Respecting the Nonhuman Other: Individual Natural Otherness and the Case for Incommensurability of Moral Standing

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anna Wienhues
Keyword(s):  
Environmental Ethics ◽  
Moral Standing ◽  
Moral Significance ◽  
Moral Considerability

The concept of natural otherness can be found throughout the environmental ethics literature. Drawing on this concept, this article pursues two aims. For one, it argues for an account of individual natural otherness as stable difference as opposed to accounts of natural otherness that put more emphasis on independence for the purpose of differentiating individual natural otherness from the concept of wildness. Secondly, this account of natural otherness is engaged to argue for a particular way of theorising the moral standing of individual nonhuman entities. While individual natural otherness in itself does not provide an account of whether an entity matters morally in itself (that is, whether it is morally considerable); it points to an account of incommensurable moral significance for all entities which are attributed moral considerability. That is an often-overlooked alternative to egalitarian or hierarchical accounts of moral significance. Individual natural otherness understood in this way in turn provides another explanatory story for why relational accounts of environmental ethics that strongly emphasise the importance of concepts such as wildness are particularly salient.

Animals

2009 ◽  
Author(s):  
R. G. Frey
Keyword(s):  
Animal Experimentation ◽  
Moral Standing ◽  
General Area ◽  
Animal Life ◽  
Moral Considerability ◽  
Animal Use

There appear to be three main sets of issues that arise upon a focus on animal value: the moral standing or moral considerability of animals, the value of animal life, and the argument from marginal cases (or unfortunate humans). But these issues all arise, and in various ways, in the confines of a larger argument concerned with human benefit that proponents of animal use accept to justify animal experimentation in medicine and that opponents of animal use reject to scuttle that attempted justification. In fact, these main sets of issues are all interconnected, and the ultimate issue in dispute in this general area will turn out to be the comparative value of human and animal life.

scholarly journals Individualist Biocentrism vs. Holism Revisited

2014 ◽  
Vol 9 (2) ◽  
pp. 130-148 ◽  
Author(s):  
Katie McShane
Keyword(s):  
Environmental Ethics ◽  
Evolutionary Biology ◽  
Environmental Conservation ◽  
Normative Ethics ◽  
Conservation Strategies ◽  
Units Of Selection ◽  
Moral Considerability ◽  
Intuitive Appeal ◽  
Theoretical Assumptions ◽  
Endogenous Viral Elements

While holist views such as ecocentrism have considerable intuitive appeal, arguing for the moral considerability of ecological wholes such as ecosystems has turned out to be a very difficult task. In the environmental ethics literature, individualist biocentrists have persuasively argued that individual organisms—but not ecological wholes—are properly regarded as having a good of their own . In this paper, I revisit those arguments and contend that they are fatally flawed. The paper proceeds in five parts. First, I consider some problems brought about by climate change for environmental conservation strategies and argue that these problems give us good pragmatic reasons to want a better account of the welfare of ecological wholes. Second, I describe the theoretical assumptions from normative ethics that form the background of the arguments against holism. Third, I review the arguments given by individualist biocentrists in favour of individualism over holism. Fourth, I review recent work in the philosophy of biology on the units of selection problem, work in medicine on the human biome, and work in evolutionary biology on epigenetics and endogenous viral elements. I show how these developments undermine both the individualist arguments described above as well as the distinction between individuals and wholes as it has been understood by individualists. Finally, I consider five possible theoretical responses to these problems.

Biocentrism, Religion and Synthetic Biology

2013 ◽  
Vol 17 (1) ◽  
pp. 26-35
Author(s):  
Robin Attfield
Keyword(s):  
Synthetic Biology ◽  
Genetic Engineering ◽  
Precautionary Principle ◽  
Human Life ◽  
Future Generations ◽  
Moral Standing ◽  
Human Species ◽  
Moral Significance ◽  
Human Interventions

Biocentrism maintains that all living creatures have moral standing, but need not claim that all have equal moral significance. This moral standing extends to organisms generated through human interventions, whether by conventional breeding, genetic engineering, or synthetic biology. Our responsibilities with regard to future generations are relevant to non-human species as well as future human generations. Likewise, the Precautionary Principle raises objections to the generation of serious or irreversible harm or changes to the quality of human or non-human life, and needs to be applied when the introduction of synthetic biotechnology is envisaged. Consideration of this Principle supplements the problems raised for synthetic biology from a biocentric perspective. The bearing of biocentrism on religions is also considered, together with contrasting views about science, religion and the creation of life.

Conclusion

2019 ◽  
pp. 183-192
Author(s):  
John Basl
Keyword(s):  
Medical Ethics ◽  
Environmental Ethics ◽  
Emerging Technologies ◽  
Moral Considerability ◽  
Environmental Practice ◽  
Specific Species

The primary aim of this work has been to show that biocentrism is false by developing the strongest, most plausible version of the view and then exposing it to new criticisms, criticisms that are not susceptible to the standard biocentrist responses. The conclusion takes up the broader implications of the death of the ethic of life in four domains: environmental ethics and environmental practice, medicine and medical ethics, emerging technologies, and within philosophy more broadly. Given the webs of interdependence in nature, it argues that not much hangs, in terms of policy, on the fact that biocentrism or teleocentrism is false, but there are edge cases: cases where, for example, we might be thought to have an obligation to restore specific species or make reparations for past environmental wrongdoing, where the answer to questions about moral considerability matters.

