Away MAVE

The Distance Mode of MA in Values and the Environment at Lancaster University

Block 1: Introduction to Environmental Ethics

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NB These materials do not represent the current (05/06) version of this module, and are offered here as only as an additional resource for students of environmental ethics.

	1. Environmental Ethics in Context		2. Defining Environmental Ethics
	3. A Brief History		4. Questions about Value
	5. Anthropocentric approaches		6. Summary

Environmental Ethics - in context

'Just another environmental disaster'

On February 10th 1996, the oil tanker Sea Empress, carrying 140,000 tonnes of light crude oil, ran aground off Milford Haven in Wales, UK. Despite several attempts to pull the ship off the rocks, she remained there for nearly a week, leaking over one half of her cargo into Welsh coastal waters. Within days, oil slicks surrounded the Welsh coastline and coated the beaches of Britain's only two marine nature reserves, Lundy Island and Skomer Island.

For a short while, the quiet West Wales coast became a media Mecca. Tourist accommodation, lying empty for the winter, was snapped up by eager television companies. Red-nosed reporters, swaddled in layers of oilskin, jostled one another for position on gale-swept, oil-acrid cliff tops. Disaster! Catastrophe! screamed the headlines. Comparisons were made with previous great oil spills: the 1967 sinking of the oil tanker Torrey Canyon and the foundering of the tanker Exxon Valdes in Prince William Sound, Alaska in 1989.

Alongside the media, wildlife rescue teams crowded into West Wales. Makeshift hospitals for oiled birds, seals and dolphins were set up hastily. The Ocean Defender, a marine wildlife rescue ship, patrolled the coasts, picking up birds and animals in distress. All oiled birds and mammals were individually cleaned, and some sent hundreds of miles to established wildlife hospitals to recuperate. Dozens of people were employed to scrape oil off the rocks and remove polluted sand. Fears were expressed that the damage to marine wildlife would be such that the area would never recover its species diversity. It was suggested that the wild heritage of future generations might have been irreparably damaged.

Although for some local people the spill meant an unexpected boost for trade during the mid-winter quiet season, for others the spill spelled disaster. The main source of employment in this coastal area was the fishing industry; with fish contaminated with oil, and damage to other marine life vital to the food chain, local people feared that their fishing jobs might be gone forever. Others, dependent on the summer tourist trade, realized that with the spectre of oil-soaked beaches and the loss of wildlife, tourism would plummet in the years to come. Demands for compensation were beginning even as the oil still leaked out of the stricken tanker. The spill threatened not only the local marine wildlife, but also the livelihoods of hundreds of local people.

Whilst for individuals directly involved this incident was catastrophic and life-changing, for those of us remote from it, the spill may seem like just another environmental disaster, the kind of thing we hear about every day. And there are good reasons why we might think this. In many ways the foundering of the Sea Empress is typical of environmental disasters, and of the much smaller-scale, constant environmental problems that we all encounter every day of our lives. Looking at the incident a little more closely will therefore help to unravel some of the complex characteristics of environmental problems and cast some light on the ethical issues they raise.

We can begin, for instance by looking at the 'causes' of, and 'responsibility' for, such an incident. At first sight, the cause might seem fairly straightforward: either some kind of mechanical failure on the tanker; or some kind of human error; or stormy weather; or some combination of these factors. Without passing judgment in this particular case, this might suggest that responsibility lay with the captain and crew of the ship; or with the mechanics responsible for maintaining the ship; or with the company who owned the ship for not maintaining or crewing it adequately.

Whilst this might be one way of looking at the causes of the incident, and who might be responsible for it, it is certainly not the whole story. Only three months earlier another oil tanker had run aground in almost the same place; but there had been no oil spill. Why not? Because this tanker had been double hulled, a technical change that makes tankers more resistant to spillage when they run aground. The Sea Empress, however, had no such double hull. Although a report had been published in 1992 advising the British Government to make double hulls compulsory for all oil tankers in British waters, these recommendations had never become law. Had such a law been in existence, the Sea Empress would never have been in West Wales.

So was the British Government responsible for the accident?

Short exercise

Before reading on, just jot down in your notes who you think is responsible or where the chain of responsibility leads.

The government being responsible is one way of looking at the incident, but again it is not the whole story. After all, the oil was being transported as part of the vast, global oil industry which is a central part of all industrialized economies. The lifestyles of those in industrialized economies float on a sea of oil, essential to industry, transport and energy production. All individuals in such economies demand oil, in a variety of forms, to continue with current lifestyles, (although of course the level of individual demand varies according to wealth and the activities individuals undertake). By creating such a demand, the continued international transportation of oil at sea is being sanctioned; by demanding oil at the lowest prices, businesses are encouraged to cut corners in safe carriage of oil products. Looked at in this way one might ask: Who is not at least indirectly responsible for this accident? In some sense, we all seem to be implicated.

