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Last night, in my class on the ecology of invasive species an interesting question was raised: why should we care about preventing the spread of invasive species? The person who asked this reinforced their question with Darwinian evolutionary theory, i.e. survival of the fittest. Her argument was essentially: If invasive species are more fit than indigenous species then they will naturally take over the native's positions in the ecosystem and it's the native's fault for not being fit enough to deal with the invasion. And since humans are a part of the natural system (even if we pretend like we aren't) our actions (namely introducing invasives) are natural processes, comparable to volcanic eruptions, earthquakes, and doomsday asteroids. Therefore, invasive species are just following the rules of nature and we should let them run their course.

This opinion did not go over well with the rest of the class. It's apparent that the introduction of invasive species is the second largest threat to biodiversity and species extinction, only habitat loss poses a greater threat. Furthermore, it seems that biodiversity is something that humankind wants to preserve and many are willing to spend large sums to do so. But what I saw when these grad students tried to define why we ought to protect other species from extinction it looked like people grasping for straws while drowning. Inadvertently these students had wondering into the frightening realm of philosophy. To say the least no one who offered an opinion had the tools to make their point sound like anything more than personal preference.

It appeared to me that those students who offered their opinions fell into one of the terrible gaps in naturalism that makes this philosophy so unappealing. [Note: Naturalism in this context refers to the philosophy that all of reality is composed of the physical world that we see and experience. There is absolutely nothing that is outside of Nature. Nature is all there is and all of our explanations must come from natural causes.] Into what gap did my classmates unintentionally fall? They tried to do something that is a normal part of our everyday life, something that most of us do on a regular basis without even thinking about. However, this everyday activity does not have a plausible natural explanation. Here's what they did: they made a value judgment.

We make value judgments every day. We claim that doing this' is better than doing that.' We advise people that they should do A' rather

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