This paper describes the interventions by the International Committee of the Red Cross to support a hospital in Afghanistan during the mid 1990s. We present elements of the interventions introduced in Ghazni, Afghanistan, and consider a number of ethical issues stimulated by this analysis. Ethical challenges arise whenever humanitarian interventions to deal with complex political emergencies are undertaken: among those related to the case study presented are questions concerning: a) whether humanitarian support runs the risk of propping up repressive and (...) irresponsible governments; b) whether humanitarian relief activities can legitimately focus on a narrow range of interventions, or need to broaden to address the range of challenges facing the health system; and c) whether sustainability and quality of care should be routinely considered in such settings. The paper concludes by highlighting the value of case studies, suggesting mechanisms for extending transparency and accountability in humanitarian health interventions, and highlighting the need of contextualising humanitarian work if the interventions are to be successful. (shrink)

Environmental pragmatists such as Ben Minteer and Bryan Norton have argued that there is an anti-democratic strain to be found in the work of some nonanthropocentrists. I examine three possible sources of the pragmatists' concern: the claim that nonanthropocentrists know the political truth, the claim that those who disagree with their basic principle should be excluded from discussions of policy and the claim that their basic principle is self-evident. I argue here that none of these claims are objectionably anti-democratic when (...) understood properly. (shrink)

Methodological pragmatists argue that, given the dire state of the environment, the primary goal of environmentalists, including philosophers who work in environmental ethics, must be to work together to ensure that environmentally friendly policies are put into place. They must set aside their differences and not argue over their competing theoretical justifications of environmental policies, as that contributes to divisiveness among environmentalists and prevents this cooperation from occurring. The proposal to ignore disagreements over theory gets cashed out in three distinct (...) ways, however, and consequently one can identify three distinct versions of methodological pragmatism. Radical methodological pragmatists propose that environmentalists give up on the task of providing well-founded theoretical justifications for environmentally friendly policies and stop engaging in debates over these justifications; rather, they should focus on providing reasons for these policies that connect with whatever values people already have. Moderate methodological pragmatists propose that although there is nothing problematic in offering theoretical justifications in contexts where environmental philosophers disagree on what policy should be adopted, they should work together and put aside their theoretical differences where policy recommendations coincide. Finally, weak methodological pragmatists hold only that environmental philosophers should work together where their policies coincide and there are no additional practical or moral considerations that might be relevant to their ability to work together. The first two positions involve interesting claims, but they are fundamentally flawed. On the other hand, the third is unobjectionable but largely trivial. Thus, there is no reason to think that method­ological pragmatism can contribute to the resolution of problems in environmental ethics. (shrink)

Environmental pragmatists such as Bryan Norton and Ben Minteer argue that environmental philosophers should look to the values of real people and communities to determine which environmental policies and legislation should be put into place. But they want to avoid a kind of simplistic relativism, since that view entails all sorts of reprehensible conclusions about what is right and wrong and what is valuable, both generally and with respect to the environment. Their solution is to distinguish between the community’s surface (...) or apparent values and its true values—the community’s true values serve as the basis for the moral appraisal and justification of policies and legislation, and they believe that these will neither endorse nor justify reprehensible principles or policies. The community’s true values, according to Norton, are those that survive a critical, deliberative process. However, there is no reason to think that the process described by Norton will yield normatively better values—values that do not have reprehensible implications. Even if the process described by Norton were to have this effect, he cannot consistently appeal to it, since it runs counter to his overall account of value as being nothing more than actual instances of real people caring about and valuing something. If value is a function of what people actually value here and now, then what people would value under conditions that are unlikely to occur is irrelevant to what is valuable and what can count as the true values of a community. Thus, Norton’s view, and environmental pragmatism, at least to the extent that Norton’s account is representative of that view, remains susceptible to the reprehensible implications problem. (shrink)

A central thesis of biocentrism is that all living things have intrinsic value. But when conflicts arise between the interests of humans and other organisms, this claim often has counterintuitive consequences. It would be wrong, for example, to swat pesky flies. Some biocentrists have responded by positing a taxonomy of interests in which human interests justifiably supersede those of other living things. I express doubts about whether this maneuver can succeed, and suggest that even if it does, it then commits (...) biocentrists to the claim that it is wrong not to harm living things, when doing so is necessary to advance nonbasic human interests, a position which runs counter to the biocentric attitude of respect for nature. As a result, biocentrists must adopt either a highly counterintuitive position or one that is contrary to their general outlook. I show that the introduction of the supererogatory may resolve not only this biocentric dilemma but other quandaries in environmental ethics. (shrink)

