Life's Intrinsic Value: Science, Ethics, and Nature

by Nicholas Agar

Overview

Are bacteriophage T4 and the long-nosed elephant fish valuable in their own right? Nicholas Agar defends an affirmative answer to this question by arguing that anything living is intrinsically valuable. This claim challenges received ethical wisdom according to which only human beings are valuable in themselves. The resulting biocentric or life-centered morality forms the platform for an ethic of the environment.

Agar builds a bridge between the biological sciences and what he calls "folk" morality to arrive at a workable environmental ethic and a new spectrum—a new hierarchy—of living organisms. The book overturns common-sense moral belief as well as centuries of philosophical speculation on the exclusive moral significance of humans. Spanning several fields, including philosophy of psychology, philosophy of science, and other areas of contemporary analytic philosophy, Agar analyzes and speaks to a wide array of historic and contemporary views, from Aristotle and Kant, to E. O. Wilson, Holmes Rolston II, and Baird Callicot. The result is a challenge to prevailing definitions of value and a call for a scientifically-informed appreciation of nature.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780231117869
Publisher:	Columbia University Press
Publication date:	05/07/2001
Series:	ASCAP Copyright Law Symposium Series
Pages:	192
Product dimensions:	6.19(w) x 9.24(h) x 0.66(d)
Lexile:	1320L (what's this?)
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

Nicholas Agar is lecturer in philosophy at Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand.

Table of Contents

1. The Psychological View of Intrinsic Value
2. Science's Bridge from Nature to Value
3. Overlapping Kinds and Value
4. Recent Defenses of Biocentrism
5. A Morally Specialized Account of Life
6. The Contents of Biopreferences
7. Species and Ecosystems
8. An Impossible Ethic?

Editorial Reviews

One impediment to demonstrating that environmental individuals or collections have intrinsic value, says Agar (philosophy, Victoria U. of Wellington) is that received ethical wisdom, to emphasize the value of humans, often contrasts humans with natural things, thus devaluing them. He finds in the sciences of the environment an agent of moral transformation with which to develop a life-centered or biocentric ethic. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

Booknews