wise use of mires and peatlands - Peatland Ecology Research Group

VALUES AND CONFLICTS: WHERE DIFFERENT VALUES MEET113respecting the other’s position, - so long asthe positions do not fundamentally clash. Anatheist or agnostic without any religiousconviction can nevertheless accept thesanctity of a church or other place of worshipto avoid the suffering of religious believersshould the place of worship be violated.Moral pluralism allows that living decentlyinvolves many kinds of principles and varioussorts of responsibilities. It recognises thatfeelings and responses to situations aredrawn from many sources and cannot besimplified without distortion. “It remains truethat a pluralist perspective will not be easy touse. If many different sets of values are inplay when environmental issues are beingdiscussed, the role of the policy-makerbecomes much more complicated. But life iscomplicated, and we will not make progressin tackling the grave difficulties we face unlesswe learn to avoid shallow thinking and simplesolutions 151 .”4.10 NON-ANTHROPOCENTRICAPPROACHESThe non-anthropocentric approachesreferred to in the previous section are worthexploring further. They allow theinvestigation of alternative views in moralphilosophy and more extended valuesystems. These may add additionalsophistication to the discussion in thisdocument. The difficulty of motivatingpeople for sustainability, in the light ofcomplex and unknown relations anddiscounting over time, may favour the use ofnon-anthropocentric positions, as an easyapproach 152 . Furthermore, the right to liveaccording to one’s own value system (Table4/1) implies that such positions have to beconsidered when brought forward in specificconflicts.Non-anthropocentric positions do notexclude human beings, but treat them as partof the elements under consideration. As anexample we present the moral philosophy ofMartin Gorke 153 , one of the most extreme andmost consistent forms of ecocentrism andholism 154 .Any moral position must be founded on aworld-view of certain basic, empiricallyderivedassumptions, e.g. on our knowledgeof the position of human beings in theuniverse. Astronomy, evolutionary biology,and ecology show that humanity is neitherthe pivotal point nor the final end of the world.Nature, including inanimate nature, does notexist solely for human beings. If humanitycan no longer be seen as the centre of theworld, then ethical anthropocentrism must bequestioned: ethics can no longer be regardeda priori as something that is restricted torelationships between human beings.While the intrinsic value of non-humanentities is usually demonstrated by selectinga particular “decisive” quality (e.g. thecondition of having consciousness or thatof being alive, cf. Table 3/1), Gorke starts froma different point of view. In his view we areforced, as a fundamental of morality, to makean “original decision” between two basicoptions: “egoism” and “a moral (i.e. nonegoist)standpoint”. If one opts for the latter,any selection of entities not worthy of moralconsideration is an act of egoism, because Idetermine whom I will respect, when andunder what circumstances. If having a moralstandpoint is taken seriously, moralconsideration has to be extended to all otherentities.Advocates of more restricted concepts ofmorality will object that it is by no meansegoism to exclude certain entities of naturefrom the moral community but simply a rationaland objective assessment of circumstances.In Gorke’s analysis of the concept of morality,however, they carry the burden of proof. Theymust convincingly demonstrate that the lackof certain qualities makes exclusionnecessary. Anthropocentrism, patho-