Del valor intrínseco de la naturaleza

Abstract

Environmental ethics considers the notion of ‘intrinsic value’ a necessary requirement to establish moral duties toward the non-human world. However, it is held here that the ecocentric conceptions of intrinsic value usually results in some kind of naturalism and that moral anthropocentrism is inevitable. Secondly, it will be shown how the conferring of intrinsic value hinders the work of arranging ecological duties in order of importance. Finally, it will be defended that appeals to intrinsic value are translatable to ‘enlightened’ conceptions of instrumental value which undertake the ecological uncertainty and the underlying incommensurability of values at environmental problems. Thus it can be faced up to most of biocentric concerns, in that intrinsic value of life that biocentrism defends may be interpreted, from an anthropocentric outlook, as a «reversion of the burden of proof principle».