How Ecological Collectives are Morally Considerable

2015 ◽  
Author(s):  
J. Baird Callicott
Keyword(s):  
Moral Psychology ◽  
Environmental Ethics ◽  
Moral Philosophy ◽  
Ethical Theory ◽  
Human Microbiome ◽  
First Century ◽  
Moral Considerability ◽  
Twenty First Century ◽  
Evolutionary Moral Psychology ◽  
Moral Ontology

Populations, species, biotic communities, ecosystems, landscapes, biomes, and the biosphere are the referents of “ecological collectives.” The essence-accident moral ontology prevailing in twentieth-century moral philosophy cannot, while the theory of moral sentiments originating with Hume, biologized by Darwin, and ecologized by Leopold can, endow ecological collectives with moral considerability. The Hume-Darwin-Leopold approach to environmental ethics has been validated by twenty-first-century evolutionary moral psychology, while the twenty-first-century analysis of the human microbiome has revealed that erstwhile human “individuals” are themselves ecological collectives, thus rendering future ethical theory exclusively concerned with ecological collectives. To reconceptualize ourselves as moral beings in relational, communal, and collective terms is a matter of the greatest urgency for twenty-first century moral philosophy.

Kant and the Moral Considerability of Non-Rational Beings

1994 ◽  
Vol 36 ◽  
pp. 129-142
Author(s):  
Tim Hayward
Keyword(s):  
Environmental Ethics ◽  
Environmental Values ◽  
Moral Consideration ◽  
General View ◽  
Moral Considerability ◽  
Kant's Ethics

Kant's ethics is widely viewed as inimical to environmental values, as arbitrary and morally impoverished, because, while exalting the value of human, rational, beings, it denies moral consideration to non-human, or non-rational, beings. In this paper I seek to show how, when specific statements of this general view are examined, they turn out to involve some significant inaccuracies or confusions. This will lead me to suggest that Kant might have more to offer to environmental ethics than has hitherto been acknowledged.

A Morally Deep World: An Essay on Moral Significance and Environmental Ethics.

1992 ◽  
Vol 42 (168) ◽  
pp. 378
Author(s):  
T. L. S. Sprigge ◽  
Lawrence E. Johnson
Keyword(s):  
Environmental Ethics ◽  
Moral Significance

scholarly journals Making insects tick: Responsibility, attentiveness and care in edible insect farming

2020 ◽  
pp. 251484862094532
Author(s):  
Christopher Bear
Keyword(s):  
Qualitative Study ◽  
Science And Technology Studies ◽  
Animal Studies ◽  
Human Relations ◽  
Moral Significance ◽  
Production Sector ◽  
Moral Considerability ◽  
Edible Insect ◽  
Everyday Practices ◽  
The Relationship

Insects are increasingly promoted as a sustainable and nutritious source of protein, with ‘edible insect’ sectors emerging in many countries not traditionally associated with their consumption. A number of studies have examined the attitudes of potential consumers to eating insects but the understandings and practices of farmers have largely been ignored. This article expands nature-society scholarship’s engagement with the edible insect sector by investigating how farmers make sense of their responsibilities to insects through their everyday practices. Drawing on a qualitative study of the UK’s edible insect farmers, the article contributes to wider ongoing debates within science and technology studies and animal studies around multispecies companionship involving apparently ‘awkward’ creatures, and around the relationship between ‘care’ and ‘ethical regard’ in more-than-human relations. Such debates are especially pertinent here, as insects have often been understood as lacking sentience and beyond moral considerability, resulting in their exclusion from animal welfare codes and regulation. Insect farmers are therefore faced with questions not only about how to care for their ‘minilivestock’ but also whether to care. Following an outline of the UK’s edible insect production sector, and framed by a discussion of literature on awkward creatures, attentiveness and practices of care, the article reports on: (1) the relationship between sentience and farmers’ constructions of insects’ moral significance; (2) farmers’ motives for, and approaches to, becoming attentive to their insects; and (3) how farmers respond to the actions of insects. It concludes by reflecting on the nature of attentiveness encountered in edible insect farming, arguing that it offers a promising yet unstable basis for the development of harmonious more-than-human relations.

2. Some key concepts

2018 ◽  
pp. 13-28
Author(s):  
Robin Attfield
Keyword(s):  
Environmental Ethics ◽  
Environmental Problems ◽  
Natural System ◽  
Human Behaviour ◽  
Moral Standing ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Key Concepts

‘Some key concepts’ focuses on the key concepts widely held and pivotal to thinking about environmental ethics. It begins with the concept of nature, ways in which people seek to relate nature to human behaviour, and attitudes both to the nature that surrounds us and to our inner nature too. Are human beings apart from nature or simply part of nature? It then discusses the concept of the environment. Only through the concept of the environment as an objective natural system can we make sense of environmental problems in the first place. The next key concepts considered are moral standing and value, which introduce the ethics of biocentrism and ecocentrism.

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