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INTRINSIC VALUE PRAGMATISM AND ENVIRONMENTAL ETHICS

“It [adequate environmental ethic] claims that there are many kinds of value found in holistic ecological systems − e.g., diversity, stability, beauty − and that all these contribute to arguments for environmental preservation.” “…intrinsic value is nothing but a disguised anthropocentrism…” as cited in Katz. Neither ontologically discrete entities do not exist nor independent intrinsic properties and values. “Non-individualistic and non-anthropocentric environmental ethic can not be based on the search for an intrinsic value. It is so because of two reasons: it implies that individual entities − and not whole systems − are the bearers of value; and it tends to focus attention on anthropocentric values such as sentience.” We have to seek the systemic value. If one can prove the ultimate role of each part of the system is important, there will be no difficulty in justifying the protection.

PRAGMATISM IN ENVIRONMENTAL ETHICS

Instrumental value can not be a base for environmental ethics. One can not justify his environmental acts according to the instrumental values exist. As Eric Katz state:
Although an environmental ethic must be based on a plurality of instrumental natural values and on specific analysis of concrete ecological systems, it can not be grounded on the ever changing subjective feelings of humans as they experience nature.

“Pragmatism places the value of the natural environment squarely on the experiences of human beings interacting with nature: the desires and feelings of human subjects.” It can not be grounded on anthropocentric pragmatism because who will decide on whose desires, experiences, interests, ideas, understanding of life will be the source of moral obligations? Anthropocentric pragmatism deals with the instances. As time changes, as Katz uses the term, it will be a shaky ground for environmental ethics. The common ground must be more well supported.

“Preserving an endangered species or ecosystems poses no special conceptual problem when the instrumental value of that species or ecosystem is known.” This idea is very problematic. If it is so, there is no need to discuss the justification of environmentalist movements. We have to decide which individual, species, ecosystem in what degree possesses the properties that makes it instrumentally valuable. In addition to that, we conclude that there are individuals, species, ecosystems whose instrumental value is not designated. They can be instrumentally insignificant, intrinsically valuable and unvaluable at all. He says that a species is instrumentally valuable if it has a known value as resource for human use. What things are not instrumentally valuable?

Windelband states that “Value…is never found in the object itself as a property. It consists in a relation to an appreciating mind…. Take away will and feeling there is no such thing as value.” I value. This is all one can conclude after considering value-ability. Whether will, feeling, consciousness, taking an object in interest whatever it is, there is something that makes humans different from all the others. This difference causes humans to value outer world, to measure things. Rolston states that:
We humans carry the lamp that lights up value, although we require the fuel that nature provides. Actual value is an event in our consciousness, though natural items while still in the dark of value have potential intrinsic value. Man is the measure of things, said Protagoras. Humans are the measurers, the valuers of things, even when we measure what they are in themselves.

We only measure according to our standards, our scales. Hence, when valuing we do not locate any value on anything. Assume that all individuals on earth become unaware of the art of Leonardo. Does his Mona Lisa lose its value? It does not. Whether one measures it or not, it does not gain or lose any value. Up to now we have two conclusions. First humans value things and the second we do not locate something on the object taken in interest when we value it.

Do any other thing in nature value? Is value anthropogenic? Instrumental value is anthropogenic. What about intrinsic value? Rolston in his essay says that tourists value giant sequoia trees intrinsically but local people value sequoias instrumentally since they use them as timber. This intrinsic value is non-instrumental value. If one thing seems to be valuable but useless, we then say the value here is intrinsic. Therefore, if everything has a value in nature, those which we can not make use of or do not satisfy our needs are intrinsically valuable.

Rolston says that “there is no better evidence of non-human values and valuers than spontaneous wildlife, born free and on its own. The key word in this sentence is spontaneous. From Concise Oxford Thesaurus its opposites are: “planned, calculated, conscious, voluntary, inhibited.” Now remember the things he says when he is explaining human value-ability. When there is spontaneity there is no consciousness, involuntary actions are taking place. Hence spontaneous wildlife can not be an evidence of non-human valuers. A rock is also protecting its integrity spontaneously. Does it value this state? After years pass, it can become soil, support life. Are all rocks doing badly those which yet have not transformed into soil? Did either of the molecules choose the state it is in?

