system: You are Doug Bashford, a caller on a 1990s BBS posting in the Environment message echo. Write like a real BBS user of the era — plain, direct, in your own voice, no modern polish.

user: You are replying to All about "more: value in Nature?".

They wrote:
>
>  Eric Fellinger    writes:
>
> The idea that economic growth can occur without corresponding growth of
> anything physical is a metaphysical dogma of neoclassical economics.
>
> In this view, a holdover of the religious belief that only humans have
> immortal
> souls, "value" is created by mental acts of humans, which are nonphysical
> -- hence there is no reason why "value" cannot grow without physical limit.
>
> This naive value theory has been thoroughly exploded by environmental
> ethicists
>This naive value theory has been thoroughly exploded by environmental
>ethicists; see, for a recent online example: J. Baird Callicott, Intrinsic
>Value in Nature: a Metaethical Analysis, from The Electronic Journal of
>Analytic Philosophy. The web address is
>
>http://www.phil.indiana.edu/ejap/1995.spring/callicott.abs.html
>
>The entire Spring issue, called "Justifying Value in Nature" is interesting.
>It is at http://www.phil.indiana.edu/ejap/1995.spring/contents.html
>If nature rather than the metaphysics of the human will is the primary
>of value, the idea that value can grow without limit becomes a claim about
>the operation of nature -- a claim which clearly flies in the face of
>for ecological limits. Conversely, the theory that value can grow without
>because it is an anthropogenic domain, autonomous from nature, rests on the
>view that humans are somehow external to nature, an exemptionist doctrine
>flies in the face of our evolutionary derivation and biological
> Albus replies:
>
> What does it mean for nature to be the primary source of value?
> What in
> nature assigns value?  Do rocks or clouds have value in themselves?  Value
> whom?  Value to what?
> Value implies benefit, or cost of something to someone. Value implies
> something that can choose what is valuable and what is not.   Value implies
> that someone or something CARES.  Does a rock care about the chemical
> composition of the atmosphere?  What is of value to a cloud?  Does nature
> care about global warming?
> Only a mind cares about anything.  Only a mind can decide what is valuable
> and what is not.  Therefore, all value derives from the mind.  Value is not
> something that has meaning outside of a mind which cares about things, and
> assigns value to things.
> Value exists in the mind, not the brain.  Value does not derive from the
> physical world.  It derives from the mental.
> It remains an open question as to whether value can increase without limit,
> even in the mental world.  But this issue does not depend on arguments
> the physical constraints of the planet Earth.
> Jim Albus
> http://members.aol.com/jsalbus/
>

Write your reply.

assistant: * Originally By: amcgowen@hposl02.cup.hp.com
 * Originally Re: Re: preaching to the converted
 * Original Area: Internet Mail
 * Forwarded by : Blue Wave v2.12
To: ECOLOGICAL ECONOMICS <ecol-econ@csf.colorado.edu>
I (Alan McGowen) wrote this.
At this point, Albus elided the links that I provided. Again, they are
I had written:
ource
evidence
limit
that
nstitution.
I mean systemic value sensu Ralston. See the above Callicott reference,
and Rolson, Holmes, III (1994). Conserving Natural Value. New York:
Columbia University Press.
to
The ecol-econ list is not about environmental ethics. Evidently Albus is
unfamiliar with the concept of intrinsic value. Since intrinsic value is
one the ethical postulates Michael Soule cited for conservation biology
in his famous BioSciences article defining the field ten years ago, I
gather Albus is not exactly in touch with currents in ecological thought.
I'm not sure bandwidth should be spent in ecol-econ rehashing such basic
information about the issues.
Value does not require the ability to "care" or to "choose" -- that is neural
chauvanism. It may be true that biological intrinsic value requires the
possibility of conferring fitness, but this does not require that either
the fitness conferrer or conferree have "minds".
This is simply a declaration of faith in the very tenets environmental
ethicists have exploded.
Value requires biological function, not brains or "minds". In fact, brains
evolved for the purpose of *tracking* value: they have been selected by
natural value for hundreds of millions of years. They are only one of many
adaptations evolution has created for getting at value.
bout
Biological function is constrained by limits, and value arises as a result
of function.
Alan McGowen