Environmental ethics and intrinsic value

Abstract

In this chapter, different philosophies containing models of environmental ethics, which are based on some form of the intrinsic value of the nonhuman, will be examined. The authors discussed are three of the more prominent envi-ronmental ethicists 1 who base their approach on the intrinsic value of the non-human realm to various degrees. These authors will be presented in increasing order of radicalism. Tom Regan argues for the intrinsic value only of higher animals, excluding intrinsic value from plants and lower animals. Thus although he argues for the intrinsic value of the nonhuman, this value is more restricted in scope than in the other two authors. J. Baird Callicott, following Aldo Leopold, argues for the " land ethic, " which attributes intrinsic value more holistically to species, habitats, ecosystems, and the like. Intrinsic value is thereby given a larger scope than in Regan and also a different locus of value, in wholes rather than individuals. Finally, Holmes Rolston III argues for the intrinsic value of much the same set as Callicott, but is more radical in his the-ory of value. Callicott argues from a Humean position of (human) moral sen-timents in which intrinsic value is projected to a nonhuman set of members. Rolston, like Regan, argues that value must be completely beyond any human basis but, unlike Regan, has a much larger set, which includes more than just higher animals. It also embraces other species, ecosystems, and the biosphere. Rolston is the most radically ecocentric environmental ethicist of the three and marks the biggest break with modern Western value theory and ethics. A subsequent section will detail criticisms of non-anthropocentric value theories from within the literature of environmental ethics. Bryan Norton has