IPP 503: Environmental Ethics

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

Week 4: Incommensurability and Value Pluralism

I. Classical Utilitarianism

According to Classical Utlitarianism, the right action is that which has the consequences which maximises the well-being or happiness of affected agents i.e. the best action is that which produces the greatest improvement in well-being.

This theory makes three distinct claims that need to be distinguished:

1. It is welfarist: The only thing that is good in itself and not just a means to another good is the happiness or well-being of individuals.
2. It is consequentialist: whether an action is right or wrong is determined solely by its consequences.
3. It is an aggregative maximising approach: we choose the action that produces the greatest total amount of well-being.

II. Two assumptions – monism and commensurability

1. Value monism

The first component of classical utilitarianism, the welfarism, claims that there is only one thing that is of value in itself and not as a means to another end, happiness. It appears to assume a form of value monism: there is only one intrinsically valuable property or entity which is the ultimate value, to which others are reducible.

Bentham’s hedonist version of welfarism identifies happiness with pleasure and the absence of pain. It assumes the ultimate single value will be pleasure. Other values are instrumental – means to pleasure.

Alternatively, in J.S. Mil's version of the theory pleasures differ in quality as well as quantity BUT there is a way of comparing the value of pleasures – that is, the preferences of individuals who are fully informed of both.

Value monism contrasts with value pluralism.

Value pluralism: there are a number of distinct intrinsically valuable properties, such as autonomy, knowledge, justice, equality, beauty etc. which are not reducible to each other nor to some other ultimate value such as pleasure.

2. Value commensurability – is there a measure of value?

The third component of classical utilitarianism, the maximising component makes a second assumption. It appears to assume that we can ascertain which outcome produces the greatest total amount of value. It seems to require the existence of a common measure of value though which different options can be compared in order to discover the greatest total amount of value.

What kind of scale of measurement?

• Strong view: we need a cardinal scale i.e. a scale that will tell us precisely how much value different options offer.
• Weak view: we only need an ordinal scale i.e. a scale that ranks options Ist, 2nd, 3rd etc.

One attraction of at least some forms of value-monism is that they offer the possibility of arriving at cardinal measures of value. Consider Bentham’s feclific calculus discussed in week 1. Bentham's hedonistic measure of value informs us of how much pleasure is present. It provides a cardinal scale of value – it can tell us precisely how valuable an option is. Pains can be measured on the same scale as pleasures, as negative quantities. Thus it is possible to aggregate the pleasures/pains experienced by each person, and then aggregate the pleasures/pains of a number of people affected by some action, in this way arriving at a single result which gives the total utility of that action.

Mill’s claim that pleasures differ in quality and not only in quantity entails there can be no arithmetic calculus of pleasures of the kind Bentham seeks. However, he suggests an alternative method by which pleasures can be compared: pleasant experiences are desired, and some are desired more than others.

3. Environmental ethics

In environmental philosophy and policy making there has been a major conflict between those who think that any coherent and rational approach to environmental choice requires monism and/or commensurability, and those who allow that rational choices are possible without those assumptions. (Light and Rolston eds. Part IV)

III. Value monism:

Arguments for value monism:

One argument for value monism is the assumption that it is required for there to be rational decisions. There has to be a single standard of value to compare options if there is to be rational decision making at all. A classic statement of the position is that of J.S. Mill:

There must be some standard to determine the goodness and badness, absolute and comparative, of ends, or objects of desires. And whatever that standard is, there can be but one; for if there were several ultimate principles of conduct, the same conduct might be approved of by one of those principles and condemned by another; and there would be needed some more general principle, as umpire between them.

Problems with this argument:

1. A general umpiring principle does not entail that there must be one standard to determine the goodness or badness of different ends and objects.

It is possible to have many standards of value, v1, v2...vn and some ordering principle for determining which takes precedence over others, an umpiring rule.

E.G. Rawls’ rules introducing a lexical ordering amongst values v1, v2...vn, such that v2 comes into play only after v1 is satisfied, and in general any further standard of value enters consideration only after the previous value has been satisfied

2. A fallacy - the argument involves an implicit shift in the scope of a quantifier.

UE. For any putative practical conflict of values rationality requires that there be a method of resolving the conflict.

does not entail

EU. Rationality requires there be a method such that for any practical conflict the method resolves the conflict.

The inference of EU from UE involves a shift in the scope of the quantifiers:

An example of the fallacy: ‘Everybody loves somebody’ does not entail ‘There is somebody that everybody loves’.

III. Value pluralism

Value pluralism: There are a number of distinct intrinsically valuable properties, such as autonomy, knowledge, justice, equality, beauty etc. which are not reducible to each other nor to some other ultimate value such as pleasure.

A thought in favour of pluralism: the richness of our evaluative language cannot be reduced to some single value conferring property.

