Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences 45 (2014) 105–109
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Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/shpsc
Environmental philosophy: Response to critics Sahotra Sarkar Department of Philosophy, University of Texas at Austin, Austin, TX 78712, USA Department of Integrative Biology, University of Texas at Austin, Austin, TX 78712, USA
a r t i c l e
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Article history: Available online 21 November 2013 Keywords: Biodiversity Conservation biology Ecological restoration Historical fidelity Naturalism Decision theory
a b s t r a c t The following piece is a response to the critiques from Frank, Garson, and Odenbaugh. The issues at stake are: the definition of biodiversity and its normativity, historical fidelity in ecological restoration, naturalism in environmental ethics, and the role of decision theory. The normativity of the concept of biodiversity in conservation biology is defended. Historical fidelity is criticized as an operative goal for ecological restoration. It is pointed out that the analysis requires only minimal assumptions about ethics. Decision theory is presented as a tool, not a domain-limiting necessary requirement for environmental philosophy. Ó 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
When citing this paper, please use the full journal title Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences
The reviews have raised several pertinent issues. Let me begin by noting several areas of agreement. Odenbaugh is correct that my views are imbued with a background naturalism. I suggest that the practice of philosophy should maintain continuity with the sciences. Besides the implications for environmental ethics, my naturalism has two further consequences. First, it leads to an attention to the details of individual environmental sciences such as conservation biology and restoration ecology. Second, I do not believe that conceptual analyses that entirely ignore the historical context of the sciences can prove fully adequate—this will be relevant to some of Frank’s claims below. However, I agree with Frank that though the book tried to be comprehensive, it left out many issues. In particular, environmental aesthetics deserves much philosophical scrutiny—including attention to empirical questions (often ignored by philosophical aesthetics) such as what (if anything) the experience of nature contributes to psychological development and well-being (as, for instance, provocatively claimed by Louv, 2005). The epistemology of climate change models, whether we have any reason to act on them in the face of potentially debilitating uncertainties (Lloyd, 2010), also deserves sustained attention— but that is a project that needs several book-length treatments by itself. The chapter on justice and equity merely touches the relevant issues—but I did warn the reader that it claims no more.
E-mail address: [email protected] 1369-8486/$ - see front matter Ó 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.shpsc.2013.10.011
To justify these omissions, let me note that the book was intended to provide an integrative view of environmental philosophy and, to invoke a metaphor, I did not want to lose the forest among the trees. It will be interesting to see whether or, perhaps, how much, detailed future attention to these other issues will require modification of the general framework. Finally, all four of us agree that there is much more to environmental philosophy than environmental ethics: in particular, the history and philosophy of science is critical to environmental philosophy. This broadening of perspective was the primary motivation for the book. This said, let me turn to four areas in which there is disagreement between me and my critics: (i) biodiversity and conservation biology; (ii) ecological restoration (iii) ethics; and (iv) decision theory. 1. Biodiversity and conservation biology Most of the issues that divide my critics and me concern biodiversity and its conservation. The first issue is one which Frank raises: whether the characterization of biodiversity as the goal of conservation biology is circular insofar as it would make it impossible to question whether conservation biologists are using a correct definition. The point, though, is that this characterization was never intended as a definition. Rather, it was intended to
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S. Sarkar / Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences 45 (2014) 105–109
indicate where we should look to explicate adequacy conditions for definitions of biodiversity as a prelude to producing a definition itself. (This is part of my naturalism.) While such a contextual exploration may mostly be necessary because of the recent vintage of ‘‘biodiversity,’’ there is still an interesting parallel to the concept of health and medical practice. In situations where the concept of health is unclear, for instance, in definitions of mental health, we may want to examine professional practice, for instance, psychiatric classification schemes, to guide the formulation of adequacy conditions and definitions. This does not prevent us from coming back to question the aptness of a particular definition of health used by practitioners. A second, related, question raised by both Frank and Odenbaugh is the sense in which a conventional element enters into biodiversity definitions. Now, I do not restrict conventional content only to cases in which all options are equally good. Rather, I contextualize conventions to an explicit set of constraints (for instance, adequacy conditions) and hold that a conventional element enters into a definition if there remains epistemic discretion (Ben-Menahem, 2006), that is, the constraints do not fully specify a definition. The permitted choices are now deliberated upon using criteria that were not among the constraints—and some definitions may well be preferable to others on the basis of these new criteria. Now, given that a concept of biodiversity must be operationalizable (that is, used in the field to guide conservation policy), the adequacy conditions I lay down still leave a wide variety of choices available. That was what I mean by suggesting a conventional element in the definition of biodiversity. A third issue, raised by Frank, is whether a definition of biodiversity should be normative. He gives example such as vertebrate species richness which may be of interest in biogeography, ecology, and evolution. I do not deny that there are many value-free concepts of ecological diversity (including richness, if we allow that it is a diversity concept [which is questionable (Sarkar, 2005)]). There has been explicit discussion of many of these nonnormative diversity concepts since the 1950s. Yet, as I have previously pointed out in a discussion of the history of ecological diversity (Sarkar, 2007), this tradition was ignored when definitions of biodiversity were debated and adopted during the founding of conservation biology as an organized discipline in the late 1980s. There are many formal and conceptual connections between the two sets of definitions (Sarkar, 2010; Sarkar, Pappas, Garson, Aggarwal, & Cameron, 2004). Those involved in establishing the new discipline of conservation biology self-consciously chose to construct what they believed to be a new framework and ignored the earlier discussions of ecological diversity. They also insisted that conservation biology was a goal-oriented discipline with an irreducible normative component (Soulé, 1986). The term ‘‘biodiversity’’ came slightly later (see Takacs, 1996); it was never explicitly defined. My original explication of ‘‘biodiversity’’ (Sarkar, 2002) attempted to make sense of common usage—and the only way to do so, or so I claimed, was to pay attention to its history and note the normative role played by the term. (Other philosophers had already made the same point about the normativity of ‘‘biodiversity’’ though, perhaps, not quite so strongly [Callicott, Crowder, & Mumford, 1999; Norton, 2003].) The discussion in this book amplifies these earlier analyses and builds on the explicit treatment of biodiversity-related norms introduced by Sarkar (2008). It is also true that, once ‘‘biodiversity’’ became a buzzword and began to generate grant money, other disciplines, particularly taxonomy, jumped on the bandwagon—but the term was unknown in these fields until after the formation of conservation biology around 1985 and the introduction of the term in 1986 (Sarkar, 2005); moreover the co-option of ‘‘biodiversity’’ does not prove that these disciplines were now employing a concept not already available in the ecological repertoire prior to the 1980s (see below
