Is man "part of nature", and if so, is conservation "unnatural"?

I've always wondered this. If we believe in evolution, we believe that man evolved, and if we believe this, we presumably believe that he is still evolving. That's always been my belief, but there seem to be a hell of a lot of people who believe that man's use of technology is "unnatural" (although usually it only becomes so after a certain point which they're comfortable with ). If a species becomes extinct as an indirect result of man's behaviour, is that somehow different from another species becoming extinct because a few predators happened to wander into their ecosystem and eat them all faster than they could replenish their population?

Don't get me wrong, I don't think there's some great advantage to making species extinct, but I'm wondering whether anyone can justify, from a philosophical standpoint, man's attempts to conserve endangered species, while still believing man to be an animal, rather than something separate from "nature".

 

I agree with what you are saying, but I think the main reason we are concerned with our effects on the environment is because, all species and all of nature is interwoven. So, if we destroy one species, more than likely something else will be affected as well. and if it affects that next step in the chain enough to destroy it, then the next step will be affected as well.

with the current environment we live in, we have been able to prosper quite successfully as a species. that being said, change by consciously destroying other species without doing anything to stop or help isn't desirable, because there is no way to predict how it will affect the "circle of life" and in turn come back to hurt us.

plus people just love fuzzy little animals.

 

I get that, but I mean, wouldn't we prevent evolution by protecting species which, arguably, we have out-evolved?

 

Our continued existence may depend indirectly on such spieces, for instance as food. Also why not take this further and get rid of plants too, as they are also less evolved? We could have a polished ball of rock in space encased in plastic meatal and mylar.

 

To the technology thing... I don't think technology is unnatural. But humans tend not to think it through before jumping into it. There are various ways in which humanity could evolve, and maybe one in which we brazenly embrace technology wouldn't be the most desirable one in the long run.

Same goes for different species. You can't prevent evolution; you can only alter its course. A mankind that evolves to care for other creatures and appreciate their beauty and worth is preferable to a mankind that dumbly destroys everything else just to prove its superiority. Taken to its ultimate conclusion, mankind would eventually self-destruct from such behavior.

 

See, that's kind of an extreme. There aren't many species who hunt for recreation or for an ideological reason. But they do hunt to keep competitors out of their territory. I'm not saying that we should go out and commit genocide against any species on the planet; all I'm saying is that, if a species becomes extinct through our own carelessness, I don't see the difference between that and a predator species hunting its prey into extinction.

My thinking is that we'd have to consider our own species special.

 

Well it's not our own evolution that I'm thinking of; it's theirs. Species evolve because weak traits cause some to die while others grow stronger. The strong traits grow more prevalent because those who don't possess them stand a lesser chance of survival. If we protect species that should, by rights, be extinct, we're not doing them any favours, surely.

 

Sorry for misunderstanding you. I guess it sort of depends on if life itself is a favor, then, if a species simply wouldn't exist otherwise. I don't know whether it's justifiable just because humans want to observe these species, if the species themselves are miserable. If they can only live in a zoo or something.

Otherwise isn't it like "Why?" and then "Well why not?" What harm does it do to preserve species vs. what good does it do? Surely they can only evolve mechanisms to defend themselves if they are living...

I guess in a way it does seem like it may not be totally necessary to preserve species. But a lot of what humans do isn't totally necessary. Maybe most.

 

if we only did what was necessary, we definatly wouldn't even be having this conversation right now.

 

The only predator I can think of which has hunted its prey to extinction is the human, in cases like the dodo. It isn't carelessness but greed and stupidity, and a general un-caring attitude which lie behind such things. Nor is it anything to do with recreation - it is all about economics.

I don't see why we should consider oureselves any more 'special' than anything else. In fact, to do so is blindness to the fact that we are only a small part of a much bigger system on which we are totally reliant for our continued existence.

 

Nah, species went extinct in their droves before we showed up. At least, according to evolution.

Is there a difference between un-caring and carelessness?

Well quite. An animal doesn't hunt because it wants to wipe out a species, it does so for food. If one species kills all of another species, it's not because it wants to wipe the species out; it either wants to eat them, or individual members see them as a threat.

Man, I think, is unique in being able to consider these things. Otherwise there'd be other species who, for example, farmed livestock. If you're right, and no other species has ever wiped out another, it won't be because they were conserving them, but because they were incapable.

 

Yes, but how many were hunted to extinction?

It depends on what you mean by these words. I guess that if you are un-caring that could imply you kinow you ought to act differently but carry on the same anyway. Carelessness could mean the same - or it could just be used in the sense of clumsy - unfocused, not concentrated.
'I was careless when I forgot to lock the car' - you wouldn't say I was un-caring. Other than that I didn't care to think about mundanities such as car locking for a period of time.

Yes. We alone have the capacity for this kind of thing. So that might imply also that we have some responsibility to use our superiority wisely, otherwise we could seriously jeapordize our own future. We are also the only spieces I can think of off-the-cuff who have developed means of collective suicide such as weapons of mass destruction, which I suppose if they were ever used in a big way would prove our superiority once and for all.

 

Well, neither of us know. Most likely, like most of the species that man has caused to become extinct, they died as a result of other animals living in their ecosystem.

