so that city dwellers are spending increasingly lower amounts of time outside the city, in wild nature.

(ii) Cities are growing in the size of their populations, as more and more people leave rural lives for economic and other reasons (So an increasingly larger percentage of the earth’s people are city dwellers.)

We’re in danger of losing the citizen-level political

base needed for long-range, lifestyle-altering

environmental policies needed to address the

environmental crisis

One Answer to the Problem:

• Provide cities with greenspace that maximizes the

variables of biodiversity and access.

If cities offer city dwellers an easy way to experience quasi-wildnature in an urban setting, we may be able to reverse the trend ofcity dwellers’ falling degree of environmental sensitivity

• ECs are a reliable guide to the aesthetic value of natural environments.

• ECs’ preferences converge on wild nature as aesthetically the best, so that aesthetic value correlates to maximal biodiversity.

• Combination of growing urban populations and the trend of decreased environmental sensitivity among urbanites suggests increasing future difficulty of enacting large-scale social change necessary to address the environmental crisis.

• One solution: indirect environmental education by means of quasi-wild

urban greenspace, designed and maintained (or restored) to meet the criteria set out by ECs.

• So: aesthetically valuable urban greenspace serves an ethical function by helping to more public preference in the direction of

stronger concern for the aesthetic benefits wild nature offers.

One ramification of the conclusion: Very different future use ofpublic preference surveys—i.e., for the determination of…

(1) … initial size of gap between ECs’ preferences andpublic preference

(2) … points of potential public resistance to the aestheticfeatures of quasi-wild urban nature

(3) … rate of change of the speed of the gap’s closure(assuming at least the strategy’s minimal effectiveness)

LINKING THE TWO SUBPROJECTS—Central Practical MattersRelated to Implementing the Solution:

• Determine ways to best maximize wildness & access.

unacceptable—e.g., coarse woody debris on urban

forest floors

Points (i) and (ii) are the Core of Subproject 2.

The End