Ecological Value???

	In this paper I hope to explore the nature of ecological value. We shall ask such questions as what is it, is it important, what role does or should it play and, finally, does ecological value really exist or is it the fiction of a group of environmental conservatives who stand in the way of civilization or progress and its inherent powers of expansion and development? In answering these questions, or at least in our thematization of them, I hope to clarify this controversial territory and in the process give to this debate in our society a more rational form. As the world has little time left to remain in an undecided mood, on this question of conservation, we should waste no more time in bringing ourselves to that collective formulation of a response that takes these matters sensibly into its consideration. If we delay our resolution of this problematic area in the management of our lands, seas and atmosphere then we will surely find little left to conserve in the relatively pristine form that nature originally bequeathed to us. In an extreme form, in the formulation of this dilemma, we might ask ourselves should we lock up areas of this planet in national parks and wildernesses, or, create reserves that merely restrict the manner of their exploitation? In a question that must be faced with honesty we must ask ourselves does conservation really matter? Does, for example, a programme for the preservation of the last fifty butterflies of an endangered species that refuse to breed successfully in some obscure part of the Amazon really have any substantial value? Would our precious money spent on such a programme be in truth a waste of resources when our limited dollars should be earmarked for the preservation of members of our own species less well off and in no condition, or not in a situation, of being able to either look after themselves or look after each other? Surely every species on this planet is, in the infinity of time, doomed to extinction, why then do we not accept the inevitable and let fate realize this inescapable fact about all species on this planet? Personally, if you would allow my own thoughts to intrude at this point and declare the type of ground upon which I stand, I feel every square inch of this planet is meant to be exploited to the full and hope you will allow me to argue for this apparently unfashionable position?

	To start this paper let me propose the following thought-experiment...

	Let us imagine that some time has elapsed after a very serious world war and the people on this planet have recovered from the ravages of a nuclear holocaust. Many species were eliminated from the face of this earth and in their place people now swarm about in their teeming millions. A group of intellectuals and politicians get together to discuss the management of this planet. In their wisdom they decide to eliminate the many species that still remain. All animals, all insects, all plant-life, all fungi, all bacteria, all viruses, etc. will be eliminated. The only exceptions to this list will be mankind itself and one strain of blue-green algae. This particular organism will be confined in large very durable self-sealing transparent plastic bags created to last at least a thousand years. Into these bags all domestic human wastes will be injected on a monthly basis and the last month's produce harvested at the same time by giant robots. From the photosynthesis of this re-cycled waste factories will manufacture all the food products designed to be consumed. Using the plentiful power generated from fusion devices all other wastes are carefully monitored and removed. The ratio between oxygen and carbon dioxide is also carefully monitored and controlled. To prevent wind erosion and counterbalance the high reflectivity of these plastic cells all hilly and mountainous regions of this planet not flattened are tar-sealed in a dark bitumen substance. As things stand mankind has all that is necessary for its survival. Noting the extreme circumstances behind the imposition of this reconstructed environment can we ask ourselves what value might have been lost in our drastic simplification of the world's complex eco-systems? Having reduced our flora and fauna to one strain each of primitive blue-green algae and the sophistication of ourselves (now free from all disease, the pangs of hunger and the limitations of poverty), let us ask ourselves what would be the state of our final balance sheet? Perhaps in our coming to an understanding of what we may have lost, or gained, in these extreme circumstances might help us to better appreciate the issues forced upon us by this current omnipresent and often illogical debate on conservation?

	In previous papers I have discussed the unique transcendental form of value. As I regard all forms of judgment as having the same mechanics and dynamics at the psychological level of the judgmental act itself and perceiving all forms of value as arising through the exercise of a process of judgment we are led to ask ourselves the question in what manner can we differentiate one kind of value from some other, e.g. aesthetical value from ethical value, etc? In previous discussions of this question I arrived at a method for discerning six forms of primary value. Let me analyze this hypothetical situation or thought-experiment in the light of these six forms of primary value to discover in what way value may have been lost or enhanced through this extreme policy of non-conservation.
	Primary value was seen to arise from a polarization of various elements in the existential processes that constitute the continuous formation of the life-world. The life-world was seen as the immanent ground and transcendent horizon for the intentional polarization of a phenomenal subjective sense of ego in its differentiation from the sense of some phenomenal object or objectified other. The collective assembly of, and interaction between, these various objective objects and subjective egos creating and constituting the overall sense of a phenomenal world. In the internal or external interaction of these three aspects in our structural and functional differentiation of the life-world we derived six combinations as listed in the following chart...
Six Forms of Primary Value
1.	Object-Object Interaction:	Thematical Value.			2.	Object-Ego Interaction:		Aesthetical Value.			3.	Ego-Ego Interaction:		Ethical Value.				4.	Ego-World Interaction:		Pragmatical Value.			5.	Object-World Interaction:	Ontical Value.
6.	World-World Interaction:		Trans-Thematical Value.

	In order to evaluate possible losses and gains in primary value in an evaluation of the hypothetical situation as described in our thought experiment let us work our way through this list of primary values with this objective in mind.

Thematical Value In Relation To Ecological Value.

