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The nature of value and the value of Nature:

a philosophical overview

International Affairs 76, () ‒

BEN ROGERS

*

1 For a recent example of this claim see Michael Jacobs, Environmental modernisation, the New Labour agenda(London: Fabian Society, 1999).

You don’t have to be a philosopher to philosophize about our relation toNature. Most of us, at one time or another, have probably found ourselveswondering, if not whether we should have a concern for the natural world,then why. We all stumble over certain puzzles. Why care about the preser-vation of species or ecosystems, as distinct from individual animals? Why doesthe extinction of a species as a result of human activities seem so much moredeplorable than the extinction of a species as a result of natural developments?Why fret over the fate of non-sentient species, mineral reserves, mountainranges, rivers, coastlines and the like? Does the natural environment have anintrinsic value, or is it valuable only in relation to us? Can we do justice to itsimportance without recourse to mystical ideas of God or spirit? Indeed, doesthe idea of ‘Nature’ have any content at all?

These are profound, perplexing issues, which go to the very heart ofphilosophy. But they press themselves on us for other reasons too. The naturalworld is being transformed by human activity: species are disappearing, weatherpatterns are changing and natural resources are being destroyed at a dangerousrate. It is often suggested that these developments are an expression, at the mostfundamental level, of the shortcomings of ‘Western philosophy’—of character-istically modern, ‘instrumentalist’, ‘individualist’ or ‘alienated’ views of Nature.It has, on the other hand, equally been claimed that the Green movement’sflirtation with anti-modern, alternative values has alienated it from the main-stream, thus limiting its effectiveness.1 Or, more extremely, that the movementis in some way illiberal or fundamentalist. Either way, while we might not needphilosophers to raise these questions and make these claims, it is not too muchto hope that they can help us think more clearly about our response to them.

Philosophy’s record here is, it has to be admitted, rather mixed. None of thegreat Western philosophers has, as far as I am aware, written at any length onour duties to the environment. The Green movement does not have its Augus-tine, Locke or Marx. (This, perhaps, is hardly surprising: it is only recently, after

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all, that problems of conservation have become at all urgent. Throughout mostof its history, humanity has had relatively little capacity to effect the naturalworld, for better or worse.) Moving into the present era, the philosophy of theenvironment or ‘environmental ethics’ remains very much a minority concern,in part no doubt because it is not easily accommodated by the language ofrights, utility and justice that most contemporary moral and political philo-sophers speak. The most important English-language political philosopher ofour times, for instance, John Rawls, has virtually nothing to say on the matter,merely holding out the hope that his own theory of social justice can be fitted,without too much revision, into a ‘theory of the natural world and our place init’.2 Nevertheless, the subject has not been entirely neglected and is graduallymoving into the mainstream. Various journals devoted to environmentalphilosophy have been established and a number of leading moral philosophershave written on the issue.3 It is perhaps a sign of the times that David Wiggins,Wykeham Professor of Logic at Oxford University, chose to devote his recentaddress as President of the Aristotelian Society to a discussion of ‘Nature,respect for nature, and the human scale of values’.4

Where should an environmental ethic begin? We need first to close off twoavenues of argument, which, although they look promising, turn out to lead todead ends. It is sometimes suggested, or at least often used to be suggested, thatthe value of conservation derives from the benefits it brings us. On this account,environmentalism is just an expression of enlightened self-interest. Now, thereis no doubt that the prudent conservation of natural resources is in our long-term interest and environmentalists are, of course, well advised to emphasizethis. Yet is seems clear that the natural world is not just an instrumental good inany narrow sense. Its value cannot be justified entirely in terms of what itcontributes to some other value like economic well-being. There are, if we arehonest, many endangered species and threatened landscapes that do notcontribute, even indirectly, to our material happiness.