for more on this point). As noted earlier, definitions of biodiversity in the context of its conservation are normative because of the normative nature of conservation biology which has been emphasized by its practitioners throughout its history. This is where there is basic disagreement between my treatment and that of Maclaurin and Sterelny (2008): unlike them I require that biodiversity concepts be contextualized to conservation biology in practice and to no other biological discipline, and I emphasize the normative role of the concept of biodiversity in conservation practice. To the extent that I can interpret their rather non-specific characterizations, Maclaurin and Sterelny are in agreement with me that there is no single categorical concept of biodiversity. This is an area in which my naturalistic approach to conceptual analysis pays dividends, in clearly facilitating a sharp distinction between ecological diversity and biodiversity. Finally, I should note that neither Frank nor Maclaurin or Sterelny provide any reason to suppose that any use of ‘‘biodiversity’’ outside conservation biology goes beyond well-known (non-normative) ecological measures long available within theoretical ecology. In particular, though this claim must remain partly conjectural in the absence of systematic analysis of the literature, the uses of ‘‘biodiversity’’ outside conservation biology have only very rarely gone beyond richness. (Maclaurin and Sterelny explicitly emphasize the importance of richness in their analysis of biodiversity.) Thus there is ample reason to believe that there is no interesting (or otherwise non-trivial) non-normative concept of biodiversity which is not a mere relabeling of some existing ecological measure of diversity. Turning to conservation biology, Odenbaugh seems to question whether the emphasis on systematic conservation planning is justified. My claim in the book was that most of the concerns of conservation biology fall within systematic conservation planning. With the exception of the SLOSS debate, the topics he mentions (genetics of inbreeding, demographic stochasticity, habitat fragmentation, and metapopulation structure) are relevant to Stage 9 of systematic conservation planning (‘‘Assess biodiversity constituent and selected area vulnerabilities’’). I ignore the SLOSS debate because it was recognized by all sides to be futile by the mid1980s (Soulé & Simberloff, 1986). However, there are areas of conservation biology that are outside systematic conservation planning, for instance, management of zoo or botanical garden populations. It is unclear that these raise novel conceptual issues. But I ignore issues such as the ethics of zoos—as Frank also pointed out, the book leaves out many topics. My final point responds to Odenbaugh’s questions about the conceptual structure of conservation biology. I agree with him that the centrality of theoretical work on algorithms in conservation biology (which has been a major part of the discipline’s history [Sarkar, 2012]), may suggest a pragmatic or instrumentalist interpretation of science. Moreover, traditional philosophy of science, with its emphases on theories, models, and experiments does not seem to cope very well with late twentieth-century disciplines, not only conservation biology and restoration ecology, but also operations research, computer science, and so on. Categories such as confirmation and explanation may require radical reinterpretation, if they are applicable at all. All this may well be interesting and novel, and may lead to innovative developments in philosophy of science. But we should not ignore a more deflationary possibility: the ‘‘theoretical’’ innovations in conservation biology and these other late twentieth-century sciences may simply be formal work: the design and analysis of algorithms, data structures, etc.—applied mathematics that may not have much deep philosophical significance about the nature of (empirical) scientific theories, scientific explanation, confirmation, and so on. Much more philosophical work needs to be done on these fields and, I hope, is forthcoming.
S. Sarkar / Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences 45 (2014) 105–109
2. Ecological restoration Let me turn to ecological restoration and the criticisms of Garson. The first point to note is that what I endorse in the book and in the slightly earlier paper cited by Garson (Sarkar, 2011) is the practice of habitat reconstruction broadly conceived. (Thus, in response to Odenbaugh, I would be comfortable with novel ecosystem design, re-wilding, assisted migration, and de-extinction if they are feasible and normatively acceptable. The point is that such attempts almost never satisfy these two criteria jointly—see, however, Hobbs, Higgs, & Harris [2009].) Other problems being resolved, habitat reconstruction can include re-wilding. What I endorse includes ecological restoration in some contexts to which I will return below. Thus, contrary to Garson, the dispute between me and theorists such as Higgs (whom I will call SER theorists, the acronym referring to the Society for Ecological Restoration) is not about how ecological restoration should be defined but about whether, when, and if it should be practiced. I do take the requirement of historical fidelity to be a necessary component of ecological restoration. Even though SER theorists correctly note that historical fidelity can only be achieved to some degree (that is, not completely), they do take it as a regulative ideal (Higgs, 1997, 2003). Thus, I do not think that a focus on this requirement amounts to criticizing a ‘‘straw man’’ (as Garson puts it). The discrepancy in the use of the term ‘‘restoration’’ by these SER theorists and earlier analyses (such as Bradshaw & Chadwick [1980]) and between the former and practitioners was intended by me as an argument against the requirement of historical fidelity only to a very limited degree: to point out the extent to which SER theorists are trying to delimit common practice by definitional fiat. This is not only a theoretical problem; since implementation of environmental actions requires funding, and buzzwords such as restoration (which Garson recognizes as a buzzword) strongly influence what gets funded, habitat reconstruction may well be hobbled in practice by a narrow focus on ecological restoration as defined by the SER theorists. In contrast, Garson is correct to focus on what he calls the replacement argument which is one of my two central arguments against historical fidelity. He notes the standard cases in which historical fidelity only serves as a surrogate for some other more fundamental value. At this point, he makes a novel move, suggesting that historical fidelity can have transformative value and thus would be on par with biodiversity and wild nature which, according to me, have transformative power. I will agree with the claim that, in cases in which historical fidelity has