Treating the Dirt: Environmental Ethics and Moral Theory
Edward Johnson
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I.. Who Counts Morally?
It is difficult to deny that societies have made some terrible mistakes about who counts morally. Most of us would agree, for example, that
treating women, children, or slaves as so much property is morally wrong. The present century has seen the triumph (rhetorically and in principle, if not politically and in practice) of the ideal of "universal.. moral franchise: Every human being is supposed to count, to have her or hi interests, or rights, given due regard.
Each fresh extension of the moral franchise has seemed to be a confession of earlier moral oversight. If the history of morality is seen as the story of an "expanding circle," it is inevitable that philosophers wonder how far that circle, the "moral community," can extend. After pioneer English feminist Mary Wollstonecraft published her vindication of the Rights of Women in 1792, her countryman Thomas Taylor wrote a satirical reply, entitled Vindication of the Rights of Brutes, in which he announced, tongue in cheek: "There is some reason to hope that this essay will soon be followed by treatises on the rights of vegetables and minerals, and that thus the doctrine of perfect equality will become universal." Taylor meant to ridicule Wollstonecraft's argument that women have rights by suggesting that similar arguments would lead to the absurd conclusion that rights a" possessed by brute animals-indeed, even by clods of dirt But one age's satire is anther's cliché. Pursuit of the belief that no human should be treated like dirt has led us to reconsider how we should treat the dirt.
What sorts of creatures count, morally We answer this question by our actions every day, though we perhaps only rarely consider it explicitly. Here is an example. In January 1974, a schooner sank off the eastern
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coast of the United States. The captain, his wife, their 80-pound Labrador retriever, and an injured crewman occupied a lifeboat to which two youths, aged nineteen and twenty, as well as a forty-seven-year-old Navy veteran, tied themselves with ropes while floating in the freezing waters. The captain refused repeated requests by the swimmers that he throw the dog overboard to make room for (some of) those in the water. He later explained that he could not bear to do it. After nine hours, the youths perished from exposure and the veteran struggled aboard. (Why not earlier?) All the occupants of the lifeboat, dog included, were subsequently rescued. After an initial investigation, the Coast Guard recommended that no criminal action be brought. However, in May 1975, the captain was indicted in a federal court for manslaughter. for refusing to eject his dog in lieu of (some of) the swimmers who died.' What sort of moral consideration do we owe the dog in such a tragic case. If the passengers had drowned because the lifeboat space was preempted by the captain's wardrobe, we would feel pretty clearly that this was unjustified, a preference of property to people. But a dog? Can a dog count morally, count directly, for its own sake, rather than because of some human's interest in it? This is the problem of moral patiency. Moral patients are those beings who are members of the moral community, who deserve, or are owed, direct moral consideration' On lifeboat Earth, what is cargo and who is passenger? Moral patients are passengers, rather than cargo. But which creatures are moral patients? One popular answer has been that only (and, perhaps, all) humans are moral patients, or that humans are specially important moral patients (1). This answer has appealed to many moral philosophers, who have of course been human themselves. Recently, this view has been powerfully attacked by animal liberationists such as Peter Singer (2) and Tom Began (3). If the inclusion of nonhumans in the moral community is justified, as it seems to be, the question arises whether the moral community can be extended yet further, to include nonsentient environmental objects (such as rocks and trees, rivers and rainbows). According to one theory, all living things deserve moral consideration or respect. This view is popularly associated with Albert Schweitzer (4). but more interesting versions of it have been developed by Paul Taylor (5) and Kenneth Goodpaster (6). This extension of the moral community to include all living things is harder to justify than the liberation of animals, but it still seems insufficient to some, who wish to include the land or earth as a whole (7-8).
II. SPECIESISM AND ANIMAL LIBERATION
1. HUMAN CHAUVINISM
Obviously, we need to be concerned about issues in environmental ethics (such as the destruction of natural habitats) both for our own sate, in
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the short run, and for the sake of our descendants, in the long run. But are these the only things that need to be taken into account, in our moral reflection, or do nonhuman things count too? Do animals? Do trees, or stones, or "ecosystems"?
The short answer to such questions is to insist that only humans count, or that humans count immeasurably more than others. Its adherents think of this view as a kind of humanism; its critics call it human chauvinism or, more broadly, speciesism. Whatever label is preferred, the view implies that nonhumans count for nothing morally, or count for little as compared with humans. This human chauvinism has been by far the dominant view among moral theorists. Often the human species is simply assumed to he morally special. My favorite example of this is found in the earnest Treatise on the Moral Ideals (1876) by British philosopher John Grote (1813-1866).
"Now we ourselves are the highest and worthiest kind of beings that we know of. It may be difficult, if I am asked to say what highest and worthiest means here, to say it: but I think the proposition is one which everyone, whatever his views, would allow in some sense: allowed in this way, the proposition is in a manner a definition of what is meant by high and worthy."3
This passage, in effect, merely appeals to the reader's intuition that he or she, is indeed the "highest" and "worthiest" sort of being rue know of. But since this claim is made by humans and to humans, it looks suspiciously selfserving. The sad fact is that, when whites enslaved blacks, many..honestly" thought that slaves were morally inferior to their masters. When males legally enslaved females, many sincerely believed that wives were morally inferior to their husbands. But men, talking to men about their inferior women, were wrong: To think otherwise is sexism. And whites, talking to whites about their inferior blacks, were wrong: To think otherwise is racism. Now, what about humans, talking to humans about "the inferior creatures"? Reflection along the lines just sketched leads one to refuse to assume that humans must be morally special just because they are human. Are there any reasons to believe that humans have such special moral worth? What do all and only humans have that is morally significant?
Reasons have been offered over the centuries, but none is convincing to an unprejudiced thinker, and most are ridiculously inadequate. Space does not permit detailed discussion of these failures: the last decade has seen the publication of dozens of books and ways about the moral status of animals.' This sudden proliferation of arguments, pro and con, bears witness to the fact that the old assumption of human moral superiority can no longer be taken for granted.
Human chauvinism is easy to question if it claims that ad humans count morally, as well as claiming that only humans count. It is easy to question because species is the only criterion that will include all humans and exclude all nonhumans; yet discrimination merely on the basis of species seems arbitrary from a moral point of view.
