Spending most of this week in beautiful Estes Park in the Rocky Mountains of Colorado, here are a few philosophical reflections. The first one concerns the concept of “weirdness”, the second with what is “natural”, though both have to do with the fundamental problem of setting standards on the assumption, or belief, that “the cosmos is all that was, is, and ever will be.” (Carl Sagan) In other words, how do we make sense of what “ought” to be and what “ought not” to be if everything simply is what it is, i.e. if we hold to the philosophical view known as philosophical naturalism?
First, what do we do when we encounter people of different beliefs, customs, behaviors, and appearances? This question arose in my mind after spending some time in the eclectic community of Boulder, not unlike my experiences in Madison, Wisconsin. Often times if our exposure to persons of diverse character has been limited, it is easy, and “natural” to view such people as “weird”. They are different from us. Their behaviors are hard to understand. We just can’t relate. But, did you notice that I used the word “natural” here to describe our tendency to label such people as weird? To say that it is “natural”, in this context, is not to describe the way things are and that can never not be the case. I am using “natural” to refer to a common, knee-jerk reaction that we have both psychologically and emotionally in these situations. So, to say that one “naturally” feels a certain way is to say more about the subject than the object. It says more about how we feel than how things really are.
The second observation I made this week was after hearing a nature talk called ‘the Ballad of the Big Horned Sheep’. The park ranger, a retired science teacher of 30 years, rationalized the permission of wild coyote’s to hunt and eat young lamb. According to him, “for a coyote to eat a lamb is natural, but for a human being to stop by the roadside and disturb these same animals is unnatural.’ What a remarkable statement. For a wild coyote to kill and eat a sheep is natural, but for a human being to invade these animals’ territory is somehow unnatural. Here, if we use “natural” as referring to the obejct, rather than the subject (as talking about the way things are rather than the way we feel), we may begin to wonder. If the cosmos is all that was, is, and ever will be’ and if we are a product of the cosmos, i.e. we are a part of it, how can it ever be un-natural for a human being to disturb, or even take the life of, wild animals, in any context, and for any reason? After all, all of us are part of the grand scheme of nature. This is no other nature than the one in which we find ourselves.
Now, we can look at how these 2 senses of nature clash with each other. First, if whatever is, is, and there is not way it must be, then to label something as “weird” because it feels natural to do so is to fall victim to an illusion. But, we all share this sense of “weirdness” about the way things are. Our intuitions pick up things all along the path of life that philosophical naturalism cannot explain: although our perceptions of what is weird vary, we all have intuitions of the difference between natural and un-natural. Second, by categorizing the behavior of animals as natural and that of human beings as un-natural we are not only intuiting, but asserting and applying this concept of “feeling natural” to the natural world. But, we have no non-arbitrary basis for doing so unless we have a transcendent standard with which to judge human beings as less natural than the rest of nature. So, the naturalist , and especially the environmentalist, finds him/herself in a quandry: it is more clear than anything else that what is wild (or natural) needs protection from what is domestic (non-natural), but all the reasons and all the feelings one can muster will never be able to substitute for the objective, transcendent standard for such a view that only God’s existence and objective moral standards can substantiate.
WPF
