In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Ethics & the Environment 7.1 (2002) 102-108 [Access article in PDF] Symposium IntroductionEric Katz's Nature As Subject Andrew Light Can and should we distinguish between nature and culture? The question has become a perennial one in environmental ethics, as well as in allied fields in environmental history, sociology, and politics. And just when we think it is settled—as many did after William Cronon's famous deconstruction of wilderness in 1995—and (...) it feels safe to go back into the metaphysical waters of environmental philosophy, such issues pop up again to send us running.What follows extends this debate in the context of Eric Katz's well-known work in environmental ethics. Brought together here are Katz and two critics sympathetic to his positions, Wayne Ouderkirk and Ned Hettinger. While the occasion for the exchange was the publication of Katz's book, Nature as Subject: Human Obligation and Natural Community (1997), which collects his papers from 1979 to 1996, the focus quickly became somewhat narrower, centering on possible problems with Katz's ontological dualism between natural and artifactual entities.Katz has exerted a strong influence on the development of environmental ethics, particularly through his persistent arguments for a distinction between individualist and holist approaches to obligations to the nonhuman natural world and his metaphysical and moral critique of attempts [End Page 102] by humans to create, repair, or restore nature. While these positions continue to be on display here, there is also something more. In this exchange Katz throws down the gauntlet on his nature-culture dualism, admitting at the start that the accusation is true. Like the Protestants in Monty Python's The Meaning of Life, he is a dualist—and fiercely proud of it! Despite whatever misgivings I or others may have about this position, I believe that in making this claim, Katz, similar to David Chalmers's open embrace and resuscitation of dualism in philosophy of mind, has done us a great service. For it is arguably true that many environmental philosophers, along with other academics, have settled into a complacent "labeling as argument" pattern. If we can label a position as "dualist" or "essentialist," then our work is done. But surely not every form of dualism is necessarily wrong, even if, as Ouderkirk reminds us in his reading of Val Plumwood's work, the logic of many forms of dualism has tended toward a pernicious pattern. Arguments are needed in both directions. If nature-culture dualism is mistaken or wrongheaded, or leads to unfortunate conclusions, then we must know why; if dualism is the only way to make sense of the hurdles presented to us in coming to a better understanding of the value of nature and culture then we must know why as well. And further, because many in the field have assumed a nature-culture dualism without admitting to it, we can admire that Katz chooses to "fess up" and finally put the issue squarely on the table.If this is the road we are heading down with this particular exchange, then we are off to a good start. Both critics of Katz do a thorough job of pressing home their arguments, rather than only pointing accusatory fingers. Ned Hettinger, in "The Problem of Finding a Positive Role for Humans in the Natural World," avoids using the term "dualism," but nonetheless argues that Katz has a tendency to "rigidly dichotomize the natural/artifactual distinction." Additionally, Hettinger argues that Katz tends to overlook his own admission that the differences between nature and artifacts admit to degrees rather than a strict dualism. Hettinger focuses the bulk of his critique on the unfortunate upshot of such a position: given such a distinction, there is little if any place for a positive role for human intervention in nature, or for a philosophical contribution to the formation of better environmental policies.Wayne Ouderkirk, in "Katz's Problematic Dualism and its 'Seismic' Effects on His Theory," is sympathetic with Katz's intuitions that some distinction is needed between artifacts and natural entities. The problem [End Page 103] he sees is that such... (shrink)

Aesthetic value, often viewed as subjective and even trivial compared to other environmental values, is commonly given low priority in policy debates. In this paper I argue that the seriousness and importance of aesthetic value cannot be denied when we recognise the ways that aesthetic experience is already embedded in a range of human practices. The first area of human practice considered involves the complex relationship between aesthetic experience and the development of an ethical attitude towards the environment. I then (...) discuss how aesthetics has played a role in scientific study and the use of evaluative aesthetic concepts in science, such as variety and diversity. The final section shows the connection between the beneficial effects of aesthetic engagement with nature and the restorative value of nature for human well-being. (shrink)

This article discusses what is involved in having full moral status, as opposed to a lesser degree of moral status and surveys different views of the grounds of moral status as well as the arguments for attributing a particular degree of moral status on the basis of those grounds.

