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Toby Svoboda [30]Toby J. Svoboda [1]
  1. Sulfate Aerosol Geoengineering: The Question of Justice.Toby Svoboda, Klaus Keller, Marlos Goes & Nancy Tuana - 2011 - Public Affairs Quarterly 25 (3):157-180.
    Some authors have called for increased research on various forms of geoengineering as a means to address global climate change. This paper focuses on the question of whether a particular form of geoengineering, namely deploying sulfate aerosols in the stratosphere to counteract some of the effects of increased greenhouse gas concentrations, would be a just response to climate change. In particular, we examine problems sulfate aerosol geoengineering (SAG) faces in meeting the requirements of distributive, intergenerational, and procedural justice. We argue (...)
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  2. Towards Integrated Ethical and Scientific Analysis of Geoengineering: A Research Agenda.Nancy Tuana, Ryan L. Sriver, Toby Svoboda, Roman Olson, Peter J. Irvine, Jacob Haqq-Misra & Klaus Keller - 2012 - Ethics, Policy and Environment 15 (2):136 - 157.
    Concerns about the risks of unmitigated greenhouse gas emissions are growing. At the same time, confidence that international policy agreements will succeed in considerably lowering anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions is declining. Perhaps as a result, various geoengineering solutions are gaining attention and credibility as a way to manage climate change. Serious consideration is currently being given to proposals to cool the planet through solar-radiation management. Here we analyze how the unique and nontrivial risks of geoengineering strategies pose fundamental questions at (...)
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  3. (1 other version)Why Moral Error Theorists Should Become Revisionary Moral Expressivists.Toby Svoboda - 2015 - Journal of Moral Philosophy (1):1-25.
    Moral error theorists hold that morality is deeply mistaken, thus raising the question of whether and how moral judgments and utterances should continue to be employed. Proposals include simply abolishing morality, adopting some revisionary fictionalist stance toward morality, and conserving moral judgments and utterances unchanged. I defend a fourth proposal, namely revisionary moral expressivism, which recommends replacing cognitivist moral judgments and utterances with non-cognitivist ones. Given that non-cognitivist attitudes are not truth apt, revisionary expressivism does not involve moral error. Moreover, (...)
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  4. Ethical and Technical Challenges in Compensating for Harm Due to Solar Radiation Management Geoengineering.Toby Svoboda & Peter Irvine - 2014 - Ethics, Policy and Environment 17 (2):157-174.
    As a response to climate change, geoengineering with solar radiation management has the potential to result in unjust harm. Potentially, this injustice could be ameliorated by providing compensation to victims of SRM. However, establishing a just SRM compensation system faces severe challenges. First, there is scientific uncertainty in detecting particular harmful impacts and causally attributing them to SRM. Second, there is ethical uncertainty regarding what principles should be used to determine responsibility and eligibility for compensation, as well as determining how (...)
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  5. Duties Regarding Nature: A Kantian Approach to Environmental Ethics.Toby Svoboda - 2012 - Kant Yearbook 4 (1):143-163.
    Many philosophers have objected to Kant’s account of duties regarding non-human nature, arguing that it does not ground adequate moral concern for non-human natural entities. However, the traditional interpretation of Kant on this issue is mistaken, because it takes him to be arguing merely that humans should abstain from animal cruelty and wanton destruction of flora solely because such actions could make one more likely to violate one’s duties to human beings. Instead, I argue, Kant’s account of duties regarding nature (...)
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  6. Aerosol Geoengineering Deployment and Fairness.Toby Svoboda - 2016 - Environmental Values 25 (1):51-68.
    If deployed, aerosol geoengineering (AG) could involve unfairness to both present and future parties. I discuss three broad risks of unfairness that an AG deployment policy might carry: (1) causing disproportionate harm to those least responsible for climate change, (2) burdening future parties with the costs and risks of AG, and (3) excluding some interested parties from contributing to AG decision-making. Yet despite these risks, it may be too hasty to reject AG deployment as a potential climate change policy. I (...)
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  7. The potential for climate engineering with stratospheric sulfate aerosol injections to reduce climate injustice.Toby Svoboda, Peter J. Irvine, Daniel Callies & Masahiro Sugiyama - 2018 - Journal of Global Ethics 14 (3):353-368.
    Climate engineering with stratospheric sulfate aerosol injections (SSAI) has the potential to reduce risks of injustice related to anthropogenic emissions of greenhouse gases. Relying on evidence from modeling studies, this paper makes the case that SSAI could have the potential to reduce many of the key physical risks of climate change identified by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Such risks carry potential injustice because they are often imposed on low-emitters who do not benefit from climate change. Because SSAI has (...)
