What Is Baxter First Premise

Question 1: What is Baxter’s Conclusion?

Baxter’s conclusion is that the needs of man should dictate the state of nature. (People or Penguins: The Case for Optimal Pollution, William F. Baxter, 1974. Columbia University Press, New York. Page 383 All page citations below are from this source)

Question 2: What are Baxter’s Premises?

Baxter’s first premise is that there is no morally correct state of nature to which we should return (383).

Baxter’s second premise is that present controversy over environment and pollution rests on the idea of a morally correct state of nature (383).

Question 3: What are the reasons Baxter gives to support each premise?

Baxter supports his first premise by posing a series of questions about different entities of nature and discussing how they were neither right nor wrong in the ways they impacted the nature in the big picture. For example Baxter asks if it was “wrong” for plants to alter the atmospheric composition in favor of oxygen (383), and if it “right” for amphibians to crawl up out of the primordial ooze (383). These rhetorical questions were meant for us to come to the conclusion that there are no answers to these questions since they cannot be thought of in a moral sense.
Baxter points to examples in which we have deemed it wrong to perform a certain action because it could contribute to a worse “state of nature”. Within these points, Baxter presents a counter example of things that we consider ok or right to do, that by prior definition contribute to a worse “state of nature” as well (383). By doing so, Baxter argues that the “state of nature” that we allude to in defense of not doing certain things, is often soon forgotten when another case involving something more favorable is