Making this point is not intending to suggest that we are all equally responsible for incidents such as the grounding of the Sea Empress. It does, however, suggest that the causes of environmental problems are complex and responsibility for them is multi-layered. Analysis of such problems in terms of cause and responsibility is never straightforward.

The grounding of the Sea Empress can be used as an example of another common feature of environmental problems, whether they are single disastrous incidents as in this case or chronic, long-term problems. This is the conflict revealed between the interests of the different human beings involved in such difficult environmental situations.

Some indication of this may be obvious from the account above. When the ship ran aground, salvage operators spent a week trying to remove it from the rocks. Teams of people were recruited to clean the beaches. Reporters and camera crews moved into the area. All of this generated local employment out of season, bringing much needed income. Significant benefits and improvements in lifestyle resulted for a number of individuals. These local people were not the only people to benefit. The pictures of oiled birds and mammals brought a flood of public interest to environmental charities which received increased donations and inquiries about membership. Whilst those working for such organizations clearly did not desire such an oil spill, the income resulting from it allowed them to plan for the future, to renew employment contracts, to run new campaigns, to advertise more widely - and to trade on the impression that their pessimistic warnings about environmental disasters were justified.

Of course, the oil spill also brought significant costs. These were felt intensely at a local level, by individuals employed in the local fishing industry. In the short-term at least their livelihoods seemed to have collapsed; the accident had caused severe damage to their interests. For some local people and regular visitors, even those who only saw the spill by television, the incident was also emotionally traumatic, as a once beautiful, wild area was spoiled by deposits of oil and harm to wildlife. The concerns expressed by some about the effects of the spill on people not yet born suggests that their interests might also be affected by the spill. Loss of wildlife diversity and even the extinction of species might result, denying future people the opportunity to experience the same variety of life with which we are familiar.

The grounding of the Sea Empress, then, benefited some individuals and groups and damaged others; and the nature and degree of this damage varied over the short and the long term. In this sense the incident is like other environmental problems - especially chronic, long-term ones. Conflicts between different human interests - employment, health, income, aesthetic pleasure, lifestyle - are always tangled up in environmental problems, adding to their complex nature. More generally still, in many cases the economic and social structures adopted by human societies, which lead to benefits for many members of such societies, create the circumstances which generate environmental problems. For instance, the oil industry itself contributes to the possibility of technologically sophisticated lifestyles. To this extent we benefit from its continuance; and whilst we may not directly benefit or suffer from particular oil spills themselves, we gain from the persistence of circumstances which allow such spills to happen. So alongside the complexity of understanding the causes of, and responsibility for, environmental problems, we must also consider the intricate nature of who benefits and who suffers from environmental problems and the circumstances which create them - both in the short-term and in the long-term.

The third and final general point which I want to draw out of this incident concerns another affected 'party', the environment itself. The word 'environment' is a difficult one to define, and I have so far been using it in rather a casual way. Most generally, 'the environment' is used to refer to everything which surrounds us, the location in which we find ourselves. Clearly, if we live in an urban area our immediate environment may be apartments and shops; if we are on a ship, it will mean the sea and the air. Obviously, then, in this sense our environment is relative; it changes depending on where we are, and to some extent at least we have an impact on it. However, when we talk about 'environmental' problems, we are usually referring to problems within the natural environment, meaning by this those parts of our surroundings which are not human constructions (Though this raises questions about what might be meant by natural - which could be a whole unit in itself!) In practice, of course, boundaries here are rather difficult to draw. A conifer plantation is in some sense 'natural' - trees are not human constructions - but it is also in some sense 'human' as humans planted the trees and perhaps fertilized them, removed competitors and even engineered the seeds. Although no distinctions here are entirely satisfactory, we could for temporary working purposes envisage the 'natural' and the 'artificial' as a kind of spectrum, with wilderness near to the natural end (though we will come to question this later) and urban landscapes near to the artificial end. This very difficulty in defining 'environment' is compounded by the frequency with which we mean different things when we talk about environmental problems. If we return to the case of the Sea Empress, we can perhaps see this more clearly.

For some people, the nature of the 'problem' after such an oil spill is restricted to the damage to the interests of human beings whose livelihoods have been seriously affected. However, as the scale of the clean-up operation indicates, for many other people different issues are raised. These issues have to do with the effects of the oil spill, not on human beings, but on the environment itself. Such concerns can take a number of forms. First, there are concerns for the well-being of individual animals caught up in the spill, who might be suffering from the effects of the oil. Secondly, there are concerns about particular species, especially those species that are rare; the loss of many individuals of a rare species may mean that it will become extinct. Thirdly, there is concern for the ecology of the whole area, the delicate interactions of a wide range of species. Such a spill (by, for instance, damaging the food chain) may mean that some species will abandon the area and the ecosystem may never be returned to its previous state.

