Unit VII Create

RESEARCH ARTICLE

Should Extinction Be Forever?

Karim Jebari1

Received: 22 October 2014 /Accepted: 24 September 2015 /Published online: 17 October 2015 # Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht 2015

Abstract This article will explore a problem which is related to our moral obligations towards species. Although the re-creation of extinct animals has been discussed to some degree both in lay deliberations as well as by scientists, advocates tend to emphasize the technological and scientific value of such an endeavour, and the Bcoolness^ factor (Sherkow and Greely Science, 340(6128), 32–33, 2013). This article will provide an argument in favour of re-creation based on normative considerations. The environmentalist community generally accepts that it is wrong to exterminate species, for reasons beyond any instrumental value these species may have. It is often also claimed that humanity has a collective responsibility to either preserve or at least to not exterminate species. These two beliefs are here assumed to be correct. The argument presented here departs from and places these two ideas in a deontological framework, from which it is argued that when humanity causes the extinction of a species, this is a moral transgression, entailing a residual obligation. Such an obligation implies a positive duty to mitigate any harm caused by our moral failure. In light of recent scientific progress in the field of genetic engineering, it will be argued that humanity has a prima facie obligation to re-create species whose extinction mankind may have caused, also known as de-extinction.

Keywords Extinction . De-extinction . Species . Bioethics . Environmental ethics .

Restoration

1 Introduction

In its Earth Charter, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) asserts that Bevery form of life has value regardless of its worth to human beings^. This sentiment seems to be widely shared, notably in the field of environmental ethics: Bryan G. Norton, for example, is among those who suggest

Philos. Technol. (2016) 29:211–222 DOI 10.1007/s13347-015-0208-9

* Karim Jebari [email protected]; [email protected]

1 Institute for Futures Studies, Holländargatan 13, 101 31 Stockholm, Sweden

that biodiversity is intrinsically valuable (Norton 1986). More recently, Robert Elliot has argued that it is less acceptable to kill the last member of a species than to kill a member of a non-endangered species; (R. Elliot 1994) and Robin Attfield has observed that eliminating a species prevents future generations of that species to come into existence (Attfield 2005). Ben Bradley has formulated one of the more systematic and rigorous defences of a preservationist ethic, which recognises the intrinsic value of species (Bradley 2001).

Paul Taylor argues that within a deontological framework, any species can be shown to have an intrinsic moral worth. To respect this moral worth is to consider the good of the entity in question—and crucially, according to Taylor, to protect and promote that good (Taylor 1981). This implies that we have a prima facie duty not to exterminate species. While the view that we have special obligations towards species, over and above the obligations we might have towards organisms, is debated among philoso- phers in environmental ethics (see for example Sandler 2010); it is among the most prominent ways of conceptualizing our moral obligations to the environment.

In the extensive debate on the nature and preservation of species, some philosophers of biology question whether species is even the appropriate taxonomic unit of analysis. The phylogenetic species concept as proposed by Ghiselin and Hull, in which species are thought of as individuals and organisms as parts of this individual, has become so influential (Ghiselin 1974) as to be considered, as Ereshefsky puts it, Bthe prevailing view^ (Ereshefsky 2014). According to this concept of phylogenetic species, there is no clear distinction between a species, a genus and a sub-species, since taxonomic units are defined as monophyletic groups of populations sharing a common ancestor. Such a distinction is not, however, crucial to the proposition that distinct sets of organisms have moral worth, which can be argued whether the unit of analysis is species, genus or family. In this article, the general concept of Bspecies^ will serve to represent any distinct monophyletic group (i.e. taxonomic unit) in the tree of life.

