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ECOLOGICAL CRISIS, PROCREATION, AND HUMAN CHOICE By RONNIE ZOE HAWKINS A DISSERTATION PRESENTED TO THE GRADUATE SCHOOL OF THE UNIVERSITY OF FLORIDA IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY UNIVERSITY OF FLORIDA 1994 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS would like to express my deepest gratitude to my dissertation supervisor, I Dr. Ofelia Schutte, without whose support I would never have completed this dissertation, and to Professor Richard Hare, whose guidance in the field of ethics has been invaluable. would also like to thank the other members of my I dissertation committee, Drs. Robert Baum, John Eisenberg, and Jay Zeman, for their most helpful suggestions and encouragement. I must also express my abundant thanks to M. J. Schaer, whose assistance with the intricacies of word processing was absolutely essential to the completion of this project. Additionally, would like to express my appreciation to the Department of I Philosophy for its continued financial support in the form of teaching and research assistantships and to the Graduate School for initiating my philosophy career by awarding me a Graduate Council Fellowship and for helping my dissertation near its completion by providing me with a Humanities Fellowship. Finally, must offer my great thanks to family and friends who allowed and I encouraged me to be true to my own goals in life. My mother, Okia Bradley Johnson, and my father, Lowell Hawkins, were always there for me with support and love, and only wish could have crossed this threshold at an earlier time in I I their own lives. must thank my stepfather, Vincent Johnson, for his kindness I not only to me but to the several hundred gopher tortoises he worked to rescue while struggled with the dissertation. My special thanks, also, go out to Holly I Jensen for setting me a tireless example in fighting the good fight, and to someone who was not present and cannot be named but who nevertheless led me to discover a certain measure of strength and courage within myself that otherwise might never have come to be. Ill TABLE OF CONTENTS page ACKNOWLEDGMENTS ii ABSTRACT vi CHAPTERS SETTING THE STAGE: TWO DIFFERENT ETHICAL 1 APPROACHES TO ENVIRONMENTAL ISSUES 1 2 EVOLUTIONARY CONTINUITY: THE BASIS FOR REJECTION OF ANTHROPOCENTRISM 23 A Snapshot of Life on the Planet 23 The Third Great Extinction Crisis 26 Evolutionary Biology: Some Theoretical Points 30 A Search for "Gaps" in the Empirical World 36 On the Far End of Several Spectra 48 No "Ought" from an "Is": Humans Make Choices 50 3 AN EXAMINATION OF CONTEMPORARY INDIVIDUAL- CENTERED THEORIES 53 Peter Singer's Animal Liberation 55 Tom Regan's Case for Animal Rights 65 Paul Taylor's Respect for Nature 72 Robin Attfield's Ethics of Environmental Concern 89 Discussion and Criticism 100 4 POPULATION ISSUES: NUMBERS AND UTILITY FOR HUMANS AND NONHUMANS 115 Utilitarian Problems of Number 116 What Makes the "Repugnant Conclusion" Repugnant? 127 A Primer on Exponential Growth 138 Consequences of Continued Growth for the Human Population 142 Putting Nonhumans into the Picture 149 Some Utilitarian Calculations with Nonhumans 170 A Few Simple Ecological Principles 184 Why the "Environmentally Repugnant Conclusions" Are Still Repugnant 192 iv 5 A FRAMEWORK FOR CONSIDERING NONHUMAN INTERESTS .... 199 A Common Core of Ethical Thought 199 The Limits of Moral Considerability 209 Considering the Interests of Nonhumans 238 A Closer Look at Niches, Kinds, and Interests 249 A Possibly Useful Visual Metaphor 260 6 THINKING ETHICALLY WITHIN THE FRAMEWORK 265 Some Obstacles to Considering Nonhumans Equally: Dualism and Hierarchy 267 Considering the Kind-Including the Human Kind 283 The Environmentally Repugnant Conclusions Reconsidered 290 The Objections of the Ecocentrists Reconsidered 294 REFERENCES 298 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH 311 Abstract of Dissertation Presented to the Graduate School of the University of Florida in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy ECOLOGICAL CRISIS, PROCREATION, AND HUMAN CHOICE By Ronnie Zoe Hawkins August, 1994 Chairperson: Ofelia Schutte Major department: Philosophy Ecosystems and their component organisms are being destroyed at an unprecedented rate today by the space and resource demands of an exponentially growing human population. Ethical theories developed for addressing environmental problems have generally followed one of two different lines. Individual-centered theories that expand moral consideration to include some nonhumans draw support from traditional ethical thinking but encounter difficulties with defining the limits of moral considerability, with countenancing such natural processes as predation, and with according relevance to the extinction of species. Ecocentric theories accommodate species interactions but show a relative lack of historical grounding and are often unclear about the moral status accorded human and nonhuman individuals, facing charges of "environmental fascism" to the extent that the good of individuals may be subordinated to the good of the ecosystem. Current ecocentric views have further problems of consistency, since the human being is seemingly still vi accorded special privileges within the ecosystem, leading them to collapse into merely enlightened versions of anthropocentrism, and of effectiveness, since as yet they have demonstrated little of substance in addressing population problems. Anthropocentrism is rejected as incongruent with our empirical picture of the world, which shows evolutionary continuity, rather than sharp gaps, existing among living organisms, and hence individual-centered approaches that accord nonhumans continuity of consideration appear preferable. Of