Those residing in the Rocky Mountains enjoy both nature and culture in ways not characteristic of many inhabited landscapes. Landscapes elsewhere in the United States and in Europe involve a nature-culture synthesis. An original nature, once encountered by settlers, has been transformed by a dominating culture, and on the resulting landscape, there is little experience of primordial nature. On Rocky Mountain landscapes, the model is an ellipse with two foci. Much of the landscape is in synthesis, but there is much landscape where the principal determinant remains spontaneous nature, contrasted with the developed, rebuilt landscape in which the principal determinant is culture. Life in the Rockies permits both use and admiration of nature (fruited plains), with constant reminders (mountain majesties) that the human scale of values is rather tentatively localized in a more comprehensive environment.

Environmental artworks are not an aesthetic affront against nature because the aesthetic qualities of artworks are to some extent a function of other sorts of qualities, such as moral, social, or ecological qualities. By appealing to a new ecological paradigm, we can characterize environmental artworks as anthropogenic disturbances and evaluate them accordingly. Andrew Light’s model of ecological citizenship emphasizes public participation in ecological restoration projects, which are very similar to environmental artworks. Participation in the creation, appreciation, and criticism of environmental art can count as a form of ecological citizenship when these practices provoke public deliberation about environmental and other community-regarding values.

In opposition to modernist conceptions of the “self,” some environmental philosophers argue that human identity is first and foremost wild and natural because it is a product of an ontologically independent nature. They use evolutionary theory to create and maintain a division between our wild, natural human identity and our artifactual culture. Their position is supported by a misunderstanding of both early hominid evolution and artifacts. Artifacts are not the neutral instruments of human will, but exist with us in “economies” that constantly create unintended consequences. In terms of recent work in the field of philosophical anthropology, a reexamination of the evolutionary evidence suggests that our identity is not natural but completely artifactual. This artifactual identity provides us with new ways of conceptualizing our present ecological problems.

The philosophical literature on the ethical treatment of animals is largely divided between two distinct kinds of approaches: (1) the rights-based approach; and (2) the utilitarian approach. A third approach to the debate is possible. The general moral principle “It is wrong to cause unnecessary pain or suffering” is sufficient to render many human activities involving nonhuman animals morally wrong, provided an appropriate account of unnecessary is developed to give the principle its force. The moral principle can be easily applied to several general areas of human activity: food, research, and entertainment.

Victoria Davion in “Itch Scratching, Patio Building, and Pesky Flies: Biocentric Individualism Revisited” takes biocentric individualism to task, focusing in particular on my paper, “Reverence for Life as a Viable Environmental Virtue.” Davion levels a wide-range of criticisms, and concludes that we humans would be better off putting biocentric individualism aside to focus on more important issues and positions. Worries raised by Davion can be defended by elaborating on the position laid out in the original paper, including a background normative theory appealing to hypothetical virtuous ideal observers, upon which the position is drawn. Many of her criticisms appear to arise out of misreading or ignoring what is explicitly argued. When these misconstruals are corrected, it becomes clear that there is still space for a viable virtue of reverence for life.