Since 1976, the Frozen Zoo at San Diego Zoo Global has been storing biological material from animals in liquid nitrogen, with the explicit purpose of protecting animal diversity (Benirschke 1984). The idea behind this remarkable project is not to protect individual animals, but rather to store their genetic material in a way that will allow us to re-create these species in the future. This in turn compels us to rethink our obligations to other species, and to revisit what we mean by Bextinct^. Advances in gene technology suggest that we will soon be able to re-create a viable extinct species (Kumar 2012; Loi et al. 2001). In fact, there has already been some moderate success in cloning animals belonging to species with no living members (Lanza et al. 2000; Folch et al. 2009; Sherkow and Greely 2013). If species have intrinsic value, do we then have a duty to re-create species with no currently living members? It will be argued here that, in light of these recent developments, there are important implications for preservation and environmental ethics. The main such implication is that we have a prima facie moral duty to re-create extinct species, if their extinction was anthropogenic.

2 Value and Residual Obligations

One widely used method of conceptualizing the moral wrongness of anthropogenic species extinction is to formulate it as a negative prima facie duty. For example, Paul

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W. Taylor argues that our respect for nature is manifested in accepting duties and rules that restrict our behaviour; these are duties not only in respect of individual animals and plants but also with regard to species and ecosystems (Taylor 1981). The notion that we can have duties towards species or other abstract entities is somewhat at odds with traditional deontology, which has tended to the view that a duty requires at least one rights-holder. Species which lack interests and welfare are hardly such right-holders, as Sandler argues (Sandler 2014).

In environmental ethics, however, it is often argued that duties are to be understood as general principles of proper conduct, in that the preservation of species can be seen as the practical expression of respect for those species, rather than as a traditional rights-based duty. On this view, it is not suggested that species as such have rights; many philosophers have argued that this is one reason why environmental ethics cannot simply be reduced to standard norma- tive theory (Taylor 1981). And this idea—that we have duties which are not directed towards right-holders—is not unique to environmental ethics. For example, in political philosophy, it is sometimes argued that we have civic duties to our local community. These cannot be reduced to duties towards particular members of the community, nor are they assumed to correspond to the rights of the community; rather, as Michael Sandel argues, we have some civic duties by virtue of being members of a given community (Sandel 2009).

The idea of civic duties has also a direct appeal to philosophers in the virtue ethics tradition, which Sandel indeed is part of. On this view, the virtues of respect and concern for non-human life could be formulated as adherence to principles that direct our behaviour along the lines suggested here.

Another argument for species-level respect might be to accept the traditional deontological view that a duty requires a moral patient, while denying that this patient must be a person, or an individual organism. For example, Holmes Rolston III argues that to kill a species is the Bsuper killing^ of a whole pattern of life, and as such is less acceptable than the killing of an individual organism (Rolston 1985). Although species lack moral agency, self-awareness, sentience or individuality, Rolston’s contention is that species lines are individual systems, whose parts are individual organisms.

Taylor insists that we have a duty to preserve species, beyond merely abstaining from exterminating them. While this perspective has considerable support among environmentalists, I will assume a weaker prima facie duty here.

We have a prima facie duty to abstain from becoming responsible for the extinction of species.

This is a purely negative duty, consisting only in a side-constraint. In other words, it does not demand that we act proactively to prevent an extinction event, but only that we abstain from causing one. Many deontologists endorse this limited form of negative moral obligation, which for obvious reasons is considered to be far less demanding than any positive moral obligation. A positive obligation would imply that we have a duty to interfere in the natural world in support of a desired outcome—in this case, the continued existence of a species. Since duties may often conflict, they are often considered prima facie, in the Rossian sense: duties having genuine moral weight, which may yet be outweighed by other considerations.

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The notion of a residual obligation, first developed by Bernard Williams, has more recently been discussed by Hansson and Peterson (Hansson and Peterson 2001). The concept of a residual obligation is quite clear. Whenever an agent A has failed in his or her moral obligations to another agent B, this moral failure creates a residual obligation for A. For example, if A damages B’s property, A has a moral obligation to compensate B for this moral transgression. Note that if a prima facie duty has been violated, the duty to compensate cannot be categorical in a Kantian sense. For example, while A has a moral obligation to compensate B for damaging B’s property, this obligation can be overruled by other considerations. These could be other, more pressing, residual obligations or duties. For example, if A lacks resources to compensate B, A has a duty to abstain from stealing from C to acquire these resources. In other words, mankind’s residual obligations towards extinct species are not unconstrained by other considerations. For example, consider some extinct species, that if recreated and released into the natural environment would be highly disruptive and lead to the extinction of other species. This fact about this species could override the duty to re-create it, in particular if containment in an artificial environment would be difficult to maintain.

