PHI 2620 Environmental Ethics 1 11 Ethics study of goodness o Related to the study of right action o i e if trees have value there are reasons to not chop it down Applied Ethics the ethics of any particular issu Metaethics morals o Can differ from person to person Moral psychology motivations for acting the ways that we do Environmental Ethics o We affect nature Role of improving technology Role of increasing population o Describing the value of nature Resources People s practices and behavior o Prescribing a response What do I think o Is it consistent o Am I leaving anything out o What or who counts morally Indirect vs direct moral considerability 1 14 Palmer has three key points o What is valuable and why things have value in relation to me or by themselves Instrumental value and intrinsic value indirect vs direct o Where does value come from Subjective value comes from humans Objectives value is intrinsic and ever present o What is of intrinsic value if anything Some answers The ability to flourish wellbeing Consciousness Beauty Diversity Leopold Article o The Ethical Sequence Ecological and Philosophical way of viewing ethics Ecological ethics are ways of surviving in the environment altering behavior to adapt Philosophical is to constrain our social behavior when we interact with one another Leopold takes human ethics down a peg anything has ethics if it wants to survive Don t shit where you eat and things like that three ways to view ethics Individual individual Individual society Individual society land o The Community Concept Man as conqueror of land Man as citizen of land o The Ecological Conscience education Substitutes for land Ethic Land has instrumental value Ethics based on the idea that the person is in a community of interdependent parts We can view ourselves by two mindsets Best way to change the mindset is to have influence within early o Problem being that not everything has instrumental value o People should view themselves as proud custodians of the land His main point is that some things have indirect or hidden value which may be missed in the search for instrumental value For that reason just value everything and you ll never miss one 1 16 We can only be ethical in relationship to something we can see feel understand love or otherwise have faith in Leopold A B Cleavage of Leopold o A economic view of the land I only value the land as commodity production o B land is biota Function is something broader A thing is right when it tends to preserve the integrity stability and beauty of the biotic community L o A bit vague o Nature culture debate Judgments intuitions theory that explains captures our ethics Sylvan o Man as a tyrant over the environment o Man as a custodian of nature To whom are we responsible o Man as a perfector What is perfection What we want o Judges nature as more important than people in some cases Basic Chauvinism basic western view o One can do what one wishes so long as it doesn t hurt anyone else or cause irreparable harm to oneself Who are others What is irreparable What is harm 1 18 Singer Article for Wednesday CRE 1 is on Singer Sylvan thinks that we need to go past a basic chauvinism to move on o Sylvan adds the idea to basic chauvinism that they should not willfully destroy or broaden the concept of others Argument o 1 Killing humans for money is morally wrong o 2 There is no morally relevant difference between killing humans and killing whales the rainforest o 3 If 2 is true then killing whales for money is wrong 1 23 Singer o Nonhumans take the brunt of the blow when Humans interfere with nature We harm ourselves in the end but we harm the animals first o Religious and philosophical traditions say that Animals are made for man Cruelty to animals lead to cruelty to man o Reason Something that should figure in our calculations There are reasons to treat animals in certain ways o Suffering exists in all species switches to interests Individual animals Racism speciesism Good analogy o Interests Consciousness interests No consciousness no interests o Equal consideration vs Equal treatment Dog vs human kill the dog but do consider it How do we best weigh the interests of an animal vs those of a human Unable to quantify the amount of dog deaths that equal one human o Wants to increase the attention paid to individuals of a species not simply the death species as a whole Get last week s from the flash drive 2 4 Read O Neill for Wednesday Varner o An animal ethic and an environmental ethic can coexist o EE doesn t equal holistic theories o Enlightened anthropocentrism not what we can do right now to maximize our own utility but what we can do in the future o Three types of hunting Therapeutic culling population Subsistence food for humans Sport just for the hell of it or to continue tradition o Obligatory management species These consistently overshoot their carrying capacity which is a detriment to their ecosystem o Permissive management species These consistently overshoot their carrying capacity but not to the detriment of their ecosystem o Argues with Singer s Liberation view Need to minimize pain A bullet is less painful than starvation Gotta therapeutic hunt them o Regan s animal rights view Worse off principle between a dog and a man kill the dog Miniride principle between one man and one hundred kill the one man 2 6 Read Rolston for Friday O Neill o Worries about how we might understand intrinsic value o Three different ideas An object has instrumental value insofar as it is a means to an end instrumental The value of x depends entirely on the x s intrinsic properties non relational The value of a thing it possesses independently of any valuer Ideal objectivity How would we know that this thing has intrinsic value o Source Object Water hose Source of water is sprayer When you get wet you are the object of the sprayer 2 8 O Neill continued o Distinction between the source of value and the object of value o You might think consciousness is the source of value o You might think all value comes from one thing person o O Neill says that environmental ethicists want a secure and strong def of value Subjective Non Human o o o o o o o Objective these two don t Human If you go with this o o one people are corruptible and susceptible to propaganda o determine where you end up Test Q possibly Rolston o what is the source object distinction and how does it relate to metaethics o Windelband says that value comes from humans o Norton value