This essay provides an overview of the field of environmental ethics. I sketch the major debates in the field from its inception in the 1970s to today, explaining both the central tenets of the schools of thought within the field and the arguments that have been given for and against them. I describe the main trends within the field as a whole and review some of the criticisms that have been offered of prevailing views.

This paper presents a way of classifying different forms of naturalness and unnaturalness. Three main forms of (un)naturalness are found as the following: history- based (un)naturalness, property-based (un)naturalness and relation-based (un)naturalness. Numerous subforms (and some subforms of the subforms) of each are presented. The subforms differ with respect to the entities that are found (un)natural, with respect to their all-inclusiveness, and whether (un)naturalness is seen as all-or-nothing affair, or a continuous gradient. This kind of conceptual analysis is needed, first, because (...) discussion concerning (un)naturalness is common in current bioethics and environmental ethics, and second, because the terms natural and unnatural are highly ambiguous. Thus, the lack of an exact definition of the type of (un)naturalness may lead into equivocation, other forms of bad argumentation, or at least vagueness. (shrink)

Environmental ethics is the discipline in philosophy that studies the moral relationship of human beings to, and also the value and moral status of, the environment and its nonhuman contents. This entry covers: (1) the challenge of environmental ethics to the anthropocentrism (i.e., humancenteredness) embedded in traditional western ethical thinking; (2) the early development of the discipline in the 1960s and 1970s; (3) the connection of deep ecology, feminist environmental ethics, and social ecology to politics; (4) the attempt to apply (...) traditional ethical theories, including consequentialism, deontology, and virtue ethics, to support contemporary environmental concerns; and (5) the focus of environmental literature on wilderness, and possible future developments of the discipline. (shrink)

A central question in contemporary ethics and political philosophy concerns which entities have moral status. In this article, I provide a detailed analysis of the view that moral status comes in degrees. I argue that degrees of moral status can be specified along two dimensions: (i) the weight of the reason to protect an entity’s morally significant rights and interests; and/or (ii) the rights and interests that are considered morally significant. And I explore some of the complexities that arise when (...) we link degrees of moral status to the weight of reasons to protect bundles and/or the content and size of these bundles, in particular regarding the attribution of moral status to nonparadigmatic entities (e.g. people with severe cognitive disabilities, children, embryos and foetuses, robots, non-human animals, ecosystems, and rivers). (shrink)

In the 1920s and 1930s, an attempt was made to resurrect the aurochs (Bos primigenius primigenius), the extinct wild ancestor of contemporary domestic cattle. The back-bred species that was produced are called ‘Heck cattle’. I argue that the attempt to create the Heck cattle as a form of resurrected aurochs, and their subsequent use in rewilding projects (as in the Oostvaardersplassen in the Netherlands) is a prime example of the continuous human project of the domination of nature. The consideration of (...) domination as an extreme form of management serves as a critical lens on the policy of rewilding, similar to long-standing critiques of the policy of ecological restoration by this author. Rewilding projects do not re-create a ‘wild’ nature free from human intervention and activity. Rewilding is another form of the human management of natural processes to achieve anthropocentric goals. My examination of the Heck cattle in the rewilding process is intentionally provocative because there is a connection to Nazism. I will argue that policies of rewilding have historical antecedents (and parallels in philosophical meaning) to the Nazi plans for re-creating an authentic Aryan landscape in the lands of Eastern Europe. The case history of the Heck cattle projects illustrates the danger of pursuing radical forms of management of the natural world. (shrink)

This paper presents some of the most promising ways wild animals are currently being helped, as well as other ways of helping that may be implemented easily in the near future. They include measures to save animals affected by harmful weather events, wild animal vaccination programs, and projects aimed at reducing suffering among synanthropic animals. The paper then presents other ways of helping wild animals that, while noncontroversial, may reduce aggregate suffering at the ecosystem level. The paper argues that impracticability (...) and normative objections against reducing wild animal suffering fail against these ways of helping wild animals. (shrink)

The most alive is the wildest (Henry David Thoreau, Walking)Simply put, rewilding seeks to foster the wildness of an area or to return it to a previous state of wilderness1. Although there is no co...

