A Defense ofIntrinsic Natural Value

Yale University’s Interdisciplinary Center for BioethicsSummer Internship Program

Bo-Shan XiangJuly 27, 2010

Acknowledgements

• J. Baird Callicott, Beyond the Land Ethic• Shelly Kagan, “Rethinking Intrinsic Value”

Outline of presentation

I. Three hypothesesII. Value and natural valueIII. Why should we care about determining

intrinsic natural value?IV. Intrinsic value and two distinctions in

intrinsic valueV. Puzzle, with Callicott’s solutionVI. My proposal

{Intrinsic Natural Value}subjectivist Hypotheses

Weak version: Possibility proof {intrinsic natural value}subjectivist is (1) intelligible and therefore (2)

metaphysically possible• Only if [X is metaphysically possible if X is intelligible] is true

Strong version: Existence proofthere is {intrinsic natural value}subjectivist

• Indexical and contingent (here, now, for us situated as we are)• Callicott

Intermediate version: Internal RecommendationWe ought (for the sake of coherence of our collected values and reasons)

to acknowledge, include, to adopt {intrinsic natural value}subjectivist

• My proposal

??

!

What is value?• Pre-analytic gropings-around about value … value

(unqualified) is linguistically equivalent to something in the region of “that property of objects which:”– “makes them proper objects of our intentional acts,– “makes us desire to desire them,– “gives us reason to consider them in our practical

deliberations,– “provides justification for acts via reasons,– perhaps “stands in some particular relation to “good”,

and perhaps via “good”, to “right”

Modern metaphysical assumption about value

• Do things have value because we (a societal and historical “we”) value them, or do we value things because they have value?

This Euthyphro-style dilemma is answered such:• “There is no value without a valuer” (Hume,

etc.)– An object X has value only if X stands in some

particular intentional relationship with a subject– “Projection” by subject of desires, attitudes,

toward the object– Whatever intrinsic value is, it isn’t “objective”—

that is, it isn’t subject-independent

• If value exists, then, necessarily, there is a perceiving subject.– At least two intensional entities (subject and

object)– Either one (in the case of a self-valuing subject) or

(more commonly) two or more extensional entities.

What is Natural Value?

• Value that inheres in “natural” objects and entities

• We need not treat the question of the unit to which natural value adheres (Tokens of species? Species types? Ecosystemic energy patterns?

Why investigate intrinsic natural value?

Theoretic / academic functions of ‘intrinsic natural value’• Epistemic prudence• Helping out a brother—Lend theoretical support and credence to

otherwise inscrutable new-age environmental schools of thought• Cognitive role: Most dominant ethical traditions hold a (mostly

defeasible) principle that things with intrinsic value are worth preserving or augmenting– Clarification of intrinsic natural value helps to ensure productive discourse

between environmental ethicists and mainstream ethical theorists (eliminating linguistic slippage, internecine disputes, inhouse factionalism)

– Environmental ethics is not a unique field unless there is intrinsic natural value, and a fortiori unless intrinsic natural value is metaphysically possible.

Why investigate intrinsic value? (pg 2)Pragmatic functions of ‘intrinsic value’• Earth jurisprudence and “Worth saving unless proven otherwise”—

Acknowledging the intrinsic value of, say, a plot of rainforest shifts the burden of proof (Warwick Fox, via Callicott)– “Ontological stance” and our considerations of how things “stack up”: John

Grim, Crow Indians, and reverence for nature• Will help to clear up conceptual puzzles that appear as real-world

conservancy dilemmas– “culling” of deer population and ethical killing

• Callicott’s Weltanschauung shift– Note, this comes with two substantive theses:

• Articulation and promulgation of a new metaphysical world view has a substantial impact upon the daily practices of people

• It is within our capacities to construct a new metaphysical worldview aimed at promoting environmental sustainability, without compromising human flourishing

Word of caution (!)• From me, to me• These normative purposes are only motivational and lie

