By Forest Scaife-Elliott
As technology continues to advance, especially in the twenty-first century, it is easy to believe that we are less engaged with the natural world and our concern for it is therefore gradually diminishing. A central problem identified in the eco-philosophical literature addressing such concerns stem from whether a philosophical approach towards nature and the broader non-human world should abandon or uphold human centered perspectives commonly referred to as anthropocentrism. As we ourselves are humans trying to think and act morally, truly escaping the pull of these (anthropocentric) modes of thought may not be possible or lead to a coherent ethical framework in which we can engage with issues concerning the natural world. Alternatively, if our treatment of nature is guided by overtly anthropocentric moral positions, the ways in which we formulate an ethics of ecology may be predisposed to assert human values on non-human entities, and thus not accurately reflect the value present within the non-human world.[1] To address this tension, I will argue that concern for the non-human world is necessarily linked to human anthropocentric modes of thought and perspectives. In doing so, this essay will inspect AI, evaluative perspectives, and the human self to conclude that any philosophy of ecological ethics is necessarily limited to what human evaluative perspectives may apprehend as meaningful and valuable.
Various ecological philosophies reject anthropocentrism when considering value within the non-human world. Many such positions may be encompassed by the broader philosophical label of deep ecology. No singular argument or idea may entirely encapsulate all the concepts and aspects of this philosophical approach. However, broadly speaking, deep ecology refers to views that support the central claim that all living beings have inherent worth independent of their instrumental utility to humans, and that our relationship to the non-human world should function through this lens; fundamentally detached from any anthropocentric privileging of humans.[2] Therefore, the deep ecologist’s epistemic moral framework necessarily abandons the privileging and centering of any human perspective as the basis in weighing ethical claims surrounding the non-human world. To the deep ecologist, humanity’s tendency to default to anthropocentric (human-centered) views and values is nothing more than a deficiency in perspective. Often, they believe in placing non-human entities alongside humans when considering questions of value.[3] Whilst individual views may differ it is necessary that the deep ecologist’s framework for individual moral concepts such as intrinsic value, operates outside of, or at least does not privilege, what human modes of moral evaluation render meaningful and valuable.[4] My argument is not against non-human entities or any other such things having intrinsic moral value or worth but rather this specific epistemic claim. I argue that the deep ecologist’s assertion that human evaluative perspectives cannot be used to ascertain the moral value of the non-human world leads to an indeterminacy in valuing different states of the world. Moreover, it is these human evaluative perspectives that dictate the boundaries in which an environmental ethics may function. To show this, it is necessary that I exhibit why discarding anthropocentrism, in the way that deep ecologists propose, is problematic.
To convey this central argument, I wish to initially inspect what implications the development of modern systems of artificial intelligence (AI) have had for ethical decision making. Whilst discussing AI may initially seem tangential to our ecological concerns, I believe inspecting AI’s relationship with ethics exemplifies the importance of agents and agent decision making, and further, how deep ecology neglects moral agency in its resistance to anthropocentrism. To this, the problem of AI’s involvement in ethics, particularly moral decision-making, is centered less on the nature and mechanics behind AI, and more on the fundamental nature of ethics itself as an endeavor. Robert Sparrow shows this through drawing a fundamental distinction between practical/scientific problems and ethical problems.[5] To illustrate this, consider a policymaker named Mari who is presented with a plan to build housing units for people who desperately need proper homes for their own safety. However, the only available land for this is an endangered species habitat, where construction would result in the decimation of both the species and their environment. To resolve this tension, Mari resorts to asking a specifically trained ethics AI to solve the dilemma at hand. Now consider a second scenario where Mari needs to calculate how much of her yearly salary she would need to save to afford a new car, but because she struggles with the necessary arithmetic, she uses AI to help her complete this task.
After considering this, we may ask if Mari is more justified in using AI for one of these scenarios than the other. It may initially appear there is a strong intuitive difference between Mari’s use of AI beyond the obvious change in context. To this, I would argue the substantial difference lies in whether Mari’s task in either scenario exists as a personal or non-personal endeavor. For instance, within the latter scenario were Mari uses AI to create a budget for a new car, there are no necessary considerations specific to Mari as a person that demand close attention if she is to accomplish this task. Meaning, any necessary considerations required for Mari to accomplish this task are likewise necessary considerations for anyone else in an identical position.[6] This is what makes this latter scenario non-personal in the same way we would not typically regard brushing one’s teeth or drinking a glass of water as acts tied to the specificity of the respective actors. I believe this is also not only what differentiates these situations, but also what makes Mari’s use of AI in the former scenario intuitively less justifiable. If we were in her shoes and our AI-influenced choice resulted in an undesirable outcome, the remorse we would feel for such a choice would be primarily directed at the decision to outsource our decision to AI in the first place rather than the specific choice the AI made. Further, any blame others may assert would be directed towards Mari’s own deferral to AI rather than the AI itself. We may find this instinctual because making a choice regarding this moral dilemma is something that should be influenced by Mari’s unique subjectivity. Whatever conditions or factors that lead Mari to making a choice will not necessarily remain significant for any other agent in an identical position and so she cannot escape responsibility by outsourcing her decision to a machine. This is why Mari’s thinking may naturally appeal to some as shallow and fearful whilst being largely dismissive of the consequences her choice may entail. What this indicates is that moral dilemmas and choices are necessarily, to a degree, personal choices which must be made by their respective person. Because of this, ethics is a fundamentally personal endeavor for people to undertake. Regardless of whether the AI happens to provide Mari with an outcome that yields a desirable result, she is still far less justified in using it in this situation than within a non-personal, non-moral context because AI itself is not a person and therefore incapable of acting in a way that can address the personal nature of moral problems.