ABSTRACTIn this article, we explore how ecological restoration reference models are produced and what work they do within an ecological restoration project. By tracing the genesis of two restoratio...

Ecofascism as a tradition in Environmental Ethics seems to burgeoning with potential. The roots of Ecofascism can be traced back to the German Romantic School, to the Wagnerian narration of the Nibelungen saga, to the works of Fichte and Herder and, finally, to the so-called völkisch movement. Those who take pride in describing themselves as ecofascists grosso modo tend to prioritize the moral value of the ecosphere, while, at the same time, they almost entirely devalue species and individuals. Additionally, these (...) ecofascists are eager to reject democracy, the idea of progress in its entirety, as well as industrialization and urbanization. They also seem to be hostile towards individual autonomy and free will. In this short essay I will present and discuss Kaarlo Pentti Linkola’s approach to environmental ethics, one that could be well described as the epitome of Ecofascism. I will argue that his arguments are neither sound nor documented, and I will conclude that Linkola’s overall approach is, in my view, contrary to the purpose as well as to the very essence of morality. (shrink)

The subject-matter of this essay is the moral status of nature. This subject is dealt with in terms of normative reasons. The main question is if there are direct normative reasons to care for nature in addition to the numerous indirect normative reasons that there are for doing so. Roughly, if there is some such reason, and that reason applies to any moral agent, then nature has direct moral status as I use the phrase. I develop the notions of direct (...) normative reason and direct moral status in detail and identify and discuss the two main types of theory according to which nature has direct moral status: analogy-based nature-considerism and non-analogy-based nature-considerism. I argue for the plausibility of a particular version of the latter, but against the plausibility of any version of the former. The theory that is representative of AN claims that nature has direct moral status in virtue of possessing interests. Proponents of this theory fail to show that nature has interests of the kind that they reasonably want to ascribe to it, and that interests of this kind are morally significant. In contrast to AN, NN comes in a variety of different forms. I elaborate a version of NN according to which there are direct normative reasons to care for nature in virtue of its unique complexity, and its indispensability. I argue that even if these reasons should turn out not to apply to any moral agent, they are still genuine direct normative reasons: there is nothing irrational or misdirected about them. Finally, I show how the question of whether there are direct normative reasons to care for nature is relevant to private and political decision-making concerning nature. This is exemplified with a case from the Swedish mountain region. (shrink)

The distinction between anthropocentric and non-anthropocentric theories, together with the more fine-grained distinction between anthropocentrism, biocentrism and ecocentrism, are probably two of the most frequently occurring distinctions in the environmental ethics literature. In this essay I draw attention to some problematic aspects of the terminology used to draw these distinctions: the 'centrism-terminology'. I argue that this terminology is ambiguous and misleading, and therefore confusing. Furthermore, depending on which interpretation it is given, it is also either asymmetric and non-inclusive, or superfluous. (...) Although I find it unlikely that the centrism-terminology will be abandoned, I end the essay by providing a suggestion for an alternative way to categorise theories in environmental ethics. (shrink)

Ever since environmental ethics began to take form as an academic discipline in the early 1970s, the notion of intrinsic value has occupied a prominent position within the field. Recently, however, various types of critique have emerged within EE against invoking this notion. Contrary to these critiques, I argue that appeals to intrinsic value are not problematic, given the reason-implying sense of 'intrinsic value' that is most relevant to EE. I further argue that also those who criticise 'intrinsic-value-talk' in EE (...) actually need this reason-implying concept of intrinsic value. However, once we realise that this is the sense of 'intrinsic value' that is most relevant to EE, it also becomes clear that it is the concept of a reason, rather than that of intrinsic value, that is most important to EE. (shrink)

