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Environmental Education And Metaethics
Abstract
Contrā Dale Jamieson, the study of the metaethical foundations of environmental ethics may well lead students to a more environmentally responsible way of life. For although metaethics is rarely decisive in decision making and action, there are two kinds of circumstances in which it can play a crucial role in our practical decisions. First, decisions that have unusual features do not summon habitual ethical reactions, and hence invite the application of ethical precepts that the study of metaethics and ethical theory isolate and clarify. Second, there are times in which the good of others (including organisms and systems in the natural world) may well be given greater weight in one’s ethical deliberations if theory has made clear that the good to be promoted is ontologically independent of one’s own good.
... Zoos have become more aggressive in their education programs and have moved away from strictly taxonomic and natural history themes toward ecological inter- pretation and conservation implications Hunt, 1993;Thurston, 1995). To pro- mote their messages, nearly all zoos, including small zoos, in the USA, Europe, and Australia have education departments (Heimlich, 1996;Walker, 1991). ...
Understanding the historical development of zoos is an important aspect in defining their educational future. Therefore, this chapter provides a brief history of the available literature on zoo education, includes a condensed review of the development of zoological institutions from menageries to conservation centers, and defines the change of collections of exotic animals from curiosities to biological conservation and education centers. Zoos moved from indicators of power to scientific establishments for taxonomy, to modern centers of conservation biology. Through the historical literature, we build a foundation for this book by describing the educational evolution of zoos. If zoos had not evolved from places of curiosity, they would not be the centers for biological conservation and education they are today. Additionally, this chapter frames the body of the by considering the future of zoos through the public’s understanding of the zoo’s past. Today’s zoos must consider the zoo’s future and how it links to the public’s understanding of biological concepts, conservation biology, and environmental change. Conservation literacy should be part of good citizenship and should be addressed by practitioners to make the public conservation-literate citizens. Even though the main focus of visitors is the animals on display, the Visitor Voice in this book is described as the content of the dialogues that take place during a zoo visit.
Morality's Progress is the summation of nearly three decades of work by a leading figure in environmental ethics and bioethics. The twenty-two papers here are invigoratingly diverse, but together tell a unified story about various aspects of the morality of our relationships to animals and to nature. Jamieson's direct and accessible essays will convince sceptics that thinking about these relations offers great intellectual reward, and his work here sets a challenging, controversial agenda for the future.
Prevailing accounts of natural values as the subjective response of the human mind are reviewed and contested. Discoveries in the physical sciences tempt us to strip the reality away from many native-range qualities, including values, but discoveries in the biological sciences counterbalance this by finding sophisticated structures and selective processes in earthen nature. On the one hand, all human knowing and valuing contain subjective components, being theory-Iaden. On the other hand, in ordinary natural affairs, in scientific knowing, and in valuing, we achieve some objective knowing of the world, agreeably with and mediated by the subjective coefficient. An ecological model of valuing is proposed, which is set in an evolutionary context. Natural value in its relation to consciousness is, examined as an epiphenomenon, an echo, an emergent, an entrance, and an education, with emphasis on the latter categories. An account of intrinsic and instrumental natural value is related both to natural objects, life fonns and land forms, and to experiencing subjects, extending the ecological model. Ethical imperatives follow from this redescription of natural value and the valuing process.
The central and most recalcitrant problem for environmental ethics is the problem of constructing an adequate theory of intrinsic value for nonhuman natural entities and for nature as a whole. In part one, I retrospectively survey the problem, review certain classical approaches to it, and recommend one as an adequate, albeit only partial, solution. In part two, I show that the classical theory of inherent value for nonhuman entities and nature as a whole outlined in part one is inconsistent with a contemporary scientific world view because it assumes the validity of the classical Cartesian partition between subject and object which has been overturned by quantum theory. Based upon the minimalistic Copenhagen Interpretation of quantum theory, I then develop a theory of inherent value which does not repose upon the obsolete subject/object and ancillary fact/value dichotomies. In part three, I suggest that a more speculative metaphysical interpretation of quantum theory--one involving the notion ofreal internal relations and a holistic picture of nature-permits a principle of “axiological complementary,” a theory of “intrinsic”-as opposed to “inherent”-value in nature as a simple extension of ego.
One of the distinctions that Plato in the Laws stresses most heavily in his discussion of the proper relation between the individual citizen and the laws of the city is that between persuasion and compulsion. Law, Plato believes, should try to persuade rather than compel the citizens. Near the end of the fourth book of the Laws, the Athenian Stranger, Plato's spokesman in this dialogue, asks whether the lawgiver for their new city of Magnesia should in making laws ‘explain straightaway what must and must not be done, add the threat of a penalty, and turn to another law, without adding a single bit of encouragement or persuasion [παραμυθας δ κα πειθος … ν] to his legislative edicts’ (Laws 720a 1–2). A few lines later, the Athenian Stranger himself condemns such a procedure as ‘the worse and more savage alternative’ (τò χερον τον δυον κα γριτερον 720e4). The better method is for the laws themselves to try to persuade (πεθειν) the citizens to act in the manner that they prescribe. And as a means of doing this, Plato proposes attaching preludes (προομια) to particular laws and to the legal code as a whole: such preludes will supplement the sanctions attached to the laws and will aim at persuading the citizens to act in the way that the laws direct for reasons other than fear of the penalties attached to the law. Such a practice, Plato believes, is an innovation: it is something that no lawgiver has ever thought of doing before (722b–e). And we have no reason to think that Plato is here excluding his earlier self, e.g. the Plato of the Republic and the Politicus, from this criticism.
Human Chauvinism and Environmental Ethics
- R Routley
- V Routley
Routley, R. and V. Routley. 1980. " Human Chauvinism and Environmental Ethics, "
in D.S. Mannison, M.A. McRobbie, and R. Routley (eds) Environmental Philosophy.
Canberra: Australian National University, pp. 96-189.
the " heuristics of fear " discussed in Jonas
- Cf
Cf. the " heuristics of fear " discussed in Jonas 1984.