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Moral ConsiderationIn 1972 an essay entitled “Should Trees Have Standing?—Towards Legal Rights for Natural Objects” triggered a fierce debate among lawyers and moral philosophers about ascribing moral consideration to nature.1 It has long been accepted in ethics and law that standing2 (and thus moral consideration) is given only to persons and their institutions.3 In the reasoning of deontological ethics, humans have direct duties only to one another. Thus, a duty to care for a forest is really a duty to care for private property or for public land including the trees on it.4 Similarly, the natural law tradition of teleological ethics restricts our moral community to humans by reasoning that the natural world exists for human happiness.5
Certainly, the self-organizing nature of organisms and ecosystems has parallels with human autonomy. As rationality and autonomy are grounds in traditional ethics for limiting moral consideration to humans, might these new scientific insights prompt us to revise our ethical presumptions and embrace duties directly to (or for) nonhuman animals and ecosystems? Might current science also give us reason to redefine the consequential standard of happiness, so that it extends our moral community to include animals that suffer as well as the integrity of forests and other ecosystems? To address these questions, we assess first how current science limits as well as expands our knowledge. Then we consider how our understanding of evolution and ecology is relevant for doing environmental ethics. WHAT WE KNOW AND CAN’T KNOW“It is often claimed that science stands mute on questions of values: that science can help us to achieve what we value once our priorities are fixed, but can play no role in fixing these weightings. That claim is certainly incorrect. Science plays a key role in these matters. For what we value depends on what we believe, and what we believe is strong influenced by science.”8 This is as true for us today, as it was for Aristotle and Kant. What we believe about the world depends on what we know, and the most recent studies in science reveal not only how our brains work, but also the limits of our ability to know the world as it is. Sense-MakingBiologists now verify that our brains construct our perceptions. Our neurological system does not simply record data. “Perception is not a process of passive absorption, but of active construction.”9 The human brain has complex feedback systems that filter and interpret sensory experience, and these systems are affected by our experience.10 “Your understanding of reality is constructed in large part according to your expectations and beliefs, which are based on all your past experiences, which are held in the cortex as predictive memory.”11 This means that no matter how objective we may try to be, our knowledge is also subjective.12 “No observations can be made at all, without some initial predispositions to notice some things rather than others.”13 Our worldview is always our worldview.
Furthermore, quantum mechanics has verified experimentally that we live in a nonlocal universe. We are unable to understand the total reality of a particular event, because the entire universe is entangled.15 Whatever we know, we know only from within the entangled relationships that constitute our sense of reality.16 Yet, these entangled relationships also transcend our “local” knowing.17 Thus, our observations cannot fully disclose reality, for perceiving one aspect of what is happening hides complementary aspects that we might otherwise see.18 This scientific view of the limitations of our understanding “in no way denies the existence of a real physical world, but rather rejects an objectivist conception of our relation to it. The world is never given to us as a brute fact detachable from our conceptual frameworks. Rather, it shows up in all the describable ways it does thanks to the structure of our subjectivity and our intentional activities.”19 Our minds emerge from the natural world, so we are unable to stand apart from the world to observe it.20 As conscious beings living in a world that is affected by our observations, we shape ourselves and our world as we seek to understand both.21 Our knowledge only approximates reality. These scientific insights have three critical implications for ethics. First, we must take into account the effect of our consciousness on what we observe and describe.22 The “transition from the ‘possible’ to the ‘actual’ takes place during the act of observation.”23 In actuality, “the world comes into being through our knowledge of it.”24 If we address environmental issues from within the environment, which is our habitat, we will see that we are the environmental crisis. Ethical Implications Second, because we shape what we know, our responsibility in making ethical decisions is crucial. “Living is a process of sense-making, of bringing forth significance and value.”25 Our knowledge may be limited, but acting on our knowledge makes sense both of the world and our own lives. Therefore, we are the only solution to the environmental crisis.
Science confirms that moral consideration is a human decision. Traditional ethics has limited the moral community to humans and their institutions. On the basis of current science, however, we may decide that it is rational to ascribe moral consideration to organisms, species, and ecosystems. We are responsible for realizing the moral potentiality of nature. In the next section we see that these implications are supported by recent proposals for modifying the theory of evolution and by some of the work done in the discipline of ecology.28 Like every form of human knowledge, scientific reasoning is dynamic.29 We are responsible now for discerning how to apply scientific conclusions to our environmental crisis.30 AN EVOLVING THEORY OF EVOLUTIONWhen Charles Darwin described evolution as the result of “natural selection,” he was drawing an analogy to the breeding of animals, which involves artificial selection. It was well known that animal breeders could make changes in a species by breeding stock with certain traits. Darwin’s hypothesis was that changes also occur spontaneously in nature, and that changes contributing to the survival of an organism in its environment are more likely to be passed on to the next generation. Darwin proposed that natural selection might account not only for changes within a species, but also for the evolution of diverse species. Thus, the word selection had a different meaning for Darwin than for animal breeders, as they select animals for breeding with the purpose of improving a trait. Darwin conceived of natural selection as a natural process resulting in the greater survival of organisms that are fit for their environment.31 Fit for an Environment Many organisms in an environment are predatory. Herbivores eat plants, and carnivores eat herbivores and smaller carnivores. This obvious fact and Darwin’s theory about why the more fit survive in nature were used as evidence to support a political and economic theory known as social Darwinism. A moral philosopher was the first to characterize natural selection as “the survival of the fittest.”32 The phrase was applied uncritically to rationalize the success of the rich and the suffering of the poor, without challenging the economic and political injustice that at least partly explains this disparity.33
Social Darwinism, nonetheless, continues to cast a shadow over environmental ethics. We find this thinking, for example, in the “lifeboat ethics” that makes an ecological argument “against helping the poor.”37 Clearly, there are dangers in drawing ethical inferences from scientific theories. We should keep this in mind as we consider how genetics has led to a revision of the Darwinian theory of evolution that is known as the neo-Darwinian synthesis. Genetic EnvironmentDarwin proposed the theory of natural selection before scientists were able to confirm the presence and role of genes. Now the scientific discipline of genetics explains how the traits of an organism are transmitted to subsequent generations and also how changes may occur among genes that will affect the traits of an organism.38 It is important to emphasize that genes function in their environment as parts of chromosomes in a cell within an organism. “How, when and to what extent any gene is expressed—that is, how its sequence is translated into a functioning protein—depends on signals from the cell in which it is embedded. As this cell is itself at any one time in receipt of and responding to signals, not just from a single gene, but from many others which are simultaneously switched on or off, the expression of any single gene is influenced by what is happening in the whole of the rest of the genome.”39 That is, a gene does not simply produce a trait. Genes are part of a process that constructs proteins, which depend not only on the amino-acid sequence dictated by a gene, but also “on their environment, on the presence of water, ions and sometimes other small molecules, and on acidity or alkalinity.”40 Genes contain information about development, but the expression of genetic information depends on the environment.
