Introduction:

Scope of study
of
environmental
ethics or
philosophy
Dr Edsel E. Sajor
What is environmental ethics?
And why is it revolutionary?
 Environmental ethic is a moral philosophy
concerning nonhuman nature.
 It is a departure from 25-century tradition
of moral philosophy of the West that is
thoroughly anthropocentric or “human-
centered.
 It is thus both revolutionary and inevitable
in the Western intellectual tradition.
Critical questions challenging
anthropocentrism
Important questions that constitute a critique of
anthropocentrism cut across the main branches of
philosophy – meta physics, axiology, epistemology,
aesthetics and ethic:
Is there a firm ontological divide between human
culture and wild nature (metaphysics)?
Are humans alone intrinsically valuable and, the
“measure” of all things (axiology)? Or are some
nonhuman entities also intrinsically valuable?
How do we know (epistemology)?
Does natural beauty matter?
Does the preservation of natural beauty and ecological
integrity entail ethical responsibility (ethics)?
Questions related to
environmental ethics concern
of human, as moral agents
 Ethics is practical reasoning aimed at action.
Environmental ethics (a practical philosophy)
in particular concerns how humans, as moral
agents, should best live their lives in their
earthly homes. In the study of human beings
and the environments and the relationship
between the two, several questions
automatically arise:
 What are human beings?
 What is nature?
 How are humans related to nature?
 How should humans be related to nature?
Which do you between three visual symbols think is the
closest to representing the relationship between humans and
nature?

#1 #2 #3

Humans

Humans
Nature:
________ • Humans
• Non-
humans
Nature
Nature
What is ‘nature’
The word nature is wonderfully ambiguous and polysemous
(that is, with many meanings):
 Nature is everything apart from the artificial, or artifacts of
human making) which is the approximate sense of the
word “wilderness”.
 Nature connotes everything in the universe apart from the
supernatural (gods, God, souls). Nature in this sense
includes the products of human artifice (art, architecture,
culture, civilization) which are excluded in the definition of
nature.
 The Aristotelian connotation of nature: it is an innate
essence that is disclosed if left to develop unimpeded. For
example, living things have “natures” that are manifested
through biological processes (nature).
Difference between meanings
of nature and “environment”.
 In environment philosophy, environment mean that part of “nature”
with which human beings interact and influence – the lithosphere,
hydrosphere, atmosphere and the biosphere. These four Earth
systems comprise the environment and include both the inanimate
component of living natural systems and an animate nonhuman
component.

The above definition parallels the description of “environment” in the

science of ecology: the study of how the biota and the abiotic
features of a locale function together as a living system.

Implications: if Homo Sapiens are biota, then to posit humanity as

separate from “nature” (as in the case of nature) excludes humans for
the investigation of the structure and function of ecological systems.
From the environmental philosophy point of view, the object of
investigation is not nature, either.
Humans, technology and
nature and transformation
What are human beings?
“. . . The process begins with the intention of
transforming capricious nature into something
manipulable (from ‘man’, meaning, ‘human’). Such
transformation requires a tool. Once the tool is devised
and implemented, the range of possible human activity
is expanded, and in the process, what it means to be
“human” is redefined. This redefinition leads to new
intentions, and the process begins again.

Intentionality leads to technological innovation, and to

realization of the goal, and redefinition of humanness is
“progress”. Thus intentionality is at the very core of the
study of environmental ethics.
Human, intentionality, tool, manipulation, redefinition of
humanness and progress.

Human I
and Manipulation Human II and
Interntio- Tool Progress
nality
Summing up of the key terms
 Environmental ethics – how humans live and
interact with nonhuman nature within the context
of ecological systems.
 Ecology – the interactions of humans with other
biota and with the nonbiotic environment. This
environment includes wilderness as well as human-
built environment.
 Human-built environment is a product of
technology.
 Technology thus provides a nexus to relate the
following key terms: nature, environment, ecology,
wilderness and the essence of humanness.
Environmental meta-ethics and normative ethics
 Moral philosophers divide the enterprise of
constructing an ethical theory into two tasks: meta-
ethics and normative ethics.
 Normative ethics consists of exhortations to action.
(What ought to be done?)
 Meta-ethics concerns preparatory consideration about
those exhortations. Its role vis-à-vis normative ethics is to
provide the framing for the latter. That is in epistemic
terms or axiological terms.
 In epistemic framing there are two schools:
 Objectivism or Meta-ethical objectivism: is usually
correlated to ethical realism, with normative standards
being thought to have a real, objective existence that is
independent of human consciousness. Environmental
meta-ethical objectivism holds that nonhuman natural
objects are valuable independently of human
consciousness.
 Subjectivism or Meta-ethical subjectivism: is usually
correlated with ethical relativism, with normative
standards thought to be relative or subjective; that is, to
depend on human consciousness for existence.
Environmental meta ethical subjectivism holds that
nonhuman natural objects are valuable only insofar as
humans desire them(that is, extrinsically and subjectively)
Axiological framing of meta-ethics
 Meta-ethics must also be framed in terms
of axiology (or value theory). That is, one
must determine the class of things that
are the proper subject matter of ethics;
that is, the proper objects of moral
considerability. Environmental ethics can
be conceived as the project of pushing
the bounds of moral considerability
beyond humans to encompass other
entities by the use of theories of value.