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  8. Geoengineering and Non-Ideal Theory.David R. Morrow & Toby Svoboda - 2016 - Public Affairs Quarterly 30 (1):85-104.
    The strongest arguments for the permissibility of geoengineering (also known as climate engineering) rely implicitly on non-ideal theory—roughly, the theory of justice as applied to situations of partial compliance with principles of ideal justice. In an ideally just world, such arguments acknowledge, humanity should not deploy geoengineering; but in our imperfect world, society may need to complement mitigation and adaptation with geoengineering to reduce injustices associated with anthropogenic climate change. We interpret research proponents’ arguments as an application of a particular (...)
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  9. Is Aerosol Geoengineering Ethically Preferable to Other Climate Change Strategies?Toby Svoboda - 2012 - Ethics and the Environment 17 (2):111-135.
    In this paper, I address the question of whether aerosol geoengineering (AG) ought to be deployed as a response to climate change. First, I distinguish AG from emissions mitigation, adaptation, and other geoengineering strategies. Second, I discuss advantages and disadvantages of AG, including its potential to result in substantial harm to some persons. Third, I critique three arguments against AG deployment, suggesting reasons why these arguments should be rejected. Fourth, I consider an argument that, in scenarios in which all available (...)
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  10. Duties Regarding Nature: A Kantian Environmental Ethic.Toby Svoboda - 2015 - Routledge.
    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 (...)
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  11. A Kantian Approach to the Moral Considerability of Non-human Nature.Toby Svoboda - 2023 - Journal of Agricultural and Environmental Ethics 36 (4):1-16.
    A Kantian approach can establish that non-human natural entities are morally considerable and that humans have duties to them. This is surprising, because most environmental ethicists have either rejected or overlooked Kant when it comes to this issue. Inspired by an argument of Christine Korsgaard, I claim that both humans and non-humans have a natural good, which is whatever allows an entity to function well according to the kind of entity it is. I argue that humans are required to confer (...)
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  12. Climate Engineering and Human Rights.Toby Svoboda - 2019 - Environmental Politics 28 (3):397-416.
    Climate change threatens to infringe the human rights of many. Taking an optimistic stance, climate engineering might reduce the extent to which such rights are infringed, but it might also bring about other rights infringements. This Forum, leading off the special issue on climate engineering governance, engages three scholars in a discussion of three core issues at the intersection of human rights and climate engineering. The Forum is divided into three sections, each authored by a different scholar and discussing a (...)
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  13. Why there is no Evidence for the Intrinsic Value of Non-Humans.Toby Svoboda - 2011 - Ethics and the Environment 16 (2):25-36.
    The position of some environmental ethicists that some non-humans have intrinsic value as a mind-independent property is seriously flawed. This is because human beings lack any evidence for this position and hence are unjustified in holding it. For any possible world that is alleged to have this kind of intrinsic value, it is possible to conceive an observationally identical world that lacks intrinsic value. Hence, one is not justified in inferring the intrinsic value of some non-human from any set of (...)
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  14. A Reconsideration of Indirect Duties Regarding Non-Human Organisms.Toby Svoboda - 2014 - Ethical Theory and Moral Practice 17 (2):311-323.
    According to indirect duty views, human beings lack direct moral duties to non-human organisms, but our direct duties to ourselves and other humans give rise to indirect duties regarding non-humans. On the orthodox interpretation of Kant’s account of indirect duties, one should abstain from treating organisms in ways that render one more likely to violate direct duties to humans. This indirect duty view is subject to several damaging objections, such as that it misidentifies the moral reasons we have to treat (...)
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  15. Environmental Philosophy as A Way of Life.Toby Svoboda - 2016 - Ethics and the Environment 21 (1):39-60.
    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 (...)
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  16. The Ethics of Climate Engineering: Solar Radiation Management and Non-Ideal Justice.Toby Svoboda - 2017 - Routledge.
    This book analyzes major ethical issues surrounding the use of climate engineering, particularly solar radiation management techniques, which have the potential to reduce some risks of anthropogenic climate change but also carry their own risks of harm and injustice. The book argues that we should approach the ethics of climate engineering via "non-ideal theory," which investigates what justice requires given the fact that many parties have failed to comply with their duty to mitigate greenhouse gas emissions. Specifically, it argues that (...)
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  17. Is Climate Change Morally Good from Non-Anthropocentric Perspectives?Toby Svoboda & Jacob Haqq-Misra - 2018 - Ethics, Policy and Environment 21 (2):215-228.
