Cultural diversity and biodiversity: A tempting analogy

What makes diversity valuable? The axis of the discussion will be the analogy between cultural diversity and biological diversity, an analogy which may prove enlightening in exposing some of the deep reasoning behind the value of diversity as well as point to the fallacies and dangers in the attempt of proponents of both types of diversity to draw support from the analogy itself. There is an extensive literature on cultural diversity on the one hand and on biodiversity on the other, but very little on the relations between the two. The paper analyzes the difficulties in the conception of diversity as an intrinsic value, especially in non-essentialist and non-teleological views of the natural and the social world. The issue of diversity also raises the deep divide between a 'person-affecting' and an impersonal conception of value and the logical problem in the idea of 'a right to an open future' (especially in deciding how open it should be). It is doubtful whether 'reservations' (both biological and cultural) can be thought of as preservations of diversity.