The Intrinsic Value of Nature - Lonergan

Rolston, Lonergan, and the Intrinsic Value of NatureAuthor(s): Theodore W. NunezSource: The Journal of Religious Ethics, Vol. 27, No. 1 (Spring, 1999), pp. 105-128Published by: Blackwell PublishingStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/40018217Accessed: 23/04/2010 09:40

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ROLSTON, LONERGAN, AND THE INTRINSIC VALUE OF NATURE

Theodore W. Nunez

ABSTRACT

In recent metaethical debate over ways to justify the notion of intrinsic natural value, some neopragmatists have challenged realist conceptions of scientific and moral truth. Holmes Rolston defends a critical-realist epistemology as the basis for a metaphysics of "projective nature" and a cosmological narrative - both of which set up a historical ontology of objective natural value. Pure ecological science informs the wilderness experience of Rolston's ideal epistemic subject, the "sensitive naturalist." The author argues that Rolston's account of the relation between knowing and valuing can be clarified and strengthened by appropriating Bernard Lonergan's transcendental method. Conversely, Lonergan's view of moral self- transcendence can be developed further in light of Rolston's virtue epistemology, which is embodied in the figure of the sensitive naturalist. KEY WORDS: critical realism, environmental ethics, epistemology, intrinsic value, value theory

BEYOND PRUDENTIAL ARGUMENTS, ENVIRONMENTALISTS OFTEN APPEAL to the

intrinsic value of nature in their attempt to justify strict preservation of wilderness areas. However, environmental philosophers have reached no consensus on the theoretical grounding for such a claim. Some treat the notion of intrinsic natural value as the sine qua non of a nonanthropocentric environmental ethic, while others question both its coherence and significance (see Regan 1981; Weston 1985; Rollin 1993).

In recent discussions, one finds different meanings attached to the term "intrinsic value." In "The Varieties of Intrinsic Value," John O'Neill identifies three senses of the term as it appears in the literature. First, a natural object or process is said to be valuable in and of itself. Arne Naess, for instance, claims that "the well-being of nonhuman life on Earth has value in itself," which is "independent of any instrumental usefulness for limited human purposes" (quoted in O'Neill 1992, 119). Secondly, the term "intrinsic value" points to the "intrinsic properties" of a natural entity. Often, the attribution of intrinsic value is based on the observation that all biological organisms strive to maintain their func- tional integrity: one can "characterise the conditions which are constitutive of the flourishing of a living thing" and thereby determine the good

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of an organism (O'Neill 1992, 129). Hence, a natural object may be said to possess intrinsic value for itself. So Paul Taylor advocates a biocentric ethic based on the belief that all biological organisms are "teleological centers of life" (Taylor 1986). Thirdly, the intrinsic value of nonhuman nature is said to be an "objective value." A natural object is the source and locus of value; it exists as "mutely enacted value" even before humans arrive on the scene (Lee 1996, 299). Here the term is not so much an axiological claim as a metaethical stance against subjectivism in value theory.

The intrinsic value question reflects a long-standing conflict between rival epistemologies, with realists and relativists squaring off in a new arena. For their part, neopragmatists adopt an antifoundationalist stance: the moral and ontological status of nonhuman nature need not be settled - indeed cannot be settled - before engaging in collective action on behalf of the environment (Norton 1991). Radical pluralism at the level of conceptual frameworks need not preclude a workable accord on policy. On this view, solutions to environmental problems call for con- textual sensitivity, not metaphysical certainty.

One can agree, of course, on the need for environmental action, and fortunately there is substantial agreement - though by no means unanimity - among activists and philosophers alike on a set of policy ob- jectives for enhancing ecosystemic health. Unfortunately, the neopragmatic refusal of metaphysics amounts, finally, to a capitulation before relativism. A decoupling of worldview from ethics may seem an attrac- tive option, but at some point the different underlying assumptions will generate conflict or incoherence, and this, in turn, may well undermine the long-term effectiveness of praxis.1 The neopragmatic shift to conver- gent policy goals notwithstanding, the question of how to justify the claim of nature's intrinsic value retains a foundational significance for environmental philosophy.

1. Autonomous Intrinsic Value

Sharp disagreements exist among ecophilosophers committed to a nonanthropocentric axiology. On the one hand, J. Baird Callicott draws on the work of David Hume to elaborate an anthropogenic value theory. For Callicott, intrinsic natural values have their source in human sen- timents, which are "projected" onto natural objects that "excite" value (Callicott 1984, 305). While not the source of value, nonhuman nature can nevertheless be a locus of intrinsic value if and when humans

1 Witness, for instance, the internecine battles between animal rights advocates and land ethicists over the issue of wildlife management (for example, culling ungulate herds on national parklands).

Rolston, Lonergan, and the Intrinsic Value of Nature 107

choose to appreciate, say, a panther in Florida for its own sake. On the other hand, Holmes Rolston argues for a cognitive and moral epistemology capable of establishing an objective natural value theory. He makes the strong claim that intrinsic value is a real property of natural objects and processes, not projected onto nature but discovered there. In Rolston's view, Callicott fails to recognize and fully respect the autonomy and integrity of wild nature: a panther has a good-of-its-own. Callicott thus commits what Rolston calls the "fallacy of the misplaced location of values." According to Rolston, nature's intrinsic value is fully independent of human valuing consciousness. Individual organisms, species, and ecosystems possess varying degrees of "autonomous intrinsic value" that persons are obligated to respect (Rolston 1988, 114-16).2

To speak of "autonomous intrinsic value" is potentially misleading, though, for it seems to imply that natural entities are freestanding and inviolable. In Rolston's holistic thought, we find that intrinsic, instrumental, and systemic values are closely interrelated in what he calls the "storied achievement" of "projective nature" (Rolston 1988, 192-201). On this account, to attribute intrinsic value only to human beings (an- thropocentrism) or only to living beings (biocentrism) is to miss the significance of the originating and sustaining ecosystemic matrix. Rolston's ecocentric position affirms that intrinsic value is intertwined with instrumental value, and both are products of a value-producing ecosystem. Rolston maintains:

[F]rom a short-range, subjective perspective we can say that the value of nature lies in its generation and support of human life and is therefore only instrumental. But from a longer-range, objective perspective systemic nature is valuable intrinsically as a projective system, with humans only one sort of its projects, though perhaps the highest. The system is of value for its capacity to throw forward (pro-ject) all the storied natural history [Rolston 1988, 198].

