Table Of ContentECOLOGICAL CRISIS, PROCREATION, AND HUMAN CHOICE
By
RONNIE ZOE HAWKINS
A DISSERTATION PRESENTED TO THE GRADUATE SCHOOL
OF THE UNIVERSITY OF FLORIDA IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT
OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF
DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY
UNIVERSITY OF FLORIDA
1994
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
would like to express my deepest gratitude to my dissertation supervisor,
I
Dr. Ofelia Schutte, without whose support I would never have completed this
dissertation, and to Professor Richard Hare, whose guidance in the field of ethics
has been invaluable. would also like to thank the other members of my
I
dissertation committee, Drs. Robert Baum, John Eisenberg, and Jay Zeman, for
their most helpful suggestions and encouragement. I must also express my
abundant thanks to M. J. Schaer, whose assistance with the intricacies of word
processing was absolutely essential to the completion of this project.
Additionally, would like to express my appreciation to the Department of
I
Philosophy for its continued financial support in the form of teaching and
research assistantships and to the Graduate School for initiating my philosophy
career by awarding me a Graduate Council Fellowship and for helping my
dissertation near its completion by providing me with a Humanities Fellowship.
Finally, must offer my great thanks to family and friends who allowed and
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encouraged me to be true to my own goals in life. My mother, Okia Bradley
Johnson, and my father, Lowell Hawkins, were always there for me with support
and love, and only wish could have crossed this threshold at an earlier time in
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their own lives. must thank my stepfather, Vincent Johnson, for his kindness
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not only to me but to the several hundred gopher tortoises he worked to rescue
while struggled with the dissertation. My special thanks, also, go out to Holly
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Jensen for setting me a tireless example in fighting the good fight, and to
someone who was not present and cannot be named but who nevertheless led
me to discover a certain measure of strength and courage within myself that
otherwise might never have come to be.
Ill
TABLE OF CONTENTS
page
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
ii
ABSTRACT
vi
CHAPTERS
SETTING THE STAGE: TWO DIFFERENT ETHICAL
1
APPROACHES TO ENVIRONMENTAL ISSUES
1
2 EVOLUTIONARY CONTINUITY: THE BASIS FOR REJECTION
OF ANTHROPOCENTRISM 23
A Snapshot of Life on the Planet 23
The Third Great Extinction Crisis 26
Evolutionary Biology: Some Theoretical Points 30
A Search for "Gaps" in the Empirical World 36
On the Far End of Several Spectra 48
No "Ought" from an "Is": Humans Make Choices 50
3 AN EXAMINATION OF CONTEMPORARY INDIVIDUAL-
CENTERED THEORIES 53
Peter Singer's Animal Liberation 55
Tom Regan's Case for Animal Rights 65
Paul Taylor's Respect for Nature 72
Robin Attfield's Ethics of Environmental Concern 89
Discussion and Criticism 100
4 POPULATION ISSUES: NUMBERS AND UTILITY FOR HUMANS
AND NONHUMANS
115
Utilitarian Problems of Number 116
What Makes the "Repugnant Conclusion" Repugnant? 127
A Primer on Exponential Growth 138
Consequences of Continued Growth for the Human Population 142
Putting Nonhumans into the Picture 149
Some Utilitarian Calculations with Nonhumans 170
A Few Simple Ecological Principles 184
Why
the "Environmentally Repugnant Conclusions" Are
Still
Repugnant 192
iv
5 A FRAMEWORK FOR CONSIDERING NONHUMAN INTERESTS .... 199
A Common Core of Ethical Thought 199
The Limits of Moral Considerability 209
Considering the Interests of Nonhumans 238
A Closer Look at Niches, Kinds, and Interests 249
A Possibly Useful Visual Metaphor 260
6 THINKING ETHICALLY WITHIN THE FRAMEWORK 265
Some Obstacles to Considering Nonhumans Equally:
Dualism and Hierarchy 267
Considering the Kind-Including the Human Kind 283
The Environmentally Repugnant Conclusions Reconsidered 290
The Objections of the Ecocentrists Reconsidered 294
REFERENCES 298
BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH 311
Abstract of Dissertation Presented to the Graduate School
of the University of Florida in Partial Fulfillment of the
Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy
ECOLOGICAL CRISIS, PROCREATION, AND HUMAN CHOICE
By
Ronnie Zoe Hawkins
August, 1994
Chairperson: Ofelia Schutte
Major department: Philosophy
Ecosystems and their component organisms are being destroyed at an
unprecedented rate today by the space and resource demands of an
exponentially growing human population. Ethical theories developed for
addressing environmental problems have generally followed one of two different
lines. Individual-centered theories that expand moral consideration to include
some nonhumans draw support from traditional ethical thinking but encounter
difficulties with defining the limits of moral considerability, with countenancing
such natural processes as predation, and with according relevance to the
extinction of species. Ecocentric theories accommodate species interactions but
show a relative lack of historical grounding and are often unclear about the moral
status accorded human and nonhuman individuals, facing charges of
"environmental fascism" to the extent that the good of individuals may be
subordinated to the good of the ecosystem. Current ecocentric views have
further problems of consistency, since the human being is seemingly still
vi
accorded special privileges within the ecosystem, leading them to collapse into
merely enlightened versions of anthropocentrism, and of effectiveness, since as
yet they have demonstrated little of substance in addressing population
problems. Anthropocentrism is rejected as incongruent with our empirical picture
of the world, which shows evolutionary continuity, rather than sharp gaps,
existing among living organisms, and hence individual-centered approaches that
accord nonhumans continuity of consideration appear preferable. Of these
approaches, the utilitarian theories of Singer and Attfield have the advantage of
an ongoing dialogue concerning population, but at least one utilitarian view
appears to encourage additional human population growth. I argue that it may
be possible to develop an individual-centered ethic according equal respect for
the equal interests of all living beings that, in the process of concretizing the
content of the interests of those beings, reflects the coarse-grained,
interconnected kinds within the ecosystem and thereby discovers limits on the
numbers of those beings there should be. We find we humans have choices to
make with respect to accommodating those interests as we discover our own
coarse-grained niche within the ecosystem, and a very important choice is the
extent to which we ourselves should procreate.
