A Study Of Paul Taylor’s Biocentrism View Of Nature

Since the Industrial Revolution,mankind has created a miracle of modern development through large-scale industrialization,and the Industrial Revolution has improved the efficiency of production so that human beings themselves have continuously broken through the limitations of distance,space and strength.Especially in modern times,the information technology revolution has further accelerated the process and efficiency of industrialization,and since the industrial revolution,human beings have created more wealth than all previous eras combined.However,behind the rapid development is a large amount of land occupied by factories,increasingly serious air pollution,soil erosion,and the food and energy crisis caused by the rapid growth of the population.These problems have endangered the very existence of humanity itself.To this end,human beings have begun to reflect on the relationship between their own behavior and the natural environment,which provides a strong motivation for the development of environmental ethics.Paul Taylor is the inheritor of American biocentrism,and his ecological theory has a certain representative representation in Western environmental ethics,he believes that humans should adopt a "respect for nature" attitude to treat wildlife,for which Taylor established a set of moral standards and codes of conduct.This paper mainly explores the background,formation,theoretical basis,basic rules of behavior of "respect for nature" and the principle of priority of human behavior in five aspects: the background,formation,and theoretical basis of Taylor’s biocentristism view of nature.First,a brief description of the socio-historical context in which Taylor’s biocentric view of nature arose.Due to the uncontrolled consumption of human beings and the blind expansion of self-centeredness to the natural world,the natural environment has deteriorated continuously,which has endangered the survival and development of human beings themselves.Against this background,Taylor inherited and developed the environmental ethics of Reagan,Singer,and Schweizer about the harmonious development of man and other organisms,including both human and non-human beings in the category of ethics,and attempting to reverse the inherent concept of anthropocentrism.Second,the main content of Taylor’s Biocentrism view of nature is systematically expounded.Taylor’s idea of "respecting nature" affirms the goodness and inherent value of beings.Every living thing has its own direction and purpose,which is the "goodness of beings",which objectively exists in living things.The goodness and inherent value of beings dictate that human beings should maintain a moral attitude of "respect for nature".By comparing Peter Singer’s "animal liberation theory",Tom Reagan’s "animal rights" ideas,and Albert Schweitzer’s "will to life" theory,this paper further elucidates the content of Taylor’s "Biocentrism" view of nature and the rationale for this view of nature.On the other hand,Taylor’s biocentric view of nature also makes a detailed discussion of the relationship between humans and natural creatures-human beings are one of the many populations on the earth,human beings share the earth with other life communities,and other creatures are "good" entities like human beings,have their own inherent values,and are "individual creatures centered on the teleology of life",for which Taylor put forward four basic norms for respecting nature and five priority principles for dealing with conflicts.He believed that these norms and principles could both constrain and guide people’s practice and promote the harmonious development of the relationship between man and nature.Finally,a holistic evaluation of Taylor’s Biocentrism view of nature is made.Taylor’s thought is a typical individualist environmental ethics,and the norms of "noninterference" and "compensatory justice" advocated by him are difficult to achieve in practical practice;the basic concepts proposed are still insufficient,and the theoretical logical arguments are also flawed.Nevertheless,Taylor’s biocentric view of nature still plays an important role in environmental ethics and the practice of environmental protection: it is a wake-up call at a time when people are short-sighted and blindly emphasize human interests and thus lead to ecological crises.China should absorb the essence of Taylor’s "respect for nature" thinking,combine the characteristics of China’s ecological green development,and build a socialist ecological civilization with Chinese characteristics.