Abstract
This chapter arms the reader with some requisite tools for following the many twists and turns of reasoning that this book follows – both in the work of others and later in the book's own (Chap. 8) proposal for why the natural world is so valuable. It first (in Sect. 2.1) provides an overview – aimed primarily at those less conversant with philosophy – of how philosophers think about value in the context of environmental ethics. Then, to give a sense of the state of the art in reasoning about biodiversity, Sect. 2.2 catalogs a variety of logical lacunae pervading arguments that try to find nature's value in biodiversity. Section 2.3 concludes the chapter with reflections on why it might be difficult to argue for the value of diversity in any domain – not just biological. It traverses a path from the philosophies of Thomas Aquinas and Gottfried Leibniz, through William Cowper's famous but almost always misinterpreted “Variety's the very spice of life”, on its way to a consideration of United States Supreme Court Justice Lewis F. Powell's majority opinion in Regents of the University of California v. Bakke about the value of diversity.
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Notes
- 1.
Sarkar’s operationally defined attribution of value is all the more remarkable for relying on a “greedy” heuristic algorithm (or class of such algorithms) in order to solve his “place prioritization problem”. Very roughly, this is the problem of finding the fewest or least costly set of places that satisfy certain diversity requirements. It is a variant of and shares the computational complexity of the well-known set cover problem, which is NP-complete. It is easy to show that the greedy set cover heurisitic can yield not just sub-optimal results, but even worst possible results. That concern would be academic were it not for the fact that there seems to be no credible evidence that real conservation problems generally avoid conditions or problem structures that yield bad or worst-case results. This combination of circumstances seems to eliminate even a “practical” defense of Sarkar’s suggestion that biodiversity be valued according to its operationalization, which entails that we ought to conserve that which an execution of his algorithm chooses to conserve. See Note 2 on possible underlying values.
- 2.
To be fair, Sarkar’s operational recommendations can be said to implicitly reveal underlying held values – answers to the question “What, in biodiversity, is valuable?”. The revelations come in the form of his justifications for the choice of various stand-ins (“surrogates”) for the real (biodiversity) thing (whatever that might be), combined with algorithms for making conservation choices based on the surrogates. Moreover, Sarkar does have a separate account of the value of biodiversity – its “transformative power” – which this book takes up in Sect. 6.10 (Biodiversity as transformative). However, he offers few clues about why following his operational procedures might have any particular efficacy or efficiency in securing this (transformative) value. This criticism is independent of the question raised in Note 1, which concerns whether or not the algorithm that Sarkar espouses performs a computation that is “correct” according to his description of the (variant of the set cover) problem that it is supposed to solve. It is also independent of whether or not a theory of biodiversity’s value as transformative is credible.
- 3.
See for example Ricotta (2007) and its references, which include Ricotta’s go-around with Sarkar on the subject of biodiversity measures. Both scientists lose sight of the distinction between biodiversity (on the one hand) and measures or indexes for it (on the other), despite the fact that Sarkar mentions this distinction in his criticism of Ricotta. See also the seminal paper by Hurlbert (1971), which, despite being commonly cited, suggests questions about diversity measures that are largely ignored or misunderstood in the scientific literature. This topic is discussed further in Sect. 4.1.2 (Measures and indexes).
- 4.
This heterogeneous set of distinctions includes elements from both normative ethics and metaethics.
- 5.
For a seminal discussion of different and often conflated senses of “intrinsic value”, see O’Neill (1992).
- 6.
One might be warranted in saying that this is a distinct possibility – not just in principle, but in near-term practice. For example (Britten 2009), scientists are well on their way to figuring out how to grow disembodied meat.
- 7.
Ackrill (1980, 19) introduces both constituent goods and constitutive goods, calling them both “constitutive” goods. His example of the former is the relation of putting to playing golf; his example of the latter is the relation of playing golf to having a good holiday.
- 8.
