Environmental Philosophy

Autumn 2021 - Lecture-2: Notes – p.1

Lecture 2 – The Question of Value in Environmental Ethics

1. BEGINNINGS OF ENVIRONMENTALISM IN THE 1960S

Philosophies often arise in response to new situations and needs, to new turns in a society’s
intellectual culture. I hope by now you are convinced that the environmental philosophy that arose
in the west in the 1960s was such a response to a new and supposedly alarming situation. I now
want to dwell a bit more on this situation that gave rise to the new philosophy.

In the 1960s there arose a new way of philosophical thinking about the environment, largely
resulting from apocalyptic fears regarding widespread perception of environmental degradation and
the possible harm it could cause to the Planet, to human beings, and to future human generations.
Speaking in terms of a moral sentiment, no one wants to leave toxic air and poisoned food for their
children. In fact, one of the first and best known works that articulated the problem of
environmental degradation truly hit at the core of the matter. It was an empirically argued and
fearless work by Rachel Carson, Silent Spring (1962), which showed how dangerous toxins are
accumulating in planetary food webs. Ms Carson was an American marine biologist, who was
inspired to write the book by unnatural bird deaths from DDT sprays. She foresaw silent springs
when no birds would sing in the meadow and no fish would leap in the streams, besides calamitous
human tragedy. It was the fiercest attack known until then against irresponsible science and
industrial malpractice. Her work led to a severe national pesticide policy and grassroots
environment movements. Despite fierce denials by chemical companies, which left no stone
unturned to tarnish Ms Carson’s reputation, DDT was banned in the USA. Carson died of breast
cancer in 1964. The Silent Spring was the most helpful factor in launching the global environmental
movement.

Several other works in the 60s showed how the Planet was reaching its breaking point in
terms of population and resources. More works began to pour in pointing fingers at the Hebraic-
Hellenistic cultural ethos and modern science. Gradually, discussion began to centre on ‘human
chauvinism’ inherent in focusing on humans as the only morally valuable beings on earth. Many
environmental philosophers began to think that this assumption was not morally justifiable because
nature was intrinsically valuable. If something is intrinsically valuable, it does not base on
anything else for its value. The environment and the other living beings are valuable not because
they are useful to human beings but because they are valuable in themselves. According to Kant
only human beings are intrinsically valuable because they are the only rational beings and owing to
their rationality and freedom, they are ends in themselves. An unsaid agreement in environmental
philosophy today is that unless we widen the moral compass (that is, extension of the realm of value
from humans to non-human animals and inanimate things), we shall never be able to overcome the
environmental crisis.
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In this lecture, let us concentrate on this question of value. Let me place before you the
contemporary philosophical debate on the question of the value of the environment. I am not going
to tell you what theory appeals to me. My job is to place before you these philosophical
perspectives. It is up to you to find out which of these appeals to your reason.

2. INTRINSIC AND EXTRINSIC VALUE

Let us begin with the most fundamental philosophical task in environmental ethics today: to argue
that nature is intrinsically valuable. Our modern behavior towards nature conclusively shows we do
not value nature intrinsically. Here we are speaking in a collective sense; there may be individual
exceptions. But what is intrinsic value?

The distinction between intrinsic and instrumental value is employed in ethical philosophy
in other (non-environmental) contexts as well. Extrinsic or instrumental values are means to
further ends; they are not ends in themselves. If the end of an instrumental value leads to a further
end, that end itself turns out to be an instrumental value, oriented towards another value. The chain
can be very long.

Consider an example. Paper money or currency, though greatly valuable, is not intrinsically
valuable since it has no worth on its own. Currency without its attached value to buy something
with is a useless piece of paper. So, a bank note may be instrumental to purchase a football. Now,
the football is not valuable in itself; it is valued for the game it can be played with. Further still, for
some their favorite game may be valuable in itself, for the fulfillment and enjoyment it gives (they
are playing just to enjoy the game and for nothing else), but for others a game may not be valuable
in itself, but is valuable for something bigger, say, health. Now, healthy life for some may not be
valuable in itself but for the happiness and general wellbeing it brings. Usually in modern political
philosophy, wellbeing is considered an end in itself, but some might consider, say, very religious
people, that their wellbeing is not for its own sake but for the sake of bringing glory to their god.
And so on... goes the chain of instrumental values leading to something more intrinsic, something
that is valuable in itself.