The active engagement of organisms and genes with their environments makes a summary like “the survival of the fittest” too simple. Also, it is misleading to assert, as Richard Dawkins does, that: “We [humans] are survival machines—robot vehicles blindly programmed to preserve the selfish molecules known as genes.”42 The word selfish, expressing an analogy to caring only for oneself, does not reflect the process by which genes are expressed through interactions in the environment of a cell, which occur within the environment of the organism as the organism interacts with it. Learning The claim that humans are “blindly programmed” is also overreaching, for there is ample evidence that all kinds of organisms, as well as humans, learn to change themselves and their environment. Animals have the ability to learn because the same genes that respond to signals from within also respond to experience in the environment that impacts the organism. “The reason that animals can learn is that they can alter their nervous systems on the basis of external experience. And the reason that they can do that is that experience itself can modify the expression of genes.”43 Most “animals are born not just with the ability to perceive and act but also with the ability to learn and to use past experience to improve subsequent behavior.” 44 For instance, sea slugs “can learn to ignore the irritating prods of curious experimenters.”45 Honey bees are “prewired” to orient by the sun’s position on the horizon, but have to learn “the sun’s trajectory at the bee’s particular latitude at a particular time of the year.”46
Among some chimpanzees, older chimps teach youngsters how to forage for food by using a stick to draw termites out of their nest. In other communities, adult chimps use stones to crack open nuts while younger chimps watch. As not all chimps do these things, we know that these traits are not caused by genes.48 Diverse phenotypes (chimps using sticks, chimps using stones, and chimps using neither) are expressed by one genotype (chimpanzee). These various behaviors are taught and learned, which is what we mean by culture.49 Brain Plasticity In humans and other mammals changes in the brain take place as an organism responds to changing environments. This making, pruning, and rewiring of neural circuits is called neuroplasticity. “[F]rom the earliest stages of development, laying down brain circuits is an active rather than a passive process, directed by the interaction between experience and the environment.”50 Until recently scientists thought that aging brought an end to neuroplasticity. “In the past two decades, however, an enormous amount of research has revealed that the brain never stops changing and adjusting.”51 Our experience changes our brains. “Without question the brains of adult mammals in general, and humans in particular, are endowed with a plasticity that enables them to continually adjust their behavior with experience. The development process does not tie down every conceivable synapse in a rigid and unalterable form, but leaves considerable scope for ongoing readjustment in the adult.”52
We can also change our brains in significant ways by focusing our attention on the changes we want to make. “Paying attention matters. It matters not only for the size of the brain’s representation of this or that part of the body’s surface, of this or that muscle. It matters for the dynamic structure of the very circuits of the brain and for the brain’s ability to remake itself.”57 Our minds can change our brains! This fact is crucial for doing ethics. How we understand evolution affects our thinking about ethics, so we need to be clear about what we now know from recent science: · Organisms evolve and change the environment that “selects” them. · Organisms coevolve as well as eat one another and compete. · Humans (and many other organisms) learn, communicate, and choose. · Mammals change their brains and humans change their minds. “In natural selection as we now understand it, cooperation appears to exist in complementary relation to competition.”58 Social Darwinism is wrong. We are not “survival machines” for our genes. Mind matters.59 ECOSYSTEMS AND EMERGENT PROPERTIESTo consider how we should change our minds, we look to ecology: “The study of the relationships between and among organisms and their environment,” which “consists of both non-living factors and other organisms.”60 Like every scientific discipline, ecology is a tradition of thought that includes diverse explanations. Throughout the twentieth century, ecologists have debated whether the environment is best represented by organic models that emphasize a dynamic community or economic models that analyze the whole in terms of its parts.61 The present environmental crisis as well as recent research has shifted the focus to ecosystems. Analyzing the environment as a living system involves assessing the relationships within the system as well as its emergent properties, which are not reducible to the functions of the parts of an ecosystem. Ecology now seeks to describe the integrity of an ecosystem.62 Relationships Many relationships within the environment are mutually beneficial, or symbiotic. Fungi in the soil attach to the roots of trees to form structures called mycorrhizae, a relationship that benefits both the trees and the fungi. The trees supply carbohydrates to the fungi, and the fungi increase the ability of the root system to absorb water and minerals.63 It is estimated that 95 percent of all plants on earth participate in this symbiotic relationship, and some species of trees would not survive without the assistance of fungi.64
The ecological relationships of tree roots and fungi, and also mitochondria within every plant, fungi, and animal cell, illustrate mutually beneficial coevolution that is not accurately characterized using notions such as the “survival of the fittest” or “selfish genes.” So, we should not be surprised by the definition of an ecosystem as: “An ecological community together with its environment, functioning as a unit.”69 Ecosystems Ecosystems are everywhere. Many consist of “a community of plants and animals in an environment that supplies them with raw materials for life, i.e., chemical elements and water. The ecosystem is delimited by the climate, altitude, water and soil characteristics, and other physical conditions of the environment.” 70 Within an ecosystem, “Every species is bound to its community in the unique manner by which it variously consumes, is consumed, competes, and cooperates with other species. It also indirectly affects the community in the way it alters the soil, water, and air.”71 An ecosystem, however, may also be defined as “the collection of biotic and abiotic components and processes that comprise and govern the behavior of some defined subset of the biosphere.”72 And the biosphere may be understood as “a global ecosystem composed of living organisms (biota) and the abiotic (nonliving) factors from which they derive energy and nutrients.”73 This description emphasizes the contribution of the parts to the whole. Bacteria, for instance, which are the most abundant form of life on earth, play a crucial role in the complex processes of ecosystems. Without bacteria, we would not have nitrogen in our soil, and the ground would not sustain the trees that produce much of the oxygen we need to breathe and the crops we grow for food.74 Hundreds of millions of bacteria live in our intestines, stomach, and mouth and assist with our digestion.75
If “all organisms larger than bacteria are intrinsically communities,”79 then we need to understand evolution more ecologically.80 In every multicellular organism, there are bacteria participating in the life of the organism rather than “competing” with it for survival. Thus, evolution is more accurately described as a process of natural selection in which communities that are fit for changing environments are more likely to survive. Emergent PropertiesEcologists also verify that ecosystems have emergent properties “such as energy transfer, nutrient cycling, gas regulation, climate regulation, and the water cycle. As is typical of emergent properties, ecosystem functions cannot be readily explained by even the most extensive knowledge of system components of ecosystem structure.”81 Because emergent processes are not adequately understood, the consequences of damaging ecosystems are unpredictable.82 “While emergent cooperative behaviors within parts (organisms) that maintain conditions of survival in the whole (environment or ecosystem) appear to be everywhere present in nature, the conditions of observation are such that we distort results when we view any of these systems as isolated.”83 No one view of the whole explains the whole.
