Ethical conduct, as Leopold reminds us, is a matter of concern for others. In particular, it is a matter of concern for others with whom we are in some sort of community. He also points out that over centuries we have progressively enlarged the boundaries of the community we recognize to include slaves, foreigners, etc. His land ethic "simply enlarges the boundaries of the community to include soils, waters, plants, and animals, or collectively: the land."

      This raises some questions: what is it to act morally toward the land?; and, why ought we do so? As for the first question, morality is most easily extended beyond the human sphere to our fellow sentient animals. They can clearly be harmed or benefited. But what is it to harm or benefit other beings which can not feel the harm or benefit? While it may hurt the tree-owner for a tree to be chopped down, and it may hurt those downstream from the subsequent erosion, is the tree itself hurt by being chopped down? It feels nothing, and has no desires to the contrary.

      Famously, Leopold declares: "A thing is right when it tends to preserve the integrity, stability, and beauty of the biotic community. It is wrong when it tends otherwise." Partly the reason we should act in accordance with this pr inciple is because we bring down nemesis on our own human heads if we fail to do so. That is a good reason, too often neglected in practice. This interpretation is suggested by Leopold's emphasis on our membership in the land as a community. Yet he also suggests that we owe proper treatment to the land as a being which is an end-in-itself. When we fail to treat it properly, we deserve nemesis as do those who treat other people merely as means to their own selfish ends.

      How is it that the non-sentient land can count morally? I am convinced that Leopold is right in thinking that it does count morally, very much so, and offer my conception of a biocentric ethic in support. As I develop it, a biocentric ethic has the following principal features:

• A living being is best thought of not as a thing of some sort but as a living system, an ongoing life-process. A life-process has a character significantly different from those of other processes. Our character, as living beings, is the fundamental determinant of our interests.
• The interests of a being lie in whatever contributes to its coherent effective functioning as an on-going life-process. That which tends to the contrary is against its interests. As I develop this conception, physical illnesses and mental distress are all instances of breakdown in our coherent effective functioning. Briefly, it amounts to a breakdown in our ability to maintain ourselves within a range of favorable states. As a corollary, our primary intrinsic good, be we human or otherwise, is not (except incidentally) to be construed in terms of any mental state (be it pleasure or anything else), nor in terms of the satisfaction of our prudent desires. Such things may or may not be in our interests, as happens.
• I maintain further that moral consideration must be given to the interests of all living beings, in proportion to the interest.
• Some living systems other than individual organisms are living entities with morally considerable interests. Species, Homo sapiens and all others, are such entities. So too are ecosystems and the biosphere as a whole, and perhaps other living syste ms as well. The interests of such living systems are not just the aggregated interests of the individual organisms which are their members. (Their interests may sometimes even be in conflict with some of those of their individual members.) All interests must be taken into account.

      I can propose no viable moral algorithm for determining what we ought to do in all particular cases. No plausible ethic has been able to so this even for purely human cases. Nevertheless, as with human interests, we must consider all interests in the living world as fairly as possible.

      I develop this biocentric ethic in my book A Morally Deep World: An Essay in Moral Considerability and Environmental Ethics (Cambridge University Press, 1991), and offer it as a way of understanding and endeavoring to apply Leopold's seminal insight.

      Lawrence E. Johnson is professor of philosophy, Flinders University, Australia.

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