Agricultural philosophy

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Agricultural philosophy (or philosophy of agriculture) is, roughly and approximately, a discipline devoted to the systematic critique of the philosophical frameworks (or ethical world views) that are the foundation for decisions regarding agriculture. [1] Many of these views are also used to guide decisions dealing with land use in general. (Please see the Wikipedia article on environmental philosophy.) In everyday usage, it can also be defined as the love of, search after, and wisdom associated with agriculture, as one of humanity's founding components of civilization. [2] However, this view is more aptly known as agrarianism. In actuality, agrarianism is only one philosophy or normative framework out of many that people use to guide their decisions regarding agriculture on an everyday basis. The most prevalent of these philosophies will be briefly defined below.

Contents

Utilitarian approach

This view was first put forth by Jeremy Bentham and John Stuart Mill. Though there are many varieties of utilitarianism, generally the view is that a morally right action is an action that produces the maximum good for people. [3] This theory is a form of consequentialism; which basically means that the correct action is understood entirely in terms of the consequences of that action. Utilitarianism is often used when deciding farming issues. For example, farmland is commonly valued based upon its capacity to the grow crops that people want. This approach to valuing land is called Asset Theory (in contrast to Location Theory) and it is based upon utilitarian principles. Another example is when a community decides on what to do with a particular parcel of land. Let's say that this community must decide to use it for industry, residential uses, or for farming. By using a utilitarian approach, the council would judge which use would benefit the greatest number of people in the community and then make their choice based upon that information. Finally, it also forms the foundation for industrial farming; as an increase in yield, which would increase the number of people able to receive goods from farmed land, is judged from this view to be a good action or approach. Indeed, a common argument in favor of industrial agriculture is this it is a good practice because it increases the benefits for humans; benefits such as food abundance and a drop in food prices. [4]

However, several scholars and writers, such as Peter Singer, Aldo Leopold, Vandana Shiva, Barbara Kingsolver, and Wendell Berry have argued against this view. For example, Singer argues that the suffering of animals (farm animals included) should be included in the cost/benefit calculus when deciding whether or not to do an action such as industrial farming. [5] It has also been challenged on the grounds that farmland and farm animals are instrumentalized in this view and not valued in and of themselves. [6] In addition, systems thinkers, deep ecologists, and agrarian philosophers (such as Aldo Leopold & Wendell Berry) critique this view on the grounds that it ignores aspects of farming which are morally applicable and/or intrinsically valuable. [7] The Slow Food Movement and the Buy Local Agricultural Movements are also built upon philosophical views morally opposed to extreme versions of this approach. Other critiques will be explored below when different philosophical approaches to agriculture are briefly explained. However, it is important to note that the utilitarian approach to agriculture is currently the most widespread approach within the modern Western World.

Libertarian approach

Another philosophical approach often used when deciding land or farming issues is Libertarianism. Libertarianism is, roughly, the moral view that agents own themselves and have certain moral rights including the right to acquire property. [8] In a looser sense, libertarianism is commonly identified with the belief that each person has a right to a maximum amount of liberty when this liberty does not interfere with other people's freedom. A well known libertarian theorist is John Hospers. Within this view, property rights are natural rights. Thus, it would be acceptable for a farmer to inefficiently farm their land as long as they don't harm others while doing it. In 1968, Garrett Harden applied this philosophy to land/farming issues when he argued that the only solution to the "Tragedy of the Commons" was to place soil and water resources into the hands of private citizens. [9] He then supplied utilitarian justifications to support his argument and, indeed, one could argue that libertarianism is rooted in utilitarian ideals. However, this leaves libertarian based land ethics open to the above critiques lodged against utilitarian approaches to agriculture. Even excepting these critiques, the libertarian view has been specifically challenged by the critique that people making self-interested decisions can cause large ecological and social disasters such as the Dust Bowl disaster. [6] Even so, it is a philosophical view commonly held within the United States and, especially, by U.S. ranchers and farmers.