Hence, an intrinsic value is not dependent on another end for its value; it is self-sufficient,
self-reliant. It is justified on its own regardless of whether it is also useful as means to other ends. A
wild plant may have instrumental value because it provides the ingredients for some herbal
medicine or as an aesthetic object for human observers. But if the plant also has some value in itself
independently of its prospects for furthering some other ends such as human health, or the pleasure
from aesthetic experience, then the plant also has intrinsic value. Because the intrinsically valuable
is that which is good as an end in itself, it is commonly agreed that a thing’s possession of intrinsic
value generates a prima facie direct moral duty on the part of moral agents (human beings because
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only they can act freely and morally) to protect it or at least refrain from damaging it. Hence, in
environmental ethics, the notion of intrinsic value is of utmost importance.

3. THE VALUE OF NATURE

Let me now show you the several ways in which philosophers have been defending the value of
nature since the 1970s.

Let us start with defining a few things. For philosophers who do ethics, ‘moral agents’
means those who can be held morally responsible for their own action. Such agents should have
enough degree of freedom and rationality to make moral choices. When we judge the morality of an
action, we primarily look at the degree of freedom and rationality exercised by the moral agent. If a
court of law comes to the conclusion that the action of the accused was not free and if she/he was
not in her/his full senses at the time of the crime, at least the degree of the weight of punishment is
reduced. We are considered completely worthy of praise for a good action or culpable for a bad
action, if we acted after a free, rational decision. Under this criterion, only adult human beings who
are in control of their senses are considered moral agents. Animals, infants, mentally challenged
persons, people lying in a vegetative state, say, in a state of coma, cannot be considered moral
agents. Punishing animals is not ethical because they cannot be held responsible for their actions.
Only moral agents could be punished, and that too justly. Moral agency is also a matter of degree.
An infant is not a moral agent, but a child, though still a minor and has not reached adult moral
agency, is still a moral agent. We do make these distinctions in law. A minor who is an offender
might be found guilty, but sent not to a prison but to a reformatory. What is important in our
discussion is: Nature is not a moral agent.

Now the question is whether only moral agents have any moral standing. Moral standing
means that the wellbeing and continued existence of someone/ something is intrinsically valuable to
moral agents, and moral agents will have to consider their wellbeing and interests when deciding
about what are permissible for themselves to do. The actions of moral agents are constrained by the
wellbeing of everything that has moral standing. Though infants are not moral agents, harming them
is unethical because they too have full moral standing. All human beings, irrespective of their age,
health, gender, orientation, persuasion, culture, race, caste, class… all have equal moral standing.
Hence, moral duty is what is owed by moral agents to everyone/ everything that has moral
standing. Does nature have moral standing? That is the big question. We will decide this later in
this lecture, but usually, according to today’s environmental ethics, at least some type of moral
standing is attached to nature, though it is not often considered that nature has the same moral
standing as people so that she has something like ‘human rights’.

So, the big question is the type of moral standing that nature has. That question will decide
what kind of duty we owe nature. Moral standing of nature is considered in the following ways:
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 whether or not someone/something is a member of the human species (anthropocentric)

 whether or not someone/something has the ability to feel pain (sentience-centric)
 whether or not someone/something has life (biocentric)
 whether or not someone/something is a part of nature (ecocentric)

Now, there are various ethical theories arguing their case. Broadly we can trace them to
one or the other of these four above groups of theories: anthropocentric, sentience-centric,
biocentric, and ecocentric. We shall deal with them here accordingly.

Anthropocentric theories argue that moral standing and intrinsic value can be attributed
only to human beings. Various philosophers offer various reasons to say why so. Some of the
reasons considered are: only humans have a soul (it is the permanent and imperishable aspect,
which according to religious metaphysics, survives death), only they are moral agents and thus
responsible for their actions, only they are self-conscious and thus are persons, only they have
intelligence and rationality, only they have the capacity to express themselves coherently in
language and so on.

