Biocentrism

1. Every organism, plant, insect, or microbe, is oriented toward its own good: it grows, feeds, defends itself, reproduces, as though its life were an end for it.
2. Having a good of one's own is not feeling it: the plant senses nothing, yet there are things good or harmful for it, a fulfillment that is its own.
3. Now what has a good of its own has a worth that is not merely our use-value: to reduce it to a means is to scorn the end it is for itself.

Therefore So the moral circle extends to all life: not that all lives are worth the same in every circumstance, but that none is mere material, and that destroying a life always calls for a reason.

1. Biocentrism grants a worth of its own to all that pursues its good, sentient or not.
2. But 'pursuing a good' is said in two senses: a clock 'wants' to tell the time, a virus 'wants' to replicate, without anything mattering to anyone. A genuine interest presupposes a subject to whom its fate can make a difference.
3. Without sentience, there is no point of view from which living or dying is good or bad for the organism: one can destroy it, one does not wrong it; 'respect' has no addressee.

Therefore So moral worth requires a being able to feel its good: below sentience there are admirable mechanisms, not subjects toward whom we would have duties.