Pub Date : 2020-11-01DOI: 10.5840/enviroethics202042431
Rebekah Sinclair
The voices of Native American philosophers, scientists, and storytellers need to be amplified to problematize and decolonize the often taken-for-granted concept of species in environmental ethics. Especially in the context of climate change, concepts such as cross-species native,invasive, and endangered species have become cornerstones for understanding and evaluating moral obligations to other lives.Yet, even as the species concept does ethical work, it has not itself been subject to critical ethical evaluation. Instead, uncritical treatment of the species concept can naturalize Western metaphysical conceptual habits in ways that both support settler colonial organization of the world and conflict with Indigenous ontological and ethico-epistemological understandings of species. This can be especially problematic as scientists and environmentalists increasingly seek to engage Indigenous knowledge of particular species (for the purposes of conservation, for example) while assuming the sovereignty and objectivity of Western scientific taxonomies and species concepts. Yet, far from being objective and neutral with respect to culture, Western species concepts and taxonomies were first universalized and naturalized in part through the cooption and dismissal of Indigenous species knowledges.
{"title":"Un-Settling Species Concepts through Indigenous Knowledge","authors":"Rebekah Sinclair","doi":"10.5840/enviroethics202042431","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5840/enviroethics202042431","url":null,"abstract":"The voices of Native American philosophers, scientists, and storytellers need to be amplified to problematize and decolonize the often taken-for-granted concept of species in environmental ethics. Especially in the context of climate change, concepts such as cross-species native,invasive, and endangered species have become cornerstones for understanding and evaluating moral obligations to other lives.Yet, even as the species concept does ethical work, it has not itself been subject to critical ethical evaluation. Instead, uncritical treatment of the species concept can naturalize Western metaphysical conceptual habits in ways that both support settler colonial organization of the world and conflict with Indigenous ontological and ethico-epistemological understandings of species. This can be especially problematic as scientists and environmentalists increasingly seek to engage Indigenous knowledge of particular species (for the purposes of conservation, for example) while assuming the sovereignty and objectivity of Western scientific taxonomies and species concepts. Yet, far from being objective and neutral with respect to culture, Western species concepts and taxonomies were first universalized and naturalized in part through the cooption and dismissal of Indigenous species knowledges.","PeriodicalId":46317,"journal":{"name":"Environmental Ethics","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2020-11-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43890164","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2020-10-22DOI: 10.5840/enviroethics20204213
A. Thompson
It is widely accepted that we must adapt to climate change. But we sit on the edge of radical, unprecedented, and rapid anthropogenic environmental changes that are driven by many factors in addition to greenhouse gas emissions. In this way, we occupy a unique and precarious position in the history of our species. Many basic conditions of life on Earth are changing at an alarming rate and thus we should begin to transform and broaden our thinking about adaptation. The conceptual history of climate adaptation intersects with conceptions of human development and sustainability, which provides a framework for adaptation in how we think about human flourishing and, subsequently, what it is to be human in the Anthropocene. If sustainability is about maintaining human welfare across generations but we acknowledge that climate change may undercut our ability to deliver as much and as good total or natural capital to subsequent generations, we have a residual duty to otherwise positively affect the welfare of future generations. A subjective, preference-based conception of human welfare is compared to an objective, capabilities-based approach and, while some adaptive preferences are unavoidable, embracing an objective theory of human flourishing provides a superior approach for meeting the residual duty we have to future generations by beginning the process of adapting our conception of human natural goodness, or what it is to be a good human being.