“outside” the conceptual analysis of intrinsic natural value; they cannot be allowed to interfere in the content of a metaphysical analysis

• Interference by these normative purposes is OK—in fact, welcome—when we consider “intrinsic natural value”* as a legal term or in other contexts where “intrinsic natural value”* is of high pragmatic consequence – The Vital Lie: Even if we conclude that there isn’t or can’t be such

a thing as INV, we might want our legal system and the public sphere to operate as if there were• But this would no longer be an academic enterprise of truth-seeking, just

a social-engineering project

What is intrinsic value?• The value an object possesses “in itself,” “as an end,” “as such,” “for its

own sake” (Kagan, 1998, p. 278-9)• Aristotle, Kant, etc.—the highest good, the summum bonum, the good

from which the goodness of other things is derived– Happiness, flourishing, performance of duty– Frankena’s list: life, consciousness, and activity; health and strength; pleasures

and satisfactions of all or certain kinds; happiness, beatitude, contentment, etc.; truth; knowledge and true opinions of various kinds, understanding, wisdom; beauty, harmony, proportion in objects contemplated; aesthetic experience; morally good dispositions or virtues; mutual affection, love, friendship, cooperation; just distribution of goods and evils; harmony and proportion in one's own life; power and experiences of achievement; self-expression; freedom; peace, security; adventure and novelty; and good reputation, honor, esteem, etc. (SEP, “Intrinsic vs. Extrinsic Value”).

• Pragmatically, there might not be positive criteria for identifying intrinsic value, just negative criteria (“there aren’t further grounds to appeal to that explain why this object is valuable”)

Distinctions

• Kagan (following Koorsgaard):– Intrinsic (non-relational, internal) vs. Extrinsic

(relational) Value– Final vs. Instrumental Value– Most of the time, what we mean when we use

“intrinsic” value is “final”– Comment on Mallory

One puzzle• 1. If there is value only when a relation between a valuing

subject and the object of the valuing obtains, how is there “intrinsic value”? By the logical force of the aforementioned metaphysical assumption, if value exists in the universe, then there exist in the universe at least two distinct substantive “things.”– Aping the interlocuter: “therefore, there isn’t intrinsic natural value

because value is necessarily a relational, or extrinsic, property”– These sorts of critics tend to think that the only things with intrinsic

value, if there are any, are psychological subjects capable of self-valuing

– Their heuristic: Big empty box, drop in things

One puzzle (pg 2)– Answer: what we mean by “intrinsic” is not “intrinsic,” in the

sense of “non-relational”; what we really mean by “intrinsic” is “end in itself”

– All value is relational in the basic sense of it being predicated upon a subject’s intentional state

– If we take the critics who reject the above point seriously, then we can’t even ascribe intrinsic value to our selves! (it’s not necessary that a valuing subject self-values, but to value yourself is a relation between you as a psychological subject and you as an object of the valuing relation. E.g., the relation of an object to its parts is an extrinsic relation). Therefore, what we mean by “intrinsic” is not “not-extrinsic”

Distinctions (pg 2)

• Once we’ve accepted the “final value” interpretation of “intrinsic value,” we must also distinguish between two discrete ways of analyzing intrinsic value:– Structure of value• {Anthropogenic / non-anthropogenic} intrinsic value

(formal question—issue of what value is)– Center of value• {Anthropocentric / non-anthropocentric} intrinsic value

(substantive question—issue of object of value)

– Four categories possible:• Anthropogenic anthropocentric—not contentious• Anthropogenic non-anthropocentric—contentious• Non-anthropogenic anthropocentric—lots of historical

theories support this, like• Non-anthropogenic non-anthropocentric—deep

ecology, theistic theories, etc.