OK.

Octopuses have been known to commit suicide, but I see what you mean, if not why you're saying it.

This is why I'm curious generally though. I'm not clear on whether you think that mankind is different/special compared to the other species, or if we should be held to the same standards and be forgiven the same flaws.

 

The species die because they can't avoid us as predators, or live in the environment they are in. We keep what we want to, and we live fine without dodos. Eventually we'll be able to survive without interaction with non-plant species who serve no purpose but sustaining the old circle of life.
If we rely on what we kill, we die; there is no single species whose extinction will result in the extinction of humankind, at worst it will result in the death of the humans who rely on it.

Proteins that humans need can be assembled without the help of animals,
animals keep the ground fertile by crapping, but the human population can replace that easily; the world has the same amount of elements at all times, it's just a matter of their organization

Doesn't mean we should hunt them down in some bloodthirsty way, but don't cry when they can't take the air.

 

Conservation is learning to pick up after yourself.

What happens if you don't empty the catbox for a week?

We are only just leaning to keep our own catbox clean. The smell is finally getting to us.



x

 

We're definately part of nature. Our bodies are constituted by teh elements of teh periodic table. Hydrogen, oxygen, iron, calcium, nitrogen, potassium ..........etc...etc..

The only question is if the dawn of our existence was aleatory or inevetable.

However , the fact that we are conscious doesn't make us superior to anything. Hell , what's to say that other animals don't think deep thoughts ? Sure we can extrapolate things from observation but it's not like we can go inside their heads. Think about the animals that are able to use both sides of their brain simultaneously and are able to use more than 5-10% at a time. Sure we can create externally but to apply that you would have to state what definitavely makes one thing superior to another.

 

Well no, the smell isn't getting to us yet. That's kind of my point; it's natural for us to react to mess when it actually inconveniences us. What some are trying to do now is to stop the cat from shitting, but all they can really do is follow it around all day holding a paper towel under its arse. Which is fine if you have no job and only one cat

 

I thought a bit more about this. There was a debate in another forum about meat-eating, and someone making an argument about how people are "meant" to be omnivores (and thus, by his reasoning, partially carnivorous) as a reason for this. This is obviously the naturalistic fallacy - do what you want to do or not do and then claim anything else would be "unnatural". But it's got me thinking more about this, about whether we can and whether we should just regard ourselves as another type of animal or not.

Arguments were made about PETA, and the usual game of "who's the most blameless?" started up.
That's when I thought: we're all trying to feel less guilty about our impact on the environment, and the guilt we feel is in no way proportionate to the impact - conscientious people will find things to feel bad about, whereas people who don't care won't feel bad even if they do a lot worse. And the daft thing is, all along, as far as I know, our animal cousins feel no guilt at all! A carnivore species will scrum its way through a whole ecosystem and only stop because it's starved to death.

This is what makes me think that we have an issue here. If man is just another animal, we have no obligation to conserve. If we want to conserve, we must think of ourselves as different from animals.

 

well, obligations to conserve, why?

Our obligation to conserve is directly based on our own need for survival, IMO. As a whole, our species has grown to such proportions that we literally have the ability to destroy the entire planet. This of course, if undesirable, because we would then cease to exist.

A lot of the things we do, and the reasons we do it, aren't all that different from why animals do their thing. We just operate on a more sophisticated level. As for animals - "Simple minds, simple pleasures."

Which path is better, is debatable, to say the least.

 

In that case, what's wrong with us making the planet virtually uninhabitable for ourselves, so only a small but sustainable human population survives? A lot of other species only very narrowly escape extinction. If anything, it's our ability to predict and avoid potential extinction, and to perpetuate using that knowledge, that has led to us becoming too populous for our planet to keep us!

Well, it's probably better for a lot of species if we die out completely. Not sure many eco-types would be too thrilled by that idea though! And suicide, let alone mass suicide, isn't exactly "natural".

I think the difference is that we know why we do a lot of the things we do. It came up over food; the guy was talking as if animals either knew as much about nutrition as we did, selecting a certain type of food because it was good for them, or that we had it somehow built into us. He's a bit of a right-wing nutter, considers John McCain a socialist so probably believes in Intelligent Design - but it made me think about this. As I understood it, "in the beginning" animals eat anything, and developing what you might call "racial tastes" more as a result of surviving better. But I don't know if that is true!

How it comes to bear is, humans have the advantage on animals. Rather than just eating what's put in front of us and if it kills us it kills us, we are able to analyse and identify good and bad foods. We can even isolate what makes a given food better or worse and breed out the bad aspects of it (pre-genetic engineering, I mean; controlled and selective breeding is no less sophisticated and unnatural really, given that it's pretty hard to stop cows from fucking each other!).

So we're aware of the consequences of eating what we do. I don't know that any other species is. And that's what's making me think that it's unhelpful for man to think of himself as "just" an animal. It's not just that we're smarter. It's like we're on a totally different scale of smartness. Even really dumb humans can grasp the idea that an item of food contains certain things and so on. Whereas I don't know that even really intelligent animals, who could outsmart those humans, would get it. It's more like a specialist type of knowledge than a sign of intelligence.