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Author: J. Claude Evans
Publisher: State University of New York Press
Published: 2012-02-01
Total Pages: 304
ISBN-13: 0791483347
DOWNLOAD EBOOKExplores how humans can take the lives of animals and plants while maintaining a proper respect both for ecosystems and for those who live in them.
Author: Paul W. Taylor
Publisher: Princeton University Press
Published: 1986
Total Pages: 344
ISBN-13: 9780691022505
DOWNLOAD EBOOKRespect for Nature defends a biocentric theory of environmental ethics. Without making claims for the moral rights of plants and animals, Paul Taylor offers a reasoned alternative to the prevailing anthropocentric view, according to which the natural environment and its wild biotic communities are valued only as objects for human use or enjoyment.
Author: John Benson
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2013-11-26
Total Pages: 304
ISBN-13: 1317972562
DOWNLOAD EBOOKPresupposing no prior knowledge of philosophy, John Benson introduces the fundamentals of environmental ethics by asking whether a concern with human well-being is an adequate basis for environmental ethics. He encourages the reader to explore this question, considering techniques used to value the environment and critically examining 'light green' to 'deep green' environmentalism. Each chapter is linked to a reading from a key thinker such as J.S. Mill and E.O. Wilson. Key features include activities and exercises, enabling readers to monitor their progress throughout the book, chapter summaries and guides to further reading.
Author: Thomas Heyd
Publisher: Columbia University Press
Published: 2005-11-09
Total Pages: 250
ISBN-13: 9780231509800
DOWNLOAD EBOOKHow do the ways in which we think about and describe nature shape the use and protection of the environment? Do our seemingly well-intentioned efforts in environmental conservation reflect a respect for nature or our desire to control nature's wildness? The contributors to this collection address these and other questions as they explore the theoretical and practical implications of a crucial aspect of environmental philosophy and policy-the autonomy of nature. In focusing on the recognition and meaning of nature's autonomy and linking issues of metaphysics, epistemology, ethics, and policy, the essays provide a variety of new perspectives on human relationships to nature. The authors begin by exploring what is meant by "nature," in what sense it can be seen as autonomous, and what respect for the autonomy of nature might entail. They examine the conflicts that arise between the satisfaction of human needs (food, shelter, etc.) and the natural world. The contributors also consider whether the activities of human beings contribute to nature's autonomy. In their investigation of these issues, they not only draw on philosophy and ethics; they also discuss how the idea of nature's autonomy affects policy decisions regarding the protection of agricultural, rural, and beach areas. The essays in the book's final section turn to management and restoration practices. The essays in this section pay close attention to how efforts at environmental protection alter or reinforce the traditional relationship between humans and nature. More specifically, the contributors examine whether management practices, as they are applied in nature conservation, actually promote the autonomy of nature, or whether they turn the environment into a "client" for policymakers.
Author: Michael Ruse
Publisher: Princeton University Press
Published: 2009
Total Pages: 593
ISBN-13: 0691135533
DOWNLOAD EBOOKAn anthology of essential writings that cover some of the most influential ideas about the philosophical implications of Darwinism, since the publication of "On the Origin of Species".
Author: William F. Ogburn
Publisher:
Published: 1922
Total Pages: 388
ISBN-13:
DOWNLOAD EBOOKAuthor: Marti Kheel
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
Published: 2008
Total Pages: 362
ISBN-13: 9780742552012
DOWNLOAD EBOOKIn Nature Ethics: An Ecofeminist Perspective, Marti Kheel explores the underlying worldview of nature ethics, offering an alternative ecofeminist perspective. She focuses on four prominent representatives of holist philosophy: two early conservationists (Theodore Roosevelt and Aldo Leopold) and two contemporary philosophers (Holmes Rolston III, and transpersonal ecologist Warwick Fox). Kheel argues that in directing their moral allegiance to abstract constructs (e.g. species, the ecosystem, or the transpersonal Self) these influential nature theorists represent a masculinist orientation that devalues concern for individual animals. Seeking to heal the divisions among the seemingly disparate movements and philosophies of feminism, animal advocacy, environmental ethics, and holistic health, Kheel proposes an ecofeminist philosophy that underscores the importance of empathy and care for individual beings as well as larger wholes.