Whilst any one person may be concerned about all of these issues, they are clearly different concerns, one relating to animal well-being and suffering, the second to species preservation and the third to ecosystem health. After an oil spill, rescuing an oiled sea bird might further all three aims. But there are circumstances in which these aims may conflict; and there are also ways in which most people are apparently inconsistent in their behavior.

Imagine, for instance, that the Welsh coast had recently been colonized by a species of exotic sea-bird that had escaped from a nearby marine wildlife park and were displacing native bird species. Suppose that, after the spill, these newcomers were suffering badly from the oil pollution. To prevent their suffering, one might feel that they should be treated like other sea birds: cleaned, treated with antibiotics, released. However, the pre-existing ecosystem would be best protected by leaving these birds to die. How might one handle such a conflict of concern? (These concerns will also be dealt with at length in module 402 'Land as Community')

Or consider the case of a volunteer who, anxious about the suffering caused by the spill, might spend the day cleaning oiled seabirds - and return to a warming chicken soup in the evening. Is there something inconsistent about spending the day relieving the suffering of one kind of bird, whilst in the evening enjoying the benefits of the suffering of another kind of bird? Or is there some sense in which it is appropriate to distinguish between the treatment of wild birds and birds bred for food?

How one approaches questions such as these affects our whole understanding of what an environmental problem is. Are environmental problems primarily about the effects of environmental damage (such as pollution or species extinction) on other human beings? Or are they about causing suffering or death to individuals of other species? Or are they about preserving species or ecosystems in healthy states? Or are they a combination of all of these factors, creating a complex mesh of interrelated concerns bound into what might on the surface seem to be a fairly straightforward 'environmental problem' like the grounding of the Sea Empress?

This examination of the Sea Empress case has raised a whole series of questions. These concern the causes of, and responsibility for, environmental problems; the complicated network of benefits and costs to human beings generated by environmental problems and the circumstances which create them; and the range of different concerns which may be present when we talk about environmental problems. These are all the kinds of questions which are fundamental to the study of environmental ethics.

Longer exercise

Work through this one in your notes and post a summary of your findings to the discussion site Think about one environmental problem currently in the media (for instance climate change). Try to break it down in the following ways: a) What conflicting human interests are involved? Do you think that some human interests are more important than others? If so, why? b) What impact does the problem have on individual animals; on other individual organisms; on species as a whole; on ecosystems? c) Do you think these impacts are bad or good? What would constitute "bad" and "good" in each case?

Defining Environmental Ethics

As the preceding section might suggest, a one sentence definition of environmental ethics is difficult to provide. However, most fundamentally, environmental ethics examines how human beings should or ought to interact with the non-human world around them. What this means may become clearer if these two words environment and ethics are considered in turn.

I've already suggested that the word environment can be understood very broadly. This means that the potential scope of environmental ethics is correspondingly broad. Historically, the main focus of environmental ethics has been at the 'wild' end of the 'natural-artificial' spectrum: on wilderness areas, wild ecosystems and organisms, and biodiversity. That this has traditionally been the case, however, does not necessarily mean that it will continue to be so. More recently, some environmental ethicists have been exploring human ethical relationships with less 'wild' aspects of the environment, such as with domesticated animals and with agricultural and urban landscapes. We will be considering some of these aspects later in the course.

Reading Tip:

To explore ideas about the meaning of environment further, look at David Cooper's article 'The Environment around us' in Cooper and Palmer (eds) (1992) The Environment in Question: Ethics and Global Issues. (New York: Routledge). If you want to pursue this subject even more seriously, try Rydin and Myerson (1998) The Language of Environment (London: UCL).

The word ethics introduces the idea of should or ought to. The study of ethics is often defined as the study of how we should live and what we ought to do; what kind of behaviour is right and wrong; what our moral obligations might be. Ethical statements thus differ fundamentally from descriptive ones. For instance, the statement 'this bird has been poisoned by an oil spill' is descriptive. It tells us about an object (the bird); the condition of the object (poisoned) and the substance which has caused the condition (oil). However, the statements 'this bird ought not to have been poisoned by an oil spill' or 'it was wrong to allow an oil spill to kill this bird' are ethical. They make a judgment about what has happened to the bird: it is wrong that the bird has been poisoned. (There is perhaps also the implication here that someone has acted unethically in allowing the bird to be poisoned, and that the life of the bird has a value which has been damaged or destroyed by the oil.)

If, then, we bring the words environment and ethics back together again, we can see more clearly what might be meant by saying that environmental ethics is the study of how humans should, or ought to, interact with the environment. Such study is far from straightforward for a number of reasons, as the example of the Sea Empress illustrates. Many environmental issues, which may seem at first sight to be unproblematic, are on closer scrutiny complex and multi-faceted. To deal with such complex questions, it is vital to gather relevant information and to develop some key skills.

