Interventionism as a dangerously anthropocentric conceptInterventionism as a dangerously anthropocentric conceptP. Koperski

The article presents and critically discusses the concept of environmental interventionism, which treats interference in the functioning of ecosystems to protect free-living animals from suffering as a general ethical obligation. The strong version of this approach postulates the need to help animals suffering from natural phenomena, and the extreme version recommends the permanent reconstruction of animal bodies using biotechnology. The dispute between proponents and opponents of this concept can be reduced to a fundamental dispute over the primacy of two sets of ethical values: the individual values of particular animals, characteristic of the animal welfare stance, and the values attached to the supra-individual manifestations of the biosphere, characteristic of the environmentalist ethic. The arguments presented in the article justify the application of the principles of environmental ethics in order to protect the biosphere against the contemporary ecological crisis and clearly result from Author’s full acceptance of the assumptions of ethical naturalism. The paper attempts to show that the arguments for the validity of interventionism are based on partially erroneous assumptions and questionable conclusions. These include: ignoring knowledge of the advanced cognitive abilities of many groups of animals and their implications for ethical obligations towards them; clinging to an archaic, individualistic vision of the functioning of the biosphere; super-naturalising the approach to individual suffering; and making an unjustified transfer between intrinsic and instrumental values ascribed to animals. By basing the hierarchy of animals and their life interests used to prioritize interventionism on the arbitrary opinions of humans, this concept is clearly anthropocentric. The article presents arguments for recognising the strong and extreme version of instrumentalism as harmful from the point of view of environmental ethics and biosphere protection.