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All the aff has to do is win the link argument – if the aff doesn’t link that means the perm solves
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- A full shift to biocentrism is not necessary, weak anthropocentrism provides many benefits
- Alternative of showing oppression is not a fully transformative experience
PermAll the aff has to do is win the link argument – if the aff doesn’t link that means the perm solves.Papadopoulos 10(Dr. Dimitris Papadopoulos, teaches politics, culture and organization at the School of Management, University of Leicester. 2010, ephemera, Vol. 10 “Insurgent posthumanism”, http://www.ephemerajournal.org/contribution/insurgent-posthumanism) It is true that left politics have largely ignored the complexity and unpredictability of the entanglement between a deeply divided society and that of a deeply divided nonhuman world. The principle avenue for social transformation, at least in the main conceptualisations of the political left[3], passes through seizing the centres of social and political power. The dominant motivation for left politics after the revolutions of 1848 (and definitely since 1871) has been how to conquer institutional power and the state. Within this matrix of radical left thinking the posthumanist moment becomes invalidated, subsumed to a strategy focused solely on social power. But here I want to argue that a post-humanist gesture can be found at the heart of processes of left political mobilisations that create transformative institutions and alternatives. This was the case even when such moves were distorted at the end, neutralised or finally appropriated into a form of left politics solely concerned with institutional representation and state power. What such an appropriation conceals is that a significant part of the everyday realities put to work through radical left struggles have always had a strong posthumanist character through their concentration on remaking the mundane material conditions of existence beyond and outside an immediate opposition to the state. In what follows I will try to excavate this posthumanist gesture from the main narratives of radical left political struggles along the following three fault lines: the first is about the exit from an alienated and highly regulated relation to the material, biological and technological realms through the making of a self-organised common world – a move from enclosed and separated worlds governed by labour to the making of ecological commons. A second posthumanist move is one that attacks the practice of politics as a matter of ideas and institutions and rehabilitates politics as an embodied and everyday practice – an exit from the representational mind to the embodiment of politics. Finally, the third, involves the decentring of the human subject as the main actor of history making. History is a human affair but it is not made (only) by certain groups of humans – a move towards a post-anthropocentric history. Perm solves: There are different levels of anthropocentrism – the permutation functions to allow humans to see the intrinsic value of other beings while acting in the self-interest of humansMurdy ‘75[March 28, 1975, Dr. William H. Murdy was a former Dean of Oxford College, Charles Howard Candler Professor of Biology at Emory University, “Anthropocentrism: A Modern Version,” pg 1, http://worldtracker.org/media/library/Science/Science%20Magazine/science%20magazine%201974-1975/root/data/Science%201974-1975/pdf/1975_v187_n4182/1739476.pdf] An anthropocentric attitude toward nature does not require that man be the source of all value, nor does it exclude a belief that things of nature have intrinsic value. According to Laszlo (11, p. 105): "There is nothing in all the realms of natural systems which would be value-free when looked at from the vantage point of the systems themselves." Whitehead (12, p.93) writes: "The element of value, of being valuable, of having value, of being an end in itself, of being something which is for its own sake, must not be omitted in any account of an event as the most concrete actual something." I may affirm that every species has intrinsic value, but I will behave as though I value my own survival and that of my species more highly than the survival of other animals or plants. I may assert that a lettuce plant has intrinsic value, yet I will eat it before it has reproduced itself because I value my own nutritional well-being above the, survival of the lettuce plant. Birch (10) writes: "Man left only with his self-interest, however enlightened, will not provide sufficient motivation for ecological survival." Even this statement can be interpreted in terms of instrumental value, that is, man should acknowledge the intrinsic value of things; otherwise he will not have sufficient motivation for ecological survival, which I assume includes human survival individually and as a species. A full shift to biocentrism is not necessary, weak anthropocentrism provides many benefitsNorton ‘84 [1984, Bryan G. Norton is the head philosophy professor at Georgia Tech, “Anthropocentrism vs. Nonanthropocentrism,” Environmental Ethics and Weak Anthroprocentrism, pg 327-329]//AA In the final section of this paper I develop these two sources of value in nature