As a first step, it is essential to acquire knowledge and understanding about any environmental question, in so far as it is available. For instance, to study the case of the Sea Empress in any detail, one would need to know how much oil there was on the tanker, what kind of oil it was, what sort of effects current research suggests that such a quantity and variety of oil might have on marine organisms, what kinds of organisms might have been present in the area, how the weather might disperse the slick, and so on. This may, in itself, be a difficult task since the knowledge surrounding many environmental questions is contested and open to diverse interpretations. In the case of the Sea Empress, for instance, there may be profound scientific disagreement about the effects of oil on marine ecosystems both in the short-term and in the long-term.

Secondly, it is important to develop the skills of excavating and analyzing the different human interests, attitudes and values which may be related to environmental problems. There may be conflicting views about how best to approach any particular environmental problem, or even disagreement about what constitutes an environmental problem at all. For instance, in the case of the Sea Empress, someone concerned about protecting rare species may wish to target particular kinds of birds for rescue. Another individual, concerned about relieving suffering for individual organisms affected may oppose this approach, wanting to give priority to the most seriously oiled birds. One part of the task of an environmental ethicist - we can call it a descriptive task - is thus to clarify and analyze existing human attitudes to environmental questions, and explore the values and concerns which underlie them.

However, since environmental ethics concerns how humans ought to live, how they ought to behave towards the environment, a further and more difficult task remains. This is the task of offering guidance or even rules to others about what might constitute ethically correct behaviour towards the environment and what kinds of actions are right or wrong. This is sometimes called the prescriptive element of ethical thinking. This module will mostly be exploring the prescriptive ethical views of a variety of philosophers, and considering the strengths and weaknesses of their arguments about the environment.

In order to provide the foundation for looking at these philosophical views more closely, there are two more key things I want to do in Block 1.

The first is to provide a brief history of landmarks in what we might call "environmental ethics" in its broadest sense, in order to provide a context for what follows.
The second is to introduce some key questions about value which are central to recent discussions in environmental ethics.

A Brief History of "Environmental Ethics"

Some form of human concern about aspects of the environment seems to have existed in many ancient cultures. Plato, for instance, talks about deforestation in ancient Greece. But concern about animals and the wider environment in terms which form part of modern debates can be traced more directly back to the late 18th and early 19th century in Britain. It was in 1789, for instance, that the English political and moral philosopher Jeremy Bentham in An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation maintained that animal suffering should be taken into account when moral decisions are made. He argued: 'The question is not, Can they reason? nor Can they talk? but Can they suffer?' (We will look at views of this kind later in Block 2). In the C19, associated with the Romantic movement, both in Britain and the US, there was a growth in fascination with, and high estimation of, wild landscape. In 1845, for instance, the American naturalist and philosopher Thoreau went into a wilderness retreat at Walden Pond, Wisconsin; his journals from this time form the basis of his influential work Walden. The fascination with wilderness in the US led to the establishment of the world's first National Parks; Yellowstone National Park was created in 1872 as a "pleasuring ground" for Americans; followed by the creation of Yosemite, Sequoia and General Grant National Parks in 1890. Alongside this romantic interest in the wild, the C19 saw a huge expansion in the growth of scientific work in the fields of biology and ecology (the word "ecosystem" does not seem to have been used until 1935 by the biologist Charles Tansley). This informed the publication in 1864 of George Marsh's book Man and Nature: the first comprehensive description in English of human destruction of the environment.

However, it was not until later in the C20 that environmental ethics began to develop in a more formal sense. Two idiosyncratic but significant works with strong environmental ethics themes were published in the mid 20th century. In 1933, the German doctor, philosopher and musician Albert Schweitzer published his book Civilisation and Ethics, in which he proposed his famous principle of reverence for life. In 1949, posthumously, a collection of essays by the American forester Aldo Leopold was published. Called A Sand County Almanac these essays argue that a new land ethic is required to preserve the 'stability, integrity and beauty of the biotic community', of which human beings are just 'plain members and citizens'.

However, it was the publication of Rachel Carson's book Silent Spring in 1962, warning of the dangers to humans and to wildlife from toxic pesticide residues, which is widely regarded as the spark which kindled the environmental movement as it is known today. It was this movement which led to more serious reflection about ethical issues raised by human action in the non-human natural world. In 1967, the historian Lynn White published an article called 'The Historic Roots of our Ecologic Crisis' in the journal Science. In it, White argues that Christianity is in part to blame for the environmental crisis because in its Western form it has desacralised and dominated nature.

A number of subsequent writers have criticized White very heavily on a number of grounds, including:

a) His portrayal of the Bible. It might help you to read Genesis 1 and 2, and think about it independently. It is worth noting that Biblical scholars maintain Genesis 1-2v.1 and Genesis 2 are different creation stories written by different authors.
b) His representation of the relationship between people's religious beliefs and their environmental actions. Historically, cultures with huge varieties of religious beliefs seem to have acted destructively in their environments.
c) The historical links he makes between Christianity and technological change, and between technological change and environmental destruction.