Callicott’s possibility conjecture• Intrinsic natural value is possible and a fortiori intelligible• It is anthropogenic and non-anthropocentric, and that is

enough to sustain a uniquely environmental ethic• It makes sense to say, X (where X is something that is not

me) has intrinsic value for me• For a non-sentient thing to have intrinsic value is simply for

us to value it as an end in itself, as such, etc.• Parents and their children, persons and their non-self-

conscious pets, persons and their works– Further investigation: Intrinsic value is separable from subject-

centered aesthetic appreciation / value

The [normative] meta-ethical question

• Why should we ascribe intrinsic value to nature? What compels us to recognize intrinsic natural value?– Is a consequentialist defense reasonable? “construing

nature as holding intrinsic natural value has all these good consequences, so…”

– Hobbesian egoistic coercion cannot create a distinctive environmental ethic

– Kantian rational coercion is unavailable to Callicott; because trees aren’t rational creatures, there’s no logical inconsistency in according to our own selves rights that they don’t have

• Humean Sentimentalism—we desire that nature be good, for its own sake– Challenge—the limited amoralist who feels no reason to act to

preserve nature, who can find in herself no yearning for nature as such

– Notice that the type of amoralist that I am describing can be a member of the Sierra club and a genuine outdoorswoman and really love the symbolism of Georgia O’Keefe paintings… She is an amoralist w/r/t intrinsic natural value simply because she does not value nature for its own sake…we might say she values nature because it provides her some aesthetic value.

– So she says, “I see that it’s not logically impossible for there to be intrinsic natural value. I just don’t feel it though. It’s not a distal value for me. So, being the Humean I am, in this world, at least, there is no intrinsic natural value.”

Callicott’s reply

• Darwin and the evolution of ever-expanding other-concern, communal sympathies “biophilia,” “ecophilia”

• My note: this is very evidently not good enough

• Doubtful we have such a sentiment (or if we do, it would be very dilute)—many of us are amoralists w/r/t nature

A putative solution?• Loosen the relation between values and sentiments: Values

are informed by, but are to be separated from,– demographic patterns of sentiment: Not all popular sentiments are

values; not all values are popular sentiments– their adaptive histories: the psychological mechanism underlying

the “killing of kin is wrong” sentiment can be harnessed for moral principles like “killing of innocents is wrong”

• Reply to amoralist: motivational externalism (“value externalism”)

• Pursuing a constructivist project, which aims to form a tightly coherent axiological set of values and concomitant reasons: in other words, to “show that ascribing to nature intrinsic value fits well, and flows naturally from, our other value commitments”

A challenge: deductive closure of constructed set of values and reasons

• A non-empty set O is closed under deduction iff if P is a member of set O and P entails Q, then Q is also a member of set O.

• The problem: if nature is to be valued as “an end in itself,” and if we can’t use our psychological attitudes as a starting data points, there might not be a deductive inference chain leading to distinctively intrinsic natural value; the best possible might be instrumental value

??• Proposal: inductive “closure,” to a limit

1. collect the pre-analytic intuitions and judgments of a “naïve person” (a person who hasn’t yet taken to ensuring the general coherence of his/her accumulated beliefs about X.

2. identify the structurally-incongruous points in the set of beliefs about X—that is, identify logically conflicting beliefs and omissions of beliefs that (a) follow from necessity from the held beliefs about X.

3. shed old beliefs and/or adopt new beliefs in order to form a set of beliefs about X that (a) is logically consistent; (b) is “deductively complete”; (c) preserves those pre-analytic intuitions and judgments that person is most committed to saving

4. after “getting one’s house in order,” perform one iteration of inductive inference from the set of token moral judgments (3), adding beliefs whose inclusions into the set of moral judgments would augment the• Number/richness of inferential ties between members, plus• Least segregation of bodies of members, plus• Introduction of members that best explain the membership of other members

• Moral judgments arrived at inductively are justified by the property of coherence of the greater set of judgments

• Danger: Contamination of conceptual analysis by “external” normative purposes because those pre-analytic intuitions and judgments that are held on to are held on to because they are deemed “important” by the person doing this coherence procedure