Test 1 Questions

Question 1

4 Subjects of Study of Philosophy

Answer 1

Metaphysics (study of underlying nature of reality); Epistemology (study of nature of knowledge); Axiology (study of nature of values); Logic (study of formal reasoning)

Question 2

Principle of Aldo Leopold’s ‘land ethic’

Answer 2

An action is right when it tends to promote the beauty, integrity, and stability of the eco-system; it is wrong when it tends otherwise.

Question 3

Taylor states that non-human living things are not moral agents and do not possess moral rights. He nevertheless holds that living things deserve equal moral respect and consideration within human ethical decision- making. Explain how he uses a conception of the human good to arrive at this position.

Answer 3

Taylor provides an argument for the conclusion that all living things deserve equal moral consideration. The human good, for Taylor, involves being rational agents. Rational agents are able to discern that a conclusion follows from an argument and act in accordance with what reason requires. So, realizing our good as rational agents involves acting in accordance with the conclusion of his equality argument.

Question 4

Is the principle of Leopold’s land ethic an example of the naturalistic fallacy? Explain.

Answer 4

The principle of Leopold’s land ethic would be an example of the naturalistic fallacy insofar as Leopold is arriving at this principle from ecology (his description of the land pyramid). The sciences describe the causal processes by which an ecosystem may be stable and biodiverse. Nowhere however, do the sciences tell us that a stable and biodiverse ecosystem is the ‘natural’ or ‘proper’ state of the system, which is what the principle of the land ethic is stating. So, Leopold is attempting to derive an ought- statement (the land ethic principle) from factual descriptive statements.

Question 5

Three Fields of Philosophical Study of Ethics

Answer 5

Meta-Ethics: study of underlying nature of ethics. What constitutes a moral fact? ‘Murder is morally wrong’. Is that a real fact or just socially constructed?
Normative Ethics: Study of theories of ethics with the aim of establishing a true or adequate amount of ethics.
Applied Ethics: Application of normative theories of ethics to actual moral questions or issues to determine how one ought to be or act.

Question 6

Ethical Theories of the Good and Theories of the Right

Answer 6

Theories of the Good: Good consequences are the basis for ethical appraisal; a theory of the good must have something to say about what ‘the good’ is. Usually happiness. Theories of the Right: actions are right or wrong in themselves; they are non-consequentialist. It must have something to say about how exactly an action is right or wrong in itself.

Question 7

Deontic Ethics vs. Aretaic Ethics

Answer 7

Deontic ethical theories construe ethics in terms of duties to act. What one is apprising when one makes an ethical evaluation is the action of an agent (what one does). Deontic theories are duty based theories that evaluate people’s actions based on rules and principles that gives us duties to act and refrain from acting. The first three theories are secular but they all focus on legalistic views of ethics and what you are morally responsible for doing; they are all deontic, just like Christianity is in a sense. Aretaic theories are focused on character and there is a different view of agency here. You do as you are in this theory; someone of vicious character will do vicious things and vice versa. Causal antecedents to what humans do in this approach to ethics.

Question 8

Propositional vs. Performative Knowledge

Answer 8

Propositional theory says you must know the rule to guide your action and the facts that tell you the outcomes of your actions. Performative theories are those you must learn through experience; think stick-shift driving.

Question 9

Principle of Utility

Answer 9

Principle of Utility: Act so as to maximize the aggregate utility for all affected by your act. Utility is happiness; pain minimizes utility. It is a deontic theory. The principle of utility is an action guiding principle where your duty is to follow it. It is propositional because you must know the outcomes of your actions; you must know the facts of the consequences of your actions.

Question 10

Kant’s Categorial Imperative

Answer 10

Things we as humans ought to do, no matter what we think or feel or believe. Tells us what we ought to do. First form: act only upon that maxim that you can will as a universal law (that would not result in a contradiction). How to determine whether something is wrong in Kant’s view: 1) Describe your maxim 2) State the end contemplated by the act 3) Universalize your maxim 4) Look at the outcome of 3) and if it contradicts 2), then it is immoral. Second form: always treat humanity, including yourself, as ends in themselves and never merely as means. A maxim is a description of an act. In this theory, humans are 1) rational, have deductive reasoning; 2) we have radical free will and are autonomous. We are moral beings with responsibility for our actions. We must respect rationality wherever we find it. This goes against determinism: the view that events are of a product of antecedent circumstances and natural laws. Kant would say that our will is caused by nothing; it is an uncaused cause.

