In this article, I consider the claim that we ought to be grateful to nature and argue that this claim is unjustified. I proceed by arguing against the two most plausible lines of reasoning for the claim that we ought to be grateful to nature: 1) that nature is a fitting or appropriate object of our gratitude, and 2) that we ought to be grateful to nature insofar as gratitude to nature enhances, preserves or indicates in us the virtue of (...) gratitude, a character trait we morally ought to have. My arguments against the first line of reasoning show it to be unsound, and my arguments against the second reveal that we actually have reasons to avoid being grateful to nature. If we have reasons to treat nature well, I show, those may be rooted in the appropriateness of attitudes like praise, appreciation or compassion, but not gratitude. I conclude by highlighting several implications my arguments entail about gratitude to entities other than nature and about environmental virtues other than gratitude. (shrink)

A central question of environmental ethics remains one of how best to account for the intuitions generated by the Last Man scenarios; that is, it is a question of how to explain our experience of value in nature and, more importantly, whether that experience is justified. Seeking an alternative to extrinsic views, according to which nonhuman entities possess normative features that obligate us, I turn to constitutive views, which make value or whatever other limits nonhuman nature places on action dependent (...) on features intrinsic to human beings and constitutive of them or their obligations. After examining two kinds of constitutive views—environmental virtue ethics and Korsgaard’s Kantianism—I suggest an alternative that takes up the strengths of both while avoiding their shortcomings. On this view, we have an indirect obligation to experience nature as obligating us, although we have direct obligations only to human beings. (shrink)

Much of the literature addressing environmental virtue tends to focus on what might be called “personal virtue”—individual actions, characteristics, or dispositions that benefit the individual actor. There has, in contrast, been relatively little interest in either “virtue politics”—collective actions, characteristics, or dispositions—or in what might be called “public virtues,” actions, characteristics, or dispositions that benefit the community rather than the individual. This focus, however, is problematic, especially in a society that valorizes individuality. This paper examines public virtue and its role (...) in environmental virtue ethics. First, I outline different types of virtue in order to frame the discussion of public virtues and, in particular, a subclass of virtues I will refer to as political virtue. Second, I focus on practical problems and address the inadequacy of personal virtue for effecting social change and, therefore, for addressing most environmental crises. Finally, I argue that public and political virtues are necessary, if under emphasized, conditions for the flourishing of the individual, and that they are important complements to more traditional environmental virtues. (shrink)

John Cage and Henry David Thoreau draw attention to the indeterminacy of wild nature and imply humans cannot entirely control the natural world. This paper argues Cage and Thoreau each encourages his audience to recognize their own human limitations in relation to wildness, and thus each helps his audience to develop greater humility before nature. By reflecting on how Thoreau’s theory relates to Cage’s music, we can recognize how Cage’s music contributes to audiences’ environmental moral education. We can appreciate the (...) role of music in helping audiences to develop values conducive to environmentally sustainable practices. (shrink)

This paper proposes an answer to what Sandler calls ‘the problem of inconsequentialism’; the problem of providing justification for the claim that individuals should engage in unilateral reductions of their personal consumption, even though doing so will make an inconsequential contribution to mitigating the harmful impacts of the global environmental problems that the aggregate of such consumption causes. I provide an answer to this problem by developing a virtue ethics-based argument that a limited but significant class of consumption actions performed (...) by typical consumers in rich, industrialised economies in the global North are moral wrongdoings, and the corresponding unilateral reductions in personal consumption are morally obligatory. I make this argument by drawing an analogy between a typical Northern consumer and a member of a golf club who has discovered that his club causes harm—by dumping used golf balls into a nature reserve—to which he inconsequentially contributes. I advance a moral evaluation of remaining a member of a harming group, based on the attitudes to the harm expressed by so remaining, and on Sandler’s virtue-grounded agent-relative target principle of right action. I examine a number of objections to this argument. I use Elizabeth Cripps’s notion of a ‘harming putative group’ to respond to the objection that the set of individuals whose aggregated consumption causes environmental problems is merely an arbitrary abstract set, membership of which is not justifiable grounds for moral evaluation. I then present two responses to the objection that withdrawal from this harming putative group—by refraining to perform those consumption actions which constitute membership—is unduly demanding. (shrink)

This paper concerns virtue-based ethical principles that bear upon agricultural uses of technologies, such as GM crops and CRISPR crops. It does three things. First, it argues for a new type of virtue ethics approach to such cases. Typical virtue ethics principles are vague and unspecific. These are sometimes useful, but we show how to supplement them with more specific virtue ethics principles that are useful to people working in specific applied domains, where morally relevant domain-specific conditions recur. We do (...) this while still fulfilling the need for principles and associated practical reasoning to flexibly respect variation between cases. Second, with our more detailed approach we criticize and improve upon a commonly discussed principle about ecosystemic external goods that are crucial for human flourishing. We show this principle is far more conservative than appreciated, as it would prohibit many technology uses that are uncontroversially acceptable. We then replace this principle with two more specific ones. One identifies specific conditions in which ecosystem considerations are against a technology use, the other identifies favorable conditions. Third, we uncover a humility-based principle that operates within an influential “hubris argument” against uses of several biotechnologies in agriculture. These arguments lack a substantive theory of the nature of humility. We clarify such a theory, and then use it to replace the uncovered humility-based principle with our own more specific one that shifts focus from past moral failings, to current epistemic limits when deciding whether to support new technologies. (shrink)

I will discuss two themes that can be found in Mark Sagoff's most recent book, Price, Principle, and the Environment. Built from pieces fashioned in his entertaining and incisive critical es...

In this paper I attempt to clarify the nature of the vice of greed, focusing on what can be called “modest greed”. Agents who are modestly greedy do not long for material goods or wealth with intense desires. Rather, they have quite modest desires, but ones whose satisfaction they pursue excessively relative to other goods. Greed - including modest greed - emerges as a particularly troubling and problematic vice.

Many virtues have been proposed and defended as part of developing a mature environmental virtue ethics. Yet the crucial virtue of environmental creativity has so far not received the attention it deserves. This essay provides several arguments for the conclusion that the virtue of environmental creativity has important roles to play in environmental ethics, gives a characterisation of environmental creativity, and addresses several objections.

This paper concerns virtue-based ethical principles that bear upon agricultural uses of technologies, such as GM crops and CRISPR crops. It does three things. First, it argues for a new type of virtue ethics approach to such cases. Typical virtue ethics principles are vague and unspecific. These are sometimes useful, but we show how to supplement them with more specific virtue ethics principles that are useful to people working in specific applied domains, where morally relevant domain-specific conditions recur. We do (...) this while still fulfilling the need for principles and associated practical reasoning to flexibly respect variation between cases. Second, with our more detailed approach we criticize and improve upon a commonly discussed principle about ecosystemic external goods that are crucial for human flourishing. We show this principle is far more conservative than appreciated, as it would prohibit many technology uses that are uncontroversially acceptable. We then replace this principle with two more specific ones. One identifies specific conditions in which ecosystem considerations are against a technology use, the other identifies favorable conditions. Third, we uncover a humility-based principle that operates within an influential “hubris argument” against uses of several biotechnologies in agriculture. These arguments lack a substantive theory of the nature of humility. We clarify such a theory, and then use it to replace the uncovered humility-based principle with our own more specific one that shifts focus from past moral failings, to current epistemic limits when deciding whether to support new technologies. (shrink)