In the history of philosophy, Immanuel Kant, as we have noted before, was a diehard
anthropocentrist. He developed the idea of ‘person’ or self-conscious rational being. Only such a
being is an end in him/herself and cannot be used arbitrarily by another person. He writes that these
facets raise the human being “infinitely above all the other beings on earth… a being altogether
different in rank and dignity from things, such as irrational animals, with which one may deal and
dispose at one’s discretion.” So Kant thought that if a man shot his dog because she is no more
useful, this is morally wrong not because killing a dog is in itself something bad, but because “his
act is inhuman and damages in himself that humanity which it is his duty to show towards mankind.
If he is not to stifle his human feelings, he must practice kindness towards animals, for he who is
cruel to animals becomes hard also in his dealings with men.”

For most anthropocentric ethicists nature and all other beings are not worthless; they have
instrumental, extrinsic or dependent value because they prove useful to the being which has intrinsic
value – the human being. Anthropocentric theorists argue that a sound environmental ethic can be
built around their assumptions. Industrial pollution is bad because by this some humans are harming
their neighbors, and hence it is unethical. Protecting rainforests is ethically required because it helps
provide healthy living environment and herbs for people. But anthropocentric ethics does poorly
when human benefits from environmental action is minimum or not perceivable, like protecting a
disappearing species in a remote place. Many recent philosophers accuse anthropocentrism of
“speciesism”, the view that only ‘my species’ is morally valuable; the moral reasoning here is
accused of arbitrariness and human chauvinism. In the famous “last person argument”, New
Zealander philosopher Richard Sylvan asks us to consider that we are the last person surviving a
world catastrophe and it is in our power to destroy all plants, animals and the planet itself before we
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are gone. Would we consider it morally objectionable to do so? He concluded that according to
purely anthropocentric ethics it wouldn’t be morally objectionable, but according to our human
moral sensibility it usually is because we intuitively consider that these things have some form of
value independent of us.

Sentience-centric theorists argue that all beings that can feel pain and pleasure should be
within our moral consideration. They all have intrinsic value. A good example of such an ethicist is
the contemporary Australian philosopher, Peter Singer (author of, what is considered the bible of
animal rights movement, Animal Liberation, 1975). He is a utilitarian (those who believe that
morality is decided on the basis of the principle: happiness or pleasure of the maximum number of
people). But Singer, a well-known animal rights champion, argues that utilitarianism should be
extended to include all beings that can feel pain and pleasure because utilitarianism is an ethics
based on the principle of pleasure or happiness. Now, utilitarian morality is based not on
personhood, reason or language as such but on the capacity to suffer or be happy. If a being is able
to suffer, then moral agents have a duty not to cause them suffering. It is not in their interests to be
put under suffering. Minimal duty expected from the moral agent is ‘not to cause harm to sentient
beings’. (The classical expression of the “harm principle” is given by the utilitarian philosopher
John Stuart Mill in On Liberty: “That the only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised
over any member of a civilized community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others.”)

Peter Singer is a very controversial philosopher. He also argues that if a being cannot feel
suffering, then it is alright to kill it. So he supports abortion and euthanasia. Singer argues not only
for extending some type of moral standing to animals but also for extending to them rights like
human rights. Singer chose voluntary vegetarianism. But, for Singer, all life is not equally valuable.
Value of life depends on the capacity to feel suffering and also on rationality, autonomy, and self-
consciousness (so he is a different utilitarian). So abortion to save a mother is right because a
mature woman can make rational, self-conscious, autonomous choice. However, for Singer and all
sentience-centrist ethicists, the natural world has only instrumental value as for the other
anthropocentrists. We should not harm the environment because it is useful for sentient beings, and
not because it is something immoral in itself.

