Inegalitarian Biocentric Consequentialism, the Minimax Implication and Multidimensional Value Theory: A Brief Proposal for a New Direction in Environmental Ethics

Utilitas

Volumn 17, Issue 1, 2005, Pages 62-84

  Carter, Alan ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF COLORADO   (United States)

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EID: 84857675014     PISSN: 09538208     EISSN: 17416183     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1017/S0953820804001402     Document Type: Article

References (65)

1. See Albert Schweitzer, Civilization and Ethics (London, 1923).
2. See Tom Regan, The Case for Animal Rights (Berkeley, 1983).
3. See Paul Taylor, Respect for Nature: A Theory of Environmental Ethics (Princeton, NJ, 1986).
4. See Jeremy Bentham, The Principles of Morals and Legislation (Amherst, 1988), p. 311n.
5. See Peter Singer, Animal Liberation: A New Ethics for our Treatment of Animals (New York, 1977).
6. Most notably in Robin Attfield, Value, Obligation and Meta-ethics (Atlanta and Amsterdam, 1995) and in Robin Attfield, The Ethics of the Global Environment (Edinburgh, 1999).
7. Varner advocates what he calls 'biocentric individualism'. See Gary E. Varner, In Nature's Interests? Interests, Animal Rights, and Environmental Ethics (Oxford, 1998). For a critique, see Alan Carter, 'Review of Gary E. Varner, In Nature's Interests?', Mind 109/435 (2000).
8. See Alan Carter, 'Review of Robin Attfield, The Ethics of the Global Environment', Mind 110/437 (2001).
9. Attfield, Global Environment, p. 39.
10. For a clear statement of the Repugnant Conclusion, see Derek Parfit, 'Overpopulation and the Quality of Life', Applied Ethics, ed. Peter Singer (Oxford, 1986), p. 150.
11. For seemingly compelling versions of the argument that we cannot harm distant future persons, see Thomas Schwartz, 'Obligations to Posterity', Obligations to Future Generations, ed. R. I. Sikora and Brian Barry (Philadelphia, 1978), and Thomas Schwartz, 'Welfare Judgments and Future Generations', Theory and Decision 11 (1979). For a rebuttal, see Alan Carter, 'Can We Harm Future People?', Environmental Values 10/4 (2001). Also see Alan Carter, 'On Harming Others', Environmental Values 11/1 (2002).
12. The Person-Affecting Principle was first deployed by Jan Narveson in order to avoid concluding that we are morally obliged to bring future persons into existence. See Jan Narveson, 'Utilitarianism and New Generations', Mind 76 (1967), and Jan Narveson, 'Moral Problems of Population', The Monist 57 (1973).
13. Attfield has acknowledged explicitly that his 'theory does imply that where . . . resources [for which there is competition] could be used either to satisfy hitherto unsatisfied basic needs, or to further develop the capacities of someone whose capacities are already well developed, and cannot be used for both purposes simultaneously, they should be devoted to the first rather than to the second purpose, for greater value is more likely to be delivered in this way' (Robin Attfield, 'Biocentric Consequentialism, Pluralism and "The Minimax Implication": A Reply to Alan Carter', Utilitas 15/1 (March 2003), p. 81).
14. See Carter, 'Review of Attfield'.
15. 'Strictly speaking, it would be preferable to construe "minimax" as "the lowest level for the best off ". However, with regard to any capacity whose development is constrained by a limited resource, bringing about the lowest acceptable level for the greatest number of humans would itself imply minimising the level of the best off'.
16. Attfield, Global Environment, p. 39.
17. See Attfield, 'Biocentric Consequentialism'.
18. See Attfield, 'Biocentric Consequentialism', p. 80.
19. See Attfield, 'Biocentric Consequentialism', p. 77.
20. Contrary to what Attfield asserts at See Attfield, 'Biocentric Consequentialism', p. 81.
21. See Carter, 'Review of Attfield', pp. 151-2.
22. See Attfield, 'Biocentric Consequentialism', pp. 80-1. Indeed, Attfield even quotes me as referring to his core premisses. See Attfield, 'Biocentric Consequentialism', p. 80.
23. See Attfield, 'Biocentric Consequentialism', p. 79.
24. See See Attfield, 'Biocentric Consequentialism', p. 86.
25. Carter, 'Review of Attfield', p. 152.
26. Carter, 'Review of Attfield', p. 151.
27. Attfield is correct in arguing that my first objection would have been better stated if I had referred to resources for which there is competition rather than merely to limited resources. See Attfield, 'Biocentric Consequentialism', p. 81. But the basic objection still stands: There are certain capacities the development of which is constrained by limited resources-some being resources for which there is competition- and Attfield's theory appears to imply that we should bring more people into the world who would have those capacities developed to a slight degree than restrict human numbers so as to have the capacities in question developed further by all existing and future humans. And that seems highly counter-intuitive.
28. Carter, 'Review of Attfield', p. 151.
29. Attfield, 'Biocentric Consequentialism', p. 82.
30. I should mention that this strikes me as questionable. In overpopulated areas, some people have insufficient light because the buildings occupied by others are blocking their sunlight, and some have insufficient quiet (i.e. suffer from too much sound) because of the noise made by others. Distributions can often easily be reversed simply by individuals swapping apartments! If a person living next to a noisy highway were to exchange apartments with a person living in a basement four blocks away, then light would be removed from one person and supplied to the other, as would quiet.