Not simply a resource for humans, projective nature is itself intrinsically valuable as the generative source of all natural being and value. In its widest scope, then, Rolston's understanding of intrinsic natural value includes the creativity and fertility of the evolutionary process taken as a whole.

2 Since a full treatment of Rolston's natural value theory is not possible here, I will not explore such issues as the moral status of environmental wholes (for example, species, ecosystems) or the criteria for determining the gradations of what Rolston calls "value richness." In my view, the prior metaethical issue is the truth-status of the autonomous intrinsic value claim, since in Rolston's thought it refers to all products and processes of the evolutionary ecosystem, and finally to the entire natural system itself.


Among Rolston's critics, Elizabeth Harlow contends that his position on the autonomous intrinsic value of nature is coherent only if he makes classical ontological commitments, such as the identification of being with goodness, the hierarchical order of being/goodness, and the notion of immanent teleology (Harlow 1992). However, in Harlow's view, the objective order of being/goodness posited by classical metaphysics is no longer an option available to us - that is, to all philosophers after David Hume and Ludwig Wittgenstein, who reject immanent teleology and who see all notions of "reality" as language-dependent. According to Harlow, "[EJven our fundamental concepts of physical objects [are] cultural posits, and scientific revolutions [are] paradigm shifts and metaphorical redescriptions rather than the progressive revelation or mirroring of the intrinsic nature of either nature or human minds" (Har- low 1992, 38). While she maintains that "nature" always wears a human face, she argues that this does not lead necessarily to a runaway relativism in science and ethics, since one can recast Rolston's position within a "conceptual holism" that strongly affirms intrinsic natural values. In Rolston's work, "the aesthetic and epistemic vocabulary functions as a metaphor - not in the sense of a narcissistic echo of our own narrowly human preoccupations - but as a new way of using familiar vocabulary to 'see' nature and its features as valuable and important precisely because of the way in which its harmony and its stories are its own" (Har- low 1992, 39). Despite this endorsement, Harlow's revisionist reading would erode the distinction between anthropogenic and autonomous intrinsic value that is central to Rolston's argument.

Harlow's critique of Rolston is therefore a highly provocative one for two reasons: first because she challenges us to clarify the distinction between Rolston's metaphysics and more classical forms of ontology and second because her own strategy for salvaging Rolston's insights obliges us to clarify the degree to which Rolston's notion of autonomous intrinsic value differs from more prevalent theories that attribute value to nature but nevertheless ground that attributed value in the valuing consciousness. Does Rolston's work yield a convincing answer to Harlow's critique? Or, to frame the issue more broadly, can Rolston's metaphysics be defended against his neopragmatist critics? Perhaps, but a defense will have to stake its claim on the adequacy of Rolston's epistemology. First, then, I will examine Rolston's critical realism more closely and review his response to Harlow and other critics, with the aim of clarifying and defending the philosophical foundation of his position on the autonomous intrinsic value of nature. Second, I will discuss Bernard Loner- gan's transcendental method, with an eye toward showing how it might bolster Rolston's metaethical stance. I will conclude by suggesting one way in which Lonergan's notion of moral self-transcendence might, in turn, be developed in light of Rolston's work.


2. Rolston's Critical Realism

Rolston's metaphysics of projective nature, let us note, is essentially a historicized version of the great chain of being: we are part of an evolutionary epic better understood through narrative models than through static metaphysical categories. The cosmological narrative recounts the storied achievement of projective nature, which thrusts forward increasing levels of "value richness" over time. Moreover, the story of emergent natural value is based on modern science, not ancient mythology, and so it is more than just a "myth to live by," a good metaphor. The contempo- rary Earth story is also a much improved map of reality, grounded in scientific realism yet open to the religious dimension as well. Within a cosmological narrative, the Earth system is part of, and finds its origins in, an unfolding universe.

A certain tentativeness marks Rolston's metaphysical commitments. On the one hand, he contends that we need an integral vision capable of attuning us to the larger prolife forces of the universe, a synoptic vision that provides a role for humanity in the cosmos (as moral over- seers and storytellers) and that places us in proper relation to our fundamental sources of being and value, namely, projective nature and God. On the other hand, as Rolston pursues the task of formulating a comprehensive worldview and environmental ethic, he remains acutely aware of the various modern critiques leveled at classical metaphysics and cosmology. A direct retrieval of ancient or medieval worldviews is neither possible nor desirable, yet modern subjectivist value theory lacks the resources to fund a nonanthropocentric environmental ethic. This leads Rolston to a critical-realist endorsement of the new cosmology and a corresponding ecological worldview - a metaphysics of projective nature.

2.1 The "correspondent truthfulness" of religion and science

At the core of Rolston's metaethical thought, we find two related con- victions. First, authentic subjectivity is the epistemological basis for objective truth claims in science, ethics, and religion. We can call this Rolston's virtue epistemology. Second, the redescription of nonhuman nature by recent science (ecology, evolutionary biology, and cosmology) is for Rolston the main component of an ecological worldview.

The salient features of Rolston's critical-realist position come to light if we focus on his view of scientific and religious methods of inquiry. He holds that a qualified version of the correspondence model of truth complements a transformational model of ethical-religious truth - or what he calls "correspondent truthfulness" (1987, 335-38). Pure science informs the value judgments of an ideal epistemic subject: the "sensitive


naturalist" who discerns natural value in and through an ecologically tutored wilderness experience.

Rolston finds that scientific and religious inquiry have much in common. Differences remain, of course: whereas science formulates theories based on causality, religious creeds and the theologies that reflect on them offer frameworks of meaning and value. Still, both are rational pursuits, both employ governing theoretical paradigms, and both may undergo development in light of new experience (1987, 22-31). Before exploring the thesis of methodological affinities further, let us consider, in turn, Rolston's conceptions of scientific and religious inquiry.

2.2 Scientific practice, scientific truth

Recent work in the philosophy and history of science informs Rol- ston's account of scientific inquiry.3 Overall, he wants to illuminate the dimension of subjectivity in scientific practice yet also defend a critical- realist notion of objectivity. Rolston the critical realist holds that scientific theories aim to represent natural entities and processes in the world; science seeks to discover and understand the nature of a subject- independent reality. Against instrumentalism, then, he argues that scientific theories make tentative truth claims and are not simply useful fictions for prediction and control. At the same time, no perfect or com- plete correspondence exists between the language of scientific theory and reality "out there." A correspondence theory of truth needs qualifi- cation. Unlike the naive realist, the critical realist recognizes the conceptual contribution of the knowing subject to theory formation within the context of discovery. Critical realism also acknowledges the incomplete, selective, and perspectival character of scientific theories, the wide scope and internal coherence of the natural sciences notwithstanding. The best available theories so far provide relatively adequate de- scriptions and explanations of the nature of things and events.

