Biocentrism Bad

BIOCENTRISM IS AN INVALID PERSPECTIVE

1. BIOCENTRISM IS RIDDLED WITH DEEP THEORETICAL FLAWS Terry L. Anderson, staff, THE DETROIT
NEWS, November 15, 1995, p. np.
The main contribution of this book is that it exposes the lack of any scientific basis for biocentrism and
ecosystem management According to biocentrism, man’s activities (logging, for example) are not a part of
the ecosystem, which would be in balance were it not for these activities. But there are two problems
with this approach. First, nature is not an equilibrium system. The forests of the Pacific Northwest never
have been in balance; they always have been dynamic and always will be even after man joins the
dinosaurs. Second, ecosystem management is not scientific because it generates no testable propositions.
For example, if spotted owls go extinct, what are the consequences? Biocentrism and ecosystem
management make no predictions. They only say such extinction would be bad if it came as a result of
man’s influence.

2. BIOCENTRISM IS IMPRACTICAL AND UNREALISTIC

Timothy Patrick Brady, editor, BOSTON COLLEGE ENVIRONMENTAL AFFAIRS LAW REVIEW, Spring, 1990, p.
621.
Frost discusses two types of environmentalism: biocentrism, and duty-based. Biocentrism believes that
humans are “indistinguishable in kind from the other inhabitants of the earth.” Because this philosophy
fails to take account of people’s “dual nature-Itheiri thinking and nonthinking selves,” Frost rejects it as
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“impractical and unrealistic.”

3. BIOCENTRISM PRESENTS A FALSE VENEER OF SCIENTIFIC MERIT Terry L. Anderson, staff, THE DETROIT
NEWS, November 15, 1995, p. np.
Chase’s argument is that ultimately it is value judgments, not scientific analysis, that drive environmental
policies. The news that the emperor has no clothes will be unbelievable for those environmentalists who
have based their movement on the supposed science of ecosystem management. By embracing
biocentrism and ecosystem management, Chase says environmentalists have “confused science with
philosophy, facts with values, and truth with mythology.” Compelling evidence to support his conclusion
comes from the fight over ancient forests in the Pacific Northwest. Initially, environmentalists claimed
(without evidence) that these forests should not be harvested because they are home to an endangered
species, the northern spotted owl. Though growing scientific data indicate that viable owl populations do
exist, the bird remains on the endangered species list. Million of acres remain off limits to timber
management at tremendous economic and social costs. But these costs and the evidence that the owl is
not endangered do not matter to the environmentalists fighting over the forests. By arguing that an
interconnected natural system will be destroyed if logging is allowed to continue, they have hidden their
desire to stop logging under a veil of false science.

4. BIOCENTRISM IS INTERNALLY CONTRADICTORY

Joel B. Eisen, Assistant Professor of Law and Director, Robert R. Merhige, Jr. Center of Environmental Law,
University of Richmond School of Law, WASHINGTON UNIVERSITY JOURNAL OF URBAN AND
CONTEMPORARY LAW, Summer, 1995, p. 10.
To coexist in harmony with nature, we might establish a “biocentric democracy,” in which humans and
nonhuman species have coextensive rights. This is an alternative to anthropocentrism proposed by some
“Deep Ecologists,” who insist that the rights of humankind must extend to all species. To propose this is to
recognize one of its many inherent contradictions: humans would still make any determination of
biological egalitarianism, which would be suspect on that ground alone.
BIOCENTRISM IS AN UNDESIRABLE FRAMEWORK
1. ALL BIOCENTRIC PHILOSOPHIES COLLAPSE INTO ANTHROPOCENTRISM
Bob Pepperman Taylor, Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of Vermont, OUR
LIMITS TRANSGRESSED: ENVIRONMENTAL POLITICAL THOUGHT IN AMERICA, 1992, p. 127.
The rejection of the progressive conservation tradition by contemporary radical environmental
philosophers has created the need to find new moral ground for respecting, protecting, and valuing the
nonhuman natural environment. The results of the search for a convincing biocentric or ecocentric
theory, however, have been disappointing. At some point, all of these theories end up appealing to
human interests by connecting our interests to the ecological community of which we are a part, thus
undermining the strict biocentrism of the project. At some point, the biocentrism that is to be defended
either loses its radical force or is inconsistently applied by the theorist, as a result of its obviously and
unacceptably misanthropic implications and conclusions.

