Antoine C.-Dussault (Paris I/University of Toronto) on Biological Interests to Health
Channel: Radio-CRÉ
Date: 2017-11-02

“How not to be a Sentientist? From Biological Interests to Health in Environmental Ethics”

Many environmental philosophers advocate the non-sentientist view that moral considerability should be extended beyond entities that have valenced mental states such as preferences or hedonic experiences (Goodpaster 1978; Taylor 1986; Callicott 1989; 2013). This leads many of them to argue that non-sentient biological entities (organisms, species, ecosystems) have a good of their own, which is commonly taken to be equivalent to their having interests. I will argue that this assimilation of the notion of having a good of one’s own to that of having interests is ill-advised as line of defense for non- sentientism. I will propose that although non-sentient biological entities do have a good of their own, this good is conceptually distinct from that which underlies the paradigmatic notion of interest. More specifically, drawing upon Sumner’s (1996; 1998; 2002) distinction between prudential and perfectionist goodness, I will contend that the kind of good that can be attributed to non-sentient biological entities is better captured by the notions of health and biological perfection.

This demonstration has two main values. First, it reconciles the non-sentientist intuition that non-sentient biological entities in some sense have a good of their own, with the sentientist intuition that sentience nevertheless undergirds a special kind of good. Second,
it reinforces the theoretical plausibility of non-sentientism by exonerating its defenders from the necessity of arguing that non-sentient biological entities have interests in the same
sense that humans and other animals do.

My presentation will be structured as follows. First, I will present Sumner’s (1996; 1998; 2002) argument that, insofar as the good intuitively possessed by non-sentient biological entities can be interpreted in terms of the Aristotelian notion of “good-its- kind”, this good is more adequately envisaged as a form of perfectionist goodness than as a form of prudential goodness. This entails that this good is conceptually more similar to the notion of excellence used to evaluate artifacts (e.g. it is good for a knife to be sharpened) or the character of moral agents (e.g. it would be good for me to become more generous), than to the notion of interest used to evaluate the well-being of moral patients (e.g. it is good for a dog to be unleashed). Next, I will discuss and criticize two possible ways to defend (contra Sumner) the ascription of interests to biological non-sentient entities: 1) Varner’s (1998) attempt based on the alleged fact that non-sentient biological entities (but not artifacts) are shaped by natural selection; and 2) McLaughlin’s attempt
based on the alleged fact that non-sentient biological entities (but not artifacts) are autopoietic entities. Thirdly, I will argue that non-sentientists should concede Sumner’s argument instead of attempting to refute it. Linking Sumner’s perfectionist goodness with
the neo-Aristotelian notion of natural goodness (Foot 2003; Thomson 2003; 2008) and recent discussions of the concept of health (Hamilton 2010; Glackin 2016), I will argue that the moral considerability of non-sentient biological entities should be based on their being bearers of health—defined as biological perfection—rather than their being bearers of interests.

Caméra et montage : Marc-Antoine Plouffe