Beyond Value for Us

Abstract

AbstractSo far, the discussion has focused on nature’s value for us—that is, the value it has by virtue of the contributions it makes to human well-being. Readers towards the dark green pole of the environmental spectrum may dismiss this focus on human well-being as unacceptably anthropocentric. But to highlight nature’s constitutive value for us is not to deny that it can have other kinds of value. And in fact there are reasons to think that some natural entities have constitutive value because of the meanings they have for certain non-human animals. Besides, whether or not meaning-apprehension is a distinctively human capacity, some such entities certainly can have instrumental value for animals, as berries have value for bears or aspen twigs value for beavers. In addition to this, there are reasons to think that some natural entities are valuable for their own sakes, and not simply for the sake of other things, such as those human or non-human beings to whose well-being they contribute. There are reasons, that is, to think that some natural entities have intrinsic value. The relations between nature’s intrinsic values and its constitutive values are explored by means of a tenth case study, Dugong hunting.