{'fraction_non_alphanumeric': 0.02568351284175642, 'fraction_numerical': 0.005385252692626346, 'mean_word_length': 4.722748815165877, 'pattern_counts': {'":': 0, '<': 0, '<?xml version=': 0, '>': 0, 'https://': 0, 'lorem ipsum': 0, 'www.': 0, 'xml': 0}, 'pii_count': 0, 'substrings_counts': 0, 'word_list_counts': {'cursed_substrings.json': 0, 'profanity_word_list.json': 0, 'sexual_word_list.json': 0, 'zh_pornsignals.json': 0}}
Respect for Nature

What does respect for nature require? David Schmidtz argues that it cannot require species egalitarianism, which he defines as ‘the view that all living things have equal moral standing,’ and therefore ‘they all command equal respect’ (Schmidtz, this issue, pp. 127–138). For much of his discussion, Schmidtz identifies the species egalitarian position with Paul Taylor’s biocentrism. While I agree with most of what Schmidtz has to say in criticism of Taylor’s view, I do believe there is a way to formulate species egalitarianism in which it turns out to be quite innocuous, yet able to make sense of the idea of respect for nature. Consider first the requirement of respect. It is widely accepted that respect for persons and living beings requires that you treat or use them, or refrain from treating or using them, in certain ways. It is also widely accepted that respect is closely connected to equality. You and I are owed equal respect; unequal respect would be a failure of respect. But equal respect does not require that you and I be treated the exact same way. What it does require is that you and I be treated as equals. Of course, what it takes to treat persons and other living beings as equals is a controversial issue. One element of this is that the treatment you and I are owed depends on our properties or characteristics: our sentience, perhaps, or our cognitive abilities, our capacity for moral agency, and so on. As Schmidtz points out, it is permissible to treat mice and chimpanzees differently, since their characteristics differ in relevant ways. A species egalitarian need not disagree. She need not insist that equal treatment is same treatment. Another useful distinction is provided by moral individualism, proposed by James Rachels and many others. As Rachels explains it, moral individualism is the thesis that ‘how an individual may be treated is to be determined, not by considering his group memberships, but by considering his own particular characteristics’ (Rachels, 1990, p. 173). In order to justify treating you differently from others, I need to be able to point to a relevant characteristic in which you differ from others, and that characteristic cannot be mere group membership—it cannot be, say, that you happen to belong to a different species. So even though equal respect for a mouse and a chimpanzee does not require that they are treated the