Casetta Elena
Department of Philosophy and Education, University of Turin, Turin, Italy.
Hist Philos Life Sci. 2020 Apr 30;42(2):18. doi: 10.1007/s40656-020-00312-3.
The concept of nature in Western thought has been informed by the assumption of a categorical distinction between natural and artificial entities, which goes back to John Stuart Mill or even Aristotle. Such a way of articulating the natural/artificial distinction has proven unfit for conservation purposes mainly because of the extent and the pervasiveness of human activities that would leave no nature left to be conserved, and alternative views have been advanced. In this contribution, after arguing for the importance of the concept of naturalness as a guide for conservation, I will try to provide an account of the natural/artificial distinction suited to contemporary conservation framing. Focusing on a particular kind of objects that I suggest to name "environmental objects", I propose and defend the view of "naturalness as independence" according to which the more or less an environmental object's identity conditions and survival depend on human intervention, the more or less that object is artificial or natural, respectively. According to this view, conserving environmental objects will equate to maintaining or improving their naturalness (vis-à-vis their artefactualness) or even originating artificial objects that may become new natural objects. This view has the advantage, on the one hand, of providing a rationale for a distinction which is not only part of how people think, but also pervasive in conservation practices and policies and, on the other hand, of accounting for the global pervasiveness of human intervention in the so-called natural world.
西方思想中的自然概念一直受到自然实体与人工实体之间绝对区分这一假设的影响，这种区分可以追溯到约翰·斯图尔特·密尔甚至亚里士多德。事实证明，这种阐述自然/人工区分的方式并不适合用于保护目的，主要原因在于人类活动的范围和普遍性使得几乎没有自然可供保护，于是人们提出了其他观点。在本文中，在论证了自然性概念作为保护指南的重要性之后，我将尝试对适合当代保护框架的自然/人工区分进行阐释。聚焦于一类我建议命名为“环境客体”的特定对象，我提出并捍卫“自然即独立”的观点，即一个环境客体的身份条件和存续或多或少依赖于人类干预，那么该客体就或多或少分别是人工的或自然的。根据这一观点，保护环境客体将等同于维持或提升它们的自然性（相对于它们的人工性），甚至创造可能成为新自然客体的人工客体。这一观点的优势在于，一方面，它为一种区分提供了理论依据，这种区分不仅是人们思维方式的一部分，而且在保护实践和政策中普遍存在；另一方面，它解释了人类对所谓自然世界干预的全球普遍性。
