ABSTRACT
From a transactional perspective human culture is both immanent in and yet transcends nature, while nature as well is immanent in and yet transcends human culture. This claim is empirical; its normative counterpart is the suggestion that culture should not be permitted to completely dominate nature just as nature should not be permitted to completely dominate culture. Moral refl ection, therefore, must include both the human and the natural. Colwell, writing from a Deweyan transactional perspective, suggests that since both human and nonhuman lifeforms are part of nature, nature should be defi ned as “the totality of existing biophysical reality” [Ka28: 103]. From this perspective
. . . the locus of moral evaluation is the entire environmental complex, a structural setting which requires examination of the effects of natural changes on multiple nonhuman as well as human aspects of it. The fundamental consideration is not which values best promote the interests of humans . . . but which values best promote the collective life and interests of the diverse membership of the environmental complex as a whole. [Ka28: 109]
While we are capable of expressing a moral concern for the whole, such a concern implies neither a responsibility to manage the whole nor the duty to completely refrain from using resources found in nature to further the goals of human culture.