It is similarly clear that an ethic of conservation cannot be founded solely ona concern for animal welfare. A number of philosophers have recently developedpowerful criticism of our mistreatment of animals, most famously Peter Singer.5

But while conservationists do tend, as a matter of sociological fact, to supportmeasures to relieve the suffering of animals in factory farms and the like, thecause of conservation itself is concerned not with the treatment of individualsentient animals, but with the preservation of species and other natural things,sentient or otherwise. Thus an environmental ethic need have nothing to sayabout the right or wrongs or eating animals, where the practice does not threaten

2 John Rawls, A theory of justice (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press, Harvard University Press, 1971), p. 512.3 See, notably, Bernard Williams, ‘Must a concern for the environment be centred on human beings?’, in

his Making sense of humanity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995).4 David Wiggins, ‘Nature, respect for nature, and the human scale of values’, Proceedings of the Aristotelian

Society 100, part 1, 2000.5 Peter Singer, Animal liberation, 2nd edn (New York: Pimlico, 1990).

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the survival of a species, while an animal liberationist can offer no grounds fordiscriminating between the value of the endangered corncrake and a seagull.

The instrumentalist approach and that of the animal liberationists areindividualistic in that they take the welfare of individual beings as their measure.(Indeed, the second approach is properly understood as an extension of the first:Peter Singer, for instance, is quite explicit in presenting his arguments as anelaboration of traditional utilitarianism from the human to the animal world.)Perhaps the best-known environmental philosophy, however, comes from theopposite direction. The ‘Deep Ecology’ championed by the Norwegian ArneNaess and others is a modern ecological version of traditional mysticism. Itpromises ‘self-realization’ through communion with Nature understood as aseamless whole.6 This position, in more or less philosophical form, is verypopular with environmentalists. Prince Charles and Al Gore, for instance, bothseem to subscribe to it. Nor is it hard to see why this should be so. Environ-mentalists fear that without a belief in ‘a whole that is greater than us’, we haveno reason to value nature ‘for itself’. How can a purely secular ethic, theirargument goes, do justice to our concern for the preservation of things for theirown sake rather than for the pleasure they give us?

Nevertheless, this too seems a route best avoided. Put negatively, its claimsseem either nonsensical or, at best, highly unrealistic. It is hard to know what ismeant by the suggestion that Nature is a single whole, spiritual or otherwise. Inany literal sense it is certainly not true. And it is difficult to believe that a gradualbroadening of one’s emotions so as to arrive at an identity with the cosmos ispossible. Even if it were, it would appear to involve as much loss as gain: how isone supposed to reconcile one’s commitments to friends and neighbours, orindeed oneself, with a commitment to everything?

The criticism, however, can be put more positively. For the concerns thatlead the mystics and pantheists to adopt their positions are quite misplaced. It istrue that we are bound to care only about things that matter to us. That is atautology. But that is not the same as caring only about human matters. We justare the sort of creatures who value things for their own sake—who discern anintrinsic worth in things—and among the things we value in this way is thepreservation of the natural world. ‘The human scale of values’, as DavidWiggins puts it, ‘is not uniformly human centred.’ Nature ‘simply entrances,moves or disturbs us independently of our concern for our own welfare orcontentment.’7

The distinction in question here—between what matters instrumentally andwhat matters intrinsically—is a central feature, some would say the centralfeature, of our nature as ethical, valuing beings. As the Canadian philosopherCharles Taylor has often argued, our valuations fall into two categories, ‘weak’and ‘strong’. Some end is weakly valued when it derives its value entirely from

6 Arne Naess, ‘The shallow and the deep, long range ecology movement’, Inquiry 16, 1973.7 Wiggins, ‘Nature, respect for nature’, pp. 8, 11.

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its use to the valuer. It is strongly valued when ‘we acknowledge that its beingan end for us is not just contingent on our happening to desire or need it’—when, in other words, we allow that we would be a lesser being if we shouldcease to want or need it. ‘The ice-cream cone I now desire is weakly valued,’ asTaylor puts it, ‘because should I lose my interest in it, it would not longer haveany claim on me. But I do not think of my commitment to Amnesty Inter-national in these terms. Someone who refused to contribute to this causebecause they were not “into” torture victims this week would seem unbearablyfrivolous. Their change of interest does not reduce the claim, but rather showsthem in a poor light.’8 In Taylor’s terms, it is clear that we value skylarks,rainforests and unpolluted rivers ‘strongly’.