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Some human chauvinists, however, are quite prepared to give up the all humans clause, so as to keep the only humans clause. One can, alter all, hold that "marginal" humans (such as the severely mentally retarded) don't really count morally, in themselves and for their own sake, directly. It was fear of this possibility that led an early reviewer of Australian moral philosopher Peter Singer's influential book, Animal Liberation, to object that
these kinds of comparisons [ between nonhuman animals and "marginal" humans] are not only morally repugnant. but also dangerously irresponsible. They are less likely to extend men's moral sympathies to pigs or rats than to weaken the inhibitions that restrain their behavior toward other human beings. 5
This kind of criticism can be made of every extension of moral franchise; presumably it cannot be correct in every instance. Insofar as the criticism amounts to the claim that the animal liberation movement is futile, it begs the question politically. Furthermore, it is possible that pigs and rats might deserve to be represented in moral deliberation, even if that imposed costs on humans; to dismiss this possibility out of hand is nothing more than the very speciesism that Singer attacks. Despite these weaknesses, however, the criticism nevertheless makes an important point. It consistency requires us to treat beings at the same mental level
similarly, as Singer suggests, it still leaves it open whether we should treat beasts better or human retarded worse. This shows that the negative arguments of animal liberationists, which question the alleged justification for treating human and nonhuman animals differently. are not enough to determine our treatment of nonhumans; we need also to be provided with positive reasons to treat nonhumans better than we dl,, rather than humans worse.
In the case of the nonhuman animals, such reasons have been presented from each of the two leading perspectives in contemporary moral theory-utilitarianism and rights theory: these will be examined in the next two sections (092 and 3). In the case of other nonhuman objects -e.g., the "environment"-compelling positive theory is harder to come by, as we shall see in later sections.
~2 PETER SINGER AND RESPECT FOR INTERESTS
Singer's account of why nonhuman animals count morally is based on his commitment to utilitarian doctrine, according to which what moral agents ought to do is that act which. directly or indirectly, can most reasonably be expected toresult in the best consequences (where goodness of consequence is measured by the extent to which satisfaction of preference is maximized, and dissatisfaction minimized) The goal, according to utilitarians. is to achieve, or make likely, the best balance of total (or, perhaps, average) good over bad in the world. We are supposed to take into account all interests, regardless of who has them. Animals, like
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humans have desires and preferences, at least, it is plausible to believe that the animals we commonly exploit and abuse do. Every interest is just what it is, and counts just for its own weight: Whether it is human or not becomes secondary or irrelevant. Singer employs this line of argument with dexterity, candor, and a keen eye for practical implications. However, the argument is, in its theoretical core, traditional utilitarian doctrine.
Early utilitarians such its Jeremy Bentham (1748-1832) insisted that the pleasures and pains of nonhuman animals should be included in the total good to be maximized. The question, says Bentham, "is not, Can they reason ? nor, Can they talk? but, Can they suffer?"8 He rejects the idea that animals are mere things. Nevertheless, Bentham allows that there may be a "difference in point of sensibility" between humans and nonhumans. Bentham's eminent disciple John Stuart Mill (1806-1873) agrees that animals count. Indeed, he is willing to let this matter be a test of the truth of his utilitarian doctrine.'.Granted that any practice causes more pain to animals than it gives pleasure to man; is that practice moral or immoral?"7 It is immoral according to Mill's utilitarianism. Nevertheless, Mill allows that it is "better to be s human being dissatisfied than a pig satisfied."8 Pleasures alleged to be distinctively human (such as intellectual pleasures) are assumed by Mill to be more important in the utilitarian calculation than nonhuman pleasures.
Singer, in his influential briefs for animal liberation, continues this utilitarian tradition of assertion and qualification. Insofar as animals can suffer equally with humans, they have equal claim to relief, since pain is pain. Nevertheless, Singer allows that "a rejection of speciesism does not imply that all lives are of equal worth.'.9 The typical human life is more important than the typical nonhuman life.
It is not arbitrary to hold that the life of a self-aware being, capable of abstract thought, of planning for the future. of complex acts of communication, and so on, is more valuable than the life of a being without these capacities.l0 The foundation for such a judgment is obscure. Singer does offer the following argument:
"In general it does seem that the more highly developed the conscious life of the being, the greater the degree of self-awareness and rationality, the more one would prefer that kind of life, if one were choosing between it and a being at a lower level of awareness." 11
This is, perhaps, not a great advance on John Stuart Mill ranking dissatisfied Socrates above any satisfied pig. But these are difficult issues: Singer faces them candidly and tries to give consistently utilitarian answers. Like notable earlier utilitarians, Singer is led by theoretical reasons to extend moral consideration beyond the limits of the human species. Like them, he allows the conviction, that the kind of being we are has moral importance, to elevate most human lives above most nonhuman ones. Like other utilitarians, he is a "sentientist": Only conscious beings count morally.
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" It is difficult to apply the test of imagining living the life of the weed I am about to pull out of my garden. I then have to imagine living a life with no conscious experiences at all. Such a life is a complete blank: I would not in the least regret the shortening of this subjectively barren form of existence. This test suggests, therefore. that the life of a being
that has no conscious experiences is of no intrinsic value."12
Singer's utilitarian case for animal liberation thus seems to rule out any radically environmental ethics, which would recognize inherent value in nonsentient environmental objects or systems. The adequacy of utilitarianism as a moral theory is a key issue in contemporary moral philosophy; no proper discussion of that general question is possible here.l3 The case for animal rights, however, is independent of utilitarianism, as can be seen from the work of Tom Regan.
~3 TOM REGAN AND RESPECT FOR INHERENT VALUE
Regan agrees with Singer's practical conclusions about animal liberation, but disagrees with Singer's theoretical arguments. Regan rejects utilitarianism as inadequate both for humans and for nonhumans. Unlike Singer, Regan is attracted to the idea that one of the things an acceptable moral theory must do is to yield results that agree with our considered judgments or reflective intuitions. Regan starts from the intuition that "marginal cases", such as humans who are severely mentally enfeebled, are moral patients, creatures to whom we have direct duties, including duties not to exploit or abuse them.
Singer is also inclined to offer the argument from marginal cases." but he and Regan disagree about its full significance. For Singer, the argument often seems to be one whose force is primarily rhetorical. For Regan, no utilitarian account can do justice to the depth of the intuition.
"It is only, I think, if rights are postulated even in the case of morons that we can give a sufficiently firm theoretical basis for our conviction that it is wrong to treat them in the ways in question [that is, to harm them for our purposes)."15
Utilitarians have no choice but to link this intuited wrongness up to bad consequences; if the consequences were otherwise, the action (exploiting morons) would not be wrong. But a change in consequences would not cause us to change our judgment, says Regan, so utilitarianism must be mistaken."