	Thematical value is that value derived from logical functions and functions of applied logic, identification and/or the transformation of identity. With regard to our investigation into the nature of ecological value we can note that a successful non-conservational attitude merely eliminates various categories of objects and states from our current catalogue or inventory of the planet. For example, the demise of a species of Amazonian butterfly is the loss of that species from our ledger of living things currently living in the world. Of course a number of museums, etc. might have preserved specimens of that extinct species, still, a loss of an object or state as it is meant to exist is a loss of richness in the world by the same degree. Fewer objects and states and less variety in those objects and states in the world leaves the world relatively poverty stricken. It stands to reason that a severe loss of items in this particular inventory decreases the existential richness of this world and thus in this regard there is a loss in thematical value. 
	This loss would also be reflected in our natural languages. The living world colours our speech in almost every topic, in almost every change in intentional direction, in every turn of phrase. Echoes of past epochs in our social evolution are preserved there and overlaid by newer material. Still, these quaint images have some contact with the world today. Most of us living in cities no longer witness the harvests, e.g., but our language is full of such expressions that full back on that type of expression and reap the wider meaning or meanings intended. Overall, through progress one hopes the world has become a richer place to live in? An impoverished landscape would eventually impoverish our language and therein impoverish our ways of thinking and the subtlety of our thought.
	To what degree we put a value on this lost value most likely reflects the way we treat value in general and this can be examined in an investigation that considers both our other forms of primary value and the manner in which we treat an interaction between these six forms of primary value, i.e. the way we map a complex interaction between these primary fields or distinctive spheres of influence. Complex interactions between primary forms of value as it effects an evaluation of ecological value (as a phenomenon in the world) will be examined later in this paper.
	Do we want one variety of snake, one variety of bird, one variety of monkey on this planet or in our zoos or token members of each species? Must we persist with the idea that areas should be put aside that can effectively conserve themselves and therein preserve the richness of fauna and flora therein contained? What type of value do we put on this desire for the preservation of thematic richness in our fauna and flora currently to hand?

Aesthetical Value In Relation To Ecological Value

	A beautiful bonzai tree in an antique pot is so contrived to suggest a real tree. Through artful manipulation the harmony of a real tree under natural conditions is to be suggested to the viewer. The tree in its natural state grows through the resolution of all forces that would otherwise disrupt the growth of that tree, e.g. in its meeting too much wind, too much rain, too little sun, too little soil, etc. In meeting and matching all these competing forces a tree effectively balances and harmonizes all these disparate factors through the spatio-temporal realization of its being. The bonzai gardener in their intervention must also evoke this richness of natural harmony. Such balance however cannot be perfect or static, as it would, thank goodness, the growth of the tree itself must unbalance such a boring state of affairs. Hence the balance that this type of artist, and all types of artists for that matter, would seek to contrive and evoke for their audience must be an unbalanced balance or the balance of an unbalanced state of affairs. An experience of this ongoing resolution of forces, forces that must seek continuous resolution, is experienced as a state of aesthetic delight, a delight equal to the richness of that process of resolution. Without doubt, and I would be the first to confess this, the natural world is mine of aesthetic enjoyment. Into its infinite depths we can forever dig away and taste its ever changing patterns of harmony, and in the process experientially come to enjoy this richness that reveals itself through the temptation and seductiveness of its ever present delightfulness. But what real value should we place upon this perhaps frivolous dissipation of our mental energy and attention? Should we allow ourselves to waft through life like Ferdinand the bull content to enjoy the smell of grass and sniff the perfume of scented flowers scattered amid such fragrant pasture? Whether we regard the aesthetic moment in its reception as a dissipation of our patrimony or a refinement of our sensitivities we should at least recognize in the context of this controversy that there is an important aesthetic strand running through this debate. Without doubt the natural world left to its own devices is a place of great beauty. Although I am sure this beauty is equally spread in the natural constitution of this world, from the smallest atomic particle to the immensity of a mega-galactic cluster, in our reception of this natural world not all parts of its meet in an equality of appreciation. Those locations of natural grandeur that evoke for us deeper feelings of the aesthetic, of the sublime, are without doubt more viciously fought over in our ecological battles. Are these tableaus fought over because they inspire us? But if all people were to be inspired by the same locale then surely there would be no contest of opinion? Then, if an aesthetic mood or reason motivates this ambition for preservation in those people that respond this way to that piece of the natural environment could we dare ask ourselves if we could not improve the same with the liberal sprinkling of castles and temples, enchanted pavilions and bridges and other endearing man-made features to enrapture a more cultivated palate? Why must nature be left naked or in a raw state? Could not refinements be added to communicate important messages on the subject of morales, religion, culture, science and, dare I say it, of a political nature? Is the environment purely an aesthetic domain, an issue to be fought over on aesthetic criteria? My intuition about the motives of other people on this very question tells me that I should not just think along such lines? An aesthetic strand certainly enters the debate but cannot by itself explain adequately the complexity of motivation and practice behind those people that set out to defend the worth of ecological value. People must want to chain themselves to trees, threatened by an immanently harvesting, for reasons that must go further than principles of pure aesthetics. Become a work of art - chain yourself to a tree!? Let the forest workers test your aesthetic resolve! Make a stand for a beautiful world! I am sure at the end of the day they all would go home if the question of only our aesthetic beliefs were at stake!?
	The natural world is a world of harmony, a world of discovered harmony. In our exposure to the beautiful we meet the way of the harmonious, in our participation with the harmonious we meet face to face with the being of harmony as a process of resolution. In our reflection upon the aesthetic we experience the realization of the process of resolution as it must enter into the very being or facticity of all relationships. A recognition of this aesthetic territory in our experience of the world should recognize this type of experience that focuses upon the integrity, preservation and expansion of our relationships?
	In regards to our thought experiment it should be obvious to see that the visual impoverishment of our planet along with its loss of existential thematic richness both ensure an environment that has less to offer us as persons who have an innate need to experience the harmonious resolution of our natural surroundings. Our natural landscape is not without an emotional impact upon the person and an endless sea of plastic bags amid the spectre of blackened hillsides has little to offer us in aesthetic terms of reference. Indeed, this oppressive presence of the evidence and effects of mankind's overpopulation must sorely depress that dimension of the person that responds to the aesthetic with a creativity of its own. A beautiful environment facilitates the passage of our existence through this world and an environment without the salvation of the natural must severely damage the psychic well being of the person exposed to such inhumane thoughtlessness!?

