Diversity and the Good

Abstract

This chapter focuses on studies of the productivity of plots populated with varying numbers and proportions of grassland plant species. It also addresses the line between the descriptive and the normative. The discussion begins with the disproportionate and damaging demands human beings are now placing on the ecological systems one depends upon. In response to this difficult challenge, this analysis proposes that one needs “an unprecedented integration of science with ethics.” Recognizing the role of diminishing returns and higher-level interactions (derived in part from health-care economics) suggests a way of understanding the role of diversity in ecosystem productivity, and a link from the diversity-ecosystem productivity connection to a more general point about value. The discussion links the productivity–diversity relation in ecology to the economic value of income equality. Equality is related to diversity via an analogy between the number of points of view with the means to develop and express them, and the number of species with numbers sufficient to contribute substantially to ecological processes. On the economic side, the idea that economic equality is valuable in general follows from the diminishing utility of money. The chapter concludes with a general account of the good as richness. The idea seems to be that compositional effects can be captured by variety alone, but the contextual effects of diversity require unification, that is, interaction, interdependence, and especially mutualism.