transformative power, ecological restoration can appropriately be pursued under the strictures of the SER theorists. But I find it implausible that there are often such cases. It is important to note that I do think that cultural productions may have transformative power on par with natural features. But we are not talking here about the preservation of ancient monuments such as the Pyramid of Giza or Machu Picchu. At best we are talking of something similar to Knossos, restored on the basis of one man’s modernist vision—or delusion—of what Crete should be (Gere, 2009). In fact, the extent to which we can understand the appeal of authenticity and preservationism in discussions of natural values, it may be because these goals rely on preserved rather than restored history in order to have transformative power. The point here is that probably very few cases of habitat reconstruction can find their justification in transformative power. I also find Garson’s appeal to authenticity in the context of restored rather than preserved habitats unconvincing (and he does note the irony). Finally, Garson notes that I have argued that the use of historical fidelity is problematic because of potential arbitrariness in the
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choice of the reference state: why is one period of history privileged over all others? Garson suggests that historical fidelity removes the arbitrariness because it puts some constraints on the choice of reference state—the same argument was developed by Higgs (2003). It does not appear to me to be at all cogent. The constraints are only operative after the historical state has been chosen but the arbitrariness I have in mind is at play in the choice of that state itself. One way out for Garson would be to regard historical fidelity only to require reference to any past state whatsoever— but that does not mitigate the accusation of not being cogent. If we take this suggestion seriously, we hardly exclude anything, including a return to the non-biotic past. Worse, it would include a return to the state of a place a few minutes ago—so what is the point of restoration at all? 3. Ethics Only one chapter of Environmental Philosophy deals with ethics but, as Odenbaugh correctly notes, a weak version of anthropocentrism lies behind other chapters (and my earlier work Sarkar, 2005). However, few arguments depend on this anthropocentrism and it is weak in the sense that it does not endorse economic valuation and an attendant reliance of demand values (as tracked by felt preferences). Rather it relies on the transformative power of entities which may change the ordering of felt preferences—thus, transformative power reflects higher-order preferences. This leads to the boundary and directionality problems. Now Odenbaugh is correct in saying that a full account of human welfare would resolve these two problems and would solve other problems such as what constitutes the legitimate criteria to be used for environmental decisions. The question is whether such an account is necessary. I do not provide one because (i) a satisfactory account, that is, one that is satisfactory for non-human environmental contexts does not appear to me to be forthcoming and (ii) before an attempt is made to construct such an account, I feel a much more systematic exploration of natural values and their interactions is necessary. Meanwhile, some general considerations about what has worked well, and what has not, in our transformative experiences suffices for all the contexts that I am aware of. In other words, I intentionally shelve the problem. For the same reason I also avoid making explicit meta-ethical commitments (as Odenbaugh also notes). An analogy might help. When making epistemological judgments about scientific methods, their virtues, relative ranks, etc., we implicitly invoke a notion of scientific progress even though, since the 1960s, it has been widely accepted that we do not have a convincing comprehensive account of scientific progress. But this does not prevent the epistemological analysis of scientific practice. Finally, Odenbaugh claims that my positions with respect to anthropocentrism and intrinsic value arguments are in radical variance with much of contemporary North American environmental ethics. I would not regard that as a criticism. But, it seems to me, that environmental ethics is also shifting toward anthropocentrism and against the attribution of intrinsic value to non-human natural entities. This is why McShane (2007), who is a proponent of intrinsic value arguments, felt forced to urge environmental ethicists in 2007 not to abandon that position. Moreover, in much of environmental ethics, intrinsic value attributions have been deployed almost exclusively to justify the protection of biodiversity, that is, in the context of conservation (see, e.g., McShane, 2007). Once we expand our focus to other environmental concerns, for instance, discussions of restoration or sustainability, intrinsic value attributions can only have a much more limited role. Perhaps all this is a reflection of the intellectual maturation of environmental philosophy as a discipline.
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4. Decision theory Let me turn to decision theory. Frank finds a tension between my advocacy of decision theory on the one hand and my reliance on transformative power and emphasis on the paradoxes of decision analysis on the other. This tension is easily resolved. Transformative power attributions and formal decision analysis should be deployed at different levels. The former is supposed to be used to demarcate the set of normatively desirable goals. Given those goals (when they are available, that is, the transformative power arguments have been successfully deployed), formal decision analysis can be deployed in negotiating between them, especially in contexts of group decisions, multiple criteria, and uncertainty. Another way of putting this point: formal decision analysis can only be deployed after the goals have been specified; transformative power attribution is one of the methods for specifying these goals. Moreover, throughout the book I argue that formal decision theory must be deployed critically—the paradoxes are discussed to buttress this argument. Formal decision analysis is neither always necessary nor always sufficient to make good decisions. It is unnecessary when rational deliberation easily identifies optimal decisions. It may be insufficient for a variety of reasons including situations in which the preference set leads to paradox. Frank’s example using the Regime method is such an instance—assuming that we accept the transitivity criterion for the rationality of decisions. (I suspect there is a deeper disagreement between Frank and me on this point.) Formal decision analysis may also be insufficient if the alternative set cannot be (at least weakly) ordered according to all criteria, if the set changes during the decision process, and so on. The purpose of formal decision analysis is decision support: to pare down an alternative set and to structure it so as to aid subsequent deliberation by decision makers (who have a different role from decision analysts). In the biodiversity conservation context, this is the proper role for decision support software packages such as ConsNet (Ciarleglio, Barnes, & Sarkar, 2009, 2010), Marxan (Ball, Possingham, & Watts, 2009), or Zonation (Moilanen, Kujala, & Leathwick, 2009). Algorithms should not be used as a substitute rational deliberation. Two final points are relevant: (i) The problem with Regime that Frank elaborates adds to concerns about the rationality of such outranking methods that Arrow and Raynaud (1986) noted some thirty years ago but have never been resolved. (ii) Nevertheless, I continue to advocate a pluralistic approach to decision analytic methods