Ethical Value In Relation To Ecological Value

	Is the ecological debate an ethical debate, a matter of morals, a question of the way we should find ourselves relating to others? On such grounds we might have trouble seeing the trees for the people? If it were a matter of morals we might ask ourselves how trees, for example, could ever get into the debate? Perhaps the chopping of trees in the National Estate is a form of theft? A stealing of the trees of the people? It would stand to reason then that all trees chopped down or destroyed on private property that that particular environment under these restricted terms of reference would be immune from that type of ethical-ecological damage? Or, on the other hand, is crime necessarily related to either an anti-ecological perspective or an ecological perspective? Could some anti-ecological counter-movement, and its anti-ecological activity, necessarily be criminal and unethical? We may love trees, or we may love to chop them down, in the final analysis ethical considerations alone are not going to adequately evaluate or explain, e.g. either the preservation of natural forests or their destruction, and, the questionable forms of value we might place on either type of option?
	On the other hand the debate seems to have an ethical flavour. We discuss the rights of the environment as if it were a person or a group of people or an institution. We might treat the associated wildlife of a certain environment in the same light. We discuss the timber workers rights to full employment even though their over zealous activities will do them out of work in the long term. We even treat them, or patronize them, as an endangered species. We maintain, or entertain, the possession and access, as if by right, by the people to locations of natural beauty and the associated fauna and flora of that area. We even entertain the rights of future generations to enjoy the same prospects as we ourselves have been able to do in theory and in practice. However we may preach conservation but we are not immune from milking our conserved areas, pushing tourists into our wildernesses through the arterial infiltration of our often mindless road systems. To what extent ethical considerations, we might ask ourselves, ever enter into this debate by either of its opponents or proponents?
	It strikes me, as an obvious fact of our human  condition, that the social existence of the person is initiated and maintained through a process of gift-giving or reciprocity. Moreover, the fact of that relationship is often measured by what degree those participants will sacrifice something or someone, even themselves, for the continuation of that relationship or the preservation of the party or parties therein contained. Such sacrifice is the hall-mark of that relationship. Is the quality of our personal relationships enhanced in a conservation of the thematic richness presented to us by this planet? Have we the right to squander this heritage on our own behalf at the expense of others? Surely the way we reach a compromise on this very issue is itself an ethical action, a ethical stance marred equally by sins of omission as by sins of commission? Ethical value must enter our ecological equation but does this not imply some form of compromise that might in the end compromise all forms of previous compromise? As conservation is defined through various forms of compromise might not these compromises in the end compromise the sustainability of our intended conservation. One indication of this is the feeble attempts at conservation that puts only our disconnected mountain tops into national parks for what good this must do the fauna and flora on the valley floor, or might have been on the valley floor. Environments that are more extreme are certainly more brittle but they are often also relatively poverty stricken in comparison to less extreme environments that surround the same. That is if the farmers and their modern farming methods have not already exhausted the richness of these resources along with the qualities of their soils in the rush for uncoordinated short-term planning called profit? So in reflection we would most likely come to the conclusion ethical value has an important role to play in the complexity of ecological value and its evaluation but that ecological value cannot be reduced and compromised in such one dimensional terms of reference!?
	In an examination of our thought experiment we must ask ourselves if it is right to impose upon our fellows and future generations the prospect of endless desserts of plastic bags filled with a soup of blue-green algae, our flattened mountains painted black in bitumen, to have our seas fishless, our cities and parks grassless, treeless and the immensity of this planet free from the wanderings of all fauna except that of ourselves and the ambulations of those robots, etc?