Seeing it this way captures the special place that Nature, along with a widearray of other intrinsically important goods, occupies in our scheme of values. Italso points to what might be wrong with the orthodox economic approach to theenvironment: cost–benefit analysis. This little economic discipline has becomeexceedingly sophisticated in recent years, but the basic idea underlying itremains simple. It is that we can fix a monetary value on Nature’s goods byasking how much we would be prepared to pay to preserve a natural pheno-menon, or to accept as compensation for its destruction. The result is thencompared with benefits, also assessed in monetary terms, that might accrue fromits destruction. So one might weigh the loss of a certain sort of wild flower thatresults from applying a chemical fertilizer against gains in crop yields. Theapproach, its advocates say, offers a value-neutral ‘scientific’ basis to environ-mental policy.

It is hard not to feel that this gets something wrong. Cost–benefit analysislocates the value of things in the wrong place—not in the things themselves,where it belongs, but in us. It accords them, in other words, a ‘weak’ orinstrumental value with the unfortunate corollary that if people ceased to valuethe environmental goods, they would no longer be valuable.9 There is, indeed,something wildly inappropriate, not to say grotesque, in any attempt to put aprice on a rare species or natural landscape. It is essential to our understanding ofunspoilt moorlands and unpolluted lakes and the like that they are priceless, bywhich we mean not that we would never sacrifice them (we might have to in adesperate situation), but that they are not ordinary commodities to be traded ona market. Philosophers sometimes express this by saying that human and non-human values are ‘incommensurable’; the claims they make upon us are utterly

8 Charles Taylor, ‘A most peculiar institution’, in T. R. Harrison and J. E. J. Altham, eds, World, mind and ethics:essays on the ethical philosophy of Bernard Williams (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), p. 134.

9 ‘To assert that there is a pollution problem or an environmental problem is to assert, at least implicitly,that one or more resources is not being used so as to maximise human satisfactions. In this respect at leastenvironmental problems are economic problems’: William Benter, People or penguins? The case for optimalpollution (New York: Columbia University Press, 1974), quoted in Mark Sagoff, The economy of the earth(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988), p. 26. Note the implication that one way of solvingenvironmental problems would simply be to ‘reshape’ people’s tastes so that they no longer found satis-faction in the natural environment. Sagoff offers a detailed critique of cost–benefit analysis, as does JohnO’Neill, Ecology, policy and politics: human well-being and the natural world (London: Routledge, 1993), pp. 44–82.

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diverse, so that there is no fixed ‘degree of preference’ between them.10 That iswhy the appropriate response to destroying a valued natural object in the causeof some greater good is not the feeling of a job well done, a rational decisionmade, but of ineliminable regret, or, in the extreme, of inconsolable loss. Theenvironment is not ours to preserve or destroy. It is not a commodity.

The approach sketched above represents a middle way between the welfarismof economists and utilitarians on the one hand, and, on the other, the mysticismof ‘Deep Ecologists’. It does justice to our sense that the natural world has anintrinsic value beyond its capacity to satisfy us, without committing us to a pan-theistic, Orientalizing conception of nature. But this, of course, can only be thebeginning of a convincing account of the claims the environment makes on us.

Something more needs to be said, in the first place, about the implications ofthe claim that the environment has an intrinsic value. For it is sometimessuggested that this amounts to saying that its claims are sacrosanct—that theytrump all others. Wiggins, for instance, in the article cited earlier, after offeringan account of the source and nature of environmental values similar to the onesketched above, goes on to suggest that we should, in effect, ring-fence Natureagainst all but the most urgent of other claims—rule it out of bounds. Wigginsacknowledges that situations will sometimes arise which force us to sacrificenatural goods (and the religious vocabulary of sacrifice rather than the economicone of trade-offs is the right one here), but these will be of the nature ofemergencies. Instead of a price-list we need a set of constraints which applyexcept in cases of ‘dire vital need’. We are not to take anything that we cannotreplace or institute any changes that are not in some sense reversible. Indeed, atthe end of his article, despite some earlier strictures against metaphysics, Wigginsargues for the resuscitation of a Roman sense of religio or ‘holy dread’—a ‘God-fearing’ awe which sees Nature as some sort of ‘limitation of our will’.11

