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Inverse View
It is not the case that An individual member of the biotic community ought to be sacrificed when doing so is necessary to protect the holistic good of the biotic community
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Reasons For
2 perspectives
Reason for 1 of 2
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1.
Individual organisms possess intrinsic value independently of their membership in or contribution to any collective entity (Taylor 1986, Regan 1983).
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2.
A moral framework that treats individuals as purely instrumental to collective ends is structurally indistinguishable from the logic that justifies totalitarian sacrifice of persons for the state.
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3.
The parallel between holistic environmental ethics and fascism, identified by Regan as 'environmental fascism,' is not merely rhetorical but reveals a genuine logical entailment requiring rebuttal.
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Reason for 2 of 2
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1.
Collectives such as 'the biotic community' are not discrete unified agents but observer-dependent abstractions without a welfare that can be coherently weighed against individual sentient experience.
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2.
Moral obligations require identifiable bearers of interests, and attributing supreme intrinsic value to a diffuse ecological aggregate commits a category error that undermines the claim's normative force.
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Reasons Against
1 perspective
Reason against
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1.
The biotic community per se is the sole locus of intrinsic value
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2.
Individual members have only instrumental value dependent on their contribution to the community
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3.
Preserving the holistic good of the biotic community is the supreme deontological principle
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