The emergent processes of ecosystems
are irreplaceable. “There are no plausible technological substitutes
for soil fertility, clean fresh water, unspoiled landscapes,
Also, these emergent processes have resiliency.85 “Ecosystems remain resilient in the face of change through high biodiversity of species, organized in complex webs of relationships. The many relationships are maintained through self-organizing processes, not top-down control.”86 In an ecosystem, “each individual in a species acts independently, yet its activity patterns cooperatively mesh with the patterns of other species. Cooperation and competition are interlinked and held in balance.”87 Also, diversity matters: “the more species that inhabit an ecosystem, such as a forest or lake, the more productive and stable is the ecosystem.”88 Ecosystems are relevant for doing environmental ethics because: · Ecosystems sustain symbiotic and predatory relationships among organisms. · Ecosystem processes are complex, self-organizing, diverse, and resilient. · The emergent properties of an ecosystem are irreplaceable. · The consequences of damaging ecosystems are unpredictable. These lessons do not determine our ethical choices, but are the “environment” of these choices. Adopting this worldview means considering possibilities or probabilities, rather than simply describing facts, as every environment is always changing due to its dynamic nature and our impact on it.89 Therefore, our ability to predict the likely consequences of our actions is always limited. In the words of philosopher of science Karl Popper, “The future is open.”90 Taking an ecosystem approach means shifting our focus from the parts to the whole, from structure to process, from objective claims to contingent descriptions, and from objects to relationships.91 In environmental ethics, this requires considering the identity of organisms within their environment and also the integrity of natural systems. ASCRIBING VALUE TO NATUREScience cannot verify that nature has a purpose, nor can scientific reasoning determine whether the natural world has intrinsic worth. Yet, scientific knowledge is relevant for addressing these questions by moral reasoning. The next three sections consider the ethical implications of the scientific conclusions that nature generates diversity, evolution is an emergent process of life, and eco systems, as well as organisms, are self-organizing. I argue from these considerations that it is reasonable to ascribe objective value to nature. Nature Generates DiversityThe “biosphere is profoundly generative—somehow fundamentally always creative.” 92 Life fills every niche of nature, and as the environment changes the dynamic process of evolution enables some species to adapt. Random genetic changes and competition play a crucial role, but organisms (including human beings) also coevolve.93 If the result has value (as humans beings, we certainly think that we have value), and the process is necessary for the result, it seems reasonable to ascribe value to the natural means that have led to the valued result.
“It is certainly true that there is randomness in evolutionary nature, but it is not random that there is diversity. Four billion species do not appear by accident. Rather, randomness is a diversity generator, mixed as it is with principles of the spontaneous generation of order . . . randomness is an advancement generator, supported, as advancement comes to be, by the trophic pyramid94 in which lower ways of life are also conserved.”95 When we are unable to solve a problem, we sometimes try whatever we can think of, and this may lead us to a solution. Our own experience confirms that making random changes need not be without value. Similarly, in evolution: “Randomness guarantees the trial-and-error exploration of the potentialities of the system. Randomness sifts through new options for both diversity and advancement.”96 Evolution Is an Emergent Process Both physics and biology now assert that “the old view of evolution as a linear progression from lower atomized organisms to more complex atomized organisms no longer seems appropriate. The more appropriate view could be that all organisms (parts) are emergent aspects of the self-organizing process of life (whole), and that the proper way to understand the parts is to examine their embedded relations to the whole.”97
That is, evolution generates not only
organisms but diverse and complex ecosystems, and these natural
processes have a “heading” toward “species diversification, support, and
richness.”98 Moral philosopher Holmes Rolston III
The counterargument is that valuing ecosystems may result in “harmful consequences to human individuals or human projects and institutions.”100 Yet, contrasting the value of humans and ecosystems ignores the scientific facts that humans can only live in ecosystems and are themselves ecosystems. Therefore, it makes sense to value these natural facts as well as our own purposes. This reasoning also supports ascribing value to biodiversity and the survival of other species, as well as the habitats that sustain all life. “Moral consideration should first be directed toward the natural community or ecosystem as a whole, so that the overall good for the ecosystem is the primary goal of action. But this communal good should be supplemented by a consideration of natural individuals and species, so that in cases where ecosystemic well-being is not an issue, the protection of endangered species or natural individuals can be morally justified.”101 I argue in chapter 4 that this is more reasonable than including only individual organisms in our moral community.102 I agree with Mary Midgley that we may have duties to plants and trees, as well as animals and species, because “as beings forming a small part of the fauna of this planet, we also exist in relation to that whole, and its fate cannot be a matter of moral indifference to us.”103 I argue in chapter 7, however, that this need not mean ascribing rights to animals.104 Expanding our moral community will likely increase our conflicts of duty. Yet, conflicts are the stuff of ethics and law, so this is no reason to deny moral consideration to organisms and ecosystems. Moreover, the law has already extended our responsibility to include protecting endangered species and the integrity of ecosystems.105 Organisms and Ecosystems Are Self-organizing Life is self-organizing at all levels. “Far more complex than any computer or robot, the common bacterium perceives and swims toward its food.”106 In pursuit of their own survival, bacteria have made the earth’s environment viable for us and other life by removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, producing oxygen, and “inventing every major kind of metabolic transformation on the planet.”107
Having such an identity is certainly not the same as having autonomy or rationality, which are the human attributes that philosophers have argued justify limiting moral consideration to persons. Yet, such an identity distinguishes organisms from nonliving natural resources, and is the evolutionary root of autonomy and reason.111 “Every organism has a good-of-its-kind; it defends its own kind [its own way of life] as a good kind.”112 Every organism is oriented toward the future. “Thus life is facing forward as well as outward and extends ‘beyond’ its own immediacy in both directions at once.”113 There are no conscious intentions in the actions of bacteria or most animals. Yet, the emergent properties of self-organization and sense-making, and the forward trajectory of every organism in seeking its own good, are evidence that all life has value for itself. This is true of plants as well as animals, for plants “sense all sorts of things about the plants around them and use that information to interact with them.”114 We can distinguish, as two forms of intrinsic worth, this intrinsic value for itself and the intrinsic value in itself, which we ascribe to rationality and autonomy: “The former is common to human and nonhuman nature (at least its biotic components) and is connected with their capacity to strive to maintain their functioning integrity. The latter is confined only to humans and is connected . . . with their unique type of consciousness, reason, and capacity for language.”115 This distinction allows us to affirm both the good of nature and the good of human culture. We recognize that a self-organizing natural system has intrinsic worth (for itself ), but we also acknowledge the intrinsic worth (in itself ) of the science that identifies this natural fact, and the ethics that ascribes value to it.
Why do we have a duty to care for ecosystems? “The ecologist finds that ecosystems objectively are satisfactory communities in the sense that, though not all organismic needs are gratified, enough are for species long to survive, and the critical ethicist finds (in a subjective judgment matching the objective process) that such ecosystems are imposing and satisfactory communities to which to attach duty.”117 Nature Has Objective Value Is nature without value until there are humans to value it? Not if we understand the act of ascribing value as recognizing value, rather than creating value. We attribute value to our lives because we reason that human life has worth. Valuing is the subjective recognition of objective value.118 If our (subjective) valuing of nature is reasonable, then nature has (objective) value. Understanding that human beings have evolved and rely on the earth’s ecosystems makes it clear that human life is only part of the generative process we call nature. Furthermore, if there are good reasons for ascribing intrinsic worth to nature, then we have a duty toward nature, as it is, to act with care.119 The evolutionary and ecological processes that led to human life—and thus to consciousness, knowledge, and ethics—have objective value not only after humans exist, but in the millennia of natural history that generated a profusion of organisms and ecosystems.
Second, ascribing intrinsic value to nature requires that we distinguish the world of human culture from the world of nature. In the world of culture, which is the traditional worldview of moral philosophy, we do not reason from what is to what ought to be. For example, murder in society is a fact, but no one suggests that it ought to be morally acceptable. Deriving what “ought to be” from what “is,” and reducing “the question of values to that of facts,” is known in moral philosophy as “the naturalistic fallacy.”120 Yet, as we contemplate the world of nature, and also ascribe intrinsic value to organisms and ecosystems, it is reasonable to infer that what is (in wild nature) is what ought to be. For example, predation in the natural world involves killing, which “ought to be” in the sense that we “ought to let it be,” because this is how life in ecosystems has evolved and survives.