{"title":"Adaptation, Transformation, and Development","authors":"A. Thompson","doi":"10.5840/enviroethics20204213","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5840/enviroethics20204213","url":null,"abstract":"It is widely accepted that we must adapt to climate change. But we sit on the edge of radical, unprecedented, and rapid anthropogenic environmental changes that are driven by many factors in addition to greenhouse gas emissions. In this way, we occupy a unique and precarious position in the history of our species. Many basic conditions of life on Earth are changing at an alarming rate and thus we should begin to transform and broaden our thinking about adaptation. The conceptual history of climate adaptation intersects with conceptions of human development and sustainability, which provides a framework for adaptation in how we think about human flourishing and, subsequently, what it is to be human in the Anthropocene. If sustainability is about maintaining human welfare across generations but we acknowledge that climate change may undercut our ability to deliver as much and as good total or natural capital to subsequent generations, we have a residual duty to otherwise positively affect the welfare of future generations. A subjective, preference-based conception of human welfare is compared to an objective, capabilities-based approach and, while some adaptive preferences are unavoidable, embracing an objective theory of human flourishing provides a superior approach for meeting the residual duty we have to future generations by beginning the process of adapting our conception of human natural goodness, or what it is to be a good human being.","PeriodicalId":46317,"journal":{"name":"Environmental Ethics","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2020-10-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48675049","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2020-01-01DOI: 10.5840/enviroethics202042434
Billie Lythberg, D. Hikuroa
The complex interactions and ruptures between contemporary settler colonialism, environmental ethics, and Indigenous rights and worldviews often emerge in projects of civil engineering. The continued capture, control and burial of natural water courses in Aotearoa-New Zealand is a case in point, and exemplifies a failure to stay abreast of evolving understandings and renewed relationships we seek with our waterways, our ancestors. Wai-Horotiu stream used to run down what is now Queen Street, the main road in Auckland, Aotearoa-New Zealand’s largest city. Treasured by Māori as a source of wai (water) and mahinga kai (food), it is also the home of Horotiu, a taniwha or ancestral guardian—a literal ‘freshwater body’. However, as Tāmaki-Makaurau transitioned into Auckland city, Wai-Horotiu became denigrated; used as an open sewer by early settlers before being buried alive in the colonial process. How, now, can we know this buried waterway? Te Awa Tupua Act 2017 that affords the Whanganui River juristic personality and moral considerability offers one possible solution. It acknowledges that waterways, incorporating all their physical and metaphysical elements, exist in existential interlinks with Māori as part of their whakapapa (genealogical networks). This paper asks, can a corresponding and appropriate ethics of association and care be fostered in and expressed by the political descendants of British settlers (Pākehā) and later immigrants who live here under the auspices established by Te Tiriti o Waitangi in 1840? Here is a conversation between a Māori earth systems scientist and a Pākehā interdisciplinary scholar. Where Hikuroa speaks from and to direct whakapapa connections, beginning with pepeha, Lythberg’s narrative springboards from public art projects that facilitate more ways of knowing Wai-Horotiu. Together, we contend that a regard for Indigenous relationships with water can guide best practice for us all, and propose that creative practices can play a role in attaching people to place, and to waterways.
{"title":"How Can We Know Wai-Horotiu—A Buried River? Cross-cultural Ethics and Civic Art","authors":"Billie Lythberg, D. Hikuroa","doi":"10.5840/enviroethics202042434","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5840/enviroethics202042434","url":null,"abstract":"The complex interactions and ruptures between contemporary settler colonialism, environmental ethics, and Indigenous rights and worldviews often emerge in projects of civil engineering. The continued capture, control and burial of natural water courses in Aotearoa-New Zealand is a case in point, and exemplifies a failure to stay abreast of evolving understandings and renewed relationships we seek with our waterways, our ancestors. Wai-Horotiu stream used to run down what is now Queen Street, the main road in Auckland, Aotearoa-New Zealand’s largest city. Treasured by Māori as a source of wai (water) and mahinga kai (food), it is also the home of Horotiu, a taniwha or ancestral guardian—a literal ‘freshwater body’. However, as Tāmaki-Makaurau transitioned into Auckland city, Wai-Horotiu became denigrated; used as an open sewer by early settlers before being buried alive in the colonial process. How, now, can we know this buried waterway? Te Awa Tupua Act 2017 that affords the Whanganui River juristic personality and moral considerability offers one possible solution. It acknowledges that waterways, incorporating all their physical and metaphysical elements, exist in existential interlinks with Māori as part of their whakapapa (genealogical networks). This paper asks, can a corresponding and appropriate ethics of association and care be fostered in and expressed by the political descendants of British settlers (Pākehā) and later immigrants who live here under the auspices established by Te Tiriti o Waitangi in 1840? Here is a conversation between a Māori earth systems scientist and a Pākehā interdisciplinary scholar. Where Hikuroa speaks from and to direct whakapapa connections, beginning with pepeha, Lythberg’s narrative springboards from public art projects that facilitate more ways of knowing Wai-Horotiu. Together, we contend that a regard for Indigenous relationships with water can guide best practice for us all, and propose that creative practices can play a role in attaching people to place, and to waterways.","PeriodicalId":46317,"journal":{"name":"Environmental Ethics","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2020-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"70959178","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2020-01-01DOI: 10.5840/enviroethics20204212
{"title":"The Beginning of a New Beginning","authors":"","doi":"10.5840/enviroethics20204212","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5840/enviroethics20204212","url":null,"abstract":"<jats:p />","PeriodicalId":46317,"journal":{"name":"Environmental Ethics","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2020-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"70958555","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2020-01-01DOI: 10.5840/enviroethics202011911
Jeremy Sorgen
The anthropocentrism debate, which centers on the place and status of environmental values, has been a core issue for environmental ethics since the field’s beginning in the 1970s. Nonanthropocentrists attribute value to non-human nature directly, while anthropocentrists claim that humans hold a certain priority. While the debate has produced a wide variety of interesting philosophical positions, it has not achieved its implicit goal of cultural reform. This is not because philosophers fail to agree on a tenable position, but because the debate is misconceived. Both sides of the debate assume that agreement on common values, worldviews, and substantive positions is prerequisite to cultural reform. Pragmatic criticism of this assumption, however, displays its underlying faults, while pragmatic inquiry into the field’s development displays how scholars are already generating methods more commensurate with the goal of cultural reform. Philosophers invested in changing public values should transition from debates in axiology (the study of values) to debating method, where axiology is just one method among others and not the one best suited to supporting cultural reform. A historical survey of the field suggests what scholars of environmental ethics are learning about methods that are both publicly engaged and culturally transformative.
