Abstract
As was seen in Chapters 1 and 3, many people think naturalness or natural processes have some role to play in ethics.What is more murky is whether it is possible to incorporate these beliefs, or some form of them, into a rational and consistent theory of ethics or a practical moral code people can use to solve their ethical dilemmas about technology.
In modern industrialized countries like the United States, the assumption is often that things have only instrumental value unless there is evidence to the contrary. This is in sharp contrast to other cultures that make the opposite assumption; they assume that everything is deserving of respect, and that we ought not to use things as mere means unless there is a good justification for doing so. (Hinman 2000, p. 563)
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Notes
- 1.
Unless otherwise noted, the environment, nature, the biosphere, and the Earth, will be treated as synonymous terms. Biosystems are subsystems of the biosphere.
- 2.
Given the axiology, Reasonable Person Utilitarianism, and the Quasi Categorical Imperative, it follows people are obligated to use things sparingly (Thiroux 2004, p. 436). Frugality respects each object’s value, while at the same time produces an outcome that reasonable people would reasonably believe is likely to be among the best.
- 3.
Linda MacDonald Glenn mentions a related view – the “Circle of Interdependence”(Glenn 2003). Although this more holistic position does not integrate people and the environment into it as do Native American and Taoist views do, there is still an emphasis on a “non-hierarchical interdependent relationship between man and the Earth and also of its inhabitants” (Ibid.).
- 4.
In the 14th formulation of the Unnatural Argument against agricultural biotechnology, Comstock uses the term “creation.” The use of the term implies that those who find the argument attractive believe that nature is the result of an intelligent design and a designer.
- 5.
Callicott offers a different view of the relationship of human beings to nature. Instead of dominating nature in any way, human beings are to be “plain members and citizens’ of nature” (Callicott 1999, p. 188).
- 6.
The Problem of Evil argument does not prove that a being that knows everything that has occurred or is occurring, is infinitely good, and would like to eliminate all evil but does not have the power to do so does not exist.
- 7.
There might be a further criterion to pass before it is permissible to believe a religious proposition. Religious beliefs should not only be permitted by reason, they should be morally permissible to believe. For example, any religious proposition advocating discrimination on morally irrelevant grounds should not be believed.
- 8.
Although it might be useful to convince a large portion of the population to act ethically toward the environment (Callicott 1999, pp. 193–4).
- 9.
Paul Thompson states that one of the major problems with the sacredness argument is the reluctance of those steeped in the Enlightenment tradition of ethics to accept the sacred as a useful tool and those who accept the sacred having great difficulty ascribing sacredness to what is normally thought as profane (Thompson 1995, p. 9).
- 10.
This is one reason that we can reject religious arguments for or against transgenic organisms. Some religions, such as Buddhism, Hinduism, and Jainism believe that genetic engineering directly violates prescriptions of non-interference and non-harming or that it disrupts the spiritual process of reincarnation (Fox 1999, p. 147). However, the mere fact that people believe this does not make it true. In addition, we are obligated to respect people’s right to practice their religions, but if their religions negatively affect others who have not freely chosen to be members, then those who would cause the harm must prove why their actions are rationally justified.
- 11.
Brennan and Lo provide an excellent overview of value in nature (Brennan and Lo 2003).
- 12.
Glenn would reject the hierarchical nature of my axiology in favor of a continuum in which full scale Kantian moral agents are on one end, while pure property is on the other (Glenn 2003). Between the two classes of things are those objects with fewer rights than Kantian moral agents but more rights than pure property.
- 13.
Rollin claims that assigning intrinsic value to nature is incomprehensible and unhelpful for two reasons. First, human beings have intrinsic value, and by ascribing value to nature, we set ourselves up for instances in which there is conflict. Conflating the problem is the absence of any mechanism to decide which thing should win the conflict (Rollin 2006, p. 153). My axiology and how it works will address both of these concerns.
- 14.
The telos for an individual person is determined, in part, by the person, herself.
- 15.
- 16.
The Benefit of the Doubt principle could be considered to be a variation of the Precautionary Principle, but the former does not focus on preventing risks to all those affected by an action. Rather, the risk to be prevented by BD is to the moral agent of the action. If we require that intrinsic value for an object be proven before we give it respect as an intrinsically worthy being, then the moral agent is at risk for doing the wrong thing because he failed to recognize value when he should have.
- 17.
To be more useful, Pascal might have made it a reasonable person standard.
- 18.