According to biocentric ethicists, moral standing should be extended to all living beings –
anything that has life, not anything that can feel pain. So, animals, plants and individual organisms
have moral standing, not species or ecosystems. They all have intrinsic value. Human beings are
simply one of the elements in the whole voyage of evolution, and are not superior to other life
forms. If humans are members of the biospheric community who evolved along with other
members, then there is no point in walling off the moral community among humans alone. This is
considered morally arbitrary since we all have a common ‘kinship of life’. The moral community
should be extended to all members of the biosphere. Hence, most biocetrists argue for “biospheric
egalitarianism” – the claim that all living organisms in their individuality are equal in terms of the
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value of their life. Hence, human beings cannot consider themselves privileged, rather they must
show respect towards and consider all living organisms as intrinsically valuable. One can make a
stronger or a weaker claim of biospheric egalitarianism: (i) all life forms are absolutely equal, and
so no life can interfere with another life (strong claim); and (ii) the flourishing of all life forms has
value in itself, is intrinsically valuable (weak claim). The weaker claim, which seems to be more
acceptable, means in practical terms to minimize the harm done to living organisms and avoiding
interference with the life of plants and other organisms to the extent possible. The ethical
evolutionists take their inspiration from Darwin’s 1871 work The Descent of Man. American
environmental ethicist Aldo Leopold holds that “men are only fellow-voyagers with other creatures
in the odyssey of evolution”, but he extends the idea not only to living beings but to the land as such
(more on this below at ecocentric ethics).

Another way of arguing for biocentric ethics is to say that all members of the biosphere are
“teleological centers of life”. ‘Telos’ in Greek means ‘goal’; ‘teleological’ means oriented towards
fulfilling an aim, goal or purpose. All beings want to realize their life as a goal in itself without
reference to anything else. Each one is oriented towards fulfilling its own destiny. Of course, they
have shared subgoals which help in the service of their telos. In fulfilling their own purposes, beings
work within a network of give-and-take. These are the subgoals, which, while helping other beings
to fulfill their purposes, help themselves as well to fulfill their own intrinsic purposes. So, in nature
we can find a multitude of self-valuing and goal-seeking individual entities independently of any
human valuation. This affirmation of inherent worth in the nonhuman world is enough to generate
moral obligations of moral agents not to harm them. Human obligations in this view as well can be
formulated in a strong or weak fashion. The weaker position, which is more acceptable, will tell us
that the most important of these obligations is to minimize interfering with the development and
flourishing of these forms of life and harms done to them. American environmental ethicist, Paul
Taylor, is the prime advocate of this view of biospheric egalitarianism.

The ecocentric theorists worry about the biocentric approach because it does not give an
account of human responsibility towards non-living beings, say, the mountains and the rivers. They,
rather, want to extend moral standing to all that exists, whether living or non-living, like the earth
itself, ecosystems, abiotic entities and living beings. The ecosystem itself has moral standing as it is
a coherent system developing in accordance with its own purposes and therefore has intrinsic worth.
Ecocentric theorists question the biocentric theorists’ claim that only individual species are
valuable and not the ecosystem. Instead, they say that ecosystems are fields for the evolutionary
play of life, and are intrinsically valuable as systems that foster intrinsically valuable organisms.
The evolutionary creativity of these systems calls for our admiration. It is a wonder how the
ecosystems are organized, self-regulated, and functionally integrated. As beings outside the
ecosystem, individual organisms lose their existence. So, when we look at nature from this angle,
thinking of nature as possessing no value independently of human consciousness appears parochial,
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narrow and mere speciesism. Many beings have long had their own genetically embedded agendas
that they strive to realize within the ecosystem even before the human species evolved.

But why should we consider ecosystems and their members like land as intrinsically
valuable since they do not have life? The answer that comes from most ecocentrists is that they
have life-like flourish, they can be sick or healthy, without them other life cannot be and so on. Most
of the time it is the interconnectedness of the ecosystem that is pointed out as that which is
intrinsically valuable. The minimum duty of humans is to strive to preserve ecological balance
and stability. A well-known ecocentrist, Aldo Leopold (American philosopher known for, what he
calls, Land Ethic) says: “A thing is right when it tends to preserve the integrity, stability, and
beauty of the biotic community (here biotic community means the ecosystem). It is wrong when it
tends otherwise.” He attacks the prevailing view that all land use (land for him means the collective
home of life) is determined solely by economic considerations. For him, in using the ecosystem,
we, as moral agents, have duties to preserve its integrity, stability, and beauty. For him, morality
arises not merely from rationality but from moral sympathy (moral sentiment) and our ability to
relate with someone/ something morally. It is an aberration to think that we have to give reasons for
it. According to him, the fact that we can relate morally to the land and ecosystem is enough to say
that the ecosystem is intrinsically valuable. (We will have more to say on ecocentric ethics in the
next lecture on ‘deep ecology’.)

