3.3.1    Different non-anthropocentric positions

Wouter Achterberg (1994: 182-87) makes a distinction of three kinds of intrinsic value. He follows Taylor (1986, 72-76; 1984, 150 and next).

Intrinsic value means:

1. What is directly experienced, felt as satisfying, pleasant or of worth in itself, for example, pleasure and luck according to the classic hedonistic utilitarian
2. The value that is given by humans to places or objects with an aesthetic, historical, cultural or even sentimental meaning
3. Beings or entities have certain essential properties. Because of those properties they deserve moral consideration or is an attitude of moral respect towards them the proper thing to do?

The non-anthropocentric view, it can be presented in many ways. In this book the view is presented by four theories:

1. Pathocentrism
2. Biocentrism
3. Ecocentrism
4. Holism

Each theory deals with the question of which elements of nature and environment are candidates for moral status and what is the argument for that moral status. The argument often can be seen as a part of the main ethical theories we saw in Chapter 2, Lesson 1. Each theory has its proponents. Table 4.1 provides a schematic presentation of the four non-anthropocentric theories.

Table 1 Schematic presentation of the non-anthropocentric view (prepared by Kees Vromans) 

 (1)The pathocentric theory

This theory says that making animals suffer is wrong. Not only human beings feel pleasure or pain; animals can too. Animals are equal to human beings; they are both sentient. Within sentientism there are writers with a consequentialist argument or with a deontological one.

Peter Singer (1993) is a utilitarian. Utilitarianism, one of the consequentialist theories, focuses on the balance of pleasure and pain as such. An action can affect the interests of sentient beings. The interests of all sentient beings, including the non-human ones, should be taken into account equally when assessing an action to be right or wrong.

Singer and other utilitarians argue that the experience of pleasure or the satisfaction of interests as such have intrinsic value, not the beings involved. For utilitarians such as Singer, non-sentient objects in the environment such as plant species, rivers, mountains and landscapes are of no intrinsic and at most of only instrumental value to the satisfaction of sentient beings. The utilitarian calculation can lead to the conclusion that an action that causes harm to individual animals may be right because other interests outweigh those of the animal involved.

Tom Regan (1983) has a deontological ethical argument. He argues that some animals have intrinsic value. He calls it inherent value. These animals have the moral right to respectful treatment and should not be treated as mere means to other ends. The animals that he has defined as a ‘subject-of-a-life’ have intrinsic value and being the ‘subject-of-a-life’ is a sufficient (though not necessary) condition for having intrinsic value. To be a subject-of-a-life involves, among other things, having sense-perceptions, beliefs, desires, motives, memory, a sense of the future and a psychological identity over time.

(2)The biocentric theory

Some authors have extended concern for individual well-being further, arguing for the intrinsic value of organisms because each organism has a reason for being, or a purpose, that is inherently good, whether those organisms are capable of consciousness or not. Paul Taylor’s version of this view (1981, 1986), which we might call biocentrism, is a deontological example.

Unlike Taylor’s egalitarian and deontological biocentrism, Robin Attfield (1987) argues for a hierarchical view that says while all beings that have their own good reason for being have intrinsic value, some of them (e.g. people) have greater intrinsic value. Attfield also endorses a form of consequentialism that takes into consideration, and attempts to balance, the many and possibly conflicting good of different living things.

(3)The ecocentric theory

According to Achterberg, ecocentrism means that natural entities ought to have the freedom to flourish or to function apart from human interference. Ecocentrism admits the moral status of human beings and also of all other organisms. Moreover, nature at a higher level of organisation than individual organisms, for example, at the level of species and ecosystems, deserves moral respect and has intrinsic value. Ecocentrism doesn’t become exclusive holistic in terms of ‘concerning the whole’.

(4)The holistic theory

According to Achterberg there are two possible ways to expand our moral care towards collective entities such as ecosystems. One of them is by cognitive adjustment. We have to have a certain perception of nature. We have to change our view of complex natural entities themselves and in relation to the usual organisms. One of the examples of this ecocentric way is the land ethic of Aldo Leopold. It is not a philosophical theory, but it is very inspiring. The land ethic can be found in the last chapter of A Sand Count Almanac.

According to Achterberg remarks of Leopold bear witness to ethical holism: the ecosystem (the land) as a whole has moral status. The core is:

• The land is a community of interdependent elements;
• The land as a community and the elements have to be treated with moral respect
• The land has a value far above its economic and instrumental value, a value in the philosophical sense, something like ‘intrinsic value’

The central thesis of Leopold can be found in the following sentence:

Examine each question [of land use] in terms of what is ethically and esthetically right, as well as what is economically expedient. A thing is right when it tends to preserve the integrity, stability, and beauty of the biotic community. It is wrong when it tends otherwise (Leopold).

So Leopold uses two metaphors: the land as community and the land as organism. The first emphasises the relative independence of the elements of the ecosystem and their moral status. The second underlines the systematic cohesion: the ecosystem.

 Achterberg distinguishes three kinds of holism to clarify the position of Aldo Leopold: metaphysical, methodological and ethical holism.

Metaphysical holism proposes that the ‘wholes’ are as real as their parts. Methodological holism claims that to understand the whole, for example, the ecosystem, the knowledge of the parts, seen apart, on their own, is not enough. According to ethical holism some ‘wholes’ can deserve moral consideration, have moral status, just as some companies have a legal status apart from the legal status of the individual shareholders. So the ethical holism doesn’t need the metaphysical and the methodological as a basis. To Achterberg, Aldo Leopold’s Sand County Almanac shows ethical holism and possibly methodological holism, but not metaphysical holism.