which includes the potential use of the Regime method. The reason for this is that there are situations in which alternatives may be reasonably ordered but cardinal value or utility functions are not credible (for instance, the performance of various spatial shapes for conservation areas). A decade ago Garson and I advocated the use of dominance analysis in these contexts (Sarkar & Garson, 2004). However, we found that the nondominated set of alternatives is often too large to be tractable through deliberation alone. Subsequently, Moffett and I advocated the use of the Regime method to refine the non-dominated set (Moffett & Sarkar, 2006). Frank’s example now shows that it should be used with even more caution than what we had then noted. But, contrary to Frank, I do not suggest that all such methods be abandoned. Finally, in the last chapter, the book criticizes what I take to be an exemplary instance of the misuse of decision-theoretic reasoning. Some recent papers (see, e.g., Colyvan, Justus, & Regan, 2010) have argued against the attribution of intrinsic value to (nonhuman) environmental features. Essentially, the argument is that, because intrinsic values cannot be adequately quantified (e.g., through incorporation into a utility function to be maximized), they have no proper role in environmental decisions. Now, I am
no friend of intrinsic value attributions (as noted earlier). Nevertheless, this seems to me to be a very poor argument. As Callicott (2006) has pointed out, in a democratic society we routinely reason about entities that are not incorporated into utility functions or otherwise quantified. We make policies about them, for instance, about the compensation due to a family from the loss of a member due to negligence (presuming human life to be intrinsically valuable). Intrinsic values may be entities of this sort—unquantifiable but, nevertheless, capable of being rationally deliberated upon. A critical attitude towards decision theory is intended to guard against the sort of fallacious reasoning displayed in this argument against intrinsic value attributions. To make the point sharper: decision theory does not define rationality (or ‘‘good’’ policy making); rather, formal decision theory can be fruitfully deployed in circumstances when the assumptions of its framework are met. These may well turn out to be a minority (or even a relatively uninteresting minority) of situations in which hard decisions must be made. Acknowledgments For comments, besides the three official critics at an ‘‘Author Meets Critics’’ session of the 2013 Annual Meeting of the Pacific Division of the American Philosophical Association (David Frank, Justin Garson, and Jay Odenbaugh) thanks are due to the audience, particularly Bill Harper and Brian Skyrms, as well as Anya Plutynski and an anonymous reviewer for this journal. References Arrow, K. J., & Raynaud, H. (1986). Social choice and multicriterion decision-making. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Ball, I. R., Possingham, H. P., & Watts, M. E. (2009). Marxan and relatives: Software for spatial conservation prioritization. In A. Moilanen, K. A. Wilson, & H. P. Possingham (Eds.), Spatial conservation prioritization: Quantitative methods and computational tools (pp. 185–195). Oxford: Oxford University Press. Ben-Menahem, Y. (2006). Conventionalism. New York: Cambridge University Press. Bradshaw, A. D., & Chadwick, M. J. (1980). The restoration of land: The ecology and reclamation of derelict and degraded land. Oxford: Blackwell. Callicott, J. B. (2006). Explicit and implicit values. In J. M. Scott, D. D. Goble, & F. W. Davis (Eds.), Conserving biodiversity in human-dominated landscapes. The endangered species act at thirty (Vol. 2, pp. 36–48). Washington, DC: Island Press. Callicott, J. B., Crowder, L. B., & Mumford, K. (1999). Current normative concepts in conservation. Conservation Biology, 13, 22–35. Ciarleglio, M., Barnes, J. W., & Sarkar, S. (2009). ConsNet: New software for the selection of conservation area networks with spatial and multi-criteria analyses. Ecography, 32, 205–209. Ciarleglio, M., Barnes, J. W., & Sarkar, S. (2010). ConsNet—A tabu search approach to the spatially coherent conservation area network design problem. Journal of Heuristics, 16, 537–555. Colyvan, M., Justus, J., & Regan, H. M. (2010). The natural environment is valuable but not infinitely valuable. Conservation Letters, 3, 224–228. Gere, C. (2009). Knossos and the prophets of modernism. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Higgs, E. (1997). What is good ecological restoration? Conservation Biology, 11, 338–348. Higgs, E. (2003). Nature by design. Cambridge, MA.: MIT Press. Hobbs, R. J., Higgs, E., & Harris, J. A. (2009). Novel ecosystems: Implications for conservation and restoration. Trends in Ecology and Evolution, 24, 599–605. Lloyd, E. A. (2010). Confirmation and robustness of climate models. Philosophy of Science, 77, 971–984. Louv, R. (2005). Last child in the woods: Saving our children from nature-deficit disorder. Chapel Hill, NC: Algonquin. Maclaurin, J., & Sterelny, K. (2008). What is biodiversity? Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. McShane, K. (2007). Why environmental ethics shouldn’t give up on intrinsic value. Environmental Ethics, 29, 43–61. Moffett, A., & Sarkar, S. (2006). Incorporating multiple criteria into the design of conservation area networks: A minireview with recommendations. Diversity and Distributions, 12, 125–137. Moilanen, A., Kujala, H., & Leathwick, J. R. (2009). The zonation framework and software for conservation prioritization. In A. Moilanen, K. A. Wilson, & H. P. Possingham (Eds.), Spatial conservation prioritization: Quantitative methods and computational tools (pp. 196–210). Oxford: Oxford University Press. Norton, B. G. (2003). Defining biodiversity: Do we know what we are trying to save? Vancouver: University of British Columbia Department of Forestry Namkoong Family Lecture Series.
S. Sarkar / Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences 45 (2014) 105–109 Sarkar, S. (2002). Defining ‘biodiversity’; assessing biodiversity. The Monist, 85, 131–155. Sarkar, S. (2005). Biodiversity and environmental philosophy: An introduction. New York: Cambridge University Press. Sarkar, S. (2007). From ecological diversity to biodiversity. In D. L. Hull & M. Ruse (Eds.), The Cambridge companion to the philosophy of biology (pp. 388–409). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Sarkar, S. (2008). Norms and the conservation of biodiversity. Resonance, 13, 627–637. Sarkar, S. (2010). Diversity: A philosophical perspective. Diversity, 2, 127–141. Sarkar, S. (2011). Habitat reconstruction: Moving beyond historical fidelity. In K. de Laplante, B. Brown, & K. Peacock (Eds.), Philosophy of ecology. Handbook of the philosophy of science (Vol. 11, pp. 327–361). New York: Elsevier.
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Sarkar, S. (2012). Complementarity and the selection of nature reserves: Algorithms and the origins of conservation planning, 1980–1995. Archive for History of Exact Sciences, 66, 397–426. Sarkar, S., & Garson, J. (2004). Multiple criterion synchronization for conservation area network design: The use of non-dominated alternative sets. Conservation and Society, 2, 433–448. Sarkar, S., Pappas, C., Garson, J., Aggarwal, A., & Cameron, S. (2004). Place prioritization for biodiversity conservation using probabilistic surrogate distribution data. Diversity and Distributions, 10, 125–133. Soule, M. E. (1986). What is conservation biology? BioScience, 35, 727–734. Soulé, M. E., & Simberloff, D. (1986). What do genetics and ecology tell us about the design of nature reserves? Biological Conservation, 35, 759–778. Takacs, D. (1996). The idea of biodiversity: Philosophies of paradise. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press.
