Volume 9, Issue 2, Summer 1987
Tom Colwell
Pages 99-113
The Ethics of Being Part of Nature
Most environmental philosophers acknowledge that humans are part of nature; yet few have grasped the significance of the idea fully, and as a result it remains ambiguous. I argue that when taken to include humans and their culture, the idea supports philosophical naturalism as an alternative to dualism and provides a new approach to environmental ethics capable of meeting popular objections to naturalism in ethics. Naturalism, I conclude, requires a new way of thinking about nature, and by implication greater care in the choice of language used to talk about nature.