Radical approaches to the value of nature

pp. 74-90

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

Abstract

The theories of intrinsic value examined in Chapters 3 and 4 are examples of what I have referred to as traditional approaches. What makes an approach to environmental value traditional is a certain picture or conception of how this value must be. The conception takes the form of a disjunction, an either/or. Either the value of nature must be subjective in that it depends for its existence and nature on the mental activities of human, or at least conscious, valuers, or it must be objective in that its existence and nature are independent of the mental activities of conscious valuers. And what motivates this orienting conception of how value must be is a further, and therefore more basic, distinction between subject and object.