Everything we can refer to – physical, biological, psychological, or a human-created entity, institution, activity, or expression of some kind, and whether constituted of brute physical stuff or less tangible complexes of social arrangements, ideas, images, movements, and so on – can be considered in terms of its form of organization or structure. This applies even if what we want to say about these things is that they represent a disorganized or unstructured example of their kind or else that they (...) simply lack any discernible form of internal organization or structure in the sense that their internal structure is undifferentiated or homogenous as opposed to being ‘all over the place’. We therefore live in a world in which everything can be characterized, either positively or negatively, in terms of its form of organization or structure. (The terms ‘form of organization’ and ‘structure’ can be used interchangeably in the context of this paper, although I will tend to use the term ‘structure’ in what follows.). (shrink)

For almost 50 years, the Council of Europe through a series of documents has been helping to build up a set of rules, principles, and strategies related to culture, environment, ethics, and sustainable development. At the moment, one of the most important aims of the Council of Europe’s agenda deals with the elaboration of the General Principles for the Protection of the Environment and Sustainable Development, as raised in document CO-DBP (2003)2 related to the environmental subject. The intention of the (...) Council of Europe is to encourage national authorities to implement these General Principles into their national environmental policies. These principles should have an important effect, especially in those countries which are new members of the European Union. The primary target of this paper is the study of these principles and the setting of their entailed implications in order to establish a relation between values and policy making. Quite often, the conclusions adopted by the agreements generated within the framework of the European Union are controversial. Therefore, a study aiming to lay the foundations of these principles will make the exchange of ideas easier, providing a wider and more detailed scope in the European environmental policy. (shrink)

One of the hardest questions in environmental philosophy is the debate between anthropocentric and ecocentric accounts of value. I argue that a great deal of the disagreement in this debate arises from a) misunderstanding of the concepts used in the debate and b) unfruitful reading of vaguely framed arguments. The conceptual and argumentative analysis of the debate shows that many arguments can be ignored as they either contain conceptual confusion or concern issues that are actually irrelevant to the centrism division. (...) However, there are arguments that maintain their relevance, and these arguments have important consequences on the practical environmental ethics. Hence, contrary to Bryan G. Norton’s optimism about the “centrism convergence” on the level of practical environmentalism, I contend that disagreements prevail even in practice. As a solution, I suggest that the centrism debaters should focus on the practical level and work to find space for agreement. (shrink)

In this article, I propose a business paradigm that allows and enables the integration of environmental ethics into business decisions while creating a competitive advantage through the use of an ethical framework based on classical American pragmatism. Environmental ethics could be useful as an alternative paradigm for business ethics by offering new perspectives and methodologies to grant consideration of the natural environment. An approach based on classical American pragmatism provides a superior framework for businesses by focusing on experimentation and innovation, (...) driving a long-term focus, and providing actionable clarity. Under a pragmatic approach to ethics, the choice for sustainability becomes self-evident for business performance and moral reasons. (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)

This article explores the representation of fish in ecological discourse through analysis of the recently published Millennium Ecosystem Assessment synthesis report. The analysis utilizes an ecological framework based on "deep ecology" , examining how the discourse of the MA asserts or denies the intrinsic worth of fish. The discursive construction of fish is particularly relevant given the massive expansion of the aquaculture industry, which is having a negative impact on ecosystems and the fish themselves, particularly the Atlantic salmon. There are (...) alternatives to traditional ecological discourses, such as the lyrical discourse drawn on by Rachel Carson in her description of salmon. The article concludes with a discussion of the potential of such discourses to represent reality in ways that are more comparable with the welfare of the fish and the protection of ecosystems. (shrink)

This paper combines the interests of geography, anthropology, and philosophy in order to examine the factors that affect environmental ethics. In particular, this paper examines some of the geographical variables that impact tribal attitudes toward bison in the contemporary world. These factors influence the position of bison within the environmental and agricultural landscape. An emphasis is placed upon networks, places, and movement in order to show how these variables redefine what is acceptable and ethical with regard to relations with nonhuman (...) animals. In alternating fashion, the tribal networks discussed include diasporic movements, food chains, and individual life paths. In some cases, these networks distinguish tribal communities from non-tribal society while also distinguishing tribes from one another. In other instances, these networks bring tribal and non-tribal communities into greater agreement. This cartographic ethic differs substantially from modern scientific proscriptions, which characterize ethics in universal terms. (shrink)