To hold an environmental ethic is to hold that non-human beings and states of affairs in the natural world have intrinsic value. This seemingly straightforward claim has been the focus of much recent philosophical discussion of environmental issues. Its clarity is, however, illusory. The term ‘intrinsic value’ has a variety of senses and many arguments on environmental ethics suffer from a conflation of these different senses: specimen hunters for the fallacy of equivocation will find rich pickings in the area. This (...) paper is largely the work of the underlabourer. I distinguish different senses of the concept of intrinsic value, and, relatedly, of the claim that non-human beings in the natural world have intrinsic value; I exhibit the logical relations between these claims and examine the distinct motivations for holding them. The paper is not however merely an exercise in conceptual underlabouring. It also defends one substantive thesis: that while it is the case that natural entities have intrinsic value in the strongest sense of the term, i.e., in the sense of value that exists independently of human valuations, such value does not as such entail any obligations on the part of human beings. The defender of nature’s intrinsic value still needs to show that such value contributes to the well-being of human agents. (shrink)

In this paper I examine what I will call "the standard account" of intrinsic value as it appears in recent textbooks written by John Hospers, William Frankena, and Richard B. Brandt. I argue: (a) it is not clear whether a theory of intrinsic value can be developed along the lines of the standard account; (b) if one is to develop such a theory, one will need to introduce a notion of "basic intrinsic value" in addition to the notion of "intrinsic (...) value"; and (c) several different theories of intrinsic value may account for the same judgments concerning desirability, and it will be arbitrary to choose one of these theories over another. (shrink)

AT THE end of the earliest exposition of his emotive theory of ethics, Charles Stevenson acknowledged that the obvious response of many would be: "When we ask 'Is X good?' we don't want mere influence, mere advice.... We want our interests to be guided by... truth, and by nothing else. To substitute for such a truth mere emotive meaning and suggestion is to conceal from us the very object of our search." To this Stevenson replied: "I can only answer that (...) I do not understand. What is this truth to be about?... I find no indefinable property, nor do I know what to look for." Perhaps Stevenson might be excused for not trying harder. But no excuse is available for the failure of recent moral philosophy as a whole to do so. (shrink)