It is doubtful that this exhausts the set of value categories. David Schmidtz finds yet another, distinctive category in what he calls “maieutic ends” – ends that are satisfied by engendering other ends. See Schmidtz (2008a, 39).
- 9.
Many philosophers would dispute this, claiming that metaethics is logically prior to normative ethics. But this stance belies the literal translation of τα μετά τα ἠθικἀ (which would make metaethics “what follows ethics”). And I would say that most of us quite capably dig deep into moral questions without much respect for, or even notice of the any boundary between the two lines of inquiry.
- 10.
I am assuming here that an assertion to the effect that something is valuable can have a truth value. However, this is a matter of lively philosophical debate.
- 11.
This unfortunate confusion pervades the literature on biodiversity. For example, E.O. Wilson (1996, 175–176) lobbies hard for a non-anthropocentric ethic based on species’ rights. But he then has second thoughts about whether his proposal is really non-anthropocentric because, he (unsoundly) reasons, the granting of rights is anthropogenic.
- 12.
This question loses much of its interest when applied to other categories of value – most notably, when it comes to instrumental value. On the one hand, there is obviously a plurality of means corresponding to a plurality of ends served; there is often even a plurality of means to any one end, since only human capabilities and physical law limit the kinds, numbers, and arrangements of things that can be means to an end. On the other hand, the primary considerations for the value of means – their instrumental effectiveness and efficiency – is quite unidimensional. But these contrasting observations make a decidedly underwhelming contribution to a basic understanding of value.
- 13.
A monism/pluralism distinction can be applied to moral principles of right action as well as to moral values. Monistic moral theories seek to show that all moral principles are ultimately reducible to a single one. The monism/pluralism distinction regarding principles of right action is orthogonal to that for values.
- 14.
This contrasts with the cloistered world of tradition-bound philosophy, in which consequentialism does not hold such dominant sway and might not be even the majority opinion.
- 15.
This assessment might be disputed. The phrase “the good of the environment” often turns up alongside the phrase “human welfare” or “what is good for people”. This juxtaposition often leaves the impression that these are one and the same thing under different descriptions. At the very least, it suggests a presumed concordance of environmental and human interests. Unfortunately, to my knowledge, no one has offered an account of what the environment is interested in, let alone given reasons for why environmental interests (taken literally) should matter to people. Instead, discussions invariably turn quickly to the question of why certain environmental conditions benefit people.
- 16.
As I point out elsewhere, the neoclassical economic conception of value does not require a real, existing marketplace; an imaginary or hypothetical one suffices.
- 17.
One might think that a sufficiently diverse agricultural enterprise might serve biodiversity as well as food to the hungry. But (as discussed in Sect. 6.2, Biodiversity as resource) the number of species of plants and animals that figure in agriculture is vanishingly small. So the suggestion that one might achieve the best of both worlds with diversified agriculture is not credible.
- 18.
Immanuel Kant famously seems to have come close to such a position. But only a tiny number of other thinkers have defended it. In mentioning it, I am merely suggesting the range of thinking that can fall under the deontological umbrella.
- 19.
My brief treatment avoids the arm-wrestling matches within the environmental philosophy community, which hotly contests which ideology “owns” Leopold’s ideas about the land.
- 20.
The more specific contention that biodiversity generates value is examined in Sect. 6.7 (Biodiversity as value generator).
- 21.
This exposition cannot do justice to the depth, breadth, and subtle sophistication of Rolston’s unique approach to environmental value.
- 22.
This sort of problematic gesture – the utilization of a normatively loaded term as the primary means of “establishing” a norm – crops up repeatedly in this book, including just below.
- 23.
Exceptions do exist to the generally dismal state of axiological discussion connected with economics. A shining example is the book by Debra Satz (2010) on Why Some Things Should Not Be for Sale.
- 24.
Ecosystem services are defined and discussed in Sect. 3.3.2.3 (Functions) and in Sect. 6.3 (Biodiversity as service provider). The estimation of the total value that Wilson uses is due to Constanza et al. (1997). This work is cited ubiquitously, with apparent disregard for the fact that it is irrelevant from the standpoint of establishing nature’s market price: What counts for that is the value at the margin, not the total cost of replacement, which is what Constanza purports to estimate.
