PHIL 2281 Lecture Notes - Lecture 8: Environmental Values, Correlation Does Not Imply Causation, Anthropocentrism
Document Summary
Human & environmental values- if we ask about the relations between environmental questions and human values, there is an important distinction to be made straight away. It is one thing to ask whose questions these are; it is another matter to ask whose interests will be referred to in the answers. (234) Moral effects: unallocated, experiential, non-human, non-animal. Is the human perspective ineliminable: our attitudes to these further kinds of effect are not directed simply to human interests, and in that sense they are not anthropocentric. But they are still our attitudes, expressing our values. Interests and respect- does not follow logically from the fact that other organisms have interests that these are interests we ought to respect. Taylor/goodpaster: if a tree has any interests at all, then it must have an interest in getting better if it is sick; but a sick tree, just as such, makes no claim on us. (237)
