Perspectives on Biodiversity Valuing Its Role in an Everchanging World (1999) / Chapter Skim
Currently Skimming:
4: Different Ways of Thinking About Value
4: Different Ways of Thinking About Value
Pages 72-86
The Chapter Skim interface presents what we've algorithmically identified as the most significant single chunk of text within every page in the chapter.
Select key terms on the right to highlight them within pages of the chapter.
From page 72... ...
The first category comprised biological values that embraced aspects ranging from biodiversity of wild systems, a broad group of direct value to humans called ecosystem services, and contributions to biotechnology and bioremediation. The second category comprised social and cultural values, placing particular emphasis on aesthetic appreciation, a sense of place, and the deep emotions associated with ethics and religion.
|
From page 73... ...
It is no wonder that the public discussion of biodiversity issues is so extraordinarily susceptible to semantic confusion and talking at cross purposes. The objective of this chapter is to bring clarity to the discussion by characterizing the main traditions of Western ethical theory and developing briefly their implications for biodiversity.
|
From page 74... ...
In the utilitarian system of valuation, preference satisfaction is fundamental, and market outcomes are of interest only to the extent that they provide a good account of contribution to preference satisfaction. Two major problems with utilitarianism must be discussed.
|
From page 75... ...
There is not a dime's worth of difference, libertarians believe, between policies based on benefit-cost analysis and policies based on any other form of centralized planning. Libertarians regard pollution as a form of assault, trespass, or invasion; to impose my wastes on your person or property, libertarians believe, is to violate your personal and property rights (see boxes 4-1 and 4-2~.
|
From page 76... ...
76 PERSPECTIVES ONBIODIVERSI7Y Although the libertarian defense of the individual against coercion is compatible with environmentalism in the case of pollution control, there is no such compatibility in the case of the Endangered Species Act. An endangered plant that grows on a person's land is as much his property, so libertarians reason, as are the vegetables that flourish there.
|
From page 77... ...
and others have shown, Pareto safety can be justified only if the status quo itself is justified. Contractarian proposals for justifying the starting point or original position include unanimous adoption of a starting constitution by real people who have real positions at risk (which would provide strong justification but seems insurmountably difficult in practice)
|
From page 78... ...
KANTIAN ETHICS A tradition of ethical theory dating at least to the 18th-century writings of Immanuel Kant takes seriously the distinctions between instrumental needs, desires, tutored aesthetic taste, and matters of moral principle. Kant distinguished among three kinds of value: instrumental, subjective, and categorical.
|
From page 79... ...
Kant insisted that a moral statement was meaningless unless it could be stated universally. The essential Kantian task is to identify a set of universal moral principles that permit one to deduce from them the proper course of action in specific cases.
|
From page 80... ...
Kantian ethics appeals directly to the concern that preferences alone are an insufficient guide right action. In the Kantian system, aesthetic judgment, intrinsic values, and moral principle can and should trump preferences in a considerable variety of circumstances.
|
From page 81... ...
. The basic program of deep ecology is to take any or all of the basic ethical approaches and expand the set of entities that matter that is, entities whose welfare counts, that have rights, and that have a good of their own independently of human beliefs.
|
From page 82... ...
All moral principles will depend on human sociality, so discursive ethics assumes that the key challenge in resolving ethical conflicts is to ensure that our discussions are competent and fair. The sociologist Jurgen Habermas, who is the principal proponent of this approach, offers some principles for competent and fair moral discussion (Habermas 1991, 1993~.
|
From page 83... ...
Many people ascribe intrinsic value to some aspects of biodiversity. Although there is fairly broad agreement among philosophical traditions about what is meant by instrumental value, there is much less agreement about what is meant by intrinsic value and about how seriously to take the idea that something like biodiversity might have intrinsic value.
|
From page 84... ...
Instrumental reasons for preserving biodiversity would be recognized but would be ranked lower than tutored aesthetic concerns (Kiester 1996~; the intrinsic values of things that have "a good of their own" would rank highest of all. A Kantian approach takes seriously the possibility that people individually and as a society might believe that we ought to protect species as "ends in themselves" and thus apart from the welfare effect of such a commitment.
|
From page 85... ...
Discursive ethics is really a process and a relatively loosely defined process at that. Its promise lies in determining and expressing genuinely social values inherent in biodiversity as opposed to the aggregation of individual values that utilitarism would promote.
|
From page 86... ...
1995. Benefits, costs, and a safe minimum standard of conservation.
|
Key Terms
This material may be derived from roughly machine-read images, and so is provided only to facilitate research.
More
information on Chapter Skim is available.