IPP 503: Environmental Ethics

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

Week 5: The moral considerability of the non-human world

Introduction

Many environmental (and animal) ethicists have wanted to develop approaches to ethics which take animals and/or the non-human natural world directly into account in ethical decision-making. Such approaches are alien to many traditional forms of ethical decision making, where animals and/or the environment have been of only indirect ethical concern. Kant, for instance, thought that cruelty towards animals was unethical. But this was not because of the harm it caused animals, but rather because the committing of such harm would 'brutalise' humans and make them more likely subsequently to harm other people. For Kant, animals are of indirect ethical concern - it is only other humans who are of direct ethical concern.

However, as Routley's Last Man example suggests, by the 1970s, philosophers were trying to develop ways of extending traditional ethical approaches to take account of the new questions raised by environmental and animal issues. Many different kinds of revisions and extensions have been proposed. This block looks at a number of these, united by their "individualist" approach.

Mapping Individualism in Environmental Ethics: An Overview

Traditional Ethics

Almost all mainstream ethical approaches focus on the value of individual human beings or individual human experiences in one way or another. Utilitarianism, for instance, focuses on either minimizing the pains and maximizing the pleasures of individuals or on satisfying their preferences. Kantianism emphasizes the priceless worth of the individual and how individuals should be treated not merely as means but as ends in themselves. The language of debate about ethics in political philosophy centres on the notion of the rights of the individual.

It is not surprising, then, that one of the most widespread moves in environmental and animal ethics is to attempt to extend these ethical frameworks centred on human individuals to include non-human individuals as well. The obvious point of attack here is to ask what it is about an individual human being that makes him or her valuable in the terms of the ethical framework being considered. Another way of putting this is to ask the question "What is it which makes humans morally considerable here?" ('Morally considerable' is a shorthand expression for 'someone or something who counts morally'). Depending on the answer to that question, it might be argued in response that the criterion for moral considerability being used is in some sense problematic - in particular that it cannot exclude some or all non-humans whilst including all humans. We will look at this move further when looking at the specific instances later.
In this block I am going to look at some of the most important accounts of environmental/animal ethics which fall into this "individualistic" category. They have been developed from a variety of different traditional approaches. In thinking about these positions, it's helpful to consider them along three different axes. These are:

1. Consequentialist/Deontological
2. Sentience-centred/Life centred
3. Egalitarian/hierarchical
   

1. Consequentialist/Deontological

Some of the individualist positions we will be considering here are consequentialist, and some deontological. Consequentialist approaches are more or less closely outgrowths of utilitarianism, whilst deontological accounts tend to draw on Kant and theories of rights.

2. Sentience-centred/Life centred

Although this is something of a generalization, individualist positions tend to fall into two categories. The first focuses on sentience (the ability to feel pain and pleasure) and other associated "higher-order" abilities including consciousness. These positions generally only extend moral considerability to animals, and possibly only some animals. The second focuses on life - being alive means an organism meets the necessary and sufficient criteria to qualify for direct moral considerability.

3. Egalitarian/Hierarchical

For some individualist positions, any organism which meets the criterion of moral considerability is as morally significant as any other. In Bentham's words: everyone counts for one and no-one for more than one. In an egalitarian ethical system, just to count gives you the same standing as everyone else. Other ethical systems, though, are hierarchical. There is a baseline to be met to count at all. (For instance, you must be alive to count). But there are other criteria in the system which mean that you count more - you can get a kind of "value-added" if you like. For instance, you might be morally considerable just by being alive. But you might get extra "value-added" - be worth more - if you are sentient and intelligent. In such a case, having to choose between killing an insect and killing a dog would be straightforward - the dog is worth more. This contrasts with an egalitarian ethical system - where all living things count for the same, it would be just as bad to kill an insect as a dog.

It's these three axes which lie at the heart of the differences between the different individualist approaches to environmental ethics we'll be considering here. This can by no means be a comprehensive survey, but it will at least outline some of the main proposed positions.

