Alan Carter

There has been a process of moral extensionism within environmental ethics from anthropocentrism, through zoocentrism, to ecocentrism. This article maps key elements of that process, and concludes that each of these ethical positions fails as a fully adequate, environmentalist ethic, and does so because of an implicit assumption that is common within normative theory. This notwithstanding, each position may well contribute a value. The problem that then arises is how to trade off those values against each other when they conflict. The solution here proposed is to employ multidimensional isovalue-contours along with a multidimensional practicability-frontier. This would result in a rich, value-pluralist environmentalist ethic that enjoined different outcomes to those enjoined by purely anthropocentric, zoocentric or ecocentric ethics

Derek Parfit presents his Mere Addition Paradox in order to demonstrate that it is extremely difficult to avoid the Repugnant Conclusion. And in order to avoid it, Parfit has embraced perfectionism. However, Stuart Rachels and Larry Temkin, taking their lead from Parfit, have concluded, instead, that the Repugnant Conclusion can be avoided by denying the axiom of transitivity with respect to the all-things-considered-better-than relation. But this seems to present a major challenge to how we evaluate normatively. In this article I show how the Mere Addition Paradox and the Repugnant Conclusion can both be avoided without subscribing to perfectionism, and without sacrificing the axiom of transitivity.