Non-human worlds

G.E Moore:

Let us imagine one world exceedingly beautiful. Imagine it as beautiful as you can; put into it whatever on this earth you most admiremountains, rivers, the sea; trees, and sunsets, stars and moon. Imagine the all combined in the most exquisite proportions, so that no one thing jars against another, but each contributes to increase the beauty of the whole. And then imagine the ugliest world you can possibly conceive. Imagine it simply one heap of filth, containing everything that is most disgusting to us, for whatever reason, and the whole, as far as may be, without one redeeming feature...The only thing we are not entitled to imagine is that any human being ever has or ever, by any possibility, can, live in either, can ever see and enjoy the beauty of the one or hate the foulness of the other. Well, even so, supposing them quite apart from any possible contemplation by human beings; still, is it irrational to hold that it is better that the beautiful world should exist, than the one which is ugly?

Jon Cogburn:

We can extend Moore’s thought experiment in a Meillassouxian direction. Suppose that you are the last human being, and you can trigger a doomsday device after your death to destroy the humanless ecosystem. Wouldn’t it still be wrong to do so? (This is a future oriented and ethical version of Meillassoux’s arche-fossil, and I think it’s just as valid!) Of course it would be monstrously wrong to do so and any ethical system that suggests otherwise is at best radically incomplete.

The big point for me is that only the kind of metaphysics you guys [such as Levi Bryant, Graham Harman, Ian Bogost and, I find to my delight, myself] are defending [OOO] can make sense of these ethical facts.