Environmental thinkers often suppose that the natural world (or some parts of it, at least) exists in its own right, independent of human concerns. The arguments developed in this paper suggest that it is possible to do justice to this thought without endorsing some form of metaphysical realism. Thus the early sections look to Merleau-Ponty's Phenomenology of Perception to develop an anti-realist account of the independent reality of the natural world, one, it is argued, that has certain advantages over the (...) accounts proffered by 'environmental realists'. The concluding sections draw upon certain of Merleau-Ponty's later works to defend a rather bolder claim: that the conceptions of realism endorsed by environmental thinkers are not just ill equipped but, in fact, unable to acknowledge what may be provisionally referred to as the more-than-human dimension of reality. (shrink)

This paper explores the ethical aspects of an investigation into a forester's perception of his landscape. Three different ethical issues are addressed. The first issue concerns the ethics associated with the methodology of ethnology. The second concerns a forester's ethics. An example is provided which indicates how he applies values and aesthetics to the landscape in which he lives and works. Finally, the ethics of wilderness is discussed, concentrating on the different ways in which people perceive wilderness and wilderness issues, (...) depending on their relationship with the forest landscape. The article concludes by questioning whether the ways in which wilderness is culturally constructed can lead to misconceptions about human-forest interaction, and by asking whether emphasis on wilderness as a positive value has been exaggerated. (shrink)

. Books Received. Ethics, Place & Environment: Vol. 3, No. 1, pp. 125-128.

La ingente obra mediática de Félix Rodríguez de la Fuente en relación con las ciencias naturales nos permite explorar detenidamente los procesos de generación, circulación y gestión de conocimiento científico-tecnológico en un contexto particularmente convulso de la historia reciente de España, el final de la dictadura de Franco. Con un enfoque centrado en las relaciones entre los seres humanos y su entorno, el trabajo multidimensional de Rodríguez de la Fuente, como cetrero, naturalista, activista y comunicador, aportó un excepcional componente científico-técnico (...) a los procesos de transformación social, política y cultural de España en esos años. El objetivo de este trabajo es mostrar cómo este componente científico-técnico estaba frecuentemente ligado, y entre otros aspectos, a la definición y contextualización de España y su patrimonio natural tanto dentro de sus fronteras como en el escenario internacional. (shrink)

Environmental ethics should be understood as a radical project that challenges the limits of contemporary ethical and political expression, a limit historically defined by the concept of the citizen. This dominant model of public being, frequently justified in terms of a formal or procedural rationally, facilitates an exclusionary ethos that fails to properly represent our concerns for the non-human world. It tends to regard emotionally mediated concerns for others as a source of irrational and subjective distortions in an otherwise rationally (...) ordered ethicopolitical community. In doing so it underestimates the important role played by 'structures of feeling', those culturally variable patterns of emotionally mediated responses, that provide the (shifting) grounds for all ethical experience, motivation, communication and interpretation. An alternative model of political expression more suitable to an environmental ethic, the denizen, is suggested. (shrink)

Name der Zeitschrift: Semiotica Jahrgang: 2015 Heft: 207 Seiten: 369-393.

During the latter-half of the nineteenth century, the utility of the house sparrow to humankind was a contentious topic. In Britain, numerous actors from various backgrounds including natural history, acclimatisation, agriculture and economic ornithology converged on the bird, as contemporaries sought to calculate its economic cost and benefit to growers. Periodicals and newspapers provided an accessible and anonymous means of expression, through which the debate raged for over 50 years. By the end of the century, sparrows had been cast as (...) detrimental to agriculture. Yet consensus was not achieved through new scientific methods, instruments, or changes in practice. This study instead argues that the rise and fall of scientific disciplines and movements paved the way for consensus on “the sparrow question.” The decline of natural history and acclimatisation stifled a raging debate, while the rising science of economic ornithology sought to align itself with agricultural interests: the latter overwhelmingly hostile to sparrows. (shrink)

Allen Carlson and Sheila Lintott (eds): Nature, Aesthetics, and Environmentalism: From Beauty to Duty Content Type Journal Article DOI 10.1007/s10806-010-9258-2 Authors Nathaniel Barrett, Institute for the Biocultural Study of Religion 1711 Massachusetts Ave NW #308 Washington DC 20036 USA Journal Journal of Agricultural and Environmental Ethics Online ISSN 1573-322X Print ISSN 1187-7863.