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1. Environmental Ethics: Volume > 2 > Issue: 2

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features

2. Environmental Ethics: Volume > 2 > Issue: 2
Tom Regan

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In this essay, I explore the moral foundations of the treatment of animals. Alternative views are critically examined, including (a) the Kantian account, which holds that our duties regarding animals are actually indirect duties to humanity; (b) the cruelty account, which holds that the idea of cruelty explains why it is wrong to treat animals in certain ways; and (c) the utilitarian account, which holds that the value of consequences for all sentient creatures explains our duties to animals. These views are shown to be inadequate, the Kantian account because some of our duties regarding animals are direct duties to animals; the cruelty account because it confuses matters of motive or intent with the question of the rightness or wrongness of the agent’s actions; and the utilitarian account because it could be used to justifyidentifiable speciesistic practices. I defend a fourth view. Only if we postulate basic moral rights in the case of humans, can we satisfactorily account for why it is wrong to treat humans in certain ways, and it is only by postulating that these humans have inherent value that we can attribute to them basic moral rights. Consistency requires that we attribute this same kind of value to many animals. Their havinginherent value provides a similar basis for attributing certain basic moral rights to them, including the right not to be harmed. Possession of this right places the onus of justification on anyone who would harm these animals. I set forth conditions for such a justification which those who would abuse animals have failed to meet.
3. Environmental Ethics: Volume > 2 > Issue: 2
Eugene C. Hargrove

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Environmentalists in the United States are often confronted by rural landowners who feel that they have the right to do whatever they want with their land regardless of the consequences for other human beings or of the damage to the environment. This attitude is traced from its origins in ancient German and Saxon land use practices into the political writings of Thomas Jefferson where it was fused togetherwith John Locke’s theory of property. This view of land and property rights was most influential in the late nineteenth century after the passage of the Homestead Act in 1862 when it was used in the arguments opposing national parks and nature preservation. Today it remains a formidable obstacle to planning and zoning in rural areas, despite unstated underlying assumptions which are either outdated or false.

discussion papers

4. Environmental Ethics: Volume > 2 > Issue: 2
Meredith Williams

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I discuss Peter Singer’s claim that the interests of animals merit equal consideration with those of human beings. I show that there are morally relevant differences between humans and animals that Singer’s rather narrow utilitarian conception of morality fails to capture. Further, I argue that Singer’s formal conception of moral equality is so thin as to be virtually vacuous and that his attempts to give it moresubstance point to just the kind of differences between humans and animals that undermine his equalitarian thesis.
5. Environmental Ethics: Volume > 2 > Issue: 2
Jay E. Kantor

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Christopher D. Stone has claimed that natural objects can and should have rights. I accept Stone’s premise that the possession of rights is tied to the possession of interests; however, I argue that the concept of a natural object needs a more careful analysis than is given by Stone. Not everything that Stone calls a natural object is an object “naturally.” Some must be taken as artificial rather than as natural. Thistype of object cannot be said to have intrinsic interests and hence cannot be given rights that can protect “its own sake”-which is the sort of right that Stone focuses on. Further, there are other sorts of natural objects which, although they are objects “naturally,” cannot meaningfully be said to have intrinsic interests, and thus cannot have the sorts of rights that Stone is concerned with. Finally, there are other sorts of natural objects which are objects naturally and which have intrinsic interests, but which are not proper candidates for the possession of rights. The prerequisites for being “owed” rights are the possession of intrinsic interests and the capability to suffer when those interests are interfered with or denied or threatened.

book reviews

6. Environmental Ethics: Volume > 2 > Issue: 2
R. Paul Thompson

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7. Environmental Ethics: Volume > 2 > Issue: 2
Charles R. Magel

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8. Environmental Ethics: Volume > 2 > Issue: 2
Sara Shute

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news and notes

9. Environmental Ethics: Volume > 2 > Issue: 2

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