Consider the diversity of evaluative concepts that are employed in the appraisal of our environments and the variety of practices that inform our relationships to our environments that this reflects. We use then a rich vocabulary to appraise the environments we live in, from and with.

• biological and ecological sciences - biodiversity, species richness, integrity, fragility, health.
• aesthetic traditions - tones of colour, such as the contrasting browns and reds of autumn, the subtle shifts in shades of green in spring, the dappled sunlight in woodlands; the forms and shapes of nature such as the ruggedness of mountains, the gentleness of hills, the landscapes shaped by stone wall and terrace; the sounds such as birdsong and river over rocks; and textures such as the roughness of gritstone and the sharp and smooth of limestone.
• a place based vocabulary - a location might be valued for being evocative of the past.

These can conflict in particular conservation problems. Consider the following conflicts in nature conservation in Wales:

1. The spread of rhododendron around Beddgelert. The rhododendron is a superb landscape feature and draws many visitors when it flowers. From the nature conservation view it is an alien Himalayan intruder that spreads quickly and under whose dense thicket little else grows, destroying local ecological systems.
2. The disused slate-quarries on the Llanberis side of Elidir Fawr. From both landscape and ecological perspectives there is very little to said for them. They form a huge industrial scar up a mountainside and at present contain very little of interest to the natural scientist. Plans to landscape the quarries were partially implemented. Some of the local people, however, were very unhappy about this, on the grounds that landscaping literally covers up the past. The quarries embody a sense of place and past for a community.

Question:

Could that variety be reduced to some single value?

How should conflicts between such values be resolved?

One possible response would be to say, "There is an ultimate value at work here – well-being. The different values all make a contribution to human well-being, or more widely the well-being of individual sentient beings. Well-being remains the ultimate value".

Yet a reply to this might emphasise well-being and pluralism: Some apparently monistic views may be themselves pluralistic when unpacked. Objective list accounts of well-being typically assume that there are a number of components of well-being - autonomy, knowledge, personal relationships with friends and family, and so on. Each is valuable in itself and not reducible to any other. Welfare or well-being are covering terms for the various valuable components of life.

IV. Trading-off values

If value-pluralism is true, does it follow that there is no single measure of value, that value commensurability also falls? Not necessarily. Value-commensurability is compatible with at least some forms of pluralism if one assumes that different values can be traded-off with each other.

What is it to say that values can be traded-off against each other? There are a variety of ultimate values, but we can compare those values and say that a loss in one dimension of value is equal to a gain in another.

Here we can introduce the idea of a trade-off schedule: a loss of so much in one value is compensated for by a gain of so much in another. In making choices or expressing preferences between different options which involve losses and gains in different values, we are implicitly trading–off different values.

Universal currency

If such a trade-off schedule exists value commensuralibility may be possible. What we need is a universal currency for that trade, some measuring rod which we can use to measure the different rates at which losses and gains in different dimensions of value evidence themselves and then put them on a common scale.

Exercise: Conflicting values in forestry management in the U.K. The context is one of conflicting values.

• different biodiversity objectives –
  • increasing the diversity of native tree species in forests is in conflict with the aim of protecting the native species of red squirrel which fares better than the immigrant grey squirrel in conifer plantations or the protection of the goshawk which flourishes in spruce plantation. biodiversity considerations themselves conflict with others:
  • landscape considerations;
• the use value of forests as a timber resource;
• specific historical and cultural meanings as a place for a particular community.

How are such conflicts between different objectives to be settled?

Is there a measure of value that could be used to trade-off losses in one dimension with gains in another?

The economist in the utilitarian tradition suggests that money can act as such a universal measuring rod.

Environmental economist: Given the existence of competing values and objectives - biodiversity, landscape, timber, cultural meanings, historical and scientific values and so on - resolution requires some common measure of comparison for giving each its due against each other. Certain economists argue that monetary price is the best measure for making those trade-offs. The use of the measure does not entail that there is only one thing of value, in particular that only money is of value. Rather money serves as a measure of the exchange rate between different values.

Blocked exchange and constitutive incommensurabilities

Can values be traded like this?

Problem.
The currency of some values may not be convertible into the currency of others. Some exchanges are blocked. The point is of particular significance for the use of money measures. There are many values which simply cannot be converted into a monetary equivalent.

Money is not a neutral measuring rod for comparing the losses and gains in different values. Values cannot all be caught within a monetary currency. Note this is an argument against monetary measures, not yet to measures in general.

Certain kinds of social relations and evaluative commitments are constituted by particular kinds of shared understanding which are such that they are incompatible with market relations. Social loyalties, for example, to friends and to family, are constituted by a refusal to treat them as commodities that can be bought or sold. Given what love and friendship are, and given what market exchanges are, one cannot buy love or friendship.

Some environmental goods are of this nature – see 511 week 2.

V. Value-pluralism, consequentialism, and the alternatives

Trade and consequentialism

The metaphor of trading values suggests a particular consequentialist framing of choices. What aim to produce a state of affairs with the greatest amount of value, and we do this by comparing the gains and losses of different dimensions of value, trading these off until we arrive at a result that produces the greatest gains in values over losses in values. The account is pluralist about values – there are a variety of different values – but by exchanging gains and losses in these distinct dimensions of value, we can still arrive at some notion of the outcome with the highest total value.

Other approaches to ethics, deontological and virtue based approaches, do not lend themselves to the trading metaphor in this sense.

Deontology and value-pluralism

Deontological ethics can take both monist and pluralist forms.

Monist: There is one basic obligation, for example that we treat persons as end in themselves, and that other obligations are derivative on this obligation.

Pluralist: (1) there are a variety of basic obligations, say obligations of justice, obligations to improve the well-being of others, obligations not to injure others, obligations to develop one’s own projects, obligations that arise from special relations, for example of parents to children, obligations that arise from previous acts, say of making a promise, or making right a previous wrong, or from gratitude, and so on, and (2) these obligations are not reducible to each other or some other ultimate principle.

Resolving conflict: resolving a value conflict is rather a matter of which obligation has the stronger pull on an agent in a particular context.

Exercise: Consider a parent who spends time with her children on holiday that she could be spending on an action of an environmental cause she also pursues and which benefits many more people.

Question: How should such a conflict be resolved?

One response: She does not do so necessarily because she trades-off the value of being with her children against those values she would produce for other people, nor because she believes that her action produces a more valuable state of affairs. It is rather that her obligations to her children in some cases over-ride those of others.

An agent may compare the importance of different obligations that make demands on her. However, it is not a matter of trading-off values in order to arrive at the outcome with the highest value. Rather it is a matter of the relations one stands with respect to different individuals and groups and considering the competing claims they make on you as an agent.

Virtue ethics and value pluralism
Virtue ethics can take monist and pluralist forms.

Monist: there is just one ultimate virtue, such as intelligence, and that all other virtues, courage, justice, generosity, autonomy, kindness, and so on are ultimately different ways of exhibiting that virtue.

Pluralist: There are many basic virtues that are not reducible to each other or some other ultimate virtue.

Resolving conflict: From a virtues perspective what matters is what kind of person one should be.

Exercise: How might a virtues ethics respond to the conflicts described in the previous two exercises?

VI. Structural pluralism

As different ethical theories are usually presented, each assumes that there is a structure to ethical theory with certain ethical primitives.

They are reductionist in that they offer different accounts of what these primitive concepts of ethics are, and then attempt to show how other ethical concepts can be reduced to those primitive concepts. Consequentialism: ‘What state of affairs ought I bring about?’ The primitives of ethical theory are states of affairs. What is intrinsically good or bad are states of affairs. Actions and states of character are instrumentally valuable as a means to producing the best state of affairs.

Deontology: ‘What acts am I obliged to perform or not perform?’ The primitives of ethical theory are the acts of agents. What is intrinsically good are certain acts we are obliged to perform and what is intrinsically bad are certain acts which are impermissible. States of character are instrumentally valuable as dispositions to perform right acts. A state of affairs is right if it is the outcome of morally just acts.

Virtues ethic: ‘What kind of person should I be?’ The primitives of ethical theory are dispositions of character. The basic good of ethical life is the development of a certain character. A right action is the act a virtuous agent would perform; the best state of affairs one that a good agent would aim to bring about.

Why should one believe that there are primitives in ethics of this kind?
One answer is a certain picture of what an ethical theory should be like – like a scientific or mathematical theory, it should have a particular structure:

• A number of basic explanatory concepts and propositions
• Other ethical concepts and propositions are shown be derivable from those basic concepts and propositions.
• The structure of the theory will give some kind of order and organisation to our ethical reflections on particular cases.

Here is one influential expression of that conception of ethics that has been influential in environmental ethics.

An ethical system S is, near enough, a propositional system (i.e. a structured set of propositions) or theory which includes (like individuals of a theory) a set of values and (like postulates of a theory) a set of general evaluative judgements concerning conduct, typically what is obligatory, permissible and wrong, of what are rights, what is valued and so forth. (R. Sylvan ‘Is There a Need for a New, and Environmental, Ethic’ in Light and Holmes Rolston III, p 49)

Why should it be thought that an ethical theory should look like this?

Answer – to give rational coherence to ethical reflection. However, one might accept the need for some for a reasoned ethical reflection without assuming that it take the form of an ethical theory modelled on a scientific or mathematical theory.

Reasons for scepticism:

1. Different primitives cannot be logically isolated in the way that these theories require.

• One cannot state why a virtue like courage is a virtue without mentioning that it involves standing firm against certain independently defined harmful states of affair.
• One cannot say what is morally wrong with acts like torture without reference to the pain in which it issues.
• Some states of affairs themselves can only be characterised as wrong in terms of their involving failure to respect persons or cruelty of character.

2. The different ethical theories call upon different sources of value

Nagel 'The Fragmentation of Value'

There are a number of distinct types of value:

1. Specific obligations that arise from special relations and roles. Obligations to my children, obligations as a lecturer.
2. Constraints on actions deriving from rights of persons. E.g. rights not to be tortured, assaulted etc.
3. Utility - consideration of the outcomes of one’s action on the general welfare.
4. Perfectionist ends – the intrinsic value of certain achievements, such as a scientific discovery, a work of art, a novel etc.
5. Commitments to one’s own projects

Nagel’s argument: These are irreducible to each other because they have different sources – we can view the world from different perspectives – individual, relational, impersonal, ideal etc.
A fundamental division he draws is that between personal or agent-centred perspectives and impersonal or outcome-centred perspectives.

Agent-centred (1,2, and 5): when we view actions from the perspective as an agent there are reasons for that agent to perform or restrain from certain actions.
Consider the agent-based restrictions on action discussed in the last chapter.
While it may be better from an impartial perspective that there are fewer chemical weapons, that one indian dies rather than six, that one child suffers torture rather than several persons suffer the consequences of a bomb blast there are constraints on what we can oblige or permit an agent to do to realise those goals.

Outcome-centred (3 and 4): when we view actions from an impersonal perspective concerned only with the value of a state of affairs brought about, independently of the nature of action that brought it about or who brought it about.

Nagel’s view – Neither of these different perspectives can be abandoned, neither is reducible to the other, neither is reducible to a third perspective. The perspectives are incommensurable.

Structural pluralism: pluralism can exist not just within different dimensions of value - between different valued states of affair, between different obligations, between different virtues – but also between them. There can be conflicts involving what will produce the best outcome, constraints on types of action and different states of character.

V. Value-pluralism and value conflict:

How might conflicts between plural values be resolved?

For a discussion of some different approaches see module 511 week 2.

Is a resolution of value conflicts always possible?

Moral dilemmas: Is it possible for a person to be in a situation in which she ought to do A and ought to do B but cannot do both?

Two views:

1. Against moral dilemmas While there maybe apparent moral dilemmas all such conflicts are resolvable. This is a long standing theme in philosophy and one finds this view developed in all three traditions;

Consequentialism: For the utilitarian, the principle of utility will resolve apparent conflicts – the right action is that which produces the greatest improvement in well-being: ‘If utility is the ultimate source of moral obligations, utility may be invoked to decide between them when their demands are incompatible’ (J.S. Mill Utilitarianism chapter 2, final paragraph)

Deontology: For Kant moral duties cannot conflict, since they express what it is morally necessary for us to do. ‘A conflict of duties (collisio officiorum seu obligationum) would be such a relation between them that one would wholly or partially abolish the other. Now as duty and obligation are notions which express the objective practical necessity of certain actions, and as two opposite rules cannot be necessary at the same time, but if it is a duty to act according to one of them, it is then not only not a duty but inconsistent with duty to act according to the other; it follows that a conflict of duties and obligations is inconceivable (obligationes non colliduntur).’ (Kant Introduction To The Metaphysic Of Morals; And Preface to The Metaphysical Elements of Ethics)

Virtue ethics: The unity of the virtues entails that there can be no ultimate conflicts between the virtues (Aristotle Nicomachean Ethics Book 6, chapter 13).

2. Arguments for the ineliminability of moral dilemmas:

Plural and incommensurable values: Given the existence of a plurality of incommensurable values a resolution of conflicts between values may not be possible. Reason cannot ensure for us in advance that conflicts of values can be resolved and tragic choice avoided. The question ‘How do we resolve moral conflicts?’ may be the wrong question. We may at the end of reflection have to accept that we are in a situation in which whatever we do a wrong will be done.

Ethical residues: Blameless individuals can find themselves in situations whatever they do they do something wrong – and hence that emotions such as regret, guilt and shame are appropriation. The existence of ethical dilemmas may result in a number of ethical residues – shame at having to do something that runs against our deepest conception of the kind of person we aspired to be, or regret that we act with integrity in a situation in which we know the worst will befall us, or guilt where we find ourselves wronging some individual.

For further discussion of moral dilemmas see:

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/moral-dilemmas/#4

For a discussion of moral dilemmas in Greek tragedy see:

http://www.univ.trieste.it/~etica/2001_1/cowley.html

Consider some of the examples of environmental examples we have discussed this far in the course. How might those conflicts be resolved?

Can they all be resolved?

What responses are appropriate if they cannot be resolved?