these approaches, the utilitarian theories of Singer and Attfield have the advantage of an ongoing dialogue concerning population, but at least one utilitarian view appears to encourage additional human population growth. I argue that it may be possible to develop an individual-centered ethic according equal respect for the equal interests of all living beings that, in the process of concretizing the content of the interests of those beings, reflects the coarse-grained, interconnected kinds within the ecosystem and thereby discovers limits on the numbers of those beings there should be. We find we humans have choices to make with respect to accommodating those interests as we discover our own coarse-grained niche within the ecosystem, and a very important choice is the extent to which we ourselves should procreate. VII CHAPTER 1 SETTING THE STAGE: TWO DIFFERENT ETHICAL APPROACHES TO ENVIRONMENTAL ISSUES Ecosystems and their component organisms are being destroyed at an unprecedented rate today as a result of expanding human activities. A growing concern over this state of affairs has been responsible for the emerging effort within philosophic circles to generate an adequate environmental ethic, one capable of framing an appropriate response to the situation. Two different general approaches have been taken to date: one "extends" traditional ethical thinking that centers on human individuals "outward" to include nonhuman individuals of various sorts within the sphere of moral concern, while the other emphasizes a holistic focus on the ecosystem itself over and above its individual components. In evaluating the different approaches that have been taken, one concern of mine will be the extent to which the ethical accounts lend themselves to congruency with our overall empirical understanding of the world and, in particular, the place of human beings in relation to other lifeforms. The primary reason why a need for an environmental ethic exists, however, is that human beings are exerting an increasing impact on their environment, an effect that can in large part be related to rapidly increasing human numbers, and therefore an important measure of the adequacy of an environmental ethic will lie in its ability to address issues of human population growth. 1 2 In this chapter, we will consider very briefly some of the differences between the individual-centered and the ecosystem-centered approaches in order to frame the major points of debate. Perhaps the best known schemes to extend moral consideration beyond the boundaries of the human species along individualistic lines have been those of Peter Singer, utilizing a utilitarian ethic, and Tom Regan, who has developed a "rights view." Singer draws on the tradition of Jeremy Bentham in emphasizing the capacity of many nonhuman animals to experience pleasure and pain, and he thus identifies the possession of sentience as the relevant characteristic qualifying an individual organism for moral consideration; since different animals apparently exhibit different degrees of sentience, Singer accepts a kind of graded hierarchy that permits a weighing of the interests of different kinds of animals, with harms to some permissible if outweighed by the greater good of others.^ Regan, on the other hand, recognizes the "equal right" of every "experiencing subject of a life" to be "treated with respect" rather than simply as a means to an end; he notes that "where we draw the line" between rights-holders and those that are not may be "controversial," but rights clearly extend to all mature mammals, and those that have rights have them absolutely-infringements are not to be countenanced for presumed benefits to others.^ "Peter Singer, Practical Ethics 2d ed. (Cambridge: Cambridge University . Press, 1993), 57-61; Singer, Animal Liberation revised ed. (New York: Avon , Books, 1990), 176. ^See Tom Regan, The Case for Animal Rights (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1983), 77, 145, 243, 248, 266. . 3 Much of the attention of both Singer and Regan has been focused on the treatment of domestic animals, primarily within the domains of factory farming and animal experimentation. Two other philosophers who utilize an individual- centered paradigm, Robin Attfield and Paul Taylor, have focused their attention on environmental issues, and their views will be examined in detail in chapter 3. However, the theories of Singer and Regan have been given more attention by the ecocenthsts in defining their own differing point of view, and this brief introduction to Singer's and Regan's positions should suffice to illuminate the contrasts. With respect to environmental issues. Singer fails to find intelligible answers to questions about the morally significant interests of nonsentient animals or plants, species, and ecosystems,^ and the only reasons he can accept for according greater concern to members of endangered species than to comparable nonendangered creatures have to do with the indirect benefits that sentient beings might reap from their preservation.'* Regan, likewise, sees membership in an endangered species as conferring no additional moral weight upon an animal beyond what may have already as an individual it bearer of rights,^ and he rejects the subordination of individuals to "the greater biotic good," an implication he finds in the Leopoldian land ethic or ecosystem- ^Peter Singer, Practical Ethics 2d ed. (Cambridge: Cambridge University , Press, 1993), 276-84. '*See Peter Singer, "Not for Humans Only: The Place of Nonhumans in Environmental Issues," in K. E. Goodpaster and K. M. Sayre, eds.. Ethics and Problems of the 21st Century (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1979), 203-4. ^Regan, The Case for Animal Rights 245-46, 362-63, 359-61 .