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1. Environmental Ethics: Volume > 1 > Issue: 2
Susan L. Flader Leopold’s Some Fundamentals of Conservation: A Commentary
2. Environmental Ethics: Volume > 1 > Issue: 2
Michael Ruse Sociobiology and Behavior
3. Environmental Ethics: Volume > 1 > Issue: 2
Paul F. Schmidt Wilderness as Sacred Space
4. Environmental Ethics: Volume > 1 > Issue: 2
Aldo Leopold Some Fundamentals of Conservation in the Southwest
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Leopold first discusses the conservation of natural resources in the southwestern United States in economic tenns, stressing, in particular, erosion and aridity. He then concludes his analysis with a discussion of the moral issues involved, developing his general position within the context of P. D. Ouspenky’s early philosophy of organism.
5. Environmental Ethics: Volume > 1 > Issue: 2
John B. Cobb, Christian Existence in a World of Limits
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The new awareness of limits profoundly challenges dominant habits of mind and styles of life. Although Christians have largely adopted these now inappropriate habits and styles, the Christian tradition has resources for a more appropriate response. Among these resources are Christian realism, the eschatological attitude, the discernment of Christ, the way of the cross, and prophetie vision. Finally, faith offers freedom from the burden of guilt of failing to live in a way appropriate to our newly perceived reality.
6. Environmental Ethics: Volume > 1 > Issue: 2
Don Howard Commoner on Reductionism
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Barry Commoner has argued that the environmental failure of modern technology is due in large part to the reductionistic character ofmodern science, especially its biological component where the reductionist approach has triumphed in molecular biology. I claim, first, that Commoner has confused reduction in the sense of the reduction of one theory to another with what is better called analysis, or the strategy of breaking a whoie into its parts in order to understand the properties of the whole, this latter being the actual target of his attack. I then argue that his criticisms of molecular biology fail since each of the properties of the cell which he claims cannot be understood in an analytic fashion, such as reproduction, development and inheritance, can be so understood, and that, in fact, each of his putatively nonanalytic accounts of these properties is the result of analysis. Similarly, Commoner’s claim that ecosystenls possess properties that cannot be understood analytically is refuted by comparing ecosystems with automobiles, which Commoner acknowledges are susceptible to analysis, and by showing that there are no essential differences between the two. FinaIly, l observe that while it is false that ecosystems canna! be understood in analytic terms, it is true that they are not usually thus understood, and that the explanation for this is not that scientists subscribe to amistaken philosophy, but that our social institutions for the teaching and application of science do not adequately stress the importance of exploring the connections between the parts of such complex wholes.
7. Environmental Ethics: Volume > 1 > Issue: 2
NEWS AND NOTES
8. Environmental Ethics: Volume > 1 > Issue: 2
Eugene C. Hargrove Nature’s Economy: The Roots of Ecology
9. Environmental Ethics: Volume > 1 > Issue: 2
Gary Weatherford The Evolution of National Wildlife Law
10. Environmental Ethics: Volume > 1 > Issue: 2
Richard A. Watson Self-Consciousness and the Rights of Nonhuman Animals and Nature
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A reciprocity framework is presented as an analysis of morality, and to explain and justify the attribution of moral rights and duties. To say an entity has rights makes sense only if that entity can fulfill reciprocal duties, i.e., can act as a moral agent. To be a moral agent an entity must (1) be self-conscious, (2) understand general principles, (3) have free will, (4) understand the given principles, (5) be physicallycapable of acting, and (6) intend to act according to or against the given principles. This framework is foundational both to empirical and supernatural positions which distinguish a human milieu, which is moral, from a nonhuman milieu, which is not. It also provides a basis for evaluating four standard arguments for the rights ofnonhuman animals and nature-the ecological, the prudential, the sentimental, and the contractual. If reciprocity is taken as being central to the general concepts of rights and duties, then few animals, and no natural objects or natural systems, have rights and duties in an intrinsic or primary sense, although they may be assigned them in an extrinsic or secondary sense as a convenience in connection with human interests. Nevertheless, there are some animals besides humans - e.g., especially chimpanzees, gorillas, dolphins, and dogs - which, in accordance with good behavioral evidence, are moral entities, and sometimes moral agents. On the grounds of reciprocity, they merit, at aminimum, intrinsic or primary rights to life and to relief from unnecessary suffering.
11. Environmental Ethics: Volume > 1 > Issue: 3
Kathleen M. Squadrito Locke’s View of Dominion
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In this paper l examine the extent to which Locke’s reIigious and poIiticaI ideoIogy might be considered to exempIify values which have Ied to environmentaI deterioration. In the Two Treatises of Governlnent, Locke appears to hold a view of dominion which compromises humanitarian principles for economic gain. He often asserts that man has a right to accumulate property and to use land and animals for comfort and convenience. This right issues from God’s decree that men subdue the Earth and have dominion over every living thing. Although abuse of the environment appears to be justified in Locke’s political works, I argue that there are many passages in this work that cast doubt on such an interpretation. Further , the view of dominion adopted in Locke's educational work is one of responsible stewardship. On the whole, his view stresses man’s duties and obligation towards all creation.
