Harmonizing with nature

Living in harmony with nature can be understood in many ways. Here are two:

1. Living in a way that protects and repairs non-human aspects of nature.

2. Living in a way that harmonizes and accords with our own human nature.

The second mode of harmony with nature implies the first at least to some degree, because the nature of each organism—including humans—involves a degree of harmonization with the rest of the environment. But only to some degree. A species can do a great deal of damage to competing species by simply following out the dictates of its nature—its success can imply the failure of others. Still, our own nature probably calls on a fair amount of stewardship of surrounding nature, so the second mode implies quite a bit of the first mode.

The first mode of harmony with nature is more consequentialist than the second. While the second is focused on living a certain way that is not primarily defined in terms of consequences but in terms of accord with our own nature, the first is focused on consequences to non-human nature. Nonetheless, the first mode still implies a certain degree of the second, in that improving our natural surroundings often is an imperative of our nature.

At the same time, the second mode has implications the first does not. For instance, some forms of transhumanism fit very well with the first mode but none fit with the second mode. It might turn out that a version of the singularity—us all getting digitized and then run in a computer—is good for the non-human aspects of nature, because a computer simulation of our lives might turn out to have much lower energy costs than our meaty existence. Similarly, mass sterilization of humans might be good for non-human aspects of nature, but does not accord with our nature.

One might think of certain agrarian movements as instances of the second mode of harmony, though I do not think the second mode requires agrarianism.

Extinction, creationism and presentism

An intuition a lot of people have is:

1. The extinction of a species is a very bad thing.

On the other hand, extinction is central to the evolutionary process. Some species go extinct, making room for others, and thereby producing a greater diachronic biodiversity. Diachronic biodiversity is a very good thing, and the production of this diversity (wholly or at least to a significant degree) by natural evolutionary processes is a very good thing. This suggests:

2. If species at least typically arise by evolutionary processes, (1) is false.

What can we say given (2)? Well, we could argue:

3. Species at least typically arise by evolutionary processes. (Scientifically known fact)
4. Therefore, the extinction of a species is not a very bad thing. (By 2 and 3)

I am inclined to go for this. To soften the counterintuitive consequence, we might note that what is particularly bad is extinctions where no new species are likely to evolve to fill the niche, and the kind of environmental degradation that we want to oppose not only leads to the extinction of species but stands in the way of the evolution of new species that fill the niche. Though that's an empirical question, and I don't know if it's so.

Another move is to argue:

5. Both (1) and (2) are true.
6. Therefore, species do not arise by evolutionary processes, even typically. (By 5)
7. If species do not arise by evolutionary processes, creationism is true. (Since creationism is the best alternative to evolution.)
8. So, creationism is true. (By 6 and 7)

A yet different move is to deny (2). My thinking behind (2) was based on the value of diachronic biodiversity. But perhaps diachronic biodiversity is only as valuable as I think it is if presentism is false. It is only if the past organisms in extinct species really exist, even if pastly so, that they contribute in a valuable way to biodiversity. So one might replace (2) by:

9. If species at least typically arise by evolutionary processes and presentism is false, (1) is false.

And then one might argue:

10. Claims (1) and (3) are true.
11. Therefore, presentism is true. (By 9 and 10)

So I think we have three main options:

• Deny that extinction is a very bad thing.
• Deny evolution and affirm creationism.
• Affirm presentism.

I should note that in (1), I am thinking of on-balance badness rather than just intrinsic badness.

Frankfurt and functionalism

We learn from Frankfurt counterexamples to the Principle of Alternate Possibility that we should not use counterfactuals and nomic modality to characterize intrinsic features of things. What Frankfurt cases show is that it is frequently possible to modify counterfactual and nomic modal properties of a thing, event or process without actually causally affecting the thing, event or process in itself.

This is a useful lesson. Here is one interesting application: standard functionalist theories of mind cannot be right. I will give the roughest sketch of the argument. Start with two observations:

1. Functional characterizations of a system depend crucially on the system's counterfactual properties. (An and-gate is a system of which it is true that it would produce a 0 given two 0's or one 0 and one 1, and would produce a 1 given two 1's, even if in the course of the system's functioning it is actually only fed one of these options.)
2. That a system exemplifies a functioning mind is an intrinsic property of the system.

Now, what we learn from Frankfurt cases is that we can radically alter the counterfactual properties of a system in just about any way we wish without actually causally interacting with the system, and hence without altering its intrinsic properties. It follows from this observation and (1) and (2) that whether a system exemplifies a functioning mind cannot be a matter of the system's functional characterization. (We can, for instance, make sure that a given logic gate could never have produced a different output from what it actually produced, because someone watching the system would have intervened and forced it to produce the output it actually produced, had this watcher seen the inputs being different. But if this were done, then this would not be an and-gate, as it would not have the counterfactual properties of the relevant kind of logic gate.)

I should say that there is a way out of this argument, and it is to embrace an Aristotelian functionalism that instead of characterizing functions counterfactually, characterizes them teleologically. But that is not what "functionalism" means in the context of the theory of mind. (One might also try to do the Aristotelian move and define the functionalism evolutionarily. But not hard to see that this fails [e.g., see this, or this, or just extend the argument here].)

Or maybe we could try to get out of the argument by supposing that we can cut a system away from its environmental context and characterize the functioning of the system by looking at how the system would function apart from its environment, thereby isolating the system from the kind of purely counterfactual interference that a Frankfurt-style watcher would impose on it. But that simply doesn't work. How does the human body work absent its environmental context? It simply dies, pretty quickly, when not supplied with air, food and water.

Of course one might try to define a notion of an appropriate environment and then calculate the counterfactuals relative to that. But if we are allowed to be completely free in choosing what environment counts as appropriate, then just about everything is up for grabs. And if there is an objectively appropriate environment for the system, then again we get some version of Aristotelian teleology, which is not what functionalism wants.