Short exercise

Do you agree with any of these criticisms? Are there other difficulties with White's argument you have noted? Web Resource If you want to follow the controversy caused by the publication of Lynn White's article, a bibliography of responses is available here http://ecoethics.net/bib/1997/enca-001.htm

Brief History cont…

In 1971 the first conference on environmental philosophy was held in the USA; and in 1973 Richard Sylvan (then Routley) gave the paper - also a reading for this block -: "Is There a Need for a New, an Environmental, Ethic?" - a question which he answered positively. In the same year Scandinavian philosopher Arne Naess published, in Inquiry 16 1973, his article 'The Shallow and the Deep, Long-Range Ecology Movement', destined to be of peculiar importance in its popular appeal as the founding statement of what later became known as deep ecology. (We will consider Naess' views in Block 4). In the field of environmental law, Christopher Stone produced and later published an essay entitled 'Should Trees Have Standing?' arguing that 'environmental issues should be litigated before federal agencies or federal courts in the name of the inanimate objects about to be despoiled...and where inquiry is the subject of public outrage'. Stone's paper, while not in itself contributing substantially to the later philosophical debate, helped to make the application of the language of 'rights' and 'standing' to non-human natural objects and areas more familiar, despite its origin in a legal rather than a philosophical context. 1974 also saw the publication of John Passmore's philosophical monograph Man's Responsibility for Nature.

By 1975, ethical questions concerning the treatment of non-humans had begun to become more significant on the philosophical agenda. Peter Singer's Animal Liberation, developing a utilitarian approach to the treatment of sentient animals, was published. With the publication of this book, and the subsequent proliferation of philosophical work on this topic, ethical questions concerning the treatment of non-human animals were well on the way to achieving philosophical respectability. We will consider these issues further in Block 2. In the environmental field also, by 1979, there was enough ethical interest in environmental issues for Eugene Hargrove to begin producing the journal Environmental Ethics, now indisputably the most significant journal in the field. Shortly after this, in the early 1980's, new and influential collections of essays on environmental philosophy were published, most notably a volume from the Australian National University, Environmental Philosophy, (eds. Mannison, McRobbie and Routley 1980) and another collection, also of Australian origin, sharing the same name (eds. Elliot and Gare 1983). By this time, book length studies of environmental ethics had begun to appear. Robin Attfield's The Ethics of Environmental Concern (Oxford, Basil Blackwell) for example, was first published in 1983.

From the mid-1980's to the present time, research, publication and teaching in environmental ethics has rapidly expanded. Ethical positions first mooted in articles in Environmental Ethics in the early 1980s crystallised into densely argued books; most notable amongst these Holmes Rolston's Environmental Ethics and Paul Taylor's Respect for Nature. In 1989, the International Society for Environmental Ethics (ISEE) was founded. A number of universities began both undergraduate and graduate courses in environmental ethics. New journals relevant to environmental ethics were also founded during the 1990s: in the UK Environmental Values in 1992, and Ethics ,Place and Environment in 1998; in the US Ethics and the Environment in 1996. By the end of the twentieth century, environmental ethics was a widely studied and hotly debated subject.

Web Tip

An alternative history of environmental ethics can be read here http://www.cep.unt.edu/novice.html

Questions about Value

The second, and rather complex, set of questions I want to consider here concern values. What do we mean when we talk about something or some state of affairs as being valuable? What is value? Where does it come from? Questions like these are endlessly disputed amongst philosophers, and here it will only be possible to make a few key distinctions. However, these distinctions are absolutely crucial in understanding problems and controversies in ethics, and especially in environmental ethics, where questions about value are hotly debated. The four issues I want briefly to discuss here are:

a) The relationship between values and ethics
b) Intrinsic and instrumental values
c) Subjective/objective values (and various shades of these)
d) Anthropocentric and non-anthropocentric values

a) Values and Ethics

This is, perhaps, the most straightforward of the four. The term "value" can be used in a very broad way; we can talk about values in senses completely unrelated to ethics. We can talk, for instance, about the values endorsed by a particular company or institution, without trying to suggest that those values are ethical. FatCats PLC might have as company values that profit should be maximized at all costs, that tax evasion should be practised whenever it can escape detection and that illegal employment practices should be routinely overlooked. We would hardly think of these as ethical values; but nonetheless they form part of the corporate "ethos", part of its internal value structure. Likewise, aesthetic value - the value we might give to that which we consider beautiful, for instance - is not ethical, but nonetheless we would still use the word "value". In this sense, the study of values (formally known as axiology) is much broader than the study of ethics. We might think of ethics - and aesthetics - as subsets of axiology; they are particular kinds of values; but valuing in general encompasses a much broader area.

