Experimental Philosophy: On the Pathology of Environmental Crisis

Y. S. Lo, A. A. Brennan (Philosophy, La Trobe University)

Julian C. L. Lai (Applied Social Studies, City University of Hong Kong)

WORK IN PROGRESSS
© Y. S. Lo, Andrew Brennan, Julian C. L. Lai

1. Introduction
This paper analyzes a problem in environmental studies, suggests a way of approaching it, and outlines a way of
using social science methods to tackle some of the empirical issues revealed by the analysis. The result is a
program for interdisciplinary work that focuses on three things: (i) environmental philosophy, (ii) environmental
sociology, and (iii) experimental philosophy, a new area at the borders of philosophy and the sciences whether
natural or social. Our approach is a plea for bringing more sophistication into the third area by using methods
that are well established throughout the social sciences in particular.

2. The Problem
Since its inception more than 30 years ago, environmental philosophy has become established as a legitimate
branch of applied philosophy. A number of major theories about the origins of the contemporary environmental
crises have been developed and are now regularly woven into a web of further ethical and cultural theorizing.
Central to these philosophical theories, we argue, are a number of empirical claims which are tacitly assumed to
be true. Remarkably, little attention within the subject has been paid to whether or not these claims can be tested,
let alone whether they stand up to such testing. To remedy this deficiency, we argue that those theories should be
subjected to systematic investigation in a philosophically and scientifically rigorous way, ensuring that factual
information that bears on philosophical theorizing is taken properly into account.

3. The Lynn White Thesis

Beyond the field of environmental philosophy, the best known of those major theories on the origins of
environmental crisis is Lynn White’s thesis that Christianity, and more generally Judæo-Christian monotheism, is
the source of the present-day environmental extremities. Central to the rationale for White’s thesis were the
works of the Church Fathers and The Bible itself, which, he argues, prescribe anthropocentrism, the view that
humans are the only things that matter on Earth. Consequently, humans may utilize and consume everything else
to their advantage without any injustice. For example, Genesis 1:27-8 states that “God created man in his own
image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them. And God blessed them, and God
said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it: and have dominion over fish of
the sea, and over fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth.” Likewise, Thomas
Aquinas (Summa Contra Gentiles, Bk. 3, Pt 2, Ch 112) argued that nonhuman animals are “ordered to man’s
use”.
According to White, the Judæo-Christian idea that humans are created in the image of the transcendent
supernatural God, who is radically separate from nature, also by extension radically separates humans
themselves from nature. This ideology further opened the way for untrammeled exploitation of nature. Modern
Western science itself, White argues, was “cast in the matrix of Christian theology” so that it too inherited the
“orthodox Christian arrogance toward nature” (White jr. 1967, 1207). At the heart of White’s philosophical cum
cultural-historical analysis was a straight-forward structure:

W1. Christianity leads to anthropocentrism.

W2. Anthropocentrism is very harmful to the environment.
W3. Christianity is the (intellectual) origin of environmental crisis. (Lynn White thesis, from W1 & W2)

Clearly, without technology and science, the environmental extremes to which we are now exposed would
probably not be realized. White’s thesis, however, is that given the modern form of science and technology,

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Judæo-Christianity itself provides the original deep-seated drive to unlimited exploitation of nature.