Genes are algorithms. Environmental inputs are processed and outputs are produced. It is like a computer program. If genes are the causes of value-ability in organisms, computers are also able to value. A program can ask you to enter an integer, you enter and it gives you a result. It is a normative set, just the way a gene is.

Something is valuable if it takes advantage of environment. A car can benefit from its environment. It uses petrol as resource and turns the potential energy in it into kinetic energy. It actually benefits, takes advantage of environment. A car like a plant can do things that interest us but they are not interested in what they are doing.

There is a loose relation between compartments of ecosystems. In an organism, each organ has a specific role. Biotic and abiotic components of ecosystems are trading their products. At this instant of life, ecosystems have not evolved yet to be called as compact organisms.

Value is generated by valuers. The locus and the source of value is the same. It is human consciousness. If we consider a life with out human, everything does not lose its value. There is a systemic value in nature. Philosophers seeks a valuable thing other than human because in his words “Finding that valuable thing will generate a global sense of obligation.”
While considering the role of intrinsic value in environmental ethics, he says that:
The existence of intrinsic value needs to be acknowledged, to serve as the limit to anthropocentric instrumentalism; but this value need not be totally articulated or justified, for it is not the ground of all obligations. The problem of intrinsic value in nature is a problem that does not require a solution; it is enough to know that some kind of non-anthropocentric value exists, even if the description of this value remains unclear.

This idea is very important. Intrinsic value should be limiting the anthropocentric instrumentalism. Environmental ethics can not be based solely on the existence of some intrinsically valuable things in nature. It is so because; intrinsic value deals with individuals rather than the systems. Environmental ethics, as clearly understood from its name, deals with the interdependent objects. Individuals form populations, populations biota, biotic and abiotic environments form ecosystems, ecosystems form earth…the dependency start from atoms, goes to the nature, the universe. “Intrinsic value is too internal and elementary; it forgets the relatedness and externality.”

Defining “Value”

According to Harman “A normative theory of value might include an account of when something’s being the case would or would not be a ‘good thing’, a ‘worthwhile thing’, or a ‘desirable thing’”. Although this is one of the definitions of value theory− a normative one− it is sufficient for us to understand what “value” is. I say “understand” because it is not a definition of value. It is the definition of the valued, a valuable thing. Then there occurs a difficulty in discussing ethical problems, whenever we talk about intrinsically good, intrinsic properties. The definitions of value, good, intrinsic, right, true are not in the proper way we seek for. This proper way, though differing from philological way, must be as simple and understandable. Good is good, intrinsic is intrinsic, value is value, true is true. These definitions are the best, analytic, useful ones I have learned till now. Where do we know we could not know it? (It refers to good, value, love, desire, pain, yellow etc.) The answer is, we don’t know, hence still the labor to seek for a definition is not considered as unnecessary and inutile. “The late date at which most of the physical sciences became exact, and the comparative fewness of the laws which they have succeeded in establishing even now, are sufficient proofs of this difficulty.”

Case studies about “intrinsic value”

Is there at least one thing existing that is intrinsically valuable? We know how we know intrinsic and value. However, we feel free to go a step further to intrinsic value. I am going to consider that we have no problems with definitions.

Case I: The misprinted stamp

At first glance one can see that it is not intrinsically valuable. If you take out human, the observer from the scene, then the object in hand− the misprinted stamp− loses its value. I conclude that the value is not intrinsic. However, unlike Beardsley, I think that this value is instrumental. Possessing “the” misprinted stamp takes you what also winning a competition takes you to. You become the one, the one who has the misprinted stamp in his hands. It is like possessing the prototype Ferrari, the only Ferrari in that composition. There is a feeling, whatever it is, i.e. ego, which makes a person get more eagerly something which is rare. Hence, collecting stamps has instrumental value. We can conclude that, having a rare stamp has instrumentally more valuable than having an abundant one. The idea is parallel with conserving species those are more threatened, vulnerable to extinction and rare. It is important for a conservationist to maintain the existence of the species members; however it is more important to conserve a rare, charismatic, exotic species. All these cases are instrumentally valuable relative to an observer, there is nothing in life as ideal observer.