This said, Rolston insists that our modern, scientific world-picture is an accurate map of reality, if not the Absolute Truth. Granted, our cur- rent understanding of the astrophysical and microphysical realms shades off into unsettling notions of indeterminacy and relativity. Still, modern science yields cumulative results, even while it undergoes radical conceptual upheavals and, on occasion, paradigm shifts. At the bio- spheric level, for instance, we get from the ecological sciences what Rolston calls "nature for real," not merely the social construction of nature (Rolston 1997, 38).

3 The most influential sources for Rolston's philosophy of science are Norwood Hanson, Michael Polanyi, Imre Lakatos, Stephen Toulmin, and Ian Barbour.


Rolston subsumes the diversity of scientific procedures under a broad conception of the hypothetico-deductive method, understood as a fre- quently complex blend of theory, observation, and inference, in which the scientist "attempts to operate out of a theory in an if-then mode 'over' the facts" (1987, 2). At first, an explanatory hypothesis "emerges," through scientific insight, from an initial observation of data. This theory becomes the basis for deductions at the empirical level, followed by further observations that either uphold or undermine the theory. What is discovered is bound up with, indeed made possible by, the theoretical construct; what we "find" in experimentation are theory-laden facts. Then again, anomalous data may force a revision of theory, which, in turn, leads to new observations that may confirm or undercut the revised hypothesis. This re visionary process creates over time a develop- mental history for the theory in question. It is a progressive, spiraling process of further discovery if and when new theories lead to the prediction and corroboration of new observations or "novel facts" (Lakatos 1970). Much depends on the creative insights of the scientist, who catches as much truth as her theory-net can hold. As Rolston puts it, "[W]e catch patterns with a frame of mind" (1987, 10).

Despite the subjective element within scientific method, an objective knowledge of nature is possible. The basic test of truth for scientific knowledge is exacting: a hypothesis stands only so long as its predicted results are verified in repeated experimentation, while "negative observations" can quickly spell its end (or require an "auxiliary hypothesis" that accommodates the anomaly). For many scientists, the criterion of falsifiability remains foundational for truth claims. As Rolston points out, however, in practice a theory is often maintained through corroboration, despite some anomalies.

Determinations of scientific truth require skillful judgment, exer- cised by the scientific community. Scientists must gauge a theory's degree of plausibility and explanatory power relative to competing hy- potheses, given the evidence at hand. Typically, a proposed hypothesis will gain credibility over time; it is initially ranked as "merely specula- tive" and - with mounting evidence - advances toward the status of an established theory (the best so far). A case in point is the controversial global warming hypothesis, first proposed at the turn of the century, largely ignored until the early 1970s, and granted its scientific imprima- tur just a few years ago by an international commission of climatolo- gists. Until recently, it had been difficult to substantiate the claim that higher global temperatures in this century had resulted from human- generated gases and not simply from natural fluctuations. The newly emerging scientific consensus has resulted from improvements in computer simulations; specifically, once the cooling effect of aerosols was factored in, the performance of computer models increased markedly


(Lemonick 1995). While the extent and severity of climatic disruptions in coming decades is uncertain, the theory of anthropogenic climate change is now well established. Furthermore, with grand-scale theories, there is seldom a straightforward procedure for either verification or falsification. What matters for a theoretical paradigm, one large enough to be of metaphysical import, "is its ability to draw together and make sense of the available material, and in this the relationship between theory and observation is often indirect and interactional" (1987, 6).

The pure/applied distinction in science is important to Rolston's value theory because the different motive interests at work in each scientific ap- proach imply different evaluative stances toward nonhuman nature. Ap- plied science seeks to master and control the forces of nature; it is motivated by a practical interest in exploiting nature as a resource. While pure research may lead to new applications, its interest remains primarily theoretical; pure science seeks to discover "the nature of nature" (1988, 343) - that is, pure science describes and explains nonhuman nature as a reality with its own transcending integrity. This is not meant, of course, to deny the considerable impact of humanity on the environment. Still, wild nature "precedes and exceeds us despite our dominion over it and our uniqueness within it. . ." (1989, 44). Pure science, when it adopts an evolutionary-cosmological perspective and shifts to narrative explanation, tells the story of projective nature - the creative, fertile source of life at work long before applied science and technology sets upon it.4

2.3 Objectivity in religion and ethics

Religious inquiry also combines theory, experience, and inference, albeit in its own distinct manner. Spiritual insight comes more through intensive participation than by detached observation. Theology reflects on past religious experience yet also shapes present belief and practice;

4 Rolston's view of pure science may be contrasted with Martin Heidegger's contention that natural science actually has a de-naturing effect on nature. For Heidegger, modern science conceals as much as it reveals the nature of nature; its objectifying stance robs nature of its own powers of self-emergence (phusis), its integrity or self-standing. Experi- mental science sets upon nature as an object to be mastered and controlled; it effects a concrete ontology of nature, that of "standing reserve" or resource for technological domi- nation. On this view, the distinction between pure and applied science is invalid, since the former is so thoroughly implicated in the latter. Thus, only poetic experience arising from "authentic dwelling" may allow for the disclosure of primordial nature (Heidegger 1977). By contrast, Rolston argues that pure scientific, aesthetic, and ethical visions of nature are complementary, not mutually exclusive. The distinction between pure scientific inquiry and other modes of experience should not be drawn too sharply. Against Heidegger, then, Rolston would say that pure science reveals systemic nature as a generative source of increasingly diverse, complex natural kinds and does not necessarily entail the reduc- tion of nature to the status of a resource.


it is theory at the service of praxis. Theological concepts refine and en- rich the initial unthematized perceptions of holiness, spiritual presence, and moral order in human experience. Classically understood, theology is inseparable from spirituality. Following Augustine, Rolston identifies "two epistemically biasing loves, the one is rectifying charity, the other is debilitating concupiscence" (1985, 127). The proper cultivation of epistemic and moral virtues is a precondition for attaining higher levels of spiritual awareness. Religious knowing requires a detachment from the ego-self: for one to be right, one must be righteous. Authentic religious inquiry is thus an "expansive quest" beyond the limited ego-self to sa- cred reality: one passes from verbal confession and a cognitive grasp of doctrine to the silent wisdom of being caught up in (or grasped by, or resting in) the presence of God.5 The entire process, marked by the inter- play of theory and praxis, involves self-transformation within a communal setting as well as in solitude.

