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news and notes
1. Environmental Ethics: Volume > 18 > Issue: 4
NEWS AND NOTES
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features
2. Environmental Ethics: Volume > 18 > Issue: 4
Francisco Benzoni Rolston’s Theological Ethic
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The centerpiece of Holmes Rolston, III’s environmental ethic is his objective value theory. It is ultimately grounded not in the Cartesian duality between subject and object, but in the divine. It is not his value theory, but rather his anthropology that is the weak link in an ethic in which he attempts to weave together the natural, human, and divine spheres. With a richer, more fully developed theological anthropology, Rolston could more deeply penetrate and critique those aspects of the present ways of being-in-the-world that are environmentally destructive.
3. Environmental Ethics: Volume > 18 > Issue: 4
J. Baird Callicott Do Deconstructive Ecology and Sociobiology Undermine Leopold’s Land Ethic?
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Recent deconstructive developments in ecology (doubts about the existence of unified communities and ecosystems, the diversity-stability hypothesis, and a natural homeostasis or “balance of nature”; and an emphasis on “chaos,” “perturbation,” and directionless change in living nature) and the advent of sociobiology (selfish genes) may seem to undermine the scientific foundations of environmental ethics, especially the Leopold land ethic. A reassessment of the Leopold land ethic in light of these developments (and vice versa) indicates that the land ethic is still a viable environmental ethic, if judiciously updated and revised.
discussion papers
4. Environmental Ethics: Volume > 18 > Issue: 4
A. Dionys de Leeuw Contemplating the Interests of Fish: The Angler’s Challenge
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I examine the morality of sport fishing by focusing on the respect that anglers show for the interests of fish compared to the respect that hunters show for their game. Angling is a form of hunting because of the strong link between these two activities in literature, in management, and in the individual’s participation in both angling and hunting, and in the similarity of both activities during the process of pursuing an animal in order to control it. Fish are similar in many ways to animals that are hunted, including their interests in survival and in avoiding pain. These interests need to be considered by anglers for moral reasons. All hunters and anglers value their sport with animals more than they respect the lives of animals they pursue. Hunters are, therefore, similar to anglers in the respect that they show for the survival interests of their game animals. Hunters, however, are significantly different from anglers in the respect that they show for an animal’s interest in avoiding pain and suffering. While hunters make every effort to reduce pain and suffering in their game animals, anglers purposefully inflict these conditions on fish. These similarities and differences have three important consequences: (1) The moral argument justifying the killing of animals for sport in hunting must apply to all of angling as well. (2) Angling, unlike hunting, requires a second justification for the intentional infliction of avoidable pain and suffering in fish. (3) If ethical hunters hold true to their principle of avoiding all suffering in the animals that they pursue, then hunters must reject all sports fishing.
5. Environmental Ethics: Volume > 18 > Issue: 4
Hugh Williams What is Good Forestry?: An Ethical Examination of Forest Policy and Practice in New Brunswick
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Public concern for ecological and environmental values is making the job of forest management increasingly complex and uncertain and is gradually undermining the domination of timber value as the primary organizing goal of forest policy. The key question is how to balance the pursuit of short-term economic self-interests with the long-term public good. I articulate a moral theory that affirms the existence of a public good that is understood teleologically as an objective purpose to be pursued. I argue that there is a connection between the philosophical and moral concept of creativity and the scientific concept of biological diversity. I suggest that these concepts are both linked to the political question of the public good. The maximization of the ethical good of creativity according to this theory is linked to the maximization of the public good. In forestry, the management of forest ecosystems in order to maximize their creative good is linked to the maximization of the public good and vice versa. This ethical theory isessentially a religious one in the neoclassical theistic tradition, in which authentic human existence is defined in terms of our relationship to reality and a metaphysically and cosmologically informed world view.
6. Environmental Ethics: Volume > 18 > Issue: 4
Eric H. Reitan Deep Ecology and the Irrelevance of Morality
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Both Arne Naess and Warwick Fox have argued that deep ecology, in terms of “Selfrealization,” is essentially nonmoral. I argue that the attainment of the ecological Self does not render morality in the richest sense “superfluous,” as Fox suggests. To the contrary, the achievement of the ecological Self is a precondition for being a truly moral person, both from the perspective of a robust Kantian moral frameworkand from the perspective of Aristotelian virtue ethics. The opposition between selfregard and morality is a false one. The two are the same. The ecological philosophy of Naess and Fox is an environmental ethic in the grand tradition of moral philosophy.
