This thought came to me, but i’m not entirely sure I can support it. On the face of it, it seems like an “obvious” thing - if you kill the last two of a species (or one if you don’t need two), that’s a worse crime than killing any two of a multitude. Be it the last two worms, or the last two cats, or the last two humans - my gut reaction is that it’s a morally worse offence than killing any two <species> when there’s many left (though that’s still bad, obviously). But in thinking about it, I can’t really come up with much in the way of actual support for the idea.
If it’s true, would this also mean that the crime becomes worse as the population of killed decreases? Has a murderer of two people a thousand years ago committed a worse offense than a murderer of two people today, because there were less people around then? I would imagine it’d be more of a curve than a straight line, with a significantly sharpening slope as the population approaches zero. But this relies on extinction (or possibility of extinction) being a moral offense, and I can’t think of a way to justify that.
It is even worse to kill the single individual that pushes the founder population below the threshold from which the species can recover. If 18 are needed to ensure successful long term genetic diversity, then the death of number 18 is more significant than the death of the last two.
Maybe you can examine the dilemma framed as a question of “recoverability”. That is, killing the “last two” of a species (leading to extinction) is worse than killing “some two” because of the lack of ability to recover from such a situation.
Kind of like, which is worse: breaking someone’s fingers, or chopping all of them off?
The idea that it’s wrong to drive a species to extinction is a fairly recent idea. In the last chapter of A Short History of Nearly Everything, Bill Bryson tells the story of a hunter who eliminated several species of Hawaiian birds single-handed, and he didn’t appear to feel any regret at all. On the contrary, he seemed rather thrilled by the experience. Likewise, in 1900 Ladies’ Home Journal predicted the demise of all wild animals within 100 years and they didn’t seem to see anything wrong with it.
I have done that, but it doesn’t make it clearer for me. In terms of killing, the two cases would seem to be equal, morally - the question is, is “extinction” a moral offense to add onto that? Is it alone an evil?
The problem with that, I think, is that there is a “victim”. The person who’s now missing two fingers has been harmed by the act, more so than if they were only broken. Too, in both cases, the victim is the same. But in an extinction scenario, while the death of the two include the same victims, there’s also an extra victim - if it was the human race in general, that’d be a perfectly valid victim, but they aren’t the victim, the victim is the potential of the continuation of the human race. And I can’t justify something that doesn’t exist yet as a victim.
Totally eliminating a species will most of the time add a bit to the general decay of the stability of the ecosystem, which will impact more than just the last individuals eliminated. Not to mention research potential (i.e. drugs or genetics.)
Yes, extinction could be argued to an evil under certain circumstances. You can cause extinction without outright killing of members of species.
So, IMO it can either be seen as a tacked on additional evil or a stand alone evil.
Now, IMO, your original evil, killing some members of the species, is made WORSE IF it causes the extinction as well (and that you had some idea that former could lead to the later).
Honestly, I really don’t see how this is hard to see intellectually (assuming you view both the killing and extinction as bad things).
Sure to the first, but instability in and of itself isn’t bad - it has the potential to help as much as hurt, at least. As for research potential, that’s a fair point, but I don’t think that it seems all that impressive enough of a wrong. Besides, we can’t in advance know of future developments along those lines for sure.
Well, that’s the problem - my view of extinction as a bad thing is just a gut reaction. I don’t have any justifications for that opinion other than “it seems bad”.
Sure I do! I don’t want to enfuck the Earth for the future generations, human or otherwise. It just won’t be a moral wrong of me to have done so until it actually occurs. Since whatever race in question won’t exist at all when they are extinct, causing that extinction can’t be a wrong.
I basically agree with the OP. The finality of the act does deserve extra scrutiny. How would that guy in Hawaii feel if the feathers, or the eggs of one of the species he killed contained the cure for cancer? So not only did he kill an animal, but he erased from the earth an entire species AND the possibility of some future benefit that it might have offered.
Yes. It is. The word ‘evil’ is loaded, but it’s definitely a bad act beyond just killing something.
Say you were trapped in some theoretical woods, with a theoretically perfect bow, and you needed to kill two animals in order to survive (let’s presume you really want to survive, too). Which animals would you kill - the pair which were one of the last 50,000 of their species, or the pair which were the last of their species altogether?
I thought the OP was based on someone killing the last known pair intentionally.
If they kill the last pair unwittingly, then it’s a worse outcome for that species, and potentially for others, including us (if they were an essential part of the life-cycle), but it’s not ethically more wrong than just killing two other animals.
By the same token, the eggs of one of the species he killed could be the source of an unpleasant virus. The possibility for good is removed, but so is the possibility for bad.
This is the problem. I’d kill the less rare creatures, but I don’t have any reasoning behind that act beyond an emotional one. I don’t have any philosophical arguments for why one over the other is more morally bad - I feel like it is, but that’s not enough. I’d like to be able to say “I’d choose this option - and here’s my logic leading up to that decision” rather than just “I’d choose this option, because it just seems like the right thing to do”.
I think the ‘cute factor’ of the animals would matter as well. The last two harp seals and the masses would want your head. On the other hand the last two opossums or pigeons and no one bats an eye. Hell, every city dweller in the world praise your name to see the last pigeon.
It’s an ethical question. It doesn’t necessarily have to have an obviously logical reason.
The logical reason could be either:
If I kill the last two of this species, that crosses a line. Maybe people will be more likely to kill all my kids rather than all but one.
or
Yes, this last pair of the species could lead to something bad. However, I know that they’re the last pair of the species. I’ll be observing them. If they lead to something bad, I’ll probably notice it and stop it happening. In the meantime, we can study these creatures, see what makes them tick, and work out how to fight better against similar creatures in the future.
or
It’s something to do with the imperative to reproduce. Yeah. Not a good answer. It kinda fits, though; the more life there is, the more life there is for us to eat or use in other ways. Dead things are pretty much worthless; even maggots need new sources of recent death.
Hell, no! I’m a city dweller, and I don’t like pigeons. However, I’d be loathe to see them disappear altogether - and some of them aren’t without the cute factor, either. It’s only their numbers which make them not cute.
Someone killing the last Tawny Island Double Crested Newt wouldn’t make news as much as the person who killed the last lion, true (good point). Still, it would be news, as long as we found out about it.
We might not find out about it, of course, or care about it as much as we would or one of those baby animals that kinda looks like a baby human. That doesn’t mean it’s less ethically reprehensible to kill the last pair of some unphotogenic species.
What about the guy who killed the last two Periplaneta americana cockroaches?
What about the guy who killed the last two Anopheles gambiae mosquitoes?
Would these guys provoke the same reaction as the guy who killed the last two pandas?
