Norman L. Geisler:”Norman L. Geisler(homepage)”:http://www.normgeisler.com/, president of Southern Evangelical Seminary:”SES homepage”:http://www.ses.edu/, presents a Christian view of how to deal with consequences in conjunction with divine command theory:”The Unsound Argument(The Flavors of Objectivism Part II)”:http://www.hundiejo.com/philosophy/index.php/b/2005/06/22/the_many_diffrent_flavors_of_objectivism in his article entitled Absolutes? Absolutely!:”Ablosultes? Absolutely!“:http://www.equip.org/free/DE198.htm. I thought it was an interesting read inlight of my earlier post on Ethical Relativity:”The Unsound Argument(Ethical Relativity)”:http://unsoundargument.com/index.php/b/2005/10/20/ethical_relativity.

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I have always wanted to delve into the Environmental Ethics debate at some point. I have not done any official reading on the subject. Right now my best guesses on the subject spring from my personhood theory. The short version of what responsibility humans have toward the environment and why is as follows:

1. At the most basic level humans are animals.
2. The most basic responsibility / duty / instinct of an animal is the survival of it’s species.
   • Note that the survival of the individual animal is not the highest, but the survival of the species. This allows for the noticed seemingly suicidal behavior of certain animals for the greater good of the herd / family / species.
   • This line of reasoning is gleamed from the work of a Charles Darwin. In his theory, the goal is not progress, but a perpetuation of the species, survival.
3. :. The most basic level of responsibility of the human race is to ensure its own survival.

Following from that basic principal, that the most basic level of responsibility of the human race is to ensure its own survival, we can extend to the following:

1. The most basic level of responsibility of the human race is to ensure its own survival.
2. The earth has to be maintained at a minimum level X in order to ensure the survival of the human race.
3. :. Humans have a duty as a race to maintain the Earth at level X.

Humans, at the very least, have a duty to maintain the environment at the minimum level to ensure their survival as a race. However, is that all that is required of us? We are not merely Darwinian animals. We are Darwinian animals to be sure, and as such we have a responsibility to perpetuate our species, but is there more to it? If so, why do we have a greater responsibility? The environmentalists emphatically maintain that we do, to varying degrees, but often what is not stated is why humans do. I suspect that it lies in our personhood. Because humans are not only animals, but persons, and with that comes additonal rights and duties.

If we are to accept Carmen Price’s conclusion:”The Unsound Argument(Is Emotion a requirement of Personhood?)”:http://unsoundargument.com/personhood/is-emotion-a-requirement-of-personhood that in order for S to be considered to be a person, it must be capable of non-rational behaviors, otherwise known as emotion; then what does that mean for personhood theory? Must all persons have a non-rational basis?

1. Only Persons have free will.
2. Persons must have the capacity to make non-rational behaviors.
3. :. A being that does not have the ability to make a non-rational choice is not a person.

Under this situation all robots and animals that simply react with instinct or via code are not persons. I think that the argument holds. If it does then here are some interesting consequences of Carmen’s argument:

• Spock (or a similar being) is a person.
  1. Spock has the capacity for emotions, he just chooses to deny them.
• Data (or other non-emotive android) is not a person
• God, if he is a person, must have emotions and therefore must also be non-rational.

The first two outworkings are just imaginative fantasy, they are of no real consequence, unless we meet or construct such beings. The last one may have interesting consequences for certain religious matters. It seems that either God cannot be completely rational and be a person at the same time.