Routley uses last man argument (last man takes nature with him) to show that western ethics is corrupt and that we need a nontraditional environmental ethic. Traditional Western ethics would imply that the last man's orgy of destruction is ok.

One is a member of a community iff one is subject to moral or other limitations sufficient for maintenance of social organization.

Callicott supposes that the structure of morals is correlated with social structure.

Land ethic simply enlarges our notion of community to include the land.

But the land has no reciprocal duties to us, because restraints on the land are not moral; only humans (being moral agents) are subject to moral restraints.

Callicott suggests a sociobiological account of EE. Ethics are one of many means to an end given by nature itself through the principle of natural selection.

Most people don't see the expediency of ethics and hence regard ethics as categorical or apodeictic, not prudential.

Goal of EE would be to re-establish harmony between people and the biotic community.

Passmore rejects EE by arguing that membership in the moral community has two necessary conditions:

1. recognition of mutual obligations
2. sharing of common interests

Calicott denies that the first is necessary—consider infants, the insane, etc. But all living things share an interest in being allowed to live.

[But this is not a common interest, since these interests conflict, and any direct link to an ethic is missing.]

Callicott suggests economic dependence creates moral community (72), but in human economies there is reciprocation. So from the fact that economic dependence on other humans engenders moral obligation, it does not follow that economic dependence on the biotic community does. (72)

Callicott's Detroit tycoon analogy. How does this fly? (73)