Pragmatical Value In Relation To Ecological Value

	In our thought-experiment it was noted that our intentions were essentially pragmatic being a systematic response to the pressures of overpopulation. Algae recycled domestic waste creating the raw material for all our foodstuffs and other products. The planet had removed from it all other fauna and flora and in that way all diseases could be removed likewise along with the potential disruption caused by harmful mutations that might take to eating our mono-culture of blue-green algae. Our mountains were rounded off and protected in a layer of bitumen from the ravages of erosion now that we have no plant life, etc. to hold our soils together. The layer of bitumen also ensuring the relative stability of world temperatures. Lastly our buildings ensured that all industrial wastes and all the other emission of our human population were treated and rectified on the spot. In the process an impoverished ecological balance was maintained given the continuation of all pre-conditions, conditions and post-conditional consequences that structured this new status quo. The systematic way we have gone about constructing our environment appears to work for us. Have we a reason to complain on pragmatic grounds?
	It is obvious that in the re-construction of our environment as portrayed by this thought-experiment various presuppositions were maintained in a specific hierarchy of emphasis that if configured differently might lead us to take another path. For example if the size of the population was reduced then pressure on the original environment would not need to be so intense. Drastic measures like the sterilization of the planet, extreme forms of mono-culture, etc. need not be invoked let alone contemplated. Moreover, the multi-use of resources in a multi-dimensional value system must increase the overall utility of that environment. A landscape that caters for the use of only a part of the psyche, e.g. our physical needs, must miss the point as to the nature of existence which is to ornament and enrich our passage through the world. Sheer utility in one dimension ensures our suffering a lack of depth that must alienate the person and in the final analysis be counter-productive even to those mono-dimensional intentions. A realistic pragmatism is multi-dimensional utilizing in the process a potential that can never be released in an approach that operates upon a set containing a small finite number of levels in intentional direction. In the world of logic a chair is sat upon but in the real world we can do everything else as well that we might wish to do with them, e.g. sleep in them, use them for firewood, stand on them as a ladder, etc, etc. The world, perhaps, should be seen as an infinite horizon (or as a set of infinite horizons or perspectives) and not as an infinite resource to be exploited by the most powerful or by the most efficient? Moreover, the world in its natural richness can surprise us with the discovery of those factors that we in our wisdom come to recognize as necessary for some reason or other. These bonuses taking the form, e.g. of new food stuffs, new drugs, new materials, genetic information, etc. Only the goodness of time itself reveals these unexpected riches to us and in a sense we must find them first in order to recognize their unexpected worth at a later point in time. It seems, for reasons right or wrong, that this type of argument is often used in those campaigns that support the preservation of our rain forests, e.g. but such an argument-form applies with an equal force to the entire inventory of this planet regardless of whether those items be mineral, vegetable or animal. In a sense the world is an inheritance that we must conserve not only for ourselves but, more importantly, for those of our descendants that will hopefully follow on after us. Imagine an infinite line of all our offspring and their offspring, etc. Could we walk along this line and look into the face of all our descendants, all those members of our family, could we comfortably inspect the critical judgment of their glance knowing that we squandered resources that we did not replace, that correctly could not be called our property? Perhaps as a tentative policy or as a general rule of thumb it could be stated (and legally enacted)  that what we cannot take with us (as if we were able to survive our own death) we should leave behind us either in the same condition as we found it or in a better condition?! Without doubt the same type of criterion could also apply to our cultural environment?

Ontical Value In Relation To Ecological Value

	Ontical value concerns itself with the question of the potentiality, actuality and the relationship between these two ideal polarities in the thematic inventory of these phenomenal presentations to hand. In the light of our phenomenology the existence or non-existence  of our world is not in dispute, though the exercise of a transcendental suspension, but as a necessity in the passage of our daily lives the existential or ontical nature of our phenomenal presentations is a reasonable question of paramount concern. By a variety of stratagems the mind is able to declare in the favour of, or not in the favour of, the actuality, or potentiality only, of the phenomenal presentation under the scrutiny of our inspection. Direct or indirect phenomenal appearances as phenomena, as an interpretation of a series of interpretations, etc. by various means seem to allow us to reconsider the status of such an interpretation or re-interpretation. In our natural phenomenological-like reconstitution of a pre-constituted phenomenal presentation in our understanding as to how that presentation was put together allows us to intuitively decide one way or the other as to the most probable ontical status of that under examination. 
	In the determination of ontical value considerations that take into account the potential of that presentation must also enter our consideration. Assuming an evolutional style of hypothesis about the generation of species then in a critical examination of our thought-experiment we can note that the loss of richness in an inventory of our planet must severely restrict the emergence of future evolutional possibilities. Moreover, as all species to date, current or extinct are directly or indirectly our ancestors then it would be a loss of respect on our part not to give reverence to those beings that went before us and whose current offspring should now accompany us. Any decision to restrict the richness of this inventory, both as to its actuality and to its potentiality, is correctly not our decision to make. Decisions that grossly effect others should involve their participation and consideration and as future generations of the human species cannot present themselves at the same time to declare their point of view then such a decision should not be allowed as a general rule to be exercised, or contemplated, in the first place. If such a decision, in exceptional circumstances, had to be exercised, on the behalf of others, either current or prospective, then the same should be enacted with much gravity and great careful circumspection.
	Could the immanent pressure of population circumvent this necessity for respect for the antiquity of the past and the pregnant possibilities of the future? The simple answer should be no! As noted before our value systems must be re-ordered, given a new structure in the hierarchical re-ordering of their priorities. Our inheritance is correctly not that which belongs to just our current selves. Moreover, for this heritage to continue to conserve its capital and mature in its investments this world which is our home and our garden must be treated in a fashion that demonstrates that we are proud of our residence and proud of the way in which we look after this wonderful heritage of ours and this brings us to our last primary value for consideration, namely, that of trans-thematic value. 