b) Intrinsic and Instrumental Values

A second important distinction which should be made is between instrumental and intrinsic value. In its broadest sense, this distinction is fairly straightforward to grasp. Instrumental value is the name for value given to something because of its usefulness to us. Air, for instance, is useful to us, because it keeps us alive. We thus value it instrumentally; it is not valuable in itself, but because it helps us to achieve another goal - that is, remaining alive. We value air as a means to an end. However, this does not seem to be the case with all kinds of value - for instance, staying alive. We do not value our lives for any reason beyond themselves; we do not (usually) regard preserving our lives as a means to an end, but rather as an end in itself. Value of this sort is non-instrumental value. Non- instrumental value is commonly called intrinsic value (and that will be how I use the term in this module).

This distinction is of particular importance in environmental ethics, where questions about value in the natural and living world are central. Supposing we take Yosemite National Park as an example - this is widely thought to be a valuable landscape. But why is it valuable? We can cite a number of ways in which Yosemite might be instrumentally valuable to human beings. We might value it as a place to pursue leisure activities such as hiking, climbing or parascending; or as a magnificent area to paint or photograph. These are instrumental values; Yosemite is a means to fulfilling other ends. But does Yosemite have non-instrumental value? Can we value Yosemite not because of its usefulness for any other purpose, but valuable as an end in itself? Many environmental ethicists have argued that landscapes, other organisms and ecosystems are of non-instrumental or intrinsic value of just this kind.

One way of conceptualizing this is outlined by Jane Howarth:

"If an object has instrumental value, its value does not depend on its specific categorical properties, but rather upon its disposition or capacity to fulfil a function or serve a purpose. Anything which serves the purpose equally well will have the same value, can replace the individual without loss of value….The crucial feature of non-instrumental value, in contrast, is that the object has value because of the specific properties that it has. A change to those properties would affect, or at least require a reassessment of its value" (For full reference, see the Reading Tip below).

Howarth is arguing that something with intrinsic value is being valued because of its particular, unique properties. To value Yosemite National Park intrinsically is to value just those rock features, waterfalls, and meadows, put together in the way they are. Nothing could replace them, and it is they which are valuable; nothing could provide us with the same value as Yosemite; it is valuable just because of the way it is. Someone who valued Yosemite instrumentally as a location for great climbing could substitute somewhere else if it provided just such a great climbing experience. But for someone who valued Yosemite intrinsically, on Howarth's account, it is the very nature of Yosemite which is being valued, rather than Yosemite as a means to another end.

There is a lot on the web about Yosemite, one interesting site with pictures is here http://yosemite.org/index.html

A difficulty here, however, is that some environmental ethicists use the term 'intrinsic value' in different ways. Some writers use it to mean "objective value" (see below) and others to mean 'the value that a thing has for itself' (occasionally the term inherent worth is also used for this latter meaning - just to confuse matters still further!). These uses are less frequent, but it means that when you come across the term 'intrinsic value' in a text it is important to try to put it in context and work out what the author actually means. The reading tips below should be especially helpful here.

c) Subjective and Objective Values

This discussion of non-instrumental, or intrinsic value, however, inevitably raises a second question about where such value comes from. Is it created by human beings, or is it something which already exists in the world, which human beings recognize rather than bring into being?
Again, this is a subject of great debate amongst philosophers - central to metaethics. In its simplest form, it is sometimes called the dispute between value subjectivists and value objectivists. Fundamentally, value subjectivists think that non-instrumental or intrinsic value is something which humans create and attach to their own lives, the lives of other people, to particular states of affairs (such as pleasure or the avoidance of suffering) and perhaps to landscapes or animals as suggested above. (It should be noted, though, that there are many different kinds of value subjectivism, which we don't have space to go into here.) Value objectivists, on the other hand, think that whilst humans do create some values, there are also values not created by humans, but which are present in the world around them, built into the world. They might argue that in valuing Yosemite National Park they are not creating value but rather recognizing value already present; value which would continue to exist even if there were no human beings left in the world to value it.

There are clearly difficulties with holding to such an objectivist view. What kind of 'thing' or 'quality' is value? Is it a quality possessed by objects or individuals, rather like their colour? What if people disagree (as they do) over what objects or individuals might have this quality? Who is to decide who is right? For those who believe in God, dealing with these kinds of question is less problematic. If God created the world, and (as in the Judeo-Christian tradition at least) saw that it was good, then humans can recognize and value God's work in the world. This theological understanding of value is sometimes found amongst those who take an approach to ethics based on natural law. But for those who do not accept that ethics has a theological basis, it is more difficult to explain what objective value might be and where it might come from. A variety of different broadly objectivist, as well as broadly subjectivist, positions exist in philosophy.