Question 11

Objections to Utilitarianism

Answer 11

Objection 1: no objective calculus for calculating utility. Think of the argument that FDA should be abolished because although it provides rigorous testing it increases price and gets life-saving medicine to less people and so the costs are greater than the benefits. This is a utilitarian argument. But we would agree this isn’t the best thing because of our legal system and the harm people would incur.
Objection 2: Does not reflect actual ethical deliberation; we don’t have time in real life to actually calculate this out.
Objection 3: it puts us in impossible situations; think about the trolley car example and saving 10 strangers versus saving your baby. All parents wouldn’t act as a utilitarian in this case, even though the utilitarian thing to do is to save the strangers. Utilitarianism undervalues the individual.
Objection 4: Too absolutist. Think of the example of a false promise to repay someone so you can party. Think of the Osama bin Laden example with a bomb at the front of the class; we would want him to lie in that case so we don’t die, even though lying is morally wrong when you universalize it. Also there is the issue of generalization: no specific description of the maxim given. So is lying to save lives okay, but other lying not? This gets at the issue that we seem to think that consequences do matter in some way, because if lying saves lives then it would reason to be okay, but if it doesn’t then it’s not.
Objection 5: What about non-rational creatures like babies?
Objection 6: Immoral actions can be based on universal maxims, but that violates second form of CI.

Question 12

Social Contract Theory

Answer 12

Social Contract Theory was created by Thomas Hobbes: father of political science. Social contract: prior to signing a contract we are in a state of nature where we have full natural liberty (nothing constrains you other than natural physical limitations). Also in nature there is scarcity, and if we all want the same things, the state of nature will be a state of war. Not a good state to be living in; “solitary, brutish, short”. If you build a nice house and everyone else is in mud huts, then everyone will just gang up and take your nice things from you.
In a social contract, we each agree to give up some of our natural liberty in exchange that others do as well and each one of us gets some peace.

Question 13

Contractualism

Answer 13

John Rawls: he uses the idea of a social contract to construct a Rational decision procedure for arriving at principles of justice. Imagine that you are representing someone in the original position of negotiating the terms of a social contract. You will assume some basic facts about human beings and some knowledge about relevant alternatives in political systems and assume self-interest as well. If Mike Tyson you want things to go to the strong; if you’re weak and dumb you want everything divided equally. To deal with this you use a veil of ignorance so you don’t know anything about the position the person you’re representing is in; you know nothing about them, and in the Williston paper you are negotiating for yourself and you don’t know anything about yourself. You would argue for individual human rights so that your rights don’t get lost in the utilitarian calculus in the name of the greater good. Also, hypothetically, you would say that if there had to be economic inequality, it must benefit the worst off in society, because it could be you! He is exposing what we deeply believe (and what he thinks we ought to). But again, objection to both theories: what if certain people are excluded from the contract; what if they cannot understand its terms, like babies, or future generations?

Question 14

Virtue Ethics (Aristotle)

Answer 14

You do or act as you are (who you are is your character). This is a theory of the good: for Aristotle the good to be pursued is happiness. While utilitarians think happiness is a subjective matter for each person and you act so that the majority of people gain happiness, Aristotle starts with an account of human nature. Action in accordance with something’s nature leads to happiness or the good.
Virtues are traits/dispositions that are conducive to the good. A vice is a trait/disposition that is not conducive to the good; not as apt to thrive or flourish when engaging in those.
But what are those traits?
Doctrine of the mean: In every action or emotion there is a deficiency and an excess. Take a situation where you are facing personal risk (Mike Tyson is threatening to take away your money and beating you up). If someone runs away and hides and doesn’t call the cops, we would call that cowardice and call it a deficiency of courage. But if someone tried to take him down and got pummelled as well, we would call that recklessness and say that there is an excess of courage. Virtue is the point between these; the right point for that individual in that context which achieves the best outcome. Given our prof’s biology, courage wouldn’t be running in and fighting Tyson, but a cop with a gun would be expected to do that.
Knowing what to do and when to do it is practical wisdom; a type of know-how. The virtuous person is going to know what to do in each situation.
In terms of environmentalism: should we build a pipeline? Aristotle’s answer would be that you should do as a virtuous person would do.

Question 15

Criticisms of Virtue Ethics

Answer 15

This doesn’t seem to give much guidance for what to actually do in each circumstance. Might be a cheap shot because the ability to know what to do in each circumstance may be hard to describe but one can still operate with that ability (like if you can drive stick but not describe it, you can still drive stick well; it’s still valid).
Another criticism is his saying that your character is the way you are. Aristotle says that your character begins with how you are raised as a little kid. You start off by mimicking mom and dad. You get your virtues by practicing those virtues. If you don’t have these virtues, by being raised to live by vices, then by this perspective you are not morally equal and you are a vicious person. You can be a person of bad character and be worth less in Aristotle’s theory; not deserving of equal care and respect; goes against the Imago Dei belief of the Bible.
Also empirical: if Aristotle gets the account of human nature wrong, then there are issues. He thinks women aren’t fully rational and so aren’t deserving of equal care and respect; same with non-Greeks and foreigners… only fit to be slaves. If your account of human nature is wrong then you’ll do things that follow that view.

