In this article I consider four concerns regarding the possibility of an environmental virtue ethic functioning as an alternative – rather than a supplement – to more conventional approaches to environmental ethics. The concerns are: (1) it is not possible to provide an objective specification of environmental virtue, (2) an environmental virtue ethic will lack the resources to provide critique of obtaining cultural practices and policies, (3) an environmental virtue ethic will not provide sufficient action-guidance, (4) an environmental virtue ethic (...) cannot ground constraints on human activities regarding the natural environment. Each of these concerns makes a claim about the poverty of normative resources at the disposal of environmental virtue ethics. I defend a conception of environmental virtue – as a character virtue with the same normative standing as the conventional personal and interpersonal virtues – that enables an environmental virtue ethic with the wherewithal to address each of the concerns. (shrink)

This paper explores the idea that a proper valuing of natural environments is essential to (and not just a natural basis for) a broader human virtue that might be called 'appreciation of the good'. This kind of valuing can explain, without any commitment to a metaphysics of intrinsic values, how and why it is good to value certain natural phenomena for their own sakes. The objection that such an approach is excessively human-centred is considered and rebutted.

Environmental virtue ethics (EVE) can be applied to environmental justice. Environmental justice refers to the concern that many poor and nonwhite communities bear a disproportionate burden of risk of exposure to environmental hazards compared to white and/or economically higher-class communities. The most common applied ethical response to this concern—that is, to environmental injustice—is the call for an expanded application of human rights, such as requirements for clean air and water. The virtue-oriented approach can be made consistent with such calls, but (...) there are broader applications as well that generate unique strategies for moral responsiveness and for expanding the role of moral philosophers in civic affairs. (shrink)

Ethics, Policy & Environment, Volume 14, Issue 3, Page 361-375, October 2011.

Something is wrong with the desire to dominate nature. In this paper, I explain both the causes and solution to anti-environmental attitudes within the framework of Hegel's master–slave dialectic. I argue that the master–slave dialectic (interpreted as a metaphor, rather than literally) can provide reasons against taking an attitude of domination, and instead gives reasons to seek to be worthy of respect from nature, though nature cannot, of course, respect us. I then discuss what the social and economic conditions of (...) moving to a post-domination philosophy appear to be. (shrink)

: Humility is a virtue that is helpful in a persons relationship with nature. A humble person sees value in nature and acts accordingly with the proper respect. In this paper, humility is discussed in three aspects. First, humility entails an overcoming of self-absorption. Second, humility involves coming into contact with a larger, more complex reality. Third, humility allows a person to develop a sense of perspective on herself and the world.

: Genetic interventions raise a host of moral issues and, of its various species, germ-line genetic enhancement is the most morally contentious. This paper surveys various arguments against germ-line enhancement and attempts to demonstrate their inadequacies. A positive argument is advanced in favor of certain forms of germ-line enhancements, which holds that they are morally permissible if and only if they augment Rawlsian primary goods, either directly or by facilitating their acquisition.

Biocentrism, a prominent view in environmental ethics, is the notion that all and only individual biological organisms have moral status, which is to say that their good ought to be considered for its own sake by moral agents. I argue that biocentrism suffers two serious problems: the Origin Problem and the Normativity Problem. Biocentrism seeks to avoid the absurdity that artifacts have moral status on the basis that organisms have naturalistic origins whereas artifacts do not. The Origin Problem contends that, (...) contra biocentrism, an entity’s origin is not relevant to whether that entity has moral status. The Normativity Problem is that biocentrists are preoccupied with accounting for the goods or interests of nonsentient organisms yet fail to establish why interests so construed confer moral status; biocentrism fails to bridge the good-ought gap. It is shown how these problems emerge in three prominent book-length works representative of the biocentrists’ positions over three decades: Paul Taylor’s Respect for Nature, Gary Varner’s In Nature’s Interests?, and Nicholas Agar’s Life’s Intrinsic Value. At minimum, these criticisms suggest that biocentrism is crucially incomplete as a moral framework at present and, optimistically, where more work remains to be done. If biocentrism really is dead, then moral status should be restricted to a more plausible locus such as sentience or rationality, the value of organisms needs a different expression, and environmental ethics needs an axiological foundation different than bare life. (shrink)

