ABSTRACT
This chapter attempts to divorce attributions of value from judgments of the interest of the attributor, It aims to develop the concept of a locus of value and explores the interconnections between the goods of individuals and the goods of populations and species. The chapter also aims to indicate the degree to which an environmental ethic can be atomistic without being anthropocentric. It outlines how a nonanthropocentric conception of value is possible without being holistic, and suggests the reasonableness on naturalistic grounds of the attribution of some sorts of rights to individuals who have certain kinds of awareness. Following Holmes Rolston, J. Baird Callicott in his article “Animal Liberation: A Triangular Affair” insists that an environmental ethic is one in which the most fundamental value is that which conduces to the maintanence and vitality of the ecosystem. The chapter provides a sketch of an ethic which is at once nonanthropocentric and yet less holistic than Callicott's.
