Environmental philosophyof value based on the idea of ‘naturalness’. He argues that natural objects
have value because they are the product of a natural process rather than an
artificial, human process.^16 Naturalness has value because (1) humans want
‘some sense and pattern to their lives’; (2) people want their own lives set
in some larger context (to which they are connected); (3) it is the products
of natural processes, untouched (or lightly touched) by human hands which
provides that larger context (p. 37).^17 Similarly, Dworkin ( 1993 )talksofthe
‘sacredness’ of nature and the importance of respecting ‘nature’s investment’
tosupport his claim that nature has intrinsic value. He argues that people
wish animal species to be preserved because of ‘respect for the way they
came into being rather than for the animals considered independently of
thathistory...weconsideritwrong,adesecrationoftheinviolable,that
aspecies that evolution did produce should perish through our acts’ (ibid.:
78). Consequently, the extinction of a species is ‘an intrinsically bad thing
todo... a waste of nature’s investment’ (ibid.: 78).
There are weaknesses in this approach. Dworkin ( 1993 )concedes that there
is inconsistency in what we regard as sacred and inviolable. We might regard
ararespecies of exotic bird or the Siberian tiger as sacred, whilst not overly
regretting the extinction of pit vipers or rats. Nor do we treat everything
produced by nature as inviolable; we are prepared to mine coal or chop
down trees to build a house. In short, this kind of intuitive argument is nec-
essarily selective. Similarly, Goodin’s ( 1992 )theory of value rests heavily on
theintuitive claim that humans have a psychological need for something
larger than themselves; yet that intuition is open to dispute. Even if we
have such a need, is ‘nature’ the only means of satisfying it? For many peo-
ple religion provides this larger context. Others would say that phenomena
which touch nature neither lightly nor lovingly – feats of technological wiz-
ardry such as huge skyscrapers in Los Angeles, or atomic bombs – may also
inspire us to contemplate something larger than ourselves. What makes the
village preferable to the city is not that it is in better balance with nature
but that it required less human intervention in nature. Put differently, for
Goodin, value resides not in protecting nature from harm for its own sake,
but in humans deriving ‘satisfaction from reflection upon its larger set-
ting’ (ibid.: 52). In this sense, it appears that nature has inherent value (see
Box2.1).
Another theme in several intermediate approaches involves drawing an
important distinction between constitutive and instrumental value in a
flourishing human life. O’Neill ( 1993 ) constructs an environmental ethic
around Aristotle’s idea of objective human good. The Aristotelian objective
is the flourishing of human life. The constitutive parts of this ‘good life’
include a range of liberal values, notably autonomy, and a range of pos-
itive relationships with contemporaries, across generations and, crucially,
with nature. The flourishing of non-human creatures, therefore, ‘ought to
be promoted because they are constitutive of our own flourishing’ (ibid.: 24).