This article provides a comprehensive review of the rather intricate relationship between contemporary environmental ethics, understood as a philosophical branch, and ancient philosophy. While its primary focus is on Western philosophy, it also includes some brief yet crucial considerations about the influence of Eastern traditions of thought on environmental ethics. Aside from the introduction in the first section, the discussion is organised into three main sections. In the Reception: Ancient philosophy in environmental ethics section, I review the initial reception of (...) ancient philosophy in contemporary environmental ethics. Next, in the Reaction: Environmental ethics in ancient philosophy scholarship section, I examine how the scholarship in AP responded to this early reception. I conclude, in the final section, with some constructive suggestions for future research. (shrink)

The urgent need for solutions to critical environmental challenges is well attested, but often environmental problems are understood as fundamentally collective action problems. However, to solve to these problems, there is also a need to change individual behavior. Hence, there is a pressing need to inculcate in individuals the environmental virtues — virtues of character that relate to our environmental place in the world. We propose a way of meeting this need, by the judicious, safe, and controlled administration of “classic” (...) psychedelic drugs as a way to catalyze the development of environmental virtues – a form of moral bio-enhancement. Recent evidence shows that psychedelics can be given safely in controlled environments, and can induce vivid experiences of unity and connectedness. These experiences, in turn, can durably increase feelings of nature-relatedness and pro-environmental behaviors. Therefore, we argue that responsible psychedelic use can reliably catalyze the development of a key environmental virtue known as living in place. This is a “master environmental virtue” that subsumes the qualities of respect for nature, proper humility, and aesthetic wonder and awe. Our account advances the environmental virtues debate by introducing a relevant practical proposal, and advances the psychedelic moral enhancement debate by providing a much-needed conceptual framework. (shrink)

In his book Wild Animal Ethics, Kyle Johannsen argues that our duties of beneficence to help suffering wild animals require significant interventions into wild nature. In particular, he claims that the majority of wild animals lead miserable lives and that naturalness, or wildness, is not an intrinsically valuable property. In these comments, I question both these claims. First, I argue that a lot more evidence is needed than Johannsen provides to support the claim that most wild animal lives are terrible. (...) Then I suggest that Johannsen both mischaracterizes and fails to recognize the importance of wildness value, meaning that he doesn’t discuss some significant ethical worries about the kind of large-scale interventions into wild nature he proposes. While I don’t argue that wildness value necessarily trumps the disvalue of wild animal suffering. I maintain that there are genuine value conflicts here, and also that wildness value is just one example of such a conflict. If, as Johannsen claims, he wants to gain democratic legitimacy for large scale interventions to assist suffering wild animals, he needs to take such value conflicts much more seriously. (shrink)

This paper argues that social trust is the emergent product of a complex system of property relations, backed up by a sub-system of mutual monitoring. This happens in a context similar to Ostrom’s commons, where cooperation is necessary for the management of resources, in the absence of external authorities to enforce sanctions. I show that social trust emerges in this context because of an institutional structure that enables individuals to develop a generalized disposition to internalize the external effects of their (...) actions. This is made possible by the “patrimonial” nature of this structure. (shrink)

