Species Trouble: From Settled Species Discourse to Ethical Species Pluralism
Loading...
Date
2021-11-23
Authors
Sinclair, Rebekah
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
University of Oregon
Abstract
In this dissertation, I develop and defend the importance of species pluralism (the recognition and use of multiple species definitions) for both environmental and humanist ethics. I begin from the concern that, since the concepts of the human and animal have been rightly challenged for their essentializing and exclusionary social function, the concept of species has come to serve as a supposedly more accurate, value-neutral, and ethical ground on which to negotiate moral claims. Yet I show that in the absence of critical evaluation, and with very little attention to the complexity and uncertainty of species boundaries as articulated in the sciences, much environmental philosophy and ethics instead deploy a myopic understanding of species that is both scientifically reductive and morally problematic. I draw insights from philosophy of biology, as well as Native American and Latinx philosophies to identify and challenge what I call the settled species discourse, or the widespread tendency to understand species as self-evident, mutually exclusive groups with singular, clear boundaries and stable natures. By understanding species this way, the concept of Homo sapiens in ethics plays a similarly and dangerously normative role to that of the human, while essentialized understandings of species can undermine the very ethical goals for which they are deployed. I thus turn from monism to multiplicity to develop a heuristic I call ethical species pluralism. Specifically, I argue that accounts of epistemic and ontological pluralism from within anti-colonial traditions can productively supplement the important framework of species pluralism in philosophy of biology, even as the former also provide tools for making such pluralism actionable in society, ethics, and policy. Building on this heuristic, I conclude by showing that approaching ethical species pluralism historically (generating counter-histories that do not take species as givens) can helpfully track and challenge the way make specific species or species groups are made legible and disposable in science and society. By placing Indigenous and Latinx perspectives together with philosophy of biology and environmental science, this dissertation hopes to help bridge the gap between these literatures while also producing more scientifically and morally responsible interspecies ethical frameworks.