Weak Anthropocentric Intrinsic Value

Abstract

Professional environmental ethics arose directly out of the interest in the environment created by Earth Day in 1970. At that time many en vironmentalists, primarily because they had read Aldo Leopold's essay, The Land Ethic, were convinced that the foundations of environmental problems were philosophical.1 Moreover, these environmentalists were dissatisfied with the instrumental arguments based on human use and benefit?which they felt compelled to invoke in defense of nature?because they thought these arguments were part of the problem. Wanting to counter instrumental arguments in some way with nonor even anti-instrumental arguments, and unable to think of anything else to say, they began wistfully suggesting that perhaps nature had or ought to have rights.2 When profes sional environmental ethics came into its own in the early 1980s, rights for nature were one of the first subjects to be debated in detail.3 Unfortunately, however, no one could come up with a theory to support such rights attribu tions. Nevertheless, because rights had been invoked by environmentalists to challenge the preeminent role of instrumental value arguments, and because the field of environmental ethics developed in support of en vironmental concerns and arguments, environmental ethicists turned to an examination of noninstrumental or intrinsic value arguments for the preser vation of nature. As these investigations progressed, it soon became clear that most en vironmental ethicists, and indeed most environmentalists, did not believe that traditional intrinsic value?for example, the kind of intrinsic value which is attributed to art?was an adequate counter to instrumental value.4 To find a kind of intrinsic value that could trump instrumental value?in the way that rights can?they started looking for nonanthropocentric intrin sic value. This search, unfortunately, has been a confusing one because of definitional problems with the word nonanthropocentric. A nonanthro pocentric value was simply assumed to be the opposite of an instrumen tal value, making anthropocentric for all practical purposes a synonym for the word instrumental* In environmental policy, there is perhaps some basis for such a definition, since nearly all arguments, economic and other wise, are formulated routinely in terms of instrumental value to human be ings. Nevertheless, anthropocentric is not and has never been a synonym for