At this point in our discussion, let me make a fundamental distinction between

anthropocentric values and anthropogenic values. In all the theories we have discussed so far,
we have been speaking as though “value” is a property, a characteristic of a valued thing – in our
case here ‘nature’. Anthropocentric ethicists consider value is a property only of human beings;
sentience-centric ethicists think it is a property of sentient beings only; biocentric ethicists think it is
a property of living beings alone; ecocentric ethicists, on the other hand, think value is a property of
the ecosystem as such, and not only of living beings. However, a group of philosophers argue that
we are making a fundamental mistake when we think so. For them, “value” is not a property but an
activity: to value… valuing. Value primarily is a verb – they say. Valuing is done by a subject, a
moral agent, a conscious being = a human being. The source of value is not the thing valued but
the conscious agent who values. The moral agent values a thing in two ways: either intrinsically or
extrinsically. Hence, value is anthropogenic, and the valuing agent can invest value on what she/he
is valuing – say nature; and she/he has the ability to invest intrinsic value on the thing valued, in our
case nature. Usually we value ourselves intrinsically and other things extrinsically; but it is possible
for us to value nature intrinsically. The effect of this argument is that value can thus be
ANTHROPOGENIC and not anthropocentric. Value is generated from the human being
(anthropos) and attributed to nature. These philosophers also say that even when we say that a
biosystem or ecosystem has its own telos or evolutionary movement, what we are actually saying is
that there is a rudimentary type of subjectivity in the unconscious entity. By plainly accepting that
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value is generated from a conscious subject, we are merely saying that we, as value-generating
agents, can intrinsically value nature. So value is human-generated, not human-centric.

The bad thing this view does is to project the human being as the all-important valuing
agent, and hence in some sense still superior to all other beings. It is also a subjective-theory of
value as it says value does not lie with the object. But the good thing this view does is to bite the
sting out of all debates on whether value is a property of human beings, sentient beings, living
beings or ecosystems. That debate is simply not necessary if we consider human beings are value-
generating beings and that they can value nature as such intrinsically. American environmental
philosopher J. Baird Callicott argues this case. He joins forces with Leopold’s land ethic to say that
there are convincing reasons for moral agents, ourselves, to value nature for its own sake.

There is a scheme of privilege in all civilizations. According to modern feminists, there is a

deep rooted link in these schemes of privilege of modern civilization. What underlies the scheme of
privilege is the system of PATRIARCHY. They point out that masculinity, which is privileged
over femininity, is associated with mind, rationality and humanity. On the other hand, femininity is
associated with body, feelings and nature. This scheme of privilege justifies the domination of
nature and women by men. Hence, modern feminists propose, what is called ecofeminism.
Ecofiminists reject patriarchal schemes of privilege. They claim that the wrongful domination of
nature by men is similar and related to the domination of women by men. The subversion of the
patriarchal system of power over all relationships, ecofeminists argue, will benefit women and
nature. The alternative worldview after the defeat of patriarchy will be based on care and nurture
rather than domination. Thus, ecofeminism is a social movement that regards the oppression of
women and nature as interconnected, and thus brings about a coordination between two movements,
feminism and ecology. Feminists also have extended their analyses to consider the interconnections
between sexism, the domination of nature (including animals), and also racism and social
inequalities. Consequently, feminism is now better understood as a movement working against the
interconnected oppressions of nature, gender, race, and class.

