Is There an Environmental Principle of Causality?

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

This paper begins with an important question: whether there is an environmental principle of causality. Unfortunately, the paper does not answer this question, or even focus on it directly very much, and has a number of other problems.

The actual focus of the paper is a dilemma in how we causally explain the environmental crisis. On the one hand, there's a danger of regarding human beings as "the" sole cause of environmental "destruction" or of the environment's potential "salvation" (6). The other danger is to deny the human role entirely, such that "the environment would be in this 'crisis' either way"--this would make nature something like an autonomous subject (6). The paper's author recommends a more complex conception of causality, where causes and effects can be simultaneous (6), there can be multiple causal series (6), and (I take it) human beings and their environment causally interact. 

The main problem here is that nothing about a general causal principle commits one to this dilemma. Kant, and a great many others since, accept some sort of causal principle but also think that there is widespread and enormously complex causal interaction, as well as causal simultaneity, and a potential multiplicity of causal series. One thing that Kant may not have allowed is statistical or chancy causation. But this is not mentioned in the paper, and anyway lots of people now do allow for it, in part because of quantum mechanics. So these widely known complexities of causation do not on their own suggest a need for a distinctive, environmental principle of causality. So it is unclear what new light this paper sheds on its central question: it does not provide a new reading of Kant or Heidegger on these issues, and draws its key point about the prevalence of simultaneous causality (or "causeeffect" as the author puts it) from a well-known passage in Kant. 

I might add here that the paper never justifies its almost exclusive focus on Kant's first Critique, or its failure to discuss or cite any recent work on causation, in environmental philosophy, and so on. The tacit but never defended assumption seems to be that contemporary thinking about the environment is overly influenced by Kant in certain ways (even if there are, for the author, certain promising strands in Kant's thought too). But I just don't know if that's true. For example, if Kant did think that "the world is constituted because of the human" in some way (6), then many, even most strands of contemporary thinking about the environment will strongly object. Deep ecology and the 'new realism' come to mind here, as does Heideggerianism (the author quotes Heidegger various times but doesn't really engage with the critique of Kant in the quotes). But even the average person on the street--in a climate march for example--probably is not a Kantian transcendental idealist and does not think our categories constitute spatiotemporal causation and other features of the world. Even more broadly, it could be argued that a lot of the core concepts discussed here, such as the contemporary concept of the environment, developed largely outside of the Western philosophical canon, and need to be considered in their scientific, social, and political context (see for example Etienne Benson's recent historical case studies on the concept of environment). 

I also found a great many particular claims in the paper to lack support or explanation--both in the author's interpretations of Kant and Heidegger passages, and more general statements. A few examples:
* The Heidegger quote on p. 3 about original affecting is apparently taken to mean that for Kant, "action and freedom do not coincide." Heidegger does not say this in the quotation and for Kant action proper (Handlung) and freedom do coincide.  
* The next Heidegger quote on p. 3 ("...then the concept...") raises an interesting potential problem for Kant's account of freedom, namely that its notion of action is taken from the merely present-at-hand and is inappropriate for cases of Dasein. The author does not pick this up but only takes Heidegger to be saying that "causality is not a precisely defined concept." That trivializes Heidegger's point.
* After the long block quote from Kant at the top of p. 4, the author brings up "history" and how we deal with it. The quote does not seem to discuss history, so the connection to history needs to be explained. 
* At the bottom of p. 4, following another quote from Kant, the author writes: "we can thus see how Kant...is appealing to nature more than to morality and freedom, since nature gives us something to think about, it gives us a desire to question whereas morals and freedom give us a stop-sign." I don't see that in the quotation at all; in fact Kant seems to be saying things that seem very un-promising for environmentalism, namely that non-rational nature has no "significance" whatsoever, and imposes no oughts or norms on us. I personally think Kant softens this stance somewhat in later works such as the third Critique, but still, it is surprising that the author does not discuss it!
* At the bottom of page 5, it is suggested that for Kant, our freedom makes us "quite omnipotent." The Kant passage quoted earlier on the page definitely does not say this. Kant does not think we are omnipotent. 
* The second half of the first paragraph (page 1) makes a number of leaps I was unable to follow. Why assume the environment has an end? Why assume human activity and the "end of the world" are both natural phenomena (whatever that means)? Why would the mere principle of causality lead us to assume human will and freedom exist? And so on.  

* On p. 6 the author moves from Kant's accepting simultaneous causes to much broader conclusions about nature, freedom, and causality itself. These conclusions seem unwarranted without further justification. It might be helpful to consider whether various critics of Kant on causation, time, and/or the nature-freedom relationship--e.g. Schelling, Hegel, Bergson, Heidegger--would change their minds about their criticisms merely given the fact that Kant accepts simultaneous causes. It seems they would not.

* As much as I enjoy Leopardi's writing, the relevance of his short story to the paper was not made clear (7). Instead, it moved the discussion in an odd direction, namely to focus on a distinction between "animate" and "inanimate," which is distinct from, and not necessarily relevant to, the distinction between (transcendental) freedom and natural causality at work in the rest of the paper.

