In the US Environmental Protection Agency, the World Wide Fund for Nature and many other environmental organisations, it is standard practice to evaluate particular woods, wetlands and other such places on the basis of the ‘ecosystem services’ they are thought to provide. I argue that this practice cannot account for one important way in which places are of value to human beings. When they play integral roles in our lives, particular places have a kind of value which cannot be adequately (...) conceived in terms of service provision. Since it is in this respect limited, the ecosystem services framework can, I suggest, be criticised on grounds of justice. (shrink)

Starting from a distinction between intrinsic and final value, I explore the implications of the supervenience of final value on extrinsic properties regarding moral status. I make a case for ‘extrinsic moral status’ based on ‘extrinsic final value’. I show that the assumption of ‘moral individualism’, that moral status supervenes merely on intrinsic properties, is misguided, and results from a conflation of intrinsic with final value. I argue that at least one extrinsic property, namely vulnerability, can be the basis of (...) both final value and moral status, and that dependence on such extrinsic properties is compatible with the requirement of agent-neutrality. (shrink)

On some popular accounts of promissory obligation, a promise creates an obligation to the person to whom the promise is made . On such accounts, the wrong involved in breaking a promise is a wrong committed against a promisee. I will call such accounts ‘directed obligation’ accounts of promissory obligation. While I concede that directed obligation accounts make good sense of many of our promissory obligations, I aim to show that directed obligation accounts, at least in their current forms, cannot (...) accommodate an obligation to keep deathbed promises. While the term 'deathbed promise' refers to any promise made to a person who is dying, I focus specifically on deathbed promises which will not, or even cannot, be fulfilled until after the promisee's death. In what follows, I examine two prominent types of directed obligation account: rights-based accounts, which argue that a promissory obligation is a directed obligation because a promise gives the promisee certain rights, and harm accounts, which argue that a promissory obligation is a directed obligation because a promise puts the promisee in a special position to be harmed. I argue that neither version can accommodate an obligation to keep deathbed promises. (shrink)

This paper is a plea for hedonism to be taken more seriously. It begins by charting hedonism's decline, and suggests that this is a result of two major objections: the claim that hedonism is the 'philosophy of swine', reducing all value to a single common denominator, and Nozick's 'experience machine' objection. There follows some elucidation of the nature of hedonism, and of enjoyment in particular. Two types of theory of enjoyment are outlined-intemalism, according to which enjoyment has some special 'feeling (...) tone'. and externalism, according to which enjoyment is any kind of experience to which we take some special attitude, such as that of desire. lnternalism-the traditional view--is defended against current externalist orthodoxy. The paper ends with responses to the philosophy of swine and the experience machine objections. (shrink)

: Animal ethics has presented convincing arguments for the individual value of animals. Animals are not only valuable instrumentally or indirectly, but in themselves. Less has been written about interest conflicts between humans and other animals, and the use of animals in practice. The motive of this paper is to analyze different approaches to interest conflicts. It concentrates on six models, which are the rights model, the interest model, the mental complexity model, the special relations model, the multi-criteria model, and (...) the contextual model. Of these, the contextual model is the strongest, and carries clear consequences for the practical use of animals. (shrink)

The issues of climate change and environmental degradation elicit diverse responses. This paper explores how an understanding of human moral psychology might be used to motivate conservation efforts. Moral concerns for the environment can relate to issues of harm or impurity . Aversions to harm are linked to concern for current or future generations, non-human animals, and anthropomorphized aspects of the environment. Concerns for purity are linked to viewing the environment as imbued with sacred value and therefore worthy of being (...) protected at all costs. While both harm-based and purity-based framings of environmental issues can sometimes backfire, we argue that making these moral concerns salient can nevertheless bring about moral responses to environmental issues. In sum, scientists' emerging knowledge about the moral mind can be used to facilitate the sustainable conservation of the planet. (shrink)

Nonhuman animals are routinarily used as resources for us to use. An important argument in the literature on the issue claims that this is justified because we are not attached to them by the emotional ties that bind us to other human beings. This line of reasoning is examined here and found to be faulty as regards both its factual and its normative assumptions. This implies that the burden of proof rests on the side of those who want to defend (...) the use of nonhuman animals. The paper concludes with the claim that until a sound defense of anthropocentrism is provided, we should assume that such use is not morally justified. (shrink)

This paper investigates consistency in applied moral philosophy with regard to the recent controversy over Makah whaling in the state of Washington. The first part presents both sides of the controversy. The second part examines the meaning of 'tradition' and distinguishes between 'new' and 'old' traditions. The third part explores what might constitute moral consistency for the Makah and what might constitute moral consistency for the larger community.