Rolston says that "religion shares with science ... a concern for objective rationality, only it knows far better than science that the path to true objectivity lies through subjective reformation" (1987, 31). A genuine spirituality promotes the scientific quest. In science and religion alike, objectivity is gained by cultivating a proper receptivity and sensitivity to truth and value, "and this requires a joining of and education into a skilled community" (1987, 18). As an example, the community of well-trained naturalists is sensitive to an array of ecological values and aesthetic properties that lie "beneath" picturesque scenery; they see more, and see more objectively, than the untrained eye. The achievement of objectivity demands a passionate commitment to discover the public truth of the reality in question. Such a universal intent, reinforced by a community of inquiry, keeps personal bias in check.6 Accordingly, the capacity for objective judgment is enhanced by personal qualities of honesty, humility,

5 It is worth comparing Rolston's nuanced discussion of mystagogy with Lonergan's account of the dynamic state of being in love with God in an unrestricted fashion as an experience of holy mystery (1972/1990, 106-7). Lonergan describes mystical experience as a state of consciousness beyond cognitive operations and discursive knowledge: God's love is an "unmediated experience of the mystery of love and awe" (1972/1990, 112). Lonergan's experiential-expressive distinction between the personal "inner word" (a core religious experience) and the "outer word" of a communal religious tradition parallels Rolston's view of the relation between theology and spirituality, where theology (along with creed and doctrine) functions as a conceptual education of spiritual perception.

6 Rolston's point is similar to Lonergan's central claim that the dynamic structure of our consciousness impels us to be attentive, intelligent, reasonable, responsible, and loving. The "optimal performance" of attentiveness, intelligence, reasonableness, responsibility, and love by an authentic subject yields a cognitive and moral objectivity. Our fidelity to these built-in norms of consciousness, or what Lonergan calls "transcendental impera- tives," is in dialectical tension with the distorting effects of various biases (1972/1990, 52-55).


and selflessness in the scientist as well as the saint. The truth, as known, requires a "correspondent truthfulness" in the knower (1985, 2).

In the communal search for truth, there is a continuum ranging from relative detachment to existential involvement:

Every discipline requires its relevant sensitivity; and learning and think- ing in the biophysical and social sciences, so far as they operate empiri- cally, are simpler morally, aesthetically, and spiritually, however complex a causal logic may be used, than these are in religion. Proportionally as truths become more significant, combining cosmic with personal importance, they require more sensitivity for their reception [1987, 21].

Intensive participation does not preclude claims to objectivity in religion and ethics, for such objectivity is a function of (1) the competence of an authentic knower and (2) an inter subjective context in which a consensus may emerge among those within a community who are competent to judge.

In both science and religion, our vision of reality is a patterned knowing; "our observations are formed within gestalts" (1987, 8). A theoretical model that organizes a wide field of experience and so facilitates our "interpretive seeing" in a fruitful way becomes, over time, a generally accepted paradigm. "Paradigms are governing models that, in some fairly broad range of experience, set the context of explanation and intelligibility" (1987, 8). A time-tested paradigm is not easily dismissed, for it provides an operative worldview and carries an authority derived from communal assent. A ruling paradigm, whether scientific or religious, offers a central image or root metaphor for interpreting ongoing events:

A good paradigm has a maplike character in that reality is selected and represented through it so as to fit into a kind of basic picture: Newtonian mechanism portrays the world as a great machine; Darwinian evolutionary survival of the fittest portrays the world primarily as a jungle; behav- iorism sees life-environment interactions as stimuli and responses; physics views protons, electrons, and photons as both waves and particles. God is a Father, Shepherd, and Creator. Jesus is the normative person. The Church is the body of Christ. Persons get "lost" and "saved". . . . Im- agery is present alike in science and religion, and to become aware of the representational or symbolic character here is to realize that these critical affirmations are maps rather than exact pictures of reality [1987, 8].

Typically, an established paradigm undergoes revision over time, yet it may be overthrown by a new paradigm in moments of "revolutionary science" or religious reformation. In Rolston's judgment, the development of scientific theories and religious creeds in history has been, overall, progressive in character. While accepting Thomas Kuhn's notion of paradigm shifts in the history of science, Rolston rejects his relativistic conclusion: paradigm shifts are not just different conceptual vocabularies coming into


vogue; rather, more recent theories are most often better approximations of the natural world. The heliocentric and evolutionary models of nature, for instance, have rendered certain ancient views permanently obsolete.

According to Rolston, ecology has radically revised the earlier Dar- winian emphasis on nature's ceaseless strife, and this redescription of nature has enormous implications for a new environmental ethic. Con- flict and struggle in nature are now set within a "dynamic web of life" that includes the elements of cooperation and interdependence. The evolutionary ecosystem stimulates the creation of new life forms as much by environmental resistance as by conductivity. Despite the undeniable presence of disvalues in nature (predation, parasitism, and so on), "the natural system is pro-life, prolific" (1992, 252). The standard Darwinian picture conceals as much as it discloses:

Nature is random, contingent, blind, disastrous, wasteful, indifferent, self- ish, cruel, clumsy, ugly, struggling, full of suffering, and, ultimately, death? This sees only the shadows, and there has to be light to cast shadows. Nature is orderly, prolific, efficient, selecting for adapted fit, exuber- ant, complex, diverse, renews life in the midst of death, struggling through to something higher. There are disvalues as surely as there are values, and the disvalues systemically drive the value achievements [1992, 275].

Viewed systemically and within an evolutionary timeframe, the "perpet- ual perishing" of life forms is necessary for the continuing creativity of protective nature. "The integrity of species and individual," Rolston writes, "is a function of a field where fullness lies in interlocking predation and symbiosis, construction and destruction, aggradation and deg- radation" (1989, 25). In the new ecological paradigm, then, disvalues are reinterpreted as contributory to the emergence of increasingly diverse, complex natural kinds - each with its own situated fitness.