“What is ethically puzzling, and
exciting in the marriage and mutual transformation of ecological
description and evaluation is that here an ought is not so much
derived from an is as discovered simultaneously with it.
As we progress from description of fauna and flora . . . of stability
and dynamism, and move on to intricacy . . . to unity and harmony with
oppositions in counterpoint and synthesis, to organisms evolved within
and satisfactorily fitting their communities, arriving at length at
beauty and goodness, it is difficult to say where the natural facts
leave off and where the natural
Our environmental crisis is a conflict between the world of human culture and the world of nature. Our way of life is the problem, and thus also the solution. This crisis is due largely to our ethical failure, in the world of human culture, to grant moral consideration to the intrinsic worth of the world of nature. How are we to resolve this problem? Rather than rejecting anthropocentric thinking for an ecocentric perspective, I argue that we must learn from both. An ecocentric perspective extends our moral community beyond ourselves to the world of nature, and anthropocentric reasoning defends the moral standards of social justice in the world of human culture.
NOTES1. Christopher D. Stone, “Should Trees Have Standing?—Towards Legal Rights for Natural Objects,” 45 S.Cal.L.Rev 450 (1972), reprinted in Christopher D. Stone, Should Trees Have Standing?—Towards Legal Rights for Natural Objects (Los Altos, CA: William Kaufmann, 1974). The original article was cited by Justice Douglas in his dissent in Sierra Club v. Morton, 405 U.S. 727 (1972), a decision by the Supreme Court upholding a lower court ruling that the Sierra Club did not have legal “standing” in its lawsuit to block a decision by the Forest Service that would allow development in the Mineral King Valley in the Sierra Nevada Mountains, because the Sierra Club itself could not show that it would be adversely affected. Stone proposed that the law should allow someone to represent the interests of trees in the valley, because the trees would be adversely affected by economic development. See also Christopher D. Stone, Earth and Other Ethics: The Case for Moral Pluralism (New York: Harper & Row, 1987). 2. “Standing is the ability of a party to bring a lawsuit in court based upon their stake in the outcome. A party seeking to demonstrate standing must be able to show the court sufficient connection to and harm from the law or action challenged. Otherwise, the court will rule that you ‘lack standing’ to bring the suit and dismiss your case.” “Standing Law & Definition,” USLegal, online at http://definitions.uslegal.com/s/standing. 3. See Claire Andre and Manuel Velasquez, “Who Has Moral Standing,” Markkula Center for Applied Ethics, Santa Clara University, online at http://www.scu.edu/ethics/publications/ iie/v4n1/counts.html. Institutions are seen as representing the interests of persons. 4. Immanuel Kant wrote: “So far as animals are concerned we have no direct moral duties. Animals are not self-conscious and are there merely as a means to an end. That end is man.” Immanuel Kant, “Duties to Animals and Spirits,” in Lectures on Ethics, trans. Louis Infield (New York: Harper and Row, 1963), 239–242, in Tom Regan, The Case for Animal Rights (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2004), 177. 5. Aristotle wrote: “Plants exist for the sake of animals, and brute beasts for the sake of man.” See Claire Andre and Manuel Velasquez, “Who Has Moral Standing,” Markkula Center for Applied Ethics, Santa Clara University, online at http://www.scu.edu/ethics/publications/iie/v4n1/ counts.html. 6. “Jeremy Bentham on the Suffering of Non-human Animals,” online at http://www .utilitarianism.com/jeremybentham.html. Chapter 8 quotes Bentham and considers including the assessment of animal suffering in consequential ethics. 7. By sentient he means animals able to feel pain like humans feel pain. See chapter 6. 8. Henry P. Stapp, Mindful Universe: Quantum Mechanics and the Participating Observer (New York: Springer, 2007), 5. “The proposition, foisted upon us by a materialism based on classical physics—that we human beings are essentially mechanical automata, with every least action and thought fixed from the birth of the universe by microscopic clockwork mechanisms—has created enormous difficulties for ethical theory. These difficulties lie like the plague on Western culture, robbing its citizens of any rational basis for self-esteem or self-respect, or esteem or respect for others. Quantum physics, joined to a natural embedding ontology, brings our human minds squarely into the dynamical workings of nature. With our physically efficacious minds now integrated into the unfolding of uncharted and yet-to-be-plumbed potentialities of an intricately interconnected whole, the responsibility that accompanies the power to decide things on the basis of one’s own thoughts, ideas, and judgments is laid upon us. This leads naturally and correctly to a concomitant elevation in the dignity of our persons and the meaningfulness of our lives. Ethical theory is thereby supplied with a rationally coherent foundation that an automaton account cannot match.” Ibid., 117. 9. Sandra Blakeslee and Matthew Blakeslee, The Body Has a Mind of Its Own, 41. “Thus, everyday observation and many experimental studies make it clear that experience-dependent, learned internal structures filter, select, and otherwise alter our perception and evaluation of sensory inputs. Such processes are so common that they seem only natural, and the excess of input beyond processing capacity makes them necessary. Two points, however, are of current relevance. First, since these internal structures select and value sensory input that is consistent with them, they create an exaggerated sense of agreement between the internal and external worlds. Second, since internal structures shape perceptual experience to be consistent with the structures themselves, they limit further alteration of brain structure by environmental input.” Bruce E. Wexler, Brain and Culture: Neurobiology, Ideology, and Social Change (Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2006), 154–155. 10. Rita Carter, Exploring Consciousness (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2002), 128. 11. Ibid. “Anatomists have found that in most areas of the cortex, for every fiber carrying information up the hierarchy, there are as many as ten fibers carrying processed information back down the hierarchy.” 12. Robert Nadeau and Menas Kafatos, The Non-Local Universe, 175. 13. Anthony O’Hear, Introduction to the Philosophy of Science (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1989), 24. 14. Henry P. Stapp, Mindful Universe, 8. “Science is what we know, and what we know is only what our observations tell us. It is unscientific to ask what is ‘really’ out there, what lies behind the observations.” Jeffrey M. Schwartz. The Mind and the Brain, 273–274. 15. “[T]he stark division between mind and world sanctioned by classical [Newtonian] physics is not in accord with our [current] scientific worldview. When nonlocality is factored into our understanding of the relationship between parts and wholes in physics and biology, then mind, or human consciousness, must be viewed as an emergent phenomenon in a seamlessly interconnected whole called the cosmos.” Robert Nadeau and Menas Kafatos, The Non-Local Universe, 5. 16. Erwin Schrödinger explains: “Hence this life of yours which you are living is not merely a piece of the entire existence, but is, in a certain sense, the whole; only this whole is not so constituted that it can be surveyed in one single glance.” Quoted in Ken Wilber, ed., Quantum Questions (Boulder, CO: Shambala, 1984), 97, in Robert Nadeau and Menas Kafatos, The Non-Local Universe, 216. 17. “And no scientific description of the physical substrate of a thought or feeling, no matter how complete, can account for the actual experience of a thought or feeling as an emergent aspect of global brain function.” Ibid., 143. 