Buddhism is a unique religious system that is not only considered as a religion to follow but also is a way of attaining enlightenment in life. Buddha shows people a path following which they can reach the ultimate goal that is liberation afterlife. Buddha’s whole approach is going through an ethical system that enriches the human mind with love and wisdom as well as prepares the human body to attain liberation. Buddhism is mainly based on the Buddha’s four noble truths (...) and noble eight-fold path which are the foundations of Buddhist ethics. This thesis concerns Buddhist ethics and its impacts on modern time. It emphasizes the fact that Buddhist ethics and morality can be the aid of all inhuman activities of the modern world. Buddhist ethical teachings are the pole star, not only for the monks-nuns or lay people rather for all human beings. In the introductory chapter, the history and background of Buddhism with the significance of Buddhist ethics in modern life have been demonstrated shortly. The next two chapters go through the introduction of Buddhism and Buddhist ethics. Buddhist values and attitudes along with the three puñña: dāna, śīla and bhāvnā have been discussed thoroughly in the fourth and fifth chapter respectively. It is impressive that whenever one will explain Buddhism, there must be magnified the Buddhist ethical views. Moreover, this thesis is all about Buddhist ethics and its relevance in human life; so, the sixth chapter is regarding the Buddhist perspective of the natural world and human life. Those perspectives of Buddha influence modern human life and its crisis. The seventh chapter has dominated Buddhist ethics as virtue ethics lighting upon contemporary perspectives. Finally, the study concludes that Buddhism and Buddhist ethics is no way can be antiquated. Buddha’s sweeping thoughts regarding life and the world has a timeless existence. If Buddhist ethical directions can be maintained in modern time by everyone then, in near future the world will be more sustainable for all sentient beings. And Buddha’s five precepts are a complete guideline to lead a moral life that will consummately take a true follower to his or her actual destiny of liberation through right mindfulness. (shrink)

Scholars in the field of environmental and animal ethics have propounded theories that outline what, in their view, ought to constitute an ethical relationship between humans and the environment and humans and nonhuman animals respectively. In the field of animal ethics, the contributions by Western scholars to theorize a body of animal ethics, either as an ethic in its own right or as a branch of the broader field of environmental ethics is clearly seen. Consequently, there are, notably, two main (...) schools of thought in the field of animal ethics. These are the ‘welfarist’ and the ‘rightist’ approaches (Regan, 2006; Owoseni & Olatoye, 2014). Unfortunately, a clearly concerted effort to theorize on animal ethics from an African perspective is at the minimal, although there is a lot written in African environmental ethics, broadly construed. It is within this context that this study locates an African animal ethic within the two main theories in the global animal ethics debate, using traditional Akan ontology and ethics particularly, those that speak to their relationship with the environment and, especially animals. Thus, using Akan ontological worldview and ethics as foundational sources, alongside learned principles from the emerging theories in African environmental ethics, the study seeks to find the place of Akan animal ethics within the rightist and welfarist debates. (shrink)

In this article, I examine the moral dimensions of gender affirmation. I argue that the moral value of gender affirmation is rooted in what Iris Murdoch called loving attention. Loving attention is central to the moral value of gender affirmation because such affirmation is otherwise too fragile or insincere to have such value. Moral reasons to engage in acts that gender affirm derive from the commitment to give and express loving attention to trans people as a way of challenging their (...) marginalization. In the latter part of the paper, I will discuss how my arguments bear on recent arguments by Robin Dembroff and Daniel Wodak (2018) on the use of gender-neutral language. They argue that we have a duty not to use gender-specific pronouns for anyone. Their conclusion turns, in part, on a rejection of gender affirmation as a moral duty. The value of gender affirmation, rooted in our moral perception of trans people, should make us skeptical of this conclusion, in favor of a more nuanced and pluralistic approach to the ethics of gendering. (shrink)

Climate change is the first anthropogenic alteration of a global Earth system. It is globally catastrophic in terms of food production, sea level rise, fresh water availability, temperature elevation, ocean acidification, species disturbance and destruction to name just a few crisis concerns. In addition, while those changes are occurring now, they are amplifying over decadal periods and will last for centuries and possibly millennia. While there are a number of pollutants involved, carbon dioxide which results from the combustion of any (...) fossil fuel is the primary pollutant. It has not been considered a pollutant until recently because of its natural dissociation into oxygen and carbon compounds like wood. However, because of its molecular durability and ability to acidify water, it has become the primary pollutant as a result of the exponential increase in fossil fuel use for the production of energy by Earth’s population that has doubled over the last six decades. That increase has exceeded Earth’s ability to handle humanity’s waste CO2. Obviously, the involved changes detrimentally affect all life on Earth. Because of the evolving nature of the changes, climate change is presently denied primarily in the United States because of the costs of eliminating our carbon addiction. Because no similar global natural or anthropogenic situation has previously occurred during the lifetime of Homo sapiens, our extant ethical theories are incapable of confronting the crisis. Consequently, new ethical paradigms are necessary. This dissertation attempts to provide thoughts about the use of Aristotelian ethical theory, the aidōs feeling, Aquinian psychology and a possible new virtue of proper primility in an effort to further nurture the growth of the new climate change ethics. (shrink)

