Rhys Southan (Oxford University), “Experiential Variety and Biodiversity Conservation”
Channel: Radio-CRÉ
Date: 30/10/2017

In environmental ethics, conservation is often defended in blatantly anthropocentric terms, with aesthetics or the pursuit of knowledge justifying our protection of endangered lifeforms. Some philosophers find this unsatisfactory, especially when it comes to sentient wildlife. I will begin the presentation by looking at the difficulties that environmental philosophers have had with meeting what Sahorta Sarkar calls “the non-anthropocentric condition for a conservation ethic,” and why this failure to avoid a blatantly anthropocentric defense of biodiversity conservation is a problem.

Sarkar suggests six adequacy conditions for a conservation ethic, including that it “should allow us to attribute value to biological entities without reference to our most parochial human interests.” Environmental philosophers sometimes address this by appealing to the intrinsic value of nature, but this can undermine the goals of conservation when intrinsic value is attributed to animals on the basis of their sentience. Sentience is not only a property of animals who contribute to biodiversity – common animals are sentient too. Prioritizing endangered species becomes difficult to impossible if all sentient animals deserve equal protection, as it would be wrong to cull members of common species to protect endangered species. Those who care more about animal rights than biodiversity conservation will not find this to be a pressing worry, and so I will raise other problems for granting rights to wild animals on the basis of their sentience.

We could however value the sentience of animals contingently without granting them rights. While I will refer to this idea in my own proposed solution, on its own, it does nothing to justify or alter our conservation choices in any way. It keeps prioritization intact,
but it does not provide a way to value rare animals in particular for their own sakes, as the altruistic or quasi- altruistic reason we had for valuing rare animals would be the same as for common animals, assuming all are equally sentient.

As my own partial solution to this anthropocentrism problem, I will propose that we recognize the value of “experiential variety,” generalized at a species level. I assume many animal species experience the world in distinctive ways. Those who aspire to value rare species for their own sakes could argue that the differences in internal states that helps distinguish different species is worth protecting. Because experiential diversity generalizes at the species level rather than individual level, it allows us to value the internal states of animals without granting rights to individuals within the species. I will conclude the presentation by looking at various possible objections to this proposal. Some of the objections include that we do not really value experiential diversity, and that valuing experiential diversity leads to absurd conclusions. I believe all such objections may be met.

Caméra et montage : Marc-Antoine Plouffe