Environmental Ethics Elliot

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Environmental EthicsElliot

• Disputes over resource exploitation often focus
  on empirical facts. For example, mining in an
  area might
• Reduce species diversity
• Provide jobs
• Pollute rivers
• Provide society with material goods

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Background to Empirical Disputes

• Empirical arguments presuppose some other
  background principles
• Providing jobs can count as an argument for
  mining only under certain background assumptions
• Polluting rivers can count as an argument
  against mining only under certain background
  assumptions

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Background Elements

• Desires
• Preferences
• Aims
• Goals
• Principles
• Moral views

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Perspectives on Environmental Ethics

• Human-centered
• Animal-centered
• Life-centered
• Everything-centered
• Ecological holism

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Human-Centered Environmental Ethics

• Example Evaluate environmental policies only on
  effects on humansa human-centered utilitarian
  outlook
• Mining would reduce future recreational
  opportunities.
• Mining would provide nice jewelry.
• Non-human individual animals and species do not
  count

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Animal-CenteredEnvironmental Ethics

• Humans and non-human animals, both as individuals
  and as species, are morally considerable
• May possible rank species differently
• May bring qualitative differences into
  consideration, e.g., intelligence

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Life-CenteredEnvironmental Ethics

• Plants are morally considerable
• Perhaps also the ecosystem and biosphere are
  morally considerable
• Complexity may distinguish ranks

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Rights for Rocks?

• Everything is morally considerable
• Neither life, nor intelligence, is necessary to
  qualify for moral consideration
• Ranks are possible
• Example Breaking rocks is morally objectionable
  in itself, but may be permissible to serve some
  higher moral interest.

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Ecological Holism

• Biosphere and large ecosystems are morally
  considerable
• Individuals and species are not morally
  considerable by themselves

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Justification

• Human-centered ethics focus on human
• Interests
• Capacities, e.g., rational thought
• Intrinsic qualities, e.g., complexity, beauty
• But other beings possess these same features in
  different ways
• Suggests a drift beyond the human-centered

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Beyond Human-Centered Ethics

• Find a determinant of moral-considerability in a
  human-centered ethic, then show that a rigorous
  application of the principle also applies to
  animals
• Show that human-centered ethics ignores a feature
  of animals that really is morally considerable

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Is Naturalness Morally Considerable?

• Thought experiment A mining operation destroys a
  mountain, but the mining company replaces the
  mountain with a perfect replica of the original
  Assume there is no life on the mountain.
• Is there still a loss?
• Does it raise a moral question?