Trans-Thematical Value In Relation To Ecological Value

	Whereas thematical value concerns itself with logical value and questions of differentiation, referential discernment and identification trans-thematic value is an evaluation of the field or context that is presented in the presentation of that phenomenal presentation in its thematization. In considerations of an ecological nature this field is correctly the world, and more correctly, our world as our home, that-which-is-there-for-us in the-living-of-our-existence-in-this-world.
	Being at home in this world demands the care and concern on our part to ensure a conservation of residence and when and where necessary an expansion in the quality of these premises, an expansion that is not conducted at the expense of these premises but in an enrichment of them. As it is through the context, or appropriate frame of reference, that essential meaning is realized then in the final analysis the meaning and meaningfulness of the individual is brought into the light of day through the richness of their surrounding environment. An impoverished environment is reflected in an impoverishment of the individual that has had the misfortune to reside there. The full potentiality of the person demands a necessary and sufficient degree of richness in the their environment as a pre-condition to this relatively full realization of personal worth. The presence of a healthy natural environment, in all its richness, is a hallmark and recipe for the advancement of an individual given a natural response on their part towards the manner of their involvement in this world that surrounds and grounds the multi-dimensional nature of the person. With the creation and exploitation of a mono-intentionally constructed landscape as presented in the bleakness of our thought-experiment, an individual so interred, who has had no access to a multi-dimensional vision of the world, must find their vision of the world flattened in a like manner. Without doubt such a creature, like a plant carelessly raised in an artificial hot house, would possess, metaphorically, a weakened root system and a diminished supply of foliage along with a fossilized adaptability to the winds of change?

	Even the mere potential of having to hand an ecologically insulated or protected environment must have a salutary effect on the psychological being of the members of that society that `maintain' such areas. The proximity of wilderness regions, and similar, allows the members of that society to test themselves as persons in the natural landscape. The mere presence of such a region, the less interfered with the better, contrasting and allowing us to appreciate the artificial environment we have increasingly immured ourselves within. This attempt to absolutely tame the landscape, both natural and cultural, has, to my mind, an adverse effect both upon society and the individual. Regions must be demarcated that allow both the individual and their society to escape, and thereby transcend, this rigid imposition and alienation of the forever predictable. It is an important observation or tenet in Crisis Theory that a locality not subjected to a state of crisis for a period of time is more likely to experince a crisis whose severity is in relative measure to the length in time that that locality does not exerience some form of crisis. The regular exposure to a series of minor crises would ensure that local institution or whatsoever would be the stronger for the same and in a better position to survive or conserve itself. Moreover, periods of crisis facillitate the re-constitution of that institution or person subjected to such stress. 
	Wilderness regions, and similar, are in a way like a cellar of choice wine or a collection of fine books or records. Such variety cannot be sampled all at the same time but the mere fact of such being to hand, and the element of choice being present, is in itself an enrichment of life and a catalyst for a more successful passage through this world.
Our going back to nature from time to time allows us to re-create ourselves and re-discover the fact that we have our roots in the natural world and not in a world made purely by us for us!

	An ecological understanding of the mechanics of value formation should realize those dimensions of the world that respond to the existential richness of this planet, the ongoing harmony of its relational processes of resolution that realizes an experience of the trans-phenomenal beauty of nature, the correct reciprocity of an ethically directed intentionality, the multi-dimensional pragmatic utility of this world when it is entered in a multi-dimensional spirit, an intuitive experience of the actual potentiality and the potential actuality of a cosmos that is to become our inescapable-home-to-be along with the way we care for it and the way it reciprocates this care in its care of us!

	In an attempt to understand the phenomenon of the ecological attitude we discovered that each of our six primary values has a role to play in the midst of this complex issue. No one of these six forms of fundamental value could alone account for the necessity of a constructive ecological attitude in our management of this planet. However, viewed together and we should, I believe, come to some understanding as to why the pronouncements of the ecological movement are usually presented as natural and self-evident. More often than not, however, their arguments are constructed on grounds too intellectual and too narrow to act in their own right as adequate buttresses against the some times bitter winds of controversy. To conclude this paper let me investigate the manner in which these forms of primary value interact (besides that in fundamental transcendental terms of reference, i.e. as in the essential structure and function that appears to constitute the phenomenon of judgment).

The Mapping Of Primary Value In Relation To Ecological Value

	Six forms of primary value individually associated with one other gives us thirty permutations, or fifteen combinations, to consider. Rather than plough our way systematically through such a list let us instead associate one form of primary value with the next in our list in an order as presented earlier by this paper.

The Ecological Mapping Of Thematical-Aesthetical Value

	It might be safe to say that ecological value is enhanced with thematical richness and that overall thematical richness enhances, and is enhanced, by aesthetical value. Moreover, in a relationship between the parts and the whole, aesthetical richness enhances thematical value and v.v.  The complexity of interaction and the natural resolution therein entertained generates an ecological richness that reflects the harmonious interaction of its participating parties. Furthermore, this actuality of the ecological system left to its own devices should generate in time a new set of thematical items realizing the potentiality present in such an ecological system. In other words there is an intimate relationship between thematics and aesthetics in the realm of the ecological, that generally speaking thematic diversity generates a greater aesthetic richness, and v.v. (through the increased overall complexity of the resulting relationship that is established through the internal harmonious interaction of that system with respect to itself and the material investment of that complexity throughout the parts of that system).