{"title":"Beyond the Anthropocentrism Debate","authors":"Jeremy Sorgen","doi":"10.5840/enviroethics202011911","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5840/enviroethics202011911","url":null,"abstract":"The anthropocentrism debate, which centers on the place and status of environmental values, has been a core issue for environmental ethics since the field’s beginning in the 1970s. Nonanthropocentrists attribute value to non-human nature directly, while anthropocentrists claim that humans hold a certain priority. While the debate has produced a wide variety of interesting philosophical positions, it has not achieved its implicit goal of cultural reform. This is not because philosophers fail to agree on a tenable position, but because the debate is misconceived. Both sides of the debate assume that agreement on common values, worldviews, and substantive positions is prerequisite to cultural reform. Pragmatic criticism of this assumption, however, displays its underlying faults, while pragmatic inquiry into the field’s development displays how scholars are already generating methods more commensurate with the goal of cultural reform. Philosophers invested in changing public values should transition from debates in axiology (the study of values) to debating method, where axiology is just one method among others and not the one best suited to supporting cultural reform. A historical survey of the field suggests what scholars of environmental ethics are learning about methods that are both publicly engaged and culturally transformative.","PeriodicalId":46317,"journal":{"name":"Environmental Ethics","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2020-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"70958612","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2020-01-01DOI: 10.5840/enviroethics20204216
Steve Bein, J. Mcrae
In 2016, a Cincinnati Zoo worker shot and killed a Western lowland gorilla to protect a three-year-old boy who had fallen into the animal’s enclosure. This incident involves a variant of the classical trolley problem, one in which the death of a human being on the main track might be avoided by selecting an alternate track containing a member of an endangered species. This problem raises two important questions for environmental ethics. First, what, if anything, imbues a human child with greater value than a member of a critically endangered species? Second, is it ethical for zoos to house species such as gorillas? With regard to the first question, at a minimum, it is not obvious whether a human child or a gorilla has the greater value (i.e., that whatever evaluation one wishes to make, it requires an argument beyond simple speciesism). With regard to the second question, an appeal can be made to Japanese environmental philosophy, particularly the ethical paradigm of kyōsei (symbiosis) and the aesthetics of Yuriko Saitō. Members of endangered species have intrinsic value, which entails human obligations to protect the species as a whole and minimize harm to its specimens.
{"title":"Gorillas in the Midst (of a Moral Conundrum)","authors":"Steve Bein, J. Mcrae","doi":"10.5840/enviroethics20204216","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5840/enviroethics20204216","url":null,"abstract":"In 2016, a Cincinnati Zoo worker shot and killed a Western lowland gorilla to protect a three-year-old boy who had fallen into the animal’s enclosure. This incident involves a variant of the classical trolley problem, one in which the death of a human being on the main track might be avoided by selecting an alternate track containing a member of an endangered species. This problem raises two important questions for environmental ethics. First, what, if anything, imbues a human child with greater value than a member of a critically endangered species? Second, is it ethical for zoos to house species such as gorillas? With regard to the first question, at a minimum, it is not obvious whether a human child or a gorilla has the greater value (i.e., that whatever evaluation one wishes to make, it requires an argument beyond simple speciesism). With regard to the second question, an appeal can be made to Japanese environmental philosophy, particularly the ethical paradigm of kyōsei (symbiosis) and the aesthetics of Yuriko Saitō. Members of endangered species have intrinsic value, which entails human obligations to protect the species as a whole and minimize harm to its specimens.","PeriodicalId":46317,"journal":{"name":"Environmental Ethics","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2020-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"70958651","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2020-01-01DOI: 10.5840/ENVIROETHICS202042322
Yuedi Liu
The so-called “Paradigm of the Wild” means either environmental ethics or environmental aesthetics has gone wild. According to Holmes Rolston, III, “philosophy has gone wild.” Chinese traditional environmentalism takes another anthropocosmic way, and it has a global applicability in cultural diversity. The dichotomy of “nature-culture” is already out of date, and humans have to face the new relation of humanized-nature today. From the perspective of “ethics and aesthetics” in Chinese Confucianism, a different passageway between environmental ethics and environmental aesthetics can be shaped.