Question 16

Naturalistic Fallacy

Answer 16

You cannot derive an ought statement (or value statement) from an is statement. Just because something is the case doesn’t mean it ought to be the case. Goes back to David Hume who was an empiricist, meaning that all knowledge of matter is derived from experience and your sense observation. He says you can’t know something just from thinking about it.
We say murder is wrong and that it is a moral fact.
Imagine watching someone being stabbed to death; seeing time slices of someone’s neck being sliced and all the blood and gore and suffering that brings. Just from watching the sequence of events in time, he says you can’t infer that murder is wrong just from watching someone get murdered. There isn’t something wrong in the thing itself. So when Leopold says biodiversity is right based on a physical description of the ecological system, he is committing a naturalistic fallacy. The naturalistic fallacy is to assume that if something is natural, it must be good; another form is to derive that something ought to be, from something that is; according to Hume that is a naturalistic fallacy. Ex. Breastfeeding is the natural way of feeding human children; therefore women ought to breastfeed. The naturalistic fallacy says you cannot make that jump because we make actions against nature all the time, like vaccines or electricity or medicine. Also very similar to appeals to nature; because something is natural, it is right. Is/ought just has to with something being the way it is, and that making it right.

Question 17

Peter Singer: All Animals are Equal

Answer 17

He says that a thing has moral value if it has interests, and to have interests it must be able to feel pleasure/pain. He says that the capacity for suffering and/or enjoyment/happiness is the line to determine whose pleasure/pain we take into consideration. This disqualifies things like rocks but includes mice for example, who can suffer. To experience pleasure and pain you need a brain and a nervous system. Plants are out of the net here. Mosquitos can’t feel pain and are not truly conscious. Singer is talking about higher animals that have a nervous system and a capacity for pleasure/pain. It excludes most insects, single-celled organisms, etc.
An ecosystem doesn’t have a nervous system in and of itself; it only has things within it that can feel pleasure/pain. Species as a whole also don’t have protection under Singer’s view. When building a pipeline, the ecosystem wouldn’t come into consideration but we’d have to take into consideration all the utilities of each individual animal.
Singer’s approach has been taken as an animal rights approach or an animal liberation approach.
Singer’s view allows for pets as long as the pet’s utility is increased from being owned by a human compared to not. Humans can’t be pets in this utilitarian view because we would feel pain and suffering from being owned and restricted by other humans.

Question 18

Problems with Singer

Answer 18

Problems with Singer: already has all the problems of utilitarianism built into it.
Cheap shot when he says that the dog is as rational as a young infant because there is the potential for rationality and autonomy.
Another issue: a plant can’t feel pleasure and pain but it has interests. Same with mosquitos. They have interests in being alive and in reproducing. Think of tree roots growing towards nutrition (a causal-mechanical process where that tree initiates an action). Unless Singer wants to say that there is something special about the human causal-mechanical process, he is in trouble here because he must include the plants here. He must specify what makes a brain and a nervous system special.

Question 19

Regan’s Definition of Subject of Life and Differences from Kant’s Account of Human Dignity

Answer 19

Subject of a Life: To have beliefs and desires, perception, memory, a sense of the future, including your own future, an emotional life together with feelings of pleasure and pain; preference and welfare interests; ability to initiate action in pursuit of desires and goals; a psychological identity over time; and an individual welfare in the sense that their experiential life fares well or ill for them, independently of their utility for others.
Differences: Regan is a neo-Kantian, so this is where he gets his view of rights from. Heart of Kant’s view is that we have moral dignity because we are all rational (capacity to analyze concepts and deduce logical entailments) and autonomous. In Kant’s writing, he talks about everything having a price or dignity, and we are beyond all price, and have value in and of ourselves and we are therefore have dignity. Animals are not rational at all! They act on instinct alone and cannot rationally deduce anything.
If animals have rights, we can’t base it on that. Regan bases animals having dignity based on them being subjects-of-a-life.
The things Regan is referring to are consistent with a causal-mechanical view (that we are just physical things with mechanical processes that cause things to happen in our brains and cognition). But the professor thinks that the list Regan gives doesn’t give a clear reason and ability for us to derive the same value human beings have through the categorical imperative. The subject-of-a-life criterion expands the range of things that have moral rights but doesn’t give us the same justification of why they have rights that you have in Kant’s account. Kant’s account is much stronger in that regard with the categorical imperative.
This list of qualities is extremely rare for animals to have!!
Test question: How is Regan’s subject of a life criterion different from Kant’s view of rational autonomy?
Remember the question of the Categorial Imperative with someone lending money to someone but lying that they will pay it back… this will rationally contradict itself if you universalize the maxim itself because no one will believe any promise made to them and promises would never be made in the first place and you’d never be able to get the money you want. The outcome contradicts the end in itself (getting the money).