    Anthropogenic climate change poses some difficult ethical quandaries for non-anthropocentrists. While it is hard to deny that climate change is a substantial moral ill, many types of non-human organisms stand to benefit from climate change. Modelling studies provide evidence that net primary productivity (NPP) could be substantially boosted, both regionally and globally, as a result of warming from increased concentrations of greenhouse gases. The same holds for deployment of certain types of climate engineering, or large-scale, technological modifications of the global (...)
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  18. The Ethics of Geoengineering: Moral Considerability and the Convergence Hypothesis.Toby Svoboda - 2012 - Journal of Applied Philosophy 29 (3):243-256.
    Although it could avoid some harmful effects of climate change, sulphate aerosol geoengineering (SAG), or injecting sulphate aerosols into the stratosphere in order to reflect incoming solar radiation, threatens substantial harm to humans and non-humans. I argue that SAG is prima facie ethically problematic from anthropocentric, animal liberationist, and biocentric perspectives. This might be taken to suggest that ethical evaluations of SAG can rely on Bryan Norton's convergence hypothesis, which predicts that anthropocentrists and non-anthropocentrists will agree to implement the same (...)
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  19. A Place for Kant's Schematism in Glauben und Wissen.Toby J. Svoboda - 2018 - Idealistic Studies 48 (3):237-256.
    In Glauben und Wissen, Hegel criticizes Kant for drawing a deep division between sensibility and understanding. Hegel suggests that Kant’s faculty of productive imagination is a step toward uniting intuition and concept in an original unity out of which the two arise, but this requires him to treat the productive imagination in ways Kant would not approve. I argue that Kant’s doctrine of the schematism offers an advance on the productive imagination when it comes to solving the intuition/concept dualism Hegel (...)
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  20. Plato’s Ion as an Ethical Performance.Toby Svoboda - 2021 - In Garry L. Hagberg (ed.), Fictional Worlds and the Moral Imagination. Palgrave-Macmillan. pp. 3-18.
    Plato’s Ion is primarily ethical rather than epistemological, investigating the implications of transgressing one’s own epistemic limits. The figures of Socrates and Ion are juxtaposed in the dialogue, Ion being a laughable, comic, ethically inferior character who cannot recognize his own epistemic limits, Socrates being an elevated, serious, ethically superior character who exhibits disciplined epistemic restraint. The point of the dialogue is to contrast Ion’s laughable state with the serious state of Socrates. In this sense, the dialogue’s central argument is (...)
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  21. Solar Radiation Management and Comparative Climate Justice.Toby Svoboda - 2016 - In Christopher J. Preston (ed.), Climate Justice and Geoengineering: Ethics and Policy in the Atmospheric Anthropocene. Rowman & Littlefield International. pp. 3-14.
    In line with Christopher Preston’s argument in the introduction to this volume, I argue here that, although it is helpful to identify potential injustices associated with SRM, it is also crucial both to evaluate how SRM compares to other available options and to consider empirical conditions under which deployment might occur. In arguing for this view, I rely on a distinction between two types of question: (1) whether SRM would produce just or unjust outcomes in some case and (2) whether (...)
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  22. Thoreau’s Walden: Epicureanism or Stoicism?Toby Svoboda - 2021 - The Concord Saunterer 29 (1):132-146.
    This paper argues against Pierre Hadot's view that Thoreau in Walden displays Epicurean and Stoic traits in roughly equal proportion. Of the two schools, he is much closer to the latter. However, the similarities between Thoreau and the Stoic are practical or generic. In terms of ethical practices, Thoreau exhibits many of the qualities found in the Stoic school. However, the theoretical discourse used to justify those practices is different in each case. If one is to say that Thoreau is (...)
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  23. Response to Commentaries on ‘Ethical and Technical Challenges in Compensating for Harm Due to Solar Radiation Management Geoengineering’.Toby Svoboda & Peter Irvine - 2015 - Ethics, Policy and Environment 18 (1):103-105.
    We thank the commentators for their interesting and helpful feedback on our previously published target article (Svoboda and Irvine, 2014). One of our objectives in that article was to identify areas of uncertainty that would need to be addressed in crafting a just SRM compensation system. The commentators have indicated some possible ways of reducing such uncertainty. Although we cannot respond to all their points due to limitations of space, we wish to address here the more pressing criticisms the commentators (...)
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  24. The Role of Reasoning in Pragmatic Morality.Toby Svoboda - 2021 - Contemporary Pragmatism 18 (1):1-17.