The nature of the compensation naturally varies according to the transgression; however, a general principle concerning appropriate compensation would be that the harm caused should if possible be reversed, or at least mitigated. If A had stolen B’s property, then it is prima facie plausible that A has (at least) an obligation to return that property to B. Other forms of compensation, such as financial reparations or formal apologies, might also be appropriate, but only if there is someone to benefit from these compensations. To be able to apologize or make reparation requires someone to whom apologies or reparations can be made. For any species that has been exterminated, no such compensation is possible.

However, an intuition behind the idea of residual obligations seems to be a forward- looking concern for proper conduct. On this view, the main residual obligation of having exterminated a species should not be to re-create that species, but rather preserve existing ones. However, this is only one intuition behind this idea. An arguably more important intuition, at least among deontologists, concerns a backward-looking concern for making amends for a wrongful conduct. On this intui- tion, we should focus on repairing the harm done.

This perspective has been brought to bear not only on the individual but also in the case of states and ethnic groups. For example, the reparations agreement between Israel and Germany was based on a mutual understanding that the German people had collectively wronged the Jewish people (Honig 1954). In contemporary political philosophy, collective responsibility is a contested notion, set against the idea of Bmoral individualism^, which holds that people only have obligations as individuals. BMoral communitarianism^, by contrast, holds that persons are not unencumbered selves, but participate in a community, which serves to define not only who we are but also our responsibilities. This explains why we are entitled to feel pride for the achievements of past generations, but also why we must bear the burden of their crimes (Sandel 2009). Although moral communitarianism remains controversial in moral and political phi- losophy, it is a mainstream view in the environmentalist community, and in environ- mental ethics. Again, Norton argues that no individualist normative theory can address the major concerns of environmental ethics (Norton 1984).

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So, can we have a moral responsibility towards a non-existing entity? Many or most seem to believe that this is the case. When we honour testaments, or set aside money for our future children’s college fees, or show long-term concern for the environment, we seem to be expressing belief in our obligations to people who do not exist. Taylor, Norton and other environmental ethicists maintain that we do indeed have a duty to future generations. Note that future people are, according to most views, not actual people in the future, but merely possible individuals. Yet the welfare of future gener- ations is considered important, even when we are aware that the identity of these people could very well be changed as a result of our acts (Parfit 1986).

2.1 Moral Uncertainty

A consideration that complicates the argument presented here is that there is consider- able uncertainty with regards to a number of assumptions, both normative and descrip- tive. First, when does an act becomes the responsibility of mankind and when can it properly be attributed to a few or even a single individual? For example, the dodo, a flightless bird once endemic to Mauritius, was driven to extinction by the activity of a relatively small number of sailors and the invasive species brought by them to Mauritius (Fuller 2001). Should mankind really assume responsibility for such acts? Among the controversial challenges posed by moral communitarianism concerns how communities are demarcated and how membership is acquired and lost. However, these questions are not unique to the subject matter at hand, and are widely discussed among proponents and critics of moral communitarianism.

Second, it is a relevant distinction, from a deontological perspective, whether the extinction of a species was caused by human activity, or by some natural event. Unless we assume a general duty to prevent the latter Bnatural^ extinction of species, we cannot be said to have any moral obligation to reverse such extinctions. A residual obligation can only be created where a duty has been violated, or has been insuffi- ciently fulfilled. That being said, the distinction between Bnatural extinction^ and anthropogenic extinction is not always straightforward. For example, human activity may force the migration of animals to a habitat that could suffer from a natural disaster, effectively causing the extinction of the species.