This redescription of nonhuman nature suggests a revaluation as well, for a worldview implies an ethic. Rolston's vision of projective nature situates humans and their cultures in an always already value- laden natural world. The human capacity for worldview formation, moral oversight, and planetary altruism contributes to a unique kind of situated fitness for humanity in the ongoing Earth story: a sensitive earth residence in which humans develop and live out a nonanthropocentric ethic of care and responsibility for the home planet (1988, 335- 41). Pure environmental science thus yields an ecological worldview that complements our capacity for moral oversight.

2.4 Wilderness, virtue, and the sensitive naturalist

Rolston's virtue epistemology takes a high view of the human capacity for cognitive and moral self- transcendence. His environmental ethic


accords a central place to the ideal epistemic subject: the ecologically tutored sensitive naturalist whose moral objectivity is achieved by cultivating the epistemic virtues of love, faith, purity, and humility. Here the sensitive naturalist is analogous to the religious seer: an epistemic privilege is granted to those who love truth and are pure of heart, whether naturalist or saint (1985, 34-72). Just as the disciple renounces her "worldly self in order to seek God in contemplative solitude, so a sensitive naturalist may temporarily put aside her "cultural self in order to encounter wild nature. Rolston tells us that "wild nature is a place of encounter where we go not to act on it, but to contemplate, drawing ourselves into its order of being, not drawing it into our order of being" (1989, 43). The sensitive naturalist comes to reside in a biotic community, relating to neighbor species through a felt sense of biological kinship (biophilia) while learning to respect alien species on their own terms (1989, 124-28). In humility one comes to realize the narrowness of an exclusively human-centered viewpoint in the face of nature's transcending integrity. Wilderness experience has a way of putting us in our place. Again, just as the saint grows in the knowledge and love of God, the ultimate source of life and value, so also the sensitive naturalist comes to know and love wild nature as a penultimate source of life and value.

From the outset, wilderness experience is informed by the paradigm of community ecology. Ecological concepts enhance perception of natural kinds and their "situated fitness" within ecosystems; one is sensitized to biological goodness with the aid of an ecological paradigm. Scientific knowledge is thus a necessary but not a sufficient condition for proper valuation. In one suggestive formulation, Rolston describes the act of valuing as "a further, nonneutral way of knowing. ... an advanced kind of experience where a more sophisticated, living instrument is required to register natural properties" (1989, 104). He says, further, that "the more we know the more there is to see, and the more there is to be ad- mired" (1994, 122). In sum, Rolston's theory of objective natural value depends heavily on a maximal ethic of self- transcendence, as the unique human capacity for worldview formation, moral oversight, and planetary altruism comes to realization in the sensitive naturalist, who is capable of discovering facts and values simultaneously in the wild.

In and through an ecologically tutored wilderness experience, the sensitive naturalist undergoes a "gestalt shift." One moves from an anthropocentric view of nature-as-resource to an ecocentric view of wild nature as an always already value-laden community. As a model for this epistemic context, we do not have an isolated subject "looking in" at natural objects; this kind of "dyadic relation" is unecological. Instead, a relational model situates the epistemic subject within the natural field as a participant-observer. Here the self is "enclosed by its environment,


so that the self values in environmental exchange. . . . The self has a semipermeable membrane" (1989, 100). Participation in the events and processes of wild nature, coupled with a detachment from self-concern, yields a heightened sensitivity to intrinsic natural value.

2.5 Persisting criticisms

Beyond applied science, the pursuit of pure scientific understanding is intrinsically rewarding, as we get "let in on nature's show." Rolston writes, "The story of applied science has been one of learning to remake the world in human interests, to use it resourcefully; but the story of pure science has been one of discovering the nature of nature, learning the story of our sources" (1988, 343). However, for a neopragmatist the claim that "pure science" can deliver an accurate world-picture appears suspect; at best, new scientific paradigms are simply metaphorical redescriptions that seem more fruitful at the present time. For Rolston's critics, scientific practice is always "applied science" in one way or another; science does not deliver us "nature for real," but rather nature as social construct.

Rolston sees but a half-truth in the point that scientific truth claims are conditioned by language and social location. Doubtless the scientific community is influenced by and subsequently reflects the value system of the larger society. Still, pure science enjoys a relative autonomy, and when practiced with integrity, it can describe facts about the real world independent of subjective bias or group interest. The concept of predation, for example, may be a theoretical construct, but the fact of predation is not invented by the human mind and then projected onto a "nature" that is, really, unknowable as it is in itself. Rather, predators and prey are there in nature - for real. Rolston quips that "all those persons who did not think that lion' refers to a real predator lurking in the grass are extinct" (1997, 42). Moreover, we can also make objective value judgments in close correlation with the ecological facts.

As an example, let us consider the claim of biological value at the level of a nonsentient organism. Rolston, as we have noted, believes that all organisms possess an autonomous intrinsic value, though not in equal measure, since the emergence of sentience in higher animals and the "eminence of personality" in human beings amount to qualitative differences in "value richness" (1988, 71-75). Gradations of value aside, we can agree that nonsentient organisms are self-maintaining systems; they exhibit patterns of growth and respond to stimuli; they reproduce, and they resist death; they establish and maintain a distinct identity even as they engage in environmental exchange. An internal order is composed amidst the disintegrating tendencies of external nature. As Rolston puts it, "Life is a local countercurrent to entropy" (1988, 97). A


nonsentient organism is thus a nonmoral normative system, an "object- with-will" that develops toward an optimal state of being - a state of ma- turity and health. Each biological kind, then, has a "good-of-its-kind" and defends itself as a "good kind" (1988, 97-104). This is what Rolston means by autonomous intrinsic value at the individual level. Recall, however, that individual organisms also possess instrumental value within the biotic community. As Rolston explains, "[T]he competing, ex- changing, and intermeshing of goods in every ecosystem means that the goods of organisms are contextually situated. Everything is what it is in relation to other things, but every organism is what it spontaneously seeks to be" (1988, 102).

Despite Rolston's acknowledgment that intrinsic value is always "contextually situated," critics charge him with committing the naturalistic fallacy (see Callicott 1992). A generic description of the organism has passed over, seemingly unnoticed, into positive valuation. In response, Rolston admits that science cannot generate values of itself. Strictly speaking, Hume's is/ought gap is true in the sense that scientific premises do not logically entail evaluative conclusions (1987, 342). This does not mean, however, that value is absent until projected onto nature by human valuers. Rather, scientific inquiry by itself is not an adequate means for detecting natural value, since "a more sophisticated, living instrument is required" (1989, 104).

