Life'S Intrinsic Value. Science, Ethics, And Nature

Are the bacteriophage T4 and the long-nosed elephant fish valuable in their own right? Nicholas Agar defends an affirmative answer to this question by arguing that anything living is intrinsically valuable. This claim challenges the received wisdom according to which only human beings are valuable in themselves. The resulting biocentric or life-centered morality forms the platform for an ethic of the environment. Agar argues that just as science dislodged humans from the center of the physical universe, it now challenges our claim to the exclusive occupancy of the center of the moral universe. Spanning several fields-including environmental ethics, philosophy of mind, philosophy of biology, and philosophy of language-Agar analyzes and discusses a wide array of historic and contemporary views from Aristotle and Kant to E. O. Wilson, Peter Singer, Holmes Rolston III, Michael Ruse, and J. Baird Callicott, to name just a few. The result is a challenge to prevailing definitions of value and a call for a scientifically informed appreciation of nature.