Some brief observations about environmental ethics and bioethics

Anthropocentricism, Intrinsic Value, Instrumental Value

• Most classical ethical theories are "anthropocentric." They begin with the assumption that human life has value, and often they use human life as the yardstick to determine all other kinds of value.
• To say that "human life has value" in this context, we mean that human life has intrinsic value. That is, it is not good for some use it may have to some other thing, but rather is good in and of itself.
• An ethic that concludes that only humans have intrinsic value is called an "anthropocentric ethic" or an "anthropocentric value theory."
• For example, Kant explicitly stated that cruelty to non-human animals was not bad. Only persons (which, on Earth, means for Kant only humans) have value, and all other things can have at best instrumental value.
• An alternative view would be to argue that other kinds of things may have value. Here are just a few examples:
  • Mill claimed that pleasure was good, and that some non-human animals can feel pleasure and pain. So, for such utilitarians, such animals have some intrinsic value.
  • Peter Singer is a well known philosopher who has defended a preferences-based (as opposed to hedonistic) value theory. He argues that many animals have preferences and so have some intrinsic value.
  • Gary Varner (and DeLancey has offered revisions) proposes an intrinsic theory in which purposes are the kinds of things that deserve moral respect, and since all organisms have purposes, all organisms have some intrinsic value. This view is called "biocentric individualism."
  • The philosopher Thomas Regan revised Kant and argues that many animals deserve respect because although they are not persons they are "moral patients." He advocates then animal rights.

Anthropocentric Environmental Ethics

• Some consider the very term "anthropocentric environmental ethics" an oxymoron. However, the idea is that other species or ecosystems have value because of their use to humans.
• Values of other organisms include food, entertainment, and aesthetic value.
• A very clear example of an anthropocentric argument came from William Baxter, Ronald Reagan's , who wrote a book Optimal Pollution, where he observes that

  Recently scientists have informed us that use of DDT in food production is causing damage to the penguin population. . . The scientific fact is often asserted as if the correct implication--that we must stop agricultural use of DDT--followed from the mere statement of the fact of penguin damage. But plainly it does not follow if my criteria are employed. My criteria are oriented to people, not penguins. Damage to penguins, or sugar pines, or geological marvels is, without more, simply irrelevant. . . Penguins are important because people enjoy seeing then walk about rocks; and furthermore, the well-being of people would be less impaired by halting use of DDT than by giving up penguins. In short, my observations about environmental problems will be people oriented. . . I have no interest in preserving penguins for their own sake.

• It is a curious and overlooked fact that there is frequently no clear distinction made by "environmentalist" organizations in their appeals to self-interest (e.g., "the rainforest is the lungs of the world") and Baxter's position. They often are explicit about only empirical/scientific differences.

Three Forms of Non-Anthropocentric Environmental Ethics: Biocentric Individualism versus A Land Ethic
A large number of alternative views have evolved regarding what if any moral respect may be due to non-human organisms. Three views stand out as most influential and also as most remarkably distinct.

1. Animal Rights
   • Although animal rights theorists have different value theories, they then to agree that some fauna, particularly large mammals, have intrinsic value.
   • A good example is Thomas Regan. He argues that if an organism has the ability to be "the subject of a life", then it deserves moral respect. From his book Animal Rights, he argued:

     want and prefer things, believe and feel things, recall and expect things. And all these dimensions of our life, including our pleasure and pain, our enjoyment and suffering, our satisfaction and frustration, our continued existence or our untimely deathall make a difference to the quality of our life as lived, as experienced, by us as individuals. As the same is true of animals they too must be viewed as the experiencing subjects of a life, with inherent value of their own. (Regan, 1985)

     Animal rights theorists tend to focus on individual animals and human uses of them.

   
   
2. Biocentric Individualism
   • Biocentrism is the value theory that life is intrinsically value. One defender has been Varner (and a reviser has been DeLancey), arguing that having purposes deserves moral respect, and that all organisms have some purposes.
   • The challenge for biocentricism is to rank values. Everyone agrees that we should give more consideration to a human than a cat, and many feel we should give more to a cat than a bacterium. One approach is to rank organisms by their complexity, but this is difficult. Another is to give special privilege to humans for some other reason, such as language or planning ability.
   • Biocentrism will place the welfare of individuals first, and so it could in principle allow for changes of an ecosystem, or some other conflict with a land ethic.
   
   
3. Land Ethic
   • The land ethicists are largely inspired by the work of Aldo Leopold, a biologist who wrote about ecology in the mid-twentieth century.
   • The basic tenet of land ethics is the idea that what (other than human beings -- typically the land ethicist reserves some other ethic for human interrelations ) deserves moral consideration is whole ecosystems, and perhaps even more broadly, whole regions of land.
   • This requires a notion of "health" or "integrity" for an ecosystem. The land ethicist holds that actions are good (in relation to things other than human, at least) to the degree that they support or promote the health or integrity of an ecosystem.
   • Land Ethics can conflict notably with an animal rights ethic, when the integrity of an ecosystem is in conflict with the interests of some large animals.

A Problem for Bioethics: the Ethics of Cloning