Discussion of ecological restoration in environmental ethics has tended to center on issues about the nature and character of the values that may or may not be produced by restored landscapes. In this paper we shift the philosophical discussion to another set of issues: the social and political context in which restorations are performed. We offer first an evaluation of the political issues in the practice of restoration in general and second an assessment of the political context into which restoration (...) is moving. The former focuses on the inherent participatory capacity at the heart of restoration; the latter is concerned with the commodified (primarily in the United States) and nationalized (primarily in Canada) uses to which restoration is being put. By comparing these two areas of inquiry we provide a foundation for a critical assessment of the politics of restoration based on the politics in restoration. (shrink)

Empathy is the combined ability to interpret the emotional states of others and experience resultant, related emotions. The relation between prefrontal electroencephalographic asymmetry and emotion in children is well known. The association between positive emotion (assessed via parent report), empathy (measured via observation), and second-by-second brain electrical activity (recorded during a pleasurable task) was investigated using a sample of one hundred twenty-eight 6- to 10-year-old children. Contentment related to increasing left frontopolar activation (p < .05). Empathic concern and positive empathy (...) related to increasing right frontopolar activation (ps < .05). A second form of positive empathy related to increasing left dorsolateral activation (p < .05). This suggests that positive affect and (negative and positive) empathy both relate to changes in prefrontal activity during a pleasurable task. (shrink)

Essays showing how environmental philosophy can have an impact on the world by integrating abstract reasoning with actual environmental practice.

As of January 1, 2008, over 98,000 people are waiting for organ transplants in the United States of America. Of those, nearly 75,000 are waiting for a kidney. In this calendar year, fewer than 15,000 will receive a kidney transplant from a deceased donor. The average waiting time for a deceased donor kidney now exceeds five years in virtually all metropolitan areas. Sadly, nearly as many people die waiting as there are deceased donors each year, despite monumental efforts by the (...) entire transplant community to increase both the number of organ donors and the number of organs recovered from each donor. The imbalance between demand and supply has led to considerable efforts to expand the criteria for what is considered an acceptable organ donor by the Organ Procurement and Transplant Network, thereby hoping somewhat to assuage the shortfall of donor organs. So-called Expanded Criteria Donors may be older than 50, have history of hypertension, or have died from intracerebral hemorrhage and/or have impaired renal function. ECDs now make up nearly 40% of the donor population. (shrink)

Light and Kennison found that bias effects in the forced-choice perceptual identification of words occurred only in a subset of participants, those who claimed on a strategy questionnaire to be deliberately guessing words they had studied previously. McKoon and Ratcliff raised a number of objections to the proposal that bias effects are due to guessing strategies, citing difficulties in our statistical treatment of data, our use of subjective reports to classify participants, and our approach to the general problem of separating (...) implicit from explicit influences on performance. This article responds to these objections. (shrink)

Selectional preferences have a long history in both generative and computational linguistics. However, since the publication of Resnik's dissertation in 1993, a new approach has surfaced in the computational linguistics community. This new line of research combines knowledge represented in a pre‐defined semantic class hierarchy with statistical tools including information theory, statistical modeling, and Bayesian inference. These tools are used to learn selectional preferences from examples in a corpus. Instead of simple sets of semantic classes, selectional preferences are viewed as (...) probability distributions over various entities. We survey research that extends Resnik's initial work, discuss the strengths and weaknesses of each approach, and show how they together form a cohesive line of research. (shrink)

