The term “quality of interests” used by environmental ethicists is commonly used to determine what and what kind of ethical standing is ascribed to different species. Quality of interests means that something has a sake or personal investment in the outcome of an action. The action would affect it on a personal level. Who then, exactly, has a sake or quality of interest? What species, population, or group should have ethical standing and where should the line be drawn? Ethicists Joel Feinberg, Paul Singer, Paul Taylor, and Christopher Stone each have differing positions on quality of interests that determine how they regard the environment. Joel Feinberg believed that those who have interests have rights, and conversely, those that have no interests have no rights. He defines interests as having consciousness, hopes, desires, aims, or goals. Vegetation, according to Feinberg, has no interests and therefore, no rights. Individual animals, may or may not have a sake because they have value to us personally. Feinberg does not extend this view to whole species of animals, only individual ones. Additionally, the rights of future generations are conditional and are actualized only when they are born. His views are …show more content…
Utilitarian ethics equates good with pleasure and bad with pain. Therefore, if animals have these same experiences they must have a quality of interest in not experiencing pain, so we should extend to them some ethical standing. Singer does not, however, extend interests to all species of non-human animals; an oyster in his view is not the same as a deer or bear. Moreover, Singer does not believe that human and non-human animals should be viewed as having equal interests; he merely extends to non-human animals some interests. Additionally, vegetation has no sake in his