more fully. Even there my goal is not to defend these two bases for environmental protection as embodying true claims about the value of nature-that, as I said at the outset is a larger and later task. My point is only that, within the limits set by weak anthropocentrism as here defined, there exists a framework for developing powerful reasons for protecting nature. Further, these reasons do not resemble the extractive and exploitative reasons normally associated with strong anthropocentrisrn. And they do not differ from strongly anthropocentric reasons in merely theoretical ways. Weakly anthropocentric reasoning can affect behavior as can be seen by applying it to last man situations. Suppose that human beings choose, for rational or religious reasons, to live according to an ideal of maximum harmony with nature. Suppose also that this ideal is taken seriously and that any- one who impairs that harmony (by destroying an- other species, by polluting air and water, etc.) would be judged harshly. But such an ideal need not attribute intrinsic value to natural objects, nor need the prohibitions implied by it be justified with nonanthropocentric reasoning attributing intrinsic value to nonhuman natural objects. Rather, they can be justified as being implied by the ideal of harmony with nature. This ideal, in turn, can be justified either on religious grounds referring to hu- man spiritual development or as being a fitting part of a rationally defensible world view. Indeed, there exist examples of well developed world views that exhibit these characteristics. The Hindus and jains, in proscribing the killing of in- sects, etc., show concern for their own spiritual development rather than for the actual lives of those insects. Likewise, Henry David Thoreau is careful not to attribute independent, intrinsic value to nature. Rather he believes that nature expresses a deeper spiritual reality and that humans can learn spiritual values from it. Nor should it be inferred that only spiritually oriented positions can uphold weakly anthropocentric reasons. In a post-Darwinian world, one could give rational and scientific sup- port for a world view that includes ideals of living in harmony with nature, but which involve no attribu- tions of intrinsic value to nature. Views such as those just described are weakly anthropocentric because they refer only to human val- ues, but they are not strongly so because human be- havior is limited by concerns other than those derivable from prohibitions against interfering with the satisfaction of human felt preferences. And practically speaking, the difference in behavior be- tween strong anthropocentrists and weak anthro- pocentrists of the sort just described and exemplified is very great. In particular, the reaction of these weak anthropocentrists to last man situations is un- doubtedly more similar to that of nonanthropocen- trists than to that of strong anthropocentrists. Ideals such as that of living in harmony with nature imply rules proscribing the wanton destruction of other species or ecosystems even if the human species faces imminent extinction Nor need weak anthropocentrism collapse into strong anthropocentrism. It would do so if the dichotomy between preferences and ideals were in- defensible. If all values can, ultimately, be inter- preted as satisfactions of preferences, then ideals are simply human preferences. The controversy here is reminiscent of that discussed by early utili- tarians. john Stuart Mill, for example, argued that because higher pleasures ultimately can be seen to provide greater satisfactions, there is thus only a single scale of values-preference satisfaction.” It is true that weak anthropocentrists must deny that preference satisfaction is the only measure of hu- man value. They must take human ideals seriously enough so that they can be set against preference satisfactions as a limit upon them. It is therefore no surprise that weak anthropocentrists reject the reductionistic position popular among utilitarians. Indeed, it is precisely the rejection of that reduc- tionism that allows them to steer their way between strong antliropocentrism and nonanthropocen- trism. The rejection of this reduction is, of course, a commitment that weak anthropocentrists share with nonanthropocentrists. Both believe there are values distinct from human preference satisfaction, rejecting the reduction of ideals to preferences. Perm solves – Embracing Enlightened Anthropocentrism is practically and pragmatically sufficientBrennan ‘02 Brennan, Andrew. "Environmental Ethics." Stanford University. Stanford University, 03 June 2002. Web. 5 July 2014. It should be noted, however, that some theorists working in the field see no need to develop new, non-anthropocentric theories. Instead, they advocate what may be called enlightened anthropocentrism (or, perhaps more appropriately called, prudential anthropocentrism). Briefly, this is the view that all the moral duties we have towards the environment are derived from our direct duties to its human inhabitants. The practical purpose of environmental ethics, they maintain, is to provide moral grounds for social policies aimed at protecting the earth's environment and remedying environmental degradation. Enlightened anthropocentrism, they argue, is sufficient for