2. BIOCENTRISM ALIENATES HUMANS FROM THE REST OF NATURE

Joseph R. Des Jardins, Philosophy Professor at the College of Saint Benedict and St. John’s University,
ENVIRONMENTAL ETHICS: AN INTRODUCTION TO ENVIRONMENTAL PHILOSOPHY, 1997, p. 141.
Even Taylor’s careful defense of biocentric ethics faces serious challenges. The next chapters review
several that have implications for environmental philosophies. First, the emphasis on noninterference as a
major normative principle suggests a view of humans that is questionable at best. To say that we ought
not “interfere with” nature implies that humans are somehoe outside of, or distinct from, nature: humans
are separate from nature, and thus we should leave natural processes alone. Thus, the claim is that
environmental change or even environmental destruction is allowable (good?) if it results from natural
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processes. Change or destruction is wrong if it results from human interference. But surely humans are as
much a part of natural processes as any other organism. Thus, the fact that change is brought about by
humans should not, in itself, have any ethical implications.

2. BIOCENTRISM BLURS THE DISTINCTION BETWEEN HUMANITY AND NATURE

Bob Pepperman Taylor, Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of Vermont, OUR
LIMITS TRANSGRESSED: ENVIRONMENTAL POLITICAL THOUGHT IN AMERICA, 1992, pp. 124-125.
First, although Taylor does not depict the earth as a “superorganism,” his biocentric perspective has
significant similarities to moral theories built on such a claim most notably, it too obscures the moral
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issues at stake in the human relationship with the environment by appealing to generally shared interests.
As we will see, the ethical principles Taylor defends in the last to components of his theory presume that
environmental ethics must concentrate on the clarification and mediation of conflicts between humans
and the natural world. The biocentric outlook, in contrast, threatens to make such conflicts increasingly
difficult to identify. After all, if we are an integral and equal member of the community of life, on what
grounds are we to criticize our “natural” species behavior within that community? Just as with Rolston’s
and Callicott’s theories, Taylor’s biocentric world view may actually undermine the original purpose of the
theory: defining ethical boundaries for human behavior, through the recognition of the inherent moral
worth of other organisms. The danger of the biocenti-ic perspective is that it blurs the distinction between
ourselves and other living things so crucial for locating such boundaries.
BIOCENTRISM IS ANTHROPOCENTRIC
1. BIOCENTRISM IS JUST AS BAD AS ANTHROPOCENTRISM
Murray Bookchin, director emeritus of the Institute for Social Ecology, WHICH WAY FOR THE ECOLOGY
MOVEMENT?, 1994, page 3.
The “biocentrism” ideology of deep ecology and ecomysticism pivots on an ideological trick: a strict
assertion of biocentric “rights,” as though no body of ethical ideas could be translated that formulated
both extremes. Yet these extremes can indeed be translated in an ethics of complementarilty, in which
human beings--themselves products of natural evolution, with naturally as well as culturally endowed
capacities that no other life-form possesses--can play an actively creative role in evolution to the benefit
of life generally. Biocentrists willfully ignore such notions--that is, when they do not willfully degrade
them into a crude anthropocentrism that they can so easily oppose.

2. FOCUS ON ANTHROPOCENTRISM PARALYZES SOCIAL CHANGE

Murray Bookchin, director emeritus of the Institute for Social Ecology, WHICH WAY FOR THE ECOLOGY
MOVEMENT?, 1994, page 4.
In deep ecology’s derogation of the social, the alienation of humans from the natural world (read:
wilderness) was originally caused by human subjectivity. It is not capitalism, you see, that produced
alienation from “Nature,” but alienation from “Nature,” that produced capitalism. Was this alienation
effected by Christianity, as Lynn White, Jr. would have us believe? Or by egotism, as various
psychoanalysts claim? Or was it in fact the same “Paleolithic spirituality’ for which deep ecologists yearn,
that in fact unavoidably divided the hunter from the hunted, the natural world from the social, and
animals from the human beings who manipulated them in animistic religious beliefs? In any case it is our
attitudes and psychological makeup or “mindscapes” that we must explore in this most therapeutic of
eras--even at the expense of addressing a “crowded agenda” of social problems that so patently yield
ecological problems.

BIOCENTRIC NOTIONS JUSTIFY NAZI-STYLE ATROCITIES

1. “BIOCENTRIC EGALITARIANISM” JUSTIFIES TOTALITARIANISM & DEATH OF MILLIONS Murray Bookchin,
director emeritus of the Institute for Social Ecology, WHICH WAY FOR THE ECOLOGY MOVEMENT?, 1994,
page 10-11.
The premises of ecomysticism may lead in many directions, but a goal of social freedom seems to be
rarely expressed in the literature. Indeed, deep ecology and ecomysticism generally would be reactionary
and alienating if the logic of their precepts were actually carried out in practice. The logic of a seemingly
benign deep ecology demand for “biocentric egalitarianism” involves the surrender of human freedom to
“Nature’s” imperatives. If sociobiology predetermines a great deal of “human nature” in what E.O. Wilson
calls “the morality of the gene,” deep ecology, in turn, seems to place social life into subordination--and a
very real subordination--to the “hunger politics” of “voluntary simplicity” and outright asceticism. The
logic of permitting “Nature” to “take its course” (as David Foreman once put it) is to render human beings
no different in their “intrinsic worth” from other animals and hence subject to “natural laws” like
unrelenting swings in population numbers. The tendency of deep ecology ideologists to stop halfway in
thinking out the implications of their premises is matched only by their failure to “deeply” confront real
social problems and their impact on the natural world.

