Moral Status Phần 6 pps

whereas being a grandmother, or a recently naturalized citizen of

Canada, are relational properties.1

This chapter examines two versions of the Relationships Only

view. On either version of this view, an entity’s moral status depends

entirely upon certain of its relational properties; its intrinsic proper￾ties are irrelevant to what we owe it in the way of moral considera￾tion. J. Baird Callicott holds that an entity’s moral status depends

upon its social and ecological relationships, i.e. its membership and

role within a social or biological community.2 Nel Noddings argues

that the relationship of caring is the basis of all human moral oblig￾ations. In her view, we have moral obligations only towards beings

for whom we are psychologically capable of caring, and who in turn

have the capacity, at least potentially, to be aware of and responsive

to our care.3

Each of these theories contains important insights; social and

ecosystemic considerations can sometimes justify the ascription of

stronger moral status to a group of entities than could be justified

by the intrinsic properties of these entities. Nevertheless, neither ver￾sion of the Relationships Only view provides an adequate account

of moral status. Our obligations to living things, sentient beings, and

moral agents are not entirely contingent upon the prior existence of

social or ecological relationships between ourselves and them. Nor

are these obligations entirely contingent upon our psychological

capacity to care for such entities. There is, therefore, much to be said

for the Relationships Plus view, which permits ascriptions of moral

status to be justified on the basis of both intrinsic properties and re￾lational ones.

5.1. J. Baird Callicott’s Relationships Only View

Callicott is a philosophical interpreter and proponent of the envir￾onmental ethic pioneered by Aldo Leopold. On Leopold’s theory, as

The Relevance of Relationships 123

1 Most intrinsic properties are relational in another sense. Every thing (except

possibly the universe as a whole) has the intrinsic properties it has because of the

causal processes that bring it into being, and those that act upon it during its exis￾tence. This does not vitiate the distinction between intrinsic and relational properties

that I am making, which involves logical possibilities rather than empirical ones. 2 Callicott, In Defense of the Land Ethic. 3 Noddings, Caring.

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Callicott expounds it, all of our moral obligations arise from the

fact that we are members of communities. In Leopold’s words,

All ethics so far evolved rest upon a single premise: that the individual is a

member of a community of interdependent parts. His instincts prompt him

to compete for his place in the community, but his ethics prompt him also

to co-operate . . . The land ethic simply enlarges the boundaries of the com￾munity to include soils, waters, plants, and animals, or collectively: the

land.4

As Callicott points out, Leopold was not a professional philo￾sopher, and for that reason, ‘the metaphysical and axiological impli￾cations of ecology are incompletely expressed in his literary legacy’.5

Thus, there may be room for more than one interpretation of

Leopold’s moral philosophy. While I consider Callicott’s interpreta￾tion to be essentially sound, I am concerned less with its complete

consistency with Leopold’s intentions than with the value of the the￾ory of moral status that Callicott finds in Leopold’s work.

Humean/Darwinian Foundations

Callicott argues that Leopold’s land ethic was inspired in part by

Hume’s moral philosophy. Hume argued that the primary founda￾tion of morality is not reason, but sentiment. We are social crea￾tures, equipped with an instinctive tendency to approve of attitudes

and behaviours that serve the ‘public utility’, and to disapprove of

those that harm it. Thus, it is natural for us to be pleased by such so￾cial virtues as ‘friendship and gratitude, natural affection and public

spirit, . . . a tender sympathy with others, and a generous concern for

our kind and our species’.6 Moral concepts and principles arise from

this natural tendency to approve of that which serves the good of

the human community. Reason enables us to serve the public good

more effectively, e.g. by establishing principles of justice, legal rights

and duties, and systems of legal enforcement. Through reason, we

can extend our sympathies beyond the small community of family

and friends within which they initially develop, to larger groups of

human beings, and eventually to all of humanity.7

124 An Account of Moral Status

4 Leopold, A Sand County Almanac, 239. 5 In Defense of the Land Ethic, 5. 6 Hume, Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals, 178. 7 Ibid. 192.

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