4. Four Theories and One Structure

The second premise of White’s argument also has a central place in many rival theories in the field. Indeed, the
structure of many major theories diagnosing the roots of environmental crisis is regularly of this sort: (1) X leads
to anthropocentrism, (2) anthropocentrism is very harmful to the environment; therefore (3) X is the origin of
environmental crisis. Three other well-known cases are: the disenchantment of nature theory (Horkheimer and
Adorno 1969, see also Vogel 1996, Soper 1995), ecological feminism (Warren 1990, Plumwood 1993), and deep
ecological relationalism(Næss 1973, Fox 1984 and 1990).
The disenchantment theory argues that the rejection of animism (the idea that personalized souls are
found in animals, plants, and other material objects) leads to anthropocentrism and is thus the origin of
environmental crisis. In a disenchanted world, there is no meaningful order in natural things or events, and there
is no source of mystery, sacredness or dread of the sort felt by those who regard the natural world as peopled by
divinities or demons (Stone 2006). When a forest is no longer sacred, there are no spirits to be placated and no
mysterious risks associated with clear-felling it. A disenchanted nature commands no respect, reverence, or love.
It is nothing but a giant machine, the most inner secrets and operations of which to be revealed and manipulated
by human science and technology.
Ecological feminism argues that the origin of the problem is a different factor – patriarchy and its radical
separation of male and female into two evaluatively opposite spheres. Patriachalism leads both to androcentrism
and anthropocentrism by associating the male with the rational, active, creative human mind, and civilized,
orderly, transcendent culture, and the female with the emotional, passive, determined animal body, and primitive,
disorderly, immanent nature. It assigns superiority to everything on the male side but inferiority to everything on
the female side. Such a patriarchal mode of thinking, according to the ecological feminist, sustains all forms of
oppressions in the world, including, the human exploitation of the natural environment.
Deep ecological relationalism (or holism) blames atomistic individualism as the origin of
environmentally harmful attitudes and behaviours. The metaphysics of the atomistic individual, the deep
ecologists say, radically separates the human self from the rest of the natural world, leading directly to human-
centred (anthropocentric) values and human selfishness towards nature. To counter this form of egoism at the
species level, the deep ecologists argue, people need to adopt an alternative “relational” (or “holistic”)
metaphysics of the self. According to relationalism, the identity of a living thing is constituted by its relations to
other things in the world, especially its ecological relations with other living things. An individual human being
is therefore essentially connected to other things in nature, part of a larger ecological Self, which is, in its turn, a
defining part of the human individual. If people so conceptualize themselves and the world, the deep ecologists
argue, then they will take better care of nature and the world in general. But many feminists disagree. They argue
that the idea of nature as part of oneself will justify continuing exploitation of nature, since one is more entitled
to treat oneself in whatever ways one likes than to treat another independent agent in whatever ways one likes.
The idea of the other as part of oneself, they argue, only serves to excuse and further one’s domination of the
other (Warren 1999).

5. Evaluative versus Behavioural Theses of Non-anthropocentrism

The four theories described above all have one view in common: that anthropocentrism is at the heart of the
problem of environmental destructiveness. If anthropocentrism is the problem then perhaps non-
anthropocentrism is the solution. Non-anthropocentrism, we argue, takes two forms, which are rarely
distinguished in the environmental philosophy literature.

The evaluative thesis (of non-anthropocentrism) is the claim that natural nonhuman things have
intrinsic value, i.e., value in their own right independent of any use they have for humans.

The psycho-behavioural thesis (of non-anthropocentrism) is the claim that people who believe in
anthropocentrism are more likely to be environmentally damaging, whereas people who reject
anthropocentrism are more likely to be environmentally protective.

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Much of the last three decades of environmental ethics has been spent analysing, clarifying, examining the many
different arguments for, and generally defending, the evaluative thesis, which has now achieved a nearly
canonical status within the discipline (see e.g., Rolston 1988, Brennan 1984, Callicott 1989, Mathews 1991,
Elliot 1997, Light 2002, and for dissent from the majority line, see Norton 1991, Grey 1993).
By contrast, the psycho-behavioural thesis is seldom discussed, but is part of the tacit background of
environmental ethics. When the thesis does get explicit mention this is often in the introductions or prefaces of
books, or in reference works – for example, when it is said that deep ecology’s “greatest influence … may be
through the diverse forms of environmental activism that it inspires” (Taylor and Zimmerman 2005, compare
Rolston 1988, xii, Sessions 1995, xx-xxi, and Sylvan and Bennett 1994, 4-5). If the psycho-behavioural thesis is
true, then it is important in two ways: (i) providing a rationale for both the diagnosis and solution of
environmental problems, and (ii) giving practical justification to environmental philosophy itself (conceived as
the mission to secure converts to non-anthropocentrism). Conversely, if the psycho-behavioural thesis turns out
to be false, then not only the discipline itself, but also the four major diagnostic theories of the origin of the
environmental predicament outlined above will be seriously undermined. The psycho-behavioural thesis, as we
have seen, is the common second premise in all four theories. Put in a provocative way: to question the psycho-
behavioural thesis of non-anthropocentrism is tantamount to questioning the discipline of environmental
philosophy.