Egalitarian approach

Egalitarian-based views are often developed as a response to libertarianism. This is because, while libertarianism provides for the maximum amount of human freedom, it does not require a person to help others. It also leads to the grossly uneven distribution of wealth.[ citation needed ] A well known egalitarian philosopher is John Rawls. When focusing on agriculture, what this translates into is the uneven distribution of land and food. [6] While both utilitarian and libertarian approaches to agriculture ethics could conceivably rationalize this mal-distribution, an egalitarian approach typically favors equality whether that be equal entitlement and/or opportunity to employment or access to food. [10] However, if one recognizes that people have a right to something, then someone has to supply this opportunity or item, whether that be an individual person or the government. Thus, the egalitarian view links land and water with the right to food. With the growth of human populations and the decline of soil and water resources, egalitarianism could provide a strong argument for the preservation of soil fertility and water. [6]

Ecological or systems approach

In addition to utilitarian, libertarian, and egalitarian philosophies, there are normative views that are based upon the principle that land has intrinsic value and positions coming out of an ecological or systems view. Two main examples of this are James Lovelock's Gaia hypothesis which postulates that the Earth is an organism [11] and deep ecologists who argue that human communities are built upon a foundation of the surrounding ecosystems or the biotic communities. [12] While these philosophies can be useful for guiding decision making on issues concerning land in general, they have limited usefulness when applied to agriculture because they privilege natural ecosystems and agricultural ecosystems are often considered not natural. One philosophy grounded in the principle that land has intrinsic value which is directly applicable to agriculture is Aldo Leopold's stewardship ethic or land ethic, in which an action is correct if it tends to "preserve the integrity, stability, and beauty of the biotic community". [13] Similar to egalitarian-based land ethics, many of the above philosophies were also developed as alternatives to utilitarian and libertarian based approaches. Leopold's ethic is currently one of the most popular ecological approaches to agriculture commonly known as agrarianism. Other agrarianists include Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, J. Hector St. John de Crèvecœur (1735–1813), Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882), Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862), John Steinbeck (1902–1968), Wendell Berry (b. 1934), Gene Logsdon (b. 1932), Paul B. Thompson, and Barbara Kingsolver.

Related Research Articles

Consequentialism Class of ethical theories

Consequentialism is a class of normative, teleological ethical theories that holds that the consequences of one's conduct are the ultimate basis for any judgment about the rightness or wrongness of that conduct. Thus, from a consequentialist standpoint, a morally right act is one that will produce a good outcome. Consequentialism, along with eudaimonism, falls under the broader category of teleological ethics, a group of views which claim that the moral value of any act consists in its tendency to produce things of intrinsic value. Consequentialists hold in general that an act is right if and only if the act will produce, will probably produce, or is intended to produce, a greater balance of good over evil than any available alternative. Different consequentialist theories differ in how they define moral goods, with chief candidates including pleasure, the absence of pain, the satisfaction of one's preferences, and broader notions of the "general good".

Ethics Branch of philosophy that discusses right and wrong conduct

Ethics or moral philosophy is a branch of philosophy that "involves systematizing, defending, and recommending concepts of right and wrong behavior". The field of ethics, along with aesthetics, concerns matters of value, and thus comprises the branch of philosophy called axiology.

Justice Concept of moral fairness and administration of the law

Justice, in its broadest sense, is the principle that people receive that which they deserve, with the interpretation of what then constitutes "deserving" being impacted upon by numerous fields, with many differing viewpoints and perspectives, including the concepts of moral correctness based on ethics, rationality, law, religion, equity and fairness.

Utilitarianism is a family of normative ethical theories that prescribe actions that maximize happiness and well-being for all affected individuals. Although different varieties of utilitarianism admit different characterizations, the basic idea behind all of them is to in some sense maximize utility, which is often defined in terms of well-being or related concepts. For instance, Jeremy Bentham, the founder of utilitarianism, described utility as "that property in any object, whereby it tends to produce benefit, advantage, pleasure, good, or happiness...[or] to prevent the happening of mischief, pain, evil, or unhappiness to the party whose interest is considered."

