In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Ethics & the Enviornment 6.2 (2001) 119-124 [Access article in PDF] Book Review Eugene Odum: Ecosystem Ecologist and Environmentalis Eugene Odum: Ecosystem Ecologist and Environmentalist. Betty Jean Craige. The University of Georgia Press, Athens, 2001, pp. 226. $34.95. ISBN 0-8203-2281-4 (Hardback) A serendipity initiated this review. A half hour before checking my voice mail and receiving the invitation to write this review, I stood at the University of Georgia (...) Press table at the Association for the Study of Literature and the Environment (ASLE) conference in Flagstaff, Arizona. Picking up Betty Jean Craige's new text, I thought to myself, "This book looks interesting! I'm going to have to read it!" Not only did that wish come true; now I have the opportunity to share my thoughts.Prima facie, it may seem odd to print a review on a biography of a scientific ecologist in an environmental ethics journal. In fact, however, nothing could be more appropriate. The science of ecology is directly relevant--even essential--to the ethics of the environment: the human/nonhuman dynamic is contingent upon the identity of human beings, the essence of natural systems, and the interactive relationship between the two. As an environmental philosopher, it was this realization which directed me to the life sciences. [End Page 119]I recommend that environmental philosophers read Craige's book for at least three reasons. First, as just mentioned, the science of ecology addresses some of the necessary conditions for developing an environmental ethic--the ontology of natural systems and the relationship of biota (including Homo sapiens) with the abiotic environment.Second, and more specifically, Odum is a scientist of special concern to environmental philosophers--not to mention moral philosophers and philosophers of science--with his reticence to take seriously the is/ought (or fact/value) gap first identified by the great David Hume. As is widely known, philosophers and scientists who maintain the existence of such a gap contend that it is logically impossible to derive value-laden statements, such as ethical statements, from value-free statements, such as factual statements. According to this line of reasoning, the only way to move from the observation that human activity is causing species extinction to the imperative PRESERVE SPECIES! is another normative assumption that anthropogenic species extinction is bad. Thus Odum is at loggerheads with Bertrand Russell when the philosopher writes: "... questions as to 'values' lie wholly outside the domain of knowledge. That is to say, when we assert that this or that has 'value,' we are giving expression to our own emotions, not to a fact[.]" Siding with Russell against Odum, many ecologists refrain from making ethical (and hence environmentalist) injunctions.What makes Odum especially fascinating is that he recovered from the hangover of Modernity which numerous scientists and philosophers still suffer from: the inability of moving from descriptive science to prescriptive ethics. As Craige remarks over and over again, Odum moves easi-ly between ecology and environmentalism (p. 64): "His inclusion of human beings in ecosystems turned ecosystem ecologists into environmentalists--that is, advocates of policies and social behaviors protective to the natural environment--erasing the line traditional to Western thought between science and politics" (p. 45. See also p. xvii, p. 41). Odum's attitude marks a major breakthrough for the project of grounding environmental ethics in ecological science.Third, Odum is a great scientist whose work is relevant to a host of other philosophical issues. In our recent book, The Philosophy of Ecology: From Science to Synthesis (University of Georgia Press, 2000), Frank Golley and I struggled not to include a piece by Odum in every section of the book. Odum's work has implications for every area in the philosophy of ecology: the ontology of the ecological entity, the reductionism/holism [End Page 120] debate, the rationalism/empiricism debate, evolutionary ecology, and the relationship of ecology to ethics. In light of my work in the philosophy of ecology and familiarity with Odum's research--not to mention meeting him personally several times--I find several of Craige's statements perplexing. When she writes... (shrink)

The “land community” (or “biotic community”) that features centrally in Aldo Leopold’s Land Ethic has typically been equated with the concept of “ecosystem.” Moreover, some have challenged this central Leopoldean concept given the multitude of meanings of the term “ecosystem” and the changes the term has undergone since Leopold’s time (see, e.g., Shrader-Frechette 1996). Even one of Leopold’s primary defenders, J. Baird Callicott, asserts that there are difficulties in identifying the boundaries of ecosystems and suggests that we recognize that their (...) boundaries are determined by scientific questions ecologists pose (Callicott 2013). I argue that we need to rethink Leopold’s concept of land community in the following ways. First, we should recognize that Leopold’s views are not identical to those of his contemporaries (e.g., Clements, Elton), although they resemble those of some subsequent ecologists, including some of our contemporaries (e.g., O’Neill 2001, Post et al. 2007, Hastings and Gross 2012). Second, the land community concept does not map cleanly onto the concept of “ecosystem”; it also incorporates elements of the “community” concept in community ecology by emphasizing the interactions between organisms and not just the matter/energy flow of the ecosystem concept. Third, the boundary question can be illuminated by considering some of the recent literature on the nature of biological individuals (in particular, Odenbaugh 2007; Hamilton, Smith, and Haber 2009; Millstein 2009), focusing on concentrations of causal relations as determinative of the boundaries of the land community qua individual. There are challenges to be worked out, particularly when the interactions of community members do not map cleanly onto matter/energy flows, but I argue that these challenges can be resolved. The result is a defensible land community concept that is ontologically robust enough to be a locus of moral obligation while being consistent with contemporary ecological theory and practice. (shrink)