We naturally fall into talk about the ‘sanctity’, ‘inviolability’ or ‘pricelessness’of strongly valued goods, and as an informal way of speech there is nothingwrong with this—it is an effective, if somewhat hyperbolic, way of affirmingtheir special place in our lives.12 In practice, however, it is simply not possibleto put a fence around Nature and declare it sacrosanct. Humankind has always‘interfered’ with the environment, and on a daily basis. The crops and breedsfarmers use now are the product of centuries of cultivation. Many of thelandscapes we value have been improved by human artefact: the stone walls ofthe Lake District were once modern intrusions; England’s ‘wild’ hedgerows, theloss of which is deplored by environmentalists, were once the hated emblems ofenclosure. Indeed, beautifully constructed artefacts can add to a grim or drab

10 Wiggins, ‘Nature, respect for nature’, p. 19.11 Ibid., pp. 26–32.12 For an insightful discussion of way the language of ‘pricelessness’ functions in our lives, see Steven Lukes,

‘Comparing the incomparable: trade-offs and sacrifices’, in Ruth Chang, ed., Incommensurability,incomparability and practical reason (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1998).

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landscape. Just image Venice Lagoon without Venice. Perhaps environmentalistswill say, with Prince Charles, that in these cases human beings have worked‘with the grain of Nature’; but there are many aspects of Nature which, ratherthan cultivating, we quite reasonably try to annihilate. Cancerous tumours,malaria-carrying mosquitoes or HIV are obvious examples. An earlier philo-sopher of Nature (and one of the profoundest), J. S. Mill, put it neatly when heobserved that

nearly all the things which men are hanged or imprisoned for doing to one another arenature’s every day performances. Killing, the most criminal act recognised by humanlaws, nature does once to every being that lives, and in a large proportion of cases afterprotracted tortures such as only the greatest monsters whom we read of ever purposelyinflicted on their living fellow creatures…Nature’s explosions of firedamp are as destruc-tive as human artillery; her plague and cholera far surpass the poison cups of the Borgias.13

Those who want to defend the principle of Nature’s inviolability will say, nodoubt, that they don’t mean to rule out any, or at least most, of these sort of‘interventions’. Perhaps not (although I note that it might be hard to justifymany of them as being necessitated by ‘emergencies’, ‘dire vital needs’ and thelike). But if not, then talk about the sanctity of Nature risks becoming ratherempty.

There is, however, a still greater weakness to this position. Too many Greensassume that what is generally at stake in decisions that affect the environment isa simple choice between ‘trivial benefits’ to human beings and profoundenvironmental imperatives. Yet this is not generally how these decisions presentthemselves to us. There are things we value for themselves, other than Nature,like human health and life and artistic expression, and it is these that often are,or at least seem to be, in conflict with the preservation of a natural good. Cost–benefit analysis is rather too profane a discipline, but we are polytheists, notmonotheists. Many things other than valued natural objects are subject to‘strong’ evaluation—political freedoms, for instance, or personal projects; worksof art and familial relationships—and we often have to sacrifice one for another.The decision to limit the building of homes on greenfield sites at first looks likethe safeguarding of an ultimate good against ‘a trivial benefit’. But that is justtoo simplistic. The relatively high cost of housing in the south-east of England,for instance, which might be relieved by building ecologically designed newtowns on greenfield sites, places strains on families and weakens the economy.This in turn has knock-on effects for spending on health, education and the arts.A new bypass may save lives. Wind turbines might destroy a beautiful stretch ofcountryside in providing environmentally friendly fuel. Genetically modifiedcrops might offend against ‘nature’ but they might also contribute to the fight

13 ‘Nature’, in J. S. Mill, nature and the utility of religion, ed., George Nakhnikian (New York: Liberal ArtsPress, 1958), pp. 20–1.

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against malnutrition, or offer a better way of treating burn patients. Toacknowledge that these sort of value conflicts are endemic to politics is not toconcede anything to the partisans of cost–benefit analysis. When ‘ultimate’goods conflict, the only way to arrive at decisions is on an situation-by-situationbasis, after a thorough and collective exploration of the issues at stake; theattempt to develop a value-free tariff of trade-offs remains destined to fail. It is,however, to suggest that fencing-off Nature is too simple-minded an option.Ironically, those who want simply to declare ‘Nature’ out of bounds end up in aposition not unlike that of the narrow-minded economists and utilitarians theyoppose: for both parties understand ethical deliberation as a matter offormulae—as about the easy application of abstract rules. In truth it is moreoften a matter of hard, painful and ineffable judgement, a process in whichdoubt and regret play an ineradicable role.