There are defenders of both positions in environmental ethics. The most prominent advocate of value objectivism is Holmes Rolston, who puts forward this view in essays in his book Philosophy Gone Wild (Prometheus 1988) and Environmental Ethics (Temple University Press 1993). He also defends this view in the article "Challenges in Environmental Ethics" in the Zimmermann collection. In contrast, J.Baird Callicott, another leading environmental ethicist, has a subjectivist view, arguing that all value is anthropogenic (that is to say, originating with humans) - or perhaps, vertabragenic (originating in those organisms with spines and nervous systems). We will return to some of these issues later, but it's important to recognize at the beginning this underlying debate in environmental ethics.

d) Anthropocentric and Non-anthropocentric ethics

A final issue to be considered here relates to what are called anthropocentric and non-anthropocentric values. Anthropocentric means, "human-centred", and anthropocentric, most simply understood, means ethics centred around humans, humans as the centre of ethical concern. Non-anthropocentric ethics obviously, on the other hand, is ethics not centred around humans: so, perhaps, where other animals or other species can be the direct object of ethical concern. It has often been argued in environmental ethics that "real" environmental ethics must be non-anthropocentric. It must focus on directly valuing the non-human. If environmental ethics is anthropocentric -human-centred - then it isn't really environmental at all; it is just another version of human ethics. Of late, however, that view has been questioned by a variety of philosophers, who argue that "anthropocentrism" is not just a blanket term, but has a variety of "stronger" or "weaker" forms, and that weaker forms may be defensible as the basis for an environmental ethic.

Anthropocentrism and non-anthropocentrism are not necessarily opposing perspectives. One might want to argue that there are good anthropocentric and non-anthropocentric values at stake in any particular case. For instance, cutting down a rainforest may harm indigenous peoples and exacerbate climate change with detrimental effects on humans (anthropocentric values) as well as endangering native species and destroying the habitat of sentient animals (non-anthropocentric values). So there are circumstances where the two approaches may be allies rather than enemies. And, as a number of environmental ethicists have been pointing out recently, in some instances for strategic reasons one might want to stick to anthropocentric explanations for why some environmental action is harmful or good - since non-anthropocentric values might be regarded as tendentious or cranky and discredit rather than strengthen a cause.

One further point I want to make here concerns the relationship between anthropocentric/nonanthropocentric ethics, instrumental/intrinsic value and subjective/objective value. Environmental philosophers sometimes advocate views with - at first sight - surprising combinations of these positions. One of the most important positions to recognise here - and it's the source of considerable confusion - is that it is perfectly possible to combine value subjectivism with non-anthropocentrism and thinking there is intrinsic value in the natural world. Indeed, this is precisely the position which the leading environmental philosopher J.Baird Callicott adopts.

Let's look at this more closely, by considering an example Callicott himself uses. Imagine you are a value subjectivist. You think, in some sense or other, that all values are human creations. They aren't things or processes we discover out there in the world. You have a child. Inevitably, you value this child subjectively. But that you create the value subjectively doesn't mean you value your child instrumentally. It is not because your child is useful to you that you value her; her functions couldn't be replaced by someone or something else! Rather, you value your child intrinsically; you desire her to flourish, do well, develop her own unique capacities independently of you and even if it costs you something in the process.

In a not completely different way, you might feel similarly about a valued place - say, Yosemite. Even though you recognise that your valuation of Yosemite is subjective, it doesn't mean you can't value it intrinsically. And if you value Yosemite intrinsically, for its unique properties, not because it has any use for you, it might be argued that you are valuing it non-anthropocentrically; your valuing is not human-centred but nature-centred (or, if you prefer, Yosemite-centred). This is the case Callicott makes repeatedly - that whilst all values must be subjective and thus human-created, or anthropogenic this does not mean they must be human-centred or anthropocentric.

Other philosophers (such as Norton in the Reading Tip mentioned above) also adopt versions of this view. It is possible to be a value subjectivist and still to value nature intrinsically. Norton, though, calls this a "weak anthropocentric" position, rather than a non-anthropocentric position - a case where philosophers hold similar positions, but use different words to describe them!

Working Tip

This may all be getting a bit complicated: don't panic! What's important here is to think about these key elements when you're reading material in environmental ethics. In any text that's dealing with these issues, stop and ask yourself as you're going through:

a) Where does this author think that value comes from? Is value understood here as subjective or objective?
b) What does this author mean by "intrinsic value"?
c) Is this author adopting an anthropocentric approach, a non-anthropocentric approach, or suggesting that both might be important?

To do this effectively requires being clear in your own mind about how to understand these terms, so test yourself to see if you can provide coherent explanations of what each of these terms mean.