that practical purpose, and perhaps even more effective in delivering pragmatic outcomes, in terms of policy-making, than non-anthropocentric theories given the theoretical burden on the latter to provide sound arguments for its more radical view that the nonhuman environment has intrinsic value (cf. Norton 1991, de Shalit 1994, Light and Katz 1996). Furthermore, some prudential anthropocentrists may hold what might be called cynical anthropocentrism, which says that we have a higher-level anthropocentric reason to be non-anthropocentric in our day-to-day thinking. Suppose that a day-to-day non-anthropocentrist tends to act more benignly towards the nonhuman environment on which human well-being depends. This would provide reason for encouraging non-anthropocentric thinking, even to those who find the idea of non-anthropocentric intrinsic value hard to swallow. In order for such a strategy to be effective one may need to hide one's cynical anthropocentrism from others and even from oneself. Alternative of showing oppression is not a fully transformative experienceKing ’97 [1997, Roger King is has a Ph.D. in Agricultural Economics from the University of Reading in England, where he was on the faculty until resigning He has received multiple fellowships from Yaddo, The MacDowell Colony, and the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts. “Critical Reflections on Biocentric Environmental Ethics: Is It an Alternative to Anthropocentrism?” Space, place, and environmental ethic, pg. 220-224]//AA The anthropocentric argument for protecting wild species and places because of their transformative value is attractive. And the extension of this approach to the domesticated landscape provides one basis for a defense of open spaces in cities, preservation of historic districts, and exposure of urban children to rural and farming experiences. Despite the attractiveness of the concept of transformative value, I wish to suggest that its abstractness makes the concept epistemologically problematic. First, transformative value does not reside in objects or places independent of those who experience them. The transformation, and hence the value of what initiates the transformation, depends as much on what subjects bring to their experience as it does on what is experienced. Cultural or class differences, for example, might be expected to lead people to perceive nature differently. If so, the claim that particular places or things have transformative value would have no clear meaning until contextualized for a particular group of people at a particular place and time. Marti Kheel exemplifies this difficulty when she proposes that those who see nothing wrong with eating meat should visit a slaughterhouse. She appears to think that this experience will provide the emotional jolt necessary to unsettle those who use abstract moral reasoning to justify the consumption of meat. But some people visit slaughterhouses and are unmoved. Some people will be transformed by their visit to the slaughterhouse and others will not since the slaughterhouse experience does not have transformative value for everyone. The same point can be made about attitudes toward wilderness. Wild places do not in themselves bring about the experiential transformations Norton hoped for. After all, some people hate the experience (paradigmatically, early European colonists thought the wilderness was the domain of Satan). A second objection derives from the multiplicity of things that have transformative value. Norton used the concept to argue that wild nature has value independent of merely felt preferences, because the experience of wild nature can transform careless and irresponsible attitudes to nature into insightful and caring action. Transformative values can transform an irrational worldview based on consumption and unlimited economic growth into a rational worldview of environmental responsibility. However, it is also true that the experience of city life can transform the outlook of a person who comes from the country. And contact with American commercialism rarely leaves Third World or indigenous people untransformed. All these experiences would have a transformative value, yet surely there are some transformations we should not encourage. Thus, it remains to be explained why transformations in favor of wilderness protection or farmland preservation are to be valued as stages on the way to a more rational worldview, while transformations that industrialize and Westernize indigenous people are unacceptable. Ultimately, Norton appears to have presupposed criteria of judgment other than the transformative effect of what he values. And for the biocentrist, one plausible conclusion is that those transformative experiences that favor wilderness protection are valuable because wild things after all do have intrinsic value. Directory: file -> view view -> Western Europe after wwii view -> Author study: paul fleischman view -> Qpa1 7ela study Guide view -> Arctic Oil/Gas Neg view -> November 1970 Approximately 150,000-500,000 deaths Bhola Cyclone Bangladesh view -> Grade Level: 6 Unit of Study: Caribbean glce view -> Citation: Duffield, Katy view -> Table of Contents Lesson # view -> Chinese Wind Energy Disad Download 478.89 Kb. 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