book reviews
7. Environmental Ethics: Volume > 18 > Issue: 4
Richard Owsley Contesting Earth’s Future: Radical Ecology and Postmodernity
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8. Environmental Ethics: Volume > 18 > Issue: 4
Val Plumwood Mutant Message Down Under
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comment
9. Environmental Ethics: Volume > 18 > Issue: 4
Frederik Kaufman Callicott on Native American Attitudes
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10. Environmental Ethics: Volume > 18 > Issue: 4
J. Baird Callicott American Indian Land Ethics
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11. Environmental Ethics: Volume > 18 > Issue: 4
Greta Gaard Women, Animals, and Ecofeminist Critique
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12. Environmental Ethics: Volume > 18 > Issue: 4
Lori Gruen On the Oppression of Women and Animals
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index
13. Environmental Ethics: Volume > 18 > Issue: 4
INDEX 1996
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referees
14. Environmental Ethics: Volume > 18 > Issue: 4
REFEREES 1996
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features
15. Environmental Ethics: Volume > 18 > Issue: 3
Andrew Light, Eric S. Higgs The Politics of Ecological Restoration
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Discussion of ecological restoration in environmental ethics has tended to center on issues about the nature and character of the values that may or may not be produced by restored landscapes. In this paper we shift the philosophical discussion to another set of issues: the social and political context in which restorations are performed. We offer first an evaluation of the political issues in the practice of restoration in general and second an assessment of the political context into which restoration is moving. The former focuses on the inherent participatory capacity at the heart of restoration; the latter is concerned with the commodified (primarily in the United States) and nationalized (primarily in Canada) uses to which restoration is being put. By comparing these two areas of inquiry we provide a foundation for a critical assessment of the politics of restoration based on the politics in restoration.
16. Environmental Ethics: Volume > 18 > Issue: 3
Angus Taylor Animal Rights and Human Needs
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The idea that animal rights can be married to environmental ethics is still a minority opinion. The land ethic of Aldo Leopold, as interpreted by J. Baird Callicott, remains fundamentally at odds with the ascription of substantial rights to (nonhuman) animals. Similarly, Laura Westra’s notion of “respectful hostility,” which attempts to reconcile a holistic environmental ethic with “respect” for animals, has no place for animal rights.In this paper, I argue that only by ascribing rights to sentient animals can an environmental ethic avoid an unacceptable degree of anthropocentrism because only a rights-based environmental ethic can prohibit humans from significantly interfering with sentient animals when human vital needs are not at stake. A rights view that permits significant interference when it is required for the satisfaction of human vital needs avoids problems that otherwise plague a rights view. The “vital-needs rights view” reconciles the rights of animals with the satisfaction of human vital needs—including the vital need to have a flourishing natural environment—suggesting a possible alliance between animal rights and deep ecology and revealing the connections among vital needs, capitalism, and environmental degradation.
17. Environmental Ethics: Volume > 18 > Issue: 3
Michael Lockwood End Value, Evaluation, and Natural Systems
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I develop a general framework for natural and human values based on the position that end value is constructed by persons, but not wholly referent to them, identify and analyze three hierarchically related levels of end value in relation to the functional values which support them and the held and ascribed values generated by entities possessing teleological value, use this framework to indicate the context in which economic values should be located, and assess the implications of the framework for environmental policy and future valuation work.
discussion papers
18. Environmental Ethics: Volume > 18 > Issue: 3
J. Mark Morgan Resources, Recreationists, and Revenues: A Policy Dilemma for Today’s State Park Systems
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Many state park systems across the U.S. are facing a controversial policy issue over the three R’s: resources, recreationists, and revenues. It is becoming increasingly difficult for state parks to protect the resources and allow for public enjoyment, mainly because of political demands for increased revenue. As a result, many state park systems have built elaborate facilities for visitors. Are these park improvement projects motivated by a sincere desire to satisfy diverse user groups or simply another way of generating revenue for state governments? What are the “hidden” costs of park development? I discuss the policy implications for state park management, along with some philosophical issues concerning the utilization of publicly owned natural resources.
19. Environmental Ethics: Volume > 18 > Issue: 3
Carmen Velayos Castelo Reflections on Stoic Logocentrism
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William O. Stephens is to be applauded for the way in which he presents and analyzes some paradigmatic Stoic arguments, and thus defends Stoicism from the misplaced charges of Jim Cheney. Nonetheless, Stephens’ individualist interpretation of what he calls Stoic “logocentrism” obscures key features of the Stoics’ theory of value and their related ethic and metaphysic. Once the Stoics are allowedto speak for themselves, it emerges that they adhered to a holistic axiology, that for them virtue lay in conformity with cosmic nature, and that the standard charges of anthropocentrism and blindness to natural beauty, often wielded by environmental philosophers against them, are misguided.
20. Environmental Ethics: Volume > 18 > Issue: 3
Keekok Lee The Source and Locus of Intrinsic Value: A Reexamination
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In the literature of environmental philosophy, the single most potent argument that has been made against the claim that nature may possess intrinsic value in any objective sense is the Humean thesis of projectivism and its associated view that human consciousness is the source of all values. Theorists, in one way or another, have to face up to this challenge. For instance, J. Baird Callicott upholds this Humean foundation to modern Western philosophy. However, by distinguishing between the source and locus of value, he makes it possible to argue that nature is the locus of intrinsic value without at the same time compromising the thesis that human consciousness is the source of all values. On the other hand, Holmses Rolston, III, another eminent environmental philosopher, criticizes the distinction as well as challenges the Humean foundation itself. In this article, I attempt to resolve the disagreement between Callicott and Rolston over this particular distinction, thereby doing justice to the insights which each theorist, undoubtedly, has brought to bear on the issue of intrinsic value, at least as far as individual organisms is concerned. However, I am also critical of both for having failed to draw out the full implications behind certain crucial distinctions that should be made about the notion of intrinsic value itself.