18. This is known as the principle of complementarity. “What is dramatically different about this new situation is that we are forced to recognize that our knowledge of the physical system cannot in principle be complete or total. Although we have in quantum mechanics complementary constructs that describe the entire situation, the experimental situation precludes simultaneous application of complementary aspects of the complete description.” Robert Nadeau and Menas Kafatos, The Non-Local Universe, 93. 19. Evan Thompson, Mind in Life, 82. “Objectivism takes things for granted, without asking how they are disclosable to human experience and knowledge, or how they come to be disclosed with the meaning of significance they have. Objectivism in biology, for example, takes the organism for granted as a ready-made object out there in the world. No concern is shown for how the category ‘organism’ is constituted for us in scientific experience.” Ibid., 164. 20. “The point here is not that the world would not exist if not for consciousness. Rather, it is that we have no grip on what reality means apart from what is disclosed to us as real, and such disclosure necessarily involves the intentional activity of consciousness.” Ibid., 21. 21. Robert Nadeau and Menas Kafatos, The Non-Local Universe, 179. 22. This means that we should not seek “to disclose the real essence of phenomena, but only to track down as far as possible relations between the multifold aspects of our experience.” Niels Bohr, quoted in Henry P. Stapp, Mindful Universe, 86. 23. Werner Heisenberg, quoted in Henry P. Stapp, Mindful Universe, 95. 24. Jeffrey M. Schwartz, The Mind and the Brain, 263. Henry Stapp argues: “Quantum theory rehabilitates the basic premise of moral philosophy. It entails that certain actions that a person can take are influenced by his stream of consciousness, which is not strictly controlled by any known law of nature.” Quoted in Jeffrey M. Schwartz, The Mind and the Brain, 374. 25. Evan Thompson, Mind in Life, 158. 26. Moral philosophers often refer to this issue as the social construction of nature. “Weaker forms of constructivism argue that ‘nature’ and ‘the environment’ have been interpreted in a variety of different ways at different times; and that ‘nature’ is inescapably viewed through a cultural lens.” Clare Palmer, “An Overview of Environmental Ethics,” in Andrew Light and Holmes Rolston III, eds., Environmental Ethics, 33. In this chapter I am highlighting changes in science that reflect and shape our cultural worldview. 27. This is the philosophical implication of the scientific principle of complementarity. 28. Many biologists, however, as we see in the discussion of evolution, have yet to accept that the Newtonian view of deterministic causality does not adequately explain life and its emergent properties. 29. A scientific theory is our best understanding of natural events, and every theory is open to revision as human knowledge grows. Timothy H. Goldsmith, The Biological Roots of Human Nature: Forging Links between Evolution and Behavior (New York: Oxford University Press, 1991), 12–13. 30. Science is always an interpretation: “the fact that there is a strong international consensus among scientists that global warming is caused almost entirely by humans does not make it any less of an interpretation.” Ted Nordhaus and Michael Shellenberger, Break Through, 142. 31. Twentieth-century biologist Theodosis Dobzhansky asserts: “Nothing in biology makes sense except in the light of evolution.” Quoted in Francis S. Collins, The Language of God: A Scientist Presents Evidence for Belief (New York: Free Press, 2006), 141. 32. The philosopher was Herbert Spencer. Mary Midgley, The Ethical Primate, 6. 33. Also, the eugenics movement adopted this slogan to support human breeding to try to improve and purify the human race. See “Modern History Sourcebook: Herbert Spencer: Social Darwinism, 1857,” online at http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/mod/spencer-darwin.html. 34. “Painting a new picture on the conflict side, even before the rise of ecology, biologists concluded that to portray a gladiatorial survival of the fittest was a distorted account; they prefer a model of the better adapted.” Holmes Rolston III, Environmental Ethics: Duties to and Values in the Natural World (Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press, 1988), 164. 35. “It seems doubtful that ‘plant defenses’ are that and nothing more. Plants regulate but do not eliminate the insects and animals that have coevolved with them.” Holmes Rolston III, Environmental Ethics, 165. 36. For example, parasitic wasps lay their eggs in caterpillars, and after these eggs hatch in a caterpillar the larvae feed on it. The wasps find the caterpillars by following the scent of a chemical, which is present in the caterpillar feces but is also secreted by the plant, when caterpillars feed on it. Together, parasitic wasps and the plants that caterpillars feed on have evolved a relationship that benefits the wasps and the plants; the caterpillars, too, survive and reproduce. See Steven Rose, Lifelines: Biology Beyond Determinism (Oxford: Oxford University Press), 227. 37. Garrett Hardin, “Lifeboat Ethics: The Case against Helping the Poor,” Psychology Today (Sep. 1974), online at http://www.garretthardinsociety.org/articles/art_lifeboat_ethics_case _against_helping_poor.html. 38. “Evolution is a fact that is now established beyond reasonable doubt. So is its main mechanism by natural selection acting on accidental genetic modifications devoid of intentionality. The findings of molecular biology can leave no doubt in this respect.” Christian de Duve, Life Evolving: Molecules, Mind, and Meaning (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), 289. 39. Steven Rose, Lifelines, 131. 40. Ibid. 41. Ibid., 140. For a critique of Dawkin’s position, see “Genocentrism” in Evan Thompson, Mind in Life, 173–194. 42. Richard Dawkins, quoted in Midgley, The Ethical Primate, 5. Unfortunately, economic and political influences, “which shape our metaphors, constrain our analogies and provide the foundations for our theories and hypothesis-making” support “biology’s currently dominant reductionist mode of thinking.” Steven Rose, Lifelines, 70. 43. Gary Marcus, The Birth of the Mind (New York: Basic Books, 2004), 98. 44. Ibid., 22. 45. Ibid. 46. Ibid., 23. 47. The “language” of bees is transmitted genetically, but the dialects of some birdsongs are transmitted culturally. Timothy Goldsmith, The Biological Roots of Human Nature, 103–104. 48. “Each tool-using behavior recorded in Africa is limited to certain populations of chimps but has mostly continuous distribution within its range. This is just the pattern expected if the behavior had been spread culturally.” Edward O. Wilson, On Human Nature (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1978), 30. 49. Bijal Trivedi, “Chimps Shown Using Not Just a Tool but a ‘Tool Kit,’” National Geographic News, online at http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2004/10/1006_041006_chimps.html. 50. “The basic principle is this: genetic signals play a large role in the initial structuring of the brain. The ultimate shape of the brain, however, is the outcome of an ongoing active process that occurs where lived experience meets both the inner and the outer environment.” Jeffrey M. Schwartz, The Mind and the Brain, 117. 51. “Brain Plasticity: What Is It?” online at http://faculty.washington.edu/chudler/plast.html. 52. Timothy Goldsmith, The Biological Roots of Human Nature, 85. “Does the genome specify, in detail, all of the connections a developing nervous system makes within itself? A simple calculation shows that this is not possible. The human brain is estimated to contain about 1012 neurons and roughly 1015 synapses, but human chromosomes contain about 105 genes. Even if these estimates are off by one or two orders of magnitude, one can see that the instructions for wiring together the brain must be quite general in character. There is simply not enough information in the genetic code to specify in advance every synaptic connection, let along the finer details of neuron geometry.” Ibid., 74. See also Gerald M. Edelman, Second Nature: Brain Science and Human Knowledge (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2006), 22. 