Singer's Utilitarianism

Utilitarianism is the ethical tradition that lends itself most obviously to the sort of extension of traditional ethical approaches considered above. Even in its earliest form, its founder Jeremy Bentham (1748-1832) thought utilitarianism should take animals into account. In his Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation (1789) he wrote:

It may one day be recognised that the number of the legs, the villosity of the skin or the termination of the os sacrum are reasons equally insufficient for abandoning a sensitive being to the same fate. What else is it that should trace the insuperable line? Is it the faculty of reason, or perhaps the faculty of discourse? But a full grown horse or dog is beyond comparison a more rational, as well as a more conversible animal than an infant of a day or a week or even a month old. But suppose they were otherwise, what would it avail? The question is not, Can they reason? nor Can they talk? but Can they suffer?

This understanding of utilitarianism as including animals was largely neglected until 1975, when the utilitarian philosopher Peter Singer published his book Animal Liberation. This book is now viewed as one of the key works in the animal liberation and environmental movements. What is significant about Singer's arguments for the development of environmental ethics is that organisms other than humans are directly taken into account in moral decision-making. They are not being valued as resources, for their usefulness to human beings, but rather they are being taken into account for what they are in themselves - in ways which may cause inconvenience or even difficulty for human beings.

In Animal Liberation, Singer adopts the classic utilitarian view that the ultimate good is to minimise pain and maximise pleasure (in fact, he focuses on the former of these). He argues that since animals as well as humans can feel pain, a case can be made for equality between humans and animals. That is to say, he argues, that animals should be taken into moral consideration equally with humans where the infliction of suffering is involved, because animals, like humans are sentient. For Singer, the capacity for suffering is "the prerequisite for having interests at all" - that is to say, it's the prerequisite for being morally considerable. Since animals can feel pain, they have an interest in avoiding it; and he argues that the principle of equal consideration requires that animal interests in not suffering be taken equally into account with human interests in not suffering. We can already see here where Singer fits along the three axes discussed above:

1. He's a utilitarian and as such a consequentialist;
2. He's sentience-centred rather than life-centred;
3. He's egalitarian rather than hierarchical (although as I shall point out, he shifts a bit on this in his later work).
   

Singer argues that failure to take sentient animals into equal moral consideration with humans is speciesism. This term is something of a slippery one, and is defined in different ways by different people. One definition of it is something like the position that "humans are morally entitled to prefer the interests of fellow humans over equivalent interests of other animals". Singer maintains that speciesism follows an identical pattern to racism and sexism - and is equally to be condemned. He maintains: "pain and suffering are bad and should be minimised irrespective of the race, sex or species of the being that suffers." However, he does note that the same amount of physical pain can cause more total human suffering than animal suffering. This is because humans have capacities of memory and anticipation of pain which animals may not have; because of the depth of emotional ties between humans which may mean the suffering of one has a negative effect on others; and because certain kinds of suffering may upset whole human communities in ways which wouldn't happen amongst animals. Of course, Singer points out, there are some situations in which this may not be the case - where for instance humans can gain some relief from suffering by knowing it will shortly end, in ways which animals cannot.

Now read Singer's 'All Animals are Equal' (this is a very early piece by Singer).

Exercise

When reading this article, think carefully about the following issues:

1. Singer lines up animal liberation alongside the movements for racial and sexual equality; and speciesism alongside racism and sexism. But is speciesism really like racism or sexism? (Are they like one another?) In thinking about this you may want to consider Singer's characterisation of these movements, and whether this is how they would more generally be characterised.
   
2. What does Singer mean by "moral equality" and "factual equality"? How important do you think his distinction here is?
   
3. Singer raises the issue of vivisection and suggests that, in terms of suffering, experimenting on a human baby is much the same as experimenting on other adult mammals. What do you think he is doing in making this comparison (suggesting that vivisection should be extended to babies, or rejecting it?) What do you think of the method Singer uses in making this point?
   
4. Have a go at summarising the "flow" of Singer's argument - how his main points follow from one another. With which claims (if any) do you part company from him? Are there places where you think his argument is flawed?

Answer all these questions in your own notes and send the result of at least one of them to the discussion site.

