Environmental Ethics: Anthologies and Journal Articles

Permanent URI for this collection

https://hdl.handle.net/10217/100486

Browse

Now showing 1 - 20 of 243

Open Access
A forest ethic and multivalue forest management: the integrity of forests and of foresters are bound together
(Colorado State University. Libraries, 1991) Coufal, James E., author; Rolston, Holmes, 1932-, author; Society of American Foresters, publisher
The Society of American Foresters (SAF) has long had an ethic of using forests to benefit society. Now many foresters, prompted by Aldo Leopold and his land ethic, are wondering if SAF does not need a forest ethic, respecting the integrity of natural systems, to complement its ethic for society. Forests are communities as well as commodities. Forest management ought to expand from an ethical of multiple use to one of protecting multiple values found in forests.
Open Access
A hinge point of history
(Colorado State University. Libraries, 2010) Rolston, Holmes, 1932-, author; Trinity University Press, publisher
We live at a change of epochs. We enter a new era: the Anthropocene. From this point on, culture more than nature is the principal determinant of Earth's future. We are passing into a century when this will be increasingly obvious and this puts us at a hinge point of history. For some this is cause for congratulation, the fulfillment of our destiny as a species. For others this is cause for concern. We worried throughout much of the past century that humans would destroy themselves in interhuman conflict. The worry for the next century is that if our present heading is uncorrected, humans may ruin their planet and themselves along with it. Paradoxes and challenges confront and confound us in this new era. Although we congratulate ourselves on our powers, perhaps humans are not well equipped to manage the sorts of global-level problems we face. And yet, this wonderland Earth is a planet with promise. If we are to realize the abundant life for all time, both policy and ethics must enlarge the scope of concern.
Open Access
A managed Earth and the end of nature?
(Colorado State University. Libraries, 1999) Rolston, Holmes, 1932-, author; JAI Press, publisher
Humans increasingly see themselves as the planetary mangers. Perhaps nature is at an end? Natural history has been overtaken by human engineering. Others seek a revised account by which human activity is, or should be, natural. The ideal of nature, absent humans, ought to be replaced with an ideal in which the human presence is also natural. A postmodern claim is that nature always wears for us a human face. But nature neither is, or ought to be, ended. Humans belong on Earth, but nature ought also be an end in itself.
Open Access
Aesthetic experience in forests
(Colorado State University. Libraries, 1998) Rolston, Holmes, 1932-, author; Wiley-Blackwell (Firm), publisher
Forests are aesthetically challenging because of the sense of deep time, experiencing an archetype of creation. Forests are both perennial and dynamic. Appropriate aesthetic encounter requires knowledge of scientific natural history, necessary though not sufficient for intense, multisensory, participatory engagement when persons, immersed in forests, live their aesthetic experiences. Forests, although naturalized, are experienced as sublime, evoking the sense of the sacred. Aesthetic appreciation in forests radically differs from that appropriate for artworks.
Open Access
Aesthetics in the swamps
(Colorado State University. Libraries, 2000) Rolston, Holmes, 1932-, author; Johns Hopkins University Press, publisher
Wetlands are misunderstood landscapes, typically experienced negatively as swamps, sloughs, and mires. Understanding wetlands ecology, knowledge of specialized flora there, their unusual adaptations, and their diversity can enrich aesthetic appreciation of these landscapes. Aesthetic experiences include a sense of the primeval, admiration for ingenious and odd solutions to the challenges of wetlands living, of life persisting in the midst of its perpetual perishing.
Open Access
After preservation? Dynamic nature in the Anthropocene
(Colorado State University. Libraries, 2015) Rolston, Holmes, 1932-, author; University of Chicago Press, publisher
We have entered the first century in 45 million centuries of life on Earth in which one species can jeopardize the planet's future. Since Galileo, Earth seemed a minor planet, lost in the stars. Since Darwin, humans have come late and last on this lonely planet. Today, on our home planet at least, we are putting these once de-centered humans back at the center. This is the Anthropocene epoch, and this high profile discourse comes to showcase the expanding human empire. Humans will manage the planet. We need to figure, perhaps re-figure conservation in this novel future in which we celebrate a new epoch and name it after ourselves.