This disagreement between Began and Singer involves tough questions about how a moral theory is justified. In order to account for our feeling that the mentally retarded ought not be exploited, Began argues, we need to postulate rights. Utilitarian accounts, he seems to hold, fail to make the obligation deep enough. We need not discuss here whether utilitarian theorists can give an adequate account of the obligation in question, since even if they fail, they can still reject the intuition that there is such an obligation. (If, like Bentham, you consider the concept
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of rights to be "nonsense on stilts," then you might regard the alleged fact. that the intuition about morons could only be accounted for by appeal to rights, as a reduction to absurdity.) Singer stands in the classic line of utilitarian thought when he says:
"Our moral convictions are not reliable data for testing ethical theories. We should work from sound theories to practical judgments, not from our judgments to our theories."17
The idea, popularized by Harvard philosopher John Rawls, that "testing" goes both ways, is rejected by Singer as a procedure "liable to take relies of our cultural history as the touchstone of morality." This issue, about the proper role of intuitions in moral theory, is not easy to settle.'" Elusive as it is, however, it remains a palpable obstacle to settling the debate between Singer and Regan over the adequacy of utilitarianism. This debate obviously affects how plausible appeals to inherent value can be, since, in Regan's view, the attribution of non-utilitarian rights is accounted for by appeal to inherent value. This matter, in turn, will be central to deciding whether environmental ethics is really viable, if. as Regan holds, "the development of what can properly be called an environmental ethic requires that we postulate inherent value in nature."" In order to do justice to our intuition about morons we must, Regan holds, recognize that they have rights, rights grounded in their possession of inherent value. They have inherent value because they "not only are alive but are subjects of a life that itself has value (is better or worse) for the individual whose life it is."21 This subject-of-a-life criterion is offered by began as a sufficient condition for having inherent value, not a necessory condition. This leaves open the possibility that nonconscious beings, environmental objects, could have inherent value.
Is sentience, or consciousness, or awareness necessary for having a sake, a good of one's own? Singer says yes: "A stone does not have interests because it cannot suffer. Nothing that we can do to it could possibly make any difference to its welfare."" Regan, however, observes: "The reason we cannot make sense of the idea that something might be in a stone's interests is not that it cannot suffer; it is that we cannot form an intelligible conception of what its good could be."" A stone may not have a good of its own, but other nonsentient objects do, in a sense. A tree, an engine, even the finish on a table, can each have a good of its own, in the sense that events can be good for it or bad for it, benefit or harm it. It can be a good object of its kind, or not so. Nevertheless, in the end this good-of-its-kind argument is not able to constrain action. "Recognizing that something is goad of its kind does not call forth my admiring respect:' says Began. "Recognizing its being inherently good does."" Therefore, though a tree may have a good of its own, it does not follow that it has inherent value.
To see how serious a problem this is, it is useful to recall the great Good Roots controversy between Prescriptivists and Descriptivists that has raged in meta-ethics for the last quarter century. Prescriptivism's
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leading theorist. British moral philosopher R. M. Hare, holds that..good.. is a general term of commendation and recommendation used to prescribe actions. According to this view, you need criteria in order to call something "good" but you get to choose your own criteria, with no constraint except that you are required to apply your chosen criteria universally and evenhandedly." Descriptivists, such as British philosopher Philippe Foot, argue that "good" has specific senses tied conceptually to specific criteria, which are determined by language, tradition, or something. (This attitude is influenced by Aristotle's use of the concept of health as his model for moral concepts: Health is natural, in some sense, and is to a considerable extent fixed for the species.) Foot writes:
We say, in a straightforward way, that a tree has good roots, meaning by this that they are well suited to the performance of their function, serving the plant by anchoring it and drawing moisture out of the soil. Our interests are not involved, and only someone in the grip of a theory would insist that when we speak of a good root we commit ourselves in some way to choosing a root like that."
We might, after all, have unusual purposes: When we collect tomatoes to throw, we want rotten ones, not good ones.
Hare can keep the connection between calling something "good" and valuing it, but only at the cost of giving up almost all constraints on whet is valued and so called "good". Foot can anchor "good" to specific natural criteria, but only at the cost of being unable to insist that rationality requires one to value what is good. Neither of these positions provides what philosophers have dreamt of: a sense of "good" that is tied both to specific natural criteria (so that arguments over whether something is good can be rationally settled) and to the speaker's motivations and evaluations (so that agreeing that something is good rationally compels one to value it): in sum, a good whose recognition calls forth one's admiring respect.
This distinction between good of its kind and inherent, respect eliciting good is comparable to the distinction between good from a point of view, and good off things considered.27 What is good from a point of view is defined in terms of the point of view in question, whereas what is good all things considered is what is good when all points of view have been taken into account. Moral philosophers have long debated whether morality should be seen as one particular point of view (with its distinctive subject matter) or as our judgments oil things considered (not just those pertaining to a specific subject matter). If morality consists of all things-considered judgments, then it will be easy to get from the theoretical judgment that x is the best action morally (i.e., all things considered) to the practical judgment that I is what I ought to do: what I ought to do, after all, is what is best all things considered. The problem with this approach is that it is difficult to be specific about what it is that is best all things considered. On the other hand, if morality is one particular point of view (contrasted with others: the legal point of view, the
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aesthetic point of view, etc.), then it will be easy to say what it is that is better morally, since morality according to this view has a specific subject matter. The problem with this approach is that it becomes difficult to insist convincingly that this specific moral content is really best all things considered.
It has seemed to some philosophers that having a good of its own is where the line of moral patiency must be drawn: If a being has no good of its own, then what we do to that being is a matter of indifference except insofar as the good of some other creature is also involved. In response to this view, some critics urge that nonconscious objects do have a good: A tree has a good, an automobile has a good, the finish on a desk, and so on.
I think it must be granted that, as our ordinary-language uncles used to say, it is "correct English" to speak of a tree's good, or at least of things being good or hod for the tree, as an entity, independent of human pur pose. The big question, though, is what conclusions this admission invites. If a tree has a good, does it also have needs? Interests? Wants? Rights? Something may be good-of-its-kind without being good in any way that, as Regan puts it, calls forth our respect.
Good-of its-kind judgments seem to be tied to fairly specific facts about community purposes and judgments. An apple that poisons someone is not a good apple, even if it is selected with malice aforethought. But we seem to be under no rational constraint to desire or select only good apples (rather than apples good-for-our-purposes). That we can agree that a tree has a good-of-its-kind is not sufficient to compel us rationally to respect that good.
Similarly, it seems possible to determine what is good from any given particular point of view (legal, religious, aesthetic, that of etiquette, etc.), by reference to shared social criteria-after all, our communication with one another seems to require broad agreement on social essentials." But what is to be done all-things-considered (if this judgment actually determines action) seems not reducible to such considerations. The criteria invoked by different points of view clash. Ethics tries to make sense of this clash of criteria.
