Kant and the Moral Considerability of Non-Rational Beings

1994 ◽  
Vol 36 ◽  
pp. 129-142
Author(s):  
Tim Hayward
Keyword(s):  
Environmental Ethics ◽  
Environmental Values ◽  
Moral Consideration ◽  
General View ◽  
Moral Considerability ◽  
Kant's Ethics

Kant's ethics is widely viewed as inimical to environmental values, as arbitrary and morally impoverished, because, while exalting the value of human, rational, beings, it denies moral consideration to non-human, or non-rational, beings. In this paper I seek to show how, when specific statements of this general view are examined, they turn out to involve some significant inaccuracies or confusions. This will lead me to suggest that Kant might have more to offer to environmental ethics than has hitherto been acknowledged.

Environmental Ethics

2021 ◽  
pp. 147-168
Author(s):  
Thaddeus Metz
Keyword(s):  
Environmental Ethics ◽  
Moral Status ◽  
Moral Theory ◽  
Moral Consideration ◽  
Intrinsic Properties ◽  
Communal Relationship

This chapter begins Part III, which argues that the relational moral theory of rightness as friendliness is a strong competitor to Western principles in many applied ethical contexts. Chapter 8 articulates and defends a novel, relational account of moral status, according to which an entity is owed moral consideration roughly to the degree that it is capable of being party to a communal relationship. One of its implications is that many animals have a moral status but not one as high as ours, which many readers will find attractive, but which utilitarianism and Kantianism cannot easily accommodate. Relational moral status also grounds a promising response to the ‘argument from marginal cases’ that animals have the same moral status as incapacitated humans: even if two beings have identical intrinsic properties, they can differ in the extent to which they can relate and hence differ in their degree of moral status.

What Other Americans Can and Cannot Learn from Native American Environmental Ethics

2011 ◽  
Vol 15 (3) ◽  
pp. 219-246 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dave Aftandilian
Keyword(s):  
Native American ◽  
Environmental Ethics ◽  
Environmental Values ◽  
Ecological Crisis ◽  
Native Peoples ◽  
Cultural Contexts ◽  
Interior Alaska ◽  
Desert Southwest ◽  
The 1960S

AbstractSince the 1960s, many have sought the solutions to North America's ecological crisis in the environmental teachings of Native American peoples. However, for the most part, Native American environmental values have not been investigated in light of the cultural contexts within which they arose. This paper draws on previously published ethnographic work among the Koyukon of interior Alaska and the Hopi of the desert Southwest to elucidate the specific environmental ethics that these two peoples have developed. Based on this contextualized evidence, augmented with teachings from the environmental ethics of other Native American peoples, I then discuss what other Americans can and cannot learn from Native American environmental ethics. Finally, I suggest alternate sources upon which non-indigenous Americans might draw to develop their own traditions of caring about and for the lands they now share with Native peoples.

scholarly journals Individualist Biocentrism vs. Holism Revisited

2014 ◽  
Vol 9 (2) ◽  
pp. 130-148 ◽  
Author(s):  
Katie McShane
Keyword(s):  
Environmental Ethics ◽  
Evolutionary Biology ◽  
Environmental Conservation ◽  
Normative Ethics ◽  
Conservation Strategies ◽  
Units Of Selection ◽  
Moral Considerability ◽  
Intuitive Appeal ◽  
Theoretical Assumptions ◽  
Endogenous Viral Elements

While holist views such as ecocentrism have considerable intuitive appeal, arguing for the moral considerability of ecological wholes such as ecosystems has turned out to be a very difficult task. In the environmental ethics literature, individualist biocentrists have persuasively argued that individual organisms—but not ecological wholes—are properly regarded as having a good of their own . In this paper, I revisit those arguments and contend that they are fatally flawed. The paper proceeds in five parts. First, I consider some problems brought about by climate change for environmental conservation strategies and argue that these problems give us good pragmatic reasons to want a better account of the welfare of ecological wholes. Second, I describe the theoretical assumptions from normative ethics that form the background of the arguments against holism. Third, I review the arguments given by individualist biocentrists in favour of individualism over holism. Fourth, I review recent work in the philosophy of biology on the units of selection problem, work in medicine on the human biome, and work in evolutionary biology on epigenetics and endogenous viral elements. I show how these developments undermine both the individualist arguments described above as well as the distinction between individuals and wholes as it has been understood by individualists. Finally, I consider five possible theoretical responses to these problems.

Conclusion

2019 ◽  
pp. 183-192
Author(s):  
John Basl
Keyword(s):  
Medical Ethics ◽  
Environmental Ethics ◽  
Emerging Technologies ◽  
Moral Considerability ◽  
Environmental Practice ◽  
Specific Species

The primary aim of this work has been to show that biocentrism is false by developing the strongest, most plausible version of the view and then exposing it to new criticisms, criticisms that are not susceptible to the standard biocentrist responses. The conclusion takes up the broader implications of the death of the ethic of life in four domains: environmental ethics and environmental practice, medicine and medical ethics, emerging technologies, and within philosophy more broadly. Given the webs of interdependence in nature, it argues that not much hangs, in terms of policy, on the fact that biocentrism or teleocentrism is false, but there are edge cases: cases where, for example, we might be thought to have an obligation to restore specific species or make reparations for past environmental wrongdoing, where the answer to questions about moral considerability matters.

Beyond the Anthropocentrism Debate

2020 ◽  
Vol 42 (2) ◽  
pp. 103-118
Author(s):  
Jeremy Sorgen ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Human Nature ◽  
Environmental Ethics ◽  
Environmental Values ◽  
Historical Survey ◽  
Public Values ◽  
Cultural Reform ◽  
Common Values ◽  
Core Issue ◽  
The One ◽  
Attribute Value

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.

