Efforts to protect plant and animal species led to legislation in the 1970′s to protect the air, water, and endangered species. Below are listed summaries of the typical arguments for protective actions, each based upon one of the major ethical theories. You will be assigned to one of the arguments and asked to link it to the ethical theory upon which it rests. Please indicate your assigned argument number (e.g. “Argument #1:”) at the beginning of your essay. Then, explain how each claim of the ethical theory is expressed in the argument. Finally, note briefly one possible objection to this ethical approach to the problem. If necessary, please review the criteria for a quality blog entry on the “Student” page.
Argument #1: We need to conserve other species because they will be necessary for food, fiber, medicinal benefits in the future
Argument #2: The consequences of species loss (e.g. in the Gulf via hypoxia) may simply have to be borne in order that economic conditions of the Mississippi River communities can continue to support the residents via farming, etc. during these hard economic times.
Argument #3: According to Genesis, it is part of human responsibility to care for the Earth and the creatures and therefore we must not destroy their habitats which provide the life support for them.
Argument #4: Living organisms may be viewed as part of an ordered system, or biotic community, and the predictable interdependence within the community demands that we value and manage them in such a way that the organisms and the whole can function as it was intended to function.
Argument #5: Biotic communities should be the focus of conservation efforts because it is within these communities that each species has evolved and will continue to evolve by random mutation and natural selection.
Argument #1: I believe that this statement is based upon an utilitarian ethical theory. Utilitarianism judges acts based on their utility to produce good consequences. The argument states that species need to be preserved for their benefits (utility) in the future. Jeremy Bentham, one of the founders of utilitarian theory, rightly condensed the tenets of this ethical theory when he said “It is the greatest good to the greatest number of people which is the measure of right and wrong”. The argument in question exemplifies Bentham’s principle by assigning value to other species based on their benefit to the human race. However, it is important for one using a utilitarian ethical theory to carefully consider the limits of their ethical claims. When performing “utilitarian calculus”, one must determine what species will receive preference when calculating “the greatest good for the greatest number”. An action that may result in good for many humans could also have serious negative results for non-human species. To make a decision between humans and non-humans requires information that utilitarianism can not provide. An utilitarian theory informed by an atheistic, evolutionary worldview provides serious challenges to those who would give humans priority over non-humans, as both are viewed as simply evolved organisms. This aspect of limits is a definite weakness to the utilitarian ethical theory, and should be a matter given much thought by those who would use this ethical theory for environmental decisions.
The ethic that best applies to argument #5 is a deontological, or duty-based, ethic. The deontological ethic is essentially a well thought out choice to do something that fulfills your duty or moral obligation to other people. The outcome of this choice is not under your control, so the ethic is based on the decision you make and carrying out the act, not the end result of the choice and act. The key to this ethic is Kant’s categorical imperative, which is acting in ways that other rational people think is suitable.
Argument #5 demonstrates how these principles are applied. Our duty, according to this ethic, is to preserve communities of species because these communities are the means by which new species are derived. What new communities arise and the end result of the choice and act of preserving these communities is something we don’t have control over, because it is left to random mutation and natural selection. If you were a rational person, you would agree with this argument as well.
The danger of this ethic is that arguments can easily be manipulated into achieving one’s own ends for the sake of respecting the rights of some living thing. Deontological ethics also fails to give value to those who are not rational, which begs the question of how to define who is rational and who isn’t.
Argument #2: According to a Utilitarianism view the consequences of species loss (e.g. in the Gulf via hypoxia) may have to be borne in order that economic conditions of the Mississippi River communities continue to support the residents via farming, etc. Utilitarianism is an ethical theory that states that the best choice is to have the maximum amount of good distributed to the most people. To be able to do that we need to determine what “good” is. Pleasure or the amount of happiness a person has is often used to measure what is good. A problem with this is that it is hard to measure the value of some things such as the difference in value of the species in the Gulf or the farmers along the coast of the Mississippi. Here it could be said that supporting the farmers along the coast of the Mississippi would be better than saving the species in the Gulf because the produce of the farms is more useful than the species in the Gulf. Then on the other hand there is a significant amount of fishing that takes place in the Gulf which in turn provides food for a significant amount of people. Then we would have to determine if the greater good is in the fishing industry or in the farming industry. This is often where Utilitarianism breaks down because of the self-interest of the people involved. The fisherman will most likely say that their industry is more important and the farmers will say that theirs is more important.
Argument #5
This argument stems from Natural Law ethics, which was proposed by Aristotle. The argument rests on the claim that nature has a purpose that is directly linked to its function within the natural order and taking away from this purpose would be wrong. The greatest good, then, is to let each organism and community function as it exists and that is when they will be able to fulfill their purpose. This ethics is also called teleology because it is dealing with the final purpose for which an organism was designed.
An objection to this ethical theory is that of whether or not nature is functioning as it should and therefore fulfilling its good role. If one thinks that pain and suffering are wrong, then it seems that many of nature’s functions that cause pain and suffering (of which there are many) are not that organism’s correct function and so they are not fulfilling their correct purpose. Since many organism’s cause pain and suffering we would have to say that many are not functioning properly. That or we would have to say that pain and suffering are not wrong because they are just a part of the proper function of nature. Being able to link function with purpose seems to work abstractally but practically it might be impossible to know what the correct function of an organism is, especially if it has been evolving and changing that function over time.
Argument #3: this viewpoint stems from valuing Deontological views of right and wrong and by deriving truth from supernatural revelation. These two trains of thought lead to an ethical theory called Divine Command. From the statement God and the Bible (“Genesis”) are valued as a source of authority. Here God is the authority and right or wrong and truth comes from God or revelation. Similarly there are rules or duties which this statement calls for demonstrating the deontological outlook. I see this statement as posing some problems due to some logical fallacies, or mistakes. The therefore statement does not follow, based on the information given. The Bible is not as explicit as the statement seems to say and there are many interpretations of stewardship that is expected of humans towards the environment from Biblical passages. A final problem with this perspective is that there are plenty of individuals who place no value in the Bible as a source of authority and then the statement immediately looses credibility.