Paul Taylor Respect For Nature Analysis

In correspondence to Paul Taylor’s “Respect for nature,” he believes that nature warrants the respect of the same quality that humans receive. His view is called the biocentric view of life, and he argues that the biocentric outlook is superior to the, more commonly accepted, anthropocentrism stance with several examples. I think that Paul Taylor’s is somewhat correct in his argument in saying that we should have respect for every living creature because according to virtue ethics, being a good person means to have the correct characteristics which include; being fair, having benevolence, and being conscientious but I also find some things in Taylor’s paper that I find a bit questionable. Virtue ethics is a normative theory that explains an …show more content…
Taylor brings up arguments in order to defend his biocentric view. He defends and stands for this biocentric environmental ethics rather than the usually accepted anthropocentric view. Biocentric is regarding and putting all living species in the same moral ground while anthropocentric means that we value and place humans in a higher moral stance above everything else. Taylor makes arguments by comparing humans to other species and highlighting our likenesses to them, describes how we are all interconnected and depends on each other, how living things have goals similar to us, and explains that belief of human superiority is subjective and biased. (Hettinger) He highlights our likenesses to other species by explaining that we are all vulnerable to things we can’t control, writes about our similar evolutionary processes, and how we have just only recently come to existence in comparison to other species. (Taylor) He also goes and comments on how it is a ridiculous that some might think that humans are the final goal to evolution. He then proceeds to say to comment on our reliability of other species to keep us alive and how we are all interconnected according to the basic law of science of ecology. He also states that all living species have a goal that they strive for and therefore we should use those goals in order to create a good or bad in accordance to certain species. Lastly he says that we should be biased by only …show more content…
A part in where I think is really solid is where he describes that we should look at other species great qualities and base what is ‘good’ and what is ‘bad’ toward the species. For example, although a bacterium is not conscious, it has been one of the first species to be here on earth. I believe that we should take that into account when thinking of it’s worth. On the other hand, an argument in which I found shaky is that we need to value other life species because we need them in order to live. I found this true but I don’t think it added to why we need to value them. I was thinking that Taylor wanted all of his points to consider other species intrinsic value rather than their instrumental