I have been arguing for an alternative to both a narrowly economic and anextravagantly ‘deep’ ecology. Nature has a ‘strong’ or intrinsic value, in that weprize it beyond its capacity to satisfy our needs or wants, although, as Millnoted, we are fairly selective about what it is we deem ‘natural’. I have alsoargued that though it is a mistake to suggest that valleys and mountains, speciesand ecosystems can be subject to cost–benefit analysis, life, or at least modernlife, often presents us with hard choices between the conservation of thesethings and the realization of other no less valuable ends. To put some of thisinto perspective, to get a clearer view, it might finally be worth comparing andcontrasting Nature’s goods with other goods of a possibly similar character. Oneobvious analogy, often pursued, is with works of art; another, less familiar but insome ways more useful, is with the city.

The empiricist philosopher A. J. Ayer is said to have argued (although onlyin conversation) that there is no difference of value between a painting and itsexact replica—one which is to all existing ways of investigation indistinguish-able from it.14 This argument looks at first to have a certain irresistible logic.Yet it also leaves one feeling that something is wrong. This feeling, I suggest, iswell founded, as a simple adaptation of the thought experiment indicates.

Imagine that your father, a potter, has left you a beautiful pot. You lend meyour home for the weekend and I break the pot. The best thing I can do in thecircumstances is apologize, although I might also offer to have the pot mended.Instead however, I piece it together, take it to a potter and get an exact copymade. As a gesture this might just be acceptable, but the replica will never meanthe same as the original. (It would certainly not make matters any better if Ithrew away the original on the grounds that it was ‘old and broken’). But nowimagine instead that I get not one but five pots made. This would surely beadding insult to injury. It would be much as if I had offered you money by wayof compensation, and then, when you refused it, offered you more.

14 Ben Rogers, A. J. Ayer, a life (London: Chatto & Windus, 1999), p. 283n.

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What does all this show? It suggests, I suggest, that the value of authenticity isnot just an invention of the art market. The origins, history and rarity of anobject can be vital to its worth. Indeed, in the case of a ugly heirloom thesemight be constitutive of its worth.15 (Where a work of art is concerned, we alsodemand beauty or other aesthetic merit.) We hold heirlooms and artworks ontrust; they are not ‘instruments’ or ‘commodities’ in the usual sense at all. Ofcourse, defenders of cost–benefit analysis will insist that there is a market in artobjects—a flourishing one. Indeed there is. It is worth noting in turn, however,that the art market is famously unpredictable and bears no relation to othermarkets—its prices tend to have a rather arbitrary feel—and that a great propor-tion of the world’s masterpieces never, in fact, come up for sale but are held ontrust in public collections.16

The analogy between art and the natural environment is instructive. It helpsarticulate what is wrong with the view that nature is a commodity like anyother; it suggests why the cost of a large oil spill is not reflected in the cost ofclearing it up and why the offer to compensate for the loss of a much-loved pieceof landscape by ‘recreating’ it at another location can seem so offensively miscon-ceived.17 It also suggests something else. It is sometimes claimed that Nature, inany deep and meaningful sense of the concept, has come to an end. It has beenargued, for instance, that a wilderness that is protected is scarcely a wilderness atall. This, again, is surely wrong.18 There is a very significant difference betweenprotecting an existing species within its natural, wild habitat and creating or evenrecreating one—just as there is a difference between preserving a painting andcopying it.19 In the case of conservation we express our respect for the object con-served, but in replicating something we are, at worst, affirming our mastery over it.

A still closer analogy with the natural environment, however, is perhapsprovided by the town or the city. For there is clearly a sense in which we holdour cities, like the natural environment, on trust. They are things we inheritfrom the past and are expected to pass on, in a state at least as valuable as wefound them, to the future. The historic city, with its rich past, beautifulbuildings and living public realm is a good in itself, and would not become less15 An acquaintence had the job of working at the front desk of one of the big London auction houses. One

of her responsibilities was to take an initial look at objects brought in by the public to be valued. If shedeemed a rejection necessary she was instructed to say, ‘I think this cake tin/mug/bed-pan is of greatersentimental than monetary value.’

