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1. Environmental Ethics: Volume > 32 > Issue: 4

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2. Environmental Ethics: Volume > 32 > Issue: 4
Sue P. Stafford

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Intellectual virtues are an integral part of adequate environmental virtue ethics; these virtues are distinct from moral virtues. Including intellectual virtues in environmental virtue ethics produces a more fine-grained account of the forces involved in environmental exploration, appreciation, and decision making than has been given to date. Intellectual virtues are character traits that regulate cognitive activity in support of the acquisition and application of knowledge. They are virtues because they further the human quest for knowledge and true belief; possessing these traits improves us epistemically. Five intellectual virtues illustrate the nature and relevance of intellectual virtues to environmental ethics: thoroughness, temporal/structural sensitivity, flexibility, intellectual trust, and humility. While these virtues share many features of the moral virtues, there are differences between them that have practical implications and give sound reasons for considering these two types as distinct kinds. Intellectual virtues bear a structural relation to knowledge that moral virtues do not, and it is this epistemological stamp that sets them apart. Additionally, the two types of virtue can be possessed independently of one another. Ideally, intellectual virtues will combine with moral virtues such as respect, compassion, and humility to facilitate environmentally respectful behavior. The moral and intellectual virtues are thus importantly distinct and mutually reinforcing. Both should be present in a truly excellent human being, and both have a role to play in fully developed environmental virtue ethics.
3. Environmental Ethics: Volume > 32 > Issue: 4
Freya Mathews

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The honeybee, Apis mellifera, has excited both literary and scientific interest since ancient times, and even modern entomological investigation has not entirely dispelled the mystery surrounding the corporate intelligence of the beehive. Yet this lingering mystique has not prevented the wholesale exploitation of the honeybee as pollinator of choice in present-day industrial agriculture. In the context of this industrialization of the apiary, honeybees around the world are succumbing to the condition known as “colony collapse disorder.” The consequent disappearance of honeybees on a massive scale poses the question, what do honeybees mean to us? Is their loss a moral loss, and if so, is it merely a moral loss, or something more? Does the loss of honeybees portend further losses that will amount to the loss of the basic conditions for meaning, and hence for morality, per se?

discussion papers

4. Environmental Ethics: Volume > 32 > Issue: 4
Benjamin Howe

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According to Arne Naess, his environmental philosophy is influenced by the philosophy of language called empirical semantics, which he first developed in the 1930s as a participant in the seminars of the Vienna Circle. While no one denies his claim, most of his commentators defend views about his environmental philosophy that contradict the tenets of his semantics. In particular, they argue that he holds that deep ecology’s supporters share a world view, and that the movement’s platform articulates shared principles. Naess, however, rejects this conception of deep ecology, and, moreover, he is compelled to do so because of his long-standing views on semantics. Naess’s semantics thus poses a particularly difficult problem for the first group of theorists who endorsed Naess.
5. Environmental Ethics: Volume > 32 > Issue: 4
Mick Smith

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Concerns for the more-than-human world are consistently marginalized by dominant forms of philosophical and political humanism, characterized here by their unquestioning acceptance of human sovereignty over the world. A genuinely ecological political philosophy needs post-humanist concepts to begin articulating alternative notions of “ecological communities” as ethical and political, and not just biological realities. Drawing upon Jean-Luc Nancy’s concept of community, epharmosis, a largely defunct term of art in early plant ecology, can be reappropriated to signify the creative ethical/political/ecological interrelations that together constitute ecological communities.
6. Environmental Ethics: Volume > 32 > Issue: 4
Lars Samuelsson

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Environmental pragmatists have presented environmental pragmatism as a new philosophical position, arguing that theoretical debates in environmental philosophy are hindering the ability of the environmental movement to forge agreement on basic policy imperatives. Hence, they aim to lead environmental philosophers away from such theoretical debates, and toward more practical—and pragmatically motivated—ones. However, a position with such an aim is not a proper philosophical position at all, given that philosophy (among other things) is an effort to get clear on the problems that puzzle us.

book reviews

7. Environmental Ethics: Volume > 32 > Issue: 4
Robin Attfield

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8. Environmental Ethics: Volume > 32 > Issue: 4
Rita Turner

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9. Environmental Ethics: Volume > 32 > Issue: 4
Ty Raterman

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10. Environmental Ethics: Volume > 32 > Issue: 4
Todd LeVasseur

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11. Environmental Ethics: Volume > 32 > Issue: 4
Bryan Bannon

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12. Environmental Ethics: Volume > 32 > Issue: 4
Costas Panayotakis

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13. Environmental Ethics: Volume > 32 > Issue: 4
Frank W. Derringh

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14. Environmental Ethics: Volume > 32 > Issue: 4

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15. Environmental Ethics: Volume > 32 > Issue: 4

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16. Environmental Ethics: Volume > 32 > Issue: 3

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17. Environmental Ethics: Volume > 32 > Issue: 3
Eugene C. Hargrove

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18. Environmental Ethics: Volume > 32 > Issue: 3
Aaron Simmons

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In both environmental ethics and bioethics, one central issue is the range of entities that are morally considerable. According to one view on this issue, we ought to extend consideration to any entity that possesses interests. But what kinds of entities possess interests? Some philosophers have argued that only sentient beings can have interests, while others have held that all living organisms possess interests in the fulfillment of their biological functions. Is it true that all living organisms have biological interests? The standard arguments made against biological interests are unsatisfactory. There are two central reasons why we ought to reject the idea of biological interests: a metaphysical reason and a normative reason. First, the idea of biological interests implies a metaphysically mysterious account of the nature of how things come to have value for an entity. Second, as normative interests, the idea of biological interests implies that what is good for human beings is at least partly determined by things that are external to themselves, completely independent of their capacities for desires, conflicting with the individual ideal of self-direction, according to which it is fundamentally desirable that how we ought to live (or what is good for one) is grounded in one’s own capacities for desires. It is still an open possibility that nonsentient entities may be morally considerable in the sense of having intrinsic value.
19. Environmental Ethics: Volume > 32 > Issue: 3
Lars Samuelsson

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According to a popular critique of environmental ethics, the view that nature has intrinsic value faces an insurmountable demarcation problem. This critique was delivered in a particularly forceful manner two decades ago by Janna Thompson in her paper “A Refutation of Environmental Ethics.” However, the demarcation problem, albeit a real problem, is not insurmountable. Thompson’s argument draws on the claim that the possibility of environmental ethics depends on the possibility that nature can be demarcated with respect to some allegedly morally significant property or set of properties. Her own view of nature’s moral significance is equally dependent on that possibility. Therefore, if the demarcation problem were insurmountable, that would imply a refutation of her own view on nature’s moral significance as well.
20. Environmental Ethics: Volume > 32 > Issue: 3
Christopher A. Brown

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Few think that Kant’s moral theory can provide a defensible view in the area of environmental ethics because of Kant’s well-known insistence that all nonhumans are mere means. An examination of the relevant arguments, however, shows that they do not entitle Kant to his position. Moreover, Kant’s own Formula of Universal Law generates at least one important and basic duty which is owed both to human beings and to nonhuman animals. The resulting Kantian theory not only is sounder and more intuitive than the original, but also boasts some notable theoretical advantages over some of the most prominent views in environmental ethics.