Pathways from Environmental Ethics to Pro-Environmental Behaviours? Insights from Psychology

2020 ◽  
Vol 29 (3) ◽  
pp. 317-337 ◽  
Author(s):  
Chelsea Batavia ◽  
Jeremy T. Bruskotter ◽  
Michael Paul Nelson
Keyword(s):  
Environmental Ethics ◽  
Environmental Sustainability ◽  
Intrinsic Value ◽  
Environmental Ethic ◽  
Psychological Research ◽  
Sociocultural Context ◽  
Moral Obligations ◽  
Environmental Behaviour ◽  
Transformative Potential ◽  
Practical Agenda

Though largely a theoretical endeavour, environmental ethics also has a practical agenda to help humans achieve environmental sustainability. Environmental ethicists have extensively debated the grounds, contents and implications of our moral obligations to nonhuman nature, offering up different notions of an 'environmental ethic' with the presumption that, if humans adopt such an environmental ethic, they will then engage in less environmentally damaging behaviours. We assess this presumption, drawing on psychological research to discuss whether or under what conditions an environmental ethic might engender pro-environmental behaviour. We focus discussion on three lines of scholarship in the environmental ethics literature, on 1) intrinsic value, 2) care ethics, and 3) the land ethic. We conclude by commenting generally on both the limits and transformative potential of an environmental ethic in its larger sociocultural context.

Harmonising with Heaven and Earth: Reciprocal Harmony and Xunzi’s Environmental Ethics

2022 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yi Jonathan Chua
Keyword(s):  
Environmental Ethics ◽  
Environmental Ethic ◽  
Moral Obligations ◽  
Normative Basis ◽  
Heaven And Earth ◽  
Ethical Relationships

Xunzi’s philosophy provides a rich resource for understanding how ethical relationships between humans and nature can be articulated in terms of harmony. In this paper, I build on his ideas to develop the concept of reciprocal harmony, which requires us to reciprocate those who make our lives liveable. In the context of the environment, I argue that reciprocal harmony generates moral obligations towards nature, in return for the existential debt that humanity owes towards heaven and earth. This can be used as a normative basis for an environmental ethic that enables humanity and nature to flourish together.

Ratiocentrism, Intrinsic Value, and the Moral Status of the Nonhuman Natural World

2018 ◽  
Vol 40 (4) ◽  
pp. 363-370
Author(s):  
Edward Uzoma Ezedike ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Environmental Ethics ◽  
Moral Status ◽  
Moral Obligation ◽  
Intrinsic Value ◽  
Categorical Imperative ◽  
Natural World ◽  
Moral Consideration ◽  
Moral Obligations ◽  
Moral Agents

Kant’s doctrine of the “categorical imperative” with respect to ratiocentrism needs to be examined for its implications for environmental ethics. Kant’s argument is that moral actions must be categorical or unqualified imperatives that reflect the sovereignty of moral obligations that all rational moral agents could figure out by virtue of their rationality. For Kant, humans have no direct moral obligations to non-rational, nonhuman nature: only rational beings, i.e., humans, are worthy of moral consideration. I argue that this position is excessively anthropocentric and ratiocentric in excluding the nonhuman natural world from moral consideration. While conceding that nonhuman nature is instrumentally valuable owing to some inevitable existential, ontological considerations, moral obligation should be extended to the natural world in order to achieve environmental wholeness.

scholarly journals The problem of subjectivity of values in the search for a universal environmental ethics

2021 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 53-57
Author(s):  
Sarac Yesilada Yuksel
Keyword(s):  
Environmental Management ◽  
Environmental Ethics ◽  
Intrinsic Value ◽  
Environmental Ethic ◽  
Moral Values ◽  
The Other ◽  
The Subject ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Subjective Side ◽  
Ontological Problem

Considering the relationship between the environment and morality, discussion of the matter of values is inevitable. Although there is no consensus on the intrinsic and instrumental characteristics of the value, the condition of talking about environmental ethics is that the environment carries not instrumental but intrinsic value. The problem of subjectivity of this value creates an ontological problem. Given that the value of what is valued depends on the preferences, interests, and attitudes of the valuers, it can lead to anthropocentric environmental ethics, which is an abusive approach style by environmental policymakers. On the other hand, the understanding that value is independent of the preferences, interests, and attitudes of the subject brings an objective approach but this makes it difficult to base environmental ethics on values ??and adds scientific aspects to environmental approaches. Scientific aspects are already discussed under some concepts such as sustainability, biodiversity, ecology, and environmental management. However, grounding these concepts on moral values ??and the formation of environmental ethics depends on emphasizing not only the scientific and objective but also its subjective side. This study explained the possibility of meeting the universality criterion in objective conditions despite the subjectivity of values because the way environmental ethics is adopted by everyone is only a universal environmental ethic.

