Marder on Plants

Marder thinks that plants should have the right to flourish and the right to be free of arbitrary violence. The basis for these rights is plant subjectivity or agency. In other words, plants have a basic ability to actively shape their environments. As such, they should have certain rights. Plant intelligence studies seem to undermine Singer's justification of vegetarianism because it shows that just because someone avoids eating animals does not yet mean that one is eating ethically. Plants, as something with their own kind of subjectivity, seem to be just as deserving of rights as animals are. Just because they have rights does not entail that they also have responsibilities. We might have obligations to plants even if plants are not the kind of thing to have their own obligations. It may even turn out that all eating is unethical. If this is the case, then this is not to say that we should stop all eating. Rather, the question of whether we should eat is akin to the question of whether we should exist. Marder says that the easiest rule for respectful eating is to remember that the sources of our food are not just calories for human consumption. There is some sort of 'good' for that plant (or animal) itself. 

Kantian Animal Ethics

In this essay, Korsgaard begins by noting the unstable attitudes that we have towards animals. On the one hand, we seem to agree that it is wrong to inflict pain on an animal or to kill an animal without good reason. On the other hand, it seems like any reason other than mere enjoyment is a good reason to harm or kill an animal. Korsgaard notes that generally, those who want to argue for better treatment of animals will often emphasize the similarities between humans and non-humans whereas those who want to defend the status quo will emphasize the difference between humans and non-humans. Korsgaard will follow neither of these tactics. Instead, she thinks that there is a big difference between humans and non-humans and that it is because of this difference that we ought to treat animals better.

What is the difference between humans and non-human animals? Humans have a capacity for reflective self-awareness. We don't merely act on instinct--we think about our actions and have the capacity to choose to act other than our instincts drive us. Although Korsgaard seems to be open to the possibility that some non-humans have a rudimentary level of self-awareness, humans seem to be rationally and reflexively aware of their own consciousness in a way that other animals are not. Hume seems to think that this difference means that we have no obligations to animals whatsoever. Kant thinks that although we have no obligations to animals, we should treat animals well as a duty to ourselves and other rational beings. In short, Kant thinks that to ignore the suffering of animals is to dull our capacity for sympathy and empathy. To treat animals well is a sort of practice to treat humans well. Because animals are analagous to humans in some ways, we should treat animals well in order to keep up our capacity to care about other people.

Korsgaard on Agency

In this article, Korsgaard is concerned with agency. Agency is the ability to perform actions. Someone who can perform actions is an agent. Korsgaard describes two different kinds of theories about agency: the normative account and the natural account. On the natural account, an action is just what happens when there is a causal relationship between a belief and a behavior. This is a purely descriptive account. The normative account of agency is not purely descriptive. On the normative account, an action only happens if the agent's beliefs and actions are organized in a certain way. For example, Plato's account of agency includes the theory that an action is performed only if one's rational capacity is in control of the other parts of the person (spirit and appetite). Kant's account of agency includes the theory that an action is performed only when an agent reflectively considers the axiom that is guiding his action and then proceeds only if the axiom can be made universal law. Korsgaard thinks that any natural account of agency must also be supplemented with a normative account because only a normative account of agency can explain two implications that arise when we attribute agency.

When we attribute agency to someone, Korsgaard says there are two resulting implications. First, it seems like an action is somehow expressive of who a person is and the agent has some kind of ownership over his or her actions. She calls this the identity implication. In other words, actions express the identity of a person. Second, actions can fail in a way that simple causal linkages cannot. For example, the action of dodging a ball has a goal of avoiding being hit by a ball. Even if I move my body in response to a belief or desire, my action has failed if my goal has not been met. Korsgaard calls this the activity implication. Only a normative account of agency can help to explain these two implications.

Leopold's Land Ethic

Leopold wants to think about ethics in evolutionary terms. His background is as a biologist. Philosophically speaking, an ethic is what distinguishes social from anti-social behavior. In other words, an ethic says what you should and should not do. Ecologically speaking, an ethic is a restriction on individual behavior in the struggle for life. Leopold says that the sequence of ethical evolution is to recognize a broader range of entities as being morally relevant. For example, in the history of Western Civilization, women and various other minorities were, at one point or another, thought to be morally irrelevant. Many humans were once considered property. Property issues are not moral issues. But just as we now recognize that women and minorities are not property, Leopold thinks that we have good reason to think of land as more than property. Land has moral value even if we do not love, respect or admire it.

What is the basis of the value of the land? Leopold describes what he calls the land pyramid. At the base of the pyramid is the soil. Plants live on the soil, insects live on the plants, rodents and birds live on the plants, and smaller predators live on birds, rodents and plants. Apex predators occupy the top of the pyramid, as they are consumed by no other creatures. Beings near the top feed off of beings lower on the pyramid. Beings at the bottom are nourished by the decaying matter of higher species. Leopold says that the way this biological community functions is like an energy circuit. Energy (nutrition, calories) transfers from the lower levels to the higher levels and back down. Natural and native species keep this energy circuit open. Sometimes, invasive or introduced species interrupt this energy circuit. For example, the kudzu vine will cover all native plant species and rob them of energy from the sun. When local plants die, local insect populations do not get appropriate nutrition. Hence, local rodent and bird populations suffer, as well. Eventually, this domino effect reaches apex predators. Whereas natural changes in biological communities are slow and local, man-made changes are fast and large-scale.

Humanity can either think of itself as a conqueror over nature or as in community with nature. Leopold says that attempts to be conquerors will be self-defeating because true domination and control require perfect knowledge of how nature functions. Because we lack this perfect knowledge, we cannot control nature. Also, a long history of attempts to control nature show that our scientific and technological efforts are often met with negative consequences that are neither foreseen nor intended. As such, we should recognize that just as species within a biological community have co-evolved in order to function as a larger system, we are also part of the biological community. We are not masters of nature. We are in community with natural systems and species.