I appreciated this post—I find it good to see arguments related to wild animal ethics developed in a framework that isn’t strictly consequentialist. I was a bit surprised by the references to creating new ecosystems on other planets, as that seems to be a quite different matter, and hadn’t really been introduced in the post—but maybe your original writeup contained previous references to this, which made the reference make more sense?
Thanks! It’s actually almost the other way around—the original essay this was based on was specifically about environmental restoration, but I’ve been thinking about expanding it to touch on the issue of terraforming for a little while, a concern of some consequentialists in the wild animal welfare community like Brian Tomasik. This draft touches on this idea briefly, but when I make the final draft, it will likely include a section more dedicated to the topic.
I appreciated this post—I find it good to see arguments related to wild animal ethics developed in a framework that isn’t strictly consequentialist. I was a bit surprised by the references to creating new ecosystems on other planets, as that seems to be a quite different matter, and hadn’t really been introduced in the post—but maybe your original writeup contained previous references to this, which made the reference make more sense?
Thanks! It’s actually almost the other way around—the original essay this was based on was specifically about environmental restoration, but I’ve been thinking about expanding it to touch on the issue of terraforming for a little while, a concern of some consequentialists in the wild animal welfare community like Brian Tomasik. This draft touches on this idea briefly, but when I make the final draft, it will likely include a section more dedicated to the topic.