Biocentrism is the ethical perspective according to which we have to value all

life, whether or not

it is conscious. What matters to this perspective morally, is simply that a thing
lives. Much like in the previous two, this view can argue that we not
only should care about all life, but that we already do. Consider the following
thought experiment.

Let's imagine an apocalyptic scenario, a rather bleak one, where everyone has died,
that is, all the humans and animals inhabiting the world, except for one final
human, who is faced with the last tree on earth. The question is, is it in some
sense wrong if the final human would cut down the tree for no real reason?
The intuitive answer seems to be yes, something does seem wrong about cutting down
the final tree, even though that act won’t have any consequences for anyone, since
everyone in the thought experiment is already dead. One explanation why we’d feel
that way could be that biocentrism, the valuing of all life, is a perspective that
people, to some degree, already accept. In other words, it seems that the action is
wrong exactly because we value the tree as a thing that is alive. We could restate
the thought experiment as the final human approaching the pyramids of Giza and
blowing them up. Since according to the thought experiment there won’t be anyone to
ever see the pyramid in any case, it does seem that what happens to the pyramids
simply doesn’t matter. On the other hand, simply because there won’t be anyone to
ever appreciate the final tree in our first thought experiment, it still feels
wrong to cut it down. That is, because the pyramids have instrumental value, that
is, value for someone else, us, humans, while the tree seems to have inherent
value, that is, value that is there for itself, whether or not there is anyone to
appreciate it.
It is important to note this difference, since biocentrism could be easily
misunderstood to mean we should value all life and nature, because nature plays an
important part in a human’s psyche and health. That, however, would attribute
instrumental value to nature, value for us, humans, value that only exists, because
we are here to make use of it. Biocentrism, in contrast, maintains that nature has
value on itself and for itself.

To further illustrate this point, let us return to the discussion between

anthropocentrism and zoocentrism on the moral status of animals. A human-centered
ethic would attribute inherent value to humans and instrumental value to animals,
that is, animals are useful as a food resource, working force, ect. – hence, if
someone comes up to my cow and slaughters it without my consent, the action is
wrong, since they took a thing from me, that is valuable to me. Animal-centered
ethics would maintain that animals have inherent value, that is, independently of
whether there’s humans to make use of them in any way, and cruelly slaughtering a
cow is wrong in any case, whether or not their owner agrees to it; what matters is
that the cow would not agree to it if she had the cognitive abilities to understand
the concept of being slaughtered. Furthermore, a zoocentric perspective would
maintain that nature has instrumental value, because it provides food, resources
and shelter to humans and other animals, hence it is important to protect the
equilibrium that keeps our natural environment functioning. In contrast,
biocentrism maintains that either or both individual plants and the ecosystemas a
whole have inherent value, that is, value that is not dependent of conscious
beingsn making use of nature. The question we have to ask, of course, is why
biocentrists maintain that this is the case, or rather, should be the case.

There’s a wide array of answers. One is, that just like humans and animals, life-
forms such as plants have an interest of their own to reach their biological
potential, that is, to survive and prosper. Now, we may ask how a thing that has no
consciousness can have an interest, saying that almost seems like a contradiction
in terms. So, we need to understand that what the defenders of this view truly
mean, is that unlike dead matter, all life is oriented towards some goal of their
own and it sacrifices a lot of energy and resources to get there. To biocentrists,
it doesn’t matter that life-forms such as plants have no consciousness
and therefore don’t care about achieving that goal at all – to biocentrists, some
things are good independently of whether beings are aware of it. Hence, we can give
vitamins to our cat and can genuinely say the vitamins are good for the cat, even
though the cat is not aware of that goodness.
In the same way, we can say that things are genuinely good or bad for life-forms
such as plants, even though they have no awareness of such facts. The good is
biological, independent of conscious experience, and our moral considerations
should acknowledge that good. What’s interesting here is the practical question of
what that entails for how we should treat life-forms such as individual plants.

