Moral Status Phần 3 potx

implied by it, but that many people may nevertheless be predisposed

to draw from it.

It is not clear whether Schweitzer is making a logical or a psy￾chological claim in the passage just quoted. However, it is clearly

false that any distinction that we draw between the moral status of

people and that of bacteria will have, as a logical consequence, that

there are some people who have the moral status of bacteria. (For

instance, both the sentience and moral agency criteria logically suf￾fice to block that inference.) It is more likely, then, that Schweitzer is

describing what he takes to be a psychological tendency—the ten￾dency, having once established distinct categories of moral status, to

place some persons in the lowest category.

Schweitzer’s argument, thus construed, may appear plausible. It

is true that many people habitually demean others by comparing

them to forms of life that are considered especially unattractive,

such as pond scum (algae). Perhaps if we saw algae as our moral

equals, we would also be more inclined to see other people that way.

There is, however, no persuasive evidence of the psychological slide

that Schweitzer warns against. Persons who routinely kill algae and

feel no guilt about it (aquarium keepers, for instance), do not seem

to be especially likely to harm other persons, or seriously to equate

their moral status with that of algae. The robust distinction that

most of us make between the moral status of human beings and that

of algae prevents us from making any inference from the permissi￾bility of harming algae to the permissibility of harming human be￾ings. Thus, the psychological slope is less slippery than Schweitzer

would have us believe.

2.5. The Argument from Teleological Organization

Schweitzer has not presented a persuasive case for the Life Only

view, i.e. that life is a necessary and sufficient condition for full

moral status. Even the Life Plus view—that life is sufficient for some

moral status, but not for full moral status—receives little support

from his argument from the will to live. This argument presupposes

that all living organisms are sentient, and this presupposition is not

supported by the available evidence. It would be premature, how￾ever, to conclude that life is not a valid criterion of moral status.

Reverence for Life 45

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There are arguments for the Life Plus view that do not require so

great a leap of faith as Schweitzer’s. Perhaps the most important of

these are those which appeal to the ecosystemic relationships

amongst terrestrial organisms. These arguments are explored in

Chapter 5. At present, however, I want to focus upon an argument

which appeals only to the intrinsic properties of living things.

Some environmental ethicists argue that living things have moral

status because of their teleological nature, i.e. because of the ways in

which they are internally organized to maintain (for a time) their

own existence. Teleological organization is said to be sufficient for at

least some moral status, because it demonstrates that the organism

has a telos, or good of its own, and that it can therefore be harmed

or benefited by human actions. This is the argument that Paul

Taylor gives; and there are many environmentalists who accept this

argument, even though they reject Taylor’s further claim, that all liv￾ing things have the same moral status.47

Although generally suspicious of efforts to draw sharp lines be￾tween what is and is not morally considerable, Val Plumwood nev￾ertheless suggests that autonomous teleological organization may be

a necessary condition—and perhaps a sufficient one—for meriting

moral respect and consideration. She points out that

there needs to be something that can be turned aside or frustrated by our

actions, so that the concept of respect or consideration can get a foothold,

as it were . . . Wherever we can discern an autonomous . . . teleology the

concepts of respect and moral consideration have a potential for applica￾tion.48

Holmes Rolston III puts the point somewhat more strongly. He

argues that the teleological nature of living things is a sufficient basis

for some moral status, because it means that all organisms have in￾trinsic value. Organisms, he argues, are ‘evaluative systems’, i.e. sys￾46 An Account of Moral Status

47 Examples include Holmes Rolston III, ‘Environmental Ethics: Values in and

Duties to the Natural World’, in Earl R. Winkler and Jerrold R. Coombs (eds.),

Applied Ethics: A Reader (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1993), 271–92; John Rodman,

‘Four Forms of Ecological Consciousness Reconsidered’, in Donald Scherer and

Thomas Attig (eds.), Ethics and the Environment (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice￾Hall, 1983), 90; Hans Jonas, The Phenomenon of Life (Chicago, Ill.: University of

Chicago Press, 1966), 84–91; and Taylor, Respect for Nature, 124, 153. 48 Val Plumwood, Feminism and the Mastery of Nature (London: Routledge,

1993), 210.

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