In these cases, the principle of moral uncertainty could be applied. Consider the following analogous situation. You are uncertain as to whether you insulted your friend last night. In this case, your uncertainty could be both with regards to the actual series of events, or with regards to what was an appropriate behaviour in the context of said events. Your uncertainty concerns both the normative and descriptive circumstances. If it is true that you insulted your friend, you have the residual obligation to apologize. Since an apology does not risk violating any rights, regardless if it was warranted or not, the principle of moral uncertainty recommends that you ought to apologize.

This seems analogous with regards to the uncertainties involved in re-creating species whose extinction mankind was responsible for. If it seems likely probable that any particular species was in fact exterminated by humans, then we have a duty to re- create that species. In re-creating a species, we never risk violating any of our duties: even if the extinction of a particular species was not anthropogenic, re-creating it would not violate any duty. If the present argument is correct, the only morally responsible

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thing to do in the face of genuine uncertainty about humanity’s responsibility for a particular extinction event is to seek to restore the loss, by re-creating that species.

3 Is Extinction Forever?

According to the phylogenetic perspective, a species becomes extinct when it ceases to exist, or is subject to some branching or merging event. From a moral perspective, these two possibilities do not seem to be equivalent, and we shall focus on events where a line is truncated. In particular, extinction is seen as definitive when a species has no living members.

The common-sense notion that a species is extinct when it no longer has any living members is further challenged by technologies capable of re-creating such a species. We are at a point where such advances invite a reassessment of concepts as Bextinction^. For some years now, scientists have indicated that it may be possible to reanimate extinct animals such as the mammoth (Loi et al. 2011). Whether or not these highly publicised efforts succeed, it seems only a matter of time before an animal from some extinct species can be brought back to life. Just as defibrillators and sophisticated medical technologies have changed definitions of Bdead^, technology seems likely to change the definition of Bextinct^, in which extinction is no longer associated with irreversibility. It should be noted that the creation of a single or a few individual organisms would not constitute a genuine re-creation unless that population was viable.

A further question, then, concerns whether the creation of a viable population of organisms, genetically identical to an extinct species, would constitute a genuine re- creation of that species, or would merely be the creation of a copy. This echoes an issue currently raised in discussions of personal identity; as to whether creating a qualita- tively identical replica of a deceased person would re-create that same person, or only a copy. How we answer this question is important for how we assign value to the continued existence of a particular species, just as the question of personal identity is important for how we assign value to individual survival (Parfit 1986).

The answer to this question must surely depend on (1) whether species have essential properties or are defined by their relationship to a lineage and (2) whether such a relationship is preserved by non-normal modes of reproduction.

According to biological essentialism, a species is a population that can reproduce, and is reproductively isolated from other groups. On this view, if a population of animals can reproduce with dogs, but with no other populations, then it belongs to the canine species. This would be true regardless of the animal’s phenotypic features, origin or genetic makeup. The obvious problem for this view is that Bbeing of the same species^ is a transitive relation, while Bbeing able to produce viable offspring^ is not. This is illustrated by the existence of so-called ring-species—chains of populations, in which each link can reproduce with adjacent populations, but not with those separated by a few links from them. On this view, any instance of a recreated animal that would be similar enough to the extinct animal would be a successful re-creation. Alastair Gunn has argued that this view may imply that some animals with no living members, whose genetic information is stored in a computer, would go extinct if and when this information would be erased (Gunn 1991).

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These and other problematic aspects of biological essentialism have bolstered support for the concept of phylogenetic species, which differs fundamentally from the essentialist position (Sterelny and Griffiths 1999). On this view, a species is not an atemporal class instantiated by organisms, but rather a spatiotemporally restricted entity, in which members of the species are to be understood as parts of that entity. In other words, an animal relates to the species in the same way as a body part relates to a body. Just as my hand is part of my body by virtue of physical connectedness, only organisms with the right spatiotemporal relation to the collective are properly consid- ered to be members (or parts) of the species (Ghiselin 1974).

