If we come from the earth just like animals - isn't everything we produce wilderness? Beaver dams are wilderness, why don't we consider our dams wilderness too?

nalc · 1 year

I would argue that it's not possible to draw a distinct line between "natural" and "artificial" constructs. The only definition I've heard has arbitrarily referenced one species in particular (humans). You're absolutely right that there is a contradiction in how we calll a beaver dam natural and a human dam aritificial, or how heating our food over a fire we built is natural, but heating our food in a microwave we built is artificial. If an animal uses a tool, it's considered natural, but if humans use a tool, it isn't. The entire concept of 'natural' versus 'artificial' is irrelevant. Does natural mean unaffected by life? Obviously not. Does it mean unaffected by intelligent life? Only if you want to call beaver dams and bird nests "artificial". There's no definition that doesn't include humans, and even then, most people would say that some things humans do are 'natural' - humans did occur in nature, after all.

hyperstupid · 1 year

Something relevant to my Philosophy degree! Yay!

Essentially, nature and artifice are both linguistic (mental) tools to give us an understanding of the world. We assume cars are artifice (man made) and rocks are natural (exist independent of us). The distinction isn't inherently clear, but it does exist. This sounds counter-intuitive, but consider the "Sorites Paradox"... In the Sorites Paradox, it is asked when specifically a heap becomes a heap. If you drop sand grains one at a time onto themselves, when do those grains become a heap?

The answer is that there is no point of distinction. When the heap is a heap it is a heap, even if that's unempirical.

Some things exist with blurred borderlines. Questions that come up in these borderline cases are questions like, "When did I begin living?" Or "Where is the "I" that I refer to when I say "I"?

Relevant to this question, some will state that there is no distinction whatsoever. This is intellectually lazy, or it's something proposed mainly by those too enthusiastically dependent on science. That's like stating it's too difficult to distinguish the difference between hot and cold, because there is no inherent point at which hot becomes hot and cold becomes cold.

Or, this is where science stops and Philosophy begins.

sexinariverwithu · 1 year

Because the very definition of the word is "a place untouched by human activity".

punkamena · 1 year

Humans consider themselves to have more consciousness of the effects of what they make and do, and the ability to choose to do things differently. Other animals aren't considered as having that self-knowledge and self-control. So I'd say anything created by a maker who can choose to do otherwise is artificial. (Art is a series of carefully considered choices, and so is the making of anything "artificial".)

To think of them as separate, you have to define natural and artificial in relation to each other, rather than using the word natural to mean roughly "everything there is." Under the latter, artificial becomes a subset of natural, rather than an opposite.

antlion · 1 year

From a conservation point of view, the difference between the dams is speed and size. The beaver's dam behaviour arose slowly over time, and other animals and plants evolved along with it. Beaver dams create a neat little ecosystem of their own:

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2006/06/060605120417.htm

Human dams, on the other hand, happen very quickly, on a large scale, which can affect entire populations. The creation of Lake Jocassee, for example, wiped out much of the range of many rare plants:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lake_Jocassee

huxtiblejones · 1 year

That's a good question. Part of it is that we have the capacity to reason through the consequences of our actions. We are also unique in that we make things not to supply for a tiny, individual population, but rather for an entire civilization. Animals construct homes out of survival instinct, at some point human beings began constructing things for pleasure and convenience. Not everything we build is strictly for survival purposes - movie theaters, amusement parks, luxury shops. We also tend to affect the world on a much larger scale than any other animal. I'm sure if beavers built as many dams as we build cities it may have an adverse effect on the planet, especially if they could build one a large as our own dams.

burberry_diaper · 1 year

This idea occurred to me years ago while on various mind-expanding medicines. EVERYTHING is natural. Think about a refrigerator; all the materials used to make it came out of the earth. Humans built it (and the machines that might have been used in assembling it) and we are surely a product of the planet (and universe). I'm not saying everything we do or build is good, but its all natural.

yosemighty_sam · 1 year

Nature is either a distinction between human and non human, or an expression of cultural relativism. For the later, we use the term to excuse ourselves from civilized behavior. That can mean belching at a party or going camping. We often debate whether taboo behavior can be excused on the basis of whether or not it's natural, and colonists throughout history treated natives like part of the wilderness to be conquered.

dawesLIAIA · 1 year

You might find this interesting.

