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our moral deliberations. Let us look at what has been said on |
behalf of extending ethics beyond sentient beings. |
REvERENCE FOR LIFE |
The ethical position developed in this book is an extension of |
the ethic of the dominant Western tradition. This extended |
ethic draws the boundary of moral consideration around all |
sentient creatures, but leaves other living things outside that |
boundary. The drowning of the ancient forests, the possible |
loss of an entire species, the destruction of several complex |
ecosystems, the blockage of the wild river itself, and the loss |
of those rocky gorges are factors to be taken into account only |
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The Environment |
in so far as they adversely affect sentient creatures. Is a more |
radical break with the traditional position possible? Can some |
or all of these aspects of the flooding of the valley be shown |
to have intrinsic value, so that they must be taken into account |
independently of their effects on human beings or non-human |
animals? |
To extend an ethic in a plausible way beyond sentient beings |
is a difficult task. An ethic based on the interests of sentient |
creatures is on familiar ground. Sentient creatures have wants |
and desires. The question: 'What is it like to be a possum |
drowning?' at least makes sense, even if it is impossible for |
us to give a more precise answer than 'It must be horrible'. |
In reaching moral decisions affecting sentient creatures, we |
can attempt to add up the effects of different actions on all |
the sentient creatures affected by the alternative actions open |
to us. This provides us with at least some rough guide to what |
might be the right thing to do. But there is nothing that corresponds |
to what it is like to be a tree dying because its roots |
have been flooded. Once we abandon the interests of sentient |
creatures as our source of value, where do we find value? |
What is good or bad for nonsentient creatures, and why does |
it matter? |
It might be thought that as long as we limit ourselves to living |
things, the answer is not too difficult to find. We know what |
is good or bad for the plants in our garden: water, sunlight, and |
compost are good; extremes of heat or cold are bad. The same |
applies to plants in any forest or wilderness, so why not regard |
their flourishing as good in itself, independently of its usefulness |
to sentient creatures? |
One problem here is that without conscious interests to guide |
us, we have no way of assessing the relative weights to be given |
to the flourishing of different forms of life. Is a two-thousandyear- |
old Huon pine more worthy of preservation than a tussock |
of grass? Most people will say that it is, but such a judgment |
seems to have more to do with our feelings of awe for the age, |
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Practical Ethics |
size, and beauty of the tree, or with the length of time it would |
take to replace it, than with our perception of some intrinsic |
value in the flourishing of an old tree that is not possessed by |
a young grass tussock. |
If we cease talking in terms of sentience, the boundary |
between living and inanimate natural objects becomes more |
difficult to defend. Would it really be worse to cut down an |
old tree than to destroy a beautiful stalactite that has taken |
even longer to grow? On what grounds could such a judgment |
be made? Probably the best known defence of an ethic that |
extends to all living things is that of Albert Schweitzer. The |
phrase he used, 'reverence for life', is often quoted; the arguments |
he offered in support of such a position are less wellknown. |
Here is one of the few passages in which he defended |
his ethic: |
True philosophy must commence with the most immediate and |
comprehensive facts of consciousness. And this may be formulated |
as follows: 'I am life which wills to live, and 1 exist in the |
midst of life which wills to live: ... Just as in my own will-tolive |
there is a yearning for more life, and for that mysterious |
exaltation of the will which is called pleasure, and terror in face |
of annihilation and that injury to the will-to-live which is called |
pain; so the same obtains in all the will-to-live around me, |
equally whether it can express itself to my comprehension or |
whether it remains unvoiced. |
Ethics thus consists in this, that I experience the necessity of |
practising the same reverence for life toward all will-to-live, as |
toward my own. Therein I have already the needed fundamental |
principle of morality. It is good to maintain and cherish life; it |
is evil to destroy and to check life. A man is really ethical only |
when he obeys the constraint laid on him to help all life which |
he is able to succour, and when he goes out of his way to avoid |
injuring anything living. He does not ask how far this or that |
life deserves sympathy as valuable in itself. nor how far it is |
capable of feeling. To him life as such is sacred. He shatters no |
ice crystal that sparkles in the sun, tears no leaf from its tree, |
breaks off no flower, and is careful not to crush any insect as he |
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The Environment |
walks. If he works by lamplight on a summer evening he prefers |
to keep the window shut and to breathe stifling air, rather than |
to see insect after insect fall on his table with singed and sinking |
wings. |
A similar view has been defended recently by the contemporary |
American philosopher Paul Taylor. In his book Respect for |
Nature, Taylor argues that every living thing is 'pursuing its |
own good in its own unique way.' Once we see this, we can |
see all living things 'as we see ourselves' and therefore 'we |
are ready to place the same value on their existence as we |
do on our own'. |
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