4.3 Advantages of enlightened anthropocentric environmental ethic
The first advantage is that enlightened anthropocentrism corresponds to our intuition hence it has great public appeal. Enlightened anthropocentric view avoids the difficulties of justifying an environmental ethic based on intrinsic value of non-human entities which is common with non-anthropocentrism. Indeed a non-anthropocentric ethicist would see value in an animal that no human could ever benefit from or even know about, simply because of what it is. The problem of emphasizing on intrinsic value as the foundation of ecological preservation is that this view may be as seem very radical to a large portion of the public and other scholars (apparently scholars remain divided on the issue). As Mendenhall (2009) argued that the importance of the public appeal to an environmental ethic should not be undermined. She continued to claim that there is little time to reverse the effects of past environmental degradation; for these effects to be effectively addressed, we will need the assistance of society. Hence, the most important advantage of an enlightened anthropocentric ethic over a non-anthropocentric one is the public appeal; many people feel that non-anthropocentrism is just too radical and contrary to common sense. For many, all value does come from humans, since they believe we are the only species capable of rational thought.
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Another advantage of the enlightened anthropocentric environmental