Department of Philosophy, University of Zurich, Zollikerstrasse 117, 8008 Zurich, Switzerland.
Endeavour. 2022 Mar-Jun;46(1-2):100819. doi: 10.1016/j.endeavour.2022.100819. Epub 2022 May 28.
While in the humanities and social sciences at large we can observe posthumanist developments that engage with the microbiome, microbes are still not a major topic of discussion within environmental ethics. That the environmental ethics literature has not engaged extensively with this topic is surprising considering the range of theoretical challenges (and opportunities) it poses for environmental theorising. So, this paper is 'looking through the microscope' from an environmental ethics angle in order to see how these little beings challenge what we consider to be ethically relevant and how we conduct moral theorising. Especially interesting is how a focus on microbes can simultaneously support and challenge individualist biocentric intuitions and theories, which attribute moral standing to (some) microbes. Accordingly, the main aim of this paper is to lay out crucial aspects of these challenges and present some initial arguments about why not all of them pose a serious threat to biocentric theorising-including biocentric theories of interspecies justice. The three challenges discussed are (1) the moral significance challenge, (2) the self-defence predicament, and (3) undermining individualist biocentric intuitions.
虽然在人文学科和社会科学领域我们可以观察到后人类主义的发展，这些发展与微生物组有关，但微生物在环境伦理学中并不是一个主要的讨论话题。考虑到它为环境理论化带来的一系列理论挑战（和机遇），环境伦理学文献没有广泛地讨论这个话题是令人惊讶的。因此，本文从环境伦理学的角度“透过显微镜”观察这些小生物如何挑战我们认为与伦理相关的问题，以及我们如何进行道德理论化。特别有趣的是，关注微生物如何能够同时支持和挑战将道德地位赋予（某些）微生物的个体主义生物中心主义直觉和理论。因此，本文的主要目的是阐述这些挑战的关键方面，并提出一些初步的论点，说明为什么并非所有这些挑战都对生物中心主义理论化构成严重威胁，包括种间正义的生物中心主义理论。讨论的三个挑战是：（1）道德意义的挑战，（2）自我防卫困境，以及（3）破坏个体主义生物中心主义直觉。
