{"id":281,"date":"2010-06-26T17:47:56","date_gmt":"2010-06-27T00:47:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.ecopsychology.org\/gatherings\/?p=281"},"modified":"2011-09-30T18:36:56","modified_gmt":"2011-10-01T01:36:56","slug":"humanity%e2%80%99s-inherent-earth-first-value-preference","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ecopsychology.org\/gatherings\/humanity%e2%80%99s-inherent-earth-first-value-preference\/","title":{"rendered":"Humanity\u2019s Inherent Earth-First Value Preference"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Photo by Amy Lenzo<\/p><\/div>\n

by Leon Miller<\/em>
\nIt is possible to have a more advantageous view of nature by maintaining a perceptual focus on what enhances the human experience while avoiding that which diminishes human well-being.<\/p>\n

Introduction<\/strong>
\nHumanity\u2019s understanding of the nature of existence is primarily based on perception.\u00a0 Humanity has long held a perspective on existence where nature and human culture exist in dichotomy.\u00a0 But this perspective of nature has not always been the view through which humanity perceived and experienced the environment and is not the only view through which the nature-human relationship is based.\u00a0 It is clearly possible and preferable to have a perspective that allows taking advantage of nature\u2019s signaled opportunities for flourishing while avoiding what would diminish human well-being.\u00a0 Being able to take advantage of this improved nature-human relationship is a matter of perception.<\/p>\n

The first segment of this article describes the possibility for enhancing the perception of the nature-human relationship.\u00a0 Such a perceptual shift would contribute to human flourishing by providing a better connection with the environment.\u00a0 Human flourishing is based on maintaining a perceptual focus on nature\u2019s life enhancing opportunities and avoiding what would diminish human well-being.\u00a0 Failing to adhere to this natural impulse could result in increased fragmentation, reducing human flourishing and consequently threatening existence.<\/p>\n

The second section of the article describes why the human biological system has an inherent value preference for an ecocentric perspective on existence.\u00a0\u00a0 I offer a biological explanation to support the claim that humans exist with an inherent, natural impulse to interact with nature in ways that enhance being.\u00a0 The biological perspective-for understanding human intentionality-is significant in that it helps us to understand the very nature of what it means to be a biological organism and how this is reflected in the human biological nature.<\/p>\n

The final section describes the significance that humanity’s natural value preference for cooperative interaction has for human culture and for improving the nature-culture relationship.\u00a0 A flourishing culture is built on increasing the range of internal and external mutually beneficial interchanges. There is a conceptual understanding between all the participants that the highest level of being can be actualized when such a belief is shared and practiced.\u00a0 Such a perspective on existence takes us beyond a sense of dualistic contention into improved connections with the things we need to flourish.<\/p>\n

The Role of Perception in the Human Experience of the Environment<\/strong>
\nRecent research in cognitive science sheds light on the significance of perception in the human experience of nature, thus on the connection between humanity\u2019s inherent biological impulses and perception.\u00a0 Studies in perceptual psychology and neurobiology reveal that it is preferable to view existence from the perspective of nature-human \u201ccomplementarity.\u201d[1]\u00a0 We know that human perception (triggered by sensations) operates with an intention to organize and categorize human reactions to external phenomena.\u00a0\u00a0 The key to doing this successfully is the ability to perceive nature\u2019s signaled opportunities for flourishing, nourishment and growth while also recognizing nature\u2019s signaled warnings to avoid that which would diminish being. Eco phenomenologists advise that viewing nature from this perceptual advantage offers the possibility of increasing human-nature beneficial exchanges.<\/p>\n

Neurobiologists and bio-ethicists claim that human neural networks partially function in an attempt to shape the components of experience into the perception of a unified whole (with anticipatable and appreciable continuity).\u00a0 The human neurological preference, as an extension of the human biological system, has a value preference for a complementary\u00a0 nature-body-mind interconnection there for promoting a sense of \u201cintegral being.\u201d Human fitness can be thought of as dependent on the perceptual ability to effectively manage nature\u2019s beneficial opportunities and avoiding that which would diminish a nature-human beneficial exchange.\u00a0 Thus the human natural value preference-for being a fully integrated being-is realized by acting to “modulate the human connection with the natural order”[2]<\/p>\n

Humans necessarily exist with a correlated tension between how nature is affected by human perceptions and how nature itself shapes these perceptions.\u00a0 \u201cWe are the world that thinks itself- or that the world is at the heart of our flesh. Once a body-world relationship is recognized, there is a ramification of my body and a ramification of the world and a correspondence between its inside and my outside and my inside and its outside.\u201d[3]\u00a0 Because of the \u201cfeedback\u201d or \u201clooping\u201d relationship humans have with nature we are continuously both a product of nature and producing feedback of the human perception of nature.\u00a0 In other words the human experience is shaped by a reflective interaction between the environmental “signals and the interpretant.\u201d<\/p>\n