A species may be created by the branching of a lineage, at which point the predecessor species ceases to exist. A species may also be created by the merging of two branches, where both predecessor species cease to exist. Or a species may cease to exist by extinction, when the lineage is truncated. It is worth noting that the phylogenetic species perspective does not require that we accept any branching, or any merging, as the creation of a new species. Whether or not the reanimation of an animal from an extinct species could really be said to re-create that species would depend on what is considered to be Bthe right kind^ (i.e. the kind that preserves species identity) of causal relationship between the parts of that species. Two possibilities seem plausible.

I A reproductive relation: animal A is part of species S if A was created by an act of reproduction involving gametes from at least one animal that is part of S. II A pure spatiotemporal relation: animal A is part of species S if there is spatiotemporal continuity between A and other parts of S.

This is important, because not all proposed methods of reversing extinction satisfy condition II and even fewer satisfy condition I. Six technologies to re-create species are of particular interest. For a more detailed and technical review of these technologies, see Piña-Aguilar et al. (2009) or Loi et al. (2011).

1. Implantation of frozen embryos. In which embryos of an animal, preserved in liquid nitrogen, are implanted in the uterus of a closely related animal (Folch et al. 2009). 2. IVF with preserved gametes. In which sperm and/or eggs, preserved in either liquid nitrogen or in a stable ice formation, are fertilized in vitro, and the embryo is implanted in the uterus of a closely related animal. 3. Hybridization with preserved gametes. In which either sperm or eggs are preserved, but not both. A hybrid embryo, of the extinct species and a closely related species, is created in vitro and implanted in the closely related species. Gametes are then extracted from the hybrid, and fertilized with additional gametes from the extinct animal. The process is iterated over a few generations until a Bpure^ population of the extinct animal is produced. 4. IVF with gametes derived from other genetic material. In which preserved cells from the organism are induced to be pluripotent stem cells, which are then differentiated to gametes. These are then either fertilized with gametes according to (2) or (3) (Ramathal et al. 2014). 5. Somatic cell nuclear transfer. A cell nucleus is retrieved from an extinct animal. An embryo from a closely related animal is then stripped from its nucleus, which is

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replaced by the nucleus of the extinct animal. The embryo is then implanted in the closely related animal. This requires a very well-preserved cell. 6. Genome editing/construction

(a) Genetic material is retrieved from animals that have been naturally preserved, in ice or some other favourable environment. The genetic material is sequenced, and new strands of DNA are built and organized into chromosomes. These chromo- somes are then enclosed in the embryo of a closely related animal, in an artificial membrane. The embryo is then implanted in a closely-related animal. (b) The genetic code of a closely related species is modified to resemble the extinct species. The modified embryo is then implanted in the closely related animal (Miller et al. 2008; Pask et al. 2008).

Since (1) and (2) are not that different from a standard IVF, which is already a routine procedure, we can be confident that these methods will suffice to preserve species identity. To deny this would be to suggest that millions of people who were created in vitro are not in fact human. Strategy (3) should also suffice to preserve the species identity of the decedents of the hybrid, as natural hybridization sometimes occurs successfully in wild animals, and the resulting offspring is normally regarded be of one of the parent species (Larsen et al. 2010).

The procedure described in (4) is more controversial, and may not satisfy condition (I), depending on what constraints we place on the term Breproduction^. However, if the research of Ramathal et al. would in the future lead to a procedure for infertile people to reproduce by the combination of gametes that have been derived from pluripotent stem cells, we are likely to regard the resulting offspring as being members of our species (Ramathal et al. 2014). This counts in favour of either regarding procedure (4) of being consistent with condition (I), or rejecting this condition in favour of the more permissive condition (II).

Does procedure (5) preserve species identity? This is an even more contested question. According to the concept of phylogenetic species, the species is an individual, and animals relate to that individual as spatiotemporally connected parts. This criterion may be interpreted as a purely physical connectedness, between the parts of an animal and other animals in the lineage (II). If so, (5) would preserve the identity of the species. However, the other interpretation (I) is that connectedness must not only be physical but also reproductively causal, connecting the animal to other animals in the line through an act of combina- tion of (the right kind of) gametes. On this interpretation, only an animal resulting from an act of reproduction by at least one animal from the lineage properly belongs to that lineage. If this interpretation is favoured, then proce- dure (5) will fail to reproduce a genuine member of the extinct species.

