Tegen de natuur in

Kantelingen #2

by Lorraine Daston, Willem Visser (Translator), Lukas Verburgt (Afterword)

Waarom beschouwen mensen in uiteenlopende culturen en tijdperken de natuur als bron van normen voor menselijk gedrag?

Filosofen en wetenschappers hebben eeuwenlang beweerd dat de natuur geen waarden kent. Toch probeert de mens keer op keer het ‘zijn’ van de natuur te veranderen in een ‘zou moeten zijn’. Wetenschapsfilosofe Lorraine Daston laat zien dat de poging om de natuurlijke orde te gebruiken als bron van de morele orde even problematisch als onvermijdelijk is.

Genres: Philosophy, Nonfiction, Anthropology, History, Science, Sociology, Theory

94 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2018

About the author

Lorraine Daston (born June 9, 1951, East Lansing, Michigan)[1] is an American historian of science. Executive director of the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science (MPIWG) in Berlin, and visiting professor in the Committee on Social Thought at the University of Chicago, she is considered an authority on Early Modern European scientific and intellectual history. In 1993, she was named a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

Reviews

[Sharad Pandian · Rating 4 out of 5]

Lorraine Daston, one of the most prominent historians alive, attempts an essay-length investigation "philosophical anthropology". She poses an intriguing question: despite philosophers arguing that an "is" by itself can never lead to an "ought", why is the tendency to draw on natural order to reason about social order so prevelant, and why has the philosophers' arguments failed to stop this?

(Overall Evaluation: Daston is a good writer, possesses incredible analytic clarity, is very knowledgeable, provides many pictures. But engaging in philosophy rather than history, this text is relatively unmoored from sources. This means more taxonomies and links that are not entirely backed up with examples (although she does an admirable job in pointing out difficulties in categorization). There are also places where it seems like missed moments - eg: while she points out the division between nature and culture isn't universal, she doesn't notice that this means what counts as nature needs to constructed, made plausible in a society. If this is the case, simply claiming there are many different natural orders that can be drawn from is perhaps not a sufficiently analyzed claim. But then again, perhaps these are issues that will plague any philosophical analysis in such a broad domain, and so it's quite plausible this is the best kind of analysis possible.)

A summary of the major arguments in the book:


I. Setting up

She begins by identifying three kinds of natural orders, along with what subverts them, and the "passion" (an "extreme state that we suffer rather than merely feel") such subversion evokes:

1. specific nature - subverted by monsters - evoking horror
2. local natures - subverted by imbalances - evoking terror
3. universal natural laws - subverted by indeterminism - evoking wonder (33)


II. The relation between order, normativity, and community

So why is any order, let alone natural order, invoked? Daston's has two answers:

First, it is a precondition for normativity you need some consistency across people and across time, in other words a community:

For much the same reasons that there cannot exist a purely private language, there cannot exist purely private norms: norms imply a community, which may be defined as narrowly as the inhabitants of a single village or as widely as all rational beings, but never contracted to a single individual. Moreover, norms imply a temporal horizon that stretches at least some way into the past and, still more important, into the future... There must exist enough order to guarantee that norms that hold for my peers (however defined) will also hold for me and that today’s norm will also hold tomorrow. (49)

Second, normativity requires a structure that allows for extension through time :

Not only is some minimal order the practical precondition for any kind of norms; normativity itself posits an ideal order. It takes a considerable effort of reflection to make such ideal orders explicit. From Hesiod and the Laws of Manu to the United Nations Charter and John Rawls’s A Theory of Justice (1971), great works of literature, theology, and philosophy have envisioned orders in which to lodge particular norms of neighborliness, justice, filial piety, and human dignity. These orders are rarely rigorously systematic. They are less like mathematical demonstrations and more like architectures, in which diverse elements are structurally and stylistically combined into harmonious but contingent wholes, be they gothic cathedrals or high modern skyscrapers.

Some degree of coherence is particularly important as a guide to moral reflection when new, previously unimagined quandaries emerge, whether in the context of advances in reproductive technologies or animal welfare. Recurring to the architectural metaphor, the style and structure of the original building guide the design of the new extension. Normativity presupposes order, both practically and theoretically. (50-1)

Note: admittedly, this second point is somewhat hand-wavey and seems to have been forgotten in the subsequent discussions.