Author: Leena Vilkka
Publisher: Rodopi
Published: 1997
Total Pages: 192
ISBN-13: 9789042003255
DOWNLOAD EBOOKWhat is intrinsic value? What is the origin of value? Are people always superior to nature? This book is a philosophical analysis of the human relationship to the non-human world. It is a pioneering study of the philosophy of nature-conservation in relation to the discussion of intrinsic value. Vilkka develops a naturalistic or naturocentric theory of value that is based on ethical extensionism and pluralism. Vilkka analyzes natural values and environmental attitudes: zoocentrism, biocentrism, and ecocentrism. This book forms a taxonomy for nature having intrinsic value. The theory of intrinsic value is based on naturocentric and naturogenic values. The book questions the thesis of weak anthropocentrism that denies the existence of naturogenic values. In Vilkka's theory, animals and nature are the origin of value. She defends the existence of zoogenic and biogenic values in the non-human world and discusses the possibility of ecogenic value, nature as a whole having value independent of human or animal minds. Vilkka analyzes the goodness and rights of nature, the problem of priorities, and ecological humanism. A naturocentric recommendation is that the well-being of animals and nature should have priority over human values at least in some real decision contexts. Ecological humanism recommends an attitude of respect for people, animals, and nature. The book includes an extensive glossary, index, and bibliography.
Author: Devon G. Peña
Publisher: University of Arizona Press
Published: 2022-09-13
Total Pages: 249
ISBN-13: 0816550824
DOWNLOAD EBOOKMexican Americans have traditionally had a strong land ethic, believing that humans must respect la tierra because it is the source of la vida. As modern market forces exploit the earth, communities struggle to control their own ecological futures, and several studies have recorded that Mexican Americans are more impacted by environmental injustices than are other national-origin groups. In our countryside, agricultural workers are poisoned by pesticides, while farmers have lost ancestral lands to expropriation. And in our polluted inner cities, toxic wastes sicken children in their very playgrounds and homes. This book addresses the struggle for environmental justice, grassroots democracy, and a sustainable society from a variety of Mexican American perspectives. It draws on the ideas and experiences of people from all walks of life—activists, farmworkers, union organizers, land managers, educators, and many others—who provide a clear overview of the most critical ecological issues facing Mexican-origin people today. The text is organized to first provide a general introduction to ecology, from both scientific and political perspectives. It then presents an environmental history for Mexican-origin people on both sides of the border, showing that the ecologically sustainable Norteño land use practices were eroded by the conquest of El Norte by the United States. It finally offers a critique of the principal schools of American environmentalism and introduces the organizations and struggles of Mexican Americans in contemporary ecological politics. Devon Peña contrasts tenets of radical environmentalism with the ecological beliefs and grassroots struggles of Mexican-origin people, then shows how contemporary environmental justice struggles in Mexican American communities have challenged dominant concepts of environmentalism. Mexican Americans and the Environment is a didactically sound text that introduces students to the conceptual vocabularies of ecology, culture, history, and politics as it tells how competing ideas about nature have helped shape land use and environmental policies. By demonstrating that any consideration of environmental ethics is incomplete without taking into account the experiences of Mexican Americans, it clearly shows students that ecology is more than nature study but embraces social issues of critical importance to their own lives.
Author: Steven Vogel
Publisher: MIT Press
Published: 2015-05
Total Pages: 295
ISBN-13: 0262029103
DOWNLOAD EBOOKA provocative argument that environmental thinking would be better off if it dropped the concept of “nature” altogether and spoke instead of the built environment. Environmentalism, in theory and practice, is concerned with protecting nature. But if we have now reached “the end of nature,” as Bill McKibben and other environmental thinkers have declared, what is there left to protect? In Thinking like a Mall, Steven Vogel argues that environmental thinking would be better off if it dropped the concept of “nature” altogether and spoke instead of the “environment”—that is, the world that actually surrounds us, which is always a built world, the only one that we inhabit. We need to think not so much like a mountain (as Aldo Leopold urged) as like a mall. Shopping malls, too, are part of the environment and deserve as much serious consideration from environmental thinkers as do mountains. Vogel argues provocatively that environmental philosophy, in its ethics, should no longer draw a distinction between the natural and the artificial and, in its politics, should abandon the idea that something beyond human practices (such as “nature”) can serve as a standard determining what those practices ought to be. The appeal to nature distinct from the built environment, he contends, may be not merely unhelpful to environmental thinking but in itself harmful to that thinking. The question for environmental philosophy is not “how can we save nature?” but rather “what environment should we inhabit, and what practices should we engage in to help build it?”