There are insurmountable problems with this argument for belief in God, but there is no time to address them here. Suffice it to say that without any evidence of the last three characteristics Pascal attributes to God, then it is merely non-rational to believe the Wager has any evidentiary weight.
- 19.
Specieism is defined along the lines of racism. It is the favoring of one’s species over other species on morally irrelevant grounds.
- 20.
Practical Moral Code.
- 21.
Mill’s method of ranking the quality of various pleasures and pains can be expanded for this work. The result is a more democratic process.
- 22.
Since many of the state of affairs Frankena lists can be experienced by higher order animals or all sentient creatures, then their experiencing of them at particular times will make them more intrinsically valuable at that time.
- 23.
What will also change the value of an individual is if an evil person has positive experiences such as pleasure when he does not deserve it. An evil person having a positive experience might make it much lower in intrinsic value than if a good person had the same experience. Furthermore, if a good person has negative experiences when she deserves good ones, then the value of her having the experience is much lower than it would have been if she had deserved it. An evil person receiving a disvaluable experience might be less intrinsically disvaluable than a good person having the same experience (Ross 1988, pp. 136–7).
- 24.
Of course, if the moral agents are all evil, then the second world will have greater intrinsic value than the former due to the fact that the former are filled with people who are experiencing things that they do not deserve.
- 25.
Taylor’s argument begins with him defeating three classical views of human superiority: the Greek’s essentialist view of humans; Christian monotheism, and Cartesian Dualism and the claim that animals are automata (Taylor 1986, pp. 134–6). It might have been more helpful in the long run for Taylor to have examined stronger positions than these rather than addressing widely discredited views.
- 26.
It is unclear whether Taylor’s “inherent worth” is equivalent to “intrinsic value.”
- 27.
Many have taken a great deal of time to discuss the problem of future generations. In order to avoid the controversy, I will stipulate that we have every reason to believe that there will be future generations of moral agents that require resources in order to achieve their moral agent potential. Our duty to them will be to make the world have the capability of producing these resources by advancements in science, reduction of environmental degradation, and all other necessary measures.
- 28.
Actual persons might at times become potential people, and then resume their former status. Someone is a non-permanent coma is a potential person because he has lost the abilities to be a moral agent. He cannot act; hence, on those grounds alone, he is not an actual person.
- 29.
It is possible to get sidetracked into a discussion of what the probability must be to satisfy this condition. However, any probability stipulated will be open to the charge of arbitrariness. Since one of the ultimate goals of ethics is to establish a theory that most people would correctly use to solve moral dilemmas, and most of these people are reasonable, the vagueness of acceptable probability levels is not vital to eliminate here.
- 30.
At one of my stem-cell ethics presentations, I met an individual who asserted that a person’s life could be taken in order to save a frozen embryo no larger in size than the head of a pin. This seems a common view in some anti-abortion groups, but not a generally held belief overall.
- 31.
A large number of philosophers, such as Baxter, deny it.
- 32.
There are two reasons that I use the term “sentient creatures’ rather than “animals.” First, not all animals, such as sponges, have sentience. They would have equivalent intrinsic value with any other living thing, but have less value than something that can feel pleasure or pain. The second reason is that something that feels pleasure and pain might not be an animal, although one has not been discovered.
- 33.
It is clear that not all sentient creatures are persons and not all persons are sentient. Some moral agents are insentient because of rare nervous disorders or other medical abnormalities.
- 34.
W.D. Ross works out a similar but less complex version of these principles (Ross 1988, pp. 136–8).
- 35.
Rollin claims that non-sentient things neither have intrinsic or inherent value nor are they the direct objects of moral concern. His reasoning seems to be based on the possible bad result that if nature had such value, then some people would state that nature is perfect as it is, and then try to keep it in stasis (Rollin 2006, p. 151). However, it is hard to see how intrinsic value equates to perfection in any way; so Rollin’s concern appears unwarranted.
- 36.
Teitel claims that all genetic carriers have worth (Teitel 2002, p. 32). It is difficult to know if dead genetic carriers have worth or the same worth as living ones.
- 37.
Regan attempts to show that non-sentient objects, such as cars, can have inherent goodness. An entity has an inherent good if it has a teleological end, or a good X is something that fulfills the definition of being an X. Some cars would be better than others, even if no one is interested in them, due to their ability to fulfill the definition of being a car (Regan 1982, pp. 176–80).