6. Reason and Action

Central to the psycho-behavioural thesis is the problematic assumption of rational agency, the idea that if people
rationally or intellectually believe that they have a duty to do something, then they will actually do it (or at least
do it more often than not). The psycho-behavioural thesis is just a particular case of this more general thesis –
one that is an empirical claim about human cognition and behaviour, the truth or falsity of which cannot be
decided by purely a priori philosophical reasoning. In fact, the four major philosophical theses just given on the
origin of environmental crisis (and their many counter-theses) are also empirical claims about social and cultural
reality. To be credible, then, they must be able to stand up to empirical testing. If we believe we have a duty to
respect nature, for example, or believe that natural things are intrinsically valuable, then will we in fact worry
about environmental destruction, or act in ways that are eco-friendly? This question about the relation of belief
to action, looks no different in kind from the sorts of questions that social scientists regularly ask.
Of the above theses, Lynn White’s is the only one to have been empirically tested by sociologists and
other social scientists. The net result of these studies so far has been “inconclusive”, especially when education,
sex, age and social class are also factored in (Shaiko 1987, Greeley 1993, Woodrum 1994, Eckberg and Blocker
1996, Boyd 1999). Moreover, like their philosophical counterparts, environmental sociologists often take the
psycho-behavioural thesis of non-anthropocentrism for granted. Some of the best-known and most widely used
survey instruments in the field (for example, the NEP scale by Dunlap and van Liere 1978, and the Revised NEP
scale by Dunlap et al. 2000) explicitly use indicators of anthropocentrism to measure presence of un-
environmental attitudes, thus assuming in advance that anthropocentric beliefs are harmful to the environment. It
seems plain that we can define anthropocentrism without using the concept of environmental destructiveness. So
if we show that anthropocentric beliefs have no clear positive correlation to environmentally harmful behaviours
or to other attitudes strongly associated with such behaviours, then it will challenge many of the standard ideas
about anthropocentrism in relation to “environmental protectiveness” and “environmental harmfulness”.
In White’s argument the three central claims can be read as empirical claims about the association
between (A) Christian beliefs, (B) anthropocentric beliefs and (C) environmental harm. Read in this way, the
argument is not deductively valid, on two counts. First, a strong association between factors A and B (e.g., 70%)
together with a strong association between factors B and C (e.g., 70%) are not enough to guarantee a strong
association between A and C. Second, factor A might have a strong association with some other factor D which
has a strong association with not-C. In other words, A might not be an internally coherent factor. Lack of
deductive validity is not a problem for White’s argument, so long as it was intended as a non-deductive argument
in the first place. The argument would be cogent so long as its premises have relatively high chance of being
true, and their being true makes the conclusion more likely to be true than false. So, in order to test the cogency
of his argument, we need to separately test all of the three claims involved. Oddly enough, as far as we can
ascertain, no previous studies on White’s theory have taken this holistic and comprehensive approach.
Finally and most importantly, the suspicion that deep-seated worldviews and belief systems might have
significant influence on attitudes and behaviour towards the environment should not be limited to the religious
ones, but extended to cover both philosophical and cultural belief systems. We have already indicated a striking
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common underlying structure between White’s theory and the other major theories sketched out above. Despite
the existence of such significant parallel, no sociological studies, to our knowledge, have ever been done on the
other theories, nor on the common underlying thesis regarding non-anthropocentrism and its effects. To remedy
this, we would need to engage in a philosophical as well as empirical investigations of all four theories already
discussed. In the light of these considerations, it seems reasonable to posit a set of detailed research questions as
follows:

Q1. How are anthropocentric beliefs associated with environmentally harmful attitudes and behaviours?
Q2. How are various religious, cultural or philosophical belief-systems associated with anthropocentric
beliefs?
Q3. How are various religious, cultural or philosophical belief-systems associated with environmentally
harmful attitudes and behaviours?
Q4. What profiles do “environmentally protective” and “environmentally damaging” people have?