2. BIOCENTRIC “EQUAL INTRINSIC WORTH” THEORIES LEAD TO NAZI-STYLE ATROCITIES Murray Bookchin,
director emeritus of the Institute for Social Ecology, WHICH WAY FOR THE ECOLOGY MOVEMENT?, 1994,
page 39.
Whether biocentrism’s equation of the “intrinsic worth” of humans and lemmings will pave the
ideological way to a future Aushwitz has yet to be seen. But the “moral” grounds for letting millions of
people starve to death has been established with a vengeance, and it is arrogantly being advanced in the
name of “ecology.”
BIOCENTRISM IS SELF-CONTRADICTORY
1. “EQUAL INTRINSIC WORTH” THEORY IS FLAWED AND SELF-CONTRADICTORY
Murray Bookchin, director emeritus of the Institute for Social Ecology, WHICH WAY FOR THE ECOLOGY
MOVEMENT?, 1994, page 46-7.
Among neo-Malthusians, hardly any attempt is made to think out premises, indeed, to ask what follows
from a given statement. If all life forms have the same “intrinsic worth” as deep ecologists contend, can
we impact to malarial mosquitoes or tsetse flies the same “right” to exist that we accord to whale and
grizzly bears? Can a bacterium that could threaten to exterminate chimpanzees be left to do so because it
too has “intrinsic worth” and, perhaps, because human beings who can control a lethal disease of chimps
should not “interfere” with the mystical workings of “Gaia”? Who is to decide what constitutes “valid”
interference by human beings in nature and what is invalid? To what extent can conscious, rational, and
moral human intervention in nature be regarded as ‘unnatural,” especially if one considers the vast
evolution of life toward greater subjectivity and ultimately human intellecturality? To what extent can
humanity itself be viewed simply as a single species, when social life is riddled by hierarchy and
domination, gender biases, class exploitation and ethnic discrimination?

2. BIOCENTRISM IS SELF-CONTRADICTORY: THE ABORTION ISSUE PROVES

Murray Bookchin, director emeritus of the Institute for Social Ecology, WHICH WAY FOR THE ECOLOGY
MOVEMENT?, 1994, page 11.
Yet abortion rights patently affect rates of population growth, which ecomystics of all kinds have also
made into a major issue, and as such they are required fully to support women’s rights to abortion. Thus,
neoMalthusian attempts to reduce social facts to biological facts divide into pro-choice demands for
reproductive and anti-abortionist claims to the rights of the unborn. The abortion issue, in fact, points up
the absurd tangle of contradictions--partly in theory, partly in practice--which biocentrism produces and
the extent to which it remains a thoroughly unthought-out, one-sided, and irrational outlook.

BIOCENTRISM STOPS TRUE ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION

1. BIOCENTRISM WEAKENS REAL ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION EFFORTS
Keith Schneider, former national environmental correspondent for The New York Times, executive
director of the Michigan Land Use Institute, THE NEW YORK TIMES, November 19, 1995, Section 7; Page
34. The environmentalists, on the other hand, were influenced by a corrosive biocentrism, an almost
religious conviction that all living things have equal value and that old-growth forests, in particular,
deserved to be protected at any cost. When the two sides clashed, the result was a loss of balance that
hurt small communities, dramatically weakened the environmental movement and further fueled an
already rampant cynicism about the American political system’s ability to solve complex problems.

2. BIOCENTRISM BECOMES A SUBSTITUTE FOR REAL SOCIAL CRITIQUE AND ACTION Murray Bookchin,
director emeritus of the Institute for Social Ecology, WHICH WAY FOR THE ECOLOGY MOVEMENT?, 1994,
page 41-2.
The shadowy side of suprahuman “naturalism” suggests the perilous ground on which many ecomystics,
ecotheistics, and deep ecologists are walking and the dangers of de-sensitizing an already “minimalized”
public, to use Christopher Lasch’s term. As the late Edward Abbey’s denunciations of Latin “genetic
inferiority” and even “Hebraic superstitions” suggest, the mystical Malthusians themselves are not
immune to the dangerous brew. The brew becomes themselves are not immune to the dangerous brew.
The brew becomes highly explosive when it is mixed with a mysticism that supplants humanity’s
potentiality to be a rational voice of nature with an all-presiding “Gaia,” an ecotheism that denies human
beings their unique place in nature. Reverence for nature is no guarantee of reverence for the world of
line generally, and reverence for nonhuman life is no guarantee that human life will receive the respect it
deserves. This is especially true when reverence is rooted in deification--and when a supine reverence
become a substitute for social critique and social action.