12. Environmental Ethics: Volume > 1 > Issue: 3
NEWS AND NOTES (2)
13. Environmental Ethics: Volume > 1 > Issue: 3
R.J. Nelson Ethics and Environmental Decision Making
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Environmental ethics tends to be dominated by the idea that the right environmental actions require a change in the value systems of many people. I argue that the “rebirth” approach is perverse in that moral attitudes are not easily changed by moral suasion. A properly ethical approach must begin where we are, as moderately moral people desiring the best for all. The real ethical problem is to develop procedures for collectively defining environmental ends that will be fair to the parties participating in the decision process. This idea is essentially utilitarian, and depends on the maximization of expected social utility. This type of environmental ethics is contrasted with current theories of social choice in welfare economics and with Rawls’ theory of justice as fairness.
14. Environmental Ethics: Volume > 1 > Issue: 3
Archie J. Bahm Marx and Engels on Ecology
15. Environmental Ethics: Volume > 1 > Issue: 3
Eugene C. Hargrove The Historical Foundations of American Environmental Attitudes
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John Passmore has claimed that American environmental attitudes are incompatible with Western traditions and Western civilization: they arose out of a Romantic transvaluation of values in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, and today are defensible only in terms of antiscientific nature mysticism and Oriental religions. I argue that these attitudes developed out of an intricate interplay between Western science and art over the last three centuries, and are, therefore, of Western, not Eastern, origin. Moreover, they are apart of scientific and aesthetic changes so broad and fundamental that, despite Passmore’s prediction that they are unlikely to survive into the twenty-first century, they cannot be regarded lightly as a passing fad, and probably have already found a permanent place in Western thought and values.
16. Environmental Ethics: Volume > 1 > Issue: 3
R. V. Young, Jr. A Conservative View of Environmental Affairs
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The contemporary debate over man’s relation to his natural environment raises many complex issues which have thrown our familiar liberal and conservative political alignments into disarray. Although ecology is now generally regarded as a liberal cause with conservatives supporting commercial and industrial expansion, until very recently liberals almost unanimously championed industrialization andtechnological advance. Resistance to “progress” was the folly of only the most eccentric conservatives. Today, both liberal proponents of environmental protection and conservative defenders of business and industry argue on merely prudential grounds: each side maintains that only the adoption of its own program can save human civilization from collapse, or even the race from extinction. Extremely radical environmentalists have based their arguments on nloral principle: humanity is just one species among many, and men are, therefore, morally obligated to respect the rights of other organisms and of the ecosystem as a whole. This position, however, is ultimately reducible to a self-contradictory utilitarianism. It is the reverent attitude of traditional conservatism - that man is superior to other creatures as the steward of creation, holding it not as absolute possessor but only in trust from his Creator - that promises both the most moral and the most sensible approach to environmental affairs.
17. Environmental Ethics: Volume > 1 > Issue: 3
NEWS AND NOTES (1)
18. Environmental Ethics: Volume > 1 > Issue: 3
William Aiken Food First: Beyond the Myth of Scarcity
19. Environmental Ethics: Volume > 1 > Issue: 3
Don E. Marietta, Jr. The Interrelationship of Ecological Science and Environmental Ethics
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Arecent trend among environmentalists (e.g., Aldo Leopold) of basing ethical norms for land use, resource management, and conservation on ecological principies such as homeostasis is examined, and a way to justify such an ethical approach through analysis of moral judgment is explored. Issues such as the is/ought impasse, the connection between value judgments and reasons for acting, and the question of whether moral judgments are definitive and categorical are treated as they relate to an ecological ethic, i.e., an environmental ethic grounded in ecological science. I argue that such an ethic is in such regards as sound as more traditional approaches.
20. Environmental Ethics: Volume > 1 > Issue: 4
William Godfrey-Smith The Value of Wilderness
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In this paper I explore various grounds on which wilderness can be regarded as something which we should value, and I draw attention to the problems of resolving conftict which are generated by these diverse grounds. I conclude that our attitudes toward nature are partially determined by a background of metaphysical assumptions which derive in particular from the philosophy of Descartes. Thesemetaphysical preconceptions lead to the misconception that various alternative views about the natural environment are mystical or occult. Thus, an alternative non-Cartesian mode ofconception involving holistic or systemic modes of-thought is required in order to develop a satisfactory basis for our attitude toward the natural world.