Question 20

Leopold

Answer 20

1. Humans are just a part of nature, not separate/superior to it.
2. By invoking this biodiversity and complexity in nature, he’s saying that our ethics should be informed by the life sciences (ecology, biology, etc.)
3. Leopold’s land ethic principle (holistic ethics): 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.

Radical both conceptually and in the ethics of acting on it; our entire Western society can’t function based on this approach!

Runs into an issue because whatever we do is in nature according to his three main points; whatever we do is just part of nature. Everything we do is natural; there’s nothing we can do that is unnatural in and of itself.
There is a tension between claims 1 and 3 because of this! If we build a pipeline, then even if it harms nature it is fine because we are technological beings naturally, and we can’t be morally wrong for doing what we naturally do.

Question 21

Leopold’s Land Pyramid

Answer 21

This view also believes in a land pyramid where each creature relies on something below it which relies on something else below it in the land pyramid and so on. The wolf or the Indian eats the elk and so relies on it, the elk relies on plants, and the plants rely on the soil, etc.
This view says we have obligation not to individuals but to collectives as a whole.
This is a radical view and throws out the idea that human beings are special in some way morally and in inherent value.
In his land pyramid Leopold is talking about a tendency to diversity. Biodiversity and complexity is good; it occurs when the land pyramid is functioning smoothly.
In our supply chain, there isn’t a lot of redundancy, so there are bottlenecks, and if one thing goes wrong, then the whole thing is disrupted.
But in complex land systems, with biodiversity, if one species goes extinct, there are so many interdependent links that something else can fill its place and land systems can continue on. In that sense they are resilient and their redundancy really helps them survive change.

Question 22

More Criticisms of Leopold

Answer 22

Another tension between claims 2 and 3.
By saying that we should look to the life sciences to tell us about ethics, and saying that a thing is right when it tends to preserve the integrity, stability, and beauty of the biotic community, he is implying that the life sciences will tell us that there is one state that the earth should be in, one that is integral and stable and beautiful. But the Earth has changed so much over the years in ways that aren’t always stable or integral or beautiful (what do those words even mean?)
The sciences provide us with the laws and mechanisms by which things change, but they don’t say that there is one way that things should be.
Think of the Earth: it has changed so much over its lifetime; used to be a time when no ice at the poles, or planet covered in ice (and water!!). But there isn’t one natural way that things ought to be (or so it seems).

Take the land ethic all the way to its logical conclusion: it allows for a genocidal view of human beings (like Thanos) which would help the environment become more stable and beautiful. This is an incredibly radical view and it wouldn’t allow for much human civilization at all, which is incredibly problematic as stopping those things would cause the hurt and death of many human beings in pursuit of the land ethic.

Not to mention that it provides no reason why human beings shouldn’t murder each other; where do we get an ethic for how to treat each other? This theory provides none of that.
His theory only attaches to wholes, not to individuals.

Question 23

Taylor’s Biocentrism

Answer 23

Four main components of Biocentrism
Humans are a part of nature, not special or superior to it.
The parts of the ecosystem are interdependent on the sound biological functioning of the others.
Each living individual is a ‘teleological centre of life’ with its own unique good.
Arguments for the superiority of the human good fail.

Other notes: He views these as a good reason argument for the view that the good of all living things is equal.
Taylor also rejects the notion that what science tells us has normative relevance. He says it has no moral relevance; he is preserving the fact-value distinction. He is not committing the naturalistic fallacy here, because he is saying you can’t derive a value statement from a descriptive statement. In this sense he is traditional, whereas Leopold tried to get an ethics from the life sciences, so this is different between the two.

Taylor is different because he emphasizes the individual as having value in his theory, not the whole. It is an individualistic approach to ethics. He would still say damages to the environment that affect individuals are problematic but he won’t necessary say that is a moral wrong, which Leopold would. Taylor would say that the wrong was done to individuals who depend on that environment whereas Leopold would just say the wrong was done to the whole in and of itself. This is more of a traditional approach to ethics than Leopold.
Also calling each living individual a teleological centre of life is calling each thing an end in and of itself. This is what Aristotle taught about humans; it harkens back to his type of teaching of virtue ethics.

