Online research in philosophy

The radical contingencies attending human reproduction indicate that attempts to improve the living conditions of future generations result in generations populated by different individuals than would otherwise have been born. This remarkable consequence challenges the widespread belief that the present generation has responsibilities to its remote successors. I contend, first, that while the radical genetic contingency and epistemological indeterminacy of future persons obsolves us of obligations to act "in behalf of" them as individuals, this moral absolution does not entail (...) a permission to disregard entirely the remote consequences of our policies. Since relevant moral principles bind us to persons in general, not to particular individuals, we remain obligated to improve the life prospects of whatever individuals eventually come into being. Second, I suggest that by applying an analogous argument within the lives of persons rather than to the long history of civilization, we arrive at the morally repugnant result of negating long-term obligations to contemporary persons. Conversely, the condition of continuity which affords moral legitimacy of personal obligations among contemporaries likewise entails moral responsibility for the life conditions of distant generations. (shrink)

A complete environmental ethic must include a theory of motivation to assure that the demands of that ethic are within the capacity of human beings. J. Baird Callicott has argued that these requisite sentiments may be found in the moral psychology of David Hume, enriched by the insights of Charles Darwin. I reply that, on the contrary, Humean moral sentiments are more likely to incline one toanthropocentrism than to Aldo Leopold’s land ethic, which is defended by Callicott. This mismatch becomes (...) more evident as Callicott attempts to enlist Humean moral sentiments in support of the Leopoldian “land community.” The disanalogies between human and natural communities, I argue, are too great to permit this application. The motivation we need to meet our duties as “citizens of the land community” must be of a nonmoral kind. I suggest that the necessary sentiments may be found in a genetically based “affirmation of nature” that has evolved out of our natural history as a species, shaped by the very forces and contexts that are now put in peril by our technology. (shrink)

In this paper I attempt a moral justification of protecting wild species, ecosystems, and landscapes, a justification not directly grounded in appeals to human benefit. I begin with a description of anthropocentric and ecosystemic approaches to the valuing of nature and offer some empirical arguments in support of the ecosystemic view. I suggest that human beings have a genetic need for natural environments, and that the direct experience of wild nature is an intrinsic good. Theoretical coherence and scope is another (...) advantage of the ecological perspective over the anthropocentric view. Turning to moral psychology, I argue that human beings have a fundamental need to care for things outside themselves and that this need is suitably met, and human life enriched, by a transcending concern for the well-being of natural species, habitats, and ecosystems . These considerations are joined with the ecological point of view to yield the conclusion that a self-transcending concern for the welfare of wild species and their habitats enriches the quality of moral life. Persons with genuine reverence and respect for wild creatures and their habitats will enjoy greater fulfilment in their own lives and be better neighbors toeach other. (shrink)

This essay is an inquiry into the relevance of psychology to morality-particularly, the relevance of a capacity to treat nature with respect and restraint to a responsibility to do so. I begin with a presentation of Aldo Leopold’s “land ethic” (which I also designate with the term ecological morality). I then examine two notions of moral psychology that have recently attracted the interest of moral philosophers: first, “the moral sense,” a concept that has gained prominence, in part, through the recent (...) work of the philosopher, John Rawls; and second, Lawrence Kohlberg’s theory of the development of moral cognition. Finally, I consider how these prospectives on moral psychology might apply to ecological morality. (shrink)