It is important to remember that the environment and the perceived experience of the environment are linked together in a way that creates co-dependency (coition or mutuality) between our bodies and things.\u201d[4]\u00a0 Thus today we recognize that it is preferable to think of the necessary interaction between nature and culture as a complementary interchange between two interdependent organic systems.\u00a0 In other words an ecological perspective recognizes that some aspects of the perceived (necessarily components of nature) correspond with some aspects of the self (which are also components of nature).\u00a0 An ecocentric perspective reduces the difference between the perceiving subject and the perceived object by making the apprehension of things and the meaning assigned to the experience a reciprocal interchange.<\/p>\n

Nature provides abundant evidence of patterns of natural interchange where biological elements cooperate to form structures of beneficial exchange (the very basis of life is the ability to form structures of cooperative interchange). Flourishing depends on being able to recognize, participate in and sustain opportunities for cooperative interchange.\u00a0 Perception is the key to fulfilling the neural value preference for having a beneficial exchange with nature.<\/p>\n

The Inherent Value Preference for an Ecocentric Perspective on Existence<\/strong>
\nOrganic organisms attempt to achieve intra and inter-structural integrity.\u00a0 The ability to achieve and maintain such integrity is based on appropriate interactions with the surrounding environment.\u00a0 As human cognitive skills developed the human neural network would \u201cfire\u201d in patterns promoting a value preference for relating to things in the environment in ways that are beneficial to human flourishing.\u00a0 This inherent predisposition urges humanity to choose interactions that could prompt human growth and development, that increase the possibility of satisfaction, and to avoid acting in ways that threaten human well-being.\u00a0 Many of the world\u2019s wisdom traditions have always asserted that achieving the natural value preference-for harmonious interactions with nature-sparks regeneration, benefits health, increases human vitality and heightens mental abilities.<\/p>\n

Nobel Prize\u2013winning neuro scientist Gerald Edelman sheds light on the integral relationship between humans and the environment.\u00a0 Edelman explains that there is a fundamental connection between nature\u2019s biological principles and the value preferences naturally triggered as human cognitive skills developed.\u00a0 He believes humans exist with a natural neurological value preference so inclined because our biological nature urges the selection of behaviors that result in a feeling of being well-integrated.<\/p>\n

Edelman claims that groups of neurons (synapses and neural networks) are inclined to select behaviors that increase the human effectiveness to respond to multiple stimuli from the outside world. Thus humans are \u201chard wired,\u201d with a neuro biological, value predisposition that developed with the intent to \u201creinvent\u201d internal-external ecological equilibrium.<\/p>\n

Edelman offers a neuro biological explanation for how humans \u201cmake sense\u201d out of interacting with the environment.\u00a0 He believes that human consciousness is a natural manifestation of the human organism\u2019s interactions with the surrounding environment.\u00a0 He uses the term \u201cprimary consciousness\u201d to describe the fundamental influence that the human biological tie to nature has on human value preferences.\u00a0 Edelman refutes reductionism and dualism with the Holistic claim that the relationship between person and environment in a healthy individual is unitary or integrated.[5]\u00a0 Humans are not discrete epiphenomena distinct from the environment. The nature of human response, growth, awareness and movement has all been continuous ecological adaptation.<\/p>\n

Modern philosophers of mind agree that biological functions give rise to intentions. In other words neurons respond to stimulus by inciting the selection of what is most useful for supporting the integrity of the organism.\u00a0 John Searle states that the human organism is interlaced with elements of nature in a particular way that shapes consciousness.[6]\u00a0\u00a0 Searle claims that intentionality is a special feature of the human effort to incorporate various elements into an interchange that contributes to the human endeavor to experience growth and development.[7]<\/p>\n

Life and growth demand the ability to hold an organism-with a complexity of components-together as a unified whole.\u00a0 The world\u2019s wisdom traditions all agree that achieving an experience of unified wholeness is the basis of maintaining an organism\u2019s integrity and in the human situation helps the individual experience a fuller sense of the self.\u00a0 For complex organisms this requires a system of cooperative interchange with many other aspects of the environment.\u00a0 Thus the inherent human value preference is for experiencing a harmonious cooperative exchange with as many other aspects of the environment as possible.<\/p>\n