Thus environmental meta-ethics are both

epistemological and axiological.
Two basic types of axiology or value theory
on the environment
 An anthropocentric value (or axiology), by
common consensus, confers intrinsic value on
human beings and regards all other things,
including other forms of life, as being only
instrumentally valuable, that is, valuable only
to the extent that they are a means or
instruments which may serve human beings.
Thus, entities are valued as instruments for the
actualization of some other end down a
chain of axiological regress (value1).
 A non-anthropocentric value theory (or
axiology), on the other hand, would confer
intrinsic value on some non-human beings.
Thus entities are valued as ends-in-themselves
at the termination of an axiological chain of
regress (value2).
A third sense of value presupposed by value2
 Value2 presupposes some kind of innate
attribute or property that gives an entity value
independent of its use-value for other ends.
Here we have a third sense of value: value
qua attribute (value3). If human beings are
considered valuable in the second
sense(value2), then it must be because we
possess some attribute (value3) that gives us
the claim to be valued in and of ourselves
(value2) independently of our use-value
(value1).
 Anthropoccentrists usually view value3 as a
quality bestowed by god; by possession of
mental substance (as for Descartes); or by
fact of being sentient (as for Bentham and
Mill); or being sentient (as for Bentham and
Mill); or being rational (as for Kant)
The fourth sense of value

Objective intrinsic value cannot exist

independently of valuing subjects (value4)
because “the source of all value is human
consciousness”. But in the
phenomenological process of interaction
between valuers and the valued, a more
complex kind of valuing arise that is not
reducible to any of the foregoing types of
value, and not all of values derived in this
fourth sense is instrumental.
Fifth sense of value
The catalyst of value is anthropogenic or the
source of the thing’s value is human-generated,
but the locus of value is in the thing’s nature,
hence external to the valued object. This
suggests a type of value (value5) that is
independent of human wants, needs and
desires, but is dependent on human cognition.

The fifth sense of value (value5) considers the

anthropocentric/nonanthropocentric
dichotomy obsolete. Noting that “most values
are independent of human judgment, and . . .
When we do value, we value necessarily from
the human perspective but not necessarily in
terms of human instrumental interest.
Summary of the five values

 Instrumental value (value1) is the value for some other end

 Instrinsic value (value2) is value for its own sake and not for
the sake of any further end;
 Moral value (value3) is a property or attribute that gives an
entity value, and consequently makes that entity worthy of
moral consideration;
 Objective value is the value that inheres in nature and exists
independently of being perceive (axiological realism)
 Inherent value (value5) is value accorded to non-human
nature that is latent (potential) and must be valued in order
to become actual; the valuation arises externally
(extrinsically) from the entity itself through a vauling subject
(anthropogenically), who values it for its own sake
(noninstrumentally)
The 1970s developments
 The spirit of progressivism of the 60s (the civil rights, women’s
and peace movements) brought a sense of the possiblity of a
new attitude about the proper relationship to nonhuman
nature.
 Various scholarships on environment (Rachel Carson, 1962;
Garret Hardin, 1968)
 The blossoming of the academic field of environmental
ethics – whose first debate centered on traditionalism (the
normative paradigm of the individual vis-à-vis nonhuman
nature) vs. progressivism which renounced the paradigm of
extensionism of individualistic normative, and the adoption
of new paradigms rooted in holism.
 The debate between shallow ecology and deep ecology
movement. The former framed environmental issues in terms of
human welfare and proposes solutions through technological
fixes. The latter on the other hand, questions the fundamental
assumptions of Western anthropoccentrism, shuns reform of
present society and advocates substantial reorientation of our
whole civilization.
 The 70s established firmly environmental ethics as a
subdisicipline of philosophy, although still struggling to gain
respect of the “pure” philosophers.
Thank you.