The move from is to good in environmental ethics

Environmental Ethics

Volumn 31, Issue 2, 2009, Pages 135-154

  Nolt, John ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF TENNESSEE   (United States)

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EID: 67650753737     PISSN: 01634275     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.5840/enviroethics200931216     Document Type: Article

References (40)

1. Holmes Rolston, III, Environmental Ethics: Duties to and Values in the Natural World (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1988), pp. 230-31.
2. A species for Rolston is "a living historical form... propagated in individual organisms, that flows dynamically over generations" (ibid., p. 135). "Genetically, though not neurally, a species over generations 'learns' (discovers) pathways previously unknown.... There is a specific groping for a valued ought-to-be beyond what now is in any individual. Though species are not moral agents, a biological identity-a kind of value-is here defended" (ibid., p. 143). "[P]rocesses of value found first in an organic individual reappear at the specific level: defending a particular form of life, pursuing a pathway through the world, resisting death (extinction), regeneration maintaining a normative identity over time, storied achievements, creative resilience learning survival skills. If, at the specific level, these processes are just as evident or even more so, what prevents duties from arising at that level? The appropriate survival unit is the appropriate level of moral concern" (ibid., p. 151).
3. For more examples, see John Nolt, "The Move from Good to Ought in Environmental Ethics", Environmental Ethics 28 (2006):355-74.
4. My description of this circumstance is, of course, dependent on the form of our language. But the natural phenomena thus described predated us and are independent of our description of them. Antirealists may find this claim contentious. My reply can be found in John Nolt, "An Argument for Metaphysical Realism", Zeitschrift für Allgemeine Wissenschaftstheorie 35 (2004):71-90.
5. It was, however, typical in medieval philosophy to think of them as consequences somehow of the Fall.
6. My criticism of teleological leaps should not be understood as a rejection of teleology per se, but only of ill-founded or non-natural teleology. I regard it as obvious that organisms and other biotic entities are teleological in that they strive to reproduce, sustain themselves, etc.
7. Augustine, Confessions, bk. 7, chap. 12.
8. The term perfection itself is in Greek teleion-a cognate of telos. It signifies the ultimate selfsufficient completion toward which things tend. (Thanks to John Kress for this point.) Plato's notion of things striving for but falling short of their forms is expressed in Phaedo 74d-75a. For an excellent account of Aristotle's views on these matters, see John M. Cooper, "Aristotle on Natural Teleology", in John M. Cooper, Knowledge, Nature and the Good (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2004), pp. 107-29;
9. Originally published in Malcolm Schonfield and Martha Craven Nussbaum, eds., Language and Logos (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982), pp. 197-222.
10. Jenny Teichman, "Good For and Good About", Philosophy 78 (2003):117.
11. Philippa Foot, Natural Goodness (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2001) and Alasdair MacIntyre, Dependent Rational Animals: Why Human Beings Need the Virtues (Chicago: Open Court, 1999), esp. pp. 64-65.
12. Michael Thompson, "The Representation of Life", in Virtues and Reasons: Philippa Foot and Moral Theory, ed. Rosalind Hursthouse, Gavin Lawrence, and Warren Quinn (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1995), p. 295.
13. Foot, ibid., pp. 30-31.
14. Ibid., p. 29.
15. Categories (1) and (2) correspond respectively to what Ernest Partridge calls dyadic and monadic conceptions of evaluation. See Earnest Partridge, "Values in Nature: Is Anybody There?" in Louis P. Pojman, ed., Environmental Ethics, 2d ed. (Belmont, Calif.: Wadsworth, 1998), pp. 81-88;
16. This is a revised version of an article that first appeared in Philosophical Inquiry 8 (1986):97-110.
17. I do not mean to suggest that this would trouble either Foot or Thompson. But it may be a problem for Teichman, who seems to hold that goodness-about is a distinct form of goodness.
18. Thompson, "Representation of Life", p. 295.
19. Tools employed by nonhuman animals are an exception, but these introduce no new considerations. If chimps find a modified stick good for pulling termites out of their nests, its goodness is goodness-for biotic entities (the chimps). There may come a time when such artifacts as robots are sufficiently autopoietic (see discussion of autopoiesis below) to count as having goods of their own. If so, then conditions will be good for these artifacts independently of the values of their makers and users, and value theory will have to accommodate this development.
20. In an early paper, "The Nature and Possibility of an Environmental Ethic", Environmental Ethics 3 (1981):19-34, Tom Regan suggested in effect that there might be goods of category (2). But Emest Partridge provided a convincing refutation of Regan's suggestion; see Partridge, "Values in Nature", pp. 81-88.
21. Partridge ultimately concludes that "the only so-called 'values' in the biotic community are 'values-for' some organism"-a view that is similar to mine, except that it is restricted to organisms, while I hold that biotic entities that are not organisms also have goods.
22. See also Ernest Partridge, "Discovering a World of Values: A Response to Rolston", in Pojman, Environmental Ethics, p. 92.
23. See Paul Taylor, Respect for Nature: A Theory of Environmental Ethics (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1986).
24. Ibid., pp. 75-76.
25. Ibid., p. 72.
26. Tom Reagan, The Case for Animal Rights, updated and with a new preface (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2004), p. 236 (emphasis in original).
27. Ibid., p. 243.
28. Ibid., summarized from pp. 247-48.
29. The point that perfectionism leads to ethically unacceptable forms of subjugation is explicitly made on pp. 236-37.
30. Perfectionism is not the only alternative. Moreover, the argument neglects the possibility that the inherent value of subjects of a life may be neither equal nor of varying commensurable degrees but incommensurable.
31. Ibid., chap. 4.
32. Taylor, Respect for Nature, pp. 129-56.
33. Ibid., pp. 66-67.
34. Richard Dawkins, The Selfish Gene (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989).
35. It may also serve other levels of organization, such as the organism's social group or the isolated population of which it is a member.
36. I am not assuming here the contentious principle that to be caused to exist is a benefit. Rather, what I mean by saying that a reproducing entity benefits its offspring is that it provides them with some of its substance, some stored energy, and genetic information, all of which contribute to their autopoietic functioning. If it is an organism, it might provide other benefits as well-a cocoon, web, nest, other form of shelter, feeding, protection from predators, etc.
37. For substantiation of this point, see Rolston, Environmental Ethics, chap. 4.
38. Ibid., pp. 187-88.
39. Arthur O. Lovejoy, The Great Chain of Being (Cambridge, Harvard University Press, 1961).
40. Nolt, "The Move from Good to Ought in Environmental Ethics", pp. 371-73.