The Ecological Mapping Of Aesthetical-Ethical Value

	In looking for a relationship between aesthetics and ethics in the light of the ecologicial we might note the connections that can be drawn between aesthetical harmony and ethical harmony. Both types of harmony are realized in a process of ongoing resolution. Although it is wrong to say that there is no difference between these two fields on the other hand a disruption of the harmony of one will eventually have its effect in the other field. A play that praises, directly or indirectly, behaviour completely unnatural to the preservation of human relationships will meet our revulsion and a diminution in the remaining aesthetic reception, if any, attached to that work of art. The attitude of the normal person to `snuff movies' would seem to confirm this point however much that same type of person might enjoy forms of drama that represent the process of dying, whether violent or non-violent in the characterization of its simulation. Likewise, an ethical response that is exceedingly ugly and inappropriate  in its associated context will eventually undermine the ethical content and intent of that response as an ethical response, and v.v. In regard to ecological considerations with respect to the cooperation of aesthetical and ethical fields continuing decision making disturbances in one of these fields will eventually undermine the intentional direction of the other.

The Ecological Mapping Of Ethical-Pragmatical Value

	An ethical response conducted in an existential mode effectively realizes an appropriate response, i.e. a response with associated pragmatic utility appropriate to the continued existence of that associated relationship or some other more important relationship. By existential is meant the relevant relationship is intuitively allowed to express itself in and through an act of judgment subjected to the thorough imposition of a transcendental suspension that allows that relationship to express itself in the most appropriate manner given the nature of the environment of that relationship. In an environmental context an ethically conducted existential analysis of the problematic situation to hand should be able to deliver its own pragmatic response. A resolution of cross-interest or the competing interests of a number of parties always realizes a compromise and in this regard controversial ecological responses will be no different. A difficulty enters the equation, however,  when political considerations or some other form of interference are allowed to colour the outcome of our environmental decision making although this qualification itself is indicative of the need for and the fact of compromise. Even a decision that appears to be no compromise is itself the result of previous compromised responses that did not emphasize or properly take into account the need for some form of pragmatic compromise. In a sense in the determination of a response there is either a compromise and/or a being compromised. Being compromised standing in an inverse relationship to the act of compromise. That in the undoing of one or the other there is an increased emphasis upon the other, so e.g. in the undoing of a prior act of compromise there is as a result our then being compromised to the same inversed degree. Authenticity demands our acceptance of compromise rather than our being compromised. Logging of a national forest as a forest is not by itself antithetical to its being partial logged, however, in those regions of greater ecological sensitivity or rarity in thematic inventory a decision for partial logging, or full logging, is more likely to see our being compromised and hopefully future research into that area doesn't have to demonstrate the realization of this fact for us. This interesting insight being encapsulated in our language expression of compromise, the tension between the verbal aspects to compromise and to be compromised revealing both the dialectical and paradoxical roots of language, and, the forever present degree of indeterminacy associated with the exercise of language. This latter aspect being revealed through the imposition of some form of a dialectical analysis that reveals the limits language cannot meaningfully transgress without some form of accommodational resolution. The limits of language reflecting the limits of thought implying, in the concept just treated, an element of indeterminacy being in place to some degree or other between a compromise and a being compromised. The presence of authenticity in attitude seeing to it that our being compromised is eventually recognized to be our being compromised and that a compromise is reached between all the relevant parties in keeping with the spirit, or harmony, of the situation to be compromised through a compromise rather than through its being being compromised.

The Ecological Mapping Of Pragmatical-Ontical Value

	What relationship is there between pragmatical evaluation and factual evaluation? Firstly, pragmatical responses enacted are more likely to see the ongoing preservation of that relationship concerned. Secondly, a pragmatic response is more likely to realize the potentiality of that relationship, i.e. increase the impact of its relational facticity as a relational fact in the world. Thus we might consider pragmatical decision making, existentially conducted and sensitive to the world as a whole or totality, helps the potentiality of the relationship to establish and more ably realize itself as a fact in the world. In an ecological light existentially conducted decision making estalishes not only the introduction or re-establishment of a factual state of affairs but also establishes a greater degree of factual actualization. The ecological attitude that existentially ensures the ongoing harmonization of competing forces preserves and initiates a thematical and pragmatical richness necessary for an in depth utilization of this planet that is multi-functional and not uni-modal in its intentionality. In other words we must recognize that our being in this world is a multi-functional affair with a richness and integrity in its manifestation that allows the person to take on a depth in meaning and meaningfulness that would be lost if our environmental motivation was channeled through a restricted pre-determined number of options. An existential ecological attitude is therefore one that preserves, or re-establishes, a richness in environmental options and in so doing ensures a richness in environmental interaction. Our differentiation in this environment establishing a richness in identity that otherwise would be lost to us both individually and collectively.