53. Ibid. “[C]ertain kinds of competence—perceptual, linguistic, social—do need to develop on schedule, or the deleterious consequences are reversed with difficulty, if at all. This is because the capacity for learning, like the development of body form, is subject to some genetic constraints.” 54. The adult brain has “the power to repair damaged regions, to grow new neurons, to rezone regions that performed one task and have them assume a new task, [and] to change the circuitry that weaves neurons into the networks that allow us to remember, feel, suffer, think, imagine, and dream.” Sharon Begley, Train Your Mind, Change Your Brain, 8. 55. Ibid., 8–9. 56. “[E]xercise increases levels of serotonin, norepinephrine, and dopamine—important neurotransmitters that traffic in thoughts and emotions.” The neurons in the brain “connect to one another through ‘leaves’ on treelike branches, and exercise causes those branches to grow and bloom with new buds, thus enhancing brain function at a fundamental level.” John J. Ratey, MD, with Eric Hagerman, Spark: The Revolutionary New Science of Exercise and the Brain (New York: Little, Brown and Company, 2008), 5. 57. Jeffrey M. Schwartz, The Mind and the Brain, 224. For a pianist, “merely thinking about playing the piano leads to a measurable, physical change in the brain’s motor cortex” and patients with depression by “thinking differently about the thoughts that threaten to send them back into the abyss of despair . . . have dialed up activity in one region of the brain and quieted it in another, reducing their risk of relapse.” Sharon Begley, Train Your Mind, Change Your Brain, 9. 58. “This is particularly obvious in predator-prey relationships and the manner in which different predators have evolved to favor different prey and hunting strategies in a particular ecological niche. What is privileged in the struggle for survival is not competition between parts. It is complementary relationships between parts and wholes that result in emergent self-regulating properties that are greater than the sum of parts and that serve to perpetuate the existence of the whole.” Robert Nadeau and Menas Kafatos, The Non-Local Universe, 207. 59. The phrase “mind matters” is part of the titles of chapters 8–10 in Robert Nadeau and Menas Kafatos, The Non-Local Universe. 60. Bill Freedman, Environmental Ecology, 550. This text has the subtitle “The Ecological Effects of Pollution, Disturbance, and Other Stresses.” Among the topics discussed are air pollution, eutrophication of fresh water, pesticides, harvesting of forests, oil pollution, biodiversity and extinctions, and the ecological effects of warfare. 61. Writing at the beginning of the final quarter of the twentieth century, Donald Worster argues that the split between an “organic, communal ideal and a more pragmatic utilitarianism remains in doubt.” Donald Worster, Nature’s Economy: The Roots of Ecology (San Francisco, CA: Sierra Club Books, 1977), 257. 62. See Laura Westra, An Environmental Proposal for Ethics: The Principle of Integrity (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 1994). 63. “Tree Roots,” Iowa State University Extension, online at http://www.extension.iastate.edu/ Pages/tree/roots.html. 64. “Mycorrhiza,” online at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mycorrhizae. 65. Harold Morowitz asserts that “all evolution is coevolution.” Harold J. Morowitz, The Emergence of Everything: How the World Became Complex (New York: Oxford University Press, 2002), 137. 66. “Citric Acid Cycle,” online at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citric_acid_cycle. 67. “Cellular Respiration,” online at http://users.rcn.com/jkimball.ma.ultranet/BiologyPages/ C/CellularRespiration.html. 68. “Mitochondria,” online at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mitochondria. “An estimated 6 trillion reactions are taking place in each cell every second.” Deepak Chopra, The Essential Ageless Body, Timeless Mind: The Essence of the Quantum Alternative to Growing Old (New York: Harmony Books, 2007), 18. 69. Yahoo! Education, online at http://education.yahoo.com/reference/dictionary/entry/ ecosystem. 70. Yahoo! Education, online at http://education.yahoo.com/reference/encyclopedia/entry/ 14890;_ylt=ApQPyGKZkvGjcMfSDLN.KsZTt8wF. 71. Edward O. Wilson, The Future of Life (London: Abacus, 2003), 11. 72. Wikipedia, online at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ecosystem. 73. Encyclopedia Britannica, online at http://www.britannica.com/eb/article-9117266/biosphere. 74. Lynn Margulis, “Power to the Protoctists,” in Lynn Margulis and Dorion Sagan, Slanted Truths: Essays on Gaia, Symbiosis, and Evolution (New York: Springer-Verlag 1997), 79. 75. Steven Rose, Lifelines, 2. 76. “You yourself are a rainforest of a kind. There is a good chance that tiny spiderlike mites build nests at the base of your eyelashes. Fungal spores and hyphae on your toenails await the right conditions to sprout a Lilliputian forest.” Edward O. Wilson, The Future of Life, 20. 77. “[O]f all the organisms on Earth today, only prokaryotes (bacteria) are individuals. All other live beings (‘organisms’—such as animals, plants, and fungi) are metabolically complex communities of a multitude of tightly organized beings. That is, what we generally accept as an individual animal, such as a cow, is recognizable as a collection of various numbers and kinds of autopoietic [self-organizing] entities that, functioning together, form an emergent entity—the cow.” Lynn Margulis, “Big Trouble in Biology: Physiological Autopoiesis versus Mechanistic neo-Darwinism,” in Slanted Truths, 273. 78. Nicholas Wade, “Bacteria Thrive in Inner Elbow; No Harm Done,” The New York Times (May 23, 2008), online at http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/23/science/23gene.html. 79. Ibid. 80. “It now appears that microbes—also called microorganisms, germs, bugs, protozoans, and bacteria, depending on the context, are not only the building blocks of life, but occupy and are indispensable to every known living structure on the Earth today.” Lynn Margulis and Dorian Sagan, Microcosmos: Four Billion Years from Our Microbial Ancestors (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1986), 16, in Robert Nadeau and Menas Kafatos, The Non-Local Universe, 110. 81. Herman E. Daly and Joshua Farley, Ecological Economics: Principles and Applications (Washington, DC: Island Press, 2004), 431–432. “The concept of emergence essentially recognizes that an assemblage of parts in successive levels of organization in nature can result in wholes that display properties that cannot be explained in terms of the collection of parts.” Robert Nadeau and Menas Kafatos, The Non-Local Universe, 118. 82. Also, nonlinear systems are unpredictable. In nature the flow of streams and the weather are good examples. “A system like this, in which the outcome is exquisitely dependent on the details of the initial conditions, is said to be chaotic.” James Trefil, Human Nature: A Blueprint for Managing the Earth—by People, for People (New York: Henry Hold and Company, 2004), 180–181. 83. Robert Nadeau and Menas Kafatos. The Non-Local Universe, 118. 84. Robert Ayers, quoted in Charles J. Kibert, Jan Sendzimir and G. Bradley Guy, “Defining an Ecology of Construction,” in Charles J. Kibert, Jan Sendzimir, and G. Bradley Guy, eds., Construction Ecology: Nature as the Basis for Green Buildings (New York: Spon Press, 2002), 16. 85. Ecological theories now measure the resiliency of ecosystems rather than their stability, as disturbances are understood to be natural. See Ned Hettinger and Bill Throop, “Refocusing Ecocentrism: De-emphasizing Stability and Defending Wildness,” Environmental Ethics (Spring 1999), in Louis P. Pojman and Paul Pojman, eds., Environmental Ethics, 187–188. 86. Ernest Lowe, “Foreward,” in Charles J. Kibert, Jan Sendzimir, and G. Bradley Guy, eds. Construction Ecology, xxiv. Italics added. 87. Ibid. “Even very similar organisms in the same habitat display internal adaptive behaviors that serve to sustain the whole when food and other resources are in short supply. One such adaptive behavior involves the division of the habitat into ecological niches where the presence of one species does not harm the existence of another similar species.” Robert Nadeau and Menas Kafatos. The Non-Local Universe, 117. 