The foregoing discussion gives some indication, I hope, of how deeply the question of moral patiency is embedded in abstract and difficult issues in moral theory. The word "good," for example, often serves in practice to facilitate a transition in reasoning from the factual judgment that a particular thing is good-of-its-kind-or has a good (as the kind of thing that it is), or is good judged from a particular point of view -to the value judgment (or decision, or commitment) that such a good ought to be respected (or admired, or chosen). Scottish philosopher David Hume (1711-1776) famously questioned this apparent gap between claims about descriptive facts (usually expressed by talk about what is the case) and normative judgments or decisions (usually expressed by talk about what ought to be the case). Regan agrees that "Hume's famous observation in his Treatise, about the mystery of the passage
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from is to ought, points to one of the fundamental problems that a philosophically sophisticated environmental ethic must address"29 When Regan says elsewhere that "the development of what can properly be called an environmental ethic requires that we postulate inherent value in nature:'' one expects that he believes that postulating inherent value (in humans, nonhumans, or natural objects) would function to license the mysterious passage from is to ought. Whether-and under what circumstances--it is possible rationally to move from the one to the other is a central issue in recent moral theory, and one whose outcome must closely concern those who wish to demonstrate the need in moral theory for the concept of inherent value.
lt is difficult to see how we could have a useful notion of inherent value without first solving these traditional problems of moral theory, and that is a large task indeed. On the other hand, it is at least arguable that some inherent or intrinsic value must be recognized by any cogent moral theory.31 Proponents of animal liberation have, to a large extent, been able to proceed without resolution of these theoretical issues. Regan's argument, at least in his early essays, is conditional: If humans have rights then (some) nonhumans do too. If human rights recognize the inherent value of humans, then nonhuman rights can recognize the inherent value of nonhumans; talk about "inherent value" is no more questionable in the latter case than in the former.
But how far can such a conditional argument be stretched? The step from human to nonhuman animals seems easy to make because both are conscious individuals. This "atomism" and "sentientism" has been attacked, however, by those who want to attribute inherent value to nonconscious environmental objects, if they are living, or even to the planet as a whole, living or not.
III. RESPECT FOR LIFE
The idea behind the respect-for-life theories is that something about the nature of living organisms requires our respect. That sounds simple enough, but two questions immediately arise. First, what is this requirement based on: What is it about a living organism that demands respect, and why should such a demand apply to us if we just don't care? Second, what does this requirement really require: What does it mean, in practice, to show respect for life?
4 ALBERT SCHWEITZER AND REVERENCE FOR LIFE
A very crude version of this sort of theory can be found in Albert Schweitzer's well-known reflections concerning reverence for life.
" A man is truly ethical only when he obeys the compulsion to help all life which he is able to assist, and shrinks from injuring anything that liver. He does not ask how far this or that life deserves one's sympathy as being
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valuable. nor, beyond that, whether and to what degree it is capable of
Feeling. Life as such is sacred to him."32
Why should we feel that life is sacred, and how does this feeling affect our decisions and actions? Unfortunately, Schweitzer has no satisfactory answer to either question. The basis of ethics, for him, lies in mysticism" -apparently in a mystical and irrational fellow-feeling that humans have, or are supposed to have, with the will to live in every living organism." Schweitzer does mention some of the implications of his ethical view. We are to tear no leaf, pluck no Bower, crush no insect. Indeed, we are called upon to carry out little rescue operations for stranded insects." Further reading reveals, however, that Schweitzer is really only concerned to attack "thoughtless injury to life." If the injury is "necessary.. -for what, he does not say-then it is permitted. Schweitzer simply assumes the necessity of experimentation on nonhuman animals. Such experimentation establishes "a new and special relation of solidarity" between these animals and us, which apparently requires us to do good deeds for animals other than those we experiment on. "By helping an insect when it is in difficulties, I am only attempting to cancel part of man's ever new debt to the animal worId."37
Schweitzer says a good deal more about reverence for life, and his view has been oddly popular (probably because of his image as a saint and sage), but in the end it just doesn't come to much. Its basis is obscure and its implications are useless. at best, and incoherent, at worst. Though Schweitzer seems to say that we are not to rank lives, that is, practically, impossible. As Peter Singer remarks:
His life as a doctor in Africa makes no sense except on the assumption
that the lives of the human beings he was saving are more valuable than the lives of the germs and parasites he was destroying in their bodies, not to mention the plants and probably animals that those humans would Lill and eat after Schweitzer had cured them."
The lesson of Schweitzer's failure as an ethical theorist is that, if we try to go beyond sentience to embrace all living things in the moral community, we have some difficult questions to answer. It is worth keeping this lesson in mind as we examine the more interesting respect-for-life ethic being, developed by Paul Taylor, a well-known moral theorist who reaches at Brooklyn College of the City University of New York.
5 PAUL TAYLOR AND RESPECT FOR NATURE
Taylor believes that "the relevant characteristic for having the status of a moral patient is not the capacity for pleasure or suffering but the fact that the being has a good of its own which can be furthered or damaged by moral agents."" Something can have a good of its own, according to Taylor, without being sentient, but not without being animate; trees and flowers are in. rocks and water are out. Moral agents are required to be concerned about the good of sentient creatures--human and non-
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human animals-but also about the good of nonsentient living creatures, that is, plants and various "lower" organisms.
To pass from speciesism to sentientism, we must take seriously the' possibility that it may be necessary to sacrifice the good of humans to the good of nonhumans. Similarly, according to Taylor, to move beyond sentientism we must take seriously the possibility that it may be necessary to sacrifice the good of sentient animals to the good of nonsentient creatures, such as plants.
"The conscious suffering of a sentient creature is indeed intrinsically bad from that creature's standpoint... But cannot that intrinsic evil be outweighed by consideration for the creature's overall well-being? And if so, why may it not be outweighed by consideration for another creature's well-being, even if it is not sentient?40
The natural answer would be that the sentient creature cores whether its good is sacrificed, while the living-but-nonsentient creature doesn't. This answer, and the controversy surrounding it, leads us to the heart of the issue. Living organisms certainly have a good, can be benefitted and harmed, have interests (in a suitably broad sense of "interests"), and so on. The same may be true for inanimate things. But does morality require us to pursue a creature's good, if that creature does not core about its good? This question is not easy to answer. Sentientists, such as Peter Singer say no: The creature must care, or at least be able to care. Antisentientists say yes: Caring is not what is at issue. Those anti-sentientists who, like Taylor, emphasize respect for life appeal to a natural goal seeking ability in living organisms. This goal-seeking, or teleological, character is manifested in the way animals and plants seek out certain elements of their environment and turn away from other elements, as when a dog pulls its paw from the fire or a plant turns toward the sun. Taylor says that
"a teleological center of life is an entity whose "world" can be viewed from the perspective of its life ... [W]e can conceive of a teleological center of life as a being whose standpoint we can take in making judgments about what events in the world are good or evil, desirable or undesirable ... [The entity itself need not have any (conscious) interest in what is happening to it for such judgments to be meaningful and true ... But conscious or not. all are equally teleological centers of life in the sense that each is a unified system of goall-oriented activities directed toward their preservation and well-being.''
Taylor's emphasis on natural teleology has important consequences. One consequence is that it provides, he thinks, a foothold for moral obligation:
"We begin to look at other species as we look at ourselves, seeing them as
beings which have a good they are striving to realize just as we have a good we are striving to realize. We accordingly develop the disposition to view the world from the standpoint of their good as well as from the standpoint of our own good."42
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Once we see clearly that human claims to moral superiority are groundless. Taylor thinks, we will be inclined to adopt a doctrine of species impartiality.
