What's So Good About Biodiversity? A Call for Better Reasoning About Nature's Value

摘要

'Instead of a solid edifice, I found a chimera' (p. 2). With these words, the US philosopher-scientist Donald S. Maier depicts his first research-minded encounter with what he labels 'the biodiversity project.' When scientists, philosophers, economists, practitioners, and others talk about biodiversity and contemplate its value, their ideas have been fragmentary, diverse, and contradictory to a great deal. Noticing this motivated Maier 'to survey, clarify, and scrutinize' the soundness of the arguments presented for biodiversity conservation and to create his own theory of environmental ethics free from the current notion of biodiversity. The scholarly work What 's so Good about Biodiversity ? A Call for Better Reasoning about Nature's Value is the outcome of his research. As far as I know, it is his first publication in the field of environmental philosophy.