More on Anthropocentric Approaches

To conclude this block, I want to look at some approaches to environmental ethics which are broadly anthropocentric. In terms of the literature in environmental philosophy in general, and ethics in particular, such approaches are in the minority. Until very recently, most environmental ethicists have taken the view (advocated by Routley in the next reading) that what is characteristic of environmental ethics is its non-anthropocentrism. Most of the literature we will be considering in this module falls into that category. However, outside environmental ethics as a sub-discipline of philosophy - in the world of local, national and international policy-making, for instance - anthropocentric approaches have been dominant. Most international discussion of central environmental issues - depletion of stratospheric ozone, global warming, marine and atmospheric pollution, treatment of toxic waste, destruction of rainforests - focuses ethically on their effects on human beings. At the level of popular political debate, anthropocentric resource management concerns compose virtually the entire ethical agenda.

It should be noted, first, that just because such approaches are anthropocentric, they do not imply reckless exploitation of the environment. They may instead maintain that natural resources should be very carefully managed for human benefit - including for the benefit of the poor and future human generations. The Kyoto protocol was finally adopted in Bonn, the comment of Margaret Wollstrom, the EU environment commissioner as reported in The Guardian (July 24 2001) was "Now we can go home and look our children in the eye, and be proud of what we've done". A human-centred reason, but one which underpinned constraining rather than increasing exploitation of the environment.

Further reading: There is a large philosophical literature on ethical obligations towards future generations, which unfortunately we will not be covering in more detail in this module. The most useful starting place for thinking about this issue philosophically is Avner De-Shalit's 1995 book Why Posterity Matters (London, Routledge).

Two commonly-used ethical terms in environmental policy making which often, although not always, fall into the category of "anthropocentric" approaches are sustainable development and stewardship. Discussion of sustainable development frequently focuses on forms of resource management, with an emphasis on social justice and on the well-being of future generations of humans. Indeed, the most commonly cited definition of sustainable development, taken from the World Commission on Environment and Development (WCED) report Our Common Future (1987), is anthropocentric: "sustainable development is development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs". Attempts have been made to interpret sustainable development in non-anthropocentric ways, but this has not really penetrated environmental policy-making. Similarly, stewardship of the environment - a term often used within modern Christian writing, but which is also found in environmental policy statements (such as in the introductory section of the 1990 UK government's White Paper on the environment, This Common Inheritance) - usually refers to stewardship for future generations.

It would be misleading to suggest, however, that there was a near absolute gulf between the non-anthropocentric approaches of environmental ethics and the anthropocentric approaches of environmental policy-making. Even without the recent growth in anthropocentric environmental ethics, some philosophers have developed broadly anthopocentric approaches to environmental ethics, though these have taken different forms. John Passmore, for instance, in his early and influential book Man's Responsibility for Nature (1974: London: Duckworth 1980) argues - contrary to Routley in the next reading - that there is no need for a new environmental ethic. At the root of Passmore's objection to the idea of a new, non-anthropocentric environmental ethic is the doubt that there are any rigorous grounds on which to base non-anthropocentrism. Values are both human-generated and human-focused - anthropogenic and anthropocentric. Existing Western traditions of environmental management - such as a stewardship tradition - if developed and applied to current ecological problems, are perfectly adequate.

This essay uses a thought experiment to clarify our thinking. Sylvan invents a scenario comprising a world where only one person remains - and this person will shortly die. The last person sets about destroying every other living thing in the world - although without causing any pain. Routley asks us whether we think this person is doing a wrong thing. He reckons that, intuitively, we will think this behaviour is wrong. But he argues that traditional, anthropocentric ways of doing ethics can't provide a reason why this is wrong. So he reasons that a new ethic is required which will explain why such behaviour is wrong.

Questions to consider:

1) Do you think the last person's action is wrong? If so, what explanation would you give for this?
2) Could traditional ethical theories (such as utilitarianism or Kantianism) really not account for this?

Summary of Block 1

1) The term "environment" is complex and can be used in many ways. What is understood by an 'environmental problem' can include a variety of different, and even conflicting, concerns.

2) Studying environmental ethics is, simply put, studying how humans should or ought to interact with the environment around them.

3) In its broadest sense environmental ethics has had a long history, but in its modern philosophical form it grew out of the rise in environmental concern in the 1960s.

4) The following distinctions are useful for the study of environmental ethics:

The study of values in general is called axiology; ethics is a subset of this broader study;

Instrumental values are use-values, where the value is as a means to another end; other values are non-instrumental, ends in themselves. Non-instrumental value is often called intrinsic value, though use of this term can vary;

Some philosophers think that all value is subjective, generated by humans; other philosophers argue that value can be objective, something humans can discover rather than create;

The distinction between anthropocentric (human-centred) and non-anthropocentric values is important in environmental ethics, although the two are not necessarily alternatives.

5) Although most of the approaches to environmental ethics explored in this unit are broadly speaking non-anthropocentric, much environmental policy-making, such as that focused on sustainable development, is anthropocentric.

To complete this block you now need to send your response to at least one of the 'think' tasks to the discussion site.

Web notes by
Clare Palmer