In environmental philosophy, environmental ethics is an established field of practical philosophy "which reconstructs the essential types of argumentation that can be made for protecting natural entities and the sustainable use of natural resources." The main competing paradigms are anthropocentrism, physiocentrism, and theocentrism. Environmmental ethics exerts influence on a large range of disciplines including environmental law, environmental sociology, ecotheology, ecological economics, ecology and environmental geography.

The following outline is provided as an overview of and topical guide to sustainable agriculture:

A land ethic is a philosophy or theoretical framework about how, ethically, humans should regard the land. The term was coined by Aldo Leopold (1887–1948) in his A Sand County Almanac (1949), a classic text of the environmental movement. There he argues that there is a critical need for a "new ethic", an "ethic dealing with human's relation to land and to the animals and plants which grow upon it".

J. Baird Callicott Philosopher and professor

J. Baird Callicott is an American philosopher whose work has been at the forefront of the new field of environmental philosophy and ethics. He is a University Distinguished Research Professor and a member of the Department of Philosophy and Religion Studies and the Institute of Applied Sciences at the University of North Texas. Callicott held the position of Professor of Philosophy and Natural Resources at the University of Wisconsin–Stevens Point from 1969 to 1995, where he taught the world's first course in environmental ethics in 1971. From 1994 to 2000, he served as Vice President then President of the International Society for Environmental Ethics. Other distinguished positions include visiting professor of philosophy at Yale University; the University of California, Santa Barbara; the University of Hawai’i; and the University of Florida.

<i>Utilitarianism</i> (book) book

John Stuart Mill's book Utilitarianism is a classic exposition and defence of utilitarianism in ethics. The essay first appeared as a series of three articles published in Fraser's Magazine in 1861 ; the articles were collected and reprinted as a single book in 1863. Mill's aim in the book is to explain what utilitarianism is, to show why it is the best theory of ethics, and to defend it against a wide range of criticisms and misunderstandings. Though heavily criticized both in Mill's lifetime and in the years since, Utilitarianism did a great deal to popularize utilitarian ethics and has been considered "the most influential philosophical articulation of a liberal humanistic morality that was produced in the nineteenth century."

Rule utilitarianism is a form of utilitarianism that says an action is right as it conforms to a rule that leads to the greatest good, or that "the rightness or wrongness of a particular action is a function of the correctness of the rule of which it is an instance". Philosophers Richard Brandt and Brad Hooker are major proponents of such an approach.

Secular ethics is a branch of moral philosophy in which ethics is based solely on human faculties such as logic, empathy, reason or moral intuition, and not derived from belief in supernatural revelation or guidance—the source of ethics in many religions. Secular ethics refers to any ethical system that does not draw on the supernatural, and includes humanism, secularism and freethinking. A classical example of literature on secular ethics is the Kural text, authored by the ancient Tamil Indian philosopher Valluvar who lived during the 1st century BCE.

Altruism is an ethical doctrine that holds that the moral value of an individual's actions depend solely on the impact on other individuals, regardless of the consequences on the individual itself. James Fieser states the altruist dictum as: "An action is morally right if the consequences of that action are more favorable than unfavorable to everyone except the agent." Auguste Comte's version of altruism calls for living for the sake of others. One who holds to either of these ethics is known as an "altruist."

Two-level utilitarianism is a utilitarian theory of ethics developed by R. M. Hare. According to the theory, a person's moral decisions should be based on a set of 'intuitive' moral rules, except in certain rare situations where it is more appropriate to engage in a 'critical' level of moral reasoning.

Agriculturalism, also known as the School of Agrarianism, the School of Agronomists, the School of Tillers, and in Chinese as the Nongjia, was an early agrarian Chinese philosophy that advocated peasant utopian communalism and egalitarianism, and was arguably the world's first Communist and Socialist movement that believed in a form of a classless society.