To be clear, when identifying Mari’s action this way, as a kind of ‘outsourcing’ of decision making, I am using this term in quite a direct and literal way. Because for one to outsource is to have something produced, constructed, or otherwise designed in some way by an external party rather than oneself. In this way, Mari’s choice to use AI to make her decision for her may not be read as analogous to her asking someone, such as a college, friend, or professional on the matter for advice. That would amount to an expression of her own agency and engagement with her moral responsibility, as she is taking the time to make a decision herself; specifically, a decision informed by, (but crucially not made by) external influences that may help her in coming to address her moral responsibility through a decision of her own. Using AI only as a tool to gather advice, as opposed to making the decision for her may have a similar effect on her decision-making process to asking another person, and so would likely not constitute an evasion of responsibility. However, the specifics of how AI may interact with moral responsibility in this way would require a discussion of specifically relational and other models of autonomy that exceeds the intended purposes of this paper. Regardless, Mari’s use of AI in the outlined scenario is substantially different from using AI in this way or generally seeking advice from others before coming to make her own moral choice. Effectively, if we agree that it is not possible for Mari to evade responsibility by using AI then moral decisions are necessarily personal decisions that require a person or an agent and because machines and AI are not agents, they therefore cannot make moral decisions.[7]
I believe this scenario poses issues for deep ecology perspectives, as its fundamental ideas move moral value away from any relationship with human perspectives and towards a broader picture of nature. In doing so, it asks agents to detach themselves from the very thing that enables their participation in moral dilemmas and decisions in the first place. Mari’s capacity for agency in the first scenario is partly constituted by her own personhood, which itself is intrinsically attached to her human existence. Effectively, since the capacity for agency in ethics is enabled by personhood located within human ontology, the normative significance of agency is reduced if our framework of ethics encourages distancing ourselves from the human existence that enables the personhood that grants agency. Therefore, the deep ecologist’s account risks diminishing moral agency by limiting the role our human position should have in our moral choices. Of course, in response, the deep ecologist would likely argue that their stance does not do this but rather advocates that agents do not privilege their own anthropocentric existence and interests in their use of said agency. However, because addressing moral dilemmas like Mari’s, and making moral choices are actions performed by agents whose capacity to do so rest on their personhood, which is linked to their human ontology; ecological ethics cannot divorce itself from human existence and perspectives without simultaneously affecting the normative significance of moral agency. Furthermore, since normative judgments and claims require agents who can evaluate preferential states of the world, if human agency is reduced in this way, then it is much harder to see how our picture of ecological ethics could use moral agency to determine whether one state of the world is more valuable than another.
