Monday, February 3, 2014

(EE) Sentience and Sensibility

I see from the comments on Sebastian's blog that the position for which I (with David Johnson) argued in S&S is coming in for discussion. I had hoped to avoid this, really, since the thing was written by Silliman 3.1 over a decade ago, and I don't even have an operating system capable of running that program anymore. It would be like trying to read a Windows 95 document on a new Mac OS.

In a nutshell (or just a nut; hold the shell) I was there attempting to develop a perspective from which we could understand ourselves as having obligations toward other living things and ecosystems as robust as Rolston and Naess require, without abandoning the insight and practical usefulness of a sentientist ethical foundation. I honestly have no idea whether I succeeded, either analytically or rhetorically, as I find it pretty painful to read my own publications. But if I become convinced that we really need to have that conversation, perhaps I'll extract something from the appendix of the book to discuss in class.

2 comments:

Jon Logan said...

M.V.I. seems like a pragmatic solution to what most of us find lacking or overextended in the other positions we've discussed. I'm curious to learn what exactly you have distanced yourself from.

David K. Braden-Johnson said...

Here's a link to the full account of MVI for those who are interested. It still strikes me as a thoughtful addition to the literature:

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1_Ok_EXn3Gk7B3AqmPbFxf7KtV1dpoVv_xUtF9KCSbWU/edit