Also at the end of the article, he says that he is not arguing that animals have moral rights, whereas humans do because we are moral agents. It’s difficult to square here what he’s saying in the rest of the piece. It seems kind of traditional.
Conceptually Taylor is closer to Singer than he is to Leopold because he is more traditional in some of this ethical foundations, and he talks about the interests of living things and emphasizes their pursuit of a good life as the reason for valuing them.

Question 24

Taylor’s Definition of a Teleological Centre of Life

Answer 24

He says that each living thing is a teleological centre of life. His use of the word teleological is unfortunate as it means the study of final ends. The idea of final ends is that each kind of thing has a specific way that it should be and each kind of thing has an essential nature, immutable and unchanging and a way it ought to be. We can infer that he doesn’t mean that kind of teleology, that each thing is an end in and of itself.

We may believe he is more thinking of the word teleonomy.
We can say that each living thing needs certain things to thrive and survive: we need water, food, shelter, etc. Everything has its own unique ways that help it navigate its environment to succeed, thrive, and flourish. That’s the sense in which Taylor is using the word. He’s more saying when we study laws of nature we come to appreciate and identify the value that living things have and the ways they thrive and flourish.

Taylor breaks down three ways in which human beings are said to be superior to animals and nature. He says the ancient Greek way of looking at humans being rational, making us superior to animals is just a human way of valuing rationality above other characteristics. He says that rationality is only valuable for us as humans to thrive and achieve their good whereas running fast is valuable for cheetahs to achieve their good and so it doesn’t help us as seeming superior.
He says that the way to seeing which good is best evolutionarily is seeing how long a species can last and adapt.

Question 25

Know how Taylor argues for moral consideration of non-human life notwithstanding his denial of non-human moral agency

Answer 25

Taylor would say that we as humans having moral agency does not mean anything for animals who are not moral agents themselves and so that doesn’t make us superior to them in any way. We achieve our species-specific good through rationality while other organisms do it in other ways. (Page 9 & 10)

It seems that at the end of Taylor’s piece, he somewhat contradicts himself. It seems strange that he would say that animals don’t have moral rights but still have moral equality and deserve to be taken care of just the same way that humans do.
He does say that every living thing has a good; the human good is rationality which endows us with nobility and worth that other creatures lack. That’s a very traditional notion. What is it to be rational? A rational being can reason through an argument to a conclusion and choose to act on the basis of that conclusion.
The 4 components of the biocentric outlook provide a good reasons argument for the moral equality of all living things, according to Taylor. We achieve our species-specific good by acting in ways that respect the moral equality of all living things (or rationally), according to him.

But we do NOT think of mosquitos having the same intrinsic moral value as human beings; almost no one does. The ramifications of this theory are crazy and it devalues human life in a way that is horrifying.
It is FAR easier to sympathize with things that are like us in behaviour or in form; we do this with apes or with dogs compared to the way we devalue insects or reptiles. For us to care about inanimate objects or lower animals, we have to anthropomorphize them like Thomas the Train (human-like characteristics and behaviour). We are wired to sympathize with things akin to us.
We would only care about flies or mosquitos if they were key to human survival, because we only care about humans and their wellbeing, and since they aren’t, we do not (and should not) feel any moral issue with killing them. This is a flaw of Paul Taylor’s biocentrist outlook on life. Often emotional responses (like resentment) flow into moral responses (when someone gets upset with us for doing something, we feel resentment and start to form a moral from that). The biocentric view is just not realistic.
Also at the end of the article, he says that he is not arguing that animals have moral rights, whereas humans do because we are moral agents. It’s difficult to square here what he’s saying in the rest of the piece. It seems kind of traditional.
Conceptually Taylor is closer to Singer than he is to Leopold because he is more traditional in some of this ethical foundations, and he talks about the interests of living things and emphasizes their pursuit of a good life as the reason for valuing them.

Taylor denies the notion that we are made in the image of God or morally special because of how much longer other things have been on the Earth compared to us.

He also says that the total, final extermination of our species would result in nature and Earth’s entire community of life saying good riddance to our leaving; saying we are not needed. This seems to create tension between his first and second points. Species go extinct everyday; and nature continues on. Science doesn’t actually tell us that all parts of the ecosystem are interdependent on each other, at least not totally. It pokes holes in his second point and makes it less sound, for sure. Taylor runs into some moral issues with this point in my opinion.

