B&P note that there are two ways of understanding value. On the objectivist view, value exists independently of the judgements of valuers. Value inheres in the world in a similar way to e.g. mass or charge. The subjectivist, by contrast, holds that values can't exist without a valuer. Things are right or wrong, good or bad, because we interpret them that way.
B&P's concern in this paper, they say, is with the question: can the environment bear intrinsic value? Given their title, one would expect that their answer is "no". I'm not sure that this is their answer, however. Their arguments are directed towards denying objective intrinsic value. As B&P themselves note, nothing stops a subjectivist from holding that certain natural items are intrinsically valuable. It's worth being clear about the distinctions involved as in my experience this often causes confusion. Ethics is concerned with what objects have value; an anthropocentric ethic claims that humans are the only objects of value, or at least the only objects of intrinsic value (things that are of use to humans may be valuable instrumentally). Metaethics is concerned with the source of value (what is value? how is value realized in the world? etc); an anthropocentric metaethic claims that humans are the only source of value, i.e. to say that something is valuable is to say that it's valued by some human.
Importantly, an anthropocentric metaethic doesn't entail an anthropocentric ethic. Consider, for instance, crude emotivism, according to which value judgements don't describe the world but simply express feelings. "Abortion is wrong" means something along the lines of "boo to abortion!"; "charity is good" means something along the lines of "yay for charity!" This is clearly anthropocentric about the source of value, i.e. it's an anthropocentric metaethic. Is an emotivist committed to an anthropocentric ethic? Of course not. The emotivist may value e.g. biodiversity just for its own sake. She may, that is, attribute intrinsic value to biodiversity.
What B&P are attacking, then, is not the view that parts of environment are intrinsically valuable, but rather the view that this intrinsic value is objective. They are concerned with metaethics, not ethics. This makes some of their arguments rather odd, since they attack arguments for nonanthropocentric ethics.
They first consider the Last Man Argument proposed by Richard Routley, later Richard Sylvan. Routley imagines a man, the last man on the planet, who has survived the total collapse of civilization and the death of all other people. This man decides to destroy, as far as he can, all living things and all beautiful natural items. Routley thinks it's clear that the Last Man's actions are deplorable, but on an anthropocentric ethic, it's hard to explain why this is so. After all, if only humans matter, the only reason why destroying non-human things is a problem is that other humans might object, and obviously no other humans are objecting to the Last Man's actions. Routley takes his thought experiment to show that the natural environment is also of intrinsic value.
B&P's objection to the Last Man Argument is bizarre:
Suppose that after the last man has departed, leaving behind the mountains and trees, and so on, perhaps in due deference to their intrinsic value and beauty, some aliens from outer space arrive on earth one day who have very different tastes from ours. They much prefer flat surfaces and find all these mountains and trees sticking up all over the place to be very ugly. Any philosophers among them who had previously espoused the "last man" argument would be looking rather silly.First, it's unclear what this is supposed to show. The aliens don't share our environmentalist orientation. So what? Perhaps the aliens have all sorts of repugnant beliefs. They might support slavery, for instance. Would this show anything about our views of slavery? In any case, there are already plenty of people on this very planet who reject the environmentalist attitude, preferring a world wholly transformed by technology (the sensible ones would grant that it's not a good idea in practice, at least not currently, given that we depend on various processes in the environment for our survival, but they'd have no objection in principle to e.g. completely stripping away the forests and replacing them with plastic trees). All this tells us is that people have different moral and aesthetic attitudes, something that's already perfectly obvious to everyone.
Second, an obvious problem for B&P, given that they're concerned with denying that the natural world has objective intrinsic value, is that Routley's argument isn't supposed to establish objective intrinsic value. Routley is simply arguing that the natural world is intrinsically valuable; his paper is completely tangential to the question of whether this value is objective or subjective. Indeed, Routley wasn't an objectivist. (He wasn't quite a subjectivist either. He developed a rather bizarre metaethical position, inspired by his Meinongian metaphysics, according to which to say that some state of affairs X has value is to say that X is valued by a person at some possible world; this person may or may not exist in the actual world. In other words, things can have value because they are valued by a non-existent, merely possible person. Yet another way to put it is to say: X is valuable because X would be valued by a person if that person were to exist.)
B&P haven't paid sufficient attention to the distinction, discussed above, between the source of value (metaethics) and the object of value (ethics). As I explained, we can hold that the source of value is wholly anthropocentric without holding that the only objects of value are humans. B&P's oversight in this respect is odd given that they draw attention to the distinction earlier in the paper.
B&P also charge that prominent defenders of the objective intrinsic value of nature are in fact beholden to human interests and values. First they consider Arne Naess's statement as part of the deep ecology platform that "Richness and diversity of life forms ... are also values in themselves. Humans have no right to reduce this richness and diversity except to satisfy vital needs." B&P point out that these vital needs are, of course, the vital needs of humans. How this is supposed to be an objection to Naess is a mystery. After all, Naess doesn't deny that humans have a right to flourish; indeed he explicitly affirms that they do. He simply holds that other species and ecosystems have that right as well. This is completely consistent with also holding that sometimes, in conflicts of interest between humans and nonhumans, the humans win. Naess's statement is therefore analogous to "individuals have no right to harm others except in self-defense." Affirming that humans have the right to flourish, that the good of non-humans can be sometimes sacrificed for humans, doesn't entail that one is really a disguised anthropocentrist - just like how affirming that each individual has the right to flourish, that the good of other people can sometimes be sacrificed for the good of the individual, doesn't entail that one is really a disguised egoist.
