Where does Intrinsic Value Come From?

Jamieson charts various construals of intrinsic value, but before we can decide between them we need to understand where intrinsic value comes from. My suggestion is as follows:

What we might call quantitative value (e.g. how big or hard something is -- the quantities of its primary qualities) inheres in everything: the weight (or more precisely, the mass) of a stone is a determinate value inherent in it insofar as it is a structurally coherent object. The more structurally integrated the object is, the more durable and persistent are its quantitative values, and the more clearly differentiated it is from other things.

Qualitative value, then, emerges as the systemic complexity of objects give rise to new kinds of internally interactive objects, such as organisms with brains. As this kind of complexity increases, at some point it crosses a threshold and a new kind of valuing emerges: the conscious capacity to prefer, and hence evaluate, things that the subject perceives (or conceives). This emergent capacity goes by different names (intentionality, will, autonomy...) but most generally it is the process whereby a conscious being places value on the things around it.

Only once such a capacity has emerged, I would argue, is there what we should properly call 'intrinsic value' -- the sort of value that is relevant to moral analysis. This valuing process is intrinsic not merely because it inheres in subjects, but because it is constitutive of subjectivity as such: it is the process that defines subjects as individuals. Value (of the relevant sort) thus comes from the activities of valuers.

Short Argument for Examining Life

“The unexamining life is not a life for humans” -- Socrates (Plato's reconstruction)

Consider the following argument for one interpretation of Socrates' proposition:

1) Due primarily to our intellectual abilities, humans as a species are capable of doing great harm to each other, other sentient animals, and the surrounding environment.

2) Humans (with normal cognitive function) are capable in principle of deliberating, individually and in groups, about their actions and the consequences of their actions, and choosing a course of action on the basis of such deliberation.

3) When humans act without careful deliberation and cooperation, the consequences of their actions are often very harmful.

4) When humans act cooperatively but without systematic examination of the value and disvalue of motives and consequences, the harm is often multiplied.

5) Everyone always ought to avoid doing harm if it is avoidable.

Therefore

6) Humans (with normal cognitive funtion) ought to engage in a shared process of self-examination, including examination of their behavior and its consequences -- and thereby seek to discover and follow the least harmful courses of action.

New Kierkegaard Manuscripts Turn World of Philosophical Humor on its Head

NEWSFLASH – Atrophied Philosophers (AP): Announcement of the recent discovery in Copenhagen of two previously unknown manuscripts is rocking the intellectual community. Found in a previously overlooked secret drawer in a desk believed to have belonged to the Danish philosopher Søren Kierkegaard, best-selling author of such humorous classics as 'Fear and Trembling,' 'The Sickness Unto Death,' and 'Concluding Unscientific Postscript,' they represent the first addition to the famous thinker’s comedic oeuvre in over 150 years.

Most gratifying to the small community of scholarly devotees of Kierkegaardian wit, if authenticated they may forever change our understanding of the great philosopher’s sense of humor, perhaps even settling the question of whether he had one. The two manuscripts, written in what looks like Kierkegaard’s handwriting but attributed to “Climatus Changicus,” an apparent pseudonym, were found together. The first appears to be a sort of instructional manual for maneuvering rowboats, 'Either Oar,' and the second a draft of a novela about successful marriage: 'Neither Snore.'

Noted Kierkegaard scholar Nails Thongstrap, chair of the Department of Philosophy and Uncontrollable Giggling at the University of Copenhagen, comments: “These new discoveries appear to be pseudononymous drafts for another of Kierkegaard’s works, the name of which I can’t think of just now.“ Asked about the probability of the works’ authenticity, Thongstrap conceded: “There remains the possibility of course that these are very clever forgeries, but even so it would still follow logically that they are very clever.”

Limitations of an Economic Model

Peter Barnes proposes a Commons model as a way of incentivizing conservation that avoids some of the pitfalls of conventional "two-sector" economic thinking. I suspect it is a very good and practical idea, and it will be better for the world if we implement it.

Barnes's proposal remains, however, within the paradigm of conventional economic thought, and perhaps replicates uncritically some of its problematic assumptions. Leopold insists that some important things are not economically productive, and so will be impossible to generate an interest in, even if we were to propertize them without privatizing them, as Barnes suggests.

Consider an endangered species such as the snail darter, a tiny, nondescript fish that will never be a source of revenue for anyone, not even as a tourist attraction. What would motivate us to protect it? The knowledge that species diversity is a marker of ecosystemic health, and that the snail darter in particular is an indicator species for the health of specific ecosystems, is a cogent reason but so indirect as to be nearly useless (absent an act of Congress -- aways liable to be repealed or undermined by the next president) when powerful economic interests incline us to damage its habitat.

I take Leopold's point to be that there is thus no substitute, over the long term, for an actual change of heart toward the snail darter, to value it not instrumentally but for itself. That is, we need not a strategy for manipulating self-interest, as though that were the only reliable motivator, but a different value system altogether -- an ethic.