Many valuable natural resources are found outside current territorial limits, for example, on the Moon and in the deep sea. As technology advances, these resources become more accessible. I argue that the claim that all humanity owns these resources is insupportable if taken literally. Because they are truly unowned, we need to develop a principle of justice in acquisition which describes the procedure that must be followed to obtain property rights to these unowned objects. I conclude with a tentative development (...) of such a principle based on the moral ideals of fairness, freedom, and the maximization of the common good. (shrink)

Many valuable natural resources are found outside current territorial limits, for example, on the Moon and in the deep sea. As technology advances, these resources become more accessible. I argue that the claim that all humanity owns these resources is insupportable if taken literally. Because they are truly unowned, we need to develop a principle of justice in acquisition which describes the procedure that must be followed to obtain property rights to these unowned objects. I conclude with a tentative development (...) of such a principle based on the moral ideals of fairness, freedom, and the maximization of the common good. (shrink)

Some critics have understood environmental egalitarianism to imply that human and animal lives are generally equal in value, so that killing a human is no more objectionable than killing a dog. This charge should be troubling for anyone with egalitarian sympathies. I argue that one can distinguish two distinct versions of equality, one based on the idea of equal treatment, the other on the idea of equally valuable lives. I look at a lifeboat case where one must choose between saving (...) a human and saving a dog, and using the work of Peter Singer and Tom Regan, I show why equality understood as equal treatment does not entail that lifeboat cases are moral toss-ups. But the view that all lives are equally valuable does entail this, and so egalitarians should reject this alternative account of equality. The upshot is that egalitarians need to be more careful about distinguishing between these two versions of equality. The failure to insist on this distinction has led many to believe that egalitarianism generally has counter-intuitive implications when in fact only one version of egalitarianism has this problem. (shrink)

The principle that we should not interfere with nature plays a prominent role in both popular and academic accounts of environmental ethics. For example, it is often cited to justify the claims that we should not actively manage wilderness areas and that we should not extinguish naturally occurring fires in those areas. It is far from clear, however, exactly what that principle entails for our treatment of species and ecosystems. Does all human interaction with nature amount to interference? If there (...) are different kinds of interference, are they all wrong? Might not there be such a thing as beneficial interference? Can one part of nature interfere with another, and if so, is it morally permissible or forbidden for humans to prevent this kind of interference? These questions can be answered only if we have a clear notion of interference. First, I examine one initially plausible account which takes it to be a kind of cause. One interferes with a species or ecosystem when one alters or redirects it. Second, I answer a crucial question that must be faced with regard to any theory that takes interference to be a kind of cause. If interference involves nothing more than having an effect on an ecosystem, then the activities of practically every species in an ecosystem interfere with it. However, these activities are usually thought of as legitimate or normal ecosystemic change, as essential components of the ecosystem, rather than as interference.Thus, some criterion must be proposed to distinguish between interference and the actions of other species which have an effect on an ecosystem but do not interfere with it. I look at a number of proposals and conclude that no one of them is uniquely correct. Rather, the criterion one employs to understand interference must be determined by one’s projects and goals. (shrink)

The principle that we should not interfere with nature plays a prominent role in both popular and academic accounts of environmental ethics. For example, it is often cited to justify the claims that we should not actively manage wilderness areas and that we should not extinguish naturally occurring fires in those areas. It is far from clear, however, exactly what that principle entails for our treatment of species and ecosystems. Does all human interaction with nature amount to interference? If there (...) are different kinds of interference, are they all wrong? Might not there be such a thing as beneficial interference? Can one part of nature interfere with another, and if so, is it morally permissible or forbidden for humans to prevent this kind of interference? These questions can be answered only if we have a clear notion of interference. First, I examine one initially plausible account which takes it to be a kind of cause. One interferes with a species or ecosystem when one alters or redirects it. Second, I answer a crucial question that must be faced with regard to any theory that takes interference to be a kind of cause. If interference involves nothing more than having an effect on an ecosystem, then the activities of practically every species in an ecosystem interfere with it. However, these activities are usually thought of as legitimate or normal ecosystemic change, as essential components of the ecosystem, rather than as interference.Thus, some criterion must be proposed to distinguish between interference and the actions of other species which have an effect on an ecosystem but do not interfere with it. I look at a number of proposals and conclude that no one of them is uniquely correct. Rather, the criterion one employs to understand interference must be determined by one’s projects and goals. (shrink)

