Mr Finian Worrall

Research project: An Ethics of Ecological Instability

Abstract

My project investigates the idea of 'stability' in nature, critically interrogating ecological practices based on restoring 'balance' or 'harmony' to natural ecosystems. Although such concepts are often used by environmental agencies and policymakers, they owe less to empirical studies than ancient metaphysical assumptions about nature as homogenous, static, and teleological.

Many contemporary ecologists and philosophers prefer a dynamic and contingent view of nature drawn from process philosophy or advances in open-system non-equilibrium thermodynamics. But while a dynamic conception of nature is theoretically compelling, it offers little in the way of a foundation on which to build an ethical system. Environmental ethics, and to some degree Western ethics more generally, requires stable and homogenous subjects to make ethical laws. Does a dynamic conception of nature undermine environmental ethics, or is it possible to construct an ethical system that does not depend on 'stability'?