The Ecological Mapping Of Ontical-Trans-thematical Value

	The nature of the interaction between ontical value and trans-thematical value is essentially one between the potentiality-actuality of factual states of affairs and the perspectives or horizons those states of affairs are introduced in to us in our direct experience of the same or indirect reflection upon. The nature of that interaction is essentially dependent upon the nature of those states of affairs. In an ecological light the richness of a perspective or horizon reflects the richness of the type of state of affairs that have come before and could come before such a frame of reference or world. In our coming between these two polarities we find the richness, or otherwise, in the meaning and meaningfulness of our being is a reflection of the actualized potential richness established in this interaction. An ecological attitude that preserves, conserves and expands the overall quality of this interaction is one that preserves, conserves and expands the richness in the being of our being in this world. Hence a richness in thematical identity and a richness in trans-thematical reference ensures a richness in ontical being that in turn helps define the person as that person in this world with the corresponding degree of freedom to be as a person in this world.

Conclusion: The World As Our Home

	It would appear, therefore, that the richness of being in this world is generated through the richness of thematical and trans-thematical being and the richness of the interaction between the same. Such an interaction is equivalent to our being immersed in the life-world. Our being at home in our being at home in this world necessitates that we exercise an existential-ecological attitude that seeks to preserve, conserve and expand the richness of our thematical, aesthetical, ethical, pragmatical, ontical and trans-thematical multi-dimensional interaction. In the embrace of this world of life, or life-world, this world of dasein, sees our being there in a world-there-for-us. 
	Our self-thematization is dependent upon this richness in this tapestry upon the richness of a world stage that recognizes and supports a multi-dimensional approach to our being here. That an ecological attitude that is open to this richness of experience is reflected in the existential manner we purport ourselves in its midst. In turn this discovery of meaning thematizes the meaningfulness of our being in this world of life or life-world. Our being at home in this life-world automatically finds itself reflected in our ecological consideration of this world of life. The very structures of meaning that give to us a sense of value are the very structures that ensure the functioning of the life-world as a world of life. Thus the existential exercise of an ecological attitude realizes the potential of the person to be a person at home in this dimension of the personal, this world of dasein. 
	The ecolgical attitude is thus a reflection of the harmonized functioning and integrity of the life-world. In a sense how we seek to live in this world is a direct commentary on how we live in this-world-of-life. Treating this world as a home allows the life-world to reveal to us our being at home in this world of life! An ecological attitude to our being in this world is therefore not only important it is necessary to our very being here! Through such an existentially open attitude the world rewards our concern with a richness of experience that can be found in no other way! Through the richness of such experience we come to discover an authenticity of meaning and meaningfulness that allows us to realize a heightened sense of freedom. In this light we can regard ecological value as the very foundation of our being giving us a depth that will allow us to appropriately express ourselves in a multi-dimensional exploitation of this planet that recognizes the multi-dimensional nature of the person, of life and the world in general. Treating this world as our home gives to the person a sense of being a-person-at-home-in-this-world-of-life. The integrity of the life-world for us seeing us function as a person in the richness of a world that is not only subjective but also in effect inter-subjective and objective. Only through an open ecological attitude therefore can the person discover an authenticity of being that sees them rise above exploitation for the sake of exploitation and mere profit and realize a being in this world as an authentic being in this world, compromising when and where necessary without being compromised!
	Although it is philosophically important to discriminate between these six fields of primary value when living in the real world we must realize that value is generated through the very being of the life-world itself. The structure of this life-world is such that the life-world is both the immanent ground and the transcendent horizon of all intentional experience. In this manner it is to be seen as the basis for the interaction between the sense of ego and the sense of an object or object-state. In our phenomenological reflections this life-world is metaphorically entered via the transcendental suspension. Through the moment of the transcendental suspension the constitution of the life-world is recognized and able to be reconstituted through a process of reduction and synthesis that allows our judgmental understanding to operate in this sense of world that contrasts the subjectively and intersubjectively orientated senses of ego and the objectively orientated sense of object-state. These three factors or aspects of the life-world, namely, ego, world, object-state, can only be provisionally extracted from this ground and horizon of the life-world. As primary value is generated through an emphasis on one or two of these three aspects and the experiential presence of this world of living cannot be so artificially extracted it follows that real value in its expression through the structure and function of the life-world is in our living in this world a process that must to some degree reflect all our primary values simultaneously. It then follows that those types of lived experience that attempt to restrict these aspects of primary value are to that degree lived and experienced as inauthentic. All six forms of primary value must be seen to operate in and through all forms of lived experience. It stands to reason therefore that to dis-establish one form of primary value is to effectively dis-establish the existential functioning of this world of life or dimension of dasein. Let us briefly return to the horrendous perspective as portrayed in our thought experiment as introduced at the beginning of this paper.
	A landscape populated with a sea of plastic bags filled with a blue-green algae is not a pretty sight, certainly not in the long run. Lost is the thematic richness of the natural landscape and gone is an aesthetic vista that delights the mind's eye. The flashy appearance of these bags filled with our primitive blue-green algae can only catch our sight for a limited time without tiring the mind. A loss in thematic richness is reflected in a loss of aesthetic richness. Moreover, this disvaluation of various aspects of our primary values, in our promotion of the merely pragmatic, would find itself met in an equal disvaluation of the ethical, e.g. in its association with such exploitation on our planet. Therefore, if it is our intentional ambition to re-arrange the manner of our living in this world and disvalue forms of primary value at the expense of others or merely to promote one form or more of primary value at the expense of the rest then we must realize we stand to disvalue the very nature of our living in this world. To that extent we enter into, directly or indirectly, such a frame of reference is to that extent we stand to loose in potential or actual terms of reference the degree of value already found in place in our living in this part of the world. The ecological attitude is one functional and structural aspect of the life-world as a world of lived experience that equally implicates all six forms of primary value. The exercise of such an attitude is an exercise in authenticity. In living our lives in an atmosphere of authenticity we create for ourselves a sense of meaning and meaningfulness, a sense of value and valuableness that is its own rewards. Such an attitude also translates into a spontaneous and effortless meeting with the pragmatic with all the utitlty necessary for the full and rich enjoyment of our being in this world to that degree that this is possible under the circumstances currently to hand. An authenticity in value is realized not at the expense of the pragmatical, the aesthetical, the ethical, the thematical, etc. but in and through a full flowering of all primary forms of value because the existential ground and horizon of lived experience is developed through the ongoing harmonization of what would be otherwise the non-existential. Harmonization is realized through the resolution of conflict, difference or dissonance, etc. and this necessitates a degree of compromise without being compromised. To compromise this art of compromise is to that degree to be compromised, re-introduce our entry into a world of unresolved conflict and all the inauthenticity that must be met if we face this world in the same manner as it is presented to us through the inauthenticity of others. Thus in our living in this world we should strive to see put in place an ecological attitude that does full justice to the structure and function of the life-world that grounds and horizons our being in this world. In this manner the existential richness of reality is realized for each one of us allowing us to realize or actualize that potentiality of spirit that constitutes the person as a person in this world, or dimension, of dasein. Hence the promotion of this ecological attitude is one that sees the full self-exploitation of the person as a person by that person by that community. Not that the exercise of such an attitude is an easy one to put in place but for all that it is one that facilitates its own existential realization through the sense of the pragmatic realizing or actualizing the ontical potentiality of that situation. 
	An ecological response is one that is realized though the ongoing resolution of conflicting parties and that necessitates the art of compromise without being compromised. The ecological attitude is not one that forbids the utilization of our natural environment for pragmatic purposes. An ecologist has no right to insist on locking up all our natural forests in national parks. On the other hand the timid reservation of inadequate territory for the preservation, and conservation at current levels, in our inventory of indigenous fauna and flora is a blatant exercise in our own being compromised. We must treat our world as if it were our home and treat all parties therein as if they were our own kith and kin for if we fail in this love of our environment we become lesser people to the same degree we fail in this responsibility. This responsibility is one that we must exercise not only for ourselves but also on the behalf of those future generations dependent upon the selflessness of our intentions in this regard. But such an attitude is in our very own interest through the promotion of an authenticity in value that realizes meaning and meaningfulness for the individual, the individual in society and society itself. Value is discovered in and through the very being of the life-world and that value has no real boundaries at the transcendental level between the primary fields of thematical value, aesthetical value, ethical value, pragmatical value, ontical value and trans-thematical value. To discover our real place in the world necessitates our re-instatement in a world that is equally there-for-us as we-are-there-for-it. 
	
