Against Human Exceptionalism: Environmental Ethics and the Machine Question

2019 ◽  
pp. 325-339
Author(s):  
Migle Laukyte
Keyword(s):  
Environmental Ethics ◽  
Human Exceptionalism

scholarly journals Sociology and Animal Studies: Human Responses to Animal Loss in Times of Disaster

2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
Joseph Ching Velasco ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Social Media ◽  
Environmental Ethics ◽  
Animal Studies ◽  
Social World ◽  
The Philippines ◽  
Human Exceptionalism ◽  
The World ◽  
Species Boundary ◽  
Humanities And Social Sciences

A number of attempts have been made to include animals in explorations in the humanities and social sciences. This is a response to the gap where animals are much-neglected entities in the said disciplines. There have been debates pertaining to the inclusion of animals in scholarly discourses in the field of sociology. Notably, human exceptionalism has been one of the key ideological drivers which prevent a more inclusive consideration of animals in the study of our social world. The anthropocentric view of the world and society has put the needs and status of humans above all other animals. This line of thinking has implications on how humanity relates and interacts with animals in a broader context. In times of crisis, humans relegate animals as conveniently expendable or an inconvenient afterthought, which easily leads to instances of animal abandonment and even abuse. However, there has been a collective shift in the way acts of animal abandonment are perceived on social media. This article examined the responses on social media pertaining to animal abandonment during the onslaught of typhoon Vamco in the Philippines in 2020. More specifically, two themes were analyzed: outrage against negligence and compassionate treatment of animals. While this article looks specifically at the abandonment of animals, the project invites further reflection on the notions of environmental ethics and the species boundary.

scholarly journals Foucault’s Fossils: Life Itself and the Return to Nature in Feminist Philosophy

2015 ◽  
pp. 122-141 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lynne Huffer
Keyword(s):  
Environmental Ethics ◽  
Animal Studies ◽  
Science Studies ◽  
Feminist Philosophy ◽  
Geological Time ◽  
Critical Animal Studies ◽  
Feminist Science ◽  
Human Exceptionalism ◽  
New Materialisms ◽  
Life Itself

This essay asks about the return to nature and “life itself” in contemporary feminist philosophy and theory, from the new materialisms to feminist science studies to environmental ethics and critical animal studies. Unlike traditional naturalisms, the contemporary turn to nature is explicitly posthumanist. Shifting their focus away from anti-essentialist critiques of woman-as-nature, these new feminist philosophies of nature have turned toward nonhuman animals, the cosmos, the climate, and life itself as objects of ethical concern. Drawing on Foucault, the essay probes the ethical meanings of the term “life itself” invoked in many of these renaturalizing projects. Focusing especially on the archival matter that guides Foucault’s thinking, I suggest that we rethink “life itself” not as a transhistorical substance but as the unstable materiality of history. I then reframe Foucault’s archival, genealogical perspective through the lens of the Anthropocene and geological time. Reconceiving our archive as a fossil record, I suggest that Foucault has much to contribute to environmental challenges to human exceptionalism and the anthropogenic destruction of other species and ourselves.

Ecological and ethical duty

1996 ◽  
pp. 16-26
Author(s):  
Dionisiy Lyahovych
Keyword(s):  
Social Behavior ◽  
Environmental Ethics ◽  
Environmental Issues ◽  
Theological Reflection ◽  
Ethical Duty ◽  
Environmental Value ◽  
The People

Ecological ethical duty is a kind of philosophical and theological reflection on environmental issues, and at the same time finding the appropriate foundation for environmental ethics. By the term "ethical duty" we mean the search for environmental value, the nature of which would have the effect of inducing the appropriate personal and social behavior and thus influenced the customs and culture of the people.

POST-COSMISM AND POST-HUMANISM: TWO STRATEGIES IN THE MOD-ERN PHILOSOPHY OF THE HUMAN

Chelovek RU ◽  
2020 ◽  
pp. 217-220
Author(s):  
Natalia Rostova ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Human Exceptionalism ◽  
Current State ◽  
Human World ◽  
State Of Affairs ◽  
Post Humanism

The article analyzes the current state of affairs in philosophy in relation to the question «What is hu-man?». In this regard, the author identifies two strategies – post-humanism and post-cosmism. The strat-egy of post-humanism is to deny the idea of human exceptionalism. Humanity becomes something that can be thought of out of touch with human and understood as a right that extends to the non-human world. Post-cosmism, on the contrary, advocated the idea of ontological otherness of the human. Re-sponding to the challenges of anthropological catastrophe, its representatives propose a number of new anthropological projects.

