Objectivist theories of intrinsic value

pp. 34-50

in: Mark Rowlands, Jo Campling, The environmental crisis, Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan, 2000

Abstract

The preliminary arguments outlined towards the end of the previous chapter suggest that the possibility of developing a genuine ethic of the environment, as opposed to a human or sentience based ethic for environmental use, requires that the environment possess value that is both non-instrumental, in that it does not depend on its utility for humans, and also objective, in that it does not depend on the beliefs, attitudes, opinions or feelings of human or other sentient valuers. Any account of environmental value that satisfies, or purports to satisfy, these conditions of non-instrumentality and objectivity I shall refer to as an objectivist theory.