- ... biodiversity.1
- A
cynic might well conclude that the discussion we've just completed
is evidence that it probably isn't worth it to try to conserve
biodiversity. I'm not a cynic, or I wouldn't be teaching this
course.
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- ... respect.2
- This section draws heavily from Chapter 4
of [2]
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- ...
compelling.3
- Although you do have to wonder whether we would
genuinely believe that biodiversity is infinitely
valuable. Certainly I think we'd all agree that it is extremely
valuable, but would any of us claim that it is so valuable that
preventing loss of biodiversity is more important than anything
else?
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- ... done4
- Of course, I'm an amateur
philosopher at best, so me being unaware of a philosophical theory
is weak evidence of its non-existence.
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- ... do.5
- Feel free to ask me why, if you're
curious about my reasons.
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- ... defined6
- Does it include only humans, for
example?
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- ... value.7
- Rawls' approach is based on the idea that
just outcomes are those to which any of the participants would
agree if they didn't know their role in society. It is clearly
focused on determining just outcomes within human society and
considers other parts of the world, if at all, only to the extent
that those other parts of the world influence outcomes that affect
human beings.
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- ... proposed.8
- See, for example: Nussbaum. M. C. 2006. Frontiers of Justice: Disability, Nationality, Species
Membership. Belknap Press of Harvard University Press,
Cambridge, MA.
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- ... biodiversity.9
- I
should mention that Nussbaum's approach does, to some extent,
involve something like the rights of individual animals to be
free, but it develops those rights in the context of a
contractarian ethical system, not a libertarian one.
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- ... resources).10
- I'm
going to use the phrase ``conserve biodiversity'' throughout the
rest of these notes. I don't mean to imply that conserving
biodiversity is the only thing we might have an ethical
obligation to do towards the environment. I just don't want to
repeat myself constantly.
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- ...
composed.11
- In the case of landscapes we might even hope that
we'd be able to place values on inanimate objects.
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- ... extinction?12
- The
reason everything isn't extinct is that some species give rise to
one or more new species before they go extinct.
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