Ecology, Policy and Politics

Human Well-Being and the Natural World

John O'Neill

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2002
• Print ISBN: 9781138424517
• eBook ISBN: 9781134907021
• Topic: Philosophy
• Subtopic: Philosophy History & Theory

Revealing flaws in both 'green' and market-based approaches to environmental policy, O'Neill develops an Aristotolian account of well-being. He examines the implications for wider issues involving markets, civil society an

1
HUMAN WELL-BEING AND THE NATURAL WORLD

What is it for us to live well? How should ‘human well-being’ be understood and characterized? Which social institutions best enable human beings to live a good life? How should we formulate policies to foster human well-being? What role do the sciences and arts have in its development? These are some of the central questions addressed in this book. Why? Should a book on environmental philosophy begin with questions about human well-being?

The place that considerations about human well-being should have in environmental concerns has been at the centre of recent debates. The literature on the environment is dominated by two broad approaches, each of which might be expected to respond very differently to my opening questions. This book argues that both are mistaken. The first position is that which holds that environmental problems can be accommodated within existing procedures of public decision-making and by the standard economic positions that found them. Thinkers who defend this view are likely to be quite happy to start from my initial set of questions about human well-being. Thus, for environmental economists who approach ecological problems from within the standard neoclassical paradigm that underpins the main tool of policy-making—cost-benefit analysis—the questions with which I begin are just those with which a book on environmental issues should begin. On this particular point the Austrian paradigm of Menger, von Mises and Hayek et al. would concur. Economics, for these thinkers, is concerned with human well-being, and that stance is not substantially changed when environmental issues are raised. Well-being is characterized in terms of the satisfaction of wants or preferences—the stronger the preference satisfied, the greater the well-being. The strength of a preference is captured in terms of the price a person would pay at the margin for its satisfaction. For both neo-classical and Austrian schools, the best institutional framework for the realization of well-being is the market. Thus a basic theorem of neoclassical economics is that ‘ideal’ markets are an efficient mechanism for satisfying preferences.¹ ‘Ideal’ markets are not, however, found in reality—and cost-benefit analysis is introduced as a way of rectifying the ‘failures’ that result from the departures of real markets from ‘ideal’ conditions. Cost-benefit analysis still, however, begins with human well-being understood in terms of the satisfaction of preferences, the strength of which are expressed in terms of willingness to pay: it aims to maximize well-being thus understood. So these thinkers would apparently have no problems with my initial questions, with the possible exception of that about the sciences and arts.

Opposed to this position in the recent literature is a second ‘deep green’ or ‘deep ecological’ approach popular with both environmental philosophers and green activists. This argues that dominant economic, political and ethical approaches to the environment cannot accommodate proper environmental concern: standard approaches are ‘anthropocentric’ or ‘shallow’, in that they treat the non-human world as having only instrumental value for human satisfaction. The argument goes that we need to develop an ‘environmental ethic’ which recognizes the intrinsic value of non-human entities. The range of entities to which intrinsic value should be ascribed standardly includes some or all of the following: nonhuman animals, plants and other non-sentient living things, the collectives to which they belong, such as species and ecosystems and, occasionally, inanimate entities such as rivers and mountains. Those who hold a deep position often extend the target of their criticisms to include modern science itself which is also taken to entail an ecologically malignant anthropocentrism. For many green theorists science is part of the ideology of industrial society and presupposes an instrumental picture of nature as a separate object which is of value only as a resource for humans. Others, while they allow that science, like art, need not presuppose a narrow view of nature as a resource to satisfy basic material needs, still suggest that it involves a view of the world as a means for the development of specifically human practices.

From this deep perspective, to begin with questions about human beings and their well-being is to begin at precisely the wrong place. It betrays just that anthropocentric approach to the non-human world which the deep perspective aims to reject. A book that opens with my questions is likely to be ‘shallow’: it will treat the non-human world as having only instrumental value as a means to human well-being. Indicative of that shallowness is the question about science and the arts: it privileges the value that the world has for specifically human practices. In addition to this shallowness, the sins of the first paragraph are made still worse by the first question ‘what is it for us to live well?’: a view that begins with ‘us’, whoever ‘we’ may be, is unlikely to take on the temporally neutral perspective that proper environmental concern requires.² It will not give proper due to the interests of future generations. So even if one mistakenly begins with human well-being, ‘our’ well-being is not the proper starting point. This would be the likely ‘deep’ response to my initial set of questions.

This book rejects both the ‘standard’ and the ‘deep’ approaches to the environment just outlined. In opposition to both, it develops an Aristotelian conception of well-being according to which well-being should be characterized not in terms of having the right subjective states, as the hedonist claims, nor in terms of the satisfaction of preferences as modern welfare economics assumes, but rather in terms of a set of objective goods a person might possess, for example friends, the contemplation of what is beautiful and wonderful, the development of one’s capacities, the ability to shape one’s own life, and so on. On the basis of this conception I show the relationship between concerns for the goods of both non-humans and future generations and components of our own well-being, and I highlight the role the sciences and arts play in the development of such concerns. The hedonistic and preference-based accounts of well-being presupposed by market-based approaches to environmental policy are not, however, simply arbitrary mistakes. Those conceptions of well-being are institutionally fostered by the market itself: the environmental problems engendered by the market stem in part from the forms of self-understanding it develops. As Aristotle himself was aware, an Aristotelian conception of well-being contains a critique of the market.