Some thinkers, such as the well-respected Albert Schweitzer and the more
contemporary Paul Taylor, maintain that we can use animals and plants for our own
needs only when absolutely necessary for survival. Hence, we can kill an animal if
otherwise we would starve to death, or if it threatens us, but not for trivial
needs such as preferring the taste of meat over vegetables. Likewise, we can pluck
plants for food and fell trees to build shelter, but we shouldn’t destroy nature
for trivial needs that are not necessary for survival. This, as you can observe, is
an extremely demanding ethics. It would seem, for example, that I can not pluck a
weed from my garden, because my interest to have a pretty garden is not necessary,
in other words, it is trivial. It would also seem that when I go on a walk, I
should make sure that I don’t step on any plant that I might destroy.

To ease this demand, some thinkers proposed a hierarchical frame that lets us value
humans and animals more than plants, but still give plants inherent value, although
less. It is not entirely clear, however, how this in practice differs from
zoocentrism and anthropocentrism. So, while anthropocentrism stems mainly from
practice and zoocentrism remains entirely practical in its calls for vegetarianism
or veganism, the question of how to practically apply biocentrism to our common
practices remains difficult, open and, if you’ll have it, quite interesting. But to
continue our exploration, so far we talked only about ethical perspectives that
focus on individual entities, be it humans, animals or individual plants. However,
some thinkers observe that if interests aren’t tied to conscious experience and
there are goods that are independent from it, we can formulate goals that pertain
to the interests of “wholes” such as the ecosystem and a species as a “whole”.
Hence, if I slaughter the last remaining group of some subspecies of wolfs, let’s
say, I not only went against the interests of the wolfs to continue their lives,
but also the interest of the species as a whole to spread its genome. If I destroy
a forest, I not only go against the interests of all the animals that losemtheir
home or their lives, and the interests of all the plants that won’t reach their
biological potential, but also the interest of the ecosystem itself that strives to
remain in an equilibrium. It is not entirely clear, how the interests of such
holistic entities should be weighted against the interests of individuals, however.

In principle, it seems that when the two are in conflict, a holistic ethics could
take it to be permissible to harm individuals for the good of wholes, which made
thinkers such as Tom Regan, quite skeptical of this view, calling it eco-fascism.
He’s very skeptical of the idea that we’d give holistic entities moral standing,
since that could easily crush the rights of individual beings. Which is a point
worth noting, namely that some theories are more prone to dangerous conclusions,
which calls for some additional epistemic humbleness, which means that we should
strive to be as self-critical as possible once we start moving in such directions.

Why we should value all life-forms. One answer has been that all life-forms have
some kind of interest and giving no moral significance to interests of other beings
is unethical. However, another answer is, that the question itself comes from a
philosophically problematic point of view. Consider the following. So far in these
lectures, our argumentation has progressed from the seemingly certain fact that
humans have value, to considerations of whether non-human things do. This position
commonly starts with the observation that I, the individual, obviously have value,
and then we expand our circle of moral consideration to our family members, usually
to the members of our social circles, to people of our nationality, and finally, if
we except enlightened humanism, to all members of our species. Many philosophers go
further and expand the moral circle to conscious beings that are not members of our
own species, and then some go further and expand it to individual plants and even
the ecosystem itself. Some biocentrists, such as the so-called radical ecologists,
maintain that this approach is entirely mistaken and in principle more ideological
than truly philosophical in nature. Afterall, this slow moral expansion is what led
to the misuse of our environment and animals in the first place, and even if it
does get expanded so that it attributes inherent value to the environment, our
moral relationship to nature still seems to remain hierarchical, so that humans
kill animals if necessary and destroy whole ecosystems if truly needed. This, in
some important sense, still remains to be deeply anthropocentric. To truly break
free of our long tradition of anthropocentrism, a perspective that is deeply rooted
in western culture and got especially reaffirmed after the industrial revolution, a
radical break is needed, one that is not solely based in arguments, but rather
needs an expression through art and culture, which are the most effective means
that truly let
us transcend an ideology. Until this is achieved, the radical ecologists maintain,
we will never be truly able to break free and understand the true value of nature.

So, to summarize, I have presented some arguments for biocentrism and some
different biocentristic theories, since it’s really a diverse assembly of views,
all with different reasons why it is exactly that not only conscious beings matter,
but all life does. We have pointed out the difference between inherent and
instrumental value, and outlined some different biocentristic stances towards life,
one valuing individual life-forms such as plants, one valuing holistic entities
such as the ecosystem, and one refusing to merely expand moral standing from the
starting point of humans having value, but rather calling for a radical break with
tradition in order to achieve a truly new philosophical perspective on nature.