I criticize Bourget’s intuitive and empirical arguments for thinking that all possible conscious states are underived if intentional. An underived state is one of which it is not the case that it must be realized, at least in part, by intentional states distinct from itself. The intuitive argument depends upon a thought experiment about a subject who exists for only a split second while undergoing a single conscious experience. This, however, trades on an ambiguity in "split second." Meanwhile, Bourget's empirical (...) argument is question-begging. My critique also has implications for debates about the essential temporality and unity of consciousness experience, and, phenomenal atomism. (shrink)

This article draws together research from various sub-disciplines of philosophy to offer an overview of recent philosophical work on the ethics of historic preservation. I discuss how philosophers writing about art, culture, and the environment have appealed to historical significance in crafting arguments about the preservation of objects, practices, and places. By demonstrating how it relates to core themes in moral and political philosophy, I argue that historic preservation is essentially concerned with ethical issues.

In this paper, I argue both that philosophy as a way of life is a tradition worth reviving and that environmental philosophy is a promising branch of philosophy to enact this revival. First, I sketch what constitutes philosophy as a way of life, which includes both some conception of the good life and an array of spiritual exercises that assists one in living according to that conception. I then discuss a connection between possessing virtue and leading the good life, a (...) connection of great importance to ancient and modern practitioners of philosophy as a way of life. Next, I offer an argument for why this tradition of philosophy is worth reviving at the present time. The remainder of the paper is devoted to exploring the prospects for a distinctively environmental approach to philosophy as a way of life. (shrink)

Some environmental views characterise the human abuse of nature as an offence against nature itself. What conception of nature would best fit that characterisation? To focus upon such a conception, aesthetic offences against nature are examined and distinguished at the outset from moral offences. Aesthetic offences are divided into those internal to our cultural outlook and external to it. The external outlook, conceiving nature as a thing wholly apart from us, is shown to be necessary to any view of nature (...) being offended against. Central to the external outlook is a conception of nature as the victim of offence without ever being itself an offending agent. Best fitting this is the notion of nature as primordially innocent. Given this metaphorical extension, the awkward consequence arises that any human use of nature constitutes thereby an abuse of it from the external standpoint. (shrink)

It is frequently claimed that breeding animals that we know will have unavoidable health problems is at least prima facie wrong, because it harms the animals concerned. However, if we take ‘harm’ to mean ‘makes worse off’, this claim appears false. Breeding an animal that will have unavoidable health problems does not make any particular individual animal worse off, since an animal bred without such problems would be a different individual animal. Yet, the intuition that there is something ethically wrong (...) about breeding animals—such as purebred pedigree dogs—in ways that seem negatively to affect welfare remains powerful. In this paper, an animal version of what is sometimes called the non-identity problem is explored, along with a number of possible ways of understanding what might be wrong with such breeding practices, if it is not that they harm the animal itself. These possibilities include harms to others, placeholder arguments, non-comparative ideas of harm, an ‘impersonal’ approach, and concerns about human attitudes and dispositions. (shrink)

