Isaiah Menning

President Trump shared this image to Truth Social moments after criticizing Pope Leo XIV in front of the press.

Finally saw Project Hail Mary last night. Fascinating how unapologetic its ecological anthropocentrism was, and how instinctively audiences “get” this: Some species have attributes of supreme moral value (humans, Eridians) and so they and the ecosystem services they depend upon are worth preserving, and others (astrophage, Taumoeba) do not possess those moral attributes, and so they and their ecosystems necessarily must be rendered extinct or engineered in service of the needs of the species of moral value. (Note that *all* of life on Earth/Erid is not threatened by astrophage, as chemosynthetic organisms—those that get their energy from chemical compounds—would surely be able to survive. And so Grace’s and Rocky’s missions were not to save “life on Earth/Erid”, but to save a set of ecological conditions [including most especially photosynthetic production] optimal for humans/Eridians and those other species we/they care most about). This anthropocentrism is not a chauvinism of Homo sapiens’ particular branch of the tree of life, for Erid’s current ecological conditions also must be preserved in order to maintain the flourishing of Rocky’s species. So really, we should call this preference an “ethico-centrism” rather than anthropocentrism. Audiences might respond: But of course microbes are less important than humans/Eridians; they’re just microbes! And this is indeed an unassailable position. But then the audiences will be immediately expressing an anthropocentric argument: that some species have greater moral value than others. What is noteworthy is how this instinctive response rubs up against critiques of anthropocentrism popular in some corners of academia and the environmental movement, critiques that ask why one species and its way of being should be viewed as superior to any other? Here in the real world of course, there is only one such species (that we know of) with all these attributes of moral value, not two: humans. So anthropocentrism and ethico-centrism are identical “-centrisms”. Only if we discover a new species with those same exceptional moral values would these two -centrisms diverge. Some other animal species may have a *few* of these moral attributes, but not the full complement, and not to the full extent, and that suggests we have a duty of care toward them, but there is no moral equivalence (i.e., chimpanzees have far more moral value than microbes, but they are not persons). But it is not enough to leave this question of moral hierarchy in nature at the level of instinct. We need to formally clarify what these attributes of moral value are, or put another way, rigorously define what it means to be a human as distinct from other species, which requires asking what humans are for. This is especially true amidst the current ecological crisis (in order to clarify that the project can *only* be the conservation of optimal ecological conditions for humans, and not “saving the planet”). Such an ontology is also urgent if we are on the cusp, not of discovering a new species that may possibly have such moral attributes, but of inventing one in the form of AI. We need to define all this pretty damn quickly.

President Donald J. Trump posted to Truth Social just minutes ago, stating, "A whole civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back again." I don’t want that to happen, but it probably will."

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