I present the foundational structure for a life-centered theory of environmental ethics. The structure consists of three interrelated components. First is the adopting of a certain ultimate moral attitude toward nature, which I call “respect for nature.” Second is a belief system that constitutes a way of conceiving of the natural world and of our place in it. This belief system underlies and supports the attitude in a way that makes it an appropriate attitude to take toward the Earth’s natural (...) ecosystems and their life communities. Third is a system of moral rules and standards for guiding our treatment of those ecosystems and life communities, a set of normative principles which give concrete embodiment or expression to the attitude of respect for nature. The theory set forth and defended here is, I hold, structurally symmetrical with a theory of human ethics based on the principle of respect for persons. (shrink)

Many philosophers have become familiar with Leopold’s land ethic through the writings of J. Baird Callicott, who claims that Leopold bases his land ethic on a ‘protosociobiological’ argument that Darwin gives in the Descent of Man. On this view, which has become the canonical interpretation, Leopold’s land ethic is based on extending our moral sentiments to ecosystems. I argue that the evidence weighs in favor of an alternative interpretation of Leopold; his reference to Darwin does not refer to the Descent, (...) but rather to the Origin of Species, where Darwin discusses the interdependencies between organisms in the struggle for existence. (shrink)

On most understandings of what an ecosystem is, it is a kind of thing that can be literally, not just metaphorically, healthy or unhealthy. Health is best understood as a kind of well-being; a thing’s health is a matter of retaining those structures and functions that are good for it. While it is true both that what’s good for an ecosystem depends on how we define the system and that how we define the system depends on our interests, these facts (...) do not force us to the conclusion that an ecosystem has no good of its own. Ecosystems and persons can have goods of their own in spite of the fact that the schemes we use to categorize them are matters that we decide upon. (shrink)

I present the foundational structure for a life-centered theory of environmental ethics. The structure consists of three interrelated components. First is the adopting of a certain ultimate moral attitude toward nature, which I call “respect for nature.” Second is a belief system that constitutes a way of conceiving of the natural world and of our place in it. This belief system underlies and supports the attitude in a way that makes it an appropriate attitude to take toward the Earth’s natural (...) ecosystems and their life communities. Third is a system of moral rules and standards for guiding our treatment of those ecosystems and life communities, a set of normative principles which give concrete embodiment or expression to the attitude of respect for nature. The theory set forth and defended here is, I hold, structurally symmetrical with a theory of human ethics based on the principle of respect for persons. (shrink)

In the recent philosophical literature, two questions have arisen concerning the status of natural selection: (1) Is it a population-level phenomenon, or is it an organism-level phenomenon? (2) Is it a causal process, or is it a purely statistical summary of lower-level processes? In an earlier work (Millstein, Br J Philos Sci, 57(4):627–653, 2006), I argue that natural selection should be understood as a population-level causal process, rather than a purely statistical population-level summation of lower-level processes or as an organism-level (...) causal process. In a 2009 essay entitled “Productivity, relevance, and natural selection,” Stuart Glennan argues in reply that natural selection is produced by causal pro- cesses operating at the level of individual organisms, but he maintains that there is no causal productivity at the population level. However, there are, he claims, many population-level properties that are causally relevant to the dynamics of evolution- ary processes. Glennan’s claims rely on a causal pluralism that holds that there are two types of causes: causal production and causal relevance. Without calling into question Glennan’s causal pluralism or his claims concerning the causal relevance of natural selection, I argue that natural selection does in fact exhibit causal production at the population level. It is true that natural selection does not fit with accounts of mechanisms that involve decomposition of wholes into parts, such as Glennan’s own. However, it does fit with causal production accounts that do not require decomposition, such as Salmon’s Mark Transmission account, given the extent to which populations act as interacting “objects” in the process of natural selection. (shrink)