In our view, attention should be extended to cover a whole range of belief systems beyond Christianity. These
include: monotheism (i.e., Christianity, Judaism, Islam), animism, patriarchy, atomistic individualism, Marxism
and three traditional Chinese worldviews (including Daoism, Buddhism andConfucianism). We plan to answer
the above three questions by running a series of social studies in both Australia and China.

7. Pathologies East and West

Despite being often called a “secular” nation, the proportion of monotheistic believers in Australia is not much
lower than that in the US. Therefore, the Lynn White thesis is highly relevant here. Of the religions that are
officially sanctioned in China, monotheism is the fastest growing one – providing a perfect opportunity to track
any parallel growth in the factors suggested by White’s theory. Furthermore, sociological studies on White’s
thesis may very well have different results for Australia and China. For example, some writers have argued that
anthropocentrism may be as much a product of politics as of religion (Proctor and Berry 2005). To test this
speculation we would need to map the study of White’s various claims to the political demographics of studied
populations. If the speculation is true, the prevalence of anthropocentrism among populations where there is a
strong religion-politics connection (e.g., Christian populations in the U.S.) is likely to be very different from that
in populations where there exists no such connection (e.g., their counterparts in China). So the research will
show whether empirical data backup Proctor and Berry’s conjecture.
We argue that Australia and China would also be very suitable places for testing the other three theories
already sketched for a number of reasons. For example, since Australia is a decidedly multi-cultural society it
will be considerably easier to find good representations of the different population groups that we propose to
study. Further, since Chinese cities are considerably less multi-cultural, and demographically very different from
Australian ones, comparison of results between the two countries will make our study significantly more
sophisticated than those previously carried out in the U.S. A comparative study of this kind will also provide
valuable insights for environmental diplomacy between Australia and China.