In this book, Toby Svoboda develops and defends a Kantian environmental virtue ethic, challenging the widely-held view that Kant's moral philosophy takes an instrumental view toward nature and animals and has little to offer environmental ethics. On the contrary, Svoboda posits that there is good moral reason to care about non-human organisms in their own right and to value their flourishing independently of human interests, since doing so is constitutive of certain virtues. Svoboda argues that Kant’s account of indirect duties (...) regarding nature can ground a compelling environmental ethic: the Kantian duty to develop morally virtuous dispositions strictly proscribes unnecessarily harming organisms, and Svoboda argues that this duty compels us to act in ways that benefit non-human organisms, given that doing so can enhance one’s virtues. Svoboda’s argument engages the recent literature on environmental virtue and provides an original argument for an environmental virtue ethic firmly rooted in Kant’s moral philosophy. (shrink)

This article addresses the question as to whether it is logically possible to fashion a discourse exclusively for the natural environment. Could such a discourse emerge without colonization by other social spheres acting as proxy? The prospects appear to be rather bleak, for even in the case of two apparently non-human-directed or non-committal discourses, that of extensionist ethics and new sophisticated management (of environmental crises), the latent social-constructionism built into both renders them monistic discourses hegemonically mapping the territories of what (...) they refer to. It becomes increasingly difficult to escape the human epistemic locatedness anti-anthropocentric critics demand. Despite this, such an exercise offers us the benefit of being mindful of what the crisis of social-scientific discourses amounts to as well as what to expect of discourse analysis as such. Furthermore, the prospects of the two discourses examined are being mapped onto two modified models drawing on Foucault and Deleuze thus helping us understand the pattern of our diverse environmental responses. Ecological thinking is perhaps the first subject-matter that transcends or shatters discourse boundaries and strains both imagination and human powers when selecting between conceptual frameworks, making us aware of the ineluctable feature of social-constructionism present in our social thought. (shrink)

“Arguments from nature” are used, and have historically been used, in popular responses to advances in technology and to environmental issues—there is a widely shared body of ethical intuitions that nature, or perhaps human nature, sets some limits on the kinds of ends that we should seek, the kinds of things that we should do, or the kinds of lives that we should lead. Virtue ethics can provide the context for a defensible form of the argument from nature, and one (...) that makes proper sense of its enduring role in debates concerning our relationship to technology and the environment. However, the notion of an ethics founded upon an account of the essential features of human nature is controversial. On the one hand, contemporary biological science no longer defines species by their essential characteristics, so from a biological point of view there just are no essential characteristics of human beings. On the other hand, it might be argued that humans have, in some sense, “transcended our biology,” so an understanding of humans as a biological species is extraneous to ethical questions. In this article, I examine and defend the argument from nature, as a way to ground an ethic of virtue, from some of the more common criticisms that are made against it. I argue that, properly interpreted as an appeal to an evaluative account of human nature, the argument from nature is defensible with the context of virtue ethics and, in this light, I show how arguments from nature made in popular responses to technological and environmental issues are best understood. (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)

The use of the term "applied ethics" to denote a particular field of moral inquiry (distinct from but related to both normative ethics and meta-ethics) is a relatively new phenomenon. The individuation of applied ethics as a special division of moral investigation gathered momentum in the 1970s and 1980s, largely as a response to early twentieth- century moral philosophy's overwhelming concentration on moral semantics and its apparent inattention to practical moral problems that arose in the wake of significant social and (...) technological transformations. The field of applied ethics is now a well established, professional domain sustained by institutional research centers, professional academic appointments, and devoted journals. As the field of applied ethics grew and developed, its contributors predominantly advocated consequentialist and deontological approaches to the problems they address; but lately a significant number of moral philosophers have begun to bring the resources of virtue ethics to bear upon the ever-evolving subject matters of applied ethics. (shrink)