Open Access
An ecological pope challenges the Anthropocene Epoch
(Colorado State University. Libraries, 2015) Rolston, Holmes, 1932-, author; Process Century Press, publisher
In his recent encyclical Laudatio si', On Care for our Common Home, Pope Francis is a biocentric holist, advocating "integral ecology." He fully recognizes that humans need nature as natural resources, but he limits such use with a recognition of intrinsic value in God's created order. He laments biodiversity losses, celebrating all creatures great and small. He is scientifically informed, and in result asks for a transformed world view, limiting excessive technology and taming rapacious capitalism, simultaneously conserving nature and opening up opportunity for impoverished peoples. The encyclical is about environment and equally a socio-economic critique. Those concerned with environmental ethics can welcome a new and powerful voice for saving the Earth.
Open Access
Animal welfare and environmental ethics
(Colorado State University. Libraries, 2021) Rolston, Holmes, 1932-, author
Bernard Rollin's main concerns are domestic and research animals. Tens of thousands of such animals have endured less suffering as a result of Rollin's seminal work. Animals are of moral concern because they have conscious interests, or telos. Rollin's use of telos is plausible though more specialized than usual. He develops an account of animal rights and has been influential in shaping legislation and regulations. Rollin has theoretical or in-principle ideals that are unlikely to be accepted as current practice. In result he adopts more moderate moral principles. In the fair-contract, husbandry dimension of agriculture, the farmer takes care of the cows and pigs, recognizing their rights, and then eats them, or sells them to be eaten. Environmental ethicists add that there are considerations in a more complex ethic, predation for example, that cannot be reached by conferring rights on them. Rollin has effectively analyzed the bioscience that confirms animal minds. He reaches a strange combination of kinship and chasm separating human and animal minds. Rollin's account of any deeper environmental ethics for a biospheric Earth is unsatisfactory, any respect for life beyond respect for sentience, especially his concepts of endangered species.
Open Access
Annotated bibliography
(Colorado State University. Libraries, 2009) Rolston, Holmes, 1932-, author; Gale, publisher
Annotated Bibliography with sections: 1. Reference works 2. Systematic overviews 3. Collected essays of a single author 4. Anthology overviews, collected essays by multiple authors, textbooks 5. Case Studies 6. Animals and environmental ethics 7. Biodiversity, wilderness, restoration, aesthetics 8. Environmental justice, environmental virtue ethics 9. Religion and nature 10. Ecofeminism 11. Sustainability, future generations 12. Global environmental ethics, climate change.
Open Access
Antarctica
(Colorado State University. Libraries, 2009) Rolston, Holmes, 1932-, author; Gale, publisher
Antarctica, the seventh continent, is anomalous, compared with the six inhabited continents. The usual concerns of environmental ethics on other continents fail without sustainable development, or ecosystems for a "land ethic," or even familiar terrestrial fauna and flora. A political Antarctic regime developed policy with a deepening ethical sensitivity over the second half of the last century remarkably exemplified in the Protocol on Environmental Protection to the Antarctic Treaty (Madrid Protocol) at the end of the century, protecting "the intrinsic value of Antarctica," though puzzles remain about how to value Antarctica.
Open Access
Are values in nature subjective or objective?
(Colorado State University. Libraries, 1982) Rolston, Holmes, 1932-, author; Environmental Philosophy, Inc., publisher
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-laden. 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 forms and land forms, and to experiencing subjects, extending the ecological model. Ethical imperatives follow from this redescription of natural value and the valuing process.
Open Access
Arvot luonnossa
(Colorado State University. Libraries, 1997) Rolston, Holmes, 1932-, author; Gaudeamus, publisher
Nature is examined as a carrier of values. Ten areas of values are recognized: (1) economic value, (2) life support value, (3) recreational value, (4) scientific value, (5) aesthetic value, (6) life value, (7) diversity and unity values, (8) stability and spontaneity values, (9) dialectical value, and (10) sacramental value. Each is analyzed and illustrated with particular reference to the objective precursors of value described by natural science.
Open Access
Beauty and the beast: aesthetic experience of wildlife