Next they quote Sylvan & Bennett (1994): "there should be no substantially differential treatment of items outside any favoured class or species of a discriminatory sort that lacks sufficient justification." B&P object that it is humans, of course, who must decide what counts as sufficient justification. So again, the attempt to attribute objective intrinsic value to nature just leads us back to humans as the basis of value. B&P say: "we are once again relying on humans to weigh up competing claims on resources. In that case the concept of objective values outside the valuations made by humans can have no place." We have an argument along the lines of:
(P1) If only humans can weigh competing claims, then values are not independent of human judgement.
(P2) Only humans can weigh competing claims.
(C) Values are not independent of human judgement.
Again, this objection just silly. First, compare babies and the severely mentally retarded. Just as there are conflicts of interest between humans and non-human nature, there are conflicts of interest between rational humans and nonrational humans. Most people hold that babies and severely mentally retarded have intrinsic moral value; an objectivist would, of course, hold that this value is objective. Is it an argument against the objective moral value of nonrational humans to point out that only rational humans can weigh up competing claims? This is just a non-sequitur. Clearly, (P1) is mistaken. The reason why only humans can weigh competing claims is that humans are the only beings who have evolved the cognitive capacities to do so. In the same way, only humans can discover subatomic particles. It hardly follows from this that subatomic particles don't exist independently of human judgement.
Second, Sylvan and Bennett's claim is ethical, not metaethical. They aren't saying anything about objective values. Sylvan is Richard Routley, who as I noted isn't an objectivist. Again, B&P have confused ethical claims with metaethical claims. Similarly, while I don't know anything about Naess's metaethical views, his statement also clearly has nothing to do with objectivism.
In the last part of their paper, B&P present two arguments for the inevitability of human-centred values:
First we have this piece of sophistry: "it is inevitable that, to whatever view we subscribe about the value of nature, it will always be our human view. There is no other perspective available to us and there is no other perspective that can be adopted in our treatment of the non-human world."
We might compare the following argument: "it is inevitable that, to whatever view we subscribe about the value of women, it will always be our male view. There is no other perspective available to us and there is no other perspective that can be adopted in our treatment of women."
Perhaps this is unfair. B&P would presumably object that male humans aren't limited to a purely male view, since they can converse with female humans and come to understand their perspectives. We can't however understand the perspective of much of the nonhuman world, a fortiori because the vast majority of nonhuman things have no perspective whatsoever. But what can we conclude from this? All this tell us is that, if there are objective values, we will only ever be able to comprehend them from a human perspective. It certainly doesn't tell us that there are no objective values. What is true here of values is true of everything else: everything we will ever know is known only from a human perspective - mountains, rivers, cars, quarks, clothes. Presumably B&P wouldn't deny that any of these things objectively exist.
Second, B&P suggest that there is a tension in the environmentalist injunction, found for instance in the statements by Naess and by Sylvan & Bennett that we saw above, to treat all species equally. Equal treatment for all species requires extending rights or consideration to other species. But if all species are to be treated equally, why shouldn't humans act as other species do, in their own self-interest, and hence limit rights and consideration merely to humans? No other species cares about environmentalism. Ultimately, B&P suggest, our concern for the environment is really an example of human superiority.
There are several points to note about this argument. First, no environmentalist denies that humans are allowed to act in their own self-interest. Of course, environmentalists do deny that humans should act purely in their own self-interest, and presumably this is what B&P mean to suggest is entailed by the notion of treating all species equally. Second, do environmentalists really claim that all species should be treated equally? I suppose that's one way of reading the statements by Naess and Sylvan & Bennett, although it depends on what B&P have in mind by "equal treatment". As I recall Sylvan & Bennett's book (I can't cite any pages since I don't have it on me at the moment), they hold that different kinds of objects generate different kinds of obligations. Bear in mind also that many environmentalists will value species differently depending on their rarity, their importance to ecological processes, etc.
Third, B&P's argument is clearly seen to be sophistical if we consider again babies and the mentally retarded. Most people hold that babies and the severely mentally retarded should, in some important sense, be treated equally to adult humans. Or at any rate, we should hold them to be of equal moral value. But babies and the severely mentally retarded do not, of course, care at all about moral behaviour. They don't have any concept of moral behaviour. So if we are consider them morally equal to normal adult humans, why shouldn't normal adult humans act just like babies do, in their own self-interest? In this context, of course, the argument is easily seen to be silly.
B&P's paper is very frustrating. Many of their arguments are quite weak, not helped by the fact that they don't seem to be clear what exactly their target is. They claim to be attacking the view that the natural world has objective intrinsic value. Yet they address arguments only designed to show that the natural world has intrinsic value, which are neutral on the metaphysical status of this value.
I agree with B&P that the natural world has no objective value. In my view, there are no objective values period. Values are nothing more than human judgements (at least this is the case for moral values: presumably other animals value things in the sense that they enjoy or dislike them, but animals have no moral attitudes). This is a metaethical claim, and is entirely compatible with a robustly nonanthropocentric normative ethic. Indeed, I agree with Routley that the Last Man's behaviour is evil. When I say that the Last Man's behaviour is evil, I'm simply expressing my strong disapproval and disgust towards his behaviour.
B&P argue for an anthropocentric metaethic, and on this point we're in agreement. But anthropocentric metaethics is tangential to the concerns of environmentalism.
Beckerman, W. and Pasek, J. (2010) "In Defense of Anthropocentrism", in Keller, D. R. (ed.) Environmental Ethics: The Big Questions, Malden, Massachusetts: Wiley-Blackwell.
Sylvan, R. and Bennett, D. (1994) The Greening of Ethics, Cambridge: White Horse Press.
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