Hubris to Humility

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Oswald J. Schmitz
Keyword(s):  
Environmental Ethics ◽  
Animal Rights ◽  
Environmental Stewardship ◽  
The Other ◽  
Ethical Awareness ◽  
Ethical Considerations ◽  
The One ◽  
Life On Earth ◽  
And Behavior ◽  
Attitudes And Behavior

This chapter examines what environmental stewardship hopes to accomplish by putting it into the context of broader anthropocentric and nonanthropocentric ethical considerations. The ethical awareness and non-economic values that humans have for nature plays an important part in shaping human attitudes and behavior: how humanity views and treats life on Earth. The field of nonanthropocentric environmental ethics emerged in response to a desire for greater humility in human engagement with nature. The chapter considers how nonanthropocentric ethics are expressed in society, citing as an example the animal rights and animal welfare movement. It also discusses environmental stewardship as an emerging ethic that is intermediate between anthropocentrism on the one hand, and ecocentrism on the other. Finally, it reflects on what will happen when humans heavily exploit or damage ecosystems.

scholarly journals Fangsheng (放生) and Its Critical Discourse on Environmental Ethics in Buddhist Media

2020 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 42-47
Author(s):  
Latifah Latifah ◽  
Ary Budiyanto
Keyword(s):  
Digital Media ◽  
Environmental Ethics ◽  
Critical Discourse ◽  
Community Group ◽  
Living Things ◽  
The Media ◽  
The One ◽  
Point Of Intersection ◽  
And Behavior ◽  
Attitudes And Behavior

Religious views of a community group are very influential in determining their attitudes and behavior towards nature and the environment. On the one hand, there is a worldview correlation that affects attitudes that are less friendly to nature as well as human superiority among other creatures that makes it feel entitled to exploit nature. On the other hand, religious views are also a motivation for caring for and loving nature, as is the will of Buddhists to create happiness for all living things. Reflections on choosing a moderate way of life prevent greed that can cause damage to nature so that sustainable development can be realized. The media, especially digital media, represents the implementation of Buddhist environmental ethics in a variety of writing frames. This study aims to look at Fangshen (放生) ritual in critical discourse on environmental ethics perspective as represented in Indonesian Buddhist media such as Buddhazine, Kompasiana, Tionghoa.info, and etcetera. This research shows that the discourse on environmental ethics in Buddhist media is at the point of intersection between natural disasters as a result of karma (kamma), paramita funds to change karma, responsibility for protecting nature, and compassion for all beings.

Introduction

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Patrick Colm Hogan
Keyword(s):  
Queer Theory ◽  
Social Constructionism ◽  
The Other ◽  
Sexual Identities ◽  
The Third ◽  
Sexuality And Gender ◽  
And Gender ◽  
Sexual Part ◽  
The One ◽  
And Behavior

The introduction first sets out some preliminary definitions of sex, sexuality, and gender. It then turns from the sexual part of Sexual Identities to the identity part. A great deal of confusion results from failing to distinguish between identity in the sense of a category with which one identifies (categorial identity) and identity in the sense of a set of patterns that characterize one’s cognition, emotion, and behavior (practical identity). The second section gives a brief summary of this difference. The third and fourth sections sketch the relation of the book to social constructionism and queer theory, on the one hand, and evolutionary-cognitive approaches to sex, sexuality, and gender, on the other. The fifth section outlines the value of literature in not only illustrating, but advancing a research program in sex, sexuality, and gender identity. Finally, the introduction provides an overview of the chapters in this volume.

Greening the Machine Question: Towards an Ecological Framework for Assessing Robot Rights

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Joshua C. Gellers
Keyword(s):  
The Other ◽  
Macro Level ◽  
Ecological Framework ◽  
Legal Systems ◽  
Other Hand ◽  
The World ◽  
Rights Of Nature ◽  
Robot Rights ◽  
The One ◽  
And Behavior

Could robots have rights? On the one hand, robots are becoming increasingly human-like in appearance and behavior. On the other hand, legal systems around the world are increasingly recognizing the rights of nonhuman entities. Observing these macro-level trends, in this paper I present an ecological framework for evaluating the conditions under which some robots might be considered eligible for certain rights. I argue that a critical, materialist, and broadly ecological interpretation of the environment, along with decisions by jurists establishing or upholding the rights of nature, support extension of rights to nonhuman entities like robots.