This position entails a rejection of both sets of responses to my opening set of questions. Against the second, ‘deep’, response, it argues that there is no incompatibility between a concern for human well-being and the recognition of and care for the intrinsic value of the non-human world, or between concern for the well-being of present generations and that of past and future generations. The term ‘intrinsic value’ itself is an ambiguous one. In chapter 2 I clarify its different senses and argue that, even if non-human entities have intrinsic value in its strongest sense, i.e., value independent of human valuations, the defender of such intrinsic value still needs to show how concern for it increases human well-being. I then sketch an account of how the two are related which is filled out in chapters 5 and 9. Chapter 9 focuses in particular on the special place that science and the arts have in the development of human excellence and the appreciation of the intrinsic value of the non-human world. In doing so it rejects the anti-scientific views prominent in recent green writing. In chapter 3 I argue that concern for our own well-being, properly understood, ties our well-being to that of future generations, and I examine the reasons why this tie is not recognized in modern market societies.

The case against the mainstream economic response is developed in chapter 4, 5, 6, 7 and 9. The focus of most of my arguments against market-based approaches to environmental policy will be on cost-benefit analysis. In developing my criticism I point to more general problems in the neo-classical foundations of cost-benefit analysis, and also in the very different approach of Austrian economics. In chapter 4 I examine the difficulties in incorporating into cost-benefit analysis the interests of those unable to articulate preferences—non-humans and future generations. While sophisticated versions of environmental economics show that the value and interests of non-humans and future generations can be incorporated into cost-benefit analysis, they cannot give them proper weight. This failure is particularly evident in the role of social discounting in cost-benefit analysis in which future goods and harms are valued at less than those of the present. I show that the standard arguments for social discounting fail. Radically revised versions of cost-benefit analysis attempt to respond to these problems by including the ‘preferences’ of non-humans and future generations directly. In arguing that these also fail, I highlight the problems of starting with preferences in the first place. The problems with purely ‘want-regarding’ principles of policy, i.e., principles that confine policymaking to the satisfaction of wants individuals happen to have, are examined in chapters 5 and 6.

chapter 5 outlines and rejects the want-regarding accounts of well-being that provide one of the main theoretical under-pinnings of neo-classical economics and cost-benefit analysis. I argue that well-being consists not in the satisfaction of preferences as such, but in the possession and realization of a set of objective goods. It is shown that sophisticated want-regarding views of well-being, which identify it with satisfaction of informed preferences of compe-tent agents, are unstable and in the end collapse into an objective account. An objectivist account of well-being entails that the gap between well-being and ideals is narrower than is usually assumed, and, more specifically, it reveals that the capacity to appreciate environmental goods is a component of human well-being. The relationship between them is spelt out in more detail in chapter 9 on science and value.

Welfare arguments form, however, only one part of the case for the want-regarding principles that underlie market-based approaches to environmental policy. A second and quite independent case for such principles is one that appeals to liberal values. A departure from want-regarding principles of policy, the argument goes, is illiberal and at worst totalitarian. It presupposes a classical account of politics according to which politics aims at the promotion of a particular ‘correct’ conception of the good. Modern liberalism is often defined in opposition to that view: the liberal political order is one that is procedurally neutral between that plurality of different conceptions of the good which is characteristic of modern society. chapter 6 shows this position to be mistaken: the classical account of politics is compatible with ‘liberal’ values, notably that of autonomy, and the existence of a plurality of goods and ways of life. Indeed, J.S.Mill’s liberalism quite rightly starts from just such a classical account.

Environmental policy does, however, raise in a stark form a related problem for both liberal and socialist theory concerning the role of authority within democracy and its compatibility with the value of autonomy. Rational environmental policy requires citizens to accept as authoritative the judgements of others, in particular scientists, without being able to appraise the grounds for those judgements. How can it be rational to hold beliefs on the authority of others? Is it compatible with individual autonomy and political democracy? chapter 8 examines the grounds and conditions for the acceptance of authoritative judgements and suggests that, despite its arid appearance, the argument for rational acceptance to authority provides fertile soil for a defence of democracy and social equality, and is compatible with the value of autonomy.

Another major problem for cost-benefit analysis as an approach to environmental policy is that of value-pluralism and value-incommensurability. Cost-benefit analysis depends on a particular algorithmic conception of practical rationality, according to which the lack of a common measure by which to compare different options signals irrationality. This assumption is built into the neo-classical foundations of cost-benefit analysis, and is shared by those in the Austrian tradition where it played a central part in their case against planning in the socialist calculation debate. In chapter 7 I argue that this assumption is false. Environmental policy calls on a plurality of incommensurable values. The existence of that plurality does not entail irrationality, but rather points to the inadequacy of algorithmic conceptions of practical rationality. It reveals the role that judgement plays in practical choice. Why is there an assumption of value-commensurability in market-based approaches to policy? The answer lies in an inference at the heart of the marginal revolution in economics—that the commensurability of objects in market exchange entails value-commensurability. This inference is invalid. It fails to appreciate the social meaning of acts of exchange and betrays a misconception about what ethical commitment involves. I show that a proper understanding of these explains and justifies the widespread refusal of the economist’s request to put a price on environmental goods.