In a recent letter to Canada's national newspaper, The Globe and Mail, British columnist and climate change gadfly George Monbiot pleaded with Canada to clean up its greenhouse gas emissions act. The letter appeared just a week before the Copenhagen climate conference. In it, Monbiot alleged that Canada's newly acquired status as oil superpower threatens to ?brutalize? the country, as it has other oil-rich countries (Monbiot, G. 2009. Please, Canada, clean up your act, The Globe and Mail, November 30, A15). (...) In this paper, I want to expand on Monbiot's bleak assessment of the Canadian national psyche. It has been pointed out that climate change is forcing us to rethink philosophical ethics. Some, like Dale Jamieson, believe that virtue theory is best equipped to meet the challenge of understanding the moral dimensions of this phenomenon. I think this is basically right, but that climate change is also forcing us to reassess our capacity for moral progress. The two challenges are linked. In what follows, I will first (Section 1) motivate the appeal to virtue ethics as a new way of understanding the ethics of climate change. Next (Section 2), I offer a virtue ethical account of moral progress. With the latter in place, we can (Section 3) uncover the real nature of Canada's moral failing on climate change: it is an impediment to the moral progress of our species. (shrink)

Species egalitarianism is the view that all living things have equal moral standing. To have moral standing is, at a minimum, to command respect, to be more than a mere thing. Is there reason to believe that all living things have moral standing in even this most minimal sense? If so—that is, if all living things command respect—is there reason to believe they all command equal respect?1 I explain why members of other species command our respect but also why they (...) do not command equal respect. The intuition that we should have respect for nature is one motive for embracing species egalitarianism, but we need not be species egalitarians to have respect for nature. This paper questions whether species egalitarianism is even compatible with respect for nature. (shrink)

This essay offers a critical assessment of environmental virtue ethics (EVE). Finding an environmental ethical analogy with Hume’s critique of the sensible knave, I argue that EVE is limited in much the same way as morality is on the Humean view. Advocates of nonanthropocentrism will find it difficult to engage those whose virtues comport them to anthropocentrism. Nonetheless, EVE is able to ground confidence in nonanthropocentric virtues by explicating specific key virtues, thereby holding open the possibility of bridging the motivational (...) gap between anthropocentrism and nonanthropocentrism. (shrink)

Moral philosophers who differ from one another on a wide range of questions tend to agree on at least one general point. Most believe that things are worth valuing either because of their relationship to something else worth valuing, or because they are simply (in themselves) worth valuing. I value my car, because I value getting to work; I value getting to work, because I value making money and spending time productively; and I value those things because I value leading (...) a fulfilling life—and that valuing needs no justification. The values that need to be justified by other values are extrinsic; those that do not are intrinsic. Most traditional philosophical approaches to value justification are foundational in this sense: intrinsic values provide a foundation upon which other values can be justified. (shrink)

The Southern Journal of Philosophy, Volume 59, Issue 3, Page 270-308, September 2021.

Weak panpsychism, the view that mindlike qualities are wide-spread in nature, has recently been argued for by the prominent ecofeminist Val Plumwood and has been used by her to ground an ethic of respect for nature. This ethic advocates a principle of respect for difference, the rejection of moral hierarchy and the inclusion of plants, mountains, rivers and ecosystems within the moral community. I argue that weak panpsychism cannot, convincingly, justify the rejection of moral hierarchy, as it is compatible with (...) it. Also the intentional criterion of mind, employed by weak panpsychism, which includes teleology, has the counter-intuitive implication of giving machines moral status. I cast doubt on the claims that (i) intentionality is a necessary condition for moral status and that (ii) it is sufficient for the ascription of agency. It is suggested that any account of intentionality that allows it to be predicated of mountains, rivers etc. would be widely, and correctly regarded as a reduction of that account. Finally an aesthetic reinterpretation of weak panpsychism is offered. (shrink)

Standard virtue ethics approach to environmental issues do not go far enough because they often lack significant attachment to local environments. Place provides the necessary link that enlarges the arena of moral action by joining human well-being to a place -based goal of wildness or biotic harmony. Place defines a niche for human activity as part of nature. Virtuous action, then, is understood as deliberation from a position of being in and of the natural world; respect and gratitude are examples (...) of this type of deliberation. (shrink)