88. “By ‘productive,’ the scientists mean the amount of plant and animal tissue created each hour or year or any other given unit of time. By ‘stability’ they mean one or the other or both of two things: first, how narrowly the summed abundances of all species vary through time; and second, how quickly the ecosystem recovers from fire, drought, and other stresses that perturb it. Human beings understandably wish to live in the midst of diverse, productive, and stable eco - system.” Edward O. Wilson, The Future of Life, 108. 89. For a more detailed description of this ecological worldview see Fritjof Capra, “The Role of Physics in the Current Change of Paradigms,” in Richard F. Kitchener, ed., The World View of Contemporary Physics: Does It Need a New Metaphysics?, (Albany, NY: State University of New York, 1988), 163, in Robert Nadeau and Menas Kafatos, The Non-Local Universe, 213. 90. Karl Popper: “You cannot predict the future. The future is open.” Adam J. Chmielewski and Karl R. Popper, “The Future Is Open: A Conservation with Sir Karl Popper,” Ian Jarvie and Sandra Pralong, eds,. Popper’s Open Society after Fifty Years: The Continuing Relevance of Karl Popper (London: Routledge, 1999), 32. 91. Robert Nadeau and Menas Kafatos, The Non-Local Universe, 196–197. 92. Stuart Kaufman, Investigations (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), 135. For example, see Julie Steenhuysen, “Thousands of New Marine Microbes Discovered,” Reuters (Oct. 4, 2007), online at http://www.reuters.com/article/scienceNews/idUSN0441498020071004. 93. “When two species are ecologically intimate, closely influencing each other’s lives as do predators and prey or hosts and parasites, each normally becomes a major source of selection operating on the other; in such situations, coevolution occurs. As a species, human beings are ecologically intimate with lots of organisms, from cows and crop pests to mackerel and malarial mosquitoes, and coevolution affects us in many ways.” Paul R. Ehrlich, Human Natures: Genes, Cultures, and the Human Prospect (New York: Penguin Books, 2002), 61. 94. A trophic pyramid, or hierarchy, consists of the steps in a food chain within an ecosystem. “Trophic Level,” Encyclopedia Britannica, online at http://www.britannica.com/eb/article -9073499/trophic-level. 95. Holmes Rolston III, Environmental Ethics, 207. 96. Ibid. 97. Robert Nadeau and Menas Kafatos, The Non-Local Universe, 109. 98. Holmes Rolston III, Environmental Ethics, 175. 99. Ibid., 174. J. Baird Callicott affirms that “the good of the biotic community is the ultimate measure of the moral value, the rightness of wrongness of actions,” and that “the effect upon ecological systems is the decisive factor in the determination of the ethical quality of actions.” J. Baird Callicott, “Animal Liberation: A Triangular Affair, Environmental Ethics 2 (1980): 320, in Eric Katz, “Is There a Place for Animals in the Moral Consideration of Nature?,” Andrew Light and Holmes Rolston III, eds., Environmental Ethics, 86. This position is in conflict with ascribing moral consideration to individual animals, which is central to advocacy for “animal rights” or “animal liberation.” Chapters 6–8 discuss the ethical arguments for these assertions. 100. Attributing moral consideration to ecosystems is seen as undermining the value of human beings, who must be valued in terms of their contribution to the natural community “since the primary goal of moral action is the good of the natural community, and since human technology and population growth create many of the threats to environmental health, an [ecocentric or biocentric] environmental ethic may demand the elimination of much of the human race and human civilization.” Eric Katz, “Is There a Place for Animals in the Moral Consideration of Nature?,” in Andrew Light and Holmes Rolston III, eds., Environmental Ethics, 87. 101. Ibid., 91. “The appropriate unit for moral concern is the fundamental unit of development and survival. Loving lions and hating jungles is misplaced affection. An ecologically informed society must love lions-in-jungles, organisms-in-ecosystems, or else fail in vision and courage.” Holmes Rolston III, Environmental Ethics, 176. 102. Moral philosopher Paul W. Taylor argues for the intrinsic worth of nature and that all organisms, including humans, have equal intrinsic worth. “The inherent worth of an entity does not depend on its merits. To consider something as possessing inherent worth . . . is to place intrinsic value on the realization of its good.” Paul W. Taylor, “The Ethics of Respect for Nature,” in David Schmidtz and Elizabeth Willott, eds., Environmental Ethics, 91. As the good of humans includes caring for the earth in a unique way, I do not think it necessarily follows that the human “good” is the same in intrinsic worth as the “good” of every other organism. I do agree with Taylor, however, that extending moral consideration to animals does not necessarily mean granting them rights, for accepting duties to animals is another way of giving them moral and legal consideration. See Paul W. Taylor, Respect for Nature (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1986). 103. Mary Midgley, Animals and Why They Matter, 91. 104. “The difficulties [of developing a rights-based environmental ethic] include reconciling the individualistic nature of moral rights with the more holistic view of nature emphasized by many of the leading environmental thinkers. . . . It is difficult to see how the notion of the rights of the individual could find a home within a view that, emotive connotations to one side, might be fairly dubbed ‘environmental fascism.’” Tom Regan, The Case for Animal Rights, 361–362. I argue in chapter 7 that rights need not be limited to the individualistic view that Regan asserts. 105. Chapter 13 considers protecting endangered species and their habitats, and chapter 5 notes how the standard of ecosystem integrity is now being applied. 106. Lynn Margulis and Dorion Sagan, What Is Life? (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1995), 92. 107. Ibid., 90–92. 108. Evan Thompson, Mind in Life, 146–147. 109. This is true for all organisms, including human beings. “Every five days you get a new stomach lining. You get a new liver every two months. Your skin replaces itself every six weeks. Every year, ninety-eight percent of the atoms in your body are replaced. This nonstop chemical replacement, metabolism, is a sure sign of life.” Lynn Margulis and Dorion Sagan, What Is Life?, quoted in Evan Thompson, Mind in Life, 150–151. 110. Evan Thompson, Mind in Life, 155. 111. “Animals maintain a valued self-identity as they cope through the world. Valuing is intrinsic to animal life.” Holmes Rolston III, “Value in Nature and the Nature of Value,” in Andrew Light and Holmes Rolston III, eds., Environmental Ethics, 145. 112. Ibid. “A plant, like any other organism, sentient or not, is a spontaneous, self-maintaining system, sustaining and reproducing itself, executing its program, making a way through the world, checking against performance by means of responsive capacities with which to measure success. Something more than physical causes, even when less than sentience, is operating; there is information superintending the causes; without it the organism would collapse into a sand heap. The information is used to preserve the plant identity.” 113. Hans Jonas, quoted in Evan Thompson, Mind in Life, 156. 114. Carol Kaesuk Yoon, “Loyal to Its Roots,” The New York Times (Jun. 10, 2008), online at http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/10/science/10plant.html. For instance, if the plant known as “the sea rocket detects unrelated plants growing in the ground with it, the plant aggressively sprouts nutrient-grabbing roots. But if it detects family, it politely restrains itself.” 115. Keekok Lee, “The Source and Locus of Intrinsic Value: A Reexamination,” Andrew Light and Holmes Rolston IIII, eds., Environmental Ethics, 155. 116. Holmes Rolston III, Environmental Ethics, 173. “The survival of the fittest shapes the ever more fit in their habitats. Each is for itself, but none is by itself; each is tested for optimal compliance in an intricately disciplined community. Every organism is an opportunist in the system but without opportunity except in the ongoing system.” Ibid., 219. 