Reconsidering Approaches to Moral Status

摘要

In this paper, we have considered John O'Neill, Alan Holland and Andrew Light's criticism of standard approaches to the question of moral status and their alternative approach to this question and to environmental ethics. In this connection, we have briefly outlined a version of a multi-criterial standard approach that can take into account and meet important aspects of O'Neill, Holland and Light's criticism of standard approaches that have played an important role in environmental ethics. We have also argued that although something can be said for O'Neill, Holland and Light's virtue ethics approach when it comes to explaining our relation to non-sentient nature, this approach also faces some important problems. Despite our criticism, we believe that O'Neill, Holland and Light's approach to the question of moral status and environmental ethics represents an interesting contribution to the literature that can generate good discussion.