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LIFE’S INTRINSIC VALUE
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L I F E ’ S
I N T R I N S I C
VA L U E
Science, Ethics, and Nature
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Nicholas Agar
Columbia University Press • New York
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Columbia University Press
Publishers Since 1893
New York Chichester, West Sussex
Copyright © 2001 Columbia University Press
All rights reserved
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Agar, Nicholas.
Life’s intrinsic value ; science, ethics, and nature / Nicholas Agar.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references
ISBN 0-231-11786-8 (cloth) — ISBN 0-231-11787-6 (paper)
1. Environmental ethics 2. Philosophy of nature. I. Title.
GE42 .A38 2001
179'.1—dc21 00-047540
∞
Casebound editions of Columbia University Press books are printed on permanent
and durable acid-free paper.
Printed in the United States of America
c10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
p10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
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Contents
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acknowledgments vii
preface ix
1. The Psychological View of Intrinsic Value 1
Life on Mars, Life on Earth 1
Defining Intrinsic Value? 7
Why Are Humans Morally Special? 14
2. Science’s Bridge from Nature to Value 19
Scientific Facts and Values 19
The Limits of Ethical Extensionism 24
Beyond Ethical Extensionism? 30
3. Overlapping Kinds and Value 41
Two Types of Natural Kind Overlap 41
What to Do About Kind Overlaps 48
Descriptive Overlaps and Morality 52
Combining Descriptive and Metaphysical Kind Overlaps to
Unearth Environmental Value 58
4. Recent Defenses of Biocentrism 63
The Value of Life 63
AnEthic to Live by? 78
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5. A Morally Specialized Account of Life 87
Commonsense and Customized Accounts of Life 87
A Biofunctional Explanation of Self-Movement 90
Why the Representationally Alive Are Morally Important 94
Other- and Self-Directed Goals 97
6. The Contents of Biopreferences 101
The Teleological Account of Content 101
The Threat of Genic Selectionism 107
Sentience and Goals 120
7. Species and Ecosystems 129
The Shortcomings of Individualism 129
Environmental Value Holism 132
Individualistic Ethics of Species and Ecosystems 145
8. An Impossible Ethic? 153
Biocentrism, Consequentialism, and Cognitive Tractability 153
Does Life Value Leave Room for Human Lives? 159
notes 175
references 183
index 191
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Acknowledgments
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I have incurred many debts in the writing of this book. First, I should thank
Holly Hodder and Jonathan Slutsky, editors at Columbia University Press,
for shepherding the book through to production and Anthony Chiffolo,
copyeditor, for his hunting out of stylistic and argumentative infelicities.
I received specifically philosophical feedback from a number of sources.
Mostly anonymous referees for the press provided useful comments, both
sympathetic and combative. Various conference and department seminar
audiences throughout Australasia have heard and provided invaluable criti-
cisms on sections of the book. I should also thank my colleagues here in
the Victoria University of Wellington Philosophy Department for years of
formal and informal feedback on the issues discussed in this book. Last, I
will single out for individual mention Ruth Avery, Hugh Clapin, Jack
Elder, Tony Fielding, Mike Hurst, Timothy Irwin, Edwin Mares, Alison
Munro, Denis Poole, Sarah Sandley, Kim Sterelny, and Gary Varner.
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Preface
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Inthis book I aim to show that individual living things are intrinsically
valuable and to found an environmental ethic on this value. The search for
intrinsic value in nature will be familiar to readers already acquainted with
the ethics of the environment. Demonstrating that environmental individ-
uals or collections have intrinsic value seems the most straightforward way
of showing that they matter morally. Yet in spite of the worthy efforts of
such writers as J. Baird Callicott, Holmes Rolston III, and Arne Naess, we
are some distance from a workable account of such value. The reason is not
hard to see. Received ethical wisdom uses the notion of intrinsic value to
indicate the great moral importance of humans. Stories about such value
frequently latch onto perceived contrasts between humans and natural
things. Rational humans are held to be ends, while nonrational termite
mounds can only ever be means. We think of humans as experiencers of
pleasure and suffering, but of kauri trees as mere instruments to these
morally important experiences in other beings. Defenders of the supposed
exclusive moral significance of humans can rely not only upon the inertia
of commonsense moral belief but also upon centuries of philosophical
speculation about the nature of value.
The life-centered or biocentric ethic requires some agent of moral
transformation. I cast the sciences of the environment in this role. I show
that science enables us to define a concept fit to spread intrinsic value
beyond humanity. Just as in past centuries science dislodged humans from
the center of the physical universe, it now challenges our claim to exclusive
occupancy of the center of the moral universe.
How is science to effect this transformation? According to received
philosophical wisdom, scientific theories simply do not provide the right
variety of information to bring about fundamental changes to moral views.
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