What do we mean by the intrinsic value and integrity of plants and animals?

Abstract

There is integrity in any life that has a good of its kind and is good in its kind of place, with a biological identity sought, conserved, reproduced in species lines, and fitted into its niche in an ecosystem. Ecosystems are places of value capture and transformation. When humans appear, the only animal able critically to evaluate its options in behavior, such value capture can require justification. Humans may and must capture and transform natural values genetic, organismic, specific, ecosystemic. This is both permissible and required, but it requires justification proportionately to the loss of integrity and value in the natural world as this is traded for value gain integrated into richness in culture.