The purpose of Regan’s argument remains ambiguous until its conclusion, whereby it becomes clear that it is not his intention to detract from ostensible progress made by the likes of Moore, Kant and Taylor in environmental ethics, but instead to contribute to the fortification of such an ethic’s meta-ethical basis. Regan seems to believe that theories of environmental ethics that rely heavily on the idea of certain (or all) natural entities having “intrinsic value”, are inherently flawed in how they “cannot do the philosophical work demanded of them by the conception of environmental ethics with which we are concerned”; that is, a conception that vindicates appropriate respect and duty towards the environment. In other words, an ethic of (not for) the environment.
While he fails to adequately do so, Regan alludes to the fact that a reformed environmental ethic will necessarily circumvent the need of forming its premises on such a contentious and dubious term as “intrinsic value”. For any branch of ethics to be effective in its purpose of en-/dis-couraging certain action across the human population based on justification of certain moral obligations, it must substantively and universally prove its related “oughts” through derivations of formal logic, in a manner akin to proofs in mathematics. The main point that I took away from reading Regan’s argument is that all attempts in doing so thusfar have been unconvincing as they have, to speak in the language of Hume, derived that “ought” from an “is.”
Question: Assuming Regan is correct and that using the term “intrinsic value” should be avoided in formulation of an environmental ethic, what are some of the alternative premises on which we can base such an ethic?