environmental ethics final

study terms for environmental ethics final

Holism

Holism is the view that moral consideration should extend to ecological wholes—like species, ecosystems, or the biosphere—not just individual beings. It emphasizes the value of interdependence and system integrity.

Individualism

Individualism holds that moral consideration belongs primarily to individual beings—especially sentient animals or living organisms—rather than to ecological wholes like species or ecosystems.

Monism

Pluralism

Other properties might be possessed by some, but not all species and might provide bases for different kinds or degrees of moral standing. Pluralism is the view that multiple moral principles or values (e.g., justice, utility, respect for life, beauty) may be relevant and sometimes in tension when making environmental decisions.

Antropocentrism

Only humans have moral status and that the natural environment has no intrinsic value.

Biocentrism

the view that all living beings—human and non-human—have inherent moral worth and deserve moral consideration simply because they are alive.

Taylor

Biocentralist egalitarian

egalitarian

the view that all morally considerable beings—whether human or non-human—deserve equal moral respect and should have their interests weighed equally. not teir

non-egalitarian

Teired list Non-egalitarianism holds that some beings have greater moral worth than others—often prioritizing humans, sentient animals, or rational agents over other forms of life or ecological entities.

Modal personism

kagan Modal personism is the view that moral status depends not on current characteristics (like rationality) but on the potentialto become a person or have person-like capacities under the right conditions. think ET

sentientism

All sentient creatures and only those creatures have moral status

Teir

sentientism non-egalitarian

Singer

sentientism egalitarian

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pluralism non-egalitarian

Cost based Analysis

If a policy P maximizes benefits-minus-costs, then P ought to be enacted.

Cost effectiveness

If a policy P ought to be carried out for whatever reasons, P should be enacted in the way that maximizes benefits-minus-costs. (This is not CBA)

Willingness to Pay

A person’s calculated ‘willingness to pay’ is the maximum amount she is willing to sacrifice to procure a good or avoid something undesirable.

CBA

utilitarian policy-making procedure

Willingness to Pay objection 1

Kelman’s first objection: “It may be difficult to control for all the dimensions of quality other than the presence or absence of the non-marked thing….Thus, to use the property value discount of home near airports as a measure of people’s willingness to pay for quiet means to accept as a proxy for the rest of us the behavior of those leave sensitive to noise, of airport employees (who value the convenience of a near-airport location) or of others who are susceptible to an agent’s assurances that ‘it’s not so bad” (344).

Willingness to Payobjection 2

second objection: “A second problem is that the attempts of economists to measure people’s willingness to pay for non-marketed things assume that there is no difference between the price a person would require for giving up something to which he has a preexisting right and the price he would pay to gain something to which he enjoys no right”

Willingness to Pay objection 3

third objection: “Those who use figured garnered from [willingness to pay studies] to provide guidance for public decisions assume no difference between how people value certain things in private individual transactions and how they would wish those same things to be valued in public collective decisions” (344).

Willingness to Pay objection 4

fourth objection: "one may oppose the effort to place prices on a non-market thing and hence in effect incorporate it into the market system out of a fear that the very act of doing so will reduce the thing's perceived value" (345)

CBA objection Problems of injustice

"The measurement of the costs of health-impairing pollution depends on the foregone earning from increased morbidity and mortality. From this point of view a given amount of health-impairing pollution should be done in the country with the lowest cost, which will be the country with the lowest wages. I think the economic logic behind dumping a load of toxic waste in the lowest-wage country is impeccable and we should face up to that" (Lawrence Summers, The Economist 1992: 82).

CBA Issue with compensation?

Leonard and Zeckhauser: "it is typically infeasible to design a compensation system that ensures that all individuals will be net winners" (348).

Deontologists

believe that the rightness (/wrongness) of an action is determined by its conformity to moral laws or rules. These principles will identify a property of an action which makes it right (/wrong) regardless of the act’s consequences.

divine command theory

theory, an act is wrong if and only if it violates one of God’s laws.

Taylor's prima facie duties

Nonmaleficence, Noninterference,Fidelity, Restitutive Justice

Restitutive Justice

“imposes the duty to restore the balance of justice between a moral agent and a moral subject when the subject has been wronged by the agent” (1986: 186).

Fidelity

“Under this rule fall the duties not to break a trust that a wild animal places in us (as shown by its behavior), not to deceive or mislead any animal capable of being deceived…” (179).

Noninterference

“…refrain from placing restrictions on the freedom of individual organisms…[and] whole ecosystems” (173).

Nonmaleficence

“This is the duty not to do harm to any entity in the natural environment that has a good of its own” (1986: 172).

Taylor: "The Rule of Nonmaleficence prohibits harmful and destructive acts done by moral agents. It does not apply to the behavior of a nonhuman animals or the activity of a plant that might bring harm to another living thing or cause its death" (172).

Simplified Kantianism

an act is wrong if and only if it treats a person merely as a means to an end rather than an end in themselves

Taylor The principle of self-defense

It is permissible for moral agents to protect themselves against dangerous/harmful organisms, provided that doing so is a practical necessity

Taylor The principle of proportionality

In cases of conflict between the basic interests of a non-human organism and a human non-basic-interest-that-is-incompatible-with-respect-for-nature, give preference to the non-human organism's basic interest.

Taylor The principle of minimum wrong

In cases of conflict between the basic interests of a non-human organism and a human nonbasic-interest-that-is-compatible-with-respect-for-nature, give preference to the human's nonbasic interest.

Taylor the principle of distributive justice:

in cases of conflict between basic interests of two organisms, satisfy the interests fairly regardless of species.

What is Hourdequin’s response to Sinnott-Armstrong?

She argues from integrity: we ought to live in line with our values. Even if individual actions don’t cause harm, they can express or undermine our environmental commitments.

What is Russow’s final justification for valuing species?

She argues species have value because of their aesthetic and scientific interest, and our role as rational agents includes appreciating and preserving these values.

What is the difference between intrinsic, instrumental, and aesthetic value?

Intrinsic value = valuable in itself; instrumental value = valuable as a means to something else; aesthetic value = value based on beauty or perceptual experience.

What is one reply to the non-identity argument?

Parfit suggests we can still evaluate actions impersonally: even if no one is harmed, some outcomes (like a world with more suffering) are worse and morally objectionable.

What is the non-identity argument about duties to future generations?

It claims we can’t harm future individuals by our policies if those very policies determine which people come into existence—so no one is worse off than they would have been.

What is a criticism of the free market approach to environmentalism?

It may neglect justice, public goods, and long-term sustainability, and assumes markets can internalize all environmental costs, which is often unrealistic.

What is the free market approach to environmentalism?

It argues that assigning property rights and relying on market forces can solve problems like the tragedy of the commons by giving owners incentives to preserve resources.

What is Sinnott-Armstrong’s group principle?

It says an act is wrong if it contributes to a group that causes harm. Still, he claims individual acts of emissions don’t significantly contribute to harm-producing groups.

What are Taylor’s priority principles for resolving human-animal conflicts?

He distinguishes basic interests (survival, health) from non-basic (comfort, convenience), arguing that basic interests of non-human animals can outweigh humans' non-basic interests.

How does Taylor’s view differ from other deontological ethics?

Unlike Kantian ethics, which centers moral worth on rational agents, Taylor extends moral consideration to all living things, based on their teleological lives, not rationality.

How does Taylor’s theory differ from utilitarianism?

Utilitarianism focuses on maximizing overall good; Taylor rejects this and argues we must respect each living being as an end in itself, not a means to others’ ends.