KEY+TERMS+&+DEFINITIONS


 * At the margin:** this is a way of determing the ultimate worth of something by asking, "how much are you willing to pay to acquire one more of X?" when are satisfied, the amount you are willing to pay for one more goes down. When there is no benefit at all to acquiring another X, the price you are willing to pay is 0.


 * Consequentialism:** the value of human action lies in the value of the results of that action. The only reason to take an action is because the results are valuable.


 * Distributive ends:** the way harms and benefits get distributed across impacted individuals and groups. There are two ways __utilitarians__ consider (or calculate) distributive ends into the decision equation: (1) __priority principle__: choose the action that produces the greatest improvement in the well-being of the worst off - this is not as simple a calculation as one might think, because, for example, canceling a project to avoid harm to the worst-off might create a worst-off situation for the proposed beneficiaries; (2) __telic egalitarianism__: promote the decision that results in equality because that is a just outcome in itself; telic egalitarians raise equality of outcome to the same importance as maximization. This is also not a simple calculation. Mere existence of equality is not necessarily a good outcome, e.g. if wealth were equally distributed and as a result, everyone starved (I'm not sure this would actually be the outcome of equal food distribution).


 * Deontology:** ethical philosophy asking us to apply //principles// of action that are the moral principles for a particular context. So, for example, our constitutional principle of "equal protection" requires us to avoid environmental decisions that will distribute harms unequally on one demographic of society, e.g. siting waste facilities primarily in low income neighborhoods. Yet protecting "the few" may be in conflict with aggregating maximum well-being across the whole.

**Kaldor-Hicks compensation test:** a situation A is an improvement over situation B if the gains are greater than the losses, so that the gainers could compensate the losers and still be better off.


 * Moral agent:** one who gives equal consideration to the interests of all affected by some action.


 * Moral considerability of the non-human world:** the discussion of whether nature is an instrument of humankind, or has intrinsic value is in part defined by the discussion about who and what may be owed moral consideration. This is important in the sense that a moral agent (see above) needs to know whose or what's interests to consider when making decisions. Kant (1956) originally said moral consideration was owed only to rational beings. Benthem much earlier (1789) said the question was whether a being could suffer. Peter Singer (1986), a modern utilitarian, suggests that moral consideration is owed to any being that can be said to have an interest of its own. When coupled with a second strand of Kantian ethics, that a being with moral standing cannot be used as a means, but must be considered an end of itself. Played out, giving equal consideration to human and nonhuman beings would mean that judging medical experimentation on animals to be ethical would require one to find that humans could similarly be ethically subjected.


 * Pareto Optimality:** a two part test: (1) __pareto improvement__: a proposed situation A represents an improvement over situation B, if someone prefers A to B but no one prefers B to A; (2) __pareto optimality__: a situation A is Pareto optimal if there are no possible Pareto improvements that can be made over it.


 * Priority Principle:** see **Distributive ends.**


 * Telic Egalitarianism:** see **Distributive ends.**


 * Utilitarianism:**

 ** Modern "Preference" Utilitarianism: ** Maximization of the satisfaction of preferences. //John Stuart Mill, Utilitarianism, 1861:// Pleasure and pain differ in quality, not just quantity, and hence cannot be added and subtracted; in fact, pleasure can be found in solitude, natural beauty, etc.; pleasures must be compared by which is more desired than others by people with knowledge of both. **Value commensurability:** the idea that a common measure of value can be appplied, through which different options can be compared. The western world has primarily attempted to reduce value of all things to a "measuring rod of money," or market value that is expressed in terms of dollars.
 * Classical Utilitarianism:** Maximization of well-being (pleasure and the absence of pain). //Jeremy Bentham, Introduction to Principals of Morals and Legislation, 1789:// Pleasure and the absense of pain, measured by intensity, duration, certainty, propinquity (nearness). For groups or people, for any particular action, add up associated pleasures, and then subtract associated pain per individual, and then aggregated to find the overall outcome. Simple mathematics!

 **Virtue ethics: ** a philosophy asking what a person of good moral character would do, or in the case of policy-making, what a virtuous community would look like or do. The best state of affairs is one that arises from acting in virtuous ways. A community may see virtue in the promotion of personal dignity, harmonious relationships, equality, etc., or even in the symbiotic co-existence with wildlife sharing its local ecosystem. To apply this to an environmental discussion, consider environmental “goods” necessary to our survival. A virtuous community will want to protect the availability of these for future generations. Consider also the cultural, aesthetic and historical significances as environmental “goods” that a virtuous society might strive to protect .
 * Value pluralism:** the idea that there are a number of distinct values such as beauty, autonomy, justice, knowledge, equality, etc, are not reducible to each other, or to some primitive value such as pleasure, well-being, or dollars. The authors note that these multiple values //add up to well-being//, but cannot easily be traded off against each other. Trade offs look like "the loss of one value is compensated for by a gain in another." An example would be that the closure of the forest to off-road vehicles (a loss to recreationalists) is compensated for by the gain of a healthier forest ecosystem (which may benefit humans and nonhumans in multiple ways.