III. The role of nature

As for why nature is a particularly frequented source for representations of order, she argues that:

1. "...it is everywhere and always on display, available and familiar... A serviceable model must be thing-like: an object that can be contemplated publicly as well as privately, accessible to the senses as well as the intellect, and possessed of sharp-edged solidity, the sort of thing you can stub your toe against." (55)

2. it is "so rich in possibilities that it has thus far outstripped human inventiveness. We are, after all, only one species among millions, and for evidence of sheer baroque variety, natural history beggars cultural anthropology. And then there is all of inorganic nature to boot, from the orbits of planets to the symmetry of ice crystals. Nature displays so many kinds of order that it is a beckoning resource with which to instantiate any particular one imagined by humans." (57)

3(?). "the sheer scale and durability of nature have surpassed that of even the most impressive human artifacts for most of human history. Natural orders are, in effect, more orderly than human orders, which may offer a clue as to why natural orders are invoked to buttress human orders and not vice versa. In an age of genetic engineering and anthropogenic climate change this imbalance of power may be shifting in the opposite direction." (69)

Daston is aware there are complications - "not all traditions draw a sharp ontological distinction between natural and moral realms" (57) and "Nor do cultures that do draw a clear line between the natural and the human always accord greater majesty or dignity to nature." (58) However, "Even cultures that do not categorically distinguish the natural from the human or, if they do, consider nature to be the worse side of the bargain, use aspects of the natural order to figure the moral order." (59)

The moral from nature's abundance is, as the philosophers cautioned, that reliance on nature is no sign of knowledge. But for Daston, this reliance on Nature to reason about order is ineliminably human:

Therefore, the hope that norms extracted from nature will converge more convincingly than those freely invented by art is illusory. In other words, the strategy of naturalization to combat relativism is doomed. To glorify certain human values as “natural,” whether in the liberal cause of human rights or the conservative one of social Darwinism, does not lend them one iota more of certainty or inevitability. Opponents can always retort, “Which nature?” and counter with examples of another order, equally natural, to support the opposite position... The polyphony of nature is, however, precisely the point: it is difficult—perhaps impossible—to imagine an order that is not manifestly, flamboyantly on display in nature. (60-1)

The yearnings of philosophers for another kind of reason, allegedly more perfect, have always been enmeshed in theology, either overtly or covertly. It is no accident that qualms about anthropomorphism and idolatry, of which Xenophanes’s acerbic remarks are an early example, first occur in the context of religion. They ridicule (or censure) the admixture of the human with the divine… Epistemology still indulges in thought experiments in angelology, whether in Kant’s mysterious nonhuman rational beings or Martians or the inhabitants of other possible worlds. Theology continues to haunt epistemology, feeding desires that can never be realized for a form of reason that escapes the limitations of our species. Kant famously warned against the ambitions of reason to transcend its own limitations. Perhaps we might follow Kant in spirit if not in letter if we explored the capacities of specifically human reason. (70)

IV. Miscellaneous discussions which were cool

#1: On the ridiculouos anthropocentrism of nature vs. culture, somewhat Latour-ian:

Even to formulate the reproach of anthropomorphism implies a certain commitment to anthropocentrism. Only from a parochial human point of view does it make any sense to divide up all that exists into our species on one side and everything else, from microbes to pulsars, on the other. (Imagine such a division from the standpoint of some other species—raccoons, say—and the oddity of a universe split up between raccoons and not-raccoons becomes absurdly apparent.) And only once such a division is posited is it possible to identify anthropomorphic projections from the tiny province of the human onto the vast realm of the universe—and to declare them illicit or childish. Other cultures, even those in the Greco-Roman lineage, have divided up the world differently. When, for example, the ancient Greek philosopher Heraclitus coupled the due measure of the sun with that of justice, he may not have been speaking metaphorically: “The sun will not overstep his measures; otherwise the Erinyes, ministers of Justice, will find him out.” The measures of the sun and those of human justice belonged to the same realm, with no need of a metaphor to bridge them. (58)

#2 On our inescapable need to represent in pictures:

These humanly rational propensities have to do with the kind of organisms that we happen to be. We are outfitted with senses that convey the surfaces of things. Even when intellectual curiosity and technological ingenuity makes possible anatomy, geometry, the microscope, X-rays, and other ways of peering beneath surfaces, our way of probing the viscera of the world is to turn them into yet more surfaces. If by some miracle noumena, things-in- themselves, were revealed to us, we could only grasp them as phenomena, as appearances. Fortunately, the peculiarities of our sensory systems have not blocked philosophical and scientific inquiry into domains ordinarily inaccessible to the senses, from elementary particles to distant stars to brain waves. But even in these investigations there has been a strong tendency to convert information, much of it now digital, into appearances, especially images—from radio telescopes, bubble chambers, magnetic resonance scans, and innumerable other devices designed to penetrate where the senses cannot reach. When Plato attempted to wean his readers from their addiction to appearances in the Republic, the only way he could make his point was to invent a myth about more appearances: the shadows in the cave cast by the equally phenomenal, if occluded, objects outside in the daylight. For beings like us, it is appearances all the way down. (65)

[Monica Vidal · Rating 4 out of 5]

Nature is the repository of all orders, specific orders in which natural laws and moral passions are grounded.