scholarly journals Why Teach Environmental Ethics? Because We Already Do

2004 ◽  
Vol 8 (2-3) ◽  
pp. 227-242
Author(s):  
Christine Benton ◽  
Raymond Benton
Keyword(s):  
Environmental Ethics ◽  
Personal Experience ◽  
Environmental Issues ◽  
Environmental Ethic ◽  
Ethical Dimension ◽  
Land Ethic ◽  
The Way

AbstractIn this paper we argue for the importance of the formal teaching of environmental ethics. This is, we argue, both because environmental ethics is needed to respond to the environmental issues generated by the neoliberal movement in politics and economics, and because a form of environmental ethics is implicit, but unexamined, in that which is currently taught. We maintain that students need to become aware of the latent ethical dimension in what they are taught. To help them, we think that they need to understand how models and metaphors structure and impact their worldviews. We describe how a simple in-class exercise encourages students to experience the way metaphors organize feelings, courses of action, and cognitive understandings. This is then intellectualized by way of Clifford Geertz's concept of culture and his model for the analysis of sacred symbols. From there we present a brief interpretation of modern economics as the embodiment of the dominant modern ethos. This leads into a consideration of ecology as a science, and to the environmental ethic embodied in Aldo Leopold's "Land Ethic." We close with a personal experience that highlights how environmental teaching can make students aware of the presence of an implicit, but unexamined, environmental ethic.

scholarly journals Environmental Ethics for Sustainable Development: A Comparative Study on Tribal and Non-Tribal Secondary School Students

2016 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Tanveer Ahmad Bhat ◽  
Prof. Ahrar Husain
Keyword(s):  
Secondary School ◽  
Secondary Students ◽  
Environmental Ethics ◽  
Environmental Sustainability ◽  
Secondary School Students ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
School Students ◽  
Jammu And Kashmir ◽  
Student Community ◽  
Novel Association

Science, as a part of way of life, has been developed to help human beings and has the ethical responsibility of improving the quality of life. As far as Environment is concerned, the preliminary harmonic association between man and Environment has been critically distressed throughout current decades. The unrestrained progression of Technology and mankind’s leading performance over Nature, have shaped serious environmental troubles. Unless these troubles will be restricted, they may create lasting unfavorable trends which may even put at risk earth’s capacity. In order to attain feasible progress and harmonious coexistence between Mankind and Nature, mankind has to shape a novel association with the environment. At present the world is witnessing numerous environmental problems, which are the result of un-mindful exploitations of natural resources by human beings. There is an urgent need to create environmental ethics among all the citizens in general and student community in particular so as to enable us in ensuring Environmental Sustainability which is one amongst the Millennium Development Goals. The present study was conducted on Tribal and Non-Tribal Secondary Students of Jammu and Kashmir on a randomly selected sample of 302 Tribal and 277 Non-Tribal Secondary School Students. The researcher found that the Non-Tribal Secondary School Students have high Environmental Ethics than their Tribal counterparts.

A New Look at the Plight of Tropical Rain-forests

1980 ◽  
Vol 7 (3) ◽  
pp. 203-206 ◽  
Author(s):  
Willem Meijer
Keyword(s):  
Natural Resources ◽  
Environmental Ethics ◽  
Environmental Ethic ◽  
Developed Countries ◽  
Tropical Rain Forests ◽  
Rain Forests ◽  
Life Styles ◽  
Resource Managers ◽  
Long Run ◽  
The World

While developed countries of the world are expressing growing concern about the plight of tropical rain-forests, it is necessary to understand the issues involved. They are not merely populaton growth, the world food problems, and the ever-growing demand for natural resources, but also environmental ethics and the attitudes of resource managers and other decision-makers. These last issues might be even more important in the long run than purely demographic and socio-economic problems.The Author of this essay attempts to build up a case for the need of a global environmental ethic which would incorporate existing values of respect for living creatures, sacred groves, and sacred animals—such as still survives among the cultures of the less-developed parts of the tropical world. It might well be that the life-styles of strongly vegetarian societies, and the intensive tropical lowland agriculture as practiced in and around irrigated rice-fields in Southeast Asia, could be used as a model for wiser use of renewable natural resources in the lessdeveloped tropical areas.

In Defence of Earth's Insights

1997 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 167-182
Author(s):  
J. Baird Callicott
Keyword(s):  
Environmental Ethics ◽  
Environmental Ethic ◽  
Environmental Crisis ◽  
Master Narrative ◽  
Indigenous Worldviews

AbstractThe foregoing criticisms of Earth's Insights notwithstanding: there is an environmental crisis; reconstructed postmodern science provides a privileged discourse, more particularly, an evolutionary-ecological master narrative; in which a globally credible environmental ethic may be grounded; and by comparison with which, in turn, the several local environmental ethics grounded in traditional and indigenous worldviews may be validated.

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