Value is discussed by Kaufman as instrumental (at human disposal) and intrinsic (not at human disposal). However, the reference to derivative value, which is identified according to whether an object such as a car has in fact been put at human disposal, is a useful one for discussing the plausibility of nonhuman objects' rights. That is because it implies that value as humans perceive it can be considered not as a property embedded in a material object meriting what is referred to as "direct moral standing" (Kaufman 86) but instead as a consequence of the relationship or encounter between the human and nonhuman thing.
The moral standing that exists in the human part of the relationship lends moral weight to the object by what could be called a principle of attraction. That may not dispose of Kaufman's concern that environmental ethics reaches "very murky areas of philosophy" (84), but why should discourse of environmental ethics be any less murky than other ethical discourse?
A presumption of moral content is consistent with Regan's argument that nonhuman natural objects have something like goodness inherent in them. Regan's most forceful argument is that inherent value commands "admiring respect," which can of course come only from conscious (human) sources, and that "gives rise to the preservation principle" (91). Similar articulations can be found in Rodman's "propriety principle" (125-6), which calls for scrutiny of the nature of, so to speak, nature, and Midgley's idea that human beings can behave both suitably and unsuitably toward a found environment that is completely at their mercy (105-6).
Sylvan's argument asserts that human chauvinism, as he calls it, is species bias that bodes ill for nonhuman objects (99), yet he admits that it is difficult to grant rights to something that does not or cannot also assume responsibilities (98). Regan, too, admits that it is difficult to determine with certainty what is truly wort...