Has Rolston adequately explained the epistemic transition from what is to what is good? Rolston's critics, I suspect, will continue to find his position unconvincing. To some, his appeal to the vision of an ideal epistemic subject appears esoteric or elitist; at best, he offers a "conversion ethic" acceptable to wilderness advocates, perhaps, but not available as a publically shared value-set.

In a recent paper, Scott Davis has criticized the sectarian mentality of some radical ecologists, who base their militant environmentalism on an ineffable "wilderness experience" that is not unlike the religious experience of the mystic studied by William James. The problem, as James noted, is that truth claims arising from mystical experience are only authoritative for the mystic; they cannot serve as a resource for practical moral action or a shared sense of the common good. Davis sees a parallel in the reliance of certain radical environmentalists on a "wilderness puritanism" that effectively relegates their cause to marginal status (1997).

Is Rolston's position vulnerable to such a critique? In my judgment, Rolston's "conversion ethic" is more catholic than sectarian in character. His argument for a science-based ethic appeals to all persons of reason and mature conscience, not simply those baptized into wilderness. Granted, the discovery of intrinsic natural value in the wild requires an epistemically virtuous, self-transcending subject. A


naturalist must cultivate a sensitivity to value through an educative process that includes moments of withdrawal (wilderness solitude) and return (interaction with other naturalists). This scientific and moral education begins with an initial apprehension of natural value, which is then refined and enriched through increasing comprehension made possible by an ecological paradigm: "the more we know the more there is to see, and the more there is to admire" (Rolston 1994, 122).

Even if we concede that the human capacity for moral oversight and planetary altruism lies dormant or undeveloped in many, still it is real- ized impressively by some. What the community of sensitive naturalists discovers through informed wilderness experience - a vision of intrinsic natural value - can be communicated to a wider public and held in common belief, and not just believed in the abstract but lived out concretely in a thousand local earth residences.7 Given the realities of limited access to wilderness for the many, this is the only practicable alternative. Rolston's ecologically tutored wilderness experience, while remaining the province of a few, nevertheless yields a naturalistic ethic that is more publicly accessible and more readily articulated than an ineffable encounter with the holy. In theory, the sensitive naturalist represents an ideal epistemic type, but in practice the community and tradition of great naturalists - Henry David Thoreau, John Muir, Aldo Leopold, Ra- chel Carson, David Brower, Jane Goodall, Jacques Cousteau, and E. O. Wilson, to name a few - set a standard of excellence for the rest of us. We can end up with publicly shared environmental values underwriting a strong policy of wilderness preservation even when the initial recognition, appreciation, and promotion of such values comes from a creative minority.

3. The Relevance of Lonergan's Method

Rolston's epistemological argument, I submit, can be further clarified and strengthened by appropriating Lonergan's transcendental method. While Rolston's critical realism is sound for the most part, Lonergan's cognitional theory may provide Rolston with a more adequate account of how knowing and valuing are related.

7 Compare Lonergan on the role of belief in communal value-formation and on the pri- vate and public impact of conversion (1972/1990, 41-47, 130-31). While high-quality nature programs on television and nature photography have oriented millions of modern urbanites to an ecological worldview, it is not clear whether the dissemination of this new outlook is creating a shallow environmentalism - little more than "green" consumerism and recycling - or the beginnings of a genuine sea change in human attitudes and behavior toward nonhuman nature.


3.1 Knowing

Lonergan presents a phenomenology of cognitional process that is, in principle, open to verification by all. By attending to our own cognitional activity, we can identify a dynamic structure or pattern of basic operations at work in all instances of knowing and valuing (1972/1990, 6- 13). 8 The intentional operations of consciousness form the basis of transcendental method, the "common core" of all specialized methods of inquiry in the sciences and humanities.

A focusing of attention on our own cognitional activity reveals four levels of consciousness: experiencing, understanding, judging, and de- ciding. Driven by the desire to know, these four levels or successive stages unfold spontaneously in consciousness, with each level presup- posing and sublating previous ones. One first attends to the data of sense and of consciousness given in immediate experience. What Lonergan calls "empirical consciousness" thus provides data for understanding. Spontaneously we move to a second level of intellectual consciousness as we begin to enquire about the intelligibility of the data. Our initial questioning prepares the way for the key event of insight, that "eureka moment" when one grasps an intelligibility immanent and emergent in the data. This direct insight then finds expression in a for- mulated concept (1957/1978, 3-13).

The desire for correct understanding impels us to ask questions for reflection: Is the insight certainly true, or hedged with some degree of probability due to incomplete knowledge? Can we verify it? Hence, a third, rational level of consciousness emerges to reflect on what is given in understanding, gathering and weighing the evidence in order to judge the veracity of insight. One now seeks reflective understanding, a further insight regarding the necessary and sufficient conditions for affirming the truth. An internal criterion of adequacy for judging the truth-status of a reflective insight operates at this level, namely the presence or absence of further relevant questions. Unless blocked or distorted by subjective factors, further questions about the object under study will arise if the insight is not solidly grounded in sufficient evidence; conversely, if the insight does, in fact, "hit the bull's eye," then no other relevant questions will come to mind. In the latter case, one arrives at an "invulnerable insight," and so an idea at first merely con- sidered is now affirmed as an object actually known. In positive affirmation, we claim objective knowledge of the real, the factual. To judge

8 In Insight (first published in 1957), Lonergan's position on the knowing subject appears to privilege cognitive operations as most distinctive of human being. In later writings, most fully in Method in Theology (1972), he works out a more comprehensive, integrated view of human subjectivity, one that incorporates affectivity, existential free- dom, historicity, and inter subjectivity more fully into a transcendental method.

Rolston, Loner gan, and the Intrinsic Value of Nature 121

before all relevant questions are settled is to be rash, while refusal to affirm an insight despite the apparent exhaustion of all pertinent questions is to be indecisive. Critical reasonableness or good judgment, which is developed over time in and through the self-correcting process of learning, will find the mean between the extremes of rashness and in- decision (1957/1978, 280-87).