For example, ecofeminists argue that in an issue like deforestation, the predominant
perpetrators are men and the predominant victims are women. It is women who are most visibly
affected by deforestation, say, in India. Forests in India are connected to the rural household
economies managed by women. As collectors of firewood and small forest resources, and as
managers of subsistence domestic economies, ecofeminists argue, Indian women are the primary
victims of deforestation, after which they have to walk deeper into the forest for these resources,
carry them home all by themselves, and with depletion of the resource, seek other works which
were traditionally done by men, while continuing uninterrupted their work as domestic managers.

According to what is called social ecology, what underlies the scheme of privilege is not
patriarchy alone but the idea of HIERARCHY in all its manifestations. What has led to the
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ecological crisis is neither human-centrism nor man-centrism; rather, it is the hierarchical

organization of power (class and caste) and the authoritarian mentality that is part of the
structure of our society. Domination of nature is only a symptom of the domination of human
beings by other human beings. We do not really have an environmental crisis; the crisis we have at
hand is a social crisis. If we change the authoritarian and hierarchical structure of society, our
relationship with nature also will be transformed. Social problems like racism, sexism and third
world exploitation are a product of the same mechanisms that cause rainforest devastation. What is
the model for reorganizing society in non-hierarchical and non-authoritarian ways? The model,
social ecologists believe, can be provided by nature. A flourishing eco-system maximizes diversity
and interaction and minimizes hierarchy and domination. The good of the whole is achieved
through rich individuality and complex interrelationship of the parts. So, ecological reorganization
of society is based on egalitarian and communitarian values of mutual help, caring and nurturing.
Social ecologists call for this transformation through collective action (revolutions) and cooperative
social movements.

Social ecology was inspired by a left American anarchist (proponents of stateless,

voluntarism-based societies), Murray Bookchin (1921-2006). He was totally against the capitalist
ideology of unending progress of society, consumerism and corporate self-interest. Soft
technologies, environmental engineering, green capitalism, and green consumerism will not save
the environment unless deep social changes are instituted, according to Bookchin. Rather than an
ethic of competition, social ecology advocates an ethic of complementarity. For Bookchin, human
beings are nature becoming self-aware. He was against the idea of biospheric egalitarianism, which
for him was misanthropic (hatred of human species). Rather, for him, social egalitarianism will
help us realize our true place in nature. The environmental crisis did not begin from scientific
rationality but from the human tendency to dominate which started much earlier than the scientific
revolution. In the new ecological society, Bookchin wants private property to be abolished and
domination stopped right from the family (where man dominates over woman) upwards.

4. ECOLOGICAL CRISIS AND THE CRISIS OF ETHICS

From the above discussion of the question of value in environmental ethics, we can draw certain
conclusions:

(i) The environmental crisis results from human behavior towards nature, and human
behavior is based on human values. So there is a crisis of values. The modern behavior
towards the environment is the direct result of a specific set of values. Changes in these
values are necessary to resolve our environmental problems.
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(ii) How do we imbibe our values? Through social inculcation (family, community) and
through mass media and education. So we need to focus our attention on these.

(iii) The environmental problems, thus, are not merely empirically caused, and hence they
cannot be resolved by means of science alone; moral and cultural change is a more
fundamental matter. In matters of value (what should be done?) science is insufficient;
its proper field is fact, not value. Science can only assist value decisions by making
correct data available. Environmental ethics, political ethics, social ethics, aesthetics and
theology should be used in environmental decision making rather than only
environmental science.

(iv) Technology is usually used under the assumptions of prevailing social values; instead,
technology should be used after ethical considerations within a democratic set up.

(v) The environmental crisis has a positive side: it is forcing us to think critically about
destructive aspects of the modern culture and values. It calls for changing social values,
practices and institutions. This crisis has a transformative potential.

To conclude, let me quote Paul Gilding, an Australian environmentalist: “We are heading for a
crisis-driven choice. We either allow collapse to overtake us or develop a new sustainable economic
model. We will choose the latter. We may be slow, but we’re not stupid.” (The Great Disruption:
Why the Climate Crisis Will Bring On the End of Shopping and the Birth of a New World, 2011)

---END OF LECTURE TWO---