The value of nature has been extensively debated in environmental ethics. There has been less dis... more The value of nature has been extensively debated in environmental ethics. There has been less discussion, however, about how one should understand the relation between this value and normativity, or reasons: if something in nature is seen as valuable, how should we understand the relation between this fact and claims about reasons to, for example, protect it or promote its existence? The “commonsense” view is that value gives rise to reasons. The buck-passing account of value (BPA), on the other hand, implies that for an entity or state of affairs in nature to be valuable just is for it to have properties (other than that of being valuable) that provide reasons to promote or have a pro-attitude towards it. BPA has been extensively debated, but has received little attention in environmental philosophy. In this paper, it is argued that the view suggests a “reasons first” approach to environmental ethics, and that it should be preferred to competing accounts of value in the context of ...
Journal of Agricultural and Environmental Ethics, 2018
While there is an extensive literature on how the precautionary principle should be interpreted a... more While there is an extensive literature on how the precautionary principle should be interpreted and when precautions should be taken, relatively little discussion exists about the fair distribution of costs of taking precautions. We address this issue by proposing a general framework for deciding how costs of precautions should be shared, which consists of a series of default principles that are triggered according to desert, rights, and ability to pay. The framework is developed with close attention to the pragmatics of how distributions will affect actual behaviours. It is intended to help decision-makers think more systematically about distributional consequences of taking precautionary measures, thereby to improve decision-making. Two case studiesone about a ban on turtle fishing in Costa Rica, and one about a deep-sea mining project in Papua New Guineaare given to show how the framework can be applied.
2016 IEEE International Symposium on Ethics in Engineering, Science and Technology (ETHICS), 2016
In this paper, a tension in the so-called Millennium Ecosystem Assessment (released by UNEP in 20... more In this paper, a tension in the so-called Millennium Ecosystem Assessment (released by UNEP in 2005) between concerns about intrinsic value on the one hand, and the discourse of "ecosystem services" on the other, is identified and discussed. The tension can be understood to constitute a conflict between intrinsic and extrinsic values. I look at possible ways to resolve this conflict, considering both quantitative and philosophical approaches, and the problem that value incommensurability poses for such attempts. I argue that it can be useful to shift the focus away from incommensurability and instead look at the problem of value conflicts as constituting a form of "evaluative uncertainty". Evaluative uncertainties should be identified and analysed in order to provide a better foundation for decision-making in the context of ecosystem assessment.
With regard to any natural resource, we can ask whether we should obtain (more of) it. We may fur... more With regard to any natural resource, we can ask whether we should obtain (more of) it. We may further hold that the answer to this question depends, at least in part, on whether there is a need in our society for the resource in question. In this paper, a framework is developed for evaluating the moral significance of arguments from need in natural resource debates. The main components of the framework are: a harm-based conception of morally significant needs; a transmission principle holding between basic and derived needs; and a bulk of considerations regarding competing concerns.
In decision-making based on multiple criteria, situations may arise where agents find their optio... more In decision-making based on multiple criteria, situations may arise where agents find their options to be neither better than, worse than nor equal to each other with respect to the relevant criteria. How, if at all, can a justified choice be made between such options? Are the options incomparable? This article explores a hypothetical case that illustrates how such a situation can arise in an environmental context; more specifically, it considers the deliberations of an imagined 'ethics committee' as it struggles to decide whether or not a deep-sea mining project should be allowed to proceed. I argue that the case is best understood as involving options that are comparable in the sense of being 'on a par'. Working out from a discussion of Ruth Chang's 'self-governance' theory of choice in cases of parity, I suggest that, in the environmental context, the idea of choices expressing a moral identity may lead us in the direction of a plausible solution to th...
In this paper I investigate the concept of responsibility in the context of technological innovat... more In this paper I investigate the concept of responsibility in the context of technological innovation, with reference to two types of responsibility: ex post and ex ante responsibility. Exposing the shortcomings of ex post responsibility in the context of innovation, I examine different ways of conceiving of a form of ex ante responsibility suitable for our current technological situation. Here I identify two positions with very different approaches to the question of the ethical status of responsibility: Hans Jonas’s concept of responsibility as an ethical principle structuring moral behavior, and René von Schomberg’s idea of responsibility as “responsiveness” linked to procedures of communication and collaboration. Rejecting von Schomberg’s concept on ethico-philosophical grounds, I argue in favor of a critical rehabilitation of some basic thoughts in the philosophy of Jonas. Finally, I suggest taking the step from the Jonasian ethics of responsibility towards the Hegelian concept ...
Existence value refers to the value humans ascribe to the existence of something, regardless of ... more Existence value refers to the value humans ascribe to the existence of something, regardless of whether it is or will be of any particular use to them. This existence value based on preference satisfaction should be taken into account in evaluating activities that come with a risk of species extinction. There are two main objections. The first is that on the preference satisfaction interpretation, the concept lacks moral importance because satisfying people’s preferences may involve no good or well-being for them. However, existence value can be based on a restricted version of the preference satisfaction theory, which is not vulnerable to the skeptical arguments about the link between preference satisfaction and well-being. The second objection is that even if preference satisfaction can be linked to well-being, understanding existence value in terms of individual preference satisfaction is incoherent, because existence value reflects disinterested preferences that involve no bene...