Another issue: if all creatures’ good are equal, the passage about us dying off being good for the environment makes it seem that our good is less valuable than other individual’s good on the planet.

Question 26

Know Sober’s criticism of the environmentalist’s use of the term natural.

Answer 26

He doesn’t think we need to radically change ethics to defend why we should protect the environment (which Taylor and Leopold are trying to do) because it creates more problems than they solve, and we have a whole other category of value called aesthetics which are analogous to our concerns with the environment.
Sober is a traditionalist in this case!

From Leopold’s perspective: wild = natural (good)
Domestic (domesticated) = artificial (bad)

On Leopold’s view, domesticated chickens are part of our food manufacturing, industrial culture, and from his perspective, those creatures are not a moral concern as they are an unnatural alteration of a natural animal; they are an artifact we created.
Sober says that the distinction Leopold is making is very problematic because if we are part of nature, everything we do is part of nature as well. When we domesticate nature, this is just an example of one species exerting a selection pressure on another. One could say the same about parasites or symbiosis (something that exists in nature and that exerts a selection pressure) or slave-making in social insects. Once again this is the tension between the land ethic principle and the claim that humans are a part of nature, not separate to it. We saw this between points 1 & 3 in Leopold’s article.
Leopold is trying to say that there is a particular state of an ecosystem that is normatively the “right” state (biodiverse). Aristotle thought this about gravity; things fall to Earth’s centre because they want to get to their right, natural state which is near Earth’s centre. But we do not think like this anymore. Aristotle also applied this to homosexuality and to women not being fully human (kids were to be identical copies of their father).
Darwin thought that there isn’t necessarily a right way that things ought to be, but rather things just express themselves in different ways in different environments. It seems that the statement that we should get our ethics from the life sciences and that whatever is biodiverse is good is false from an empirical standpoint. The Earth has been in many states naturally, and not all of them biodiverse! The life sciences contradict the land ethic principle!! What is natural is not always biodiverse, and there is no “right way” for nature to be. It changes in many ways that don’t always seem to be good for biodiversity and things just express themselves in certain ways (not one right way).

Question 27

Know Sober’s criticism of the environmentalist’s more expansive appeal to interests

Answer 27

Sober also critiques their appeals to needs and interests. They talk of everything having a need (something needs a thing if it will cease to exist if it does not get it), including species, plants, and mountain ranges. This sounds like Paul Taylor’s Biocentrism in that everything is a teleological centre of life and has interests that are to be upheld.
Sober criticizes this view by saying that if mountain ranges and all natural things have needs (in this sense of a need) then automobiles, garbage dumps, and buildings do too. Taylor says that it is all living things that have needs, whereas Leopold is a wholist (everything has needs and interests) whereas Taylor is an individualist (each living thing is a teleological centre of life and has a good) and would agree with Sober’s criticism that science doesn’t tell us which things have moral value. He thinks the move Leopold makes is a grounding for ethical value.
When you say that intrinsic moral value is based on things that have needs and interests, you get living things and a lot of things that we don’t want to say have moral value (things like garbage dumps, automobiles, etc.)
Each ethical theory must provide principles that describe which objects matter for their own sakes (moral value) and which do not.
Remember that Singer said the basis for moral value is the ability to feel pleasure and pain.
Kant said rational autonomy is what makes us have moral value (we are more than robots and we can make moral judgements and decisions).
But species going extinct and a loss of biodiversity are still issues; so how can we deal with them?
So if we don’t have a moral basis for preserving nature and biodiversity and ecosystems and species, then how do we justify saving them, because there are species and ecosystems we do want to save!

Sober says that the distinction between natural and artificial is not the crucial one. The distinction and intended comparison he makes is not between mountains and highways but mountains and works of art.

Question 28

Know the category of value Sober would use to address environmental issues

Answer 28

Sober’s positive suggestion: Aesthetics provides a better category of value to make the case for preservation and other environmental issues.

Sober makes an analogy between things that matter to us environmentally and things that matter aesthetically. He says we can address environmental concerns by aesthetic preservationism.
He talks about us feeling cheated if we see a beautiful famous historical painting but is a copy of the original because we value it for more than just the beauty of it.
Last Man thought experiment: if you were the last man on Earth and went around chopping down every tree on the planet and destroying every piece of art, would it be wrong? Many would say that destroying art isn’t wrong, because it gains its aesthetic value from those who can value it; it doesn’t have inherent value but only in the relational facts that they are part of (the human enjoying it). If you say it’s wrong however to destroy nature as the last man, you’re saying that nature has more value than aesthetic things like art, because it is still wrong to you even if no one is around to enjoy the aesthetic value of the nature itself. You are saying that there is a contrast between natural and aesthetic objects, because no one says that you are wrong for destroying all the art on the planet (no value because no one there to enjoy it). This exposes the fact that many think nature has inherent value beyond aestheticism.
Singer would have a problem with it because as a Utilitarian (greatest good for greatest amount of creatures who can feel pleasure and pain) it would affect squirrels, and all living things in the trees, but not the trees itself.