However, for now, assume the deep ecologist view, wherein we reject anthropocentric approaches to environmental ethics. In doing so, it is necessary to then decide what our moral preferences are and where they may be located. Effectively, why ought the world exist in one state over another. Various forms of deep ecology have proposed different properties that attempt to provide a non-anthropocentric foundation for this question, such as environmental harmony, diversity, and other forms of ecological flourishing.[8] Baird Callicott, for example, advocates for the harmony of biospheres overall as a non-anthropocentric basis through which we may privilege one state of nature over others.[9] Here, the locus of value is not held within individual humans or even individual species; rather, value is located within the biotic whole to which they belong, such as their ecosystem and the harmony and health of that environment.[10] This presents us with a non-anthropocentric ecological framework that shapes our responses to the non-human world independently of human interest. For instance, the flourishing of a species may serve the health and harmony of a biosphere and so we are presented with a non-anthropocentric reason for protecting and preserving such a species.[11] To evaluate this, consider the Miocene Epoch, one of the most biodiverse periods in history, and the time of the Permian Triassic extinction, during which an overwhelming amount of Earth’s biodiversity was lost in species and habitat mass extinction.[12] It is obvious that those aligned with Callicott would identify the former as more ecologically rich and so would argue it is the preferable state of the world that we ought to strive for over the other. Stan Rowe, for instance, supports this kind of change in the recognition of value by advocating for a shift from anthropocentric perspectives to the delineation of moral value within the environment stemming from a holistic understanding of the ecosphere. From this perspective the Earth’s ecosphere itself is of most significant value rather than any individual organisms. And so, any privileging of anthropocentric perspectives in the apprehension of environmental value violates our ability to engage with the broader ecological whole.[13] However, what is not obvious is how this preference functions independently of anthropocentric values. It is not clear why the harmony and health of a biosphere is a self-evident value that escapes human interest entirely. Because when we describe the Miocene era as ecologically healthier or richer than the time of the Permian extinction, we are applying evaluative terms that are descriptive only because of the human perspective they originate from. If we detach ourselves entirely from these anthropocentric perspectives, there is no clear answer as to why one ecological period should be valued over another. Hence a totally non-anthropocentric ethics of ecology has no grounds to suggest any differentiation of value present within nature without altogether forsaking the non-anthropocentric foundation upon which such views are constructed.[14]
However, surely not all deep ecologists would advocate for abandoning anthropocentric—or simply human thinking—in addressing how we should ethically assess the natural world. In upholding their core epistemic commitment to avoid anthropocentrism, deep ecologists need not entirely forsake distinctly human modes of thought when assessing where moral values lie within nature. Especially if what is distinctly human, or a part of the self, is expanded in some way to encompass the non-human world in a way that facilitates moral consideration for it.[15] Under this idea of a much wider human self, deep ecologists such as Warwick Fox and John Seed develop the notion of a self indistinguishable from nature. In doing so, they reject any metaphysical dualistic boundaries between humans and nature; advocating against our understanding of the world operating via hyperseparation of humans from the non-human world.[16] However, this form of deep ecology goes further than simply breaking down this traditional distinction, as these thinkers often identify the self and nature as connected in such a strong ontological holism that they reject our capacity to conceive of and analyze the world as separate and distinct constituents.[17] Thus, even the separation between self and other collapses, and considerations for what we would typically call the environment become considerations for oneself. In this sense then, protecting the natural world is synonymous with protecting myself.[18] This seems to provide a sort of optimal solution to the problems faced by Callicott, where, by conceiving of humans as much more thoroughly integrated into nature, we avoid removing human evaluative modes of thought through integrating anthropocentrism completely into our understanding of nature. We may thus use our own perspectives and needs to evaluate nature and come to a coherent ecological ethic. At the same time, because there is no hyperseparation between us and nature, the needs of the environment become our own and so we are dissuaded from abusive treatment of the non-human world lest we willingly harm what is an extension of ourselves.
However, the arguably vague metaphysics here, likely in need of further clarification and justification, is not the only problem plaguing the indistinguishability account. Most notably, it is not apparent how this deconstruction of hyperseparation with nature avoids indeterminacy in its turn away from conventional anthropocentrism. Our understanding of humans and nature as a metaphysically united whole would equally maintain regardless of humanity’s specific treatment of natural environments.[19] For instance, it is equivalently true that humans remain united with nature in a world where petroleum companies lay waste to the Amazon rainforest as opposed to one wherein such environments are conserved and protected. Under this ecological ontology then, the human self within nature is equally indistinguishable from it as oil pipelines, saltwater crocodiles, or vast forests. It is true that the realization that I am the forest—and the forest is me—may persuade some towards a protective, conservation-like approach to the environment. This view may then ideally serve to provide a descriptive account of nature necessary in stipulating such approaches. However, as a descriptive view, Fox and Seed’s account does not necessitate our engagement with the environment in this way, where we take its needs as our own rather than our needs as its needs.[20] If my flourishing is the forest’s flourishing, and my flourishing requires mass fracking, then I may justifiably reason the forest equally requires mass fracking. It is unclear then, how, through this holistic metaphysics, the indistinguishability account may identify a rational preference for certain states of nature over others and so provide a viable foundation for an environmental ethics. Instead of the exploitation of nature being labeled a harmful anthropocentric approach, there simply exists no boundary between human perspectives and nature. What is human is nature, and so we can hardly differentiate between what is and is not detrimental anthropocentrism, let alone establish a rational preference against this. Clearly if we are to delineate how we ought to avoid exploitative ecological practices, then it is necessary not only that we apply human evaluative perspectives, but that these perspectives remain distinct from the conditions of the non-human world that we assess through them. Regardless of what a descriptive metaphysics may indicate about our own continuity with nature, any viable environmental ethic should aim to maintain a meaningful distinction between ourselves and the non-human world. Without doing so, our assessments of the natural world are at risk of lacking the evaluative tools often necessary to identify and help us avoid abusive and exploitative treatment of the environments around us.
