Aldo Leopold, in “The Land Ethic”, elucidates the title of this chapter by stating: “A thing is right when it tends to preserve the integrity, stability, and beauty of the biotic community. It is wrong when it tends otherwise.”1 This implies that no matter what instrumental value a biotic community may have to human beings, it is also of paramount importance to preserve biotic communities based on our “obligations to land”2. This concept of a prima facie responsibility to protect our environment and the communities within it is known as the preservationist intuition3. We certainly attribute this value to our fellow man, putting laws in place to prevent harm and maltreatment in our communities, and breaking these laws would indeed render the culprit to be considered morally wrong. We attribute value (be it intrinsic or instrumental) to sentient animals, even plant-life. But what of ecosystems? Can we consider ecosystems to be morally considerable, and therefore attribute any value to them? It is a question that has many variables, and in this essay I will be evaluating various arguments for and against the premise that ecosystems command any value with regards to an environmental ethic.
First we must consider what it means for something to be morally considerable. It would appear that this definition would depend on what moral determinant we deem appropriate in pursuing an environmental ethic. Many philosophers, including K.E.Goodpaster adopt Joel Feinberg’s view that a thing may be morally considerable if and only if it is a living thing4. Those things which do not have the necessary condition of life are not morally considerable, and are known as ‘mere things’5. This eliminates any inanimate object from our moral consideration, as inanimate objects are not capable of being victims, nor are they capable of being beneficiaries6. For example, there is nothing to be