“nature will never speak with one voice, so why listen?”

[Walter Schutjens · Rating 3 out of 5]

An unfair rehashing of Kant in the guise of a philosophical anthropology. Daston wants to ground our desire for normativity in the orders of nature and the moral 'order' that arises from it as evidence of a human nature that always seek to evade chaos and realise itself in/through its environ. In other words, there is a human nature but it is weakly defined 'Against Nature' as the striving for order. The Critical aspect of Kant's pragmatic anthropology on the other hand is typified by the ultimate position of the question 'what is man?' in his architectonic, man as both a natural phenomenon but also as the recursive point in a practical project - the answer to the question thus being left radically open. We may make some progress in the three core questions of 'what can we know' 'what ought we do' and 'what can we hope for', and when those are satisfactorily answered we have some basis for searching for the unifying reason of man that lies behind those answers (or better - behind those questions).

Daston following the Foucauldian bent in the cultural geographical/anthropological departments she comes from turns this methodology on its head. She first seeks to answer the empirical question of what has man been? From there arriving at bland philosophical conclusions like 'maybe its appearances all the way down' besides misreading Kant's anthropology. Nonetheless this makes for fascinating historical/anthropological reading. And her identification of ideal types of Nature is spot on. Exited to see her lecture in Berlin in January - have some questions written down.

[Joeri · Rating 4 out of 5]

In dit mooi geschreven essay laat Daston een interessant wetenschapsfilosofisch historisch overzicht zien die handelt over de wijze waarop mensen zich hebben verhouden tot de natuur, welke metafysica onderliggend aan die verhouding was, wat al dan niet gold als (wetenschappelijke) kennis van die natuur en hoe we er wetmatigheden en orden aan hebben getracht toe te schrijven, met daarnaast wat we ontdekten op dat gebid.

Ze laat verder zien hoe wij onszelf vaak hebben geprojecteerd op de natuur, en andersom in onze zoektocht naar een fundament en rechtvaardiging van normativiteit en dus menselijke vormen van orde, die we vaak spiegelden aan die van de natuur, of andersom.

Wat Daston nog maar laat zien is de historische variatie in de wijze waarop wij naar de natuur verwijzen in onze zoektocht naar orde en een fundering van onze waarden en normen, maar ook als rechtvaardiging voor de argumentatie van een standpunt bij de onderbouwing van die fundering.

Dit boek maakt deel uit van een drieluik, en het enige bezwaar wat ik ertegen heb is dat ik nu nog niet de plek van dit boek kan duiden in verhouding tot de twee boeken van Latour als onderdeel van deze serie, die toch vooral gaan over klimaatopwarming en de daaruit volgende noodzaak voor een andere sociaalpolitieke verhouding tot de Aarde.

[Jayde Schwerin · Rating 5 out of 5]

A good philosophical read indeed.

[Kai]

The appeal to nature is fundamentally about the link between natural order and normativity per se, not the link between any particular natural order and any particular set or norms.

[Giuseppe · Rating 3 out of 5]

Simpatico libercolo che cerca di investigare il perché tendiamo ad utilizzare la natura, intesa come l'immanente, come modello per il nostro ordine morale.

Il saggio è breve e ben scritto, naviga dai filosofici greci ai più recenti illuministi. Il punto però dell'autrice è però per me fallace. Esistono campi della conoscenza umana che trascendono la nostra diretta capacità di esperire (e quindi rapportare qualsiasi cosa al nostro vissuto), come ad esempio la fisica quantistica (Higgs quando ha immaginato il bosone non pensava certo alla mela di Newton). È questo è dovuto alla capacità umana di astrarre (e quindi di andare oltre alla visione platonica del "non conosciuto" come comunque una proiezione esperibile). Questa considerazione è totalmente omessa non so se per ignoranza o per volontà (la stessa Daston potrebbe avere "orrore" nella consapevolezza che la capacità umana travalica la sua capacità di organizzazione della realtà al di là dell'esperito).

