In Jamieson's summary version of Routley's famous "Last Man" example, the planet is dying and the last living person knows (somehow -- we can't worry too much about these epistemic details) that it can never regenerate. So in his own dying act he (perhaps only a guy would think to do this) blows up what's left. Does he do anything wrong? By hypothesis the rest of sentient and sapient life is already gone, so it's just mountains and gorges and atmosphere and oceans and insentient species (crustateans, microbes...) that he destroys, all permanently devoid of sentient life. He eliminates all future sunsets, of course, but no one would have seen them anyway, so there's no possible cost even to anyone's aesthetic quality of life.
It would not be fruitful to fuss much over the wackiness of this imaginary scenario. What is interesting is the way, setting aside its implausibilities, it tests our intuitions. Those inclined to imbue a mountain as such, or a species of bacteria, with morally relevant intrinsic value would have to say that the guy does something wrong, though it is difficult to put our finger on what, precisely -- who or what is harmed that is even in principle capable of caring one way or the other? The act might reveal a (soon to be moot) character flaw, but it disrespects no-one, has no consequences that could possibly matter to anyone, etc. On the other hand, if we claim he does nothing wrong we must contend with what for many of us is a strong sense of loss in the contemplation of that last, trivially violent act.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
9 comments:
In the context of intrinsic value, I do not believe he is doing anything wrong. As we know, microbes can not really apply value to things. However, of course blowing up the world is wrong, on multiple levels. Intrinsic value is meaningless in this situation. Why would anyone want to destroy millions of years of a planets existence? The remains of our civilization would still be existent for intersteller life-forms to potentially discover one day if Earth remained intact. Imagine if the human race created technology to travel to other solar-systems, yet when we got there we found nothing. What if a planet had previously existed, but ended in a matter similar to this "Last man" siuation? This man is following George Berkeley's "to be is to be perceived" too far. If no human is there to perceive Earth, there is no logical reason why the abiotic cycles of the Earth shouldn't continue. Also, who is to say that this last man isn't simply the last man before a mass extinction? All mass extinctions prior to our existence have not been the end of this planets prosperity. In fact, each mass extinction has eventually led to more intelligent life forms. To sum my argument up, our planet has value very seperate from but superior to intrinsic value.
One of the things that makes this famous experiment hard to grapple with is the difficulty most people have of granting, even for the purpose of inquiry, its stipulations -- including that the fact of the planet's gratuitous destruction can in principle matter to no one, ever. It is designed specifically to test our conceptions of (morally significant) intrinsic value.
Our conceptions of intrinsic values are not easily applied in this case. I feel as if Fred had some kind of human intrinsic values only because we know he is human and has some kind of conscience. No one will ever know if Fred has the basic human instinct we do or even any morals what so ever. Asking the if what Fred did was justified is unanswerable. It is a matter of the reader's opinion which relies on the little information we are given. To call Fred immoral would be agreed on by most, but is it true? Since morals are individually determined, no one is able to say what is right or wrong.
I agree with Greg's last statement, "...our planet has a value very separate from but superior to intrinsic value." Intrinsic value is a worth or value created by man, attempting to determine nature's preferred values and morals with humans being the center of the universe.
Amanda LEtoile
It might be helpful to re-read the sections of Jamieson on moral relativism. If it were true that "Since morals are individually determined, no one is able to say what is right or wrong," we would neither be in a position to condemn mass murderers, nor even to begin a serious conversation about the topic of this course.
Likewise, it does not seem sensible to assert that the attempt to understand intrinsic value is irremediably antropocentric (though it is obviously true that it is we anthropoi who are attempting it). The term 'intrinsic' itself suggests value that inheres in something independently of any projection, self-interested or otherwise, from outside it.
Intrinsic value is part of everyday life and not apparent in order for humans to enjoy and that's it. The last man argument is a funny way of putting the idea that if humans can't enjoy it, why does it even matter? It is not respectful to think that as humans, we can just come around and expect the world that the world is our property. Millions of years of this worlds existence is something that means so much more than human life as a whole.
So many people feel, and it is natural to express the point forcefully. Such passion is not a substitute, however, for explaining how or why it is the case that "Millions of years of this world's existence is something that means so much more..." To whom, for example, does it mean anything?
I have a few questions when I think about what the "last man" would do. What what he thinking when he blew it up? Did he do it for selfish reasons, because if he wasn't going to survive he wasn't going to let anything else be around after him? Even if it was just rock and water and such? Or did he do it out of the pure fact, like you mentioned about him being a guy, that he would love nothing more than to spend his last few seconds of living memory watching the greatest explosion to ever happen on this planet?
We can of course only imagine the motives of a character in a thought experiment(!), but the sorts of questions you raise are both characterological (the kinds of things a virtue ethicist might be concerned with) and motivational (of crucial interest to a deontologist). Here the consequentialist's concerns are moot, since by hypothesis nothing matters after the fact, but I wonder whether the deontologist's concerns might not likewise fade away in the absence of any persons (including himself in just a minute) toward whom his good will might be directed. It is a sort of autonomous act, and given the experiment's restrictions perhaps even universalizable, but it feels oddly hollow for all that.
Perhaps the only questions left to ask are ones about character, and the answers don't seem very pretty.
Post a Comment