Things we can derive from the analogy between environmental things and aesthetic things:
Originality matters in both art and environmental appreciation. Seeing the Grand Canyon as a metaverse replica version just wouldn’t be the same to any of us, and we care about original works of art too (even if the replica looks the exact same).
Context matters. Environmentalists wouldn’t be satisfied with preserving endangered species in a zoo or in a humanly constructed preserve. They want to preserve the species in its natural habitat, as would people who want to preserve more than just a famous work of art but also the original settings it was found in like the church that housed it and the city itself. Old artifacts like the Bamiyan Buddha being destroyed by the Taliban in Afghanistan seems to be wrong; no human harm done (so in the traditional view it’s fine) but a wanton destruction of something that tells us about where we’ve come from seems to be wrong to us. Seeing a polar bear just sitting in a tiny enclosure looking bored or even suffering is much worse compared to seeing a bear in a better exhibit and that doesn’t compare to seeing them completely unconstrained in their natural environment.
Rarity matters. We struggle to understand it in terms of preserving one whale over another based just on endangered species (because we are very individualist in terms of justice and equity). But it makes sense in terms of art because works of act that are very rare with very few other works by the same artist or from the same historical period or in the same style have increased aesthetic value. So, rare organisms may be valuable because they are rare.
We appreciate the rare bits of rainforest left and value them because there aren’t many of them, but we believe we can lose a bit of Canadian Shield (scrub and rock and grass) and we value it less because we have so much of it.
But here the last man argument shows that often times there is a dichotomy that exists, because like was written above, many would say that nature shouldn’t be destroyed even with only one man on earth and this shows that they think nature has intrinsic moral value. And this runs contrary to the idea that everything has equal moral value regardless of rarity or other external value.

Question 29

Know the difference Parsons articulates between strong and weak aesthetic preservationism & know the problem Parsons identifies with the strong version

Answer 29

The idea of preserving environments and species in their ‘natural’ (non-human interfered with) state for aesthetic reasons.
There is strong aesthetic preservation and weak aesthetic preservation.
Strong aesthetic preservation: humans should preserve the environment from whatever threatens it (promote preserving things in their natural state). This is a positive right.
The strong form is that we should protect a species or a natural environment from any threat to its aesthetic preservation, even if that threat is natural in and of itself.

But there is an issue with the strong form of aesthetic preservation. If we come along and stop natural destruction from happening to certain natural things, that in itself turns them into artifacts which are sustained and influenced by human beings. This takes them from natural things to artificial things when we interfere to keep them from being destroyed.

Weak aesthetic preservation is that humans should not act to disrupt nature in its natural state.
The weak form is preserving environments and species from human interference.

Remember, a negative right is a right to not be interfered with. A negative right to free speech means that people can’t do something to interfere with your exercise of free speech.
A positive right to free speech means that others have a duty to enable you to exercise free speech.
Our Constitutional rights are negative; they hold the government from interfering with our rights.

Here with the weak aesthetic preservation form we run into the Preservationist’s Dilemma:
A dilemma is where one is confronted with choices, all of which are bad.

Question 30

Know what Parsons means by the aesthetic preservationist’s dilemma and why he believes it arises

Answer 30

Here are the choices:
Make the case for preservation on aesthetic grounds alone. There is a great problem with this. There are things that are not natural (but are artificially created by humans) that have great aesthetic value as well, and people find great beauty in them. So in this choice you have to make the case that on aesthetic grounds alone, nature is more aesthetic and deserves to be preserved. There is no guarantee on aesthetic grounds alone that the environment will ‘win’ out over human interference. But Jenna Thompson tries to argue with this and says that nature is by and large superior to human development on aesthetic grounds: 1) magnificence and richness in detail; 2) capacity to change or enhance our way of seeing the world; 3) cultural significance for those who experience it; 4) the capacity to put things in perspective. Is this always true of all of nature? But even if this is true, if there’s so much of something that does this (perhaps the Canadian Shield) do we actually need all of it? The environmentalist wants to preserve all of nature not just the pretty parts, and so this won’t preserve as much as the environmentalist wants.
Introduce ethical considerations to tip the scale of conflicts in favour of preservation. The environmentalist can say that a natural area is aesthetically superior to a strip mine in part because it is more natural and what is natural is more valuable than what is artificial. Think about this though: if we are deciding whether to murder a human or not, there could be an aesthetic reason (the human is handsome) and an ethical reason (he is an image bearer of God and has inherent value). Of course the ethical reason takes far precedence over the aesthetic one, so much so that the aesthetic one becomes rhetorical. If ethical considerations are at play, the aesthetic considerations become rhetorical. They become an add-on on the side to convince you.

