Category: PHIL345A

The Lack of Necessity of “Intrinsic Value” in Environmental Ethics

Today, we need only exercise intuition in our observation of the rampant exploitation of non-human nature by humans in the fulfillment of industrial interests and deliberately inflated notions of subsistence requirements to arrive at the same conclusion as Regan (Regan 1992); that the prevalent conception of environmental ethics within contemporary philosophical discourse does not do the work required of it. It does not adequately and universally justify our moral obligations to this nature, as evinced by our unsustainable habits of resource overconsumption and general neglect of how such habits may disrupt natural ecosystems.

While this anecdotal insight may serve as an impetus for philosophical debate, we must arrive at the same conclusions via logically sound reasoning if they are to carry any argumentative weight in meta-ethics, a field of meticulous criteria. In his criticism of past attempts by philosophers at formulating a robust environmental ethic, Regan incorporates elements of both J. Baird Callicott (Callicott 1985) and Holmes Rolston, III’s (Rolston, III 1991) models into a comprehensive checklist, which serves as the benchmark of his analysis.

Regan’s ideal environmental ethic is:

“(1) an ethic of the environment (as distinct from an ethic for its use), (2) an ethic that attempts to illuminate, account for or ground appropriate respect for and duty towards natural entities (…), (3) an ethic that attempts to illuminate, account for or ground appropriate respect for and duty to natural entities by appealing to their intrinsic value, and (4) an ethic that relies on an account of intrinsic value that attributes not only different but greater intrinsic value to wild in comparison with domestic organisms and species… “ (Regan 1992)

Before I continue with this review of Regan’s argument, it is necessary to stipulate exactly what I will mean when I use certain recurring terms. I will use the term nature to refer to the Earth’s four subsystems (the lithosphere, biosphere, hydrosphere and atmosphere (Keller 2010)). While the biosphere may be seen to include human beings and their built environments (e.g. cities, roads, etc), due to the nature of Regan’s argument, my definition of these three equivalent terms will be limited to non-humans and their ecosystems.

To remain consistent with the language used by Regan, natural entity will be used in its broad definition to refer to individual beings and objects of nature, species, populations and ecosystems.

As much of this debate revolves around contentious claims about the term intrinsic value, it is worth invoking pertinent assertions made by John O’Neill (O’Neill 1992). On the varieties of intrinsic value, O’Neill believes that the majority of literature on environmental ethics is guilty of equivocating two of the three different senses of the term. The two senses that are most commonly conflated are those corresponding to non-instrumental value (that is, a property of an object that is an “end in itself”) and objective value (that is, the type of value held by an object independently of any evaluative agents). Therefore, any efforts towards developing a rigorous environmental ethic by appealing to the notion of intrinsic value must show that natural entities have both non-instrumental and objective value, and arrive at this conclusion rationally without committing any logical fallacies.

Like Regan, O’Neill maintains that the ontological shortcomings of these efforts are exactly why they are unable to induce moral obligations in humans with respect to their relationship with nature.

Upon reaching the conclusion of Regan’s inquiry, it is clear that his intention is not to detract from ostensible progress made by the likes of Kant (Kant 1930) and Taylor (Taylor 1981) in environmental ethics, but instead to contribute to the fortification of such an ethic’s meta-ethical basis. I share Regan’s view that the failures of environmental ethics, thus far, can be attributed to an equivocal ontology of intrinsic value and the lack of attention paid to what constitutes such value. I will now rehash Regan’s arguments that show why the most prominent theories of intrinsic value are incapable of passing the aforementioned checklist, before concluding the discussion by questioning whether this insistence on appealing to the intrinsic value is at all necessary in the formulation of our ethics.

In Does Environmental Ethics Rest on a Mistake?, Regan substantively demonstrates why existing theories of intrinsic value do not suffice in environmental ethics. He shows that mental-state theories are unable to illuminate respect or duties to natural ecosystems, while states-of-affairs theories cannot prove that species or populations have intrinsic value, as they are not states-of-affairs themselves. In addition, Regan criticizes the end-in-itself theory by highlighting its egalitarianism and consequent inability to assign different degrees of value to different kinds of natural entities, for example wild and domesticated (Regan 1992).

And it is his objection to the hierarchical ends-in-themselves theories, which I believe can be extended to all environmental ethics that depend on conceptions of intrinsic value. If we are going to grant that there is a scale of intrinsic values; that is, different entities carry different amounts of intrinsic value, then is this very notion not superfluous? If all cases of environmental ethics that rely on this idea of intrinsic value have proven themselves to be feeble, as Regan has shown, is this not an unnecessary layer of abstraction? Like Regan, I do not claim to bear the details of a reformed environmental ethic, but I hope that questions similar to those I have raised are able to guide further work towards an ideal ethic of the environment.

Bibliography

1. Regan, Tom. 1992. “Does Environmental Ethics Rest On A Mistake?”. The Monist 75 (2): 162-181.
2. Callicott, J. Baird. 1985. “Intrinsic Value, Quantum Theory, And Environmental Ethics”. Environmental Ethics 7 (3): 257-275.
3. Rolston, III, Holmes. 1991. “Environmental Ethics: Values In And Duties To The Natural World”. In Ecology, Economics, Ethics: The Broken Circle, 1st ed., 73-96. New Haven: Yale University Press.
4. Keller, David R. 2010. “Introduction: What Is Environmental Ethics?”. In Environmental Ethics: The Big Questions, 1st ed., 2. Oxford, United Kingdom: Blackwell Publishing Ltd.
5. O’Neill, John. 1992. “The Varieties Of Intrinsic Value”. The Monist 75 (2): 119-138.
6. Kant, Immanuel. 1930. “Indirect Duties To Non-Humans”. Lectures On Ethics, 239-241.
7. Taylor, Paul W. 1981. “The Ethics Of Respect For Nature”. Environmental Ethics 3: 197-200.

Upon my first reading of the excerpt from Walking, I considered Thoreau’s writing to be poetry at best; too verbose to follow and of a bombastic tone that disqualified the arguments presented from being considered sound reasoning. Tallying how many times the anecdotal, naturalistic and ‘appeal to emotion’ fallacies were committed, I concluded that Thoreau had broken too many rules of logic to be taken seriously. However, a second reading allowed me to discern the ingenuity of how his argument was formulated. Thoreau, claiming that the intrinsic value of nature is in its aesthetic, divine beauty, is not interested in adhering to rigid standards of deductive logic; for how can the premises of such a novel conclusion be defended in a post-Enlightenment context whereby philosophical discourse was analysed using stringent, almost mathematical, standards that reduce subjects to mere static variables?

Thoreau’s reflection on his veneration of nature and its sublimity is followed by an affirmation of the anthropocentric view that nature’s value is instrumental, that is “To preserve wild animals implies generally the creation of a forest for them to dwell in or resort to. So it is with man.” In this latter part of the excerpt, Thoreau deduces that the survival of humankind relies on that of nature, aligning himself with the anthropocentrists before him (Kant, Locke, et al.), perhaps in an attempt to engage their followers. However, in conjunction with the first half of the excerpt, in its entirety, Thoreau’s argument is one for nonanthropocentrism and one that I can mostly agree with.

Question: If Kant, Mill, Locke, etc. were alive to read Thoreau’s argument, how would they respond?