Singer's Animal Liberation is often thought to have given birth to the modern animal liberation movement as we know it. But a number of nagging questions were raised by critics about the book, to which Singer has attempted to respond. Since philosophically interesting points are raised, we will briefly consider them here.

A number of critics pointed out that Singer's position might work quite well to prevent animals from suffering. But it didn't work well to prevent them from being killed, provided they were killed painlessly and a new animal bred in their place. This follows from the nature of the kind of utilitarianism Singer adopted. If what matters is maximising happiness and minimising pain, so long as no pain is caused, and a new animal at least as happy as one killed is produced, nothing has been lost by killing. Thus animals become, in essence, replaceable. Singer wasn't very happy with this, and so in his more recent writing attempted to develop a form of utilitarianism which would overcome this problem. He adopted a different form of utilitarianism - preference utilitarianism - to refine his earlier position. What does this mean?

Well, there are two popular forms of utilitarianism - classical utilitarianism which focuses on pleasure and pain, and preference utilitarianism which focuses on satisfying preferences. By adding a layer of preference utilitarianism onto his position, Singer tried get round the painless killing and replaceability problem. He continued to maintain that the baseline of moral considerability was sentience. Any sentient being must be taken into account in ethical decision-making. But there is also a class of beings who are capable of having preferences, which requires a level of intelligence and consciousness, not just sentience. And those beings who have preferences will (generally speaking) have preferences to go on living, rather than being killed. A preference utilitarian should try to satisfy those preferences by not killing, whether or not the killing would be painless. In this way, Singer creates a class of preference-havers who receive a level of protection from killing not available to the sentient non preference-havers. In other words, he moves away from an egalitarian position towards a hierarchy which has three tiers - one which looks something like this:

Singer's later three-tier position

Top Tier
The Personally Morally Considerable
(Most adult humans, apes, dolphins etc)
Self conscious
Irreplaceable
Persons________________________________

Middle Tier
The Impersonally Morally Considerable
(animals and humans which lack self-consciousness - incl. foetuses and infants)
Replaceable
______________________________________

Bottom Tier
The Morally Inconsiderable
(Rocks, rivers, insects, plants, molluscs)

Sentience still marks the line between being morally considerable or not. Rocks, rivers, insects etc which can't - according to Singer - feel pain, don't count at all; they fall into the bottom tier. Animals which are sentient but not conscious fall into the middle tier; they may be painlessly killed and replaced without anything unethical having transpired (Singer uses a chicken as an example in this category). Then animals in the top tier - such as humans, dolphins, primates - who have preferences to go on living may not (generally speaking) be killed ethically, however painless this might be. (Singer is not, unfortunately, very clear about into which tier the most widely eaten animals like cows and pigs fall).

Picture: some members of a top tier species contemplating the inconsiderable

Question for Thought:

What do you think is the main objection which might be raised to Singer's preference utilitarianism here? If you are foxed, have a look at the article by Michael Lockwood in the reading tip below.

Reading Tip: Singer develops his philosophical approach towards animals, as mentioned above, in a number of later writings. Most useful amongst these is the section on animals in his book Practical Ethics (of which there are numerous editions, the more recent the better) and his 1979 article "Killing Humans and Killing Animals" in Inquiry 22 145-156. This edition of Inquiry has a number of interesting articles, including an attack on Singer by Michael Lockwood in "Killing and the Preference for Life" Inquiry 22 p.157-170.

Web Resource

There's a huge amount about Peter Singer on the web - his controversial views about abortion and euthanasia as well as animals have cause uproar in various quarters. Some websites you might like to look at:

An interview with Singer in Reason magazine
http://www.reason.com/0012/rb.the.html

And finally a site with masses of links to Singer's writings and writing about him:
http://www.petersingerlinks.com

Animals and Rights

"Animal rights" is an expression most commonly used in a broad sense to cover a wide range of ethical positions where animals are directly morally considerable. In a philosophical rather than a popular sense, however, the expression "animal rights" should be confined to philosophical positions which actively adopt the language of rights. The most important of these positions has been developed by Tom Regan, whose book The Case for Animal Rights was published in 1984. Regan adapts key ideas from Kantian ethical theory and incorporates them into an extended rights theory which includes animals alongside humans.
Regan's argument is complicated and it is impossible to reproduce more than a summary here. However, we can look at some of the basic steps in his argument.