On any plausible interpretation of the phylogenetic species concept, procedure (6) will fail to re-create the species in question.

This argument has some important implications. First, if genetic material is stored in a BFrozen Zoo^, this may reduce the risk of extinction for at least some species with few living members. This safe-fail (rather than failsafe) conservation strategy seems worth pursuing more aggressively, particularly in light of repeated failures to protect endangered species.

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Second, the mere existence of biologic material from a species means that the very same species has the potential to exist.

Third, the moral transgression of extermination (i.e. the wrongness of fatally reducing the number of individuals of a species so that is no longer viable) can be at least partially mitigated by reanimating the species.

Fourth, although there has been some speculation about the possibility to re-create the woolly mammoth and even Homo neanderthalensis, no option to do this while preserving their species identity is available. In other words, all the suggested strategies for re-creating the woolly mammoth and other since long extinct species are instances of procedure (6), which does not preserve species identity on the phylogenetic species concept. While an impressive finding of a woolly mammoth was presented in 2013, no cell with viable DNA was found, nor is it likely to be (Wong 2013).

4 Objections

4.1 A Distraction

We are witnesses to a rate of species extinction not seen for millions of years; humans are directly or indirectly responsible for a significant but uncertain number of these extinctions (Díaz et al. 2006). According to Rockström et al., this rate of extinction may increase the vulnerability of crucial ecosystems that provide human civilization with some very important services (Rockström et al. 2009). It has been argued that the reintroduction of a few charismatic species will only distract from the urgent and underfunded task of reducing general rates of extinction: this objection misunderstands the purpose of reanimating animals. Reanimation can never be a project to maintain the resilience of ecosystems, nor can it ever plausibly be used to prevent or mitigate the ecological damage and disaster currently unfolding. This needs to be clear to propo- nents of reanimation. Might the widespread adoption of this technique even lead to a diversion of funds from conservation projects? We do not know; the argument here is not that reanimation would, all things considered, achieve the best outcome. It is rather that, in light of past transgressions, and under assumptions commonly made in this context, humanity has a prima facie duty to reanimate exterminated species.

Furthermore, the technology used to reanimate species can also be used to comple- ment current preservation efforts. Imagine for a moment a species whose last members are about to die. The death of these organisms may lead to rapid deterioration of their genetic material, making it impossible for any member of this species to exist again in the future. The only way to save the species from extinction would be to preserve these disappearing individual’s genetic material.

4.2 Faking Nature?

Robert Elliot has argued repeatedly against what is commonly referred to as Bthe restoration thesis^—the idea that a natural ecosystem can and should be restored, and that this restoration would reverse the harm caused against this environment (Elliot 1982). Elliot argues that the value of an object depends partly on its origins, on how it came about. We naturally value a copy of the Mona Lisa less

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than we would the original artwork; destroying this original and creating a perfect copy would be worse than preserving the original Mona Lisa, and could hardly be said to compensate for its loss. It may, however, be the next best achievable thing. This claim is consistent with the present argument, which is not that re-creating a species would be just as good as not exterminating it, but that to re-create a species would restore some of the value lost. For Elliot’s claim to go against this argument, he would have to claim that restored nature has no value whatsoever, or that the value of any such Brestored^ nature cannot even be compared with the value lost. Any such position would seem untenable. Surely, a replanted forest has some non-instrumental value, if it replaces a barren and toxic wasteland? Surely, to claim that no restored natural system can compensate for the loss of an existing one would be to say that any number of manmade environments might reasonably be sacrificed to avert the destruction of one natural landscape. What about ecosystems created as a side-effect of human activity, such as the rich and unique fauna in metropolitan areas, or the intricate web of microorganisms flourishing on the drifting islands of plastic debris in the Pacific (Zettler et al. 2013)?