16 For a discusion of the parallels between art works and natural goods, see the perceptive discussions inRobert Elliot, ‘Faking nature’, and Elliot Sober, ‘Philosophical problems for environmentalism’, both inRobert Elliot, ed., Environmental ethics (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995). Douglas MacLean hasdeployed the example of the heirloom in developing a critique of cost–benefit analysis in ‘Cost–benefitanalysis and procedural values’, Analyse & Critique 16, 1994. I am grateful to John Broome for sendingme this article.

17 This sort of offer has sometimes been made. See Elliot, ‘Faking nature’, pp. 76–7.18 Or at least, only half right. For it is true that if a wilderness was once understood as a thing more or less

unsurvivable, then a managed wilderness is not a wilderness at all. See Williams, ‘Must a concern for theenvironment be centred on human beings?’, p. 240.

19 Although in both domains, nature and art, there will be borderline cases. When does ‘restoration’become simulation? Is the recreation of extinct species, using DNA retrieved from dead specimens, anexample of good ‘stewardship’ or something more sinister? (This Jurassic Park scenario is now very closeto becoming a reality.)

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of one because we ceased to appreciate it as such. The great failure of muchtwentieth-century town planning, indeed, was not that it subscribed to anaesthetic, modernist or otherwise, but that it was insensitive to both the historicand the public nature of the city. This is why it so often gave priority to the carand high-rise developments over the public square and the street. At the sametime, of course—and in a way that finds no parallel in the treasured heirloom orwork of art but finds an exact parallel in the countryside—we have to find waysof living in our cities. They have to accommodate new technologies, needs anddesires. Put it another way. Just as there are certain parts of the city that werefuse to demolish or seriously develop at any price (the great cathedrals, parksand historic centres), so there are areas of nature that we want to see preservedas wildernesses—although the wildernesses should certainly take a much greaterpart of Nature than the sites of exceptional historic or architectural significancewill ever occupy in most cities. But then, just as there are parts of our citieswhich we want to see developed, although developed sensitively, so we shouldbe happy to see landscapes, breeds and even ecosystems sensitively cultivated.Finally, Nature, like cities, will continue to offer us hard choices betweenconservation and development. Here the best that we can hope is that decisionsare properly discussed in public forums, and are made with a due sense ofgravity and an appropriate regret at the sacrifices involved. It is ironic, but cityand country, which have throughout history been defined in opposition to eachother, look, from an environmentalist perspective, strikingly alike. This makesit unfortunate that those that live in the one tend naturally, at least in Britain, tosee the other as an enemy.

I turn last to another thought experiment, aimed once again at clarifying theplace of the natural world in our scheme of values. It has been suggested by anumber of ‘deep ecologists’ that it would be wrong for ‘the last man’ to destroythe world, as he himself prepared to leave it. I accept this—the implications ofdenying it are arrogantly anthropocentric.20 But if we ask whether the last manwould be wrong to destroy a world destined for ever to remain devoid of allsentient creatures, then I am not so sure. Thought experiments like this are,admittedly, of very limited use: our intuitions are hardly to be trusted. Never-theless, it seems to me that the analogy with other things is, again, helpful. I caneasily imagine how a destruction of art works and indeed everything humanmight express an affirmation of life—a refusal to go gently into the night. Whatmakes the case of nature somewhat different is this: it will take someone verylike a human to appreciate the qualities of the Divine Comedy, the Acropolis orVenice, but other species enjoy Nature, and other intelligent beings might poten-tially come to appreciate it and transform it—and in ways not necessarily availableto us. In that sense, we are responsible for the survival of Nature not just to ourdescendants but to other existing or potential species. But if we really had somecast-iron certainty that nothing would ever experience the world again, is thereany reason why its fate should matter at all? I cannot see that it should.20 The case of the last man is discussed by Sober in ‘Philosophical problems’, pp. 245–6.

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