More than Zombies: Considering the Animal Subject in De-Extinction

NanoEthics, 2014

de-extinction" refers to the process of resurrecting extinct species by genetic methods. This science-fiction-sounding idea is in fact already in early processes of scientific implementation. Although this recent "revival of the dead" raises deep ethical questions, the ethics of de-extinction has barely received philosophical treatment. Rather than seeking a verdict for or against de-extinction, this paper attempts an overview and some novel analyses of the main ethical considerations. Five dimensions of the ethics of deextinction are explored: (a) the possible contribution of de-extinction to promoting ecological values, (b) the deontological argument that we owe de-extinction to species we rendered extinct, (c) the question of "playing God" through de-extinction, (d) the utilitarian perspective, and (e) the role of aesthetic considerations in the ethics of de-extinction. A general feature arising from the paper's discussion is that, due to de-extinction's special character, it repeatedly tests the limits of our ethical notions.

Hastings Center Report

Extinction, 2023

This review provides an overview of the ethics of extinctions with a focus on the Western analytical environmental ethics literature. It thereby gives special attention to the possible philosophical grounds for Michael Soulé's assertion that the untimely 'extinction of populations and species is bad'. Illustrating such debates in environmental ethics, the guiding question for this review concerns whyor whenanthropogenic extinctions are bad or wrong, which also includes the question of when that might not be the case (i.e. which extinctions are even desirable). After providing an explanation of the disciplinary perspective taken (section "Introduction"), the concept of extinction and its history within that literature are introduced (section "Understanding extinction"). Then, in section "Why (or when) might anthropogenic extinctions be morally problematic?", different reasons for why anthropogenic extinctions might be morally problematic are presented based on the loss of species' value, harm to nonhuman individuals, the loss of valuable biological variety and duties to future generations. This section concludes by also considering cases where anthropogenic extinctions might be justified. Section "How to respond to extinctions?" then addresses a selection of topics concerning risks and de-extinction technologies. Finally, the section on "Extinction studies" introduces other viewpoints on the ethics of extinction from the extinction studies literature, followed by the "Conclusion". Impact statement This is an overview review article of the ethics of species extinctions drawing on the environmental ethics literature. While most people seem to believe that extinctions are morally bad or wrong, no systematic review of the moral philosophical literature that can support or question such intuitions on this subject matter has been provided to date, which is the gap that this review article aims to fill.

Croatian Medical Journal, 2014

2006

No one really knows the rate by which species go extinct by the hands of human beings. The estimations differ,1 but they seem to agree that it is a matter of extreme proportions. According to the Worldwatch Institute, we are now experiencing the worst case of mass extinction since the dinosaurs disappeared 65 million years ago.2 For most of us, this is a depressing insight and many people seem to agree that to knowingly cause or significantly contribute to the extinction of entire species is (at least prima facie) not only bad, but morally wrong. For someone with a philosophic curiosity, the question that immediately arises is: 'Why is it wrong’? Intuitively it seems obviously true that it is wrong, but why is it wrong, and how does it fit with formal ethical theories? These questions are more complicated than they may seem at the first glance and they have been the object of a heated debate among both ethicists and environmentalists. This fact alone should be reason enough to pursue the question, but there are other reasons too. The clearness of and the wide agreement about the intuition that what we are doing is at least prima facie wrong, makes the extinction problem an excellent test case that any theory should be able to deal with in order to be taken seriously as a moral theory. Another quite obvious motivation for studying the question of why it is prima facie wrong to cause extinction, is that a better understanding of the ethical aspects of the extinction problem would increase our chances of dealing with the problem. Bryan G. Norton points out that environmentalists often put much effort in trying to explain why a species is instrumentally important for human beings, and they often use different approaches. This is a ‘strategy’ that usually gives a bad impression however. It also makes it harder to reach the common goal of saving the species.3 Failures of the environmental movement that can be traced back to the difficulties in agreeing on why different species and ecosystems are important enough for us humans to be worth saving, leads Bryan G. Norton to conclude that we need what he labels “a coherent rationale for environmental protection.” This is underlined by Lori Gruen and Dale Jamieson who declare that: It is ironic that the destruction of biodiversity, which may be the greatest of human crimes against nature, is also one of the least understood. We do not have a good philosophical account of why biodiversity matters, and the steps that would have to be taken to protect it are, in the present climate, politically impossible.5 Both Norton’s and Gruen/Jamieson’s remarks, tell us that there is quite a great deal of work to be done in the field, and they also tell us that the work is very important. Finally, the problem of human-caused extinction also seems to be a good battleground for the more general question of what should count as criteria for moral standing. Actually, most of the ethical debate surrounding the extinction problem is concerned with this question, and this will also be salient in this investigation. The present debate around this question is mostly performed in polemic between advocates of holistic theories on the one hand, and advocates of individualistic theories on the other. The advocates of the holistic approach claim that we have moral duties directly to the species. They are primarily concerned that without a direct moral standing for the species, we will have to depend on its the instrumental value for us humans. The individualists on the other hand claim that only individuals can be moral objects. They are sceptical to the holistic approach, and to the possibility of ascribing moral standing to species. They especially find it difficult to comprehend how species can have morally relevant interests for us to consider. This book is the first part of an investigation that will scrutinise both the holistic approach and the individualistic approaches.