"One who accepts that doctrine regards all living things as possessing inherent worth-the some inherent worth, since no one species has been shown to be either 'higher' or 'lower' than any other ... Once we reject the claim that humans are superior either in merit or in worth to other living things, we are ready to adopt the attitude of respect."43
Once we adopt what Taylor calls the "biocentric outlook', on nature, and realize that humans. animals, and plants are all members of "the Earth's community of life," we will recognize "the attitude of respect to be the only suitable or fitting attitude to take toward all wild forms of life."" Having adopted this attitude of respect, we will see living entities as possessing "inherent worth" and will place "intrinsic value on the promotion and protection of their good." This will lead to a moral commitment to certain rules of duty and standards of character, which in turn will affect how we treat living entities.
What is the theoretical basis of this view, and what are its practical implications? If the basis of Taylor's view is less obscure than Schweitzer's mysticism, that is partly because Taylor is willing to settle for less. The attitude of respect for nature, like that of respect for persons, is, he thinks, an ultimate attitude. There are "two senses in which an attitude can be justified: showing that it is not unjustified for anyone to take it, and showing that it is unjustified for anyone not to take it."46 Taylor thinks that the former can be done for the ultimate attitude of respect, but not the latter, because an ultimate attitude involves "commitment to certain normative principles" but does not involve "a statement of fact whose truth or falsity can be ascertained by some kind of empirical test."" Thus, the attitude of respect for nature is said to be "suitable" or "fitting" and we are told that
"the biocentric outlook recommends itself as an acceptable system of concepts and beliefs to anyone who is clearminded, unbiased, and factually
enlightened, and who has a developed capacity of reality awareness with regard to the liver of individual organisms. This, I submit, is as good a reason for making the moral commitment involved in adopting the attitude of respect for nature as any theory of environmental ethics could possibly have."48
Maybe. But is that good enough? The importance of this question is heightened by the fact that the practical implications of respect for nature are unclear. Taylor is not unaware of the problem. He asks:
"If we accept the biocentric outlook and accordingly adopt the attitude of
respect for nature as our ultimate moral attitude, how do we resolve
conflicts that arise from our respect for persons in the domain of human
ethics and our respect for nature in the domain of environmental
ethics?49
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The question is acute, but Taylor does not answer it. Perhaps we may hope for an answer in the future. In the meantime, the practical implications of Taylor's view are obscure, since conflicts between persons and nature seem unavoidable. Shall we save the snail darter, or build the dam? Shall we preserve wilderness, or drill for oil? To resolve such practical disputes, we need to know when respect for persons is more important than respect for nature. Does it really make sense to attribute equal inherent worth to all living creatures, as Taylor does?50 Peter Miller, of the University of Winnipeg, objects to Taylor's view on the ground that
"there is little room for ambivalence, it would seem, if an individual human life weighs in no more heavily than any of the myriad its existence causes to terminate. I am not sure what keeps him [i.e.. Taylor] from advocating human genocide as the moral policy that, on balance, best
respects living nature.51
Though some thinkers have advocated human genocide,52 what keeps Taylor from agreeing with them is presumably his commitment to the attitude of respect for persons. But if we have more than one ultimate principle, and these cannot be ranked or reduced one to another, then is it possible to avoid ultimate incoherence?53 Should we not attempt to abandon one of these incompatible ultimate attitudes? It is not hard to guess which one would go.
6 KENNETH GOODPASTER AND RESPECT FOR SELF-SUSTAINING ORGANIZATION
Kenneth Goodpaster, of the Harvard Business School, has also defended a version of respect for life. Rejecting both forms of sentientism (human chauvinism and animal liberation), he says:
"Neither rationality nor the capacity to experience pleasure and pain
seem to me necessary (even though they may be sufficient) conditions on
moral considerability. ... Nothing short of the condition of being alive seems to me to be a plausible and nonarbitrary criterion."54
Goodpaster attach what he considers "the best defense of the sentience criterion in recent literature;" the argument given by the well-known moral and legal theorist Joel Feinberg. Feinberg admits that nonsentient living creatures such as plants have a good, can be benefited and harmed, and soon. But the same is true of your automobile, or the finish on my desk. We tend to think, however, that the "good" of such things is importantly different from the good of human and nonhuman animals. Feinberg insists that the possession of interests in the full sense requires wants or aims or desires. Goodpaster finds this requirement implausible "In the face of their obvious tendencies to maintain and heal themselves,
it is very difficult to reject the idea of interests on the part of trees (and
plants generally) in remaining alive."56 Furthermore, these interests "are clearly those of the living things themselves, not simply those of the own-
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ers or users or other human persons involved.""; Why, then, Goodpaster asks, is there "reluctance to acknowledge in nonsentient living beings the presence of independent needs, capacities for benefit and harm, etc."?58 The roots of this reluctance he locates in the fact that "there is an affinity between hedonism or some variation on hedonism and a predilection for the sentience criterion of consider ability or some variation on it.""' What is the nature of this affinity between hedonism (the view that pleasure is the only good) and sentientism? It is not that one view logically implies the other. Goodpaster's claim is that "if one's conception of the good is hedonistic in character, one's conception of a beneficiary will quite naturally be restricted to beings who are capable of pleasure and pain."60 This association of sentientism with hedonism is misleading. The advocates of sentientism do not make sentience the criterion of moral patiency because they think pleasure the only value. Rather, they just do not see what point there could he in worrying about how we treat things, living ~,r not, if they cannot feel and do not care."'
I am willing to believe that trees have a good, a good not dependent on the purpose of humans or other sentient creatures."' in light of this good, we may want to attribute to them purposes, needs, interests, and the like. The crucial question, though, is: Does the tree care whether its "purposes" are fulfilled or frustrated? Does it matter to the tree whether its interests are well or ill served? The problem is not just: Why should I, as a moral agent, be concerned about the good of another being? (That skeptical questions is hard to answer adequately even for the human case. If the only way to avoid obligations to trees were to resort to general moral skepticism, the cause of tree liberation would be much advanced.) The problem is: Given willingness on my part to attend to the good of other humans, even other animals, who core about what happens to them, why should 1 care for the tree`s good when the tree does not and cannot? The finish on my desk has a good, in the sense that various kinds of treatment can be good or bad for it, but no one would suggest that it is a moral patient. How is a tree different? Two answers spring to mind: The tree is "natural" and the finish is not; the tree "strive" to maintain itself and the finish does not. Neither answer seems very convincing. That the tree is "natural" does not make it a moral patient; rocks are equally natural. That the tree "strive" to maintain itself does not make it a moral patient, unless a machine with similar talents would also qualify-but why should it? The world is full of feedback mechanisms that "strive" to do their thing, yet there seems to be nothing wrong with interrupting a mechanism because, despite the "striving" of the machine, there is no frustration: the machine doesn't care if its "purposes" are thwarted, so why should we?
