Thanks Ryan! Restitution definitely speaks to me as a personal value (we made this mess, so we have a duty to try to clean it up), but I’m not sure it fully captures why a species in itself is valuable? If the wronged parties are the individual animals whose habitat we cleared, then the duty tracks individuals. Rarity is almost just a proxy for how much harm we have already done.
Diversity clearly has instrumental value (e.g., from an ecosystem services perspective, as an option value), and I think that justifies a great deal of conservation spending. But in the abstract, where does it take us? Ought we be actively breeding new species, and be roughly indifferent between saving one and creating one? That feels wrong to me (again, the intuitionism!)
Of course! I love thinking through environmental ethics :)
On the first one, I believe it still makes sense to talk at the level of groups even if the benefits go to individuals. We can think of it the same way we think of other systemic harms. Where benefits and burdens are distributed along class lines on the basis of class membership, treating the affected parties as mere individuals is reductive; the class is the level at which the harm operates. We couldn’t reasonably conceive of giving each individual piping plover their due, but we could generate structures that benefit them as a class (such as closing stretches of New York’s cost to humans). The reason for that would be on a more systemic level: piping plovers have been harmed due to their membership to a form of life like that of a piping plover. Thus, we need to (systemically) reduce those harms at the source by removing barriers for those with a form of life like that of a piping plover. This is the familiar justification for reparations, or for programs aimed at getting more women into STEM. It also doesn’t touch the value qua species—though very few people in the environmental ethics literature believe that our taxonomizing itself generates value. This argument is, though, a good reason to protect endangered species over non-endangered species in virtue of them being ‘endangered species,’ which seemed to be the heart of the post.
On the second, Tandena below did a good job articulating my position. It’s not clear to me that diversity is merely instrumental, and I think there would be something bad about a world where everyone, keeping happiness equal, were social, cultural, and biological clones of one person. The Borg as a villain in Star Trek seems like an analagous point. Tandena did a good job on the species breeding point. But another point is, if I had a kid, I would encourage them to live life weirdly, to break the mould, and be a little freakish. I think that’s really cool!
Tandena’s history point is also solid—one of my professors in undergrad, Ron Sandler, wrote a lot on it. Eric Katz also cares a lot about it.
Thanks Ryan! Restitution definitely speaks to me as a personal value (we made this mess, so we have a duty to try to clean it up), but I’m not sure it fully captures why a species in itself is valuable? If the wronged parties are the individual animals whose habitat we cleared, then the duty tracks individuals. Rarity is almost just a proxy for how much harm we have already done.
Diversity clearly has instrumental value (e.g., from an ecosystem services perspective, as an option value), and I think that justifies a great deal of conservation spending. But in the abstract, where does it take us? Ought we be actively breeding new species, and be roughly indifferent between saving one and creating one? That feels wrong to me (again, the intuitionism!)
Of course! I love thinking through environmental ethics :)
On the first one, I believe it still makes sense to talk at the level of groups even if the benefits go to individuals. We can think of it the same way we think of other systemic harms. Where benefits and burdens are distributed along class lines on the basis of class membership, treating the affected parties as mere individuals is reductive; the class is the level at which the harm operates. We couldn’t reasonably conceive of giving each individual piping plover their due, but we could generate structures that benefit them as a class (such as closing stretches of New York’s cost to humans). The reason for that would be on a more systemic level: piping plovers have been harmed due to their membership to a form of life like that of a piping plover. Thus, we need to (systemically) reduce those harms at the source by removing barriers for those with a form of life like that of a piping plover. This is the familiar justification for reparations, or for programs aimed at getting more women into STEM.
It also doesn’t touch the value qua species—though very few people in the environmental ethics literature believe that our taxonomizing itself generates value. This argument is, though, a good reason to protect endangered species over non-endangered species in virtue of them being ‘endangered species,’ which seemed to be the heart of the post.
On the second, Tandena below did a good job articulating my position. It’s not clear to me that diversity is merely instrumental, and I think there would be something bad about a world where everyone, keeping happiness equal, were social, cultural, and biological clones of one person. The Borg as a villain in Star Trek seems like an analagous point. Tandena did a good job on the species breeding point. But another point is, if I had a kid, I would encourage them to live life weirdly, to break the mould, and be a little freakish. I think that’s really cool!
Tandena’s history point is also solid—one of my professors in undergrad, Ron Sandler, wrote a lot on it. Eric Katz also cares a lot about it.