Contents lists available at ScienceDirect
Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/shpsc
Environmental philosophy: Response to critics Sahotra Sarkar Department of Philosophy, University of Texas at Austin, Austin, TX 78712, USA Department of Integrative Biology, University of Texas at Austin, Austin, TX 78712, USA
a r t i c l e
i n f o
Article history: Available online 21 November 2013 Keywords: Biodiversity Conservation biology Ecological restoration Historical fidelity Naturalism Decision theory
a b s t r a c t The following piece is a response to the critiques from Frank, Garson, and Odenbaugh. The issues at stake are: the definition of biodiversity and its normativity, historical fidelity in ecological restoration, naturalism in environmental ethics, and the role of decision theory. The normativity of the concept of biodiversity in conservation biology is defended. Historical fidelity is criticized as an operative goal for ecological restoration. It is pointed out that the analysis requires only minimal assumptions about ethics. Decision theory is presented as a tool, not a domain-limiting necessary requirement for environmental philosophy. Ó 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
When citing this paper, please use the full journal title Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences
The reviews have raised several pertinent issues. Let me begin by noting several areas of agreement. Odenbaugh is correct that my views are imbued with a background naturalism. I suggest that the practice of philosophy should maintain continuity with the sciences. Besides the implications for environmental ethics, my naturalism has two further consequences. First, it leads to an attention to the details of individual environmental sciences such as conservation biology and restoration ecology. Second, I do not believe that conceptual analyses that entirely ignore the historical context of the sciences can prove fully adequate—this will be relevant to some of Frank’s claims below. However, I agree with Frank that though the book tried to be comprehensive, it left out many issues. In particular, environmental aesthetics deserves much philosophical scrutiny—including attention to empirical questions (often ignored by philosophical aesthetics) such as what (if anything) the experience of nature contributes to psychological development and well-being (as, for instance, provocatively claimed by Louv, 2005). The epistemology of climate change models, whether we have any reason to act on them in the face of potentially debilitating uncertainties (Lloyd, 2010), also deserves sustained attention— but that is a project that needs several book-length treatments by itself. The chapter on justice and equity merely touches the relevant issues—but I did warn the reader that it claims no more.
E-mail address: [email protected] 1369-8486/$ - see front matter Ó 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.shpsc.2013.10.011
To justify these omissions, let me note that the book was intended to provide an integrative view of environmental philosophy and, to invoke a metaphor, I did not want to lose the forest among the trees. It will be interesting to see whether or, perhaps, how much, detailed future attention to these other issues will require modification of the general framework. Finally, all four of us agree that there is much more to environmental philosophy than environmental ethics: in particular, the history and philosophy of science is critical to environmental philosophy. This broadening of perspective was the primary motivation for the book. This said, let me turn to four areas in which there is disagreement between me and my critics: (i) biodiversity and conservation biology; (ii) ecological restoration (iii) ethics; and (iv) decision theory. 1. Biodiversity and conservation biology Most of the issues that divide my critics and me concern biodiversity and its conservation. The first issue is one which Frank raises: whether the characterization of biodiversity as the goal of conservation biology is circular insofar as it would make it impossible to question whether conservation biologists are using a correct definition. The point, though, is that this characterization was never intended as a definition. Rather, it was intended to
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indicate where we should look to explicate adequacy conditions for definitions of biodiversity as a prelude to producing a definition itself. (This is part of my naturalism.) While such a contextual exploration may mostly be necessary because of the recent vintage of ‘‘biodiversity,’’ there is still an interesting parallel to the concept of health and medical practice. In situations where the concept of health is unclear, for instance, in definitions of mental health, we may want to examine professional practice, for instance, psychiatric classification schemes, to guide the formulation of adequacy conditions and definitions. This does not prevent us from coming back to question the aptness of a particular definition of health used by practitioners. A second, related, question raised by both Frank and Odenbaugh is the sense in which a conventional element enters into biodiversity definitions. Now, I do not restrict conventional content only to cases in which all options are equally good. Rather, I contextualize conventions to an explicit set of constraints (for instance, adequacy conditions) and hold that a conventional element enters into a definition if there remains epistemic discretion (Ben-Menahem, 2006), that is, the constraints do not fully specify a definition. The permitted choices are now deliberated upon using criteria that were not among the constraints—and some definitions may well be preferable to others on the basis of these new criteria. Now, given that a concept of biodiversity must be operationalizable (that is, used in the field to guide conservation policy), the adequacy conditions I lay down still leave a wide variety of choices available. That was what I mean by suggesting a conventional element in the definition of biodiversity. A third issue, raised by Frank, is whether a definition of biodiversity should be normative. He gives example such as vertebrate species richness which may be of interest in biogeography, ecology, and evolution. I do not deny that there are many value-free concepts of ecological diversity (including richness, if we allow that it is a diversity concept [which is questionable (Sarkar, 2005)]). There has been explicit discussion of many of these nonnormative diversity concepts since the 1950s. Yet, as I have previously pointed out in a discussion of the history of ecological diversity (Sarkar, 2007), this tradition was ignored when definitions of biodiversity were debated and adopted during the founding of conservation biology as an organized discipline in the late 1980s. There are many formal and conceptual connections between the two sets of definitions (Sarkar, 2010; Sarkar, Pappas, Garson, Aggarwal, & Cameron, 2004). Those involved in establishing the new discipline of conservation biology self-consciously chose to construct what they believed to be a new framework and ignored the earlier discussions of ecological diversity. They also insisted that conservation biology was a goal-oriented discipline with an irreducible normative component (Soulé, 1986). The term ‘‘biodiversity’’ came slightly later (see Takacs, 1996); it was never explicitly defined. My original explication of ‘‘biodiversity’’ (Sarkar, 2002) attempted to make sense of common usage—and the only way to do so, or so I claimed, was to pay attention to its history and note the normative role played by the term. (Other philosophers had already made the same point about the normativity of ‘‘biodiversity’’ though, perhaps, not quite so strongly [Callicott, Crowder, & Mumford, 1999; Norton, 2003].) The discussion in this book amplifies these earlier analyses and builds on the explicit treatment of biodiversity-related norms introduced by Sarkar (2008). It is also true that, once ‘‘biodiversity’’ became a buzzword and began to generate grant money, other disciplines, particularly taxonomy, jumped on the bandwagon—but the term was unknown in these fields until after the formation of conservation biology around 1985 and the introduction of the term in 1986 (Sarkar, 2005); moreover the co-option of ‘‘biodiversity’’ does not prove that these disciplines were now employing a concept not already available in the ecological repertoire prior to the 1980s (see below