This paper provides a sketch of an agent-centered way of understanding and answering the question, “What’s wrong with that?” On this view, what lies at the bottom of judgments of wrongness is a bad attitude; when someone does something wrong, she does something that expresses a bad, or inappropriate, attitude . In order to motivate this account, a general Kantian agent-centered ethics is discussed, as well as Michael Slote’s agent-based ethics, in light of analysis of the grounding role of attitudes (...) in the evaluation of two core cases. In light of these discussions, it is argued that there are advantages to preserving the grounding of the appropriateness of attitudes in facts about their objects , while cutting such an agent-centered ethics away from a Kantian grounding. (shrink)

The literature on Hinduism and the environment is vast, and growing quickly. It has benefitted greatly from the work of scholars in a wide range of disciplines, such as religious studies, Asian studies, history, anthropology, political science, and so on. At the same time, much of this work fails to define key terms and make fundamental assumptions explicit. Consequently, it is at least initially difficult to engage with it philosophically. In the first section of this paper, I clarify a central, (...) implicit assumption that many of the authors working in this area share—namely, the assumption that a plausible environmental ethic must attribute direct moral standing to individual, living, non-human entities in nature, such as animals and plants. In the second section, I offer a preliminary defense of this assumption. In the third section, I respond to objections, and conclude that the argument is at least initially convincing. (shrink)

The history of ideas normally invoked by animal liberationists and their opponents cannot account for our basic wildlife protection attitudes, which actually developed out of the worldwide species?classification project begun by Linnaeus in the eighteenth century. These attitudes, formed in terms of a pre?evolutionary and pre?ecological belief in fixed and immutable species, were weakened to some degree by the rise of evolutionary theory and ecological science, since evolution provides a mechanism for the replacement of extinct species and depicts extinction as (...) natural, and ecology teaches that ecosystems naturally adjust when species are lost. Wildlife protection attitudes are preservationist in so far as they are concerned with the preservation of species and conservationist in so far as they are concerned with the lives of individual animals and populations. From all perspectives except that of animal liberation, wild animals are predominantly viewed in terms of instrumental value: as a means to the continuation of species, the maintenance of healthy ecosystems, and for various other anthropocentric purposes. These various perspectives fit together within an aesthetic conception of wildlife which is strongly Platonic. From an aesthetic standpoint, wild animals, as exemplications of various species, are more analogous to mass?produced toys, admired for their design or structure, than the natural equivalent of original works of art admired for their own sakes. (shrink)

Considerations of virtue and character appear from time to time in the agricultural biotechnology literature. Critics of the technologies often suggest that they are contrary to some virtue (usually humility) or do not fit with the image of ourselves and the human place in the world that we ought to embrace. In this article, I consider the aretaic or virtue-based objection that to engage in agricultural biotechnology is to exhibit arrogance, hubris, and disaffection. In section one, I discuss Gary Comstock's (...) treatment of this objection. In section two, I provide an alternative interpretation of the objection that more accurately reflects the concerns of those who offer the criticism than does Comstock's standard interpretation. In sections three and four, I assess the objection. I argue that despite its merits, the objection does not justify global opposition to agricultural biotechnology. Instead, it favors a limited endorsement position not unlike the one defended by Comstock. (shrink)

Sometimes, a group of people can produce a morally bad outcome despite each person’s individual act making no difference to whether the outcome is produced. Since each person’s act makes no difference, it seems the effects of the act cannot provide a reason not to perform it. This is problematic, because if each person acts in accordance with their reasons, each will presumably perform the act—and thus, the bad outcome will be brought about. I suggest that the key to solving (...) this problem is to make it true of each person that their act would in fact make a difference to the relevant outcome. Fortunately, I contend, this can be accomplished by each person simply forming a particular type of attitude. I argue that each person has an obligation to form the relevant attitude in collective action cases, on pain of being immoral or irrational. (shrink)

