On the Intrinsic Value of Everything

摘要

Davison argues that everything including "living persons, animals, and plants . .. along with paintings, buildings, places, symbols, natural formations and events" has intrinsic value, and that different items have different degrees of such value (p. 3). He draws eclectically upon analytic philosophy, classic Christian writings, and a smattering of environmental and animal ethics, and develops his argument contrastively, by weighing the strengths and weaknesses of his position, which I call here "graded pan-axialism" (GPA), against those holding four other possible positions: (1) nothing has any intrinsic value; (2) everything has the same (positive) intrinsic value; (3) only some things have intrinsic value, and they have it to the same degree; or (4) they have it to different degrees. He ends the book by arguing that GPA fits well with "traditional theism."