The ethics of plant care

If someone devotes a significant part of their life to affectionately caring for plastic flowers, there is something wrong with them. Not so in the case of real, living plants. This points to me to the idea that life as such, and not just conscious life or the life of animals, is a valuable thing.

I don’t want to say that it’s always bad to affectionately care for artifacts. When the artifacts have an intimate and significant connection with human beings, as in the case of a chair that grandma made or a work of art, such affectionate care can make sense. But having an affectionate care for plants makes sense even in the absence of a connection to human beings.

What about microscopic forms of life? Can it make sense to fondly feed a bacterium? I think so, but I agree that the case is less clear.

An argument for animals in heaven

In quick outline, here’s a valid argument:

1. There are plants in heaven.

2. If there are plants in heaven, there are non-human animals in heaven.

3. So, there are non-human animals in heaven.

Let me expand on the argument.

Humans in heaven (i.e., on the New Earth, after resurrection) will have both supernatural and natural fulfillment. The natural fulfillment of humans requires an appropriate environment. That environment requires plants. A heavenly city with no trees or grass or flowers just wouldn’t be heavenly for us. This is fitting as humans were made for a garden. The fall turned the garden into a field of hard labor for survival, but all will be restored, and so there will be a garden again.

But plants, of the sort that form the natural environment of humans, require an ecosystem that includes non-human animals. There need to be pollinators in the air and worms in the ground. And how eerily quiet a garden would be with no birds chirping, how unnatural for humans.

This does not mean that there will be a resurrection of animals. Just as a plant can be perfect without living forever, a non-rational animal can be perfect without living forever. One may, however, worry that we will form attachments to non-human animals and would be saddened by their death. There are three responses. First, perhaps some non-human organisms could live forever, namely particular ones which are important to humans: say, a bonsai or a companion dog. Second, perhaps we wouldn’t form these attachments, maybe because no animals would be tame. Third, it might be that we would all transcend time to the extent that (a) our memory would not fade and (b) we would all have the correct view of time, i.e., eternalism, so that we would be constantly aware that our beloved animal exists simpliciter, albeit in the past.

Disembodied trees

Here’s an interesting thesis:

1. If x has the ys among its parts, and for each z among the ys, x can survive losing z without gaining anything, then x can survive simultaneously losing all the ys without gaining anything.

There are obvious apparent counterexamples. A boat that has sufficient redundancy can survive the loss of any plank, but cannot survive losing them all. An oak tree can lose any cell but cannot lose all cells.

But counterexamples aside, wouldn’t (1) be a nice metaphysical thesis to have? Then essential parts wouldn’t be made of inessential ones. You can see all the nasty ship-of-Theseus questions that would disappear if we had (1).

I think an Aristotelian can embrace (1), and can get around the counterexamples by biting some big bullets. First, like some contemporary Aristotelians, she can deny that artifacts like boats (or bullets) exist. Second, she can say that oak trees can survive the loss of all their matter, becoming constituted by form alone, much as some philosophers say happens to human beings after death (before the resurrection). The second part seems a bigger bullet to bite, as one would need a story as to why in fact oak trees perish when they lose all their cells, even if they don’t have to. But perhaps that’s just contingently how it happens, though an all powerful being could make an oak tree survive the destruction of all its cells.

The big question here is exactly what philosophical advantages embracing (1) has.

Using body parts and other natural human systems

While I'm inclined to agree that

1. it's wrong to use a natural human system (body part, aspect of the soul, naturally grounded activity, etc.) contrary to one of its natural purposes,

I am less sure about the stronger thesis that

2. it's wrong to use a natural human system in a way that isn't contrary to any of its natural purposes, but is also not in accord with any of its natural purposes.

I've been thinking about (2) today, and thought of an argument in favor of it. The human person is a closely unified whole (I actually do not think the human person has any actual proper parts). To use a part is to use the whole in respect of that system. Likewise, the telos of the system is a telos of the whole in respect of that system. Thus, to use one's system in a way that is not in accord with any telos that it has is to use oneself as a mere means, unless somehow one can create a new telos for one's own natural systems. Therefore if we keep the Kantian thesis that we shouldn't use ourselves as mere means, and supplement it with the metaphysical thesis that we cannot create a new telos for a natural system (this thesis seems anti-Kantian in spirit, but I think the historical Kant might well be friendly to it, given the Natural Law components in his ethics—say, his discussion of euthanasia or the solitary vice), we have an argument for (2). This would be a Kantian theory with a significant injection of Natural Law. Perhaps this kind of injection of Natural Law also helps with the problem of Kantianism being too formal to apply to concrete situations.

I wonder if (2) could be defended in the case of non-human natural systems. On the face of it, not: after all, it's perfectly acceptable to ride a horse, and carrying a burden doesn't seem to be a natural telos of its back. But I am inclined to think that it may be a telos of every non-human living creature on earth to serve human beings (maybe with some proportionality constraint built in). That may be why we may kill and eat at least some of them (it's uncontroversial that we may kill and eat edible plants and fungi). If this is right, then if one uses an animal for a purpose that is not a good, say by riding out on a horse to an unjust war, one not only does wrong by pursuing something that isn't a good, but one also does wrong by misusing the animal.