Against the Moral Considerability of Ecosystems

Devorah Freundlich

Harley Cahen

Against the Moral Considerability of Ecosystems

Harley Cahen’s thesis is that ecosystems cannot be morally considerable because they do not have interests. Interests come as a result of having a goal.

Many environmentalists (brought forth by Cahen in the text) are impressed by the fact that individual non-sentient organisms (such as plants) seem to pursue their own biological goals, and conclude from this that we should therefore extend moral considerability to them, as well. However the line they toe is very thin. There’s a considerable difference between a system’s genuine goals and the incidental effects, or byproducts, of the behavior of that system and its parts. While goals may give rise to interests, byproducts do not. It’s hard to see how an entire ecosystem could be genuinely goal orientated and therefore it cannot be granted moral considerability.

Through all the back and forth of the article, which at times can be hard to follow and is often confusing, there’s a certain pattern that comes to light: it seems as though we, humans, are the decision makers in all this.

We decide whether or not an ecosystem has the right to moral considerability, we decide whether the possible “interests” of an ecosystem should be taken into account, leading us to the question of: what is the value of an ecosystem, or even of a plant, and is that value intrinsic or is it only in existence once we, as humans, have extended it?

Shouldn’t living things, no matter what we may or may not see in them be deserving of value purely for the fact that they exist and occupy space within the world?

Although there’s an opposing argument to be made that once we’ve recognized the value in something it gives us the ability to tap into our resources in order to provide assistance, or coverage, there’s still this elitist idea that the subject is only deserving of value once we’ve decided so and is otherwise irrelevant.

It may be irrelevant to us, but its relevancy shouldn’t be determined by us to begin with. Our interests aren’t what make or break the inherent value in any organism, or to extend this idea further, even to an animal (which according to the article does deserve moral considerability).