UNDERSTANDING MORAL LIMITS IN THE DUALITY OF ARTIFACTS AND NATURE:A REPLY TO CRITICS

Abstract

Ned Hettinger and Wayne Ouderkirk present some cogent criticisms of my ideas in environmental ethics, especially those ideas closely associated with my attacks on the process of ecological restoration. Both trace the source of my alleged problems to a pernicious dualism of nature and humanity that they perceive in my environmental philosophy. In this reply I accept their basic analysis of my work but deny that my overall position leads to the problems they suggest. I explicitly endorse the dualism of human artifacts and natural entities, and I argue that this dualism exists along a spectrum of more-or-less natural or artifactual. I claim that this dualism is not pernicious, but on the contrary, it is the first necessary step to understanding the moral limits of human action in the natural world. I begin with a consideration of the formal structure of these critical papers there is a remarkable formal similarity between these two essays. Each author begins with a brief review of the positive aspects of my position or theory in environmental ethics; then there is an analysis of the problems within the position, and the problematic consequences or impli-