About this book
Humans pose an unprecedented threat to life in all its great diversity of forms. The human-induced extinction rate has been compared to "mass extinctions" of the past. But this language masks the fact that the crisis is due to voluntary, and thus, avoidable choices and actions. Speaking of Forms of Life shows that at the root of this crisis is the tragic inadequacy of the language predominantly used to represent and address what we are doing, including the language of "sustainable development", "rights" for animals and the rest of nature, their "intrinsic value", and conservation of species as "populations". This talk alienates us from the other living things, from what they actually are, have and do, and it perpetuates the harm and loss. Campagna and Guevara compellingly argue, on rigorous but accessible grounds, that there is an alternative language to guide conservation, in confronting the radically urgent, ethical issues it faces. This is a language with which we are all familiar, mastered by naturalists, from Aristotle to Audubon. It articulates the primary value in life and the standard that must guide how human beings should live, as one form of life, among countless others. This book is a homecoming for those who practice conservation to, above all else, secure a creature's ability to satisfy the necessities of its form of life.
Contents
Chapter 1. Uncovering Grammars
Chapter 2. About the Authors
Chapter 3. The Error of Wuhan
Chapter 4. Provoking Extinctions
Chapter 5. Limits of Language
Chapter 6. Glossaries, Euphemisms, Metaphors, Analogies and Catchy Words
Chapter 7. Introduction to the Language of Extinction
Chapter 8. Represent-Evaluate
Chapter 9. Standards
Chapter 10. The Unique Logic of Life
Chapter 11. The Form-Bearer Unity
Chapter 12. From Natural Goodness to Moral Goodness
Chapter 13. The Value in Life
Chapter 14. The Value of Consciousness
Chapter 15. Life Forms, Artifacts, and in Between
Chapter 16. Pluralism
Chapter 17. Species and Forms of Life
Chapter 18. Conservation Without Life Forms
Chapter 19. A Bridge from Natural Goodness to Morality
Chapter 20. Natural Goodness Encompasses Moral Goodness
Chapter 21. Agent, Action, and Modalities of Action
Chapter 22. Rationality and the Good
Chapter 23. Practicing the Conservation of Life Forms
Chapter 24. Contrasting Life-Form Conservation with Alternatives
Chapter 25. Leaving Things as They Were
Chapter 26. Objections and Misunderstandings.
Customer Reviews
Biography
Claudio Campagna has an M.D. from the University of Buenos Aires, Argentina, and a Ph.D. in biology from the University of California, Santa Cruz. He started his career as a scientist, working on the behavioural ecology of marine mammals. But the core of his career was spent as a conservation biologist with the Wildlife Conservation Society. He has published widely in the fields of animal behaviour and conservation, including Ethology and Behavioral Ecology of Otariids and the Odobenid (co-edited with Robert Harcourt; Springer, 2021). In the field of conservation and language, he has published Bailando en Tierra de Nadie: Hacia un Nuevo Discurso del Ambientalismo (Editorial del Nuevo Extremo, 2013).
Daniel Guevara is a Professor Emeritus at the University of California, Santa Cruz. He did graduate work in philosophy at Princeton University and the University of California, Los Angeles, taking his Ph.D. from the latter. While at UC Santa Cruz he taught widely in ethics and the history of philosophy, including environmental ethics, moral psychology, Kant and Wittgenstein. He has published widely in these fields as well, including Kant's Theory of Moral Motivation (Westview Press, 2000) and Wittgenstein and the Philosophy of Mind (Oxford University Press, 2012), co-edited with Jonathan Ellis.