Of course, the problem with such an argument is that it equivocates on “good.” A good car has nothing to do with morality or being morally good, rather a good car is one that fulfills the definition of being a useful car. If Regan’s function definition is correct, then he would have to accept that Lee Harvey Oswald was a good presidential assassin because he was successful.
- 38.
Tyler Volk argues that Gaia has a physiology much like a breathing organism.
- 39.
Sandler states that virtue is the key to evaluating the environmental impact of new agricultural biotechnology. If the technology negatively affects the environment’s ability to produce what is needed for the development and maintenance of virtue or if the technology violates any of the relevant virtues for human/natural environment interactions, then it is worse than technology that does not have these bad results (Sandler 2005, pp. 220–1). Although the ability to sustain virtues is part of the overall assessment of an environment’s value, as stated before, good lives require more than virtue.
- 40.
If Janna Thompson is referring to instrumental value when she claims that a degraded system is not bad if it will result in an even greater state, then she is correct. However, there is no reason to believe that the same holds true of intrinsic value. We can and do compare the degraded state to the greater state to determine which is more intrinsically valuable, which of course is true by definition.
- 41.
See Chapter 2.
- 42.
Marti Kheel adopts a somewhat similar argument against Rolston. Her care ethics for human and non-human animals rejects Rolston’s attempt to transcend “personal ties of affection…[and] our self-centered ‘animal’ natures, in favor of a more expansive awareness…[and] renouncing ‘sentimental’ ties to other-than-human animals” (Kheel 2008, p. 227).
- 43.
This problem is why G.E. Moore’s isolation test for intrinsic value is impractical. We can never have the object under consideration totally isolated because of the fact it is under consideration (Moore 1988, Section 112).
- 44.
Many people assume that human beings are ethical subjects and only human subjects can establish value (Rolston 2000, p. 588). Although the assumption is true in the sense that people are intrinsically valuable and establish value in their own lives and for other things, there is no reason to assume the mere fact we can examine the parts of a whole independently and explain a bit about a value system tells us anything about the value of the whole.
- 45.
Warren states that it is more intuitively plausible to say that non-sentient things do not have intrinsic value (Warren 1983, p. 128).
- 46.
The reverse can also be true. The value of an entity as a whole need not be the same as its parts. Janna Thompson argues that each person has intrinsic value, but it would be a distribution fallacy to believe that each part of the person also has intrinsic value (Thompson 1983, pp. 580–1). In other words, objects having no intrinsic value can be put together in such a way the whole does have intrinsic value on its own.
- 47.
Lehman claims that a proper understanding of the parts of a whole is best done through understanding the whole itself (Lehman 1995, pp. 118–22).
- 48.
Inanimate objects, because of their complexity, aesthetics and mere existence, can have intrinsic value according to the Benefit of the Doubt argument, but it is not really a useful notion (Elliott 2000, p. 573). A rock has as much intrinsic value as the dust into which it is ground for paving. The only possible differences would be if there is intrinsic value from aesthetic value or potential aesthetic value. The best way of thinking of value for these types of things is to say that they are intrinsically valuable for the ecosystem
- 49.
Stephen Clark has the same position (Clark 2006, p. 184).
- 50.
I do not maintain that each system is equally legitimate. The systems can be evaluated using what thoughtful people think are intrinsically valuable-general intuitions-and which intuitions are likely to yield a system that respects people and intrinsic value (QCI) and is likely to be best overall (RPU).
- 51.
It should be noted that JL Thompson is merely characterizing a position on intrinsic value she does not hold.
- 52.
This answers Janna Thompson’s question about why environments can have different intrinsic values.
- 53.
If intrinsic value is assigned for real properties, then attempts to base value on metaphysical qualities can be avoided (Sagoff 1979, p. 617; Rollin 2000, p. 433). It is more compelling to say that a tree is intrinsically valuable because it is a living organism, than to say that it has value because it is metaphorically “majestic.” No one would disagree that the tree is alive, but there would not be agreement on whether or not the tree is majestic.
- 54.
Obviously, if the decision is evil, such as harming the innocent for wicked reasons, then the decision does not need to be respected.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2010 Springer Science+Business Media B.V.
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Cooley, D.R. (2010). A Natural Theory of Value. In: Technology, Transgenics and a Practical Moral Code. The International Library of Ethics, Law and Technology, vol 4. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-90-481-3021-4_4
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-90-481-3021-4_4
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Dordrecht
Print ISBN: 978-90-481-3020-7
Online ISBN: 978-90-481-3021-4
eBook Packages: Humanities, Social Sciences and LawPhilosophy and Religion (R0)