The human urge to participate in the natural process of interchange with the environment sparks awareness of the fact that existence demands perpetual integration (or reintegration) with nature.\u00a0 This process (of creation shaping Being into an ability to be aware of the self as necessarily and perpetually in affective interchange with life\u2019s fundamental elements) is the most basic feature of nature\u2019s ontology. This process could be described as \u201cthe primordial biological elements of nature in continuous, spontaneous and creative interchange.\u201d\u00a0 From all appearances this interchange is intended to sustain life, produce regeneration and stimulate growth.<\/p>\n

Cooperative Interactions and Enhanced Human Interactions<\/strong>
\nThe human neural network fires in patterns that support the attempt to create knowledge of how to realize inherent value preferences.\u00a0 Reliable knowledge (triggered by the human inherent value preference) takes us beyond being cut off from those things we need to flourish.\u00a0 Knowledge improves our effectiveness for interacting with nature and improves our interactions with each other. There is a conceptual understanding between all the participants that the highest level of being can be actualized when such a belief is shared and practiced. As a result of such cooperative interaction the fullest sense of self is actualized.\u00a0\u00a0 It is such knowledge that is a preferable basis for the cultural belief systems in their attempt to regulate human interactions.<\/p>\n

C. S. Pierce believed that individuals act on the basis of knowledge that is believed to be reliable for effectively managing encounters with the environment.\u00a0 Peirce considered knowledge as reliable belief when it accurately describes how to enjoy nature\u2019s life enhancing possibilities.\u00a0 Peirce goes on to explain that there are always some spontaneous, unexpected disruptions that are characteristic of nature\u2019s dynamic creative forces.[8]\u00a0 Peirce would say that reliable belief reduces the disturbance of the ambiguity humans experience with nature\u2019s by increasing the probability of anticipation becoming experience.<\/p>\n

John Dewey understood that there is a certain contingency that humanity faces in relationship to nature that creates precarious nature-culture interactions. He claimed that the ability to survive in the natural system depends upon recognizing nature\u2019s signaled warnings to avoid that which would diminish the human experience.\u00a0 However the capacity to enjoy the natural system depends upon the ability to foresee nature\u2019s opportunities for satisfaction and fulfillment.[9]\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Dewey recognized that nature\u2019s principles operate on the basis of a reciprocity encompassing both organism and environment.\u00a0 This means that a flourishing culture is built on increasing the range of mutually beneficial interchanges. This is necessary because the life principle is built on organic elements participating in continuous exchange.\u00a0 This interchange is the only means for nourishment and growth.[10]<\/p>\n

Dewey believed that cultures are ethically obliged to structure their mega systems so that they are in line with humanity\u2019s natural biological predisposition.\u00a0 Dewey stressed that culture should be understood as a highly advanced complex structure for binding units together into greater harmonious cooperative interactions.\u00a0 Such a perspective on existence takes us beyond a subject-object split into cooperative union.\u00a0 As a result of such cooperative interaction the greatest benefit to humanity and culture(s) would be realized.<\/p>\n

[1] Gibson, James J. The Ecological Approach to Visual Perception. (New Jersey: Lawrence Erlbaum, 1986), 127.<\/p>\n

[2] Merleau-Ponty, The Phenomenology of Perception. ( London : Routledge, 2005), 225.<\/p>\n

[3] Merleau-Ponty, The Visible and the Invisible. (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1968), 136.<\/p>\n

[4]Merleau-Ponty, Ibid., 373.<\/p>\n

[5]Edelman, Gerald. (WS) Wider than the Sky. (New Haven : Yale University Press, 2004), 7.<\/p>\n

[6] Searle, John. Intentionality: An Essay in the Philosophy of Mind.\u00a0 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983), 37.<\/p>\n

[7]Searle, John. Ibid., 46.<\/p>\n

[8] Peirce, Charles S. \u201cEvolutionary Love.\u201d The Monist, vol. 3, (1893), 6:303.<\/p>\n

[9] Scheckler, Rebecca Klein, Weaving Feminism, Pragmatism, and Distance Education.\u00a0 Doctoral Dissertation in Philosophy, Published by the Education Dept. of the Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University: (2000), 35.<\/p>\n

[10]Dewey,John, Experience and Nature.\u00a0 (New York: Collier Books, 1938), 4.
\n____________________________________________________________________________<\/p>\n

Leon Miller<\/a> is an instructor of The History of Culture, Comparative Religion and Business Ethics at Tallinn University of Technology.\u00a0 He has written numerous peer reviewed articles on the Philosophy of Religion, Global Ethics and Intercultural Relations.\u00a0 He also affiliated with the International and European Peace Research Associations.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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