    Charles Sanders Peirce offers a number of arguments against the rational application of theory to morality, suggesting instead that morality should be grounded in instinct. Peirce maintains that we currently lack the scientific knowledge that would justify a rational structuring of morality. This being the case, philosophically generated moralities cannot be otherwise than dogmatic and dangerous. In this paper, I contend that Peirce’s critique of what I call “dogmatic-philosophical morality” should be taken very seriously, but I also claim that the (...)
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  25. Foucault on Correspondence as a Technique of the Self.Toby Svoboda - 2020 - Genealogy + Critique 6 (1).
    This paper begins with a discussion of Foucault's examination of Seneca's epistles in his late essay, "Self Writing." I argue that Foucault offers an accurate and interesting account of the practices Seneca employs in his epistles pursuant to his art of living. This paper then considers Foucault's interpretation of Seneca's art of living as an aesthetics of existence. I argue that this interpretation is unsatisfactory, instead suggesting that Seneca's art of living is a plausible response to the problem of suffering. (...)
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  26. Hybridizing Moral Expressivism and Moral Error Theory.Toby Svoboda - 2011 - Journal of Value Inquiry 45 (1):37-48.
    Philosophers should consider a hybrid meta-ethical theory that includes elements of both moral expressivism and moral error theory. Proponents of such an expressivist-error theory hold that all moral utterances are either expressions of attitudes or expressions of false beliefs. Such a hybrid theory has two advantages over pure expressivism, because hybrid theorists can offer a more plausible account of the moral utterances that seem to be used to express beliefs, and hybrid theorists can provide a simpler solution to the Frege-Geach (...)
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  27. Climate change, individual emissions and agent-regret.Toby Svoboda - 2020 - Analysis 80 (1):84-89.
    Some philosophers are skeptical that individuals are morally blameworthy for their own greenhouse gas emissions. Although an individual’s emissions may contribute to climate change that is on the whole very harmful, perhaps that contribution is too trivial to render it morally impermissible. Against this view, there have been attempts to show that an individual’s lifetime emissions cause non-trivial harm, but in this paper I will consider what follows if it is true that an individual is not blameworthy for her emissions. (...)
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  28. Geoengineering, Agent-Regret, and the Lesser of Two Evils Argument.Toby Svoboda - 2015 - Environmental Ethics 37 (2):207-220.
    According to the “Lesser of Two Evils Argument,” deployment of solar radiation management (SRM) geoengineering in a climate emergency would be morally justified because it likely would be the best option available. A prominent objection to this argument is that a climate emergency might constitute a genuine moral dilemma in which SRM would be impermissible even if it was the best option. However, while conceiving of a climate emergency as a moral dilemma accounts for some ethical concerns about SRM, it (...)
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  29. A Philosophical Defense of Misanthropy.Toby Svoboda - 2022 - New York: Routledge.
    This book argues that it can be both reasonable and appropriate to adopt a certain kind of misanthropy. The author defends a cognitivist version of misanthropy, an attitude whose central feature is the judgment that humanity is morally bad. Misanthropy is often dismissed on moral grounds. Many people hold that malice toward human persons is problematic and vulnerable to moral objections. In this book, the author advocates for cognitivist misanthropy. He defends an Asymmetry Thesis, according to which a morally bad (...)
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  30. Engineering the Climate: The Ethics of Solar Radiation Management. [REVIEW]Toby Svoboda - 2017 - Environmental Ethics 39 (1):101-104.
    This important edited collection addresses ethical issues associated with solar radiation management (SRM), a category of climate engineering techniques that would increase the planet’s reflectivity in order to offset some of the impacts of anthropogenic climate change. Such techniques include injecting sulfate aerosols into the stratosphere or brightening marine clouds with seawater. Although SRM has the potential to cool the planet by reducing the amount of incoming solar radiation absorbed by the planet, it raises a wide array of difficult and (...)
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  31. Christine Korsgaard, Fellow Creatures: Our Obligations to the Other Animals[REVIEW]Toby Svoboda - 2019 - Environmental Values 28 (6):763-765.
    Immanuel Kant infamously denies that non-rational entities--a class that includes all non-human animals (hereafter “animals”)--have moral standing. He claims that human beings have only indirect duties with regard to animals. Roughly put, on his view we can have moral reasons to treat animals in certain ways, but these reasons depend entirely on duties we owe to ourselves and other human beings. Arguably because of this stance, most animal ethicists have had little use for Kant. Christine Korsgaard’s most recent book, Fellow (...)
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