Ethics, Policy & Environment, Volume 14, Issue 3, Page 361-375, October 2011.

Ethics, Policy & Environment, Volume 14, Issue 3, Page 307-312, October 2011.

This paper offers several criticisms of the account of rightholding laid out in S. Matthew Liao’s recent paper “The Basis of Human Moral Status.” I argue that Liao’s account both does too much and too little: it grants rightholder status to those who may not deserve it, and it does not provide grounds for offering such status to those who arguably do deserve it. Given these troubling aspects of his approach, I encourage Liao to abandon his “physical basis of moral (...) agency” account of moral status and instead adopt a position closer to a traditional “speciesist” view. (shrink)

Previous discussions on the value of sport in remote locations have concentrated on 1) environmental and process concerns, with the rejection of competition and goal-directed or use oriented activity, or 2) the value of risk and dangerous sport for self-affirmation. It is argued that the value of risk in remote sport is in self-knowledge rather than self-affirmation and that risk in remote sport, while enhancing certain kinds of experience, is not necessary. The value of remote sport is in offering the (...) opportunity for experience that enhances the participants’ knowledge both of self and of the environment with which they interact. (shrink)

The concepts dao and de in the Daodejing may be evoked to support a distinctive and plausible account of environmental holism. Dao refers to the totality of particulars, including the relations that hold between them, and the respective roles and functions of each within the whole. De refers to the distinctiveness of each particular, realized meaningfully only within the context of its interdependence with others, and its situatedness within the whole. Together, dao and de provide support for an ethical holism (...) that avoids sacrificing individuals for the sake of the whole. The integrity and stability of the whole are important not because the whole is an end-in-itself but because those conditions assist in preserving the well-being of the constituent parts. In other words, the ethical holism supported in the Daodejing does not present individuals and wholes in mutually exclusive terms, but sees them in symbiotic relation, allowing for events to be mutually beneficial, or mutually obstructive, to both. In addition, two other Daoist concepts, wuwei (non-action) and ziran (spontaneity), provide further support for this construction of holism. If the distinctiveness of particular individuals is valued, then unilateral or reductive norms which obliterate such individuality are inappropriate. In this regard, the methodology of wuwei allows for the idea of individuals developing spontaneously in relation to others. According to this view of holism,individuals manifest and realize their integrity in relation to others in the environmental context, achieving an outcome that is maximally co-possible within those limits, rather than one that is maximally beneficial only for particular individuals. (shrink)

This book examines some possible ethical principles to resolve moral dilemmas involving water. Existing problems in current water management practices are discussed in light of these principles. Transformation of human water ethics has the potential to be far more effective, cheaper and acceptable than some existing means of “regulation”, but transformation of personal and societal ethics need time because the changes to ethical values are slow.

Neosentimentalism provides environmental ethics with a theory of value that might be particularly useful for solving many of the problems that have plagued the field since its early days. In particular, a neosentimentalist understanding of value offers us hope for making sense of (1) what intrinsic value might be and how we could know whether parts of the natural world have it; (2) the extent to which value is an essentially anthropocentric concept; and (3) how our understanding of value could (...) be compatible with both a respectable naturalism and a robust normativity. (shrink)

In this article, I wish to explore a plausible alternative to both sentientist ethics and holistic environmental ethics. In particular, I put forward the claim that creatures other than sentient ones have interests and, in virtue of that, moral standing. This thesis is in disagreement with sentientism insofar as it claims that sentience is not a prerequisite for moral consideration. Radical as it may sound, this view does not take us as far as the holism favoured by some environmentalists. In (...) particular, on this view, the interests of collectives such as ecosystems and species are a positive function of the interests of the entities that make them up rather than something of an entirely different kind. Collectives are not the direct object of moral consideration. (shrink)

This paper attempts to apply an agent-based virtue ethics to issues in environmental philosophy regarding our treatment of complex non-sentient systems. I consider the ethics of terraforming - hypothetical planetary engineering on a vast scale which aims to produce habitable environments on otherwise 'hostile' planets. I argue that undertaking such a project would demonstrate two (at least) serious defects of moral character; an aesthetic insensitivity and the sin of hubris. To try to change whole planets to suit our ends would (...) be arrogant vandalism. I defend the thesis that these descriptions of character are coherent and important ethical concepts. Finally, I demonstrate how the arguments developed in this somewhat far fetched example could be used in cases closer to home, to provide arguments against our use of recombinant DNA technologies or against the construction of tourist developments in wilderness areas. (shrink)