for more on this point). As noted earlier, definitions of biodiversity in the context of its conservation are normative because of the normative nature of conservation biology which has been emphasized by its practitioners throughout its history. This is where there is basic disagreement between my treatment and that of Maclaurin and Sterelny (2008): unlike them I require that biodiversity concepts be contextualized to conservation biology in practice and to no other biological discipline, and I emphasize the normative role of the concept of biodiversity in conservation practice. To the extent that I can interpret their rather non-specific characterizations, Maclaurin and Sterelny are in agreement with me that there is no single categorical concept of biodiversity. This is an area in which my naturalistic approach to conceptual analysis pays dividends, in clearly facilitating a sharp distinction between ecological diversity and biodiversity. Finally, I should note that neither Frank nor Maclaurin or Sterelny provide any reason to suppose that any use of ‘‘biodiversity’’ outside conservation biology goes beyond well-known (non-normative) ecological measures long available within theoretical ecology. In particular, though this claim must remain partly conjectural in the absence of systematic analysis of the literature, the uses of ‘‘biodiversity’’ outside conservation biology have only very rarely gone beyond richness. (Maclaurin and Sterelny explicitly emphasize the importance of richness in their analysis of biodiversity.) Thus there is ample reason to believe that there is no interesting (or otherwise non-trivial) non-normative concept of biodiversity which is not a mere relabeling of some existing ecological measure of diversity. Turning to conservation biology, Odenbaugh seems to question whether the emphasis on systematic conservation planning is justified. My claim in the book was that most of the concerns of conservation biology fall within systematic conservation planning. With the exception of the SLOSS debate, the topics he mentions (genetics of inbreeding, demographic stochasticity, habitat fragmentation, and metapopulation structure) are relevant to Stage 9 of systematic conservation planning (‘‘Assess biodiversity constituent and selected area vulnerabilities’’). I ignore the SLOSS debate because it was recognized by all sides to be futile by the mid1980s (Soulé & Simberloff, 1986). However, there are areas of conservation biology that are outside systematic conservation planning, for instance, management of zoo or botanical garden populations. It is unclear that these raise novel conceptual issues. But I ignore issues such as the ethics of zoos—as Frank also pointed out, the book leaves out many topics. My final point responds to Odenbaugh’s questions about the conceptual structure of conservation biology. I agree with him that the centrality of theoretical work on algorithms in conservation biology (which has been a major part of the discipline’s history [Sarkar, 2012]), may suggest a pragmatic or instrumentalist interpretation of science. Moreover, traditional philosophy of science, with its emphases on theories, models, and experiments does not seem to cope very well with late twentieth-century disciplines, not only conservation biology and restoration ecology, but also operations research, computer science, and so on. Categories such as confirmation and explanation may require radical reinterpretation, if they are applicable at all. All this may well be interesting and novel, and may lead to innovative developments in philosophy of science. But we should not ignore a more deflationary possibility: the ‘‘theoretical’’ innovations in conservation biology and these other late twentieth-century sciences may simply be formal work: the design and analysis of algorithms, data structures, etc.—applied mathematics that may not have much deep philosophical significance about the nature of (empirical) scientific theories, scientific explanation, confirmation, and so on. Much more philosophical work needs to be done on these fields and, I hope, is forthcoming.
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2. Ecological restoration Let me turn to ecological restoration and the criticisms of Garson. The first point to note is that what I endorse in the book and in the slightly earlier paper cited by Garson (Sarkar, 2011) is the practice of habitat reconstruction broadly conceived. (Thus, in response to Odenbaugh, I would be comfortable with novel ecosystem design, re-wilding, assisted migration, and de-extinction if they are feasible and normatively acceptable. The point is that such attempts almost never satisfy these two criteria jointly—see, however, Hobbs, Higgs, & Harris [2009].) Other problems being resolved, habitat reconstruction can include re-wilding. What I endorse includes ecological restoration in some contexts to which I will return below. Thus, contrary to Garson, the dispute between me and theorists such as Higgs (whom I will call SER theorists, the acronym referring to the Society for Ecological Restoration) is not about how ecological restoration should be defined but about whether, when, and if it should be practiced. I do take the requirement of historical fidelity to be a necessary component of ecological restoration. Even though SER theorists correctly note that historical fidelity can only be achieved to some degree (that is, not completely), they do take it as a regulative ideal (Higgs, 1997, 2003). Thus, I do not think that a focus on this requirement amounts to criticizing a ‘‘straw man’’ (as Garson puts it). The discrepancy in the use of the term ‘‘restoration’’ by these SER theorists and earlier analyses (such as Bradshaw & Chadwick [1980]) and between the former and practitioners was intended by me as an argument against the requirement of historical fidelity only to a very limited degree: to point out the extent to which SER theorists are trying to delimit common practice by definitional fiat. This is not only a theoretical problem; since implementation of environmental actions requires funding, and buzzwords such as restoration (which Garson recognizes as a buzzword) strongly influence what gets funded, habitat reconstruction may well be hobbled in practice by a narrow focus on ecological restoration as defined by the SER theorists. In contrast, Garson is correct to focus on what he calls the replacement argument which is one of my two central arguments against historical fidelity. He notes the standard cases in which historical fidelity only serves as a surrogate for some other more fundamental value. At this point, he makes a novel move, suggesting that historical fidelity can have transformative value and thus would be on par with biodiversity and wild nature which, according to me, have transformative power. I will agree with the claim that, in cases in which historical fidelity has transformative power, ecological restoration can appropriately be pursued under the strictures of the SER theorists. But I find it implausible that there are often such cases. It is important to note that I do think that cultural productions may have transformative power on par with natural features. But we are not talking here about the preservation of ancient monuments such as the Pyramid of Giza or Machu Picchu. At best we are talking of something similar to Knossos, restored on the basis of one man’s modernist vision—or delusion—of what Crete should be (Gere, 2009). In fact, the extent to which we can understand the appeal of authenticity and preservationism in discussions of natural values, it may be because these goals rely on preserved rather than restored history in order to have transformative power. The point here is that probably very few cases of habitat reconstruction can find their justification in transformative power. I also find Garson’s appeal to authenticity in the context of restored rather than preserved habitats unconvincing (and he does note the irony). Finally, Garson notes that I have argued that the use of historical fidelity is problematic because of potential arbitrariness in the
