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1. Environmental Ethics: Volume > 36 > Issue: 2

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from the book review editor

2. Environmental Ethics: Volume > 36 > Issue: 2
Eric Katz

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features

3. Environmental Ethics: Volume > 36 > Issue: 2
V. P. J. Arponen

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In a range of human sciences, the human relationship to nature has often been viewed as driven fundamentally by religious, philosophical, political, and scientific ideas as well as values and norms about nature. As others have argued before, the emphasis on ideas and values faces serious problems in heeding the structural, socioeconomic quality of the human relationship to nature and thereby the deeply problematic structural character of the human environmental burden. At the same time, alleviating the structural environmental burden generated by global industrial market society represents arguably the single most challenging task in addressing environmental problems. Critically explicating the tendency of our intellectual culture to produce ideological and psychologistic explanations of human ecologically consequential action, and human action more generally, can clarify the notion of the cultural causes of environmental problems and the character of the human collective causing them. Only a structuralist point of view can accommodate the diversity of our positions and perspectives toward nature in the global context in which environmental problems are caused.
4. Environmental Ethics: Volume > 36 > Issue: 2
Sean C. Lema

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Modern ethical perspectives toward the environment often emphasize the connection of humans to a broader biotic community. The full intimacy of this connectedness, however, is only now being revealed as scientific findings in developmental biology and genetics provide new insights into the importance of environmental interaction for the development of organisms. These insights are reshaping our understanding of how organism-environment interaction contributes to both consistency and variation in organism development, and leading to a new perspective whereby an “organism” is not solely viewed as the adaptive product of evolutionary selection to an external environment over generations, but as continuously being constructed through systems of interactions that link an organism’s characteristics developmentally to the physical and social influences it experiences during life. This newfound emphasis on “interaction” leads to an interdependency whereby any change to an “environment” impacts the interacting “organism(s),” and an alteration to the “organism” eventually affects its “environment.” The causal reciprocity embedded within this organism-environment interdependency holds implications for our moral obligations to environments, given their compulsory role in shaping all organisms including ourselves.
5. Environmental Ethics: Volume > 36 > Issue: 2
Alex Lee, Adam Pérou Hermans, Benjamin Hale

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Should we restore degraded nature, and if so, why? Environmental theorists often approach the problem of restoration from perspectives couched in much broader debates, particularly regarding the intrinsic value and moral status of natural entities. Unfortunately, such approaches are susceptible to concerns such as the baseline problem, which is both a philosophical and technical issue related to identifying an appropriate restoration baseline. Insofar as restoration ostensibly aims to return an ecosystem to a particular baseline state, and depends upon clearly identifying this baseline for success, the very project of restoration appears impossible to get off the ground. Recasting environmental restoration in terms of obligations, instead of status, value, or worth, can avoid this and other classic challenges. If obligations to restore nature follow from intersubjectively validated reasons to justify our actions, we can salvage restoration from the threat of the baseline problem.

discussion papers

6. Environmental Ethics: Volume > 36 > Issue: 2
Ji Li, Yali Tan, Hong Zhu, Zhenyao Cai, Susanna Y. F. Lo

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Environmental ethics can be cultivated in China and other Asian countries based on Chinese philosophical perspectives. Two major Chinese philosophies relevant to the issues of environmental ethics—Confucianism and Taoism—suggest certain approaches to developing environmental ethics. These approaches can complement each other in developing a Chinese or East Asian theory of environmental ethics. Drawing on these perspectives, China’s Wolong National Nature Reserve can face the challenge of protecting its pandas while developing the local economy. By adopting a set of strategies with elements from both Confucianism and Taoism, Wolong has fared well in both protecting pandas and promoting environmental ethics. This case has implications for both managerial researchers and practitioners.
7. Environmental Ethics: Volume > 36 > Issue: 2
Alain Ducharme

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Although it is often held that Aristotle endorses anthropocentric dominionism, Aristotle’s writings include an account of nonhuman value. The interpretation of Aristotle’s natural teleology which assumes that the claim that plants and animals are “for the sake of humans” entails an axiologically anthropocentric view of nature. However, a combination of aspects of Aristotle ethics and natural teleology shows that nature is valuable insofar as it is constituted by natural objects, things with natures. In virtue of having a nature, an object has an end or good toward which it strives. Natural objects thus have morally relevant interests. Because having a nature is sufficient for intrinsic value, it is wrong to associate Aristotle with the dominion thesis.
8. Environmental Ethics: Volume > 36 > Issue: 2
Christopher G. Framarin

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Many contemporary authors argue that the Hindu doctrines of karma and/or rebirth entail that both human and nonhuman entities in nature are interconnected, and hence have intrinsic value. These doctrines do not entail that entities in nature are interconnected, however. Even if they did, the interconnectedness of entities cannot establish their intrinsic value. If the interconnectedness of entities did establish their intrinsic value, the account would attribute equal intrinsic value to all things, both natural and non-natural, and hence, fail to meet the “non-vacuity requirement.” The doctrines of karma and/or rebirth do entail that nonhuman entities in nature have intrinsic value, but not because they are interconnected. First, the doctrines entail that distinctions among embodied beings are trivial. If human beings have intrinsic value—as is typically assumed—and if the differences between a human embodiment and an animal or plant embodiment are trivial, then these differences seem less able to explain differences in the intrinsic value of humans, animals, and plants. Second, the best explanation of the connection between the treatment of nonhuman entities and the merit or demerit that arises as a result is that all living beings are intrinsically valuable. Other explanations are circular, or fail to explain the severe punishments that result from harming nonhuman entities.

book reviews

9. Environmental Ethics: Volume > 36 > Issue: 2
Kenneth Worthy

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10. Environmental Ethics: Volume > 36 > Issue: 2
W. S. K. Cameron

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11. Environmental Ethics: Volume > 36 > Issue: 2
Seamus Carey

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12. Environmental Ethics: Volume > 36 > Issue: 2
Benjamin Howe

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13. Environmental Ethics: Volume > 36 > Issue: 2
Allen Thompson

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14. Environmental Ethics: Volume > 36 > Issue: 2
Adam Shriver

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15. Environmental Ethics: Volume > 36 > Issue: 2
Melissa Clarke

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