4.3 Human Restoration Is a Lie

Eric Katz has propounded another, more radical, attack on the Brestoration thesis^ (Katz 1996). He argues that the attitude that constitutes the restorative ideal is such that restoration confers no Bnatural^ value at all, only instrumental value. Thus, the wrongness of environ- mental degradation cannot be atoned for, not even partially. The restorationist attitude, according to Katz, is not one of humility and respect for nature, but rather an extension of human hubris and arrogance. On this view, restored ecosystems (and, presumably, species) are not copies of the original, but mere artefacts. The crucial difference between artefacts and natural objects is that artefacts are devised with their proper function in mind, whereas natural objects are not. Thus, when we create a forest, or an animal species, the mere fact that this object was created implies that it serves some function. Katz’s argument cannot be reconciled with the view presented here. On his view, to re-create extinct species would not mitigate the loss of natural value associated with their extinction. This proposition, however, rests on some problematic assumptions. In particular, it assumes a special quality of normative significance in objects created by acts that Bgo beyond our biological and evolutionary capacities^. In other words, Btechnological processes^ have some special normative capacity to strip an object of its value, regardless of circumstances. This essential quality seems to adhere to the object on grounds that seem arbitrary. What, for instance, counts as a Btechnological process^? And why would such processes create objects without value?

This form of essentialism also faces the daunting task of specifying precisely what qualifies as Bartificial^ or Brestored^, and what counts as Bnatural^. Are the grasslands in Europe Bnatural^? Are wild boars or wolves—species once extinct in some Nordic countries but now reintroduced, and resurgent—Bnatural^? Katz argues that no sharp distinction is possible; yet surely, objects cannot have an essential quality to differing degrees? A compost heap and a toxic waste dump are both manmade, but according to Katz, they differ greatly as to their value. Yet the value ascribed to these two manmade objects is also anthropocentric, exposing the arbitrariness of any idea of an essential quality. The microorganisms that thrive in the toxic wasteland would not prefer the more Bnatural^ setting of the compost heap, and vice versa for the compost dwellers.

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4.4 Intrinsic Value and Value In Situ

Ronald Sandler argues that on the view that species have intrinsic value, they have this value as parts of an ecosystem. As such, we ought to preserve species in their respective habitats. However, this claim seems to misunderstand what intrinsic value means (Sandler 2010). The view that species only have value as parts of an ecosystem, that Sandler ascribes to Rolston, should not be confused with the claim that species have intrinsic value. By intrinsic value, we mean value that is inherent to and inseparable from the object of value. While it is true that, if ecosystems have some value, species have a contributive value to this system, this is not inconsistent with the view that species have intrinsic value apart from whatever value they contribute to the ecosystem. Some species live only in captivity, and contribute nothing to the value of an ecosys- tem. Yet it is hardly controversial to claim that the extinction of such species would entail a loss of value, over and above the entertainment value that such species had. Second, while it may be true that some of the value lost when an extinction event cannot be recreated, this does not imply that re-creation is pointless. Sandler believes that if species lack intrinsic value, then conservation efforts are only worthwhile insofar they bring about instrumental benefits to existing animals, human or non-human. While I believe that this claim is correct, the claim here is only that given the intrinsic value of species, one ought to accept the duty to re-create these species.

5 Conclusions

It has been argued that, on the basis of certain assumptions (or indeed justified beliefs) about the intrinsic value of species and the collective responsibility of humanity, we have a prima facie obligation to re-create species whose extinction is anthropogenic. We have this obligation because it is seen to be wrong to cause the extinction (through lineage truncation) of species; and because when such a wrong is committed, a residual obligation arises to reduce the harm so created. Until recently, little could be done to redress the harm done to extinct species; now, or in the near future, it will be possible to re-create them. This possibility actualizes those residual obligations. If species are to be understood as spatio- temporally restricted entities, not all of the available technological means for species re- creation would constitute a genuine reconstruction. It is proposed that if humans were probably responsible for the extinction of a specific species, a prima facie moral obligation to reanimate this species also follows, if and when this becomes possible.

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