I while ago I took a course called Environmental Ethics at San Diego State University. It was the most amazing and enlightening class I have ever taken.
I still read the book whenever I have a chance. The philosophy is so complex and so logical at the same time..
It is the best textbook I have ever bought and I enjoy every single time I sit to read a bit of it..
I want to share Peter Singers's thought:
" It is not just humans but the higher animals that can value. We have to move from an anthropogenic to a sentiogenic view. Animals can value on their own, provided that they have preferences that can satisfied or frustrated. A mother free-tailed bat, a mammal like ourselves, can , using sonar, wend her way out of Bracken Cave, in TExas, in total darkness, catch 500-1000 insects each hour on the wing, and return to find and nurse her own young. That gives evidence of bat-valuing; she values the insects and the pup.
It seems absurd to say that there are no valuers until humans arrive. There is no better evidence of nonhuman values and valuers than spontaneous wildlife, born free and on its own. Animals hunt and howl; find shelter; seek out their habitats and mates; care for their young; flee from threats; grow hungry, thirsty, hot, tired, excited, sleepy. They suffer injury and lick their wounds. Here we are quite convinced that value is nonanthropogenic, to say nothing of anthropocentric.
These wild animals defend their own lives because they have a good of their own. There is somebody there behind the fur or feathers. Our gaze is returned by an animals that itself has a concerned outlook. Here is value right before our eyes, right behind those eyes. Animals are valuable, able to value things in their world. But we may still want to say that value exists only where a subject has object of interest"...
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