8. Design and Method – How to Make Philosophy Experimental

So far, we have only laid out a framework for approaching the analysis of belief systems and their correlations –
if any – with environmental attitudes and behaviours. The next challenge is to get into more details about the
design and the methods that are needed to yield useful and philosophically informative results. The testing of the
empirical claims underlying the theories already discussed involves five different stages:
Stage 1. Survey design and face validity test: We have to design survey scales for measuring the degree of a
population’s monotheistic beliefs, animistic beliefs, patriarchal beliefs, atomistic-individualistic beliefs, Marxist
beliefs, anthropocentric beliefs, their commitment to Daoism, Confucianism, or Buddhism and their
environmental protectiveness, respectively. Following standard sociological practice means devising scales that
have face validity – that is that they have a good chance ofmeasuring what they claim to be measuring. Since we
are dealing with philosophical, religious and ideological beliefs, we need to ensure expert input (including our
own) into this part of the design. Here is how we do this. For each survey scale, we conduct a review of core
relevant scholarly literature, in the light of which we draft a 15-item scale to capture the essential aspects of the
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property being measured. We ask at least four international experts in the relevant area to review, and suggest
modifications to, our 15 items. In the light of expert comments, we revise the draft scales. Sometimes it is
possible to use existing survey instruments to help with scale design. For example, an environmental
protectiveness scale can be inspired by existing instruments such as the New Ecological Paradigm Scale (Dunlap
2000), the Environmentally Protective Behaviour Scale (Black 1997), and the World Value Survey (WVS 2005).
Stage 2. Criterion-related validity tests: Further validation – or revision – of scales that are meant to identify
fairly well-defined populations can be achieved by using criterion groups (e.g., attendees of church, synagogue
or mosque) from the target population. This is a group publicly recognized as having the property being
measured. We then apply it to a contrast group (e.g., the Atheist Society), which is publicly recognized as not
having the property being measured. High scores from the criterion group and low scores from the contrast
group on the relevant scale gives the scale validity. Note that this test is not suitable for scales that measure
properties for which no criterion groups can be easily identified.
Stage 3. Pilot study and factor analysis: All going well, we should now have some scales that look suitable for
use on a broader population. Before going for a full-scale study, it is wise at this stage to conduct a pilot study
on a limited number of populations for a limited number of belief systems. We would therefore run a series of
factor analyses on the collected data to determine the correlations among the factors. In the light of the analyses,
we revise and finalize all the scales.
Factor analysis is crucial to this part of the project. This is a statistical technique which reduces complex
data about many different variables to a set of potentially explanatory underlying ‘factors’. In the early days of
ethology, factor analysis of complex observed animal behaviours and gestures led to the theory that four
underlying factors – desire for food, desire for reproduction, aggression and fear – could explain most of the
behaviours observed in many animal populations, and that clusters of very different behaviours could be
assigned to each of these factors. Consider the four theories that all postulate anthropocentrism as part of the
cause of environmental destruction – the Lynn White hypothesis, disenchantment, ecological feminism, and deep
ecology. These theories in effect postulate an underlying factor as the cause of environmental crisis –
monotheism, rejection of animism, patriarchy or atomistic-individualism. Factor analysis at the pilot stage will
determine whether these four factors are sociologically distinct.
For example, suppose we have a satisfactory scale measuring the presence of each of these factors. If the
correlations among items within each scale were perfect and correlations among items from different scales were
zero, then the scales would measure sociologically perfectly distinct factors. But factor analyses often show that
factors originally thought to be independent actually form fewer larger clusters, or, conversely, further divide
into a larger number of smaller sociologically distinct factors. A finding of this sort at the pilot stage would gives
a good reason for re-conceptualising the boundaries between factors and developing new concepts.
Stage 4. Experiment design: Of course, we are not just interested in beliefs and attitudes, but want to find out if
these are correlated also with behaviour. To investigate this, we have designed an experiment for testing
environmentally charitable behaviours (ECB). The experimental procedures are as follows:
Step 1. Participant fills in a survey (containing the scales developed in previous stages of the project).
Step 2. Participant is paid a small sum of money as a reward for completing the survey, on the condition that
they donate 20% of the reward to one of two charitable foundations pre-selected by the researcher.
Step 3. Participant is presented with a choice between two (comparable) charitable foundations: (a) one for
restoring a human-built heritage site , and (b) one for restoring a natural heritage site.
Step 4. Participant must donate 20% of the reward to only one foundation.
Step 5. If the participant has donated to foundation (b) in step (4), they are asked to voluntarily donate a further
10% of the reward to foundation (b) again.
Interpretations of Results: Those who donate to foundation (a) in step (4) behave more charitably toward the
built environment than to the natural environment. Those who donate to foundation (b) in step (4) behave
charitably towards the natural environment. Those who donate to foundation (b) again in step (5) behave
strongly charitably towards the natural environment.
The ECB experiment and the environmentally protective scale previously developed will together
measure the property of environmental protectiveness.

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Stage 5. Full study: Once the first four stages are satisfactorily completed, revisions made to scales, new factors
identified, and so on, we are ready to proceed to a full study aimed at answering the three research questions
outlined above. First, we apply the eight finalized scales and perform the ECB experiment on 1200 people
randomly selected from the target population. Second, we run a series of factor analyses to determine (Q1) how
anthropocentrism correlates with environmental protectiveness, (Q2) how each of the other belief systems
correlates with anthropocentrism, and (Q3) how each of the other systems correlates to environmental
protectiveness.
Answers to Q1 will determine to what extent the psycho-behavioural thesis of non-anthropocentrism is
true or false. Answers to Q2 and Q3 with reference to monotheism, animism, patriarchy, and atomistic
individualism will determine the cogency of the Lynn White Argument, the Disenchantment Argument, the
Ecological Feminist Argument, and the Deep Ecological Holism Argument, respectively.

