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news and notes
1. Environmental Ethics: Volume > 25 > Issue: 3
NEWS AND NOTES
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features
2. Environmental Ethics: Volume > 25 > Issue: 3
Sanford S. Levy The Biophilia Hypothesis and Anthropocentric Environmentalism
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Much anthropocentric environmental argument is limited by a narrow conception of how humans can benefit from nature. E. O. Wilson defends a more robust anthropocentric environmentalism based on a broader understanding of these benefits. At the center of his argument is the biophilia hypothesis according to which humans have an evolutionarily crafted, aesthetic and spiritual affinity for nature. However,the “biophilia hypothesis” covers a variety of claims, some modest and some more extreme. Insofar as we have significant evidence for biophilia, it favors modest versions which do not support a particularly robust anthropocentric environmental ethic. A significantly more robust environmental ethic requires the most extreme version of the biophilia hypothesis, for which there is the least evidence.
3. Environmental Ethics: Volume > 25 > Issue: 3
Karyn Lai Conceptual Foundations for Environmental Ethics: A Daoist Perspective
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The concepts dao and de in the Daodejing may be evoked to support a distinctive and plausible account of environmental holism. Dao refers to the totality of particulars, including the relations that hold between them, and the respective roles and functions of each within the whole. De refers to the distinctiveness of each particular, realized meaningfully only within the context of its interdependence with others, and its situatedness within the whole. Together, dao and de provide support for an ethical holism that avoids sacrificing individuals for the sake of the whole. The integrity and stability of the whole are important not because the whole is an end-in-itself but because those conditions assist in preserving the well-being of the constituent parts. In other words, the ethical holism supported in the Daodejing does not present individuals and wholes in mutually exclusive terms, but sees them in symbiotic relation, allowing for events to be mutually beneficial, or mutually obstructive, to both. In addition, two other Daoist concepts, wuwei (non-action) and ziran (spontaneity), provide further support for this construction of holism. If the distinctiveness of particular individuals is valued, then unilateral or reductive norms which obliterate such individuality are inappropriate. In this regard, the methodology of wuwei allows for the idea of individuals developing spontaneously in relation to others. According to this view of holism,individuals manifest and realize their integrity in relation to others in the environmental context, achieving an outcome that is maximally co-possible within those limits, rather than one that is maximally beneficial only for particular individuals.
discussion papers
4. Environmental Ethics: Volume > 25 > Issue: 3
Len Olson Contemplating the Intentions of Anglers: The Ethicist’s Challenge
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There are theoretical difficulties involving the intentions of anglers that must be faced by anyone who wants to argue that sport fishing is ethically impermissible. Recent arguments have focused on what might be called the sadistic argument. This argument is fatally flawed because sport fishing is not a sadistic activity.
5. Environmental Ethics: Volume > 25 > Issue: 3
Ronald Sandler The External Goods Approach to Environmental Virtue Ethics
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If virtue ethics are to provide a legitimate alternative for reasoning about environmental issues, they must meet the same conditions of adequacy as any other environmental ethic. One such condition that most environmental ethicists insist upon is that an adequate environmental ethic provides a theoretical platform for consistent and justified critique of environmentally unsustainable practices and policies. The external goods approach seeks to establish that any genuinely virtuous agent will be disposed to promote ecosystem sustainability on the grounds that ecosystem sustainability is a necessary external good for cultivating the virtues and/or human flourishing. At most the external goods approach is able to provide an environmental ethic that in most contexts will require that any genuinely virtuous agent will have the goal of promoting a weak environmental sustainability. A better approach may be the substantive approach, which incorporates environmental concern and practice into the substance of the virtues, rather than as a boundary condition for any prospective virtue.
6. Environmental Ethics: Volume > 25 > Issue: 3
Dan Nees, Valerie E. Green, Kim Treadway Activism, Objectivism, and Environmental Politics
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Environmental activism, like all great activisms, is fundamentally normative, its principal beliefs contestable, its most powerful arguments rebuttable on the grounds that they are subjective. Environmental activists, as political tacticians with complex goals, have become skilled at presenting objectified versions of their own motivations when trying to broaden support for specific policies or take advantage of regulatory or legal opportunities. While instrumentally tempting and often expedient, this practice of objectifying moral arguments is in some respects disingenuous, and its successes as well as its failures bring with them characteristic risks, short-term and long-term.
book reviews
7. Environmental Ethics: Volume > 25 > Issue: 3
Steven Vogel Marx’s Ecology: Materialism and Nature
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8. Environmental Ethics: Volume > 25 > Issue: 3
Peter S. Wenz Environmental Philosophy: Reason, Nature, and Human Concern
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9. Environmental Ethics: Volume > 25 > Issue: 3
David Rothenberg Imperial Ecology: Environmental Order in the British Empire, 1895–1945
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10. Environmental Ethics: Volume > 25 > Issue: 3
David Baird Technology and the Good Life?
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11. Environmental Ethics: Volume > 25 > Issue: 3
Steven Frederic Lachman Technology and the Contested Meanings of Sustainability
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12. Environmental Ethics: Volume > 25 > Issue: 3
Knut A. Jacobsen Hinduism and Ecology: The Intersection of Earth, Sky, and Water
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