Philosophy 20: Ethics

Pierce College

Department of History, Philosophy, & Sociology

Lecture Notes for Baxter's "People or Penguins: The Case for Optimal Pollution"

Assumptions:

1) Freedom–good

2) Waste–bad

3) Humans are Ends, Never Merely Means–Don't forget

4) Distribution Constraints–Reality

Baxter's Cards:

"I have no interest in preserving penguins for their own sake."

"It is undeniably selfish."

Baxter's Argument Parts:

Consider the following six steps.

1) " ... the way most people think and act–i.e., [it] corresponds to reality."

2) It doesn't mean the total annihilation of "nonhuman flora and fauna, for people depend on them in many obvious ways ... ."

3) What is good (not morally good, but practically good) for us is good (not morally good, but practically good) for them.

[Baxter will end up saying that what is morally good for us, is, for the most part, practically good for penguins–for the most part, unless we like the way they taste, as we liked the taste of dodos.]

4) "I do not know" Baxter tells us, "how we could administer any other system," either privately or collectively.

5) The burden of proof is on the shoulders of those who disagree with him, Baxter contends, to explain how it is that we are to put bears into our moral calculus [though it should be fairly easy in some cases, as with bears, which are ... evil].

6) "Is" applies to nature, Baxter seems to say, but "ought" applies to man uniquely.

So, if there are no natural "oughts" then "there is no normative definition of clean air or pure water– ... ."

Cost-Benefit Analysis

"The 'right' composition of the atmosphere is one which has some dust in it and some lead in it and some hydrogen sulfide in it–just those amounts that attend a sensibly organized society thoughtfully and knowledgeably pursuing the greatest possible satisfaction for its human members."

"The first and most fundamental step toward solution (sic.) of our environmental problems is a clear recognition that our objective is not pure air or water but rather some optimal state of pollution."

This means that we're to weigh resources and get ready to trade them.

1) labor,

2) technological skills,

3) capital goods, and

4) natural resources.

"One builds a dam or cleans a river by diverting labor and steel and trucks and factories from making one kind of goods to making another."

"And so on, trade-off by trade-off, we should divert our productive capacities from the production of existing goods and services to the production of cleaner, quieter, more pastoral nation up to–and no further than–the point at which we value more highly the next washing machine or hospital that we would have to do without than we value the next unit of environmental improvement that the diverted resources would create."

Supporting Claim:

If we pollute, we earn wealth and with that wealth we can alleviate world problems:

"The cost of such a Kyoto pact [one which does not permit global trading of costs], just for the US, will be higher than the cost of providing the entire world with clean drinking water and sanitation."