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choice of the reference state: why is one period of history privileged over all others? Garson suggests that historical fidelity removes the arbitrariness because it puts some constraints on the choice of reference state—the same argument was developed by Higgs (2003). It does not appear to me to be at all cogent. The constraints are only operative after the historical state has been chosen but the arbitrariness I have in mind is at play in the choice of that state itself. One way out for Garson would be to regard historical fidelity only to require reference to any past state whatsoever— but that does not mitigate the accusation of not being cogent. If we take this suggestion seriously, we hardly exclude anything, including a return to the non-biotic past. Worse, it would include a return to the state of a place a few minutes ago—so what is the point of restoration at all? 3. Ethics Only one chapter of Environmental Philosophy deals with ethics but, as Odenbaugh correctly notes, a weak version of anthropocentrism lies behind other chapters (and my earlier work Sarkar, 2005). However, few arguments depend on this anthropocentrism and it is weak in the sense that it does not endorse economic valuation and an attendant reliance of demand values (as tracked by felt preferences). Rather it relies on the transformative power of entities which may change the ordering of felt preferences—thus, transformative power reflects higher-order preferences. This leads to the boundary and directionality problems. Now Odenbaugh is correct in saying that a full account of human welfare would resolve these two problems and would solve other problems such as what constitutes the legitimate criteria to be used for environmental decisions. The question is whether such an account is necessary. I do not provide one because (i) a satisfactory account, that is, one that is satisfactory for non-human environmental contexts does not appear to me to be forthcoming and (ii) before an attempt is made to construct such an account, I feel a much more systematic exploration of natural values and their interactions is necessary. Meanwhile, some general considerations about what has worked well, and what has not, in our transformative experiences suffices for all the contexts that I am aware of. In other words, I intentionally shelve the problem. For the same reason I also avoid making explicit meta-ethical commitments (as Odenbaugh also notes). An analogy might help. When making epistemological judgments about scientific methods, their virtues, relative ranks, etc., we implicitly invoke a notion of scientific progress even though, since the 1960s, it has been widely accepted that we do not have a convincing comprehensive account of scientific progress. But this does not prevent the epistemological analysis of scientific practice. Finally, Odenbaugh claims that my positions with respect to anthropocentrism and intrinsic value arguments are in radical variance with much of contemporary North American environmental ethics. I would not regard that as a criticism. But, it seems to me, that environmental ethics is also shifting toward anthropocentrism and against the attribution of intrinsic value to non-human natural entities. This is why McShane (2007), who is a proponent of intrinsic value arguments, felt forced to urge environmental ethicists in 2007 not to abandon that position. Moreover, in much of environmental ethics, intrinsic value attributions have been deployed almost exclusively to justify the protection of biodiversity, that is, in the context of conservation (see, e.g., McShane, 2007). Once we expand our focus to other environmental concerns, for instance, discussions of restoration or sustainability, intrinsic value attributions can only have a much more limited role. Perhaps all this is a reflection of the intellectual maturation of environmental philosophy as a discipline.
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4. Decision theory Let me turn to decision theory. Frank finds a tension between my advocacy of decision theory on the one hand and my reliance on transformative power and emphasis on the paradoxes of decision analysis on the other. This tension is easily resolved. Transformative power attributions and formal decision analysis should be deployed at different levels. The former is supposed to be used to demarcate the set of normatively desirable goals. Given those goals (when they are available, that is, the transformative power arguments have been successfully deployed), formal decision analysis can be deployed in negotiating between them, especially in contexts of group decisions, multiple criteria, and uncertainty. Another way of putting this point: formal decision analysis can only be deployed after the goals have been specified; transformative power attribution is one of the methods for specifying these goals. Moreover, throughout the book I argue that formal decision theory must be deployed critically—the paradoxes are discussed to buttress this argument. Formal decision analysis is neither always necessary nor always sufficient to make good decisions. It is unnecessary when rational deliberation easily identifies optimal decisions. It may be insufficient for a variety of reasons including situations in which the preference set leads to paradox. Frank’s example using the Regime method is such an instance—assuming that we accept the transitivity criterion for the rationality of decisions. (I suspect there is a deeper disagreement between Frank and me on this point.) Formal decision analysis may also be insufficient if the alternative set cannot be (at least weakly) ordered according to all criteria, if the set changes during the decision process, and so on. The purpose of formal decision analysis is decision support: to pare down an alternative set and to structure it so as to aid subsequent deliberation by decision makers (who have a different role from decision analysts). In the biodiversity conservation context, this is the proper role for decision support software packages such as ConsNet (Ciarleglio, Barnes, & Sarkar, 2009, 2010), Marxan (Ball, Possingham, & Watts, 2009), or Zonation (Moilanen, Kujala, & Leathwick, 2009). Algorithms should not be used as a substitute rational deliberation. Two final points are relevant: (i) The problem with Regime that Frank elaborates adds to concerns about the rationality of such outranking methods that Arrow and Raynaud (1986) noted some thirty years ago but have never been resolved. (ii) Nevertheless, I continue to advocate a pluralistic approach to decision analytic methods which includes the potential use of the Regime method. The reason