ROLSTON, NATUROGENIC VALUE AND GENUINE BIOCENTRISM

Holmes Rolston III attempts to get us to recognise nature as an object ively independent valuational sphere with its own activity of defendin g value. But in inspiring our '...psychological joining (with) on-goin g planetary natural history...' what his account ultimately does is as similate nature to the human. For, on his account, we find value in na ture through a recognition that something that goes on in us (namely, defending value) also occurs in the natural world. That, it is argued, is far from the authentically deep form of biocentrism that is implic itly his ideal. The real depth to a biocentric viewpoint is to be foun d through a route other than the one taken by Rolston. Moreover, it is a route that has nothing to do with advancing the idea of what I call a 'naturogenic' value a value generated by nature. Rather, it relates to seeing nature as other than the human (as illustrated with referen ce to Emerson), in a way that is genuinely unsullied by the claims of self-which, in the case of human beings, are the most elemental suppor ts for a species perspective.