EcoRes Forum

[J Bendik-Keymer]

It seems there are a significant number of people at this conference who do not think non-humans can be subjects of justice, let alone species. (We have not broached yet whether if non-humans can be subjects of justice, species can, rather than individuals.) A number have claimed non-humans, nonetheless, are caught up in our duties or virtues, even when they are not subjects of justice. Before we move to investigating whether there is a moral wrong in AMSE (anthropogenic mass species extinction), however, let's stick to justice a bit longer. Can species extinction be part of justice, given what we humans deserve of other other? In other words, can there be justice regarding non-human species, even if there can't be justice to them?

To answer this question, we'd have to figure out the ways non-human species figure in our good, our rights, what we deserve, or what can harm us. How might they? How do they?

It's important to consider the question of justice to future generations here, too. What problems do future generations pose to our sense of justice when we imagine a world with 30 to 70% species loss due to us?

Finally, is there any specific order of injustice -like a major injustice to fellow humans- in causing extinction as opposed to, e.g., hurting someone's dog and so doing an injustice to the owner?

[J Bendik-Keymer]

To use Aristotle again, for a start, to give us a framework for mapping the way there might be injustice regarding species extinction, we might consider:

1. What is pleasant to us;
-- E.g., Species add aesthetic richness to our world. Just as it is an injustice to a child to school it in an ugly classroom; it could be an injustice to people to deprive them of nature's wondrous variety.

2. What is useful for us;
-- E.g., Species help maintain ecological interdependencies we rely on. Destroying the key ones indirectly harms us.

(Wendy was referring to this category of injustice regarding species extinction in her last post on the thread concerning whether non-humans can be subjects of justice; and Toby was, too, in a post on the thread about morality and species extinction.)

3. What is fine -or noble (or really humane)- to us.
-- E.g., Studying what Jefferson, as a good Enlightenment thinker, considered "the Book of Nature" is a noble -or fine- pursuit. Trampling the pages of the Book of Nature in our haste and greed might then be an injustice to those who would read the Book.

If anyone has time and is interested, I'd be interested in filling out further the ways species extinction can be a matter of justice by way of being an injustice to each other (or to future generations), given the good species provide us, in various ways.