31. Attfield, Global Environment, p. 39.
32. See Alan Carter, A Radical Green Political Theory (London and New York, 1999), ch. 1.
33. Carter, 'Review of Attfield', p. 151.
34. Elsewhere, in an article cited by Attfield, I have mentioned the following objection to certain varieties of consequentialist theories: '[A]dvocates of human rights justifiably criticize [classical utilitarians] for not having safeguards at the very core of their theory which would protect individuals against their possible sacrifice for the pleasures of the majority' (Alan Carter, 'Moral Theory and Global Population', Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society 99/3 (1999), p. 300). Of course, as I added: 'Classical utilitarians can respond that happiness would not, in fact, be increased by sacrificing individuals, because everyone would feel insecure in a society that was prepared to act in such a way'. But most relevant for our present purposes is the remark that immediately follows, that any such 'reply indicates that any safeguards rely on contingent factors, rather than the theory recognising the inherent value of each individual'.
35. Attfield, 'Biocentric Consequentialism', pp. 85-6.
36. See Kenneth E. Goodpaster, 'On Being Morally Considerable', The Journal of Philosophy 75 (1978).
37. Attfield, Global Environment, p. 39.
38. Carter, 'Review of Attfield', pp. 152-3.
39. Attfield, Global Environment, p. 159.
40. Attfield, 'Biocentric Consequentialism', p. 85.
41. Attfield, Global Environment, p. 39.
42. Attfield, 'Biocentric Consequentialism', p. 80.
43. For recall that Attfield explicitly states that 'where greater interests, such as interests in self-consciousness and autonomy, are endangered and conflict with lesser interests, they take priority' (Attfield, Global Environment, p. 159), and that 'interests can only be endangered if they and the creature to which they belong exist already' (Attfield, 'Biocentric Consequentialism', p. 85).
44. See Imre Lakatos, 'Falsification and the Methodology of Scientific Research Programmes', Criticism and the Growth of Knowledge, ed. Imre Lakatos and Alan Musgrave (Cambridge, 1970).
45. See Attfield, 'Biocentric Consequentialism', p. 90n.
46. Christopher D. Stone, Earth and other Ethics: The Case for Moral Pluralism (New York, 1988), p. 118.
47. J. Baird Callicott, 'The Case against Moral Pluralism', Environmental Ethics 12/2 (Summer 1990), p. 104.
48. J. Baird Callicott, 'The Case against Moral Pluralism', Environmental Ethics 12/2 (Summer 1990), p. 110.
49. Attfield, 'Biocentric Consequentialism', p. 90.
50. For a critique of Callicott's own attempt to deal with a plurality of considerations, see the Appendix, below.
51. See Alan Carter, 'Value-Pluralist Egalitarianism', Journal of Philosophy 99/11 (2002); and Carter, 'Moral Theory and Global Population'.
52. See, for example, Carter, 'Value-Pluralist Egalitarianism'.
53. See, as an arguable instance, Aldo Leopold, A Sand County Almanac, with Essays on Conservation from Round River (New York, 1970).
54. See, for example, Holmes Rolston, III, 'Duties to Endangered Species', Environmental Ethics, ed. R. Elliot (Oxford, 1995).
55. See, as the most famous (or infamous) instance, J. Baird Callicott, 'Animal Liberation: A Triangular Affair', Environmental Ethics 2 (1980). Also see Mark Sagoff, 'Animal Liberation and Environmental Ethics: Bad Marriage, Quick Divorce', Earth Ethics: Environmental Ethics, Animal Rights, and Practical Applications, ed. J. P. Sterba (Englewood Cliffs, NJ, 1995).
56. The example is taken from Brian Barry, Political Argument (London, 1965), p. 5.
57. The asymptotic feature of certain indifference curves can provide a solution to the Repugnant Conclusion, while simultaneously avoiding the pitfalls of average utilitarianism. See Carter, 'Moral Theory and Global Population'.
58. It would be a mistake to assume that I hold all values as simply given. See Alan Carter, 'Humean Nature', Environmental Values 9/1 (2000), and Alan Carter, 'Projectivism and the Last Person Argument', The American Philosophical Quarterly 41/1 (2004).
59. See John Rawls, A Theory of Justice (Cambridge, Mass., 1971).
60. Although I do say something about it in Carter, 'Moral Theory and Global Population'.
61. Although I do say something about it in Carter, 'Value-Pluralist Egalitarianism'.
62. See J. Baird Callicott, 'The Conceptual Foundations of the Land Ethic', Environmental Philosophy: From Animal Rights to Radical Ecology, ed. M. E. Zimmerman, J. B. Callicott, G. Sessions, K. J. Warren and J. Clark, 2nd edn. (Upper Saddle River, NJ, 1998).
63. J. Baird Callicott, Earth's Insights: A Multicultural Survey of Ecological Ethics from the Mediterranean Basin to the Australian Outback (Berkeley, 1997), p. 204.
64. J. Baird Callicott, 'Holistic Environmental Ethics and the Problem of Ecofascism', Environmental Philosophy: From Animal Rights to Radical Ecology, ed. M. E. Zimmerman, J. B. Callicott, G. Sessions, K. J. Warren and J. Clark, 3rd edn. (Upper Saddle River, NJ, 2001), p. 122.
65. J. Baird Callicott, 'Holistic Environmental Ethics and the Problem of Ecofascism', Environmental Philosophy: From Animal Rights to Radical Ecology, ed. M. E. Zimmerman, J. B. Callicott, G. Sessions, K. J. Warren and J. Clark, 3rd edn. (Upper Saddle River, NJ, 2001), pp. 123-4.