Knowing, then, is not simply a matter of "taking a good look"--that is, it is not an immediate intuition. Rather, it is a discursive process that involves experiencing and understanding and judging - the multilev- eled achievement of a critical realist. Lonergan's account reorients modern epistemology by insisting upon a third level of rational judgment as a "constitutive component of full human knowing," a component that Immanuel Kant and his followers failed to grasp with full clarity (1957/ 1978, 413-14). The objectivity of factual judgment arises out of the normative exigencies of human intelligence and human reasonableness and is achieved in acts of cognitive self- transcendence. It follows that the optimal performance of a human subject underlies the success of the scientific method. For a critical realist, objectivity is the result of authentic subjectivity. In sum, Lonergan meets the challenge of modern subjectivism and its attendant relativism not by re-asserting a classicist metaphysics, but by advancing reflection on the invariant structure of consciousness as the operational basis for objective truth claims.

3.2 From knowing to valuing

One implication of Lonergan's robust defense of critical realism is that it allows Rolston to refute Harlow's critique more convincingly. In- stead of regressing to a classical metaphysics, as Harlow suggests, we have in Lonergan's work the epistemological grounds for affirming Rol- ston's historical ontology of projective nature, which is consonant with Lonergan's scientific worldview - what he calls "emergent probability" - as well as his "metaphysics of proportionate being" (1957/1978, 115- 28, 390-96).

Lonergan's cognitional theory, I would suggest, renders Rolston's re- markably similar account more explicit and systematic. Rolston's scientific realism is more plausible in light of Lonergan's cognitional theory, especially at the level of reflective judgment. To be fair, Rolston is clear on how immediate experience is enriched by conceptual understanding - a view that parallels Lonergan's account of insight into data. How- ever, Rolston does not articulate as clearly as Lonergan the further op- eration of judging and its relation to the final level of consciousness. It is in the transition from knowing to valuing that Lonergan's account sheds light on Rolston's position.


According to Lonergan, human subjectivity emerges most fully in and through value judgments and decisions made at the fourth level of responsible consciousness. Spontaneously one moves from rational judgment to moral deliberation. Now the question becomes: Is it truly good? Here knowing and feeling become integrated as rational consciousness is sublated by conscience. Lonergan says that "just as intelligence sublates sense, just as reasonableness sublates intelligence, so deliberation sublates and thereby unifies knowing and feeling" (1974/1996, 277). I take it that Lonergan is identifying four distinct operations at the fourth level: in and through "deliberation, evaluation, decision, action, we can know and do, not just what pleases us, but what truly is good, worth while" (1972/1990, 35). At the level of rational self-consciousness, one's actual judgments of value and the decision to act in accordance with them can be seen as two distinct yet closely related moments: deliberation and evaluation culminate in recognizing and affirming the good, what I am calling the "first moment" of value judgment, while decision and action follow thereafter in a "second moment." We move from value judgments to an actual commitment and subsequent action.

Closer analysis of the dynamics at work in the first moment, judgments of value, discloses that feelings are the key to our apprehension of a range of values; they constitute a "heart knowledge" or form of "affective cognition" in their own right.9 For Lonergan, feelings are "an intentional response to value," orienting us to two basic categories of objects: the merely satisfying or the valuable per se. The latter are of two types: "the ontic value of persons or the qualitative value of beauty, understanding, truth, virtuous acts, noble deeds" (1972/1990, 31).10 A felt response to value - whether ontic or qualitative - is an act of moral self- transcendence; we go beyond ourselves to recognize and appreciate some person or object as inherently valuable, not just satisfying to us. The apprehension of ontic or qualitative values is marked by feelings of joy and delight, by positive affection. Such an apprehension is "a pivotal act of affective cognition that is the initial outcome of deliberation" (Ver- tin 1995, 236). Self-transcending feelings orient us to a world of value, beyond the cul-de-sac of egoism or group interest.

9 The term "affective cognition" is Michael Vertin's (1995, 236). In what follows, I am adopting Vertin's interpretation of Lonergan on value judgment.

10 It is important to emphasize that moral deliberation and evaluation aim to determine the "ontic value" of persons as well as the "qualitative value" of various entities and types of action. Here I take Lonergan to mean that at the fourth level, one is not just asking, What am I to do? What course of action is the most responsible one? Rather, the prior question is, What is good (in itself, in its own being)? An answer to the latter question is presupposed by the former. Moreover, in a contemplative state, one can simply enjoy the existence of an actual value (moral or otherwise) without doing anything (except letting it be).


While feelings toward objects arise spontaneously within consciousness, the developing subject may intentionally reinforce or suppress those feelings; over time, one forms a set of habitual likes and dislikes. In this process of affective development, attention to and interest in fully understanding an object (what we earlier called universal intent) may grow as one's attentive study of an object allows for the enrichment and refinement of feeling toward it. As these self-transcending feelings grow in intensity and duration, the subject forms a habitual concern for and enhanced understanding of the object, most powerfully witnessed in the event of falling in love (1972/1990, 33).11

In Lonergan's method, the transcendental notion of value designates our radical openness to all that is genuinely valuable. Whatever the object, we ask questions for moral deliberation that orient us to the discovery and affirmation of value. "So when I ask whether this is truly and not merely apparently good, whether that is or is not worth while, I do not yet know value but I am intending value" (1972/1990, 33-34). Now just as the transcendental orientation to truth finds partial fulfillment in correct judgments of fact at the third level of rational consciousness, so one may make correct judgments of value at the fourth level of responsible consciousness that partly meet the transcendental thrust toward value. Lonergan thus affirms a moral realism: evaluation turns on the apprehension of value through self- transcending feelings, or what Michael Vertin calls a "deliberative insight," which enables one to correctly grasp and responsibly affirm the goodness of a subject- independent reality (Vertin 1995, 228, 231-38). Here the internal criterion of adequacy for a deliberative insight is structurally similar to reflective insight.12 The latter identifies the presence or absence of further relevant questions in its pursuit of an invulnerable insight; the former identifies the presence or absence of a peaceful conscience. If no further misgivings or pangs of conscience arise, then one has grounds for a correct evaluation, for affirming the value in question.