- 25.
The example of the New York City water supply is also ubiquitous in the literature of Natural Capitalism. Whether or not this case illustrates anything about the value of natural ecosystems – in contrast to systems that are engineered to serve some narrow (if important) human desire – is an open question. On the other hand, the bearing of this case on biodiversity, as discussed in Sect. 2.2.1 (The bare assertion fallacy), is entirely clear. The purification of NYC’s water has much to do with reducing pollution. On the other hand, it has little or nothing to do with increasing biodiversity or any attempt to refrain from decreasing it.
- 26.
This value is a market value; that necessarily depends on market conditions; and therefore this view of nature’s value is committed to the position that it depends on market conditions. Of course, as E.O. Wilson’s views illustrate, a Natural Capitalist need not be committed to saying that nature’s value lies solely in its value as natural capital. But she is committed to providing a principled basis for saying when and why a zero or negative valuation does not, on that account, justify regarding nature’s value as non-positive, too. I argue in Sect. 8.2.3 (“Living from” nature, uniqueness, and modal robustness) that principles serving this purpose are elusive, given the nature of economic valuation as it applies to nature.
- 27.
In saying this, I mostly have in mind “contingent evaluation”. But also, economists conjure up imaginary prices via “hedonic proxy” – something whose market price is claimed to accurately reflect the price of something else that does not have a market to determine its price. Other prices, known as “shadow prices” (see, for example, Ehrlich and Goulder 2007, 1148ff.), are fabricated by economists from theoretical whole cloth.
- 28.
The fact that biophilic feelings might be construed as having “non-use” value in an economic framework does not preclude another interpretation whereby they play a role in moral psychology as a means of sensing something of moral significance. Though he has no evidence to ground his speculation (he seems unaware that “compatibility with modern evolutionary theory” does not constitute evidence), Wilson supposes that such feelings might have been shaped by the adaptive advantages that they once conferred. The fact that some entity elicits positive “moral feelings” – however humans evolved to have such feelings – is sometimes a sign that it might have moral value. But that value must still be justified independently of evolved feelings, which might well turn out to be morally inappropriate.
- 29.
This argument is implicit in Wilson (2002, 150), among other places in his writings.
- 30.
On the human diaspora wiping clean the megafaunal slate, see for example, Wilson (1996, 173). See also the discussion in Sect. 6.12 (Biodiversity as the natural order).
- 31.
Section 7.3 (Biodiversity value in human timeframes) examines the future persons’ retrospective blame gambit at greater length.
- 32.
Of course, looking back at the argument from which this form is abstracted, one can make these substitutions:
X ← The dumping of sewage into the water is stopped
B ← The water is better to drink
A ← Biodiversity increases
- 33.
This is a re-recreation of just a portion of Skevington’s “argument” in Skevington (2009, 130).
- 34.
This latter-day moniker for “red herring” was immortalized by the “Chef Aid” episode of the animated sitcom South Park, which forever changed the study of informal logic.
Latin-loving philosophers know this fallacy as ignoratio elenchi – literally, “ignorance of refutation”. This conveys the sense that there is no obvious connection between the premises and the conclusion. As a result, there can be no understanding of what would constitute a refutation.
- 35.
For those who like to Latinize bad reasoning, this is argumentum verbosium.
- 36.
For example, Melillo and Sala (2008, 94) laud the introduction of brake fern and water hyacinth, species that “eat” arsenic.
- 37.
In the Latin taxonomy of fallacies, fallacies of accident are called “a dicto simpliciter”, which means “from the unqualified statement”.
- 38.
In the Latin zoo of fallacies, the first flavor of a dicto simpliciter is a dicto simpliciter ad dictum secundum quid, or “from the unqualified to the qualified statement”. This label relates to arguing from a general maxim to a particular case. As suggested in the main text, applying a general proposition to a particular case is entirely valid – provided that the particular case actually falls within the scope of the general proposition. But it is not valid when conditions disqualify the applicability of the maxim to it.