T. C. Boyle’s A Friend of the Earth (2001), tells the story of Tyrone Tierwater, a one time monkeywrencher and environmental avenger for “E. F.!” (Earth Forever!) who we first meet in 2025 in his mid-seventies. Tierwater is now working for a character based on Michael Jackson, who in his semi-retirement has employed the elder eco-warrior to help save some of the last remnants of a few dying species – warthogs, peccaries, hyenas, jackals, lions and what is likely the last (...) Patagoninan fox. The not too distant environmental future painted by Boyle is a disaster. Global warming has finally caught up to us with a vengeance and even the secure shores of the U.S. are wracked by unmitigated cycles of flooding and drought seriously degrading most semblances of life as we know it. To be sure, though, people, and some versions of progress, go on. While most affordable food and drink is limited to some combination of catfish and sake (very little else having survived decades of disastrous weather and a series of crop blights), and there are constant threats of new strains of life-threatening and highly contagious diseases, suburban development continues and new humans come into existence with the promise, at least in the developed world, of longer life spans. But Boyle does not give us anything like the overly optimistic views expressed by some conservative columnists who dismiss the need for global climate treaties; this is not an environmental future that is only felt with difficulty in the underdeveloped south requiring simpler economic readjustments for Americans without a substantial shift in lifestyle. The world.. (shrink)

The collection of papers that comprise this thesis explore three sets of questions important to environmental philosophy, broadly construed. All three topics are explored through the theoretical device of environmental pragmatism, the argument that philosophical disagreements on environmental questions can sometimes be set aside in order to achieve compatible strategies to work toward improving environmental conditions. As part of this strategy, pragmatists also call for the abandonment of the existing prejudices of environmental philosophy, in particular nonanthropocentrism and commitments to moral (...) monism. Part I of the thesis looks at two sets of debates in environmental philosophy: the social ecology-deep ecology divide in political ecology, and the debate between monists and pluralists in environmental ethics. Both debates are used as a vehicle to advance the pragmatist position, as well as demonstrate the connection between this thesis and other attempts to articulate a workable form of pluralism in environmental philosophy. Next, the first half of Part II uses the pragmatist premise to launch applied investigations of two environmental questions: the privatization of environmental regulations, and the political appropriation of restoration ecology. The second half of Part II explores questions concerning urban space and political identity, which come to the center of environmental philosophy following a pragmatist assault on its existing prejudices. Finally, Part III continues the themes of the last half of Part II to look at issues concerning technology and built space, topics which have traditionally been ignored by environmental philosophers. These final chapters present a set of issues concerning space and place which must be integral to an environmental philosophy which has been tempered by pragmatic concerns. (shrink)

Despite the intransigent nature of many of the problems discussed, the contributors to this volume demonstrate the possibilities for developing a viable alternative politics.

In recent centuries Christians of various denominations have endorsed many different political philosophies that they see as being truly biblical in their approach. Over this time there has been an increasing hostility, by some Christians, towards free markets and political philosophies that hold human liberty as the highest goal such as libertarianism and classical liberalism. This criticism is unwarranted and misplaced as libertarianism and free markets are not only compatible with Christianity, they are also the most biblically sound of all (...) economics systems and political philosophies endorsed by Christians today. Therefore, this paper will argue that Christians of all denominations should endorse free markets and libertarianism if they wish to create a world that follows biblical principles and the teachings of Jesus. (shrink)