These arguments enable the conclusion that the value of nature and the broader non-human world is fundamentally apprehended and engaged with through human evaluative perspectives. What these two arguments further indicate is that accepting deep ecology and detaching from any degree of anthropocentrism leads towards a state of indeterminacy, in which any picture of ecological ethics that we may form is unable to articulate more and less valuable states of the world. What this clearly indicates is that, in order to make any normative claims about the non-human world, any framework of ecological ethics must draw upon evaluative standards capable of exhibiting what is environmentally valuable. Furthermore, because the only evaluative standards available to us that do not lead to indeterminacy of moral value are inherently human evaluative standards, whatever philosophical frameworks ecological ethics functions through are necessarily limited to that which human evaluative perspectives can register as meaningful and valuable. Importantly, this is a conclusion about the conditions through which normative valuation of the non-human world can operate, one which entails two primary implications. First, this is not to say that there is no value independent of human evaluative perspectives, rather, humanity’s assessment of value within the non-human world is necessarily restricted to the human perspective from which any such assessment originates. Second, no moral assessment of the non-human world can entirely escape the human perspective from which it is drawn. This means anthropocentrism is intrinsically attached to any methodology through which rational normative claims about the non-human world may be argued.
I am currently undertaking my third year as an extended philosophy major at the University of Queensland, with plans to complete an honors thesis next year before graduating with a Bachelor of Arts degree. After this, I plan to further my study of philosophy through a higher degree by research within UQ’s School of Historical and Philosophical Inquiry. I love reading and especially writing philosophy, with my primary philosophical interests concerning environmental ethics, philosophical methodology, and non-naturalistic metaphysics.
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[1] Patrícia Frantz, Francisca Rego and Stela Barbas, “Ecocentrism vs. Anthropocentrism: To the Core of the Dilemma to Overcome It,” The Linacre Quarterly 92 (2025): 449–51, https://doi.org/10.1177/00243639251339844.
[2] Tasnim Nazir Rida, “Integrating environmental ethics into climate change adaptation policies in Bangladesh: a narrative review,” Climate Risk Management 50 (2025): 4, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.crm.2025.100748.
[3] Frantz, Rego, and Barbas, “Ecocentrism vs. Anthropocentrism: To the Core of the Dilemma to Overcome It,” 451.
[4] Andrew Brennan, and Yeuk-Sze Lo, “Environmental Ethics,” in The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Summer 2024. Edited by Edward N. Zalta and Uri Nodelman, sec. 3.1, https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/sum2024/entries/ethics-environmental/.
[5] Robert Sparrow, “Why machines cannot be moral,” AI & Society 36 (2021): 686, https://doi.org/10.1007/s00146-020-01132-6.
[6] Sparrow “Why machines cannot be moral,” 687–90.
[7] Sparrow, “Why Machines Cannot Be Moral,” 687–90.
[8] William Grey, “Anthropocentrism and Deep Ecology,” Australasian Journal of Philosophy 71 (1993): 470, https://doi.org/10.1080/00048409312345442.
[9] John Baird Callicott, In Defense of the Land Ethic (State University of New York Press, 1989), 142.
[10] Kristin Shrader-Frechette, “Biological Holism and the Evolution of Ethics,” Between Species 6 (1990): 185, https://doi.org/10.15368/bts.1990v6n4.8.
[11] Grey, “Anthropocentrism and Deep Ecology,” 472.
[12] Sarda Sahney and Michael J. Benton, “Recovery from the Most Profound Mass Extinction of All Time,” Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences 275, no. 1636 (2008): 759, https://doi.org/10.1098/rspb.2007.1370; Tara M. Smiley, “Changes In Small-Mammal Diversity and Ecology in Relation to Landscape and Climate Change over the Neogene,” Frontiers of Biogeography 8 (2016): 1-2, https://doi.org/10.21425/f58432713.
[13] Michael Uebel, “Ecocentrism,” in Green Ethics and Philosophy: An A-to-Z Guide, ed. Julie Newman (SAGE Publications, 2011), 262, https://sk.sagepub.com/ency/edvol/greenethics/chpt/ecocentrism.
[14] Grey, “Anthropocentrism and Deep Ecology,” 472–3.
[15] Val Plumwood, Feminism and the Mastery of Nature (Routledge, 1993), 176.
[16] Warwick Fox, “Deep Ecology: A New Philosophy of Our Time?” The Ecologist 14 (1984): 194–6; John Seed et al., Thinking Like A Mountain: Towards a Council of All Beings (New Society Publishers, 1988), 36.
[17] Plumwood, Feminism and the Mastery of Nature, 177.
[18] Seed et al., Thinking Like A Mountain: Towards a Council of All Beings, 36.
[19] Plumwood, Feminism and the Mastery of Nature, 177–8.
[20] Plumwood, Feminism and the Mastery of Nature, 177–9.
Featured Image: Rosa Bonheur, Shepherdess and Two Cows in a Meadow, oil on canvas, circa 1842-1845.