Agrarianism is social philosophy or political philosophy which values rural society as superior to urban society, the independent farmer as superior to the paid worker, and sees farming as a way of life that can shape the ideal social values. It stresses the superiority of a simpler rural life as opposed to the complexity of city life.

Tatjana Višak German philosopher

Tatjana Višak, often credited as Tatjana Visak, is a German philosopher specialising in ethics and political philosophy who is currently based in the Department of Philosophy and Economics at the University of Bayreuth. She is the author of Killing Happy Animals and the editor, with the political theorist Robert Garner, of The Ethics of Killing Animals, an edited collection. She is known for arguing that utilitarians should not accept that nonhuman animals can be replaced by other, equally happy, beings, meaning that utilitarians can oppose the routine killing of animals in agriculture.

Clare Palmer is a British philosopher, theologian and scholar of environmental and religious studies who is currently a professor in the Department of Philosophy at Texas A&M University. She has previously held academic appointments at the University of Greenwich, the University of Stirling, Lancaster University and Washington University in St. Louis, among others. Palmer is known for her work in environmental and animal ethics.

Gary Edward Varner is an American philosopher specializing in environmental ethics, philosophical questions related to animal rights and animal welfare, and R. M. Hare's two-level utilitarianism. He is a professor in the Department of Philosophy at Texas A&M University, and has been based at the university since 1990. He was educated at Arizona State University, the University of Georgia and the University of Wisconsin–Madison; at Madison, where he was supervised by Jon Morline, he wrote one of the first doctoral theses on environmental ethics. Varner's first monograph was In Nature's Interests?, which was published by Oxford University Press in 1998. In the book, Varner defended a form of biocentric individualism, according to which all living entities have morally considerable interests.

Christian doctrines, ideologies and beliefs have influenced the manner in which human interactions with land, soil, and plants are manifested, both as a historical interplay between Christian and land, and more contemporary movements where diverse sets of biblical readings, theological interpretations and Christian ethics today are manifested in Christian approaches to food production.

References

  1. ↑ C. Taliaferro and S. Carpenter. (2010) "Farms" in Life Science Ethics. ed. Gary L. Comstock.
  2. ↑ Lindsay Falvey (2005) Religion and Agriculture: Sustainability in Christianity and Buddhism. c.350pp. Institute for International Development, Adelaide and Silkworm Books, Chiang Mai.
  3. ↑ Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy/ History of Utilitarianism
  4. ↑ Conkin, Paul. (2009) Revolution Down on the Farm: The Transformation of American Agriculture since 1929. Raleigh: The University of Kentucky Press; Kingsolver, Barbara. (2007)Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life. New York: HarperCollins Publishers.
  5. ↑ Singer, Peter. (2002) Animal Liberation. New York: Harper Collins.
  6. 1 2 3 4 Thompson, Paul. (2010) "Land." "Life Science Ethics." ed. Gary L. Comstock. Raleigh: Springer Publishing.
  7. ↑ Leopold, A. (1948) A Sand County Almanac. Oxford: Oxford University Press; Berry, Wendell. (2002) The Art of the Commonplace: The Agrarian Essays of Wendell Berry. Berkeley: Counterpoint Press.
  8. ↑ Vallentyne, Peter, "Libertarianism", The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Fall 2010 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.)
  9. ↑ Harden, Garrett. (1968) "The Tragedy of the Commons." Science, 162, 1243-1248
  10. ↑ Arneson, Richard, "Egalitarianism", The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Spring 2009 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), URL = <http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/spr2009/entries/egalitarianism/>
  11. ↑ Lovelock, James (2009). The Vanishing Face of Gaia: A Final Warning: Enjoy It While You Can. Allen Lane. ISBN   978-1-84614-185-0.
  12. ↑ Naess, Arne (1973) 'The Shallow and the Deep, Long-Range Ecology Movement.' Inquiry 16: 95-100
  13. ↑ Leopold, A. (1948) A Sand County Almanac. Oxford: Oxford University Press
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