It is here, on the matter of machines, that mystical versions of respect for life, such as Schweitzer's, are most sharply distinguished from nonmystical versions, such as the views of Taylor and Goodpaster. For Schweitzer, life is something mysterious, and he counts on this mystery to gloss over the gap between fact (x is a living creature) and value (x
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should be respected). Goodpaster, in contrast, seems quite content to define living systems in terms of homeostatic feedback processes. He says, in fact, that "the core of moral concern lies in respect for self-sustaining organization and integration in the face of pressures toward high entropy:' that is, toward disorganization." Taylor leaves
"open the question of whether machines-in particular, those which are not only goal-directed, but also self-regulating-can properly be raid to have a good of their own. .. · When machines are developed that function in the way our brains do, we may well come to deem them proper subjects of moral consideration."
But why should we have to wait for machines that complicated? Why don't simpler machines, goal-directed and self-regulating, deserve moral consideration already, if living things do? Even if we might someday want to recognize the civil rights of complex computers and robots, as some have imagined," it seems clear that we would have little concern for machines no more sophisticated than trees. If that is so, then why should we be concerned about trees, or other environmental objects that, because they lack consciousness of any kind, don't care what happens to them?
Besides machines, is not the great globe itself a kind of self-sustaining organization? Shall we say that the earth as a whole is a single organism (or, perhaps, a goddess), called Gaia?68 Our treatment of the earth would then in many respects fall under the notion of respect for life. (The problem of which lives are more important would persist.) Or shall we say that moral consideration is not restricted to objects that are alive? In that case, perhaps the distinction between living and nonliving will cease to possess central moral significance. Have we been missing the planet for the trees?
IV. THE LAND ETHIC
The land ethic is a collection of views which recognize as moral patients
entities that are not sentient, or not individual, or both. Proponents of
such views often call themselves holists (emphasizing both the whole and the holy) and see the earth as, metaphorically if not literally, one organism. Some holists go so far as to attribute to this totality a kind of "planetary consciousness,"" but other holists reject such cosmic mind-mongering and insist that we fan view "landscape as an articulate unity (without the least hint of mysticism or ineffability)."68 There may be much to be said for ineffability, but it is best, in the present context, to ignore the versions of holism that hint at mysticism, and stick instead to theories
that appeal to what might be called ecological politics. Two examples will be considered. The land ethic of Aldo Leopold (~7) emphasizes the Inadequacy of moral individualism in the light of ecological interdependence, while the view of John Rodman (8) puts most emphasis on the
inadequacy of sentientism.
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7. ALDO LEOPOLD AND RESPECT FOR LAND
The term "land ethic" comes from Aldo Leopold(1887-1948), an expert in forestry and game management, and an essayist whose most famous book, A Sand County Almanac, appeared in 1949. In March of 1948, Leopold wrote:
"We abuse land because we regard it as a commodity belonging to us. When we see land as a community to which we belong, we may begin to use it with love and respect. ... Perhaps such a shift in values can be achieved by reappraising things unnatural, tame and confined in terms of things natural. wild, and free."69
I.ater that year. Leopold died fighting a grass Are on a neighbor's farm. The ideas in that posthumous book have exerted considerable influence; indeed, Leopold is "universally recognized as the father ... of recent environmental ethics."" Leopold's arguments turn around three key concepts: land, community, and health.
Land, for Leopold, means more than just inanimate dirt. The land, he says, "is not merely soil; it is a fountain of energy Bowing through a circuit of soils, plants, and animals."71 Energy is transformed and passed on, up and down the food chains. The soil is full of animals. The water is full of "little animals." Our bodies are habitats for creatures, many of whom are indispensable to bodily functions. Indeed, our very cells are inhabited. These invisible fauna and flora can now, thanks to microphotography, be seen. In light of such facts, it may be easier to see land not just as meaningless dirt, but as a community of interdependent parts; that is the ecological vision of things: The ways of one life form depend on the ways of many other life forms, large and small, sentient and not. Humans, like other creatures, are part of "a community of interdependent parts."72 Ethics is about such communities, Leopold thinks. "The land ethic simply enlarges the boundaries of the community to include soils, waters. plants, and animals, or collectively: the land."'73 Instead of speaking of "the land", Leopold sometimes calls it "the biotic community." Here, for example, is Leopold's famous account of right and wrong: "A thing is right when it tends to preserve the integrity, stability, and beauty of the biotic community. It is wrong when it tends otherwise."" We are also to preserve the health of the land. "Health is the capacity of the land for self-renewal."75
Appreciation of the interdependence ecological science has revealed may well suggest to us that we should mend our ways lest we, or those we care about, come to grief. This prudential consideration supports one kind of environmentalism, sometimes referred to as "shallow." Sometimes Leopold's arguments seem to make this kind of prudential appeal,76 but it is clear that Leopold is really a partisan of the "deep" environmental movement, according to which the ethics of how we treat the environment depends on more than our interests, economic or other. Thus, he says that "predators are members of the community, and ... no special
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interest has the right to exterminate them for the sake of a benefit, real or fancied, to itself."77
Why, then, should we not be content with purely prudential considerations in our dealings with the environment? Do we need an ethics of the environment, or just an ethics about the environment (i.e., the usual ethics applied to the environment)78 Why should the perception of interdependence make us not only mend our practical policies, but alter our conception of who, or what, is a moral patient? How do we argue from the facts revealed by ecological science to the value of the land, "value in the philosophical sense,"" as Leopold says?
The problem of how to get from the is of description to the ought of moral injunction has been thought a central, if not the central, problem in moral philosophy, especially in the twentieth century.80 Leopold was not unaware of the apparent gap. "That land is a community is the basic concept of ecology," he says, "but that land is to be loved and respected is an extension of ethics.""' Why, then, should this extension be made? Leopold's brief and scattered remarks on this matter are elusive. He tells us that this extension of ethics is "an evolutionary possibility and an ecological necessity.""' One is tempted to ask both why? and so what? That the extension of ethics to the land is an evolutionary possibility is no reason why the extension should be made. That it is an ecological necessity might be a reason, if it could be made clearer why it's a necessity. What is it necessary for? Leopold goes on to say something about "social expediency" and "community instinct," and elsewhere mentions "a sense of kinship with fellow-creatures," but his rationale is obscure.
It is possible that Leopold is trying to argue that we will (or should?) make the extension of ethics, once we come to appreciate the ecological facts, in light of our psychological attachment to communities. This kind of line is certainly taken by J.Baird Callicott, a philosopher at the University of Wisconsin much influenced by Leopold's views, who writes: "The biotic community is a proper object of that passion which is actuated by the contemplation of the complexity, diversity, integrity, and stability of the community to which we belong."" Two comments need to be made about this position.