{"title":"The Paradigm of the Wild, Cultural Diversity, and Chinese Environmentalism","authors":"Yuedi Liu","doi":"10.5840/ENVIROETHICS202042322","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5840/ENVIROETHICS202042322","url":null,"abstract":"The so-called “Paradigm of the Wild” means either environmental ethics or environmental aesthetics has gone wild. According to Holmes Rolston, III, “philosophy has gone wild.” Chinese traditional environmentalism takes another anthropocosmic way, and it has a global applicability in cultural diversity. The dichotomy of “nature-culture” is already out of date, and humans have to face the new relation of humanized-nature today. From the perspective of “ethics and aesthetics” in Chinese Confucianism, a different passageway between environmental ethics and environmental aesthetics can be shaped.","PeriodicalId":46317,"journal":{"name":"Environmental Ethics","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2020-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"70958674","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2020-01-01DOI: 10.5840/enviroethics20204217
Zhihe Wang, M. Fan, J. Cobb
Environmental ethics is a major topic of discussion and enactment in China. The government is committed to work toward an “ecological civilization,” a society in which concerns for a healthy natural environment are interwoven with concerns for a healthy human society and healthy human relations with nature. Whereas in the United States concern for the environment is rarely consciously philosophical, Chinese history has made people aware that philosophy underlies and shapes public policy. Whitehead’s thought has been welcomed as a way of clarifying and supporting the commitment to ecological civilization, which has been strongly reemphasized by President Xi. It also helps in reviving and incorporating classical Chinese thought without threatening the great advances China has made in science. This organic thinking has expressed itself in government policy in shifting from the industrialization of agriculture to support for eco-villages and in dethroning GDP as the measure of progress. The interest in Whitehead is expressed by thirty-six universities setting up Centers for Process Studies, extensive discussion of a process book—Organic Marxism—and numerous other publications.
{"title":"Chinese Environmental Ethics and Whitehead’s Philosophy","authors":"Zhihe Wang, M. Fan, J. Cobb","doi":"10.5840/enviroethics20204217","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5840/enviroethics20204217","url":null,"abstract":"Environmental ethics is a major topic of discussion and enactment in China. The government is committed to work toward an “ecological civilization,” a society in which concerns for a healthy natural environment are interwoven with concerns for a healthy human society and healthy human relations with nature. Whereas in the United States concern for the environment is rarely consciously philosophical, Chinese history has made people aware that philosophy underlies and shapes public policy. Whitehead’s thought has been welcomed as a way of clarifying and supporting the commitment to ecological civilization, which has been strongly reemphasized by President Xi. It also helps in reviving and incorporating classical Chinese thought without threatening the great advances China has made in science. This organic thinking has expressed itself in government policy in shifting from the industrialization of agriculture to support for eco-villages and in dethroning GDP as the measure of progress. The interest in Whitehead is expressed by thirty-six universities setting up Centers for Process Studies, extensive discussion of a process book—Organic Marxism—and numerous other publications.","PeriodicalId":46317,"journal":{"name":"Environmental Ethics","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2020-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"70958689","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2020-01-01DOI: 10.5840/ENVIROETHICS202042321
Wang-heng Chen, Xin-yu Chen
According to the essence of industrial civilization, wilderness is bound to disenchantment. However, in the ecological civilization era, based on the demands of ecological balance, we must reserve a certain degree of wilderness in urban environment. Therefore, we need to bring back enchantment to aesthetic appreciation of wilderness. On the surface, the re-enchantment of wilderness seems to be a regression of agricultural civilization; however, in fact, it is a transcendental development of agricultural civilization. In recent years, there have been some deviations in the application of “garden urbanism” and “landscape urbanism” have existed in contemporary Chinese urban landscaping. To some extent, the recovery of wilderness is a major mission in Chinese urban construction.
{"title":"The Re-Enchantment of Wilderness and Urban Aesthetics","authors":"Wang-heng Chen, Xin-yu Chen","doi":"10.5840/ENVIROETHICS202042321","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5840/ENVIROETHICS202042321","url":null,"abstract":"According to the essence of industrial civilization, wilderness is bound to disenchantment. However, in the ecological civilization era, based on the demands of ecological balance, we must reserve a certain degree of wilderness in urban environment. Therefore, we need to bring back enchantment to aesthetic appreciation of wilderness. On the surface, the re-enchantment of wilderness seems to be a regression of agricultural civilization; however, in fact, it is a transcendental development of agricultural civilization. In recent years, there have been some deviations in the application of “garden urbanism” and “landscape urbanism” have existed in contemporary Chinese urban landscaping. To some extent, the recovery of wilderness is a major mission in Chinese urban construction.","PeriodicalId":46317,"journal":{"name":"Environmental Ethics","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2020-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"70959090","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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