Solar funding debate

Pittsfield should reject solar funding
Berkshire Eagle Letters to the Editor
Updated: 09/28/2009 08:56:21 AM EDT
Monday, Sept. 28

It was announced in the Sept. 22 Eagle that the Holmes Road Water Treatment plant in Pittsfield was one of 12 chosen for the addition of solar power through "stimulus" funds to come through the U.S. EPA. The funds were given to the state to administer the program and Pittsfield thought it was a good idea.

So let's do some math. Even though The Eagle article says the Pittsfield project is "one of the largest," let's assume that all 12 get equal funding. So $185,000,000 divided by 12 projects yields $15 million a project. Now, the federal government writes a $15 million check to the state, which then transfers that check to Pittsfield.

With the "upgrade" (so portrayed by the grant), the facility will save $200,000 a year. We don't have a clue how real these savings are, or what the electricity rate was to generate the savings. Let's just say they are right.

Now, let's do the next step. How long will it take to "pay back" the investment? The investment is $15 million, the savings, $200,000 a year. Disregarding the present value of money, interest and so on, it will take only 75 years for this project to pay for itself. Anyone believe that in 75 years this facility will still be standing?

Are there any CEOs who'd fund this project? Love to hear from you. Having spent 25 years in corporate America, I can truthfully say I never heard of anything this absurd even being reviewed. So why hasn't this program been killed? Seems to me this "grant" ought to be rejected by Pittsfield. And anyone curious about the other 11 projects?

Assuming 40,000 residents of Pittsfield, how'd you like a check for $375 each? How about killing the project and turning the money back to the taxpayers -- and I'm not even a resident of Pittsfield.
DONALD J. DERMYER
Lanesborough

Reply:

Donald J. Dermyer (“Pittsfield should reject solar funding,” Berkshire Eagle, Monday, September 28th, p. A4) is quite correct to suggest that few CEOs would consider the proposed solar project at the Holmes Road Water Treatment plant in Pittsfield, and for the reasons he gives: too long a financial payback. This is precisely why we should not listen to people whose experience is limited to “twenty-five years in corporate America” – their determined focus on short-term profit at the expense of all other human and ecological values stifles clear thinking.

Even Dermyer’s financial calculation ignores a likely increase in electrical rates, which will probably rise rapidly as fossil fuels become scarce, or we properly include their hidden costs in the price. If electricity rates merely double, the investment payback would be only 37 years, for example. I don’t know why Dermyer doubts that the facility will last that long – my house is 79 years old and in good shape.

Moreover, aside from financial payback we need to consider energy payback. The probable energy cost of this proposed solar installation is between 14 months and two years of its annual output, so after that period it will make net energy free of any further fossil fuel inputs or downwind pollution, and with minimal maintenance (no moving parts!), indefinitely. The original photovoltaic cells installed in the 1950s are still generating their rated wattage, so the unit cost per kilowatt-hour, and environmental impact, are by now as close to zero as can be imagined. Thank goodness some entrepreneurs and government research labs were willing to take that risk when the payback wouldn’t show up in the quarterly stock report!

The proposed solar installations are expensive, but they will support manufacturing and installation jobs in Massachusetts, and their scale will help in the long run to bring down the cost of solar electricity (through manufacturing efficiencies and technological advances) so everyone can use it. We need to think about such investments not from the perspective of corporate bottom lines, but rather as would thoughtful citizens of our communities and ecosystem.

Matt Silliman

Biotic Community

To understand what Leopold might mean by "biotic community" it will be helpful first to view natural objects as comprising a spectrum:

whatever it is that comprises subatomic particles

subatomic particles

atomic elements

molecules

inanimate objects

microbes and vegetative life

sentient life

sapient life

Each of these relies on its predecessors for the building blocks of its unique emergent properties, its developmental ancestry, and (importantly) its nurturance and continued existence/thriving. Ecology observes a previously neglected web of interrelationships between these things, most vitally between and among living things, as itself comprising a system, and thus possessing irreducible emergent properties. They term this meta-organismic whole an ecosystem or biosphere. We can in principle gauge its comparative state of health or unhealth by analogy with that of ordinary organisms, so although it almost invariably exceeds our comprehension it is not entirely mysterious to us, and "the good of the biotic community" is a meaningful, if often contestable, quality.

Leopold's Land Ethic

Leopold says in his essay "The Land Ethic:" “A thing is right when it tends to preserve the integrity, stability, and beauty of the biotic community. It is wrong when it tends otherwise.”

To think through what this means, we need to examine several key terms. I will list some of them and pose a preliminary (though far from exhaustive) question about each:

"tends" -- Does this term suggest Leopold is advocating a dominantly consequentialist (as opposed to a deontological or virtue-based) concept of morality?

"integrity" -- How shall we understand this term in an ecological context? Is more integration always better?

"stability" -- Likewise, not everything that is stable is healthy from the standpoint of life; think of the moon. How shall we understand stability as a value?

"beauty" -- Even if aesthetics is more than a matter of mere preference, are all beautiful things good for the biosphere? Nuclear detonations? Perhaps these three descriptors sometimes work against each other.

"biotic community" -- we need a much fuller understanding of what this is (including the fact that it's not a big, happy family).