The Puritan Work Ethic Revisited

1980 ◽  
Vol 19 (2) ◽  
pp. 35-53 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paul Seaver
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Work Ethic ◽  
Max Weber ◽  
Early Modern Period ◽  
Modern Period ◽  
Spirit Of Capitalism ◽  
The One ◽  
And Behavior ◽  
Attitudes And Behavior ◽  
The Impact

Whether Puritanism gave rise to a “work ethic,” and, if so, what the nature of that ethic was, has been a source of controversy since Max Weber published The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism more than seventy years ago. Experienced polemicists have waged international wars of words over its terms, and tyros have won their spurs in the battle. With repect to England, there is at present no agreement either about the reality of a peculiarly Puritan work ethic or about the impact, if any, that such an ethic might have had on the attitudes and behavior of the emerging capitalist bourgeoisie, if such a species indeed existed as a distinctive social class or group in the early modern period. In fact, since perfectly sane and competent historians have questioned on the one hand, whether “Puritanism” is more than a neo-idealist reification of a nonentity, and on the other, whether the early modern middle class is more than a myth, it might be the better part of wisdom to inter the remains of these vexed questions as quietly as possible. What follows is not a perverse attempt to flog a dead horse, if it is dead and a horse, but rather on the basis of a different perspective and different evidence to resurrect a part of what Timothy Breen has called “the non-existent controversy.”

How to Deal with Growing Racism and Discrimination against Refugees and Asylum Seekers in Europe?

2017 ◽  
Vol 41 (S1) ◽  
pp. S24-S24 ◽  
Author(s):  
L. Küey
Keyword(s):  
Asylum Seekers ◽  
Armed Conflicts ◽  
The Other ◽  
Psychosocial Characteristics ◽  
Group Identities ◽  
Almost All ◽  
And Behavior ◽  
Attitudes And Behavior ◽  
Refugees And Asylum Seekers ◽  
Health Field

The growing number of refugees and asylum seekers pouring in Europe due to wars and armed conflicts constitute a great challenge for psychiatry and the mental health field. This challenge also includes the growing racism and discrimination against refugees and asylum seekers. Discrimination could be defined as the attitudes and behavior based on the group differences. Any group acknowledged and proclaimed as ‘the other’ by prevailing zeitgeist and dominant social powers, and further dehumanized may become the subject of discrimination. In a spectrum from dislike and micro-aggression to overt violence towards the other, it exists almost in all societies in varying degrees and forms; all forms involving some practices of exclusion and rejection. Hence, almost all the same specific human physical and psychosocial characteristics that constitute the bases for in-group identities and reference systems could also become the foundations of discrimination towards the humans identified as out-groups. Added to this, othering, rising from imagined and generalized differences and used to distinguish groups of people as separate from the norm reinforces and maintains discrimination.

Pride and Burden: The Quest for Consistency in the Anti-Speciesist Movement

2018 ◽  
Vol 26 (3) ◽  
pp. 239-258 ◽  
Author(s):  
Isacco Turina
Keyword(s):  
Animal Rights ◽  
The Other ◽  
Negative Effects ◽  
Animal Rights Movement ◽  
Just Cause ◽  
Individual Level ◽  
Social Segregation ◽  
Other Hand ◽  
The One ◽  
Time And Energy

Abstract This article draws on 22 interviews with Italian anti-speciesists to develop a sociological account of the quest for ethical consistency in the animal rights movement. The essay analyzes three relevant consequences of the search for consistency—identity extension, social segregation, and self-transformation—and discusses their impact on the activists’ lives. Consistency appears as both a source of self-gratification and a burden. On the one hand, self-gratification results from a sense of moral pride and the certainty of fighting for a just cause. On the other hand, the pursuit of a consistent lifestyle is highly demanding in terms of time and energy, and can have negative effects on the activist’s relationships with family and peers. While the paper adopts an individual-level perspective, it also examines how the findings might relate to vegan mobilization. It is argued that the findings might be generalizable to activists in other countries who face similar challenges.

scholarly journals Under Darwin’s Cosh? Neo-Aristotelian Thinking in Environmental Ethics

2005 ◽  
Vol 56 ◽  
pp. 22-23
Author(s):  
Michael Wheeler
Keyword(s):  
Environmental Ethics ◽  
Natural Environment ◽  
Moral Status ◽  
General Position ◽  
Well Being ◽  
The Other ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
The One ◽  
The Right ◽  
Individual Human

As a first shot, one might say that environmental ethics is concerned distinctively with the moral relations that exist between, on the one hand, human beings and, on the other, the non-human natural environment. But this really is only a first shot. For example, one might be inclined to think that at least some components of the non-human natural environment (non-human animals, plants, species, forests, rivers, ecosystems, or whatever) have independent moral status, that is, are morally considerable in their own right, rather than being of moral interest only to the extent that they contribute to human well-being. If so, then one might be moved to claim that ethical matters involving the environment are best cashed out in terms of the dutes and responsibilities that human beings have to such components. If, however, one is inclined to deny independent moral status to the non-human natural environment or to any of its components, then one might be moved to claim that the ethical matters in question are exhaustively delineated by those moral relations existing between individual human beings, or between groups of human beings, in which the non-human natural environment figures. One key task for the environmental ethicist is to sort out which, if either, of these perspectives is the right one to adopt—as a general position or within particular contexts. I guess I don’t need to tell you that things get pretty complicated pretty quickly.