Al di là del disagreement, la lettura è piacevole.

[Rosa Olagüe García · Rating 2 out of 5]

Típico libro de filosofía que dice cosas basiquisimas en un lenguaje ultra complejo.

[Franco Bernasconi · Rating 5 out of 5]

¿Por qué los seres humanos solemos utilizar la naturaleza como fuente de normas para nuestra conducta?

Durante mucho tiempo los filósofos han advertido que en la naturaleza no hay valores. Que confundir lo que es (orden natural) con lo que debe ser (orden moral) es una falacia: la falacia naturalista. Para la autora, en cambio, no es así. Usar un orden natural para representar otro orden moral es simplemente lo más propio de la especie humana. De hecho, la mayoría de las culturas no trazan una diferencia ontológica categórica entre lo natural y lo moral.

Los humanos tenemos dos características principales: siempre creamos reglas, y buscamos constantemente representar. En ese sentido, este ensayo busca sentar las bases de una antropología filosófica: una en la cual el tipo de especie que somos los humanos influye en la razón.

Ocurre que todas las culturas tienen normas. Pueden variar mucho, pero al final siempre existen. Y toda norma necesita cierto trasfondo de orden, un mínimo de coherencia y generalidad. Los órdenes naturales aparecen como un buen medio para representar las normas culturales ya que son visibles en todas partes. Pueden volver concreto lo abstracto, hacerlo tangible de manera directa y sencilla. Así que solemos utilizarlos.

Además, la naturaleza es tan fértil en variedad como la cultura: tiene tantas clases de orden que nos permite ejemplificar cualquier orden moral. De este modo, la estrategia de la naturalización para combatir el relativismo está condenada al fracaso. Ensalzar determinados valores humanos porque son naturales no les confiere más certidumbre o inevitabilidad. Para sustentar una posición contraria siempre se puede responder «¿qué naturaleza?» y utilizar ejemplos tomados de otro orden igualmente natural.

Al final, es la presunción de exclusividad lo que convierte en falaz la apelación a la naturaleza, no el vínculo entre el orden natural y la normatividad per se. Es propio de la condición humana representar los órdenes morales a partir de órdenes naturales, y no es un problema. El problema sería decir que un orden natural específico es el único posible para representar las normas sociales que hemos creado.

[Thomaz Amancio · Rating 4 out of 5]

Livrinho (80pp, formato de bolso) bem interessante da historiadora da ciência Lorraine Daston, sobre as lógicas de pensamento que fazem ecoar a Natureza na Moral (isto é, o que quer de fato acontece e o que pensamos que devia acontecer) e vice-versa.

Embora a pergunta que enquadra o ensaio não me pareça tão bem colocada ("por que se usa a natureza como referência para a moral??"), a articulação da resposta é muito rica e sintética, o tipo de coisa que só alguém com décadas de estudo em uma área consegue produzir.

O que achei mais interessante foi a tipificação de três formas de ordem natural (natureza específica, natureza local, e leis universais da natureza), com seus respectivos padrões ideais (a espécie, o equilíbrio ambiental, a causalidade previsível) interrompidos, cada um a seu modo, por alguma ruptura 'antinatural' (monstros, desequilíbrio ecológico, e milagres ou livre arbítrio), que por sua vez provocam uma certa reação emocional (Horror, Terror, e Maravilhamento). Esse tipo de conceptualização sintética é muito útil, e só por isso o livro já mereceria ser lido.

[Jonathan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Interesante ensayo sobre la estrecha relación entre el orden moral y el incontenible concepto de la naturaleza que hemos forjado los humanos a lo largo de nuestra historia. Un incansable intento de justificar en la naturaleza las representaciones de nuestras sociedades y su normatividad nos ha llevado a explorar cada vez más las distintas formas de naturaleza que se hayan presentes en la “gran naturaleza” de las cosas.