First, whether or not Callicott's argument shows that the justification of moral treatment of the land is no more problematic than the justification of moral treatment of our fellow citizens (given that we are well disposed psychologically toward members of "our community"), this does not show that we should have (or develop, or keep) such a disposition, But even if we believe that moral reason is (and ought to be?) the slave of the passion for community, public weal, or whatever, there remain worries: How strong a hold does this particular passion have on us? Can it be displaced by other feelings? What is the precise content of this passion? Hume, to whose theories Callicott appeals, repeatedly emphasizes the way in which our personal passions-not just our selfishness, but the chauvinism of our altruistic feelings-are at war with any general sense of social justice." He also emphasizes that when interest
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diminishes (or is perceived as diminishing) moral obligation relaxes." Second, the idea of a "community" is ambiguous. A political or moral community consists in individual members joined together by shared rights and obligations. The land, however, is uncontroversially a community only in the different sense of interdependent ports with interlocking functions.87 Recognizing that we and the land form a community, in the latter sense, does not imply that we have any moral obligations to the land. Appeal to the concept of community cannot ameliorate our "moral atomism." nor has it shown that such amendment is desirable.
98 IOHN RODMAN AND RESPECT FOR THE WILD
An alternative version of the land ethic has been formulated by American political theorist John Rodman, from whom I have taken the term sentientism. Rodman criticizes Peter Singer's attack on speciesism as itself a case of sentientism:
"The rest of nature is left in a state of thinghood, having no intrinsic worth, acquiring instrumental value only as resources for the well-being of an elite of sentient beings. Homocentrist rationalism has widened out into a kind of zoocentrist sentientism ... If it would seem arbitrary to a visitor from Mars to And one species claiming a monopoly of intrinsic value by virtue of its allegedly exclusive possession of reason, free will, soul, or some other occult quality, would it not seem almost as arbitrary to find that same species claiming a monopoly of intrinsic value for itself
and those species most resembling it (e.g. in type of nervous system and
behavior) by virtue of their common and allegedly exclusive possession
of sentience"?88
The word "allegedly" serves to remind us not to conflate two separate issues: (1) whether sentientism-the view that being sentient is the necessary (and possibly sufficient) rendition for moral patiency or considerability-is a correct view; (2) whether humans, and those animals closely resembling humans in certain physical or behavioral traits, are the only sentient creatures. Though Rodman's remarks sometimes bear on the latter issue--Who is sentient?-it is clear that his main concern is to reject sentientism as a moral view. He writes, for example:
"I confess that I need only to stand in the midst of a clear-cut forest, a
strip-mined hillside, a defoliated jungle, or a dammed canyon to feel un-
easy with assumptions that could yield the conclusion that no human action can make any difference to the welfare of anything but sentient animals. I am agnostic as to whether or not plants, rocks, and rivers have subjective experience, and I am not sure that it really matters. I strongly suspect that the same basic principles are manifested in quite diverse forms-e.g. in damming a wild river end repressing an animal instinct (whether human or nonhuman), in clear-cutting a forest and bombing a city, in Dachau and a university research laboratory, in censoring an idea, liquidating a religious or racial group, and exterminating a species of flora or fauna.89
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Can creatures lacking "subjective experience" have a welfare, a welfare that calls for moral respect? Drying up is no doubt bad for a river, but such desiccation is not bad to it, since the river does not seem to care whether
it continues to Row, or is evaporated into clouds. If the river doesn't
care, why should you or I? Why should we be more concerned to preserve the river that is than to hasten the arrival of the desert that will be? Rodman's real concern is not with welfare, however, but with domestication. He says:
"My view of the domestication of nonhuman animals clearly presupposes
that it is a fundamentally coercive and exploitative institution. This view is not refuted...by imagining how much better off certain animals are in the servitude or captivity that they have become habituated to than they would be if we simply turned them loose to fend for themselves."
What is wrong with domestication? Apparently, what is wrong is not that it is contrary to the welfare of domesticated creatures; rather, it threatens the existence of, or at least the experience of, the Wild: wildlife and wilderness.
"Either what is preserved is so successfully segregated from the impact of
human civilization that it cannot be experienced in a participatory way, or else it is transformed by the impact of human overuse due to its very scarcity, or else human use is methodically rationed an part If a deliberate plan of "wilderness management" that eliminates much of the quality of
the authentic wilderness experience. ... Tame birds in a zoo, substitute pines in a National Forest; bureaucratic permits to use a Wilderness Area, asking where the backpacker intends to spend each night; detribalized Indians on reservations: they are all parts of the same historic
policy.91
Why is the Wild so important? This question may be interpreted in two
ways.
If the question means, Why is the Wild important in itself?, the answer seems to be that "nonhuman species exist 'in their own right'(have their own origin, structure, tendencies, etc.) and not simply for us."92 Rodman argues that natural entities are degraded
"by our failure to respect them for having their own existence, their own character and potentialities, their own forms of excellence, their own integrity, their own grandeur and by our tendency to relate to them either by reducing them to the status of instruments for our own ends or by giving them rights by assimilating them t~, the status of inferior human beings."
If, on the other hand, the question means, Why is the Wild important to us? then Rodman's answer is this:
"The need for wilderness grows more acute every moment because it is, among other things, the need to experience a realm of reality beyond the manipulations of commodity production and technology, the need for a
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"norm given the nature of things'. the need for realities that function as symbols otherness that can arouse a response from the suppressed potentialities of human nature."94
The essence of wildness seems to consist in independence and otherness, whose metaphysics is freedom and whose epistemology is mystery. Rodman is certainly not alone in his feeling that human morality ought to be responsive to nonhuman value." But can such value be found apart from the attribution of "subjective experience"? In answering yes, the land ethic seems to require almost a new way of doing ethics. Discussing Leopold's Sand County Almanac, Rodman says that
"we cannot simply abstract from the last part of this carefully-composed book the notion of extending ethics to the land and its inhabitants. The land ethic emerges in the course of the book as an integral part of a sensibility developed through observation, participatory experience, and reflection. it is an 'ethic' in the almost forgotten sense of a 'way of life.. For this reason it would be pretentious to talk of a land ethic until we have let our curiosity follow the skunk as it emerges from hibernation, listened with wonder at the calls of the wild geese arriving at the pond, sawed the fallen ancient tree while meditating its history, shot a wolf (once) and looked into its eyes as it died, recognized the fish in ourselves, and strained to see the world from the perspective of a muskrat eye-deep in the swamp only to realize that in the end the mind of the muskrat holds for us a mystery we cannot fathom."96
It is here, meditating on the mystery of the muskrat's mind, that the difference between Singer and Rodman comes out most clearly. Rodman attacks the idea that judgments of moral obligations should be based on the moral agent's "capacity for putting himself in the victim's place." He thinks that "the location of value in the subjective experience of sentient entities allows for no small amount of subjectivity in our moral appraisals."97 For Singer, on the contrary, such putting-oneself-in-the patient's-place is the essence of moral agency. In his view,
the limits of sentience are not really limits at all, for applying the test of imagining ourselves in the position of those affected by our actions Bows that in the case of nonsentient things there is nothing at all to be taken into account. We need not deliberately exclude nonsentient things from the scope of the principle of equal consideration of interests: it is just that including them within the scope Of this principle leads to results identical with excluding them, since they have no preferences-and therefore no interests, strictly speaking--to be considered. There is nothing we can do, that matters to them.98
While Leopold and Rodman are quite happy to talk about "thinking like a mountain,"99 Singer argues that "imagining myself in the position of the tree or mountain will not help me to see why their destruction is wrong; for such imagining yields a perfect blank"100. Imaginative projection has often seemed to be the key tool of ethics; well-known American moral philosopher Thomas Nagel has called it "the primary form of
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moral argument." Rodman attacks such imaginative projection, presumably because he believes that it falsifies its object. Singer defends it, presumably because he thinks that it is unclear just what the alternative could be. Judging the inner experience of others, says Rodman, depends either on "our criteria of evidence" or on "our imaginative/emotionaI capacity ... to put ourselves in their place."'" Singer would say, I suppose, What else!