VII
CHAPTER
1
SETTING THE STAGE: TWO DIFFERENT ETHICAL
APPROACHES TO ENVIRONMENTAL ISSUES
Ecosystems and their component organisms are being destroyed at an
unprecedented rate today as a result of expanding human activities. A growing
concern over this state of affairs has been responsible for the emerging effort
within philosophic circles to generate an adequate environmental ethic, one
capable of framing an appropriate response to the situation. Two different
general approaches have been taken to date: one "extends" traditional ethical
thinking that centers on human individuals "outward" to include nonhuman
individuals of various sorts within the sphere of moral concern, while the other
emphasizes a holistic focus on the ecosystem itself over and above its individual
components. In evaluating the different approaches that have been taken, one
concern of mine will be the extent to which the ethical accounts lend themselves
to congruency with our overall empirical understanding of the world and, in
particular, the place of human beings in relation to other lifeforms. The primary
reason why a need for an environmental ethic exists, however, is that human
beings are exerting an increasing impact on their environment, an effect that can
in large part be related to rapidly increasing human numbers, and therefore an
important measure of the adequacy of an environmental ethic will lie in its ability
to address issues of human population growth.
1
2
In this chapter, we will consider very briefly some of the differences between
the individual-centered and the ecosystem-centered approaches in order to
frame the major points of debate. Perhaps the best known schemes to extend
moral consideration beyond the boundaries of the human species along
individualistic lines have been those of Peter Singer, utilizing a utilitarian ethic,
and Tom Regan, who has developed a "rights view." Singer draws on the
tradition of Jeremy Bentham in emphasizing the capacity of many nonhuman
animals to experience pleasure and pain, and he thus identifies the possession of
sentience as the relevant characteristic qualifying an individual organism for
moral consideration; since different animals apparently exhibit different degrees
of sentience, Singer accepts a kind of graded hierarchy that permits a weighing
of the interests of different kinds of animals, with harms to some permissible if
outweighed by the greater good of others.^ Regan, on the other hand,
recognizes the "equal right" of every "experiencing subject of a life" to be "treated
with respect" rather than simply as a means to an end; he notes that "where we
draw the line" between rights-holders and those that are not may be
"controversial," but rights clearly extend to all mature mammals, and those that
have rights have them absolutely-infringements are not to be countenanced for
presumed benefits to others.^
"Peter Singer, Practical Ethics 2d ed. (Cambridge: Cambridge University
.
Press, 1993), 57-61; Singer, Animal Liberation revised ed. (New York: Avon
,
Books, 1990), 176.
^See Tom Regan, The Case for Animal Rights (Berkeley: University of
California Press, 1983), 77, 145, 243, 248, 266.
.
3
Much of the attention of both Singer and Regan has been focused on the
treatment of domestic animals, primarily within the domains of factory farming
and animal experimentation. Two other philosophers who utilize an individual-
centered paradigm, Robin Attfield and Paul Taylor, have focused their attention
on environmental issues, and their views will be examined in detail in chapter 3.
However, the theories of Singer and Regan have been given more attention by
the ecocenthsts in defining their own differing point of view, and this brief
introduction to Singer's and Regan's positions should suffice to illuminate the
contrasts.
With respect to environmental issues. Singer fails to find intelligible
answers to questions about the morally significant interests of nonsentient
animals or plants, species, and ecosystems,^ and the only reasons he can
accept for according greater concern to members of endangered species than
to comparable nonendangered creatures have to do with the indirect benefits
that sentient beings might reap from their preservation.'* Regan, likewise,
sees membership in an endangered species as conferring no additional moral
weight upon an animal beyond what may have already as an individual
it
bearer of rights,^ and he rejects the subordination of individuals to "the greater
biotic good," an implication he finds in the Leopoldian land ethic or ecosystem-
^Peter Singer, Practical Ethics 2d ed. (Cambridge: Cambridge University
,
Press, 1993), 276-84.
'*See Peter Singer, "Not for Humans Only: The Place of Nonhumans in
Environmental Issues," in K. E. Goodpaster and K. M. Sayre, eds.. Ethics and
Problems of the 21st Century (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press,
1979), 203-4.
^Regan, The Case for Animal Rights 245-46, 362-63, 359-61
.
