Muddled Facts and Values: Positivism, Egoism, and Anthropocentrism in the Anthropocene

What is it about?

I review biologist Chris D. Thomas’ book, Inheritors of the Earth: How Nature is Thriving in an Age of Extinction and discuss its exposition and prescriptions. Despite a fantastic exposition of the contemporary scientific literature documenting the biological gains mediated by human impacts on the nonhuman world, Thomas’ prescriptions for a conservation ethic leave much to be desired. Thomas’ philosophically narrow, positivist and egoist approach to what is relevant when dealing with other sentient, sapient and often social nonhuman beings culminates in an explicitly anthropocentric ethic that dismisses our moral obligations to nonhumans individuals and wholes.

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