117. Ibid., 167. Eugene Hargrove argues that such ecocentric arguments depreciate anthropocentric reasoning that ascribes value to nature for its beauty. Eugene Hargrove, “Weak Anthropocentric Intrinsic Value,” in Andrew Light and Holmes Rolston IIII, eds., Environmental Ethics, 181. Christopher D. Stone seems to differ with Hargrove: “A respect for nature may engender a preference for natural processes: for example, the natural flow of a river. Untouchedness strikes me . . . as a plausible good, and so does beauty.” Christopher D. Stone, Earth and Other Ethics, 96. 118. “A sentient valuer is not necessary for value. Another way is for there to be a valuegenerating system able to generate value.” Holmes Rolston III, “Value in Nature and the Nature of Value,” in Andrew Light and Holmes Rolston III, eds., Environmental Ethics, 152. 119. “From ecology to ethics: the step is inevitable. . . . [W]e live on a planet where the activities of one species have an impact on all processes of the biosphere. . . . The old injunction against scientists uttering moral assertions, based on the notion that nature is devoid of intrinsic value or purpose, is misguided. Ecologists cannot, and ought not, refrain from making moral judgments.” From the “Afterword,” David R. Keller and Frank B. Golley, eds., The Philosophy of Ecology: From Science to Synthesis (Athens, GA: The University of Georgia Press, 2000), 320. 120. The fallacy was first identified by David Hume in the eighteenth century and then described by G. E. Moore in his book Principia Ethics (1903). “Naturalistic Fallacy,” International Society for Complexity, Information, and Design, ISCID Encyclopedia of Science and Philosophy, online at http://www.iscid.org/encyclopedia/Naturalistic_Fallacy. 121. Holmes Rolston III, Environmental Ethics, 232. “We commit the subjectivist fallacy if we think all values lie in subjective experience, and, worse still, the anthropocentrist fallacy if we think all values lie in human options and preferences.” Holmes Rolston III, “Value in Nature and the Nature of Value,” in Andrew Light and Holmes Rolston III, eds., Environmental Ethics, 146. Chapter 2, Doing Environmental Ethics, by Robert Traer.
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Physicists now confirm that our
perceptions affect what we experience. The theory of quantum
mechanics holds that we create what we experience by selecting from
among the many possibilities that may be made actual. “The observer does
not create what is not potentially there, but does participate in the
extraction from the mass of existing potentialities individual items
that have interest and meaning to the perceiving self.”14 
Third, current science reveals that
every conceptualization is a human construction and not simply
reality.26 This means that the dichotomy in traditional ethics between
humans (as rational and autonomous beings) and other living organisms is
a way of seeing the world, and not simply the way life is. Each ethical
pattern of thought actualizes some of the potentialities of life, but
obscures other possible ways of understanding the world.27
Some scientists now see predation as
primarily a process of coevolution.34 “Predator and prey or
parasite and host require a coevolution where both flourish, since the
health of the predator or parasite is locked into the continuing
existence, even the welfare, of prey and host.”35 Such relationships
involve complex patterns of fitness for an environment.36 Seeing
evolution in this way changes our view of nature.
“For individual gene-sized sequences of
DNA, the environment is constituted by the rest of the genome and the
cellular machinery in which it is embedded; for the cell, it is the
buffered milieu in which it floats; for the organism, it is the external
physical, living and social worlds. Which features of the external world
constitute ‘the environment’ differ from species to species; every
organism thus has an environment tailored to its needs.”41 
Complex systems of communication are
also present among animals. Bees “dance” in the hive to indicate to
other bees where pollen is to be found and, after locating new sites
suitable for nesting, refrain from communicating in the hive the
direction of a new nesting site until the bees “agree” as to which
potential site is best.47
As a biological process,
neuroplasticity is constrained by an organism’s genetic expression and
natural development,53 but humans have an extraordinary capacity to
recover from some brain injuries.54 Changes in our brains are largely
the result “of what we do and what we experience of the outside world.
In this sense, the very structure of our brain—the relative size of
different regions, the strength of connections between one area and
another—reflects the lives we have led.”55 Exercise enhances brain
function.56 Doing changes our thinking.
We find in the environment of cells
another important example of symbiosis, which is the result of
coevolution.65 The mitochondria, which are specialized structures
that convert carbohydrates, fats, and proteins into a usable form of
energy,66 evolved from bacteria that were incorporated into the cells of
organisms early in the evolution of life.67 The fact that a typical cell
in every animal, plant, or fungus has about two thousand mitochondria
“powering” it,68 suggests that this evolved symbiotic relationship is
important for being fit to survive.
In fact, “The vast majority of the
cells in your body are not your own; they belong to bacterial and other
microorganismic species.”76 Every person is a community of life and not
simply an individual.77 Even the crook of your elbow is “a special
ecosystem, a bountiful home to no fewer than six tribes of bacteria”
that help “to moisturize the skin by processing the raw fats it
produces.”78 
climatic
stability, biological diversity, biological nutrient recycling and
environmental waste assimilative capacity. The irreversible loss of
species and ecosystems, and the buildup of greenhouse gases in the
atmosphere, and of toxic metals and chemicals in the topsoil, ground
water and in the silt of lake bottoms and estuaries, are not reversible
by any plausible technology that could appear in the next few
decades.”84 
The main argument against attributing
value to evolution points to the random genetic changes leading to new
traits that are selected due to their fitness. The claim is that random
events cannot be purposeful, as purpose gives value to human action.
Yet, the lack of evidence for a purpose in nature itself does not prove
that nature is merely random or without value. 
writes: “Ecosystems
are in some respects more to be admired than any of their component
organisms because they are generated, continue to support, and integrate
tens of thousands of member organisms. The ecosystem is as wonderful as
anything it contains. In nature there may sometimes be clumsy, makeshift
solutions. Still, everything is tested for adaptive fitness.”99 
A bacterium maintains its identity “by
making sense of the world so as to remain viable.”108 Also, to maintain
its identity, a bacterium (like every organism) must constantly change
its material composition by metabolizing nutrients from the
environment.109 Not even a bacterium is a survival machine. “If the
organism must change its matter in order to maintain its identity, then
the organism must aim beyond itself.”110 
Rolston writes: “Ecology discovers
simultaneously (1) what is taking place in ecosystems and (2) what
biotic community means as an organizational mode enveloping organisms.
Crossing over from science to ethics, we can discover (3) the values in
such a community-system and (4) our duties toward it.”116
We may draw two inferences for ethics
from this conclusion. First, we cannot limit our ethical reasoning to
predicting likely consequences, as the consequentialist approach
does not take into account the intrinsic worth of nature, but only
values natural resources for their utility. Many moral philosophers
assert that some form of consequential ethics is the best we can do.
Nonetheless, if there are reasonable arguments for attributing intrinsic
value to nature, then ethics requires considering what is best for the
habitats we share with other species and not simply calculating our best
use of natural resources.
values appear.”121