First, there is a descriptive step - where Regan talks about the kind of beings he thinks animals are. It's important to note that Regan confines his argument about animal rights to adult mammals. These animals, he argue, should be seen as conscious, and as the kind of organisms which have beliefs and desires. (These claims in themselves put him at odds with many modern - and less modern - philosophers.) They have a degree of self-awareness, and can act with intention. And, he says, they have "preference autonomy" - they have independent preferences and the ability to act on them. Their lives can go well for them, if they can ":

1. pursue and obtain what they prefer,
2. they take satisfaction in pursuing and obtaining what they prefer and
3. what they obtain and prefer is in their interests." (p.117).

It follows from this, Regan says, that animals can also be harmed - by having unwanted things inflicted upon them (like pain) or by being deprived of things (including their lives - but this is quite a complicated argument, and to pursue this you will need to look at Regan's book itself.)

After this descriptive step, Regan makes his prescriptive step. He first argues for a deontological position against a consequentialist one. For Regan, it is not the consequences of an action which determine whether it is right or wrong, but whether it conforms to a duty. And Regan is a rights theorist; so for him our primary duties are to respect the rights of individuals - irrespective of the consequences.

Then Regan makes a key distinction - that between moral agents and moral patients. Moral agents are those who are able to act morally, that is to behave in a moral way. Only humans as far as we know are able to do this - and importantly, only some humans, generally speaking normal adults, but not children, babies, or those with some kinds of mental disability. Moral patients on the other hand are not able to make moral decisions, and are not accountable for what they do morally. But nonetheless, Regan argues, these beings are still morally considerable. We don't say, for instance, that we don't have to take children into account when making moral decisions just because they aren't capable of making them themselves!
And similarly, he is going to argue, even though animals are not moral agents, they are moral patients.

On what basis? Here, Regan returns to his earlier description of what animals are like, and coins the expression "subject-of-a-life". What does he mean by this? He says:

"Individuals are subject-of-a-life if they have beliefs and desires; perception, memory and a sense of the future, including their own future; an emotional life together with feelings of pleasure and pain; preference and welfare interests; a psychophysical unity over time and an individual welfare in the sense that their experiential life fares well or ill for them….Those who satisfy the subject-of-a-life criterion themselves have a distinctive kind of value - intrinsic value…" (The Case for Animal Rights p.244).

It is on this basis - of the intrinsic value of beings that are subject-of-a-life - that Regan maintains there are rights. All animals (including humans) which are subject of a life have rights. By this, Regan means that they can make valid claims to be treated respectfully - even if they are not able to make those claims on their own behalf. And these rights, according to Regan, are natural rights. They are not rights contractually agreed upon, or voluntarily given by humans to other humans and animals. The rights exist because of the very nature of being subject-of-a-life. And all rights-holders should be treated respectfully - not harmed, not killed, and protected from those who would harm them or kill them. Indeed, Regan here adopts a version of the Kantian principle that people should never be treated merely as means to an end, but as ends in themselves. And he applies this to all rights holders - which means all adult mammals. They should all be treated as ends, never merely as means.

Where does this place Regan on our three axes?

1. He's clearly a deontologist, not a consequentialist - much of his book is aimed at showing why Singer's consequentialist arguments are mistaken.
2. He's sentience-centred (broadly speaking - though he has even more stringent criteria than just sentience) rather than life-centred
3. He's an egalitarian. Although his sphere of moral considerability is fairly limited (that is, to adult mammals) everyone in it is worth the same.
   

Some further aspects of Regan's views can be explored in the reading.

Second reading: Tom Regan: "Animal Rights, Human Wrongs" in Zimmermann pp. 41-55 This is an article-length version of Regan's views, which he published in the journal Environmental Ethics in 1980.