(Colorado State University. Libraries, 1987) Rolston, Holmes, 1932-, author; Westview Press, publisher
Wild lives are valued aesthetically in diverse ways: (1) Wild lives are spontaneous form in motion, appealing to human emotions. (2) They are kindred yet alien sentient life. (3) They struggle to make the potential actual. (4) Wild lives are taken up as symbols in the culture that humans overlay on the natural world.
Open Access
Beyond recreational value: the greater outdoors preservation-related and environmental benefits
(Colorado State University. Libraries, 1987) Rolston, Holmes, 1932-, author; Government Printing Office, publisher
The word recreation contains the word creation. On first analysis, recreation typically benefits Americans because it re-creates, rejuvenates them when they are worn from work. At deeper analysis, when such recreation takes place in the natural environment, the creation is the context of human re-creation. Persons leave the built, cultured environment to seek the natural environment. At times this may be just recreation, quite beneficial and hardly different from indoor recreation. But often there is more, and this "more" needs to be explored. In the outdoors, one "touches base" with something greater than can be found indoors. Encounter with creation re-creates. Such benefits are philosophical and intangible, but real and deeply felt.
Open Access
Biblical wilderness--midbar, arabah and eremos
(Colorado State University. Libraries, 2016) Rolston, Holmes, 1932-, author
Words translated as "wilderness" occur nearly 300 times in the Bible. A formative Hebrew memory is the years of "wandering in the wilderness," mixing experience of wild landscape, of searching for a promised land, and of encounter with God. There is a psychology as well as a geography of wilderness, a theology gained in the wilderness. Jesus is baptized by John and then is driven by the Spirit into the wilderness for forty days. The Devil is there, but so is the Spirit. This records a search for solitude, for self-discovery, for divine presence, but the natural environment is the needed ambiance.
Open Access
Biodiversity
(Colorado State University. Libraries, 2001) Rolston, Holmes, 1932-, author
Whether humans have duties to endangered species is a significant theoretical and an urgent practical question. Initially, the focus was on endangered species, which are still central, but in recent years attention has widened to other levels of biodiversity, such as types of ecosystems at a regional level, or genetic diversity at the microbiological level. The rationale for saving species may be anthropocentric, and/or naturalistic, sometimes said to be biocentric. One rationale is that nature is a kind of wonderland.
Open Access
Biological conservation of microbes
(Colorado State University. Libraries, 1989-09-11) Rolston, Holmes, 1932-, speaker
A talk by Holmes Rolston, III in the CSU Department of Microbiology on September 11, 1989. Environmental ethics is typically concerned with big stuff, bears, wolves, plants, wildfires, or insects. The Endangered Species act protects these, but does not mention microbes. There are concerns about microbes, in diseases, such as polio, or for patents, or fermenting. There are agricultural, industrial, medical uses. The usual list of reasons for preserving species are that they have aesthetic, ecological, educational, historical, recreational, or scientific value. Microbes can have ecological, historical, and scientific value. Often we do not know how much, at least not yet. Microbes in rare places, such as in the hot springs of Yellowstone, may bring clues about the origin of life. Respect for life includes microbes. For perhaps two-thirds of the history of Earth, all life was one-celled.
Open Access
Biology and philosophy in Yellowstone
(Colorado State University. Libraries, 1990) Rolston, Holmes, 1932-, author; D. Reidel Pub. Co., publisher
Yellowstone National Park poses critical issues in biology and philosophy. Among these are (1) how to value nature, especially at the ecosystem level, and whether to let nature take its course or employ hands-on scientific management; (2) the meaning of "natural" as this operates in park policy; (3) establishing biological claims on the scale of regional systems; (4) the interplay of natural and cultural history, involving both native and European Americans; (5) and sociopolitical forces as determinants in biological discovery. Alston Chase's strident Playing God in Yellowstone is criticized and used as a test of David Hull's naturalistic philosophy of biology. Biology and philosophy in Yellowstone ought to combine for an appropriate environmental ethic.
Open Access
Biology without conservation: an environmental misfit and contradiction in terms
(Colorado State University. Libraries, 1989) Rolston, Holmes, 1932-