The source and locus of intrinsic value: A reexamination

Environmental Ethics

Volumn 18, Issue 3, 1996, Pages 297-308

  Lee, Keekok ^a,b  

^a UNIVERSITY OF MANCHESTER   (United Kingdom)

^b Ctr for Philos and the Environment

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 0008446031     PISSN: 01634275     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.5840/enviroethics199618320     Document Type: Article

References (15)

1. J. Baird Callicott, "On the Intrinsic Value of Nonhuman Species," in The Preservation of Species, ed. Bryan G. Norton (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1986), p. 142.
2. John L. Mackie, Ethics: Inventing Right and Wrong (Middlesex: Penguin Books, 1977), pp. 38-42.
3. Holmes Rolston, III, Environmental Ethics: Duties to and Values in Nature (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1988), pp. 112-17.
4. In so doing, Rolston challenges the modern philosophical foundation for values.
5. The Cartesian element comes from the claim that humans are uniquely rational because they possess language. The Kantian element comes from the thesis that humans are uniquely rational moral beings, amongst natural beings. (Of course, Kant also holds that there are rational beings which are neither human nor natural. Moreover, he holds that there could exist other rational moral species, although at the moment we know of none.)
6. Eugene Hargrove makes the same point. See "Weak Anthropocentrism," The Monist 75 (1992): 186-87.
7. Richard and Val Routley, "Against the Inevitability of Human Chauvinism," in Ethics and Problems of the 21st Century, ed. K. E. Goodpaster and K. M. Sayre (Notre Dame and London: University of Notre Dame Press, 1979), pp. 36-59.
8. This sense of teleology refers back to the medieval notion of "the great chain of beings," and earlier to that famous passage in Aristotle's The Politics in which he says that plants exist for the sake of animals which, in turn, exist for the sake of humans. But this sense is to be distinguished from another thesis of Aristotle, namely, that organisms possess their own respective tele (or "goods of their own"), which may be called intrinsic or immanent teleology.
9. One kind of critical response to this point must be faced here. Such a response concedes that humans can and may recognize intrinsic value (a) in organisms, but insists that the mere recognition of it is insufficient to determine moral judgements in contexts where the interests of two beings, each intrinsically valuable, clash. This line of argument implies that as the AIDS virus may be recognized to be intrinsically valuable (a), it ought to live and multiply, and that the human victim ought not to kill it. It further implies that if the claim entails such a conclusion, then the argument is suspect as the conclusion is counterintuitive and absurd. Through reductio ad absurdum, the premises of the argument may be dismissed as equally absurd. However, does this charge succeed? The claim that it does is based on confusing two very different issues: (i) whether an entity is intrinsically valuable (a) and (ii) in a specific conflict between two beings - the one which is intrinsically valuable (a) and (b), the other which is only intrinsically valuable (a) - which ought to yield? To settle the first issue does not ipso facto settle the second. When the two entities involved are humans, the critics do not appear to get the issues confused. But when one of the two entities is human and the other nonhuman, they become confused. Consider the following example. A teacher who intervenes to stop child A from bullying B and to discipline A is fully aware that both children are intrinsically valuable. All the same he or she judges that A's behavior is wrong, guided by considerations other than their possessing intrinsic value (a) and (b). Another possible source of confusion is a misconstrual of Kant's maxim about regarding fellow humans as ends in themselves, not as means to one's own ends. Kant and Kantians do not say: always regard them as ends in themselves, never as means to one's ends. Instead they say: do not merely regard them as means to one's ends, but also as ends in themselves. Kantians realize that the former is quite unworkable as, inevitably, situations exist where it is impossible to avoid treating another intrinsically valuable being as a means to one's ends. Analogously, recognizing that organisms have intrinsic value (a) in no way entails or even suggests that we may never treat them in certain contexts as means to our ends. Quite simply, if we did not, we would not survive at all. But having said that, it does not mean that it is right to treat them always merely as means to our ends, never as ends in themselves. To recognize that they are intrinsically valuable (a) is to admit that contexts exist where it would not be right to treat them as mere means to our ends. To claim none exists amounts to denying that they are intrinsically valuable (a), thereby implying they have only instrumental value for humans.
10. See Paul W. Taylor, Respect for Nature: A Theory of Environmental Ethics (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1986) and Robin Attfield, "The Good of Trees," Journal of Value Inquiry 15 (1981): 35-54.
11. See Paul W. Taylor, Respect for Nature: A Theory of Environmental Ethics (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1986) and Robin Attfield, "The Good of Trees," Journal of Value Inquiry 15 (1981): 35-54.
12. When Rolston refers to the superiority of the human over others species, it is this feature that he has in mind. He talks about "this latecoming species in which mind has flowered and morals have emerged" and "this sole moral species" (Environmental Ethics, p. 157). If so, Callicott is somewhat unfair to Rolston when he accuses him of "conveniently forget[ting] that [for] Kant . . . the value of reason depends ultimately upon the value ascribed to itself by a rational being" ("Rolston on Intrinsic Value," Environmental Ethics 14 [1992]: 135). In the light of the clarification offered here, Rolston could accept that nod to Kant without jeopardizing the claim that such rational/moral agents can recognize and appreciate that organisms have built-in goods of their own which are worthy of respect.
13. When Rolston refers to the superiority of the human over others species, it is this feature that he has in mind. He talks about "this latecoming species in which mind has flowered and morals have emerged" and "this sole moral species" (Environmental Ethics, p. 157). If so, Callicott is somewhat unfair to Rolston when he accuses him of "conveniently forget[ting] that [for] Kant . . . the value of reason depends ultimately upon the value ascribed to itself by a rational being" ("Rolston on Intrinsic Value," Environmental Ethics 14 [1992]: 135). In the light of the clarification offered here, Rolston could accept that nod to Kant without jeopardizing the claim that such rational/moral agents can recognize and appreciate that organisms have built-in goods of their own which are worthy of respect.
14. Callicott, "On the Intrinsic Value of Nonhuman Species," p. 141.
15. In a trivial sense of subjective, such deliverances are indeed subjective as they are the products of a particular type of consciousness, and consciousness itself, necessarily, is subjective. But they are not subjective when that term is used as a synonym or implicate of "arbitrary."