An adequate environmental ethic must assign non-derivative moral standing to evolutionary and ecological processes; utilitarianism's experientialist foundation structurally prevents it from doing so.

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Reasons For

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Reason for

1.Evolutionary processes have intrinsic value independent of whether they produce sentient experiences or maximize aggregate welfare.
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2.Utilitarianism reduces all moral value to conscious experiences, making ecosystem stability and biodiversity valuable only instrumentally.
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3.Environmental harms like species extinction and habitat loss can be morally catastrophic even when sentient suffering is minimal or absent.
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Reasons Against

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Reason against

1.Utilitarians can ground environmental duties in sentient interests: ecosystem collapse causes massive animal suffering across generations.
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2.The claim that utilitarianism structurally prevents non-derivative standing conflates utilitarian foundations with utilitarian conclusions about value.
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3.Assigning direct moral standing to 'processes' rather than entities or beings raises metaphysical questions about what grounds such standing.
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Key Terms

Evolutionary and ecological processes(the parts of nature the statement says deserve moral consideration): The natural systems of how species change and adapt over time, and how organisms interact with each other and their environment.
Experientialist foundation(the underlying principle of utilitarianism being discussed): A core belief that only experiences—like feeling pleasure or pain—matter morally.
Moral standing(as what should determine who deserves compensation or rights): The quality of having a legitimate claim or right to something based on ethical principles; being the kind of person who has a valid reason to demand something as fair or just.
Non-derivative(as a philosophical term describing the nature of eudaimonia as a goal): Something that is fundamental and doesn't depend on or come from something else; it's a basic starting point rather than a conclusion drawn from other principles.
Structurally prevents(describes why utilitarianism cannot value nature for its own sake): Built into the basic framework in a way that makes it impossible to do something, rather than just difficult.
Utilitarianism(One of Sidgwick's three methods of ethics): The view that an individual self-evidently ought to aim at the maximum balance of happiness for all sentient beings present and future, whatever the cost to herself; also called Universalistic Hedonism
environmental ethic(Sylvan's response to the inadequacy of anthropocentric ethics): A proposed new ethical framework capable of accounting for the moral wrongness of acts that destroy non-human living things, even when no humans or sentient creatures suffer

Connections

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Environmental Ethics1 linked

Assigning direct moral standing to 'processes' rather than entities or beings ra...Environmental harms like species extinction and habitat loss can be morally cata...Evolutionary processes have intrinsic value independent of whether they produce ...The claim that utilitarianism structurally prevents non-derivative standing conf...

Details

Type: claim
Perspectives: 2 (1 for, 1 against)
Edits: 1 edit