The second flavor of a dicto simpliciter is a dicto secundum quid ad dictum simpliciter, or “from the qualified statement to the unqualified”. As discussed in the main text, this relates to an induction, whereby particular instances are held to validate a general rule. A dicto secundum quid ad dictum simpliciter designates the informal fallacy of making an inductive leap while ignoring cases that show show it to be generally unwarranted.
- 39.
The second premise and conclusion attempt to summarize Kellert’s extended discussion, taking into account that he is “Explaining the Relationship between Biodiversity and Quality of Life”.
- 40.
Adaptive advantage is Kellert’s term, ill-chosen for a context that has nothing to do with evolution. If it did, then the argument would also be an instance of a genetic fallacy wherein the benefit for the species H. sapiens of a condition over evolutionary time is mistakenly taken to be a reason for why people ought to realize that condition now.
- 41.
As I reiterate in Note 61 of Chap. 3, the pervasively used terms “invasive” and “alien” are emotionally and normatively loaded. For my own discussion, I prefer terms that are emotionally and normatively more neutral, such as “exotic”, “newcomer”, or “recently naturalized”. The issue of “who came first” weaves in and out of the book, ending with Sect. 8.2.7.1 (Implications for natural value generally and biodiversity in particular).
- 42.
I generally follow the convention of using scientific name for organisms first, followed parenthetically by the (or a) popular name. My aim in doing this is not to present a façade of scientific wisdom that I do not possess. Rather, I believe that scientific names tend to be not so laden with preconceived value as the popular ones – at least for some well-known and “charismatic” species, as well as for species at the other end of the charisma spectrum. I believe that this helps to promote what I regard as the axiologically defensible attitude of prima facie species egalitarianism.
- 43.
I take up this tendency to equate change with reduction of biodiversity later in Sect. 5.1.4 (The just-so model) and Sect. 6.3 (Biodiversity as service provider).
- 44.
While this observation is a quite straightforward one, some find it “strange” or “misleading”. But the justifications for these sentiments are themselves strange. For example, one objection is that food chains often get shorter when creatures at the top trophic level are exterminated. That is true. But it is also completely irrelevant to the point – that extending the food chain upwards results in a greater abundance of the top predators most coveted as food, whose high toxin levels affect the health of the people who consume it. It is important to note that my one example here is not isolated nor even the strongest one that shows that sometimes, biodiversity is quite bad for human health. See Sect. 6.5.2 (Biodiversity as safeguard against infection) for more examples.
- 45.
In the Latin catalog of fallacies, this is cum hoc ergo propter hoc, meaning “with this, therefore on account of this”. This fallacy is the twin of post hoc ergo propter hoc, which infers causation from mere sequence and which I do not take up in my discussion of fallacies.
- 46.
Specifically, Nipah-infected fruit bats dropped partially eaten fruit and feces, which sufficed to infect the pigs, which in turn, infected people who came in contact with the pigs’ feces and nasal mucous secretions, aerosolized by the pigs’ coughing.
- 47.
In the Latin catalog of fallacies, this “petitio principii” – literally, “request for the premise”. This conveys the sense of “the proposition taken to be proved is assumed” – in other words, circularity.
- 48.
Though, that supposition happens to be false, as I show in Sect. 6.5.1 (Biodiversity as pharmacopoeia).
- 49.
The concept of species that biologists most frequently use and cite is the “biological species” concept. Wilson (1992, 35–50) provides an accessible discussion of it and some of its difficulties. The biological species concept relies on sexual reproduction combined with a tricky – because often unverified and even unverifiable – condition having to do with the potential ability to mate and produce viable offspring should the opportunity arise. The limitations of this concept – even with sexually reproducing organisms has motivated a raft of other concepts, including the concepts of phylogenetic species (sharing an ancestor), chronospecies (an infusion of phenotype similarity requirements into another species concept), genetic species (a requirement for genomic similarity, which figures prominently in the definition for bacteria), and phenotypical species (the much-derogated but handy concept of “if it looks like a duck and quacks like a duck, then it is a duck”), among others. No two of these concepts defines the boundaries between species in the same way.
