Typology of Environmental Values
from Rolston, Conserving Natural Values, Ch 5, Sec 6 and Ch 6, Sec 2 & 6

Questions

• Is all natural value instrumental? (What about intrinsic value of wild animals, who value their own lives?)
• Is all natural value anthropocentric (and instrumental)?
  • No because some things are instrumentally valuable to animals/plants
  • No because of anthropogenic intrinsic valuing (humans value some things in nature for their own sakes)
• Is all natural value anthropogenic? (Is all natural value dependent on humans?)
  • No because instrumental value in nature is present apart from us
• Is all value subjective?
  • (Even if value need not be anthropocentric nor anthropogenic, it still might be subjective as based on the valuing of sentient animal subjects)
• Does all value depend on a (subjective) conscious valuer?
• Instrumental value in nature (water being good for trees, or even nutrients being good for animals) would seem a kind of objective value
• Might there be objective valuers--such as plants who value things even if have no inner conscious experiences?
• Are there nonhuman valuers?
  • Do animals intrinsically and instrumentally valuing things?
  • Can plants (nonconscious organisms value things instrumentally/intrinsically?)?
    • If water is good for a plant, does that mean the plant values water?
• Last person argument as a test for intuitions about value:
  • If the last person who would ever live destroyed the whole natural world, would she be destroying anything of value? (If yes, believe in nonanthropocentric value)
  • What if she were the last sentient being? (If still answer yes, believe in value without subjective conscious valuers)
  • Considering potential value clouds this test: One might argue that even thought no sentient or human being would ever live again, the value that is being destroyed is potential value (that could be actualized if such beings ever came to exist again, even thought in fact they never will)
    • But isn't the value being destroyed actual value?
• Entities with these values
  • Humans
  • Sentient organisms engaging in intrinsic and instrumental valuings
  • Insentient organisms as having (autonomous-on their own) intrinsic value-as have good of own
  • Ecosystems (and earthen nature as a whole) have systemic value (not intrinsic value, nor instrumental value, but relational and productive value; ecosystems can generate value; they are producers of value;
    • Hence they are valuable as "there is value wherever there is positive creativity" Earth is a fertile planet; a womb from which we come (truth in "mother earth language")
  • Abiotic (i.e., nonliving) natural entities (e.g., 14,000 foot mountains) as having objective value toward which we can be disrespectful and behave inappropriately
• Some key points Rolston:
• Rolston defends of non-anthropocentric, objective intrinsic value of nature (not all value is subjective or depends on a valuer or on human valuers; nor is all value in nature instrumental)
• Rolston as a holist: "Stability, integrity, and beauty of the biotic community is what is most fundamentally to be conserved" P. 177
  • Not just individuals (animals/plants) that are of value, but non-individuals like natural systems (e.g., ecosystems)
  • Earth's creative processes ("its systemic powers") are what is of greatest value and most deserve protection
• Rolston "Finds some programmatic evolution toward value" (p. 181)
  • Nature has a heading toward creating more and more value? How is this suppose to work, without supposing a deity guiding the project? Is this claim simply noting a contingent fact of evolutionary history? (I think Rolston would say no. The nature of our nature is such that it produces more and more value, and so we should expect that it will continue to do so and can "put our trust in mother nature.")