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Sentientism, Wellbeing, and Environmentalism
Author(s) -
RODOGNO RAFFAELE
Publication year - 2010
Publication title -
journal of applied philosophy
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.339
H-Index - 30
eISSN - 1468-5930
pISSN - 0264-3758
DOI - 10.1111/j.1468-5930.2009.00475.x
Subject(s) - sentience , holism , creatures , environmentalism , environmental ethics , epistemology , virtue , function (biology) , sociology , object (grammar) , wish , philosophy , law , natural (archaeology) , political science , linguistics , archaeology , evolutionary biology , politics , biology , anthropology , history
In this article, I wish to explore a plausible alternative to both sentientist ethics and holistic environmental ethics. In particular, I put forward the claim that creatures other than sentient ones have interests and, in virtue of that, moral standing. This thesis is in disagreement with sentientism insofar as it claims that sentience is not a prerequisite for moral consideration. Radical as it may sound, this view does not take us as far as the holism favoured by some environmentalists. In particular, on this view, the interests of collectives such as ecosystems and species are a positive function of the interests of the entities that make them up rather than something of an entirely different kind. Collectives are not the direct object of moral consideration.