While Oliver Leaman's aesthetic justification of efforts to preserve endangered species is certainly one consideration that might be advanced in support of such efforts--as well as efforts to preserve plants and other living organisms, such as coral reefs and rainforests (conceiving of the forest as a whole, an ecosystem, as an organism), and even inanimate natural features of the environment, such as icebergs--it's not clear to me that it's the most satisfactory or compelling consideration. Absent some justification for a principle of plenitude--of maximizing the variety of beings in the world--there is no reason to accept such a justification of efforts to preserve anything. It seems to me, however, that other considerations might be advanced in support of conservation. First, it might be argued that given the interrelationship of species, the elimination of any species, especially a predator like the wolf, which plays an important role in keeping the population of other species in check,...

In "Brains in a Vat," the first essay of his book, Reason, Truth, and History , the philosopher Hilary Putnam considers a thought experiment, according to which an ant crawling along the sand produces what would appear to be an image of Winston Churchill. He asks whether this image would count as a depiction of Churchill, and claims that it would not: it would not count as a depiction or representation of Churchill, because the ant has never seen Churchill, and therefore could not have the intention to depict Churchill. The image, therefore, is not intrinsically meaningful: it would take an observer to notice that the ant's tracings resemble Churchill, and to conclude that s/he has seen a representation of Churchill traced in the sand, thereby endowing the ant's tracings with meaning. Nature as a whole, like the ant, does not seem capable of producing meaning: in order to produce meaningful representations (including pictures or words), there must be an agent who knows how to manipulate those signs....