for this is that there are situations in which alternatives may be reasonably ordered but cardinal value or utility functions are not credible (for instance, the performance of various spatial shapes for conservation areas). A decade ago Garson and I advocated the use of dominance analysis in these contexts (Sarkar & Garson, 2004). However, we found that the nondominated set of alternatives is often too large to be tractable through deliberation alone. Subsequently, Moffett and I advocated the use of the Regime method to refine the non-dominated set (Moffett & Sarkar, 2006). Frank’s example now shows that it should be used with even more caution than what we had then noted. But, contrary to Frank, I do not suggest that all such methods be abandoned. Finally, in the last chapter, the book criticizes what I take to be an exemplary instance of the misuse of decision-theoretic reasoning. Some recent papers (see, e.g., Colyvan, Justus, & Regan, 2010) have argued against the attribution of intrinsic value to (nonhuman) environmental features. Essentially, the argument is that, because intrinsic values cannot be adequately quantified (e.g., through incorporation into a utility function to be maximized), they have no proper role in environmental decisions. Now, I am
no friend of intrinsic value attributions (as noted earlier). Nevertheless, this seems to me to be a very poor argument. As Callicott (2006) has pointed out, in a democratic society we routinely reason about entities that are not incorporated into utility functions or otherwise quantified. We make policies about them, for instance, about the compensation due to a family from the loss of a member due to negligence (presuming human life to be intrinsically valuable). Intrinsic values may be entities of this sort—unquantifiable but, nevertheless, capable of being rationally deliberated upon. A critical attitude towards decision theory is intended to guard against the sort of fallacious reasoning displayed in this argument against intrinsic value attributions. To make the point sharper: decision theory does not define rationality (or ‘‘good’’ policy making); rather, formal decision theory can be fruitfully deployed in circumstances when the assumptions of its framework are met. These may well turn out to be a minority (or even a relatively uninteresting minority) of situations in which hard decisions must be made. Acknowledgments For comments, besides the three official critics at an ‘‘Author Meets Critics’’ session of the 2013 Annual Meeting of the Pacific Division of the American Philosophical Association (David Frank, Justin Garson, and Jay Odenbaugh) thanks are due to the audience, particularly Bill Harper and Brian Skyrms, as well as Anya Plutynski and an anonymous reviewer for this journal. References Arrow, K. J., & Raynaud, H. (1986). Social choice and multicriterion decision-making. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Ball, I. R., Possingham, H. P., & Watts, M. E. (2009). Marxan and relatives: Software for spatial conservation prioritization. In A. Moilanen, K. A. Wilson, & H. P. Possingham (Eds.), Spatial conservation prioritization: Quantitative methods and computational tools (pp. 185–195). Oxford: Oxford University Press. Ben-Menahem, Y. (2006). Conventionalism. New York: Cambridge University Press. Bradshaw, A. D., & Chadwick, M. J. (1980). The restoration of land: The ecology and reclamation of derelict and degraded land. Oxford: Blackwell. Callicott, J. B. (2006). Explicit and implicit values. In J. M. Scott, D. D. Goble, & F. W. Davis (Eds.), Conserving biodiversity in human-dominated landscapes. The endangered species act at thirty (Vol. 2, pp. 36–48). Washington, DC: Island Press. Callicott, J. B., Crowder, L. B., & Mumford, K. (1999). Current normative concepts in conservation. Conservation Biology, 13, 22–35. Ciarleglio, M., Barnes, J. W., & Sarkar, S. (2009). ConsNet: New software for the selection of conservation area networks with spatial and multi-criteria analyses. Ecography, 32, 205–209. Ciarleglio, M., Barnes, J. W., & Sarkar, S. (2010). ConsNet—A tabu search approach to the spatially coherent conservation area network design problem. Journal of Heuristics, 16, 537–555. Colyvan, M., Justus, J., & Regan, H. M. (2010). The natural environment is valuable but not infinitely valuable. Conservation Letters, 3, 224–228. Gere, C. (2009). Knossos and the prophets of modernism. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Higgs, E. (1997). What is good ecological restoration? Conservation Biology, 11, 338–348. Higgs, E. (2003). Nature by design. Cambridge, MA.: MIT Press. Hobbs, R. J., Higgs, E., & Harris, J. A. (2009). Novel ecosystems: Implications for conservation and restoration. Trends in Ecology and Evolution, 24, 599–605. Lloyd, E. A. (2010). Confirmation and robustness of climate models. Philosophy of Science, 77, 971–984. Louv, R. (2005). Last child in the woods: Saving our children from nature-deficit disorder. Chapel Hill, NC: Algonquin. Maclaurin, J., & Sterelny, K. (2008). What is biodiversity? Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. McShane, K. (2007). Why environmental ethics shouldn’t give up on intrinsic value. Environmental Ethics, 29, 43–61. Moffett, A., & Sarkar, S. (2006). Incorporating multiple criteria into the design of conservation area networks: A minireview with recommendations. Diversity and Distributions, 12, 125–137. Moilanen, A., Kujala, H., & Leathwick, J. R. (2009). The zonation framework and software for conservation prioritization. In A. Moilanen, K. A. Wilson, & H. P. Possingham (Eds.), Spatial conservation prioritization: Quantitative methods and computational tools (pp. 196–210). Oxford: Oxford University Press. Norton, B. G. (2003). Defining biodiversity: Do we know what we are trying to save? Vancouver: University of British Columbia Department of Forestry Namkoong Family Lecture Series.
S. Sarkar / Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences 45 (2014) 105–109 Sarkar, S. (2002). Defining ‘biodiversity’; assessing biodiversity. The Monist, 85, 131–155. Sarkar, S. (2005). Biodiversity and environmental philosophy: An introduction. New York: Cambridge University Press. Sarkar, S. (2007). From ecological diversity to biodiversity. In D. L. Hull & M. Ruse (Eds.), The Cambridge companion to the philosophy of biology (pp. 388–409). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Sarkar, S. (2008). Norms and the conservation of biodiversity. Resonance, 13, 627–637. Sarkar, S. (2010). Diversity: A philosophical perspective. Diversity, 2, 127–141. Sarkar, S. (2011). Habitat reconstruction: Moving beyond historical fidelity. In K. de Laplante, B. Brown, & K. Peacock (Eds.), Philosophy of ecology. Handbook of the philosophy of science (Vol. 11, pp. 327–361). New York: Elsevier.
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Sarkar, S. (2012). Complementarity and the selection of nature reserves: Algorithms and the origins of conservation planning, 1980–1995. Archive for History of Exact Sciences, 66, 397–426. Sarkar, S., & Garson, J. (2004). Multiple criterion synchronization for conservation area network design: The use of non-dominated alternative sets. Conservation and Society, 2, 433–448. Sarkar, S., Pappas, C., Garson, J., Aggarwal, A., & Cameron, S. (2004). Place prioritization for biodiversity conservation using probabilistic surrogate distribution data. Diversity and Distributions, 10, 125–133. Soule, M. E. (1986). What is conservation biology? BioScience, 35, 727–734. Soulé, M. E., & Simberloff, D. (1986). What do genetics and ecology tell us about the design of nature reserves? Biological Conservation, 35, 759–778. Takacs, D. (1996). The idea of biodiversity: Philosophies of paradise. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press.