* The paper begins by granting that "man [sic] is a cause of the global environmental crisis" (1). But near the end the author suggests that we should (in light of our cosmological freedom?) have "greater doubt whether human activity actually contributes to the environmental crisis by polluting nature" (6). I do not see the grounds for the latter claim, or how it follows from cosmological freedom in the Kantian sense. It also seems to contradict the claim on page 1. More broadly, do not think that the type of evidence presented in this type of theoretical philosophy paper could provide reason to doubt the findings of climate science, let alone the minimal, common-sense claim that "human activity actually contributes" to the destruction of the environment.

Author Response

Responding to the point that the main problem of my essay is that nothing about a general causal principle commits one to the dilemma presented in my essay, I must respond that what is at stake is the difference between natural causes and causation by freedom. This distinction was coined by Kant and developed above all in the First critique. At stake, in my view, is not the problem of multiplicity of causal series, but how natural necessity and freedom of possibility are connected in human life. In my view, it is the way both causalities interact that can help us to understand the issue of causality in relation to the environmental crisis. 

This paper is not a paper on Kant, but a paper whose humble intention is to draw attention to the insufficiency of the modern basis to define the principle of causality instead of discussing who the subject of causal destruction or causal salvation of the environment is. I did not argue that contemporary thinking about the environment is overly influenced by Kant. Rather, I only tried to learn from Kant how natural causality and causality by freedom interact. What I learned from Heidegger's readings of Kant's notion of causality is that natural causality is also active in man's free acts, and I have tried to follow up how this can be conceived.

I have revised the essay trying to render my position more clear after reading the criticisms that I have received.

I did not pretend to account for and develop the contemporary concept of the environment. That is why I did not discuss or refer to recent historical case studies on the concept of environment. I only paid attention to the interesting meaning of the French word 'environ' meaning neighbouring, more or less, approximation, around, etc., to show that there is an open dimensionality operating in this concept which challenges the idea of a linear direction operative in the concept of causality.

To the examples appointed by the reviewer of passages that lacked support or explanation, I have tried to support and explain them in the new version of the essay. I thank the reviewer for seeing a bad formulation on p. 3 about the coincidence of action and freedom, something that I have corrected. I also corrected and explained further Heidegger's account on how Kant understood the notion of action.

I also agree with the reviewer that the topic of history came up too early in the paper and without any discussion. This has been corrected.

I have also tried to better explain how the quotation on p. 4 is related to my reflection and also how the absence of an 'ought' in nature may provoke the 'ought' of freedom in man.

I did not account for Kant's discussion in the second part of the Third critique regarding the relation of the teleology in freedom and in nature. But as I have mentioned, the intention was to focus on the First critique and the questions of causality that he raises there.

In relation to the omnipotency of man, I accept the criticism as well and have effaced this passage in the new version of the essay.

The first paragraph has been rewritten after considering the remarks on the number of leaps in this paragraph that were difficult to follow.

The main concern in the passage related to the end of the world is connected to the double-meaning of the word 'end', meaning at the same time 'finality' and 'ending'.

In regard to the criticism that I did not take into account various critiques on Kant such as Schelling, Hegel, and Bergson, I would like to answer that this essay has as its main intention to ask a question, to draw attention to the question of causality and to discuss the interaction of acts of freedom in nature, and free acts in human life.

Regarding the quote of Leopardi's tale - I have tried to justify its reason and how to understand it in relation to the essay as a whole in the new version.

Finally, to the general criticism that the essay does not solve the aporia that if man, as a subjective causation of the destruction of the world, might be the cause of its salvation when considering that the modern view of man as subject and cause of the world is the reason of the destruction of the world - I can only answer that the paper did not aim to answer this aporia, but rather to render it clear and argue for the relevance to consider it. The way to "solve" this aporia is, in my view, to draw attention to the problematic aspects of considering causality as a subjective, moral principle, and of not seeing that there is a cosmological freedom beyond or beside causality of nature and by freedom within which man and environment interact.

Reviewer 2 Report

• It would probably be interesting, at the beginning of the article, to better define the "approximate" nature of the French term environ, which the author uses in an interesting way to clarify the undefined nature of causality in the contemporary era, which may need to be better articulated.

• With regard to the concept of "finitude", as well as the interesting passage of the environmental crisis "as an end of the end, an end to an end", etc.,  since the Heideggerian interpretation of this Kantian concept is one of the most decisive for continental philosophy in the last century, it might be important to make reference to those writings of Heidegger in which this problem is posed in the most direct way. We recommend this because we believe the article would benefit from more cogently defining the relationship between an environmental principle of causality, and how "finitude" has been problematized by Heidegger.

   

Author Response

Response to Point 1:

I agree that the concept of environ should be developed, something that I have attempted in the revised version by showing that the environ is the experience of an approximative, neighbouring and more or less kind of space, that is uncertain and imprecise, that is now tending to an end. I have tried to show that the meaning of environ challenges the idea of direction implied in the principle of causality.

Response to Point 2: 

I have added a note indicating Heidegger's reading of Kant in relation to finitude in his book Kant and the problem of metaphysics, showing the need to connect this work to his readings of causality in the lecture course called The Essence of Freedom: an introduction to philosophy.