With judgments of value, then, three elements come together: (1) the antecedent knowledge of reality ascertained in judgments of fact, (2) the apprehension of value given in self-transcending feelings, and (3) an evaluation based on a deliberative insight that is formally similar in structure to reflective insight. The value of an object comes to be known in and through a mediate cognitional-affective process (as opposed to immediate intuition) that is a matter of discovery rather than projec- tion. Recalling our initial discussion of intrinsic value, we can say that

11 Compare Rolston on studential, devotional, and charitable love in religious inquiry (1985, 34-42).

12 As Lonergan notes, "Judgments of value differ in content but not in structure from judgments of fact" (1972/1990, 37).


the object itself is both the source and locus of value, while apprehension and conceptualization of such value is accomplished by a morally self- transcendent subject. Like Rolston's sensitive naturalist, Lonergan's authentic subject is capable of recognizing and appreciating objective value.

Granted, the full realization of moral self- transcendence is a difficult lifelong challenge; each moral biography has its own breakthroughs and high moments yet also its blind spots, backslidings, and shameful fail- ures. Knowing what is good provides no guarantee that one will do what is right. Biases and distorted feelings can inhibit the subject's ability to be attentive, intelligent, reasonable, responsible, and loving in a sus- tained fashion. More radically, human beings face the problem of "moral impotence" (1957/1978, 627-30). Though the actual achievement of sus- tained virtue and loving kindness is rare, good women and men are nevertheless found among us. Affective and moral conversions set people on a new course.

The importance of moral self- transcendence for Lonergan's view cannot be underestimated, since it is the genuinely virtuous and loving subject who is most capable of making correct judgments of value. Indeed, the basic standard for correct judgments of value is personal - that is, the standard is "the person in his self- transcendence, as loving and being loved, as originator of values in himself and in his milieu, as an in- spiration and invitation to others to do likewise" (1972/1990, 32).

Lonergan's morally self-transcendent subject makes true judgments and takes appropriate action in one of two possible modes: contemplative and active. One can also distinguish between actual values in existence and merely possible values present in the moral imagination of an authentic subject. Combined, these distinctions chart the gradations between reflection and practice, between enjoyment and obligation. Thus, one response to actual value is contemplative enjoyment; one follows a principle of noninterference or letting-be. So, for example, a wilderness trekker following "zero impact" hiking rules can enjoy wild nature without disrupting it. Another response is active concern, as when the wilderness trekker becomes an advocate for preserving wild nature. A response to merely possible value is either contemplative (mere specula- tion) or an active attempt to bring a possible value into being; given the right conditions, one seeks to transform what is into what ought to be.13

13 With just a few terminological changes, I am following Vertin's analysis of deliberative insight into actual and merely possible values: "A value judgment that manifests an actual value belongs to a conscious intentional process in the pattern of complacency, the process that properly terminates in a decision to enjoy the actual value. Any such value judgment must be preceded by a judgment of actual fact. Alternatively, a value judgment that manifests a merely possible value belongs to a conscious intentional process in the


By means of this example, it becomes apparent that Lonergan's transcendental method is applicable to the field of environmental ethics.

4. Expanding the Human Good to Planetary Altruism In conclusion, I want to argue that Lonergan's thought can and

should be extended beyond the range and scope of the human good. Using Rolston's sensitive naturalist, we can develop Lonergan's account of moral self- transcendence to include a recognition and appreciation of the ontic and qualitative values of nonhuman nature. Indeed, the inner logic of moral self- transcendence - the heart of which is a radical openness to all genuine value - compels us to take seriously the intrinsic natural value claim, even if Lonergan himself does not explore this dimension.

In the unlabored contexts of pure science and wilderness experience (the contemplative mode), the sensitive naturalist recognizes and appre- ciates (to adopt Lonergan's terms) both ontic and qualitative values in wild nature. According to Rolston:

[W]e need wild nature precisely because it is a realm of values that are independent of us. . . . Wild nature has a kind of integrity, and we are the poorer if we do not recognize it and enjoy it. ... Such genuine nature precedes and exceeds us despite all our dominion over it or our uniqueness within it, and its spontaneous value is the reason why contact with nature can be re-creating. . . . The sensitive naturalist is again and again sur- prised by nature, being converted to its values and delighted by it just because he or she has gone beyond previous, narrowly human values. It is the autonomous otherness of the natural expressions of value that we learn to love. . . [Rolston 1989, 44].

The development of self-transcending feelings toward nature (biophilia) reaches an advanced stage in the sensitive naturalist, whose judgments of objective natural value follow from a reflective grasp of ecological facts. Correct judgments of natural value presuppose a capacity for moral self-transcendence, or what Rolston calls moral oversight and planetary altruism. As Lonergan points out, however, biases and distorted feelings may frustrate the subject's quest for authenticity. To overcome this moral impotence, one must undergo an affective and

pattern of concern, the process that properly terminates in a decision to attempt actualiza- tion of the possible value" (Vertin 1995, 239). The use of the term "complacency" is potentially misleading, I think, since it seems to suggest an overly passive or even apathetic response on the part of the subject. The better term is "contemplative," so long as it is understood in a generic sense. The choice of "concern" is also potentially misleading, since the basic attitude of concern (or caring about x) is present in both the contemplative and active modes of valuing.


moral conversion. The sensitive naturalist, having undergone an ecological conversion, "goes beyond" narrowly human concerns, that is, beyond the debilitating effect of anthropocentric bias. An ecological conversion opens up a new horizon, reorienting our feelings toward a wild nature "that we learn to love." Finally, contemplative enjoyment of natural value requires adherence to the principle of noninterference or letting-be; the sensitive naturalist thus advocates a strong policy of wilderness preservation.

To sum up, Lonergan's account of moral objectivity, while focused exclusively on the human good, closely resembles that of Rolston. Both thinkers require the cultivation of epistemic virtues, most especially a self- transcending love, as a precondition for scientific and moral knowledge. Lonergan's critical realism is grounded in the human subject's realization of cognitive, moral, and religious self- transcendence. Similarly, Rolston points to the human capacity for worldview formation, moral oversight, and planetary altruism as the epistemological foundation for a theory of objective natural value. I have tried to show that Lonergan's methodological rigor enhances Rolston's critical-realist epistemology, especially with regard to the interrelationship between cognitive operations and moral deliberation. We also have broached the possibility that Rolston's sensitive naturalist may open up a previously unexplored dimension of Lonergan's thought on moral self-transcendence.14 Paradoxically, human uniqueness reveals itself most fully when self-transcending humans fully recognize and respect the autonomous intrinsic value of the more-than- human.

14 See Nunez 1997 for a more detailed exploration of the relevance of Rolston's environmental ethic to Lonergan's philosophy of the subject.


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