Etikk i praksis - Nordic Journal of Applied Ethics, 2020
Book review of Finance or Food? The Role of Cultures, Values, and Ethics in Land Use Negotiations... more Book review of Finance or Food? The Role of Cultures, Values, and Ethics in Land Use Negotiations, edited by Hilde Bjørkhaug, Philip McMichael and Bruce Muirhead, 3-18. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. https://doi.org/10.3138/9781487 517236-002
The value of nature has been extensively debated in environmental ethics. There has been less dis... more The value of nature has been extensively debated in environmental ethics. There has been less discussion, however, about how one should understand the relation between this value and normativity, or reasons: if something in nature is seen as valuable, how should we understand the relation between this fact and claims about reasons to, for example, protect it or promote its existence? The “commonsense” view is that value gives rise to reasons. The buck-passing account of value (BPA), on the other hand, implies that for an entity or state of affairs in nature to be valuable just is for it to have properties (other than that of being valuable) that provide reasons to promote or have a pro-attitude towards it. BPA has been extensively debated, but has received little attention in environmental philosophy. In this paper, it is argued that the view suggests a “reasons first” approach to environmental ethics, and that it should be preferred to competing accounts of value in the context of ...
Journal of Agricultural and Environmental Ethics, 2018
While there is an extensive literature on how the precautionary principle should be interpreted a... more While there is an extensive literature on how the precautionary principle should be interpreted and when precautions should be taken, relatively little discussion exists about the fair distribution of costs of taking precautions. We address this issue by proposing a general framework for deciding how costs of precautions should be shared, which consists of a series of default principles that are triggered according to desert, rights, and ability to pay. The framework is developed with close attention to the pragmatics of how distributions will affect actual behaviours. It is intended to help decision-makers think more systematically about distributional consequences of taking precautionary measures, thereby to improve decision-making. Two case studiesone about a ban on turtle fishing in Costa Rica, and one about a deep-sea mining project in Papua New Guineaare given to show how the framework can be applied.
2016 IEEE International Symposium on Ethics in Engineering, Science and Technology (ETHICS), 2016
In this paper, a tension in the so-called Millennium Ecosystem Assessment (released by UNEP in 20... more In this paper, a tension in the so-called Millennium Ecosystem Assessment (released by UNEP in 2005) between concerns about intrinsic value on the one hand, and the discourse of "ecosystem services" on the other, is identified and discussed. The tension can be understood to constitute a conflict between intrinsic and extrinsic values. I look at possible ways to resolve this conflict, considering both quantitative and philosophical approaches, and the problem that value incommensurability poses for such attempts. I argue that it can be useful to shift the focus away from incommensurability and instead look at the problem of value conflicts as constituting a form of "evaluative uncertainty". Evaluative uncertainties should be identified and analysed in order to provide a better foundation for decision-making in the context of ecosystem assessment.
With regard to any natural resource, we can ask whether we should obtain (more of) it. We may fur... more With regard to any natural resource, we can ask whether we should obtain (more of) it. We may further hold that the answer to this question depends, at least in part, on whether there is a need in our society for the resource in question. In this paper, a framework is developed for evaluating the moral significance of arguments from need in natural resource debates. The main components of the framework are: a harm-based conception of morally significant needs; a transmission principle holding between basic and derived needs; and a bulk of considerations regarding competing concerns.
In decision-making based on multiple criteria, situations may arise where agents find their optio... more In decision-making based on multiple criteria, situations may arise where agents find their options to be neither better than, worse than nor equal to each other with respect to the relevant criteria. How, if at all, can a justified choice be made between such options? Are the options incomparable? This article explores a hypothetical case that illustrates how such a situation can arise in an environmental context; more specifically, it considers the deliberations of an imagined 'ethics committee' as it struggles to decide whether or not a deep-sea mining project should be allowed to proceed. I argue that the case is best understood as involving options that are comparable in the sense of being 'on a par'. Working out from a discussion of Ruth Chang's 'self-governance' theory of choice in cases of parity, I suggest that, in the environmental context, the idea of choices expressing a moral identity may lead us in the direction of a plausible solution to th...
In this paper I investigate the concept of responsibility in the context of technological innovat... more In this paper I investigate the concept of responsibility in the context of technological innovation, with reference to two types of responsibility: ex post and ex ante responsibility. Exposing the shortcomings of ex post responsibility in the context of innovation, I examine different ways of conceiving of a form of ex ante responsibility suitable for our current technological situation. Here I identify two positions with very different approaches to the question of the ethical status of responsibility: Hans Jonas’s concept of responsibility as an ethical principle structuring moral behavior, and René von Schomberg’s idea of responsibility as “responsiveness” linked to procedures of communication and collaboration. Rejecting von Schomberg’s concept on ethico-philosophical grounds, I argue in favor of a critical rehabilitation of some basic thoughts in the philosophy of Jonas. Finally, I suggest taking the step from the Jonasian ethics of responsibility towards the Hegelian concept ...
Existence value refers to the value humans ascribe to the existence of something, regardless of ... more Existence value refers to the value humans ascribe to the existence of something, regardless of whether it is or will be of any particular use to them. This existence value based on preference satisfaction should be taken into account in evaluating activities that come with a risk of species extinction. There are two main objections. The first is that on the preference satisfaction interpretation, the concept lacks moral importance because satisfying people’s preferences may involve no good or well-being for them. However, existence value can be based on a restricted version of the preference satisfaction theory, which is not vulnerable to the skeptical arguments about the link between preference satisfaction and well-being. The second objection is that even if preference satisfaction can be linked to well-being, understanding existence value in terms of individual preference satisfaction is incoherent, because existence value reflects disinterested preferences that involve no bene...
Etikk i praksis - Nordic Journal of Applied Ethics, 2020
Book review of Finance or Food? The Role of Cultures, Values, and Ethics in Land Use Negotiations... more Book review of Finance or Food? The Role of Cultures, Values, and Ethics in Land Use Negotiations, edited by Hilde Bjørkhaug, Philip McMichael and Bruce Muirhead, 3-18. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. https://doi.org/10.3138/9781487 517236-002
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