Philosophia

Earth is currently undergoing rapid, massive, and in many ways unprecedented environmental changes. Over the course of the twentieth century, the human population increased 300% while the size of the global economy ballooned 2400% (McNeill & Engelke, 2014). Industrial expansion in agriculture, manufacturing, fishing, mining, and energy production and use have radically transformed the land, seas, and atmosphere. The impacts of human activities are so pervasive-chemically, geophysically, biologically, ecologically-that the International Commission on Stratigraphy is considering formally recognizing the Anthropocene as a new geological epoch, with its formal base around 1950. This Great Acceleration in human numbers and economic activity, which continues unabated, has been accompanied by pervasive ecological degradation and huge declines in Earth's biodiversity (IPBES, 2019). Across all taxa, vertebrate populations are estimated to have declined ~ 60% since 1970. There are more than 125,000 species on the IUCN Red List of threatened and endangered species, including 40% of assessed amphibians, 34% of conifers, 33% of reef building corals, 26% of mammals and 14% of birds. Current extinction rates are estimated to be 1000 times above the baseline rate and the synergistic impacts of habitat loss, pollution, overharvesting, and climate change are trending toward even faster biological depletion (Pimm et al., 2014). The consensus among conservation biologists is that we are entering a period of mass species extinction, the sixth in the 600-million-year history of multicellular life on Earth and the first to be knowingly caused by a single species: us. In recent decades, excellent work has been done in environmental ethics, environmentally informed political philosophy, and philosophy of biology related to spe

Bioethics and the Posthumanities (Routledge), 2022

Edited by Danielle Sands

The concept of wildlife embodies two sources of controversy regarding de-extinct animals. First, the multifaceted dependence of these animals on humans; and second , the property rights to de-extinct animals. Both provide reasons for not counting them as wildlife. A subsequent question is, however, whether we should maintain this divide or allow the boundaries to blur. If we aim to maintain it, we end up trying to stop a process that is evolving rapidly and difficult to curb by legal means. If we relinquish these boundaries, we give up customary cultural models and related cultural practices. In biology, the divide between domestic and wild species is usually considered arbitrary and the degree of synanthropy (degree of association with humans) to present a continuum. Still, wildlife is normally defined through the notion of domestication: those animals that are not domesticated are wildlife. De-extinction turns the setting upside down: the de-extinct animals would normally be classified as domesticated, since they are generated by human action and could be owned as private property, but the problem is that they are not intended as domestic – de-extinct animals are ultimately created to be wildlife. Thus the concept of wildlife calls for refinement so as to allow their inclusion. We present a classification of animal species based both on their degree of synanthropy and the complex ownership issues. It appears that de-extinct species would probably initially represent species with a low synanthropy index but a high need for human care, but might later evolve into " real " wildlife in the strict sense of the term.

2013

The Politics of the Extinction Predicament – Democracy, Futurity, and Responsibility Jason Lambacher Chair of the Supervisory Committee: Associate Professor Christine Di Stefano Political Science This dissertation examines the species extinction crisis as a matter of environmental political theory. By engaging the anthropocentrism/ecocentrism debate, literature in green deliberative democracy and green civic republicanism, and the work of Hans Jonas and Hannah Arendt, among others, I explore the challenges of the extinction predicament in light of key concepts such as freedom, responsibility, and wildness.