Any version of the land ethic must answer several questions. First, we can ask what is wrong with interrupting natural processes, or disrupting the wild. We cannot, as a matter of fact, avoid such interruptions. If there is nothing wrong with kicking a stone out of its spot, or burning a piece of wood, why should things be morally different if we change the course of a river (excluding, of course, the effects of such a change on humans and other sentient creatures)? Anyway, aren't human interruptions themselves natural actions? If it is all right for a landslide or a glacier to change the course of a river, why not a bulldozer? Even if humans are a "planetary disease,"'" are we not at least as natural as a disease? (What we call disease is, ecologically, just a conflict between forms of life whose optimal conditions are at odds.)
Second, we must not forget that many of the environments we now consider "natural" or "wild" are in fact products, at least in part, of human intervention long ago.'" How important is the truly wild-in itself, or to us?
Third, we must recognize that life forms and natural objects adapt to new circumstances.
"The biotic community changes over time: the environment alters: forms of flora and fauna appear and disappear; deserts become oceans and oceans dry up, with all the attendant metamorphoses. The crucial question is: why isn't whatever happens integral, stable and beautiful? Any arrangement of parts will be just what it is, and last as long as it does."l05
What males the old circumstances any more "natural,.. or any more morally valuable, or any more worth preserving, than the new disposition of things?
If these questions cannot be satisfactorily answered, the land ethic will seem no more compelling than respect for life, about which similar questions arise. We have not yet, I think, been given conclusive reason to believe that it is necessary, or even possible, to go beyond individualism and sentientism in moral theory. To that extent, it remains in question whether any radically environmental ethic is either possible or desirable.
V. CONCLUSION
Modern moral philosophy has often been attacked for its "individualism" or "moral atomism." Such attacks play a significant role in contemporary moral theory,'" but the attack has been particularly pronounced in con-
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nection with environmental ethics. A typical complaint is the following remark. from the conclusion to an excellent essay by philosopher Bryan G. Norton, currently at the University of Maryland`s Center for Philosophy and Public Policy:
"The animal liberation movement is based upon an analogy between human and animal suffering and its main thrust is not to provide a means to adjudicate between conflicting demands that human individuals make on the environment, but rather it introduces a whole new category of demands-the demands of animals. ... Expanding the number and types of rights holders does nor address the problem of deciding which individual claims have priority over others--it only increases these demands and maker it more and more difficult to satisfy them. The basic problem, then, lies precisely in the emphasis on individual claims and interests. An environmental ethic must support the holistic functioning of an ongoing system."107
This attack is not simply on rights, but on "claims and interests', generally as an adequate basis for an environmental ethic; it raises questions about Peter Singer's utilitarian arguments for animal liberation as much as about Tom Regan's rights-based approach.
The problems pointed out by Norton, and by other proponents of holism,"" are real ones, but the gestures made by such critics toward a solution are both theoretically unclear and politically worrisome. It is hard to guess what considerations could compel us to want to..support the holistic functioning of an ongoing system." or even what such functioning or such support could amount to. Norton himself shrewdly observes that "the ascription of rights to collectives is an inherently odd idea because every environmental collective is a part of a larger such collective";109 that "the relationship between the individual interests of organisms, individual plants, and nonliving objects, on the one hand, and the healthy functioning and integrity of the ecosystem, on the other hand, is a contingent one"1l0 and that "it is unclear whether it is in the species' interest to survive in its present form or to be allowed to evolve in response to changing environmental situations."111 Reflection on the truth of such observations might suggest that any attempt to "support the holistic functioning of an ongoing system" will face similar problems. Are we to support "the entire ecosystem which makes up the universe"112 --the ecocosmos, so to speak-or one of the many ongoing systems it contains? Won't our actions, "destructive" or not, be part of the way the whole ongoing system in fact works? Should we aspire to survive in our present form, or allow the humanufactured environment to select there among our progeny who thrive under changing environmental situations? These are difficult questions, but it is hard to see how holism can provide answers any more satisfactory than individualistic theories Such as sentientism.
Besides these theoretical unclarities, there are political worries that are worth mentioning, though space does not permit detailed discussion. The utilitarian concept of interests and the post-Kantian concept of
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rights-unsatisfactory as these concepts in many respects are-have both served a vital political and social function in providing a vocabulary for criticizing the accepted rules of the community by reference to the way those rules impinge on the needs and dignities of individual moral patients. The suggestion that these devices be abandoned in favor of support for the functioning of the ongoing system inspires understandable worries that this prefigures a resurgence of totalitarian thinking: 1984 and all that.
One need not be paranoid about the environmental protection hustle"" to be uneasy about the possible political consequences of the loss of the rhetoric of claims, rights, interests, the value of the individual, and so on. Perhaps "loss" is too strong a word. Perhaps the holist view is only that claims and interests, and the like, are inadequate for environmental ethics, however necessary for social theory; so that some new sort of moral theory, a less "atomistic" one, is necessary for dealing with the environment. Maybe. But easy conjunction of this "new ethic" with the old one is hard to imagine: All the "priority" problems will appear again. When does respect for nature trump respect for persons? Is preserving wilderness, for example, more important than creating jobs?
Every step we take raises questions in environmental ethics, questions to which moral theory has so far offered no adequate answers. These answers will not be easy to And in the future: at present. it is not even clear whether they are to be looked for with the tools of traditional ethics.
What is a token of respect in one culture may be a gesture of contempt in another, so if you want to show respect to a member of a different culture, you had better do something that will be interpreted in the right way. But how can we show respect to the earth, since it will do no interpreting? It is said that "Apaches moved stealthily about the land ... not to be sneaky but because to leave footprints everywhere was a mark of arrogance.""' The earth doesn't care whether you leave footprints, so why not tread where you please? Does it matter whether we step lightly? As we leap into the rest of the universe, these questions, questions of environmental ethical theory, become more and more pressing. Already scientists are talking about transforming the environments of other planets."115 For good or evil, we will not be earthbound forever.