The problems in market-based approaches to environmental policy raise more general issues in political theory concerning the place and justifiability of market institutions which are often missed in standard accounts of the relation between markets and environmental damage. Discussion has focused on the market’s direct effects on environmental goods, for example on the damage that results where environmental goods are ‘public goods’. While these are important, the discussion ignores the patterns of understanding about the self, self-interest and well-being that the market fosters. Indeed, those understandings themselves inform the hedonistic and preference-based views of welfare assumed in mainstream economic theory. The market as an institution systematically undermines an objectivist conception of well-being that ties our own well-being to the realization of the goods of future generations and non-humans. I show in chapter 4 that through its mobilization of land and labour the market has undermined those institutions which developed a sense of the way harms to the future are harms to the present and the past. In other chapters I show similarly that market-based understandings of welfare undermine an appreciation of the way that the good of non-humans is tied to our own.

This theme is treated more systematically in the final chapter of the book. That different institutions carry with them different definitions of well-being and self-interest is an insight developed by Aristotle in his influential account of the relation of household and market in the Politics. His analysis still has relevance in the context of modern environmental problems. It highlights the way in which the market encourages a view of well-being defined in terms of the unlimited acquisition of material goods. Other institutional contexts encourage quite different conceptions which allow limits to the material goods required for well-being and are more compatible with an appreciation of environmental goods and sustainable economics. In chapter 10 I examine the relationship between the market and other institutions, particularly political institutions and non-market associations. I argue that it is primarily within the latter that an understanding of the relation between our own well-being and that of future generations and non-humans is fostered.

This critique of the market and the case against market-based approaches to policy developed in the rest of the book are compatible with two conflicting views of the relationship of market and other institutions: the first allows the market a central place in economic life, but attempts to place boundaries around it; the second is critical of the market within the economic sphere itself. I finish by arguing that the first position has many more problems, and the second many more virtues, than recent discussion has allowed. The case against market economies remains a strong one that is still owed a reply.

2
NATURE, INTRINSIC VALUE AND HUMAN WELL-BEING

To hold an environmental ethic is to hold that non-human beings and states of affairs in the natural world have intrinsic value. This seemingly straightforward claim has been the focus of much recent philosophical discussion of environmental issues. Its clarity is, however, illusory. The term ‘intrinsic value’ has a variety of senses and many arguments on environmental ethics suffer from a conflation of these different senses: specimen hunters for the fallacy of equivocation will find rich pickings in the area. This chapter is partly the work of the underlabourer. I distinguish different senses of the concept of intrinsic value and, relatedly, of the claim that nonhuman beings in the natural world have intrinsic value; I exhibit the logical relations between these claims and examine the distinct motivations for holding them. It is not however merely an exercise in conceptual underlabouring. It defends the thesis that while it is the case that natural entities have intrinsic value in the strongest sense of the term, i.e. in the sense of value that exists independently of human valuations, such value does not as such entail any obligations on the part of human beings. The defender of nature’s intrinsic value still needs to show that such value contributes to the well-being of human agents. At the end of the chapter I sketch an account of how care for the goods of non-humans might be a constitutive of our well-being.

2.1 THE VARIETIES OF INTRINSIC VALUE

The term ‘intrinsic value’ is used in at least three different basic senses:

(1) Intrinsic value₁. Intrinsic value is used as a synonym for non-instrumental value. An object has instrumental value in so far as it is a means to some other end. An object has intrinsic value if it is an end in itself. Intrinsic goods are goods that other goods are good for the sake of. It is a well-rehearsed point that, under pain of an infinite regress, not everything can have only instrumental value. There must be some objects that have intrinsic value. The defender of an environme...

Table of contents

• COVER PAGE
• TITLE PAGE
• COPYRIGHT PAGE
• ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
• 1: HUMAN WELL-BEING AND THE NATURAL WORLD
• 2: NATURE, INTRINSIC VALUE AND HUMAN WELL-BEING
• 3: FUTURE GENERATIONS AND THE HARMS WE DO OURSELVES
• 4: THE CONSTITUENCY OF ENVIRONMENTAL POLICY
• 5: JUSTIFYING COST-BENEFIT ANALYSIS: ARGUMENTS FROM WELFARE
• 6: PLURALISM, LIBERALISM AND THE GOOD LIFE
• 7: PLURALISM, INCOMMENSURABILITY, JUDGEMENT
• 8: AUTHORITY, DEMOCRACY AND THE ENVIRONMENT
• 9: SCIENCE, POLICY AND ENVIRONMENTAL VALUE
• 10: MARKET, HOUSEHOLD AND POLITICS
• NOTES
• BIBLIOGRAPHY