J. Baird Callicott has thrown down the gauntlet once again in the monism?pluralism debate in environmental ethics. In a recent article he argues that his ?communitarianism? (combined with a limited intertheoretic pluralism) is sufficient to get the advantages of pluralism advocated by his critics, while at the same time retaining the framework of moral monism. Callicott's attempt to set the record straight on the monism?pluralism debate has once again derailed us from answering the most important question in this discussion: how (...) do we achieve a compatibilism among ethical theories which will inform better environmental practices? But if Callicott got it wrong, then who is getting it right? Arne Naess, whose work has heretofore been excluded from the mainstream discussion of this issue, has all along understood the heart of the monism?pluralism question. This paper updates the current state of the monism?pluralism debate, provides an answer to Callicott's latest challenge, and advances the thesis that all involved in this argument would do well to take a look at what Naess has to say on this issue. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Ethics & the Environment 7.1 (2002) 102-108 [Access article in PDF] Symposium IntroductionEric Katz's Nature As Subject Andrew Light Can and should we distinguish between nature and culture? The question has become a perennial one in environmental ethics, as well as in allied fields in environmental history, sociology, and politics. And just when we think it is settled—as many did after William Cronon's famous deconstruction of wilderness in 1995—and (...) it feels safe to go back into the metaphysical waters of environmental philosophy, such issues pop up again to send us running.What follows extends this debate in the context of Eric Katz's well-known work in environmental ethics. Brought together here are Katz and two critics sympathetic to his positions, Wayne Ouderkirk and Ned Hettinger. While the occasion for the exchange was the publication of Katz's book, Nature as Subject: Human Obligation and Natural Community (1997), which collects his papers from 1979 to 1996, the focus quickly became somewhat narrower, centering on possible problems with Katz's ontological dualism between natural and artifactual entities.Katz has exerted a strong influence on the development of environmental ethics, particularly through his persistent arguments for a distinction between individualist and holist approaches to obligations to the nonhuman natural world and his metaphysical and moral critique of attempts [End Page 102] by humans to create, repair, or restore nature. While these positions continue to be on display here, there is also something more. In this exchange Katz throws down the gauntlet on his nature-culture dualism, admitting at the start that the accusation is true. Like the Protestants in Monty Python's The Meaning of Life, he is a dualist—and fiercely proud of it! Despite whatever misgivings I or others may have about this position, I believe that in making this claim, Katz, similar to David Chalmers's open embrace and resuscitation of dualism in philosophy of mind, has done us a great service. For it is arguably true that many environmental philosophers, along with other academics, have settled into a complacent "labeling as argument" pattern. If we can label a position as "dualist" or "essentialist," then our work is done. But surely not every form of dualism is necessarily wrong, even if, as Ouderkirk reminds us in his reading of Val Plumwood's work, the logic of many forms of dualism has tended toward a pernicious pattern. Arguments are needed in both directions. If nature-culture dualism is mistaken or wrongheaded, or leads to unfortunate conclusions, then we must know why; if dualism is the only way to make sense of the hurdles presented to us in coming to a better understanding of the value of nature and culture then we must know why as well. And further, because many in the field have assumed a nature-culture dualism without admitting to it, we can admire that Katz chooses to "fess up" and finally put the issue squarely on the table.If this is the road we are heading down with this particular exchange, then we are off to a good start. Both critics of Katz do a thorough job of pressing home their arguments, rather than only pointing accusatory fingers. Ned Hettinger, in "The Problem of Finding a Positive Role for Humans in the Natural World," avoids using the term "dualism," but nonetheless argues that Katz has a tendency to "rigidly dichotomize the natural/artifactual distinction." Additionally, Hettinger argues that Katz tends to overlook his own admission that the differences between nature and artifacts admit to degrees rather than a strict dualism. Hettinger focuses the bulk of his critique on the unfortunate upshot of such a position: given such a distinction, there is little if any place for a positive role for human intervention in nature, or for a philosophical contribution to the formation of better environmental policies.Wayne Ouderkirk, in "Katz's Problematic Dualism and its 'Seismic' Effects on His Theory," is sympathetic with Katz's intuitions that some distinction is needed between artifacts and natural entities. The problem [End Page 103] he sees is that such... (shrink)

Philosophers and geographers have converged on the topic of public space, fascinated and in many ways alarmed by fundamental changes in the way post-industrial societies produce space for public use, and in the way citizens of these same societies perceive and constitute themselves as a public. This volume advances this inquiry, making extensive use of political and social theory, while drawing intimate connections between political principles, social processes, and the commonplaces of our everyday environments.