Parsons would say that aesthetic considerations can be more effective in swaying people to action than dry facts or the ethical case. However it threatens to shift discussions of preservation away from rational debate and toward a mere rhetorical contest.

There doesn’t seem to be a great case here for the preservation of the environment on purely aesthetic grounds at all. It must be moral.

Question 31

Know the two virtues that Hill relates to environmental concern and why he believes they are relevant

Answer 31

Hill is a virtue ethicist (important to know).
Hill details someone who covers their beautiful natural property with luscious vegetation and trees in asphalt: he says what sort of person would do this. He is appealing to their character here.

In Hill’s perspective, the character approach (a virtue approach to ethics) will better capture our environmental concerns.
This approach is somewhat radical in that it’s rejecting ethics used since the Renaissance (more deontic forms of ethics), but he is not breaking new ground in terms of virtue ethics.
Virtues - states of character. There are traits/dispositions that are conducive to a thing’s good.
Hill brings up two virtues in his paper: humility (self-acceptance) and gratitude. These are interpersonal virtues in Aristotle’s account (Aristotle categorized humans as social animals and we live in social communities).
Humility (knowing your place). The vice in relation to this is arrogance or hubris; it is a deficiency of humility. The excess of humility is always thinking you are wrong or lesser than others. You are being excessively humble. True humility is knowing what to take pride in and what you struggle with, an accurate view of limitations and skills. To thrive and achieve our human good, the idea is to have a right view of yourself in relation to others and be rightly humble.

Humility: we can have an exaggerated sense of importance when looking at nature and thinking we are above it (although we are created separate from it and clearly are given dominion over it by God). Nature does have a humbling effect and it is fitting, but we are still God’s partners in creation to rule over it (even if there are things that we cannot handle; that doesn’t change our place among the creatures).
He is saying we should try to exhibit humility with the environment and if we do that we will do that with other human beings and be closer to achieving the human good. If we just treat nature as a means to an end, then he argues that it is more likely that we will also treat others as only a means to an end and not care about their good beyond the utility it brings us, and this will keep us from achieving the human good (which is what we want).
Hill says that humility is seeing ourselves as we really are, and this relates to seeing us in our right place in nature.
Hill argues that the person who is too ready to destroy redwoods may lack humility not in relation to others but in the sense that he is trying to avoid seeing himself as one among many natural creatures.

Gratitude: if you are the type of person that is able to feel grateful for the environment around you and learn to cherish things that give you pleasure, then you will learn to feel proper gratitude for the human beings that so enrich your life. We as humans cherish mementos not just for the memories they give us but we eventually come to cherish the things themselves for their own sake, and we want them to survive. To cherish something is to care for it for its own sake. One wants a thing to survive and to thrive and not simply for its utility, and if someone took joy in nature but wanted to blow it up right when sentient life ended, then he would lack the common human tendency to cherish what enriches our lives and it may extend to the way we treat other humans.
By exhibiting both of these virtues to the environment, we are practicing them!

Question 32

Know why Hill’s application of virtue ethics to environmental concern may be described as derivative

Answer 32

He’s not saying you have to understand your place in nature to achieve the human good; he’s leaving that open. In others words, the human good (in his account) is still human-centred. This is not radical and not even tweaking virtue ethics at all.
If there is a virtue humans have to exemplify in relation to nature which is required for human to achieve their good (a specifically environmental virtue) that would be departing from the tradition of virtue ethics. But he’s not giving us that here.
The obligation to plants in Singer’s approach is derivative because you are obliged to the critters that live in the plants. Hill is the same; the good that values the environment still comes from a good that values other human beings. His idea of good is derivative in this sense; it is entirely human focused and only extends to the environment. He derives his value of the environment from pursuing a good that values other humans.

Hill wants us to look at the environment problem from a different perspective; don’t say that acts that destroy the environment are morally wrong, but rather articulate our ideals of human excellence. What sort of person would want to destroy the environment on purpose? He needs to connect a valuing of the environment with other virtues about human excellence. Though indifference to the environment doesn’t necessarily reflect the absence of virtues but signals the absence of traits which we want to encourage because they in most cases are a natural basis for the development of certain virtues.