The paper advances a Humean metaethical analysis of "intrinsic value" - a notion fundamental in moral philosophy in general and particularly so in environmental ethics. The analysis reduces an object's moral properties (e.g., its value) to the empirical relations between the object's natural properties and people's psychological dispositions to respond to them. Moral properties turn out to be both objective and subjective, but in ways compatible with, and complementary to, each other. Next, the paper investigates whether the Humean analysis can (...) support non-anthropocentric environmental ethical theories, which attribute intrinsic value to nonhuman natural entities. It argues that one of the most useful resources from Hume for non-anthropocentrism is his account of justice as an artificial virtue, which is a plausible model for the internalization of various environmentally friendly conventions and the creation of environmental values. Finally, the paper concludes that any Humean account of intrinsic value is empiricist all the way down. Moral questions about what things are intrinsically valuable, and to what extent they are so, are ultimately empirical questions about complex psychological capacities and dispositions of human beings, which cannot be single-handedly answered by philosophers a priori; and that ethics is more appropriately seen as an interdisciplinary investigation, requiring collaboration among the various psychological and social sciences, human biological and neurological sciences, and history and philosophy. (shrink)

Robert Elliot claims that the metaethical distinction between subjectivism and objectivism is unimportant in environmental ethics. He argues that because a sufficiently sophisticated subjectivist can accommodate all the intrinsic value an objectivist can, even in apparently problematic situations where humans either do not exist or do not have the relevant values, and because metaethical commitments fail to have any normative or motivational impact on rational debate, it makes no difference whether an environmental ethicist is a subjectivist or an objectivist. Elliot's (...) dismissal, however, is unjustified. As it turns out, objectivists argue differently from the way subjectivists do, are motivated differently from the way subjectivists are, and are able to make a greater range of intrinsic value claims than subjectivists are. If Elliot's arguments have any appeal at all, it is only because he blurs the fundamental metaethical distinction in the first place and defends a subjectivism so objectivist that it is almost unrecognizable as subjectivism. (shrink)

As Raymond Williams famously declared, nature is one of the most complex words in the English language – and, we may confidently predict, its Germanic relatives including Dutch. The workshop that took place in June 2007 in the Netherlands, from which this volume is derived, was based on an earlier program exploring connections between our concepts of nature and related concepts of science and religion. Though one may not immediately expect these three realms to be interrelated, countless examples suggest otherwise.

This paper presents a moral–emotional critique of environmental restoration, through discussion of narratives of redemption. The importance of ‘redemption’ vis-à-vis other environmental discourses rests with its capacity to unpack how, why and in what circumstances the idea of ‘putting something back’ for nature exerts a hold on the popular imagination. This paper thus examines the ethical and emotional experiences bound up in restoration discourses, to identify the motives deployed to confront shame and an associated guilt, and achieve restitution. In turn, (...) the paper also offers new insights into the value of restored nature. (shrink)

An environmental ethic needs to have an answer to two basic questions: what nature should we care about, and why? A number of proposals have been made about how to answer these questions. In this paper, I consider in detail one such proposal, namely, biological or ecological integrity. Different characterizations of integrity can be found in the literature, but I will treat the following one as paradigmatic. Integrity refers to a property of landscapes that are relatively unmodified by human activity (...) and that have their native biota largely intact.1 By “native biota,” I mean the native plant and animal life in a particular place, and... (shrink)

The study of biological invasions raises troubling scientific, political and moral issues that merit discussion and debate on a broad scale. Nativist trends in Conservation Biology have made environmentalists biased against alien species. This bias is scientifically questionable, and may have roots in xenophobic and racist attitudes. Rethinking conservationists' conceptions of biological invasion is essential to the development of a progressive environmental science, politics, and philosophy.

How can environmental philosophy benefit from Friedrich Nietzsche's radical critique of morality? In this paper, it is argued that Nietzsche's account of nature provides us with a challenging diagnosis of the modern crisis in our relationship with nature. Moreover, his interpretation of wildness can elucidate our concern with the value of wilderness as a place of value beyond the sphere of human intervention. For Nietzsche, wild nature is a realm where moral valuations are out of order. In his work, however, (...) we can discern a paradoxical moral concern with this wildness. Wildness is a critical moral concept that reminds us of the fact that our moral world of human meanings and goals ultimately rests on a much grander, all-encompassing natural world. Nietzsche's concept of wildness acknowledges the value of that which cannot be morally appropriated. Wild nature confronts us with the limits of human valuing. Wildness as a concept thus introduces the 'beyond' of culture into the cultural arena of values. (shrink)