Personalmente, siempre me ha llamado la atención el concepto del orden, que es tan relativo; y se mezcla mucho con el de cultura. En la media escribí uno que otro ensayo sobre eso, y me habría gustado poder usar este libro como inspiración para algunas ideas, pero entiendo que es más o menos reciente.
A ratos un poco reiterativo, aunque supongo que es más bien para dejar en claro las ideas principales del libro y su tesis. Me habría gustado que fuese un poco más largo, que quizás la autora se hubiera explayado más en sus ideas.
Saco de aquí uno que otro libro y concepto para leer y estudiar luego :-)

[helene · Rating 4 out of 5]

Wieso begründen wir Menschen so viele Dinge damit, dass es eben natürlich ist? Es liegt in unserer „Natur“. Was heißt das überhaupt? Ist diese Natur vielleicht nicht einfach nur das, von unserer sozialen Seite auf sie projizieren? Und verliert das Argument „in der Natur ist es doch auch so“ nicht direkt an Bedeutung, wenn man in der Vielfalt der Natur immer ein Gegenbeispiel finden kann?

Daston hat hier einen tollen kritischen Blick auf den Naturalismus entworfen, der gut verständlich, nachvollziehbar und mit auch humorvollen Beispielen untermalt wurde.
Ein Aufsatz, den man auf jeden Fall gelesen haben sollte, wenn man sich mit diesem Thema beschäftigt.

[حسام · Rating 4 out of 5]

"The human impulse to make nature meaningful is rooted in a double insight about order:
normativity demands order; and nature supplies exemplars of all conceivable orders." Very nice as it deals with commonly used premise of arguments in ethics and politics. It does not try to offer an alternative, for it cann't, given our limited sensory abilities making us stucj between theology and inferences to nature/s, however it is nice in that it points this out and highlights it so we beware in conversations and when making arguments.

[versarbre]

universal philosophical rumination on the authority of nature from "at least within the Western intellectual tradition", by making a distinction between natural order and normativity per se. But what makes the authority to say "all humans are like that..regardless of time/place" while admitting oneself is thinking within a particular intellectual tradition? Is there philosophical anthropology beyond Kant and the west?

[Healz · Rating 3 out of 5]

Très pertinents par moment, mais sinon c'est écrit comme la grande majorité des ouvrages de philosophie anglophone contemporain et cette façon de traiter un sujet me semble constamment manqué quelque chose, d'être toujours légèrement à côté de la plaque. Je sais pas ce qui fait ça, mais on a l'impression de tourner autour de pôt pendant longtemps avant d'avoir un ou deux paragraphes pertinents.

[Erika Sarrias · Rating 2 out of 5]

Feia estona que no llegia assaig en filosofia i no se m'ha fet fàcil. En alguns moments era massa dens amb frases enrevessades, terminologia de filosofia i citacions a autors clàssics. Tot i això, els arguments principals eren repetitius i una mica bàsics. Hi ha idees interessants, però potser podia resumir-se en un article. El llibre me'l va regalar l'Elena pel cumple.

[Leif · Rating 2 out of 5]

80-odd pages from an undoubtedly brilliant writer that managed to bore me despite my interest in the title. Call me a philistine; I'll be calling for more signs of passion in the work if you want to be read outside the graduate school classroom.

[Holly Stewart · Rating 4 out of 5]

As equally thought-provoking as it was perplexing. Why do humans consistently look to nature as a source of norms?

[Zoonanism · Rating 4 out of 5]

Short and fine

[nick · Rating 4 out of 5]

Much-needed clearing of the air around nature/order/ethics, and an invitation to more work in a thorny patch of intellectual history.

[Spencer A · Rating 2 out of 5]

as ideological and thereby naturalized as the conceptions of nature it denounces on the basis of their ideological agendas

[emma de Haan]

Pittig filosofisch. Maar een fractie van begrepen dus sterren geven laat ik bij deze achterwege

[Dan Foy · Rating 4 out of 5]

An lovely foray into philosophical anthropology, but left me puzzling why she omits potentially illuminating insights from cognitive psychology.

[April · Rating 3 out of 5]

6/10

[Sam · Rating 4 out of 5]

the bits about how normativity must be grounded in order was interesting. neat argument for why everyone appeals to nature when arguing ethics

[Joanna Forde · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5. most ideas presented are nothing new or revolutionary, but they are laid out and connected well.

[Alex Delogu · Rating 3 out of 5]

A short book on the human tendency to look to nature to figure out how to be human. The old "is" into "ought" problem. That is, the way things are in no way implies how things should be or how we should be as people. Daston focuses on why this happens rather than on the logical point that it should not happen, since that has been said before. She starts by identifying three types of order or norms that we are very accustomed to 1) specific orders (types, things, qualities); 2) local orders (customs, norms, habits); 3) universal orders (natural laws). The main thrust of the rest of the book is that nature is so diverse that to extrapolate any sort of moral or social norm from it is highly contingent. There will always be a counter-example to any example from nature.