	At the beginning of this paper a number of questions were asked concerning the nature of ecological value. Perhaps we are now ready to answer these questions? 
	What is ecological value? It would appear, from the analysis presented in this paper, that ecological value is an aspect of the life-world that cuts across all six of our primary forms of value with the implication that the promotion or de-promotion of anyone of these at the expense of the others is counter-ecological in its intentions and in the consequences that will stem from the exercise of those intentions. 
	Is it important? Our very being in the world is the result of an overall ecological attitude already in place. The persistence and enrichment of identity of the person and their community is the direct result of the cultivation of such an attitude. In realizing the potential of the individual in society an ecological attitude must be put in place in order to resolve, in an ongoing fashion, all forms of conflict that would disrupt and dis-value our present being in this world.
	What role does or should it play? The ecological role is one of compromise but an ongoing compromise that is not conducted at the expense of being compromised. On the other hand an existential-ecological evaluation takes our current being compromised and transforms it into the form of a compromise without the impossible realization of a pure compromise. Then again while neither a pure compromise nor a pure being compromised can exist an authenticity in our intentions, and their consequences, can be realized if an existential openness is allowed to manifest itself in and through the existential being of that situation to hand.
	As a conclusion we are impelled to perceive the existence of ecological value as none other than one aspect of the being of the life-world itself as it presents itself to us through our-being-in-this-world from the perspective of the World.

	Like a mother the life-world has raised us. Our growth in this soil of the life-world necessitates we attend to our roots in this world of life - a world shared between a world of the environment, a world of science and a world of culture. These three dimensions of our being necessitate an equal cultivation for without a world culture could not be grounded and without a world of culture the-world-for-us would have no horizon and without either there could not be a world of science! Indeed, and it cannot be stressed enough, without the balance of an ecological attitude this world would most certainly have for us absolutely no future! Intentional existence demands an horizon, meaningful existence demands a world of value, a world of future to be realized now though the force of the forever self-presenting presence of the life-world that existential grounds and horizons our-being-as-beings-in-this-world!

				Noël Tointon, Sydney and Leura, 9.9.90.