In the past thirty years environmental ethics has emerged as one of the most vibrant and exciting areas of applied philosophy. Several journals and hundreds of books testify to its growing importance inside and outside philosophical circles. But with all of this scholarly output, it is arguably the case that environmental ethics is not living up to its promise of providing a philosophical contribution to the resolution of environmental problems. This article surveys the current state of the field and offers (...) an alternative path for the future development of environmental ethics toward a more publicly engaged model of applied philosophy. (shrink)

I examine a puzzle concerning the role of humans in the appreciation of place that arises in Christoph Rehmann-Sutter's paper in this volume, specifically the problem of the irreplaceability of place. If places are designated as valuable in part because they are irreplaceable, and if any human can appreciate any place, then how can humans ever be part of a place if they are ultimately substitutable as agents who appreciate places? After identifying the puzzle I briefly discuss two possible ways (...) to answer this problem though the literature on bioregionalism. Two kinds of bioregionalism, liberal bioregionalism (LB) and communitarian bioregionalism (CB) are identified and distinguished. A brief appeal is made to embrace LB for now (which entails avoiding the irreplaceability problem by jettisoning the need to focus on the special qualities of a particular place) and to hold off on CB as a goal down the road which would re-establish the importance of specificity in the value of place. (shrink)

Volume 19, Issue 5, May 2019, Page 45-47.

The aesthetics of everyday life, originally developed by Henri Lefebvre and other modernist theorists, is an extension of traditional aesthetics, usually confined to works of art. It is not limited to the study of humble objects but is rather concerned with all of the undeniably aesthetic experiences that arise when one contemplates objects or performs acts that are outside the traditional realm of aesthetics. It is concerned with the nature of the relationship between subject and object. One significant aspect of (...) everyday aesthetics is environmental aesthetics, whether constructed, as a building, or manipulated, as a landscape. Others, also discussed in the book, include sport, weather, smell and taste, and food. (shrink)

When Donald Trump was elected the 45th president of the United States in November 2016, many observers in the U.S. and international environmental communities began voicing concerns about the range...

Is environmentalism a form of identity politics like feminism, race‐based politics, and other political orientations at the core of the new social movements? It is argued that it can be, but that this claim to political identity has so far only been clearly available to a narrow set of environmentalists, notably deep ecologists and essentialist ecofeminists. But if it is plausible that broader forms of environmentalism can represent a political identity, then political objections to the content of environmentalism become much (...) more salient than they might at first appear. If environmentalists decide to articulate their environmentalism as a kind of ‘ecological identity’, then this identity will encounter serious hurdles that deserve attention. (shrink)

This chapter discusses the methods of studying the nature of time, particularly the story method. It presents a discussion of time as related to identity and tells the story of a person put on trial for committing a murder five years ago who puts forward an unorthodox defense. The accused person claims to remember committing the murder, but argues that “the murderer is not the same person as me, for I have changed. I am not the same person as that (...) murderer of five years ago. Therefore you cannot punish me, for no one is guilty of a crime committed by someone else.” This defense, though not accepted by the court, raises the question of whether a person who changes over time, either physically or psychologically, remains the same person. (shrink)

La communication par ordinateur est de plus en plus utilisée comme soutien pour les cours universitaires conventionnels. Cet article offre un panorama d'une série d'études fines d'innovation à petite échelle dans diverses disciplines sur deux campus universitaires britanniques. La plupart impliquait des interactions textuelles asynchrones concernant tous les étudiants et tous les tuteurs d'un cours. Des observations, des questionnaires et des entretiens ont servi à établir des configurations de décollage et d'usage des nouveaux médias pour la discussion. Les résultats sont (...) discutés selon les cinq « règles de virtualité » .Computer-based communication is increasingly being used in support of conventional university courses. This paper offers an overview of a series of detailed studies of small scale innovations across a range of disciplines at two campus-based UK universities. Most involved asynchronous, text-based interactions involving all students on a given course and the tutor or tutors involved. Observations, questionnaires and interviews were used to establish patterns of uptake and use of the new discussion media. Findings are discussed in terms of five "rules of virtuality". (shrink)

As health care coverage gets more and more unfair by international standards, “Improving Fairness in Coverage Decisions” (Wynia et al. 2004) shows that the best of America's employers, unions, heal...