- 50.
On one account of humankind’s prehistory, Homo erectus eventually became Homo sapiens, at which point the species H. erectus ceased to be. One should be reluctant to refer to this extended event as “the demise of H. erectus”. However, its fuzzy point in time marks the end of the earlier species’ lifetime.
- 51.
I ignore the fact that the usual biological species concept falls apart for perhaps the majority of organisms on the planet, which prefer agamogenesis. The hordes of organisms that spurn sex include the single-celled archaea, bacteria, and protists, as well as a large number of plants (for example, liverworts) and fungi. The prokaryotic bacteria are equally disruptive of the biological species concept from the other, gene-exchanging side of it. They routinely and promiscuously exchange genes with relative disregard for the exchanging partners’ genetic similarity or dissimilarity.
I touch on these difficulties again in the context of discussing the species diversity part of biodiversity.
- 52.
In fact, Lovelock weaves back and forth across the teleological line. At times and especially in response to criticism, he seems to deny attributing purposive behavior to the Gaian superorganism. But to do this, he falls back to some definition of “life” that makes it uncertain why we should care about such a life, except for purely prudential reasons.
- 53.
This brief description cannot come close to conveying the sophistication of Raz’s views (Raz 1986).
- 54.
Of course, in making the claim that a human brain is capable of consciousness, one need not assume the burden of defending the position that each of the brain’s neural cells is likewise conscious. The height of a brick wall does not determine (except as an upper bound) the height of any one or more of its component bricks. Even in the realm of axiology, it is clear that a collection of entities can be valuable despite the relative worthlessness of each individual component. Considered in isolation, no single brushstroke of van Gogh’s Starry Night over the Rhone has anything like the aesthetic value of the painting. However, none of these are examples of collections of collections.
- 55.
I am indebted to Neil Manson for suggesting this as a worthy topic of reflection. In fact, I think it worthy of a more extended treatment than space allows here.
- 56.
Leibniz (1710), §8:
…there is an infinitude of possible worlds among which God must needs have chosen the best, since he does nothing without acting in accordance with supreme reason.
Perhaps even more famous than the thesis itself is the merciless mocking it receives in Voltaire’s Candide, by way of the inveterately optimistic personage of Dr. Pangloss.
- 57.
One can also ignore Leibniz’s theory of the good for humans, which hinges on a certain knowledge or apprehension of the universe’s harmony.
- 58.
The translation is my own – more literal than the standard but overly imaginative English re-creation by Lewis Galantière. The original French text is:
Il semble que la perfection soit atteinte non quand il n’y a plus rien à ajouter, mais quand il n’y a plus rien à retrancher. Au terme de son évolution, la machine se dissimule.
- 59.
I deliberately restrict my attention to the argument for affirmative action that bears simply and directly on “justice as fairness”. In doing so, I leave aside a complex web of considerations that deal with compensatory justice (righting wrongs) and just desert. These fall outside my limited purpose of teasing out the role of diversity as a good in the affirmative action debate.
- 60.
My discussion owes much to that of Anderson (2002) though it does not follow hers in any of its details.
- 61.
Anderson (2002, 1220–1222, and elsewhere in her paper) presents a similarly unenthusiastic view of social justice arguments for diversity. She goes on to rework them in a broader and, according to her, more promising “integrative” framework.
- 62.
Exceptions for important or respectable ends are required to allow for such difficulties as those that stem from the discomfiture of white students at the admission of qualified non-whites into their school.
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Maier, D.S. (2012). Preliminaries. In: What’s So Good About Biodiversity?. The International Library of Environmental, Agricultural and Food Ethics, vol 19. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-3991-8_2
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