9. How Many Worldviews out There?

There are well established philosophical reasons for expecting a negative correlation between Marxism and
animism. (Weber famously blamed disenchantment on ascetic Protestantism, and White, in his paper,
provocatively comments that “Marxism, like Islam, is a Judæo-Christian heresy”). Suppose our study finds such
a negative correlation. Then further answers to Q2 and Q3 with reference to Marxism will determine the
plausibility of the Disenchantment Argument. A positive correlation between Marxism and anthropocentrism
will confirm the first premise of the Disenchantment Argument, whereas a negative correlation between
Marxism and environmental protectiveness will confirm the conclusion of the Disenchantment Argument.
Clearly, using survey instruments of these kinds along with standard methodologies from the sciences, has the
potential to inform philosophical theorizing, possibly undermine some otherwise plausible-looking speculations,
and even lead to reconceptualizing the nature of some problems. Our early experience in China last year shows
how this latter possibility can be realised.
In a pilot study runin Nanjing in 2006, we encountered a fascinating result. Having developed and
tested scales for Confucianism, Buddhism and Daoism, we found that these belief systems – though arguably
philosophically distinct – were not empirically separable in the population under study. Some scholars have
speculated that Daoism is more environmentally-friendly than Confucianism. But if our finding were more
generally confirmed, it would be virtually impossible to test, say, a theory that postulates Confucianism as
having a certain influence on the population against another theory that postulates Buddhism or Daoism instead
as having that particular influence. As a result of our preliminary studies, we have introduced the concept
“TCW” (traditional Chinese worldview) to capture the unique clustering of those three philosophical belief
systems in the population. The same pilot study shows, however, that Marxism and monotheism are both
sociologically distinct from TCW and from each other. So even at the level of pilot studies of this sort, it is
possible to encounter philosophically and conceptually exciting findings.
We did not run the atomistic-individualist scale or the patriarchy scale in the Nanjing study. However, it
might be expected that there is a negative correlation between TCW and atomistic individualism (Triandis 1995),
and perhaps a positive correlation between TCW and patriarchy (Stacey 1983). Suppose our future study is to
show that TCW has, as philosophically speculated, a positive correlation with patriarchy, but a negative
correlation with atomistic individualism. Then further answers to Q2 and Q3 with reference to TCW will
determine the plausibility of the Ecological Feminism Argument as well as that of the Deep Ecological Holism
Argument. How is this? A positive correlation between TCW (hence patriarchy) and anthropocentrism will
confirm the first premise of the Ecological Feminism Argument, but disconfirm the first premise of the Deep
Ecological Holism Argument (which links environmental destructiveness with atomistic individualism). By
contrast, a negative correlation between TCW and environmental protectiveness will confirm the conclusion of
the Ecological Feminism Argument, but disconfirm the conclusion of the Deep Ecological Holism Argument.
Many tools and methods well established in the social sciences, we argue, can justifiably be adopted for
use in research on experimental philosophy. They are powerful devices for stimulating new ideas about the
origins of our environmental pathologies, and for testing the extent to which belief systems and worldviews
actually drive attitudes and behaviours. As long as empirical facts are relevant to philosophical and ethical
thought, adoption of social science methods will be a means of keeping our theorising in touch with – and be
inspired by – the motivations and behaviours of the people we are trying to describe and influence. By
collaborating with social scientists, we can hope to generate new knowledge of previously unidentified factors
and explore philosophical hypothesis about environmental sensitivities and its motivations.
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Acknowledgements
Thanks are due to Wang Guo Ping and his colleagues (Social Sciences, Nanjing Forest University) for
administering surveys in Nanjing 2006. Special thanks are due to David de Vaus (Sociology, La Trobe
University) for his advice in social scientific methodology and his help in analyzing collected data.

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