Room for hope: How to deal with growing racism and discrimination?

2016 ◽  
Vol 33 (S1) ◽  
pp. S43-S43
Author(s):  
L. Küey
Keyword(s):  
The Other ◽  
Group Differences ◽  
Psychosocial Characteristics ◽  
Group Identities ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Competing Interest ◽  
Almost All ◽  
And Behavior ◽  
Attitudes And Behavior

Discrimination could be defined as the attitudes and behavior based on the group differences. Any group acknowledged and proclaimed as ‘the other’ by prevailing zeitgeist and dominant social powers, and further dehumanized may become the subject of discrimination. Moreover, internalized discrimination perpetuates this process. In a spectrum from dislike and micro-aggression to overt violence towards ‘the other’, it exists almost in all societies in varying degrees and forms; all forms involving some practices of exclusion and rejection. Hence, almost all the same human physical and psychosocial characteristics that constitute the bases for in-group identities and reference systems could also become the foundations of discrimination towards the humans identified as out-groups. Added to this, othering, arising from imagined and generalized differences and used to distinguish groups of people as separate from the norm reinforces and maintains discrimination.Accordingly, discrimination built on race, color, sex, gender, gender identity, nationality and ethnicity, religious beliefs, age, physical and mental disabilities, employment, caste and language have been the focus of a vast variety of anti-discriminatory and inclusive efforts. National acts and international legislative measures and conventions, political and public movements and campaigns, human rights movements, education programs, NGO activities are some examples of such anti-discriminatory and inclusive efforts. All these efforts have significant economic, political and psychosocial components.Albeit the widespread exercise of discrimination, peoples of the world also have a long history of searching, aiming and practicing more inclusive ways of solving conflicts of interests between in-groups and out-groups. This presentation will mainly focus on the psychosocial aspects of the anti-discriminative efforts and search a room for hope and its realistic bases for a more non-violent, egalitarian and peaceful human existence.Disclosure of interestThe author has not supplied his declaration of competing interest.

scholarly journals Consequentialism and Nonhuman Animals

2020 ◽  
pp. 563-591
Author(s):  
Tyler M. John ◽  
Jeff Sebo
Keyword(s):  
Indirect Effects ◽  
Animal Rights ◽  
Well Being ◽  
Wild Animals ◽  
Nonhuman Animals ◽  
Moral Attitudes ◽  
And Behavior ◽  
Attitudes And Behavior ◽  
Significant Conflict

Consequentialism is thought to be in significant conflict with animal rights theory because it does not regard activities such as confinement, killing, and exploitation as in principle morally wrong. Proponents of the “Logic of the Larder” argue that consequentialism results in an implausibly pro-exploitation stance, permitting us to eat farmed animals with positive well-being to ensure future such animals exist. Proponents of the “Logic of the Logger” argue that consequentialism results in an implausibly anti-conservationist stance, permitting us to exterminate wild animals with negative well-being to ensure future such animals do not exist. We argue that this conflict is overstated. Once we have properly accounted for indirect effects, such as the role that our policies play in shaping moral attitudes and behavior and the importance of accepting policies that are robust against deviation, we can see that consequentialism may converge with animal rights theory significantly, even if not entirely.

scholarly journals Ru’yat al-aqallīyāt al-muslimah hawla al-tadayyun: Mawqif jayl al-shabāb fi Manado

2020 ◽  
Vol 27 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
Rosdalina Bukido ◽  
Ubed Abdillah Syarif ◽  
Rahman Mantu
Keyword(s):  
Individual Freedom ◽  
Minority Communities ◽  
Religious Attitudes ◽  
Muslim Minority ◽  
Basic Attitude ◽  
Muslim Majority ◽  
The One ◽  
And Behavior ◽  
Attitudes And Behavior ◽  
The City

This article presents data on the religious attitudes of Muslim minority communities. Similar themes have been studied considerably, but most of them are researched in the Muslim majority areas. Therefore, the author tries to delve into the same topic, but it investigates a different locus, namely how the religious views and attitudes of Muslim minority youth in Manado. The findings reveal that the attitudes and behavior of Muslim youth in Manado towards diversity tend to be conservative with scriptural and puritanical features. However, their basic attitude is highly open towards moderate values and principles, with a decent respect for individual freedom and human rights, even though norms and culture constrain them, this shows a paradox. On the one hand, they show a tolerant attitude, but on other certain aspects or problems, their attitude tends to be intolerant. In its context, the attitudes and religiosity of these Muslim youths have sparked social change in the City of Manado.

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