Do Trees Have Rights?

I've finally gotten around to posting my first philosophy blog war entry. I hope you all enjoy and I'm sincerely looking forward to your comments. To vote for my post click here

Do trees have rights? Do other in-animate ‘life’ forms have rights? These questions are too often over looked by predominantly ‘western’[1] post Socratic philosophers and scientists often unjustifiably and without any reason other than heritage. Ethics and Moral ‘codes’ are fashioned around a human-centric view of the cosmos and extend only so far as to include other conscious creatures that have a relative similarity with us. Arbor (1986, p336) illustrates the key foundation of ‘western’ ethics as:

[o]nly the conscious states and interests of sentient being[s] can be valuable in themselves. Other things are valuable only in so far as they bring about desired conscious states or promote these interests.

This statement assumes that one can do whatever one desires to anything that is not classified as a ‘sentient’ being as long as it causes no direct or indirect harm to the interests of other sentient beings. Is this an ethical position to hold? Can I go out and mutilate any non-sentient being I desire? Well, it depends on who I am and how I identify myself with my world.

In Japan there is a long tradition of an art known as Bonsai. Arbor (1986, p336) uses this as an example to argue that mutilating a tree is ethically wrong. He presents a conditional proposition that gave rise to Bonsai; if trees are deformed by natural forces then trees can be deformed by un-natural forces. Arbor then presents an analogous argument stating that if trees are deformed by natural forces and it’s okay to extend that to deforming trees by un-natural forces then it follows that if humans are deformed by natural forces (birth defects, genetic illnesses etc.) then it should likewise be okay to deform humans by un-natural forces. This would be opposed by most and this opposition would rightly sit with the above mentioned definition of ethics. Does this make it right though? There is an air of a bourgeoisie, colonial, or even chauvinistic character in this definition. Let us look at another example.

There is much dispute over whether it is ethically correct to expose certain animals, such as apes, to laboratory tests for the benefit of humans. The most fundamental ethical claim put forward by those conducting these tests is that the creatures, while certainly being sentient, have no conception, or at least a very limited conception, of their future well being. They live in the here and now and that causing suffering to them is not upsetting the definition given above because their interests are not being inhibited. Remember, the claim is that they have a limited conception or none at all of their future so they therefore have no self interest. Can we extend this claim then to other sentient beings such as humans? When a human child is born it cannot identify itself with this world nor have an interest in its future. It can be argued, however, that the child will develop these characteristics with age. Sometimes, however, humans are born with, or develop, mental disorders where they cannot identify with their surroundings or with themselves and they have no conception of their interests or their future. Can, in this instance, humans be subjected to the sort of treatment that laboratory animals endure? Most people will argue that no matter what, humans cannot be tortured or undergo laboratory tests such as grafting an ear of another species on her back. Some will even state that euthanasia is ethically wrong in such a case. What is the basis for such an argument? Treating these humans in this way would certainly fit with the definition of ethics given above but most still object. This is obviously a case of 'humanism', stating that being human is the characteristic that provides us our ethical liberties and not something that makes us human.

How does this example of comparing lab animals with humans of similar mental capacities, whether right or wrong, relate to whether trees have rights you may ask? Well, the fact that trees seem to be outside the scope of ‘western’ ethics is an ideological distinction. The fact that the ethics we have in ‘western’ society derives from a post Socratic weltanschauung, by definition, cannot be thought of as universally relevant. Because some may think, according to their ideological heritage, that trees have no rights does not mean that all people think that trees have no rights. In traditional Indigenous Australian philosophy even rocks and other inanimate objects have rights; traditional Indigenous Australians act ‘ethically’ towards such objects. What makes someone human, makes them alive, makes them ethically valuable, is the same as what makes a tree a tree or a rock a rock; some inanimate objects and places are even considered more important than humans. I can just imagine a ‘western’ scientist saying we can torture humans but we mustn’t even look at that rock. What seems absurd to us may be undeniably true to others.

Do trees have rights? I think so. But my reason for this position is that my ideological position is different from the generic ‘western’ model presented above. It is the dominant ‘western’ scientific ideology that reduces ethical nature, the nature of life, to sentience, to consciousness. I believe that there is a uniting force, an anima if you will, that is common in all life; in humans, in animals, and in trees. The ethical rights I give myself and to other humans I extend to all that shares what I share. If you declare that the definition of ethics given above is what you believe then that is fine, however, please remember the heritage of that position and the validity of other ethical view points as well. After all, ‘western’ thought, including science, can be argued to be just another social construction.

References

Arbor, JL 1986, ‘Animal Chauvinism, Plant-Regarding Ethics and the Torture of Trees’, Australasian Journal of Philosophy, Vol. 64, no. 5, pp. 335-339.

---

[1] I’m not overly happy with the term ‘western’, I may have used ‘northern’ or something similar to describe the ideological system adhered to by the group in question, however, ‘western’ remains the most widely understood term in classifying this ideological system.