Exercise:

Think about the following questions when you read:

1. Is Regan's understanding of cruelty an appropriate one? Can you think of cases which you might want to call cruelty which would not fit under his description?
2. What are Regan's key points of attack on utilitarianism? List them out one by one, then see whether you think they stand up to scrutiny.
3. Regan introduces the concept of inherent value as a way into explaining why one might attribute rights.
   a) What does he claim to be the grounds for this inherent value?
   b) Is it actually a clearer idea than the rights he is trying to explain by using it?
4. Does Regan establish a convincing case for animal rights?
5. Regan is interested in establishing that animals have moral rights here. He doesn't address the question of legal rights. How do you think they might be related? Do you think he might want his moral position to be made a legal requirement?

As before make sure you attempt an answer to all of these questions and send one that you are pleased with or on that you think there is a problem with to the discussion site.

Web Resource

An article on philosophical approaches to animals by Dave Eaton (a former MAVE student)
http://www.animalaid.org.uk/campaign/pride/eaton.htm

Another summary of Regan:
http://www.thevegetariansite.com/ethics_regan.htm

Review of Regan's latest book Defending Animal Rights
http://www.cultureandanimals.org/book.htm

Extending Value Further: Valuing all living organisms

For many environmental ethicists, though, positions like Singer's and Regan's do not go far enough. They argue that for both philosophers, the environment is still a 'backdrop' to those organisms which can feel pleasure and pain or are intelligent "subjects-of-a-life". Other organisms are still only valued as long as they are useful. Furthermore, some argue, what is going on here is a valuing of things which are nearly, but not quite, human. Organisms with human-like characteristics, on this account, are valuable; those which are not, are not. And since value is assessed on how like humans an organism is (how intelligent, how conscious, how sentient), non-humans will always fall short, always be seen as like a human but lacking the full value of humanity. To some thinkers, this is not an adequate approach to environmental ethics; it fails to recognise that a being may be unlike humans and yet still valuable. John Rodman captured this by saying:

Is this, then, the new enlightenment - to see nonhuman animals as imbeciles, wilderness as a human vegetable?... It is perhaps analogous to seeing women as defective men who lack penises, or humans as defective sea mammals who lack sonar capacity… (Rodman, John (1977) 'The Liberation of Nature' Inquiry 20 83-145)

It was partly out of such concerns that life-centred (sometimes called biocentric) environmental ethics developed. According to this view it is being alive, rather than being sentient (or conscious, or having beliefs and desires) which confers moral considerability upon an organism. Of course, this view is not an entirely new one. A form of it exists within the philosophy of Jainism. And Albert Schweitzer, in his 1933 book Philosophy and Civilisation, developed a principle of reverence for life, based on his view that every organism has a "will-to-live". This fascinating early account is clearly a forerunner to later biocentric positions in environmental ethics.

However, it was not until the late 1970s that a more rigorous attempt to defend such an approach to environmental ethics was developed by Kenneth Goodpaster. His article constitutes the third reading in this block.

Reading 3: Kenneth Goodpaster: 'On Being Morally Considerable'

This paper was first published in 1978 in the Journal of Philosophy 75 308-325 and has been reprinted subsequently in a number of different collections. This witnesses to its importance as the foundation for many modern individualist positions in environmental ethics. Goodpaster considers the question 'what makes something morally considerable?' in some detail, arguing that 'X's being a living thing is both necessary and sufficient for moral considerability so understood'. This is quite a complex paper, so you will need to read it slowly and think through the argument Goodpaster is making.

Clarifying Goodpaster's Argument:

Check that you can answer the following questions about Goodpaster's account:

1. Why does Goodpaster prefer to talk about moral considerability rather than rights?
2. What is the distinction he makes between moral considerability and moral significance?
3. How does he distinguish between questions of intelligibility and questions of normative substance?
4. Why does Goodpaster maintain that sentience alone is a sufficient but not a necessary condition for moral considerability?
5. On what arguments does Goodpaster primarily base his case that plants are morally considerable?