I most commonly see the word "wilderness" used to describe a place without human influence. In my opinion this is very much a spectrum; there are no places with zero human influence, and no places that are entirely controlled by human influence.

Of course you're right that humans are animals, so the definition of wilderness as "without human influence" is pretty arbitrary. In some cases I think this definition could be useful, because it allows us to think about the impact of a species' actions on the environment - beaver dams contribute to the functioning of the ecosystem, whereas in some (not all) cases, human dams can be incredibly destructive of other natural processes.

The article in the link discusses various cultural and historical perspectives on wilderness, considering the different values we have historically placed on wilderness and the implications of these choices.

yanivlib · 1 year

That really depends on what definition of "nature" you're using. If we check Wiktionary, three different definitions are given for "nature":

The natural world; consisting of all things unaffected by or predating human technology, production and design. e.g. the natural environment, virgin ground, unmodified species, laws of nature.
The innate characteristics of a thing. What something will tend by its own constitution, to be or do. Distinct from what might be expected or intended.
The summary of everything that has to do with biological, chemical and physical states and events in the physical universe.

If you go by the first definition, the answer is clear. By definition, everything you do is "unnatural". But that's not a satisfying answer. It amounts to saying "it's unnatural because that's what unnatural is". If you choose the third definition, then everything you do, everything you encounter, is, by definition, natural. Again, this is not a satisfying answer, as it amounts to saying "it's natural because everything is".

So, we are left with the second definition, and here is where things get interesting. By the second definition Humans are "unnatural" because somehow, at some point, we diverged from what was supposed to happen by itself. We became something "outside" of the natural process. What we do becomes distinct from what would have happened "naturally". That thought, that concept, is the reason the first definition exists. Because we believe that we are something more then "natural".

If you ask me, that is the outmost height of human pretentiousness. To think that we are somehow different from the animals around us, from the sky above us, from the earth below us - that in any meaningful sense we make a difference, that in any sense we are "unnatural" - that's just mind-boggling for me.

The way I see it, a jet plane is as natural as tree, the Internet is as natural as a spider's web, and we're is as natural as a beaver.

WellEndowedMod · 1 year

Wilderness or wildland is a natural environment on Earth that has not been significantly modified by human activity.

Dams are made from concrete and steel reinforcement (I believe?), they're pretty permanent. We're disrupted the environment and we're disrupting it on a much bigger scale than Beavers. For much longer too. Plus, we use materials that we have to create ourselves. Natural ingredients may be used but the materials themselves are still alien to nature. Beavers use anything they can find from the ground to create a natural Dam which will only last for so long.

kyin · 1 year

Yep, agree with you. Changes the perception of "niche construction."

Chakote · 1 year

It's an argument which has actually caused me a lot of introspection in the past. The verdict that I reached is that it's just a question of semantics which is really unresolvable unless we start using philosophical terms which have been designed to get around that sort of thing. I stopped thinking about stuff like this because I was starting to realize there is no universally true answer to anything and I was becoming some kind of intellectual nihilist. Thanks for opening that wound, by the way.

fun_young_man · 1 year

I've long though this, so did George Carlin. Its hubris to think otherwise at this point.

[deleted] · 1 year

Maybe it's because humans are animals too?

QuasiStellar · 1 year

The difference between our dams and beaver's dams is that ours are innovative. We utilize knowledge that several generations have gathered and synthesized it to make a dam that is much better than a dam that would have been build a hundred or a thousand years ago. Beavers don't use architectural knowledge from previous generations to design progressively better dams. They always construct them the same way.

Lots42 · 1 year

If a beaver dam falls apart, it's hard to tell a week later.

Say_La_V · 1 year

Relevant Abstruse Goose

Shits_On_Groupthink · 1 year

Hahaha awesome thought

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