Already a subscriber? - Login here
Not yet a subscriber? - Subscribe here

Browse by:



Displaying: 1-11 of 11 documents


from the editor:

1. Environmental Ethics: Volume > 1 > Issue: 1
Eugene C. Hargrove

view |  rights & permissions | cited by

memorial notice:

2. Environmental Ethics: Volume > 1 > Issue: 1
Walter H. O'Briant

view |  rights & permissions | cited by

news and notes

3. Environmental Ethics: Volume > 1 > Issue: 1

view |  rights & permissions | cited by

features

4. Environmental Ethics: Volume > 1 > Issue: 1
Holmes Rolston, III

abstract | view |  rights & permissions | cited by
“Nature knows best” is reconsidered from an ecological perspective which suggests that we ought to follow nature. The phrase “follow nature” has many meanings. In an absolute law-of-nature sense, persons invariably and necessarily act in accordance with natural laws, and thus cannot but follow nature. In an artifactual sense, all deliberate human conduct is viewed as unnatural, and thus it is impossible to follow nature. As a result, the answer to the question, whether we can and ought to follow nature, must be sought in a relative sense according to which human conduct is sometimes more and sometimes less natural. Four specific relative senses are examined: a homeostatic sense, an imitative ethical sense, an axiological sense, and a tutorial sense. Nature can be followed in a homeostatic sense in which human conduct utilizes naturallaws for our well-being in a stable environment, but this following is nonmoral since the moral elements can be separated from it. Nature cannot be followed in an imitative ethical sense because nature itself is either amoral or, by some accounts, immoral. Guidance for inter-human ethical conduct, therefore, must be sought not in nature, but in human culture. Nevertheless, in an axiological sense, persons can and ought to follow nature by viewing it as an object of orienting interest and value. In this connection, three environments are distinguished for human well-being in whichwe can and ought to participate-the urban, the rural, and the wild. Finally, in a tutorial sense, persons can and ought to follow nature by letting it teach us son1ething of our human role, our place, and our appropriate character in the natural system as a whole. In this last sense, "following nature" is commended to anyone who seeks in his human conduct to maintain a good fit with the natural environment-a sense of following nature involving both efficiency and wisdom.
5. Environmental Ethics: Volume > 1 > Issue: 1
John N. Martin

abstract | view |  rights & permissions | cited by
An analysis is proposed for the common argument that something should be preserved because it is irreplaceable. The argument is shown to depend on modal elements in irreplaceable, existence assumptions of preserve, and the logic of obligation. In terms of this theory it is argued that utilitarianism can account for most, but not all instances of persuasive appeals to irreplaceability. Beingessentially backwards looking, utilitarianism cannot in principle justify preservation of objects irreplaceable because of their history or genesis.
6. Environmental Ethics: Volume > 1 > Issue: 1
Charles Hartshorne

view |  rights & permissions | cited by

discussion papers

7. Environmental Ethics: Volume > 1 > Issue: 1
Philip M. Smith, Richard A. Watson

view |  rights & permissions | cited by
8. Environmental Ethics: Volume > 1 > Issue: 1
Donald C. Lee

view |  rights & permissions | cited by
9. Environmental Ethics: Volume > 1 > Issue: 1
J. Baird Callicott

view |  rights & permissions | cited by

book reviews

10. Environmental Ethics: Volume > 1 > Issue: 1
Daniel Lehocky

view |  rights & permissions | cited by
11. Environmental Ethics: Volume > 1 > Issue: 1
Mark Sagoff

view |  rights & permissions | cited by