On behalf of biocentric individualism: A response to Victoria Davion

Environmental Ethics

Volumn 30, Issue 1, 2008, Pages 69-88

  Kawall, Jason ^a  

^a Center for Language and Brain   (United States)

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EID: 42149158923     PISSN: 01634275     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.5840/enviroethics200830118     Document Type: Article

References (37)

1. Victoria Davion, "Itch Scratching, Patio Building, and Pesky Flies: Biocentric Individualism Revisited," Environmental Ethics 28 (2006): 115-28.
2. Jason Kawall, "Reverence for Life as a Viable Environmental Virtue," Environmental Ethics 25 (2003): 339-58.
3. See Nicholas Agar, Life's Intrinsic Value: Science, Ethics, and Nature (New York: Columbia University Press, 2001),
4. and Paul W. Taylor, Respect for Nature (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1986).
5. Davion, "Itch Scratching," p. 115.
6. Ibid, p. 120.
7. Davion states that "Biocentric individualism also requires that we worry about patio building" ("Itch Scratching," p. 118); in context it is clear that she finds this problematic. But note that we could raise such issues using any moral theory - at the very least, we can consider whether the time and money spent on a patio a valid use of such resources (especially given potential alternative uses). Strictly speaking, consequentialist theories, deontological theories, and so on would all require us to consider this use of time and resources (or at least would provide assessments of our using resources in this way, even if not being used as decision procedures). While biocentric individualism requires consideration of factors not always treated by other theories, it is not the case that moral assessment of matters commonly taken to be trivial is distinctive to or a problem for biocentric individualism.
8. Christine Swanton, Virtue Ethics: A Pluralistic View (New York: Oxford University Press, 2003), p. 23.
9. For an excellent discussion of Thoreau through a virtue-theoretic lens, see Philip Cafaro, Thoreau's Living Ethics: Walden and the Pursuit of Virtue, new ed. (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2006).
10. For more on E. O. Wilson, see his autobiography, Naturalist, rev. ed. (Washington, D.C.: Island Press, 2006).
11. Davion, "Itch Scratching," pp. 116-17.
12. We might again worry that we are not adequately valuing individual living things. A CD of the concertos does not constantly hum with music - it needs to be placed in a suitable device to arrive at a performance of the music it houses. The CD thus might be seen as having only instrumental value, as an entity that we can use (when combined with suitable technology) to provide performances that do possess aesthetic value. Might living things similarly only house or contain life on the current proposal, and thus only possess instrumental value? There is a significant disanalogy: unlike CDs and music, living things fully instantiate life (not just potentially); they do not need to be placed in devices to unlock their life as CDs need to be placed in devices to play music. Perhaps a better analogy for living things would be prints of a digital photograph. There is no one print of the photograph that has priority over the others - there isn't an original (in any interesting aesthetic sense), and the prints need not be placed in devices to instantiate the photographic work. Rather, each print will have aesthetic value as a full instantiation of the photographic work - each will share the same subject matter, the same formal features, and so on. Each individual has value, even if this value is limited.
13. Paul Woodruff, Reverence: Renewing a Forgotten Virtue (New York: Oxford University Press, 2001), pp. 65-66. It is worth noting that Woodruff argues that reverence does not require theism or a traditional faith; reverence is possible in a naturalistic world.
14. I believe that we can make sense of a reverence for life as such, regardless of whether we treat life in terms of universals or tropes (of course the precise details of this understanding would depend on the particular stance taken). Only an implausibly stark predicate nominalism would seem to pose a difficulty here. It is beyond the scope of this paper - and, frankly, my ken - to properly defend a particular stance here.
15. Davion, "Itch Scratching," p. 117.
16. Ibid., p. 120.
17. I do not mean to suggest in these passages that beauty is the only aesthetic value, or that the terms can be used interchangeably - I simply appeal to beauty as a property commonly accepted as aesthetically valuable.
18. Davion, "Itch Scratching," p. 118.
19. See, for example, my "Virtue Theory and Ideal Observers," Philosophical Studies 109 (2002): 197-222.
20. Kawall, "Reverence for Life," p. 356.
21. Davion, "Itch Scratching," p. 122.
22. I develop this proposal further in recent work. See Jason Kawall, "On the Moral Epistemology of Ideal Observer Theories," Ethical Theory and Moral Practice 9 (2006): 359-74.
23. The position I develop bears important similarities to the "exemplarism" defended in Linda Zagzebski, Divine Motivation Theory (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2004).
24. Kawall, "Reverence for Life," p. 357;
25. quoted in Davion, "Itch Scratching," pp. 124-25.
26. See Rosalind Hursthouse, On Virtue Ethics (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999).
27. See Swanton, Virtue Ethics: A Pluralistic View, or Aristotle, Nichomachean Ethics, trans. Terence Irwin (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1985).
28. Davion, "Itch Scratching," p. 127.
29. Compare: most utilitarians will claim that individuals typically should not deliberately attempt to maximize happiness in their actions (as doing so will be time-consuming, perhaps inaccurate, and so on), even though actions are right on such a position to the extent that they maximize happiness. The utilitarian criterion of Tightness need not be treated as a decision procedure.
30. Kawall, "Reverence for Life," p. 357.
31. Davion, "Itch Scratching," p. 124.
32. Ibid., p. 122.
33. Ibid., p. 127.
34. Ibid., pp. 127-28.
35. Kawall, "Reverence for Life," p. 358.
36. Davion, "Itch Scratching," p. 127.
37. Ibid., pp. 126-27.