The source of the value of naturalness is of considerable relevance for the conservation movement, to philosophers, and to society generally. However, naturalness is a complex quality and resists straightforward definition. Here, two interpretations of what is “natural” are explored. One of these assesses the naturalness of species and ecosystems with reference to a benchmark date, such as the advent of industrialization. The value of naturalness in this case largely reflects prioritization of the value of biodiversity. However, the foundation of (...) our understanding of naturalness is that it describes processes that are free of human intervention. Conflict between the two interpretations of naturalness is apparent in the claim that naturalness can be enhanced by human intervention, in the form of ecological restoration. Although naturalness in its purest form precludes human intervention, some human activities are also apparently more natural than others. This continuum of naturalness relates to the autonomy of the individual from abstract instrumentalism, which describes a particular form of influence ubiquitous in contemporary society. The value of naturalness reflects both dissatisfaction with these threats to personal autonomy, and respect for wild nature as the embodiment of a larger-than-human realm. (shrink)

Proponents of ecological restoration view the practice as a means of both repairing damage done to ecosystems by humans and creating an avenue to re-establish respectful and cooperative human-environment relationships. One debate affecting ecological restoration focuses on the place of 'exotic' species in restored ecosystems. Though popular, campaigns against exotics have been criticized for their troubling rhetorical parallels with nativism aimed at human immigrants. I point to some of the reasons why this critique of nativism persists, despite protests that no (...) xenophobic intent is evident, emphasizing the intimacy between social metaphors and claims about exotic nature. Language is but one facet of an entanglement of nature and society that ecological restoration strives to take seriously; however, restoration practice remains ambivalent toward this dichotomy permitting a longing for lost community purity that is embraced in nativism. Regarding defenses of nativism, I point out limitations of attempts to reframe the issue from a reactionary rejection of the foreign Other toward an argument for protecting communities from a process akin to 'cultural imperialism'. (shrink)

Environmentalists consider invasions by exotic species of plants and animals to be one of the most serious environmental problems we face today, as well as one of the leading causes of biodiversity loss. We argue that in order to develop and enact sensible policies, it is crucial to consider two philosophical questions: What exactly makes a species native or exotic, and What values are at stake? We focus on the first of these two questions, and offer some preliminary suggestions with (...) regard to the second. Through a series of case studies, we show that it is not always clear whether a species is native or exotic. We identify five possible criteria that could be used for distinguishing natives from exotics. Rather than identifying one of these criteria as the 'correct' one, we suggest that the concepts of 'native' and ' exotic ' function more like what some philosophers have called cluster concepts. That is, there are several characteristics that are typical of native species, and a corresponding set of characteristics that are typical of exotic species. None of these characteristics is either necessary or sufficient for identifying a species as either native or exotic. We then identify several of the values that are at stake in dealing with exotic species, and we suggest that policies need to avoid being overly simplistic. (shrink)

Environmentalists care about nature. Often, they reason and act as if they consider nature to be valuable for its own sake, i.e., to have non-instrumental value. Yet, there is a rather widespread reluctance, even among environmentalists, to explicitly ascribe such value to nature. One important explanation of this is probably the thought that it would be mysterious in one way or another if nature possessed such value. In addition, Bryan Norton’s influential convergence hypothesis states that, from a practical point of (...) view, it makes no or little difference whether we ascribe non-instrumental value to nature, given the depth and variety of instrumental value that it possesses. In this paper we provide a counterfactual argument, applying to anyone who genuinely cares about nature, for endorsing non-instrumental value in it. Even if we accept, for the sake of argument, something like the convergence hypothesis, relying on nature’s instrumental value for preservational purposes is risky business for environmentalists. We also briefly consider the mysteriousness-objection to non-instrumental value in nature. We show that with respect to most accounts of non-instrumental value, there is nothing particularly mysterious about nature possessing such value. (shrink)

Ethics, Policy & Environment, Volume 14, Issue 3, Page 329-344, October 2011.