: Whether or not extinction caused by human activities is natural depends on which sense of the term 'natural' is under consideration. Given one sense of that term which has some grip on the popular imagination, it is. This suggests that at a minimum environmentalists should be very careful about invoking 'the natural' and related concepts such as 'acting naturally' when they propose moral principles. I argue here for the stronger claim that the 'natural' is either redundant and serves to (...) obscure more than it brings to light, or that it is bound up with a picture of the world which is false, and so theoretically useless. Thus 'the natural' can do no useful theoretical work in a completely developed environmental ethic. (shrink)

Libertarians such as Nozick have argued that any redistributive tax scheme intended to achieve and maintain an egalitarian distributive pattern will violate self‐ownership. Furthermore, since self‐ownership is a central component of the idea of freedom, instituting an egalitarian distribution makes a society less rather than more free. All this turns on the claim, accepted by both libertarians and their critics, that a redistributive tax will violate self‐ownership because it must expropriate the fruit of a person’s labour. I show here that (...) there is no reason to accept this claim. The libertarian argument works only if the fruit of one’s labour must be understood to include everything that a person produces through his labour. But there is an alternative reading of the fruit of labour which identifies it with that subset of the total product of one’s labour which is due to his choices rather than luck. I argue that this reading is plausible, that there is nothing in the concept of self‐ownership which disallows it, and that if it is adopted, a redistributive tax need not automatically expropriate the fruit of one’s labour. Consequently there is no necessary inconsistency between redistributive taxation and self‐ownership, and so egalitarians can endorse the latter idea. (shrink)

A central thesis of biocentrism is that all living things have intrinsic value. But when conflicts arise between the interests of humans and other organisms, this claim often has counterintuitive consequences. It would be wrong, for example, to swat pesky flies. Some biocentrists have responded by positing a taxonomy of interests in which human interests justifiably supersede those of other living things. I express doubts about whether this maneuver can succeed, and suggest that even if it does, it then commits (...) biocentrists to the claim that it is wrong not to harm living things, when doing so is necessary to advance nonbasic human interests, a position which runs counter to the biocentric attitude of respect for nature. As a result, biocentrists must adopt either a highly counterintuitive position or one that is contrary to their general outlook. I show that the introduction of the supererogatory may resolve not only this biocentric dilemma but other quandaries in environmental ethics. (shrink)

Essentialists like J. Baird Callicott have argued that one cannot have an environmental ethic unless one adopts the nonanthropocentric principle, which holds that things other than humans can be morally considerable in their own right, typically because they are thought to be intrinsically valuable. Pragmatists like Bryan Norton reject this; they claim that environmental ethics has no core or essence, and hence that the nonanthropocentric principle is not essential to an environmental ethic. Norton advances as an alternative the Convergence Hypothesis, (...) which says that there are many different ways of justifying environmental principles and policies. In this paper I show that pragmatists and essentialists are arguing past one another because they fail to note two crucial points. First, they often propose different accounts of which principles constitute an environmental ethic and so they disagree about which principles must be justified. The nonanthropocentric principle may be required to justify the principles that Callicott believe to be constitutive of an environmental ethic, but it may be unnecessary to justify those principles that pragmatists think are constitutive. Second, essentialists and pragmatists often overlook the distinction to be made between the adequacy of a justification and its epistemic or rhetorical preferability. The nonanthropocentric principle may not be needed to provide an adequate justification of the constitutive principles and judgements, but a justification that contains the nonanthropocentric principle might nevertheless be epistemically preferable. (shrink)

Advocates of an environmental ethic frequently claim that what makes an ethical theory truly and uniquely environmental is its commitment to the principle that environmental wholes such as species, ecosystems, and biotic communities are morally considerable. The prevailing view is that our primary duty towards these wholes is to respect their integrity, stability, and beauty, and that the best way to do this is to leave them alone, not interfere with them, and let nature follow its own course. But is (...) that correct? Why should be refrain from interfering with nature?There are two ways an environmentalist might try to justify an exceptionaless, prima facie principle of noninterference. First, she might claim that there is a contingent but universal connection between human interference and ecosystemic harm. There is also an epistemic variant of this view. When faced with a decision concerning whether to interfere with an ecosystem, there will always be overwhelming reasons for thinking that interference will be harmful, regardless of the specific circumstances. Send, there might be some conceptual connection between interference and harm to ecosystems. For example, if the well-being of an ecosystem is identified with its wildness, and wildness is understood as the absence of human intervention or manipulation, then any human interference necessarily detracts from an ecosystem's wildness and thereby has a detrimental effect on its well-being. In this paper I examine these justifications in detail and argue that none can support an exceptionaless principle of noninterference. (shrink)