Since their emergence in the 1980s, environmental virtue ethics (EVEs) have aimed to provide an alternative to deontological and consequentialist approaches for guiding ecological actions in the context of the global environmental crisis. The deterioration of the ecological situation and the challenges in addressing collective action problems caused by global changes have heightened interest in these ethics. They offer a framework for meaningful individual actions independently of the commitment of other actors. However, by shifting the focus onto individuals, EVEs appear (...) to grapple with the tension between anthropocentrism and respect for nature, as well as between self-flourishing and concern for other living beings. This article argues that this difficulty is rooted in the neglect within EVEs of the communitarian aspect of ancient virtue ethics. Drawing from Baird Callicott’s ecocentric approach and Val Plumwood’s works, this paper explores the possibility of conceiving ecological communities as collective frameworks in which both public and private virtues are defined and practiced. (shrink)

In recent debates about how we ought to aesthetically appreciate nature, one important argument (the Respect Argument) claims that appropriate aesthetic appreciation of nature involves taking nature “on its own terms.” Some object that, while respect morally constrains the actions we take toward certain people or things, aesthetically appreciating nature does not involve action, but only mere contemplation. The Respect Argument therefore fails. In this article, I reply to this objection, arguing that the concept of respect can yield a kind (...) of moral constraint even upon contemplative activities such as aesthetic appreciation. (shrink)

In this paper I examine and assess an important developing trend in environmental ethics, environmental virtue ethics. I begin by providing a thorough survey of influential and representative contributions to environmental virtue ethics. Along with explaining these contributions to environmental virtue ethics I discuss their various strengths and weaknesses. In the second section I explain what I believe an environmental virtue ethic needs to do to complement other perspectives in environmental ethics. Then, using the best aspects of previously published work (...) along with some additional argument and analysis, I provide a concise portrait of an environmental virtue ethic that combines the advantages of Aristotelian virtue theory with the insights of contemporary environmental ethics. The environmental virtue ethic that emerges from this analysis and discussion is primarily a philosophical praxis. It provides a model of living well in which an understanding of and a concern for the environment human is constitutive of human flourishing. As a praxis this environmental virtue ethic articulates an account of human flourishing with a view to suggesting how a person can improve her own life by working to preserve wild nature. (shrink)

This article discusses the encounter between virtue ethics and environmental ethics and the ways in which environmental virtue ethics confronts nonhuman axiology and the controversial theme of moral anthropocentrism. It provides a reasoned review of the relevant literature and a historical–conceptual rendition of how environmental and virtue ethics came to converge as well as the ways in which they diverge. It explains that contrary to important worries voiced by some non-anthropocentric environmental ethicists, environmental virtue ethics enables and requires a rich (...) and nuanced engagement with nonhuman values of all sorts—intrinsic as well as extrinsic, moral as well as nonmoral, anthropocentric as well as non-anthropocentric—and neither presupposes nor implies moral anthropocentrism in its normativity. Finally, the article considers the fortunes of, and some challenges for, environmental virtue ethics in its application to the ethics of climate change, an increasingly central topic in environmental ethics. This article proceeds as follows: the first section introduces virtue ethics; the second section looks at axiological and normative themes in environmental ethics; the third section discusses environmental virtue ethics; and the fourth section considers its application to climate change. The fifth section draws some conclusions. (shrink)

Virtue ethics (VE), due to its eudaimonistic character, is very anthropocentric; thus the application of VE to environmental ethics (EE) seems to be in contradiction with EE’s critical opinion of human centeredness. In the paper, I prove the claim that there is a possibility of elaborating an environmental virtue ethics (EVE) that involves others (including nonhuman beings). I prove that claim through analyzing Ronald Sandler’s EVE, especially his concept of pluralistic virtue and a pluralistic approach to the aim of ethical (...) endeavor which is not only focused on personal flourishing but also helps others (including nonhumans) to flourish. I start my analysis with a close look at the application of anthropocentrism in VE, beginning by discerning the three types of anthropocentrism that are most often used in discussion on EE and EVE, namely ontological, epistemological, and ethical. Subsequently, I analyze the concept of personal flourishing, which is responsible for the anthropocentric/egoistic nature of VE, proving that VE is anthropocentric/egoistic only formally, not in its content, and as such is only a rational theory, not a moral one. (shrink)