Beatrix Potter's Mycological Aesthetics

2019 ◽  
Vol 41 (2) ◽  
pp. 160-184
Author(s):  
Erica Kanesaka Kalnay
Keyword(s):  
Human Exceptionalism

This essay argues that Beatrix Potter's work on mushrooms reveals the ways in which the Western ecological imaginary has responded to Victorian and Edwardian notions of childhood animism. It finds Potter's ‘mycological aesthetics’, or the interplay between attention and imagination that characterises her work, lingering in present-day ecocritical thinking that aims to dismantle the binary constructs underwriting human exceptionalism.

Creatures of Cain

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Erika Lorraine Milam
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Human Nature ◽  
Race And Gender ◽  
Late Night ◽  
Hollywood Films ◽  
Political Debates ◽  
American Science ◽  
Human Exceptionalism ◽  
History Of ◽  
And Gender

After World War II, the question of how to define a universal human nature took on new urgency. This book charts the rise and precipitous fall in Cold War America of a theory that attributed man's evolutionary success to his unique capacity for murder. The book reveals how the scientists who advanced this “killer ape” theory capitalized on an expanding postwar market in intellectual paperbacks and widespread faith in the power of science to solve humanity's problems, even to answer the most fundamental questions of human identity. The killer ape theory spread quickly from colloquial science publications to late-night television, classrooms, political debates, and Hollywood films. Behind the scenes, however, scientists were sharply divided, their disagreements centering squarely on questions of race and gender. Then, in the 1970s, the theory unraveled altogether when primatologists discovered that chimpanzees also kill members of their own species. While the discovery brought an end to definitions of human exceptionalism delineated by violence, the book shows how some evolutionists began to argue for a shared chimpanzee–human history of aggression even as other scientists discredited such theories as sloppy popularizations. A wide-ranging account of a compelling episode in American science, the book argues that the legacy of the killer ape persists today in the conviction that science can resolve the essential dilemmas of human nature.

Effective instructional design for value dominant education in Malaysian public universities

2008 ◽  
Vol 5 (2) ◽  
pp. 61
Author(s):  
MOHD NOR MAMAT ◽  
Fattawi Mokhtar
Keyword(s):  
Instructional Design ◽  
Environmental Ethics ◽  
Holistic Education ◽  
Environmental Attitude ◽  
National Education ◽  
Instructional Activities ◽  
Attitude Test ◽  
Ethics Course ◽  
Education Today ◽  
Document Review

Education is an important medium to ensure sustainability of human civilization. Holistic education must contain three main objectives to be achieved; cognitive, psychomotor and affective domains which involve knowledge transfer, skill enhancement and value or attitude inculcation. Our national education today regardless in primary, secondary or tertiary level seems to be more on producing graduates with knowledge and skill, but not much on value as major. This doesn't mean that value-education should be dominant in educational curriculum but it could be dominant within specific value dominant courses. Ethics or moral courses are among value-dominant courses that must prioritize value or attitude effects as main objectives. This needs different and specific instructional design (ID) in which value become major objectives in learning outcomes, activities, evaluation and etc. The study selected environmental ethics course as a case study. The study has recognized unique instructional activities for three different groups in UiTM A, UiTM B and UPSI (n=108). ID also includes learning objectives, learning object and content itself, other than instructional activities. All these have been identified using document review and interviews. The effects of environmental attitude (EA) have been measured using New Environmental Paradigm (NEP) which is endorsed by UNESCO and Behaviour-based Environmental Attitude Test by F J. Kaiser (2007) at the end of the semester to identify the effects of environmental paradigm and attitude. In this study, the result ofEA would be correlated with the different unique objectives, contents and activities to recognize the best ID for producing value effects, which is the environmental attitude. This led to few main findings as the best practices; religious elements, practical contents and environmental-related activities which have affected much on student's paradigm and attitude towards environment.

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