How Ecological Collectives are Morally Considerable

2015 ◽  
Author(s):  
J. Baird Callicott
Keyword(s):  
Moral Psychology ◽  
Environmental Ethics ◽  
Moral Philosophy ◽  
Ethical Theory ◽  
Human Microbiome ◽  
First Century ◽  
Moral Considerability ◽  
Twenty First Century ◽  
Evolutionary Moral Psychology ◽  
Moral Ontology

Populations, species, biotic communities, ecosystems, landscapes, biomes, and the biosphere are the referents of “ecological collectives.” The essence-accident moral ontology prevailing in twentieth-century moral philosophy cannot, while the theory of moral sentiments originating with Hume, biologized by Darwin, and ecologized by Leopold can, endow ecological collectives with moral considerability. The Hume-Darwin-Leopold approach to environmental ethics has been validated by twenty-first-century evolutionary moral psychology, while the twenty-first-century analysis of the human microbiome has revealed that erstwhile human “individuals” are themselves ecological collectives, thus rendering future ethical theory exclusively concerned with ecological collectives. To reconceptualize ourselves as moral beings in relational, communal, and collective terms is a matter of the greatest urgency for twenty-first century moral philosophy.

The ABCs of Relational Values: Environmental Values That Include Aspects of Both Intrinsic and Instrumental Valuing

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anna Deplazes-Zemp ◽  
Mollie Chapman
Keyword(s):  
Empirical Research ◽  
Environmental Ethics ◽  
Well Being ◽  
Environmental Values ◽  
Human Flourishing ◽  
Relational Values ◽  
Relational Value ◽  
Environmental Objects ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Empirical Analyses

In this paper we suggest an interpretation of the concept of ‘relational value’ that could be useful in both environmental ethics and empirical analyses. We argue that relational valuing includes aspects of intrinsic and instrumental valuing. If relational values are attributed, objects are appreciated because the relationship with them contributes to the human flourishing component of well-being (instrumental aspect). At the same time, attributing relational value involves genuine esteem for the valued item (intrinsic aspect). We also introduce the notions of mediating and indirect relational environmental values, attributed in relationships involving people as well as environmental objects. We close by proposing how our analysis can be used in empirical research.

Educational Literacy in the Context of Environmental Ethics

1998 ◽  
pp. 35-41
Author(s):  
Roger J.H. King
Keyword(s):  
Environmental Ethics ◽  
Environmental Values ◽  
Environmental Responsibility ◽  
World Views ◽  
The Creation

I explore the concept of literacy and the role it might play in environmental ethics. One of the goals of environmental ethics is to describe and contribute to the creation of an ecologically responsible culture. The creation of such a culture requires the development of knowledge and abilities that will help sustain such a culture. Since education is one of the key institutions for instilling values and world views, it is important for environmental philosophers to think about the institutionalization of environmental theories in terms of their implications for the environmentally literate person. I argue that attention to literacy is significant for two reasons. First, it provides one way of evaluating the differences between competing environmental philosophies. Second, it raises the important question of what kind of person is required to carry out a particular vision of environmental responsibility. By addressing the issue of education and literacy, philosophers interested in environmental ethics can help create a vision of citizens who have democratically internalized and integrated environmental values and priorities rather than having them imposed from above.

Epilogue Looking Back, Looking Forward

2021 ◽  
pp. 187-190
Author(s):  
Sarah E. Fredericks
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Environmental Ethics ◽  
Environmental Degradation ◽  
Negative Emotions ◽  
Environmental Values ◽  
Future Research ◽  
Race And Class ◽  
The Many ◽  
Looking Back ◽  
Adaptation And Mitigation

The epilogue summarizes the contributions of studying environmental guilt and shame to environmental ethics and sets agendas for future research. Even as approaching environmental ethics as a finger-wagging scold is ethically suspect, it is also problematic to avoid the study of negative emotions given the many insights prompted by such study. Questions of motivation deserve more attention in environmental ethics, as the paralyzing character of shame among people with environmental values indicates that environmental values are not enough to spark environmental behavior as many environmental ethicists presume. Other future lines of inquiry include how demographic factors beyond gender, such as race and class, affect the experience of environmental guilt and shame and how environmental rituals may foster environmental and climate apology, restitution, adaptation, and mitigation. Addressing both the theoretical and applied ethical insights arising from environmental guilt and shame not only leads to richer accounts of responsibility and agency that better fit the phenomena but also enables more well-rounded approaches to environmental degradation than those that eschew emotions, the experience of laypeople, and collectives. Without such approaches, denial, paralysis, or incomplete and therefore unsuccessful approaches to environmental degradation including climate change are likely.

Relational Values: A Unifying Idea in Environmental Ethics and Evaluation?

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bryan Norton ◽  
Daniel Sanbeg
Keyword(s):  
Environmental Ethics ◽  
Environmental Values ◽  
Ecological Systems ◽  
Relational Values ◽  
Intrinsic Values ◽  
The Future

There has been a recent spate of publications on how we should evaluate change to ecological systems, some of which have introduced the concept of ‘relational values’. Environmental ethicists have, with a few exceptions, not engaged with this debate. We survey the literature on relational values, noting that most advocates of the concept introduce relational values as an additional type of value, in addition to ‘instrumental’ and ‘intrinsic’ values. In this paper, we explore the idea that all environmental values are ultimately relational. We explore how such an approach can be articulated, and discuss the implications of this concept for the future of environmental ethics and value studies. One key implication is to suggest a stronger role for empirical ethnography.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document