See discussions, stats, and author profiles for this publication at: https://www.researchgate.

net/publication/43521001

Last man arguments

Article
Source: OAI

CITATIONS READS

2 293

1 author:

William Grey
The University of Queensland
32 PUBLICATIONS 365 CITATIONS

SEE PROFILE

All content following this page was uploaded by William Grey on 19 October 2015.

The user has requested enhancement of the downloaded file.

 Last Man Arguments

In The Encyclopedia of Environmental Ethics and Philosophy 2 Vols (ed) J. Baird Callicott.
New York: Macmillan, 2009, Vol 2, pp. 40-41

by William Grey

The last man argument was devised by Richard Sylvan (before 1983 Richard Routley) and
was first published in Routley (1973). It is a thought experiment designed to show that the
prevailing principles of the dominant Western ethical tradition are unable to provide a
satisfactory basis for an environmental ethic. An adequate ethic of concern for the non-
human world must therefore have very different foundations.

The shared core assumptions of western ethics (which Sylvan calls a "super ethic") include a
freedom principle, according to which agents are permitted to act as they please provided
that they do not (1) harm others (understood usually, though not always, as other persons),
or (2) harm themselves. Sylvan labelled this anthropocentric principle basic human
chauvinism, because it affirms that only human interests and concerns feature in moral
deliberation and choice. The last man thought experiment was devised to refute this basic
core principle, and thus expose the inadequacy of traditional western ethics to support an
environmental ethic.

Ethical principles must be universal and therefore apply not just to actual situations but to
all possible situations. It is for this reason that thought experiments are important intuition
pumps and play a central role in testing ethical principles. The last man thought experiment
is as follows:

The last man (or person) surviving the collapse of the world system lays about him,
eliminating, as far as he can, every living thing, animal or plant (but painlessly if you
like, as at the best abattoirs). What he does is quite permissible according to basic
[human] chauvinism, but on environmental grounds what he does is wrong. (Routley
1973, 207f)

Because he is the last human survivor, there are no other human interests to be considered,
and the chauvinistic liberty principle therefore provides no grounds for moral
condemnation of his actions. However it is clear to an environmentally enlightened
conscience that the actions of the last man are morally dreadful. If you share Sylvan's
intuition that these terminal actions are morally reprehensible, and if there are no
anthropocentric considerations to support this intuition, then there must be some non-
anthropocentric considerations or values which explain the evil of the acts. (The last man
argument is formulated at greater length in Routley and Routley (1980), which Sylvan
authored jointly with his then partner Val Plumwood.)

Holmes Rolston (1975) has set out a parallel 'African butterfly' argument in support of non-
anthropocentric environmental values. Gratuitous acts of 'speciescide' carried out by
unscrupulous butterfly collectors, like the actions of Sylvan's last man, are reprehensible to
the environmentally enlightened conscience. Robin Attfield (1981) and Mary Anne Warren
(1983) have also presented variants of the argument.

A thought experiment which anticipates some aspects of Sylvan's argument was proposed
by G.E. Moore in a famous attempt to establish the objective value of beauty.

Let us imagine one world exceedingly beautiful. Imagine it as beautiful as you can;
put into it whatever on this earth you most admire—mountains, rivers, the sea; trees,
and sunsets, stars and moon. Imagine these all combined in the most exquisite
proportions, so that no one thing jars against another, but each contributes to
increase the beauty of the whole. And then imagine the ugliest world you can
possibly conceive. Imagine it simply one heap of filth, containing everything that is
most disgusting to us, for whatever reason, and the whole, as far as may be, without
one redeeming feature... The only thing we are not entitled to imagine is that any
human being ever has or ever, by any possibility, can, live in either, can ever see and
enjoy the beauty of the one or hate the foulness of the other. Well, even so,
supposing them quite apart from any possible contemplation by human beings; still,
is it irrational to hold that it is better that the beautiful world should exist, than the
one which is ugly? (Moore 1903, Ch III, Section 50)

Moore's intuition is that the beautiful world is objectively better than the heap of filth—and
he suggests that this is so quite independently of whether any evaluators exist to
contemplate the worlds in question. However after David Hume (1740, Book III, Part I,
Section I) we must be cautious about inferences, however appealing, which draw evaluative
conclusions from descriptive premises.

Value intuitions depend crucially on the nature of evaluators. It is not difficult—given our
biologically programmed aversion to dung, and a clear adaptive advantage in avoiding it—to
share Moore's intuition. However this preference is clearly shaped by our biological
constitution. It is far from clear that our preference would be shared by, say, a dung beetle
or a blowfly. Rather than establishing the objective value of beauty, Moore has established
the existence of deep-seated aesthetic intuitions widely shared among humans—and the
difficulty of thinking like a blowfly.

Sylvan's argument similarly fails to establish secure objective grounds for non-
anthropocentric values. However like other famous thought experiments—such as brains in
vats (Brueckner 2004) and "trolley" problems (Thomson 1976)—it helps us to regiment our
intuitions. The powerful visceral impact of the last man thought experiment reveals a
widespread, though sadly not universal, biophilia—an affinity for rich, diverse, complex and
beautiful biological systems. The use of cyanide and explosives for fishing on coral reefs,
rather than sustainable practices, and the clear-felling and burning of old growth forests,
generate a similarly powerful visceral repugnance which is also widely shared but also, alas,
not universal. The last man thought experiment helps us to appreciate that the depletion of
biodiversity impoverishes not just the biosphere, but also the requirements for the sort of
human life to which we are adapted and to which many of us aspire.
 Bibliography

Attfield, Robin. 1981. The Good of Trees. Journal of Value Inquiry 15: 35-54

Brueckner, Tony. 2004. Brains in a Vat. The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Winter
2004 Edition. Ed. Edward N. Zalta. URL =

Hume, David. 1740. A Treatise of Human Nature, Vol III. Ed. L.A. Selby-Bigge. Oxford:
Clarendon Press, 1888

Moore, G.E. 1903. Principia Ethica. Cambridge University Press

Rolston III, Holmes. 1975. Is There an Ecological Ethic? Ethics 85: 93-109

Routley, Richard. 1973. Is There a Need for a New, an Environmental, Ethic? Proceedings of
the XVth World Congress of Philosophy 1: 205-210

Routley, Richard and Val Routley. 1980. Human Chauvinism and Environmental Ethics. In
Environmental Philosophy, ed. D.S. Mannison, M. McRobbie and R. Routley, 96-189.
Canberra: Australian National University

Thomson, J. J. 1976. Killing, Letting Die, and the Trolley Problem. The Monist 59: 204-17

Warren, Mary Anne. 1983. The Rights of the Nonhuman World. In Environmental
Philosophy: A Collection of Readings, ed. R. Elliot and A. Gare, 109-134. St Lucia: University
of Queensland Press

View publication stats