The ideal observer as Beardsley cited in his paper intrinsic value as
Weighing exactly one pound is explicated in terms of being equal in weight to a standard pound; and the latter turns out to be a complicated conditional about what would happen under ideal weighing conditions (admitting that the ideal conditions cannot all be specified). Thus “X weighs exactly one p o d 7 means (approximately) “X would be found to be one pound in weight by an Ideal Weigher, under Ideal Conditions, with an Ideal Scale, etc., etc.” And similarly, “X has intrinsic value” turns out to be equivalent to a complex conditional to the effect that X would be prized by an Ideal Observer, defied by all the necessary accoutrements and qualifications of such an individual.”

Case II: Dialectical demonstration

One misleading demonstration− existence of at least one thing that is intrinsically valuable− can be simulated as follows. X confers value to Y and Y borrows its value from X. Y confers value to Z; Z borrows its value from Y. Then at the beginning, one can think that, there must be something that is intrinsically valuable, that borrows no value from something else and only confers value. This stems from the image in our minds which can be visualized as …->X->Y->Z->… in which there exists a linear, one dimensional relationship between X, Y and Z. However, in life, relations are much more complicated. Think of two dots in space and call them X and Y. Let the distance between these points to be r. X and Y has a confer-borrow relationship. Now if we think about new infinitely many points at differing distances and angles with respect to X. With the idea at the end, a space, has no start or end point, there is only an interconnected, coherent structure.

We all have goals, and these goals determine the value of the objects. We have a start and we have an end. It is hard to say that there exists an intrinsically valuable thing. In good analogy with yellow, what we perceive is not the same thing, what we name is the same. What we perceive as good is not the same. What we listen, what we see. All things are according, relative to the observer. We are the ones who constitute philosophy, hence, thinking a stamp in the absence of an observer is nonsense, we say thinking, and in the absence of the observer. These are two conflicting ideas.

Defining “Intrinsic”

Intrinsic as cited in princeton.edu webpage, It is “belonging to a thing by its very nature; ‘form was treated as something intrinsic, as the very essence of the thing’ according to John Dewey” . This definition is not so different from our definitions, what we can consider at first glance. However, the term “intrinsic” must be defined more sufficiently. Considering possible cases as Langton & Lewis did:

Something could be round even if it were the only thing in the universe, unaccompanied by anything distinct from itself. Jaegwon Kim once suggested that we define an intrinsic property as one that can belong to something unaccompanied. Wrong: unaccompaniment itself is not intrinsic, yet it can belong to something unaccompanied. But there is a better Kim-style definition. Say that P is independent of accompaniment iff four different cases are possible: something accompanied may have P or lack P, something unaccompanied may have P or lack P. P is basic intrinsic iff (1) P and not-P are nondisjunctive and contingent, and (2) P is independent of accompaniment. Two things (actual or possible) are duplicates iff they have exactly the same basic intrinsic properties. P is intrinsic iff no two duplicates differ with respect to P.

The second definition sounds like a law of thermodynamics. It is logical but not sufficient. For instance, definition of the noun form of rose from “Concise Oxford English Dictionary” can be as follows:

A prickly bush or shrub that typically bears red, pink, yellow, or white fragrant flowers, native to north temperate regions and widely grown as an ornamental.

Now think about the rose bears in our minds. After we read this definition, we call an image in our minds about the rose and then say that “Hmm, this is the definition of the rose.” When one wants to draw a rose, draws the thing that I call the rose. Intrinsic has different values in each individual mind, when we have the input as a sound or as an image as a word, brain outputs that individual value. Neither the definition of a rose nor intrinsic is possible.