Notes on Interests

It's useful here to be distinguish between two different ways in which we think of the word "interest". We sometimes use the word to mean something that actively engages us: we are interested in something, we "take an interest". This is sometimes called a "preference interest". And on other occasions, we use the word to mean something which is good for us, "in our interests". This is sometimes called a "welfare interest". Clearly, we can take an interest in something which is not in our interests (smoking, for instance). Goodpaster is using the distinction in a slightly different way. He's suggesting that an organism which lacks the psychological wherewithal to take an interest in anything (no preference interests) still has things which are in its interests (welfare interests). For instance, my pot-plants don't take any interest in being watered. But it's in their interests that I do so (welfare interests). Goodpaster is suggesting that in terms of moral considerability, it is welfare interests that matter. Plants, and other non-sentient organisms, have a wellbeing.

They can be in better or worse states. They can be healthy or unhealthy, flourishing or not flourishing. It is in their interests to flourish, even if they can't take an interest in it

Objections to Goodpaster

1) Singer commented scathingly on this article:

All we mean when we say it is in the interests of a tree to be watered is that the tree needs water if it is to continue to live and grow normally; if we regard this as evidence that the tree has interests we may as well say that it is in the interests of a car to be lubricated regularly because the car needs lubrication if it is to run properly. (Singer in 'The Place of Nonhumans' (Sayre and Goodpaster (eds.) Ethics and Problems of the 21st Century Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press 1979)

This is clearly a different interpretation of "interests". With whom do you side, Singer or Goodpaster? Why?

2) Goodpaster suggests that "the core of moral concern lies in respect for self-sustaining organisation and integration in the face of pressures towards high entropy". But does this mean moral concern for (for instance) computers?

3) Does this position imply impossible ethical commitments? Goodpaster thinks not. Do you agree?

Exercise:

Please send your answer to question 1 to the discussion site and remember that you will need to give a reason.

Paul Taylor's Respect for Nature

Goodpaster's article is a mere sketch of a possible baseline for moral considerability. For this reason, it can't be lined up against two of the the three axes I outlined at the beginning of the block. Whilst it is clearly life-centred rather than sentience centred, it could be used as the basis for either a deontological or a consequentialist position; and although in a sense it is egalitarian, the way is left open for a hierarchical position to be built on it.

So I want now to move on to look at one of the most important books written in environmental ethics, Paul Taylor's Respect for Nature (Princeton: Princeton University Press 1986). Taylor develops a complex and thought-provoking account of human duties towards other living organisms.

Taylor's ethical system has three major strands: a belief system, a moral attitude and rules of duty/standards of character. Fundamental to his account is his advocacy of a human attitude of respect for nature. This involves the recognition that humans are part of an interconnected and interdependent ecosystem to which they are not inherently superior; and that all organisms, as well as humans are 'teleological centres of life, in the sense that each is a unique individual pursing its own good in its own way' (p.100). (The word telos is a Greek word meaning something like 'end' or 'purpose'.) All living things pursue their own ends, their own good, and defend their own life, Taylor argues. It is on this basis that Taylor argues all living beings have inherent worth; and this inherent worth is equally possessed by all living organisms, since all have a good of their own. (Note that Taylor's use of inherent worth looks like the meaning of intrinsic value I outlined in block 1). This good, Taylor argues, is as vital to them as a human good is to a human. On this basis, Taylor maintains a position sometimes called biocentric equality: all organisms, of whatever species, have the same inherent value and are entitled to respectful treatment.

In terms of our three axes, then, Taylor's position takes the following line:

1. He's a deontologist: organisms have inherent worth which must be respected, whatever the consequences;
2. He's life-centred rather than sentience centred; all living things have inherent worth, whether sentient or not;
3. He's egalitarian: everything that is alive has inherent worth and everything that has inherent worth has it equally. On this basis, Taylor affirms a principle of species impartiality.
   

Much of Taylor's book is spent working these ideas out in more detail. In particular, he develops four basic principles of duty to the non-human natural world: nonmaleficence, noninterference, fidelity, and restitutive justice. In summary, non-maleficence is the duty not to harm any particular organisms; non-interference is the duty to refrain from constraining organisms and to allow them to seek self-realisation unhindered; fidelity is the duty not to break a trust placed by a wild animal in a human; and restitutive justice is the duty to make good wrongs done to individual organisms through human action - that is to say, when one of the other three duties has not been followed.

Taylor's account is systematic and carefully worked through. But there is one, enormous, obvious difficulty with it: how could anyone possibly live such a life? Think of some of the obvious problems. How for instance could one deal with disease, if dealing with disease means killing millions of bacteria, all worth the same as a human life? How could one ever build anything, since that would inevitably involve killing plants which previously occupied the site? What about eating? And presumably Taylor's position wouldn't support vegetarianism, since killing a plant would be as bad as killing an animal (and cannibalism no worse, for that matter!)

In an attempt to deal with some of these questions, Taylor develops a series of "priority principles" for resolving conflicts. These allow for self-defence (a category into which medicine, for instance, falls) and inevitably - to some extent at least - compromise his egalitarianism, since he allows amongst other things for humans to construct buildings of great cultural significance even where this results in the mass death of organisms.

Reading 4: Paul Taylor: 'The Ethics of Respect for Nature' in Zimmerman pp.71-86

This reading is derived from an early article Taylor wrote, prior to developing his systematic case in Respect for Nature. It outlines some of his key arguments, ones which he later elaborated. (For instance, in this article he doesn't commit himself to either a consequentialist or a deontological position; in Respect for Nature, he adopts the latter).

Clarifying Taylor's Arguments:

Check after reading this article that you could explain the following:

1. What does Taylor mean by the 'good' of an organism?
2. What does he understand by the biocentric outlook on nature?
3. What does being a 'teleological centre of life' mean?
4. How does Taylor use the term 'inherent worth'?
5. How does he understand 'species impartiality'?

More questions about Taylor:

1. Is Taylor committing some kind of naturalistic fallacy here? That is to say, is he leaping from discussing the descriptive 'good' of an organism to thinking of this as good in a moral sense?
2. Why might Taylor have dismissed concern about non-wild organisms? Do you think it weakens, or strengthens his case that it is wild individuals only about whom he is concerned?
3. Does it really make sense to talk about non-sentient organisms as having their own individual perspectives on life?
4. How do you respond to Taylor's attack on hierarchies of inherent worth? Is it more 'democratic' to be egalitarian? Is the idea of a species value hierarchy really like a human class hierarchy?
5. What might the implications of Taylor's position be in practice? Could it be made workable, or do you think it is an utterly impractical moral position? If so, does that mean it's not worth advocating?
   

A Glance at some Hierarchical Positions

Before reaching the end of the block, we should just cast our eyes over some hierarchical positions in individualist environmental ethics. In principle, Singer, Regan and Taylor adopted the view that, as it were, moral considerability = moral significance. If you count morally, you count the same as everyone else. (In fact all three slip from this position in various places, but we don't need to pursue this too closely here!) However, a number of environmental ethicists have deliberately attempted to develop hierarchical views, where, generally speaking, being alive is enough to qualify for moral considerability, but having other qualities (like sentience or consciousness) gives added moral significance - value-added, as I suggested at the beginning of the block. We don't have space to consider these positions in much detail here, but it's important to point them out, and to note that both consequentialists and deontologists have adopted such positions.

A Deontological Hierarchy of Value

Louis Lombardi in his article 'Inherent Worth, Respect and Rights' in Environmental Ethics 5 Fall 1983 develops a deontological approach where the value of different kinds of organisms is hierarchical. Responding to Taylor, Lombardi argues that the "telos" possessed by a living thing should be regarded as a capacity. And, he argues, it is a worth-giving capacity; by which he means an organism possesses inherent worth. But, Lombardi argues, being alive is not the only worth-giving capacity. Organisms can have other valuable capacities, on top of being alive, that increase inherent worth. A plant, for instance, has vegetative capacities which give it a little 'value-added'; mammals have vegetative capacities, but are also sentient, the added capacity to feel pleasure and pain giving additional value; while human beings, having other additional capacities, such as reflectiveness, have even greater value-added. Thus Lombardi constructs a hierarchical individualist deontological environmental ethic built on difference of capacities between species. The baseline capacity, being alive, gives inherent worth; but other added capacities give extra worth.

A Consequentialist Hierarchy of Value

Robin Attfield is an example of a consequentialist philosopher who adopts a hierarchical individualist postion. In fact, he adopts a new configuration of the three axes: he combines being a consequentialist with being life-centred and hierarchical! How does he manage this? Well, the crucial step which enables him to do this is change the nature of the consequentialism, moving it away from either classical utilitarianism (about pleasure and pain) or preference utilitarianism (the satisfaction of preferences). Both these require experience on the part of those involved. Both pleasure/pain and the satisfaction of preferences are, after all, experiences. But Attfield rejects experience as a necessary criterion for moral considerability. Instead, he advocates the state of being able to flourish. Flourishing need not be experienced, but is essential for the wellbeing of all organisms. So what drives the consequentialism here (put in very simple form) is maximising the flourishing of all living things. However, this is not the end of the story for Attfield, because there are two further factors to take into account in moral decision making. The first is a hierarchical principle - of how psychologically complex the organism in question is. The flourishing of more psychologically complex organisms is more important than that of less complex organisms. But, also, the degree of significance any proposed act has to the different organisms involved is important too. For instance, suppose a psychologically complex animal like a human wants to eat a less complex animal like a cow. Attfield would reject this. Certainly, the human is more complex than the cow, and so at first sight one might think the human should be given priority. But the need to eat beef is a relatively trivial significance to the human (providing that there is other food available) - it isn't fundamental to human flourishing. But it's fundamental to the survival of the cow. On Atfield's system of weighting then, even though the human has more capacity to flourish than the cow, it doesn't mean that in any conflict humans will automatically win out.

Reading Tip: A useful article developing a view like this, on which Attfield draws, is Donald VandeVeer's article "Interspecific Justice", published in Inquiry 1979 p. 55-79. A more detailed hierarchical view (and one which attempts to incorporate ecosystems and species as well) can be found in Lawrence Johnson's A Morally Deep World (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1991)

Summary

I. This section has looked at non-anthropocentric individualist approaches to environmental ethics. These are ways of going about environmental ethics that focus on the value of individual organisms or their experiences. These individualist approaches were structured around three axes:

• consequentialist/deontological;
• sentience-centred/life centred
• egalitarian/hierarchical

II. Peter Singer developed utilitarianism to take into account the suffering of animals. He argued that as sentient beings they are morally equal to humans and should be treated as such. His account - in its early form anyway - is sentience-centred and egalitarian.

III. Tom Regan developed rights theory to take into account animal rights. He argued that animals (adult mammals) are subjects-of-a-life, have inherent value, and should be treated as ends in themselves, never merely as means. His account is deontological, but also sentience-centred and egalitarian.

IV. Paul Taylor argued that all living organisms have their own good, their own telos, and that this gave them inherent worth. Humans should adopt an attitude of respect for nature in which they recognise that they are part of, and not superior to, a web of interdependent organisms in the world. Part of respecting nature involves recognising the inherent worth of non-human wild organisms, and not interfering with them or harming them. Taylor's account is deontological, life-centred and egalitarian.

V. Finally we considered a couple of hierarchical accounts, where life is a baseline for moral considerability, but extra capacities add value.

VI. There are, then a wide range of possible positions in individualist environmental ethics - and not all have been filled or fully explored! (Can you think of other possible combinations of the three axes, and arguments for them?) However, all of these positions have been criticised by holistic environmental ethicists.

A Concluding Exercise: before moving to the next week’s material, have a go at thinking about the following case:

An old growth forest, with a rich ecosystem and endangered species is about to be felled. The felling will provide employment for a number of unemployed local people, and the area will be partly replanted with a conifer plantation and partly used for a free-range, organic cattle farm.

 

1. Would a) Singer b) Regan c) Taylor object? If so, why? If not, why not?
2. Which of these three positions would be most opposed to the felling?
3. Are there some ethical problems with the felling that you want to raise but which don't seem to be taken account of in any of these accounts?

To complete this block make sure that you have responded to some of the exercises by sending a response to the discussion site.

Based on notes by Clare Palmer