Clare Palmer | |
|---|---|
| Born | 1967 (age 57–58) |
| Education | |
| Alma mater | University of Oxford |
| Philosophical work | |
| Institutions | Texas A&M University |
| Main interests | Environmental ethics Animal ethics |
| Notable works | Environmental Ethics and Process Thinking (1998) Animal Ethics in Context (2010) |
Clare Palmer (born 1967) is a British philosopher, theologian and scholar ofenvironmental andreligious studies. She is known for her work onenvironmental andanimal ethics. She was appointed as a professor in the Department of Philosophy atTexas A&M University in 2010. She had previously held academic appointments at the Universities ofGreenwich,Stirling, andLancaster in the United Kingdom, andWashington University in St. Louis in the United States, among others.
She has published three sole-authored books:Environmental Ethics (ABC-CLIO, 1997),Environmental Ethics and Process Thinking (Oxford University Press, 1998) andAnimal Ethics in Context (Columbia University Press, 2010). She has also published two co-authored books and has edited (or co-edited) sevencollections oranthologies. She is a former editor of the religious studies journalWorldviews: Environment, Culture, Religion, and a former president of theInternational Society for Environmental Ethics.
InEnvironmental Ethics and Process Thinking, which was based on her doctoral research, Palmer explores the possibility of aprocess philosophy-inspired account of environmental ethics, focussing on the work ofAlfred North Whitehead andCharles Hartshorne. She ultimately concludes that a process ethic is not a desirable approach to environmental questions, in disagreement with some environmentalist thinkers. InAnimal Ethics in Context, Palmer asks about responsibilities to aid animals, in contrast to the typical focus in animal ethics on not harming animals. She defends a contextual, relational ethic according to which humans will typically have duties to assist onlydomestic, and notwild, animals in need. However, humans will often be permitted to assist wild animals, and may be obligated to do so if there is a particular (causal) relationship between humans and the animals' plight.
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Palmer read for aBA (Hons) in theology atTrinity College, Oxford, graduating in 1988, before reading for adoctorate in philosophy at the same university. From 1988 to 1991, she was based atWolfson College, before becoming a Holwell Senior Scholar atThe Queen's College.[1] In 1992, having previously publishedbook reviews, Palmer published her first research publication,[1] "Stewardship: A Case Study in Environmental Ethics", in theedited collectionThe Earth Beneath: A Critical Guide to Green Theology, published bySPCK. She was also, along with Ian Ball, Margaret Goodall, and John Reader, a co-editor of the volume.[2] She graduated from Oxford in 1993 with a doctorate from The Queen's College;[3] her thesis focussed onprocess philosophy andenvironmental ethics.[4] She worked as aresearch fellow in philosophy at theUniversity of Glasgow from 1992 to 1993, before becoming a lecturer inenvironmental studies at theUniversity of Greenwich. She worked at Greenwich from 1993 until 1997, after which she spent a year as a research fellow at theUniversity of Western Australia.[1] In 1997, she published her first[1] book:Environmental Ethics was published withABC-CLIO.[5] Additionally, the first issue ofWorldviews: Environment, Culture, Religion (later renamedWorldviews: Global Religions, Culture, and Ecology), apeer reviewedacademic journal inreligious studies, was published. Palmer was the founding editor,[6] and she remained editor until 2007.[1]
Palmer returned to working in the UK in 1998, becoming a lecturer in religious studies at theUniversity of Stirling.[1] That same year, she publishedEnvironmental Ethics and Process Thinking with theClarendon Press imprint ofOxford University Press.[7] This was based ultimately on her doctoral dissertation.[4] The book was reviewed by William J. Garland inEthics,[8] Richard J. Matthew inEnvironment,[9] andStephen R. L. Clark inStudies in Christian Ethics,[10]Timothy Sprigge inEnvironmental Ethics,[11] and Randall C. Morris inThe Journal of Theological Studies.[4] It was also the subject of a "forum" in the journalProcess Studies. Introduced byDavid Ray Griffin, the forum's editor,[12] it featured a "Palmer on Whithead: A Critical Evaluation" byJohn B. Cobb[13] and "Clare Palmer'sEnvironmental Ethics and Process Thinking: A Hartshornean Response" by Timothy Menta,[14] as well as a reply by Palmer herself.[15] The next year, Cobb published "Another Response to Clare Palmer" in the same journal.[16]
Palmer remained at Stirling for several years before taking up the post ofsenior lecturer in philosophy atLancaster University in 2001. While at Lancaster, she became the vice-president of theInternational Society for Environmental Ethics (ISEE). In 2005, she moved toWashington University in St. Louis, where she took up the role ofassociate professor, jointly appointed in departments of philosophy and environmental studies.[1] The same year, the five-volume encyclopaediaEnvironmental Ethics, co-edited by Palmer andJ. Baird Callicott, was published byRoutledge,[17] and, in the subsequent year, she was part of "The Animal Studies Group" which published the collectionKilling Animals with theUniversity of Illinois Press.[18] While at Washington, she was also the editor of bothTeaching Environmental Ethics (Brill, 2007)[19] andAnimal Rights (Ashgate Publishing, 2008).[20] In 2007, she was elected president of the ISEE, a position she held until 2010.[1]
In 2010, Palmer was appointedprofessor in the Department of Philosophy atTexas A&M University.[1] The same year saw the publication of herAnimal Ethics in Context withColumbia University Press.[21] Among reviews of this book were pieces byBernard Rollin inAnthrozoös,[22] Jason Zinser inThe Quarterly Review of Biology,[23] J. M. Dieterle inEnvironmental Ethics,[24] Scott D. Wilson inEthics[25] andDaniel A. Dombrowski in theJournal of Animal Ethics.[26] She has subsequently published papers on the theme of assisting animals in the wild—ideas discussed in herAnimal Ethics in Context[27]—in animal-focussed journals,[28][29] prompting commentary from Joel MacClellan,[30] Gordon Burghart,[31] andCatia Faria.[32]
While at Texas A&M, Palmer co-edited the 2011Veterinary Science: Humans, Animals and Health with Erica Fudge[33] and the 2014Linking Ecology and Ethics for a Changing World: Values, Philosophy, and Action with Calliott,Ricardo Rozzi, Steward Pickett, and Juan Armesto.[34] In 2015,Wiley-Blackwell published Palmer'sCompanion Animal Ethics, co-authored with Peter Sandøe and Sandra Corr,[35] and, in 2023, Wiley published herWildlife Ethics: The Ethics of Wildlife Management and Conservation, which was co-authored withBob Fischer, Christian Gamborg, Jordan Hampton, and Sandøe.
InEnvironmental Ethics and Process Thinking, Palmer examines whetherprocess philosophy, in particular the philosophies ofAlfred North Whitehead andCharles Hartshorne, can provide an appropriate background for engaging in environmental ethics.[8] Process thought, Clark notes, has frequently appealed more to theologically inclined environmental ethicists thanclassical theism; in particular, the views of Hartshorne and Cobb have been influential.[10]
Palmer first sets forth a process ethic. The ethic she presents is similar toJohn Stuart Mill'sutilitarianism, but while Mill's approach locates value inpleasure, Palmer's process ethic locates value in "richness" of experience. She then compares this ethic to several dominant schools in environmental ethics: "individualist consequentialism" (as championed byPeter Singer, Donald VanDeVeer andRobin Attfield), "individualist deontological environmental ethics" (including the diverse positions presented byAlbert Schweitzer, Kenneth Goodpastor,Tom Regan andPaul W. Taylor), "collectivist environmental ethics" (including those thinkers who advocate doing what is best for nature as a whole, such asAldo Leopold and Callicott in his earlier work) anddeep ecology.[8]
Process ethics, Palmer argues, is closer to individualist consequentialism than individualist deontological environmental ethics. In considering collectivist environmental ethics, Palmer asks how process thinkers could approach natural collectives, such asecosystems. She argues that Whitehead could view them as single entities with a good of their own, while Hartshorne could not. The primary difference between process ethics and collectivist environmental ethics, however, is that the former has atheological basis. The advocates of deep ecology have previously sought support from the views of Whitehead; two affinities are the sharedholism and a shared concern with the extension of theself, but Palmer finds that the views of Whitehead and the views of the deep ecology advocateArne Næss differ in these areas.[8]
The book was not intended to either present or defend any particular position in environmental ethics, but rather to explore what process philosophers could say or have said about environmental issues.[15] There are, for Palmer, two key problems with a process approach to environmental ethics. The first concerns the value of human and nonhuman life; for process thinkers, the latter will always be trumped by the former in terms of value. The second concerns human perspectives; as process philosophy invariably models interpretation of all entities on human experience, it is not well-suited to characterising non-human nature. Palmer thus concludes that process philosophy does not provide a suitable basis for environmental ethics.[8]
The book was hailed as an important addition to the literature in both environmental ethics and process philosophy.[4] Garland offered two challenges to Palmer's claims. First, he challenged her linking of process ethics with individualist consequentialism, arguing that it is instead somewhere between individualist consequentialism and deep ecology. Second, he challenged Palmer's claim that process philosophers will always favour human ends over nonhuman ends.[8] Cobb and Menta, though both welcoming her consideration of process philosophy, challenged Palmer's interpretation of the philosophy of Whitehead and Hartshorne on a number of points.[13][14]
In addition to writing on process approaches to the environment, Palmer has contributed toChristian environmental ethics more broadly,[36][37][38] urban environmental ethics,[39][40] and scholarship on the environment in the work of English writers.[41][42] Much of her work in environmental ethics has explored questions concerning animals, including the tension between protecting individuals and protecting species.[39][40][43][44]
Palmer does not explicitly connectEnvironmental Ethics and Process Thought toAnimal Ethics in Context, her second monograph; the latter does, however, address environmental ethics, insofar as it offers an attempt to bridge environmental ethics and animal ethics.[26] In contrast to more typical approaches to animal ethics which focus on the ethics of harming animals, Palmer asks, inAnimal Ethics in Context, about the ethics of aiding animals,[25] with a focus on the distinction betweenwild anddomestic animals.[26] She follows mainstream animal ethics approaches in arguing that humans have aprima facie duty not to harm any animal. However, when it comes to aiding animals, she argues that human obligations differ depending on the context.[26]
Palmer begins by defending the claim that animals have moral standing, and then surveys three key approaches to animal ethics; utilitarian approaches,animal rights approaches, andcapabilities approaches. All are lacking, she argues, as they are fundamentally capacity-oriented, and thus unable to properly take account of human relationships to animals. However, her approach leans more strongly towards a Regan-inspired rights view. She next identifies different kinds of relations humans may have with animals:affective,contractual and, most significantly,causal.[25]
Palmer identifies thelaissez-faire intuition (LFI), which is the intuition that humans do not have an obligation to aid wild animals in need. There are three forms of the LFI:
Ultimately, Palmer endorses the no-contact version of the LFI. She defends the distinction between doing and allowing harm, and then defends the idea that humans have different positive obligations towards domestic animals and wild animals. At the centre of Palmer's approach is the fact that humans are causally responsible for the hardship faced by some animals, but not the hardship faced by others. She then deploys this philosophy in a number of imagined cases in which humans have varying relations to particular animals in need. She closes the book by considering possible objections, including the idea that her approach would not require someoneto save a drowning child at little cost to themselves.[25]
Thus, Palmer argues that humans are not normally required to aid wild animals in need.[27][29] The philosopher Joel MacClellan, a critic of intervention, challenges Palmer on three grounds: first, he says that the difference between our obligations to domestic and wild animals in Palmer'sthought experiments could be justified on scientific, rather than moral, grounds; second, he challenges Palmer's characterisation of wildness as a relationship, rather than a capacity, arguing that a description of an animal as wild likely conveys that the animal has certain capacities lacked by domestic animals; and, third, he suggests that just as a utilitarian approach to wild animal suffering maydemand too much, Palmer's contextual approach maypermit too much, by allowing the policing of nature. The affinities between utilitarian and contextualist approaches, MacClellan argues, come from their shared idea of what is and is not valuable.[30] The pro-intervention philosopher Catia Faria criticises Palmer's argument from the other direction. Faria challenges Palmer's account by pointing to the counter-intuitive conclusions it would reach, Faria claims, in cases of assisting humans with whom an individual does not have significant relationships. Unless Palmer is willing to deny that humans have obligations to help suffering distant humans, Faria argues, the account cannot justify not aiding animals.[32]
In addition to contextual animal ethics and her exploration of animals in environmental ethics, Palmer has written ondisenhanced animals (i.e., animals that have been engineered to lose certain capacities)[46][47] andcompanion animals.[48][49] The latter topic was the focus of her co-authored textCompanion Animal Ethics,[35] which explores ethical issues concerning companion animals, including feeding, medical care, euthanasia and others.[50]
In addition to her books, Palmer has written or co-written over 30 articles in peer-reviewed journals and over 25 articles in scholarly collections, as well as various encyclopaedia articles and book reviews.[1] Editorial duties have included acting as an associate editor for Callicott andRobert Frodeman's two-volume encyclopaediaEnvironmental Philosophy and Ethics and editing the journalWorldviews. Palmer has served on the editorial boards of twoSpringer series (first, the International Library of Environmental, Agricultural and Food Ethics, and, second, Ecology and Ethics) and oneSydney University Press series: Animal Publics. She has served on the editorial boards of various journals, includingEnvironmental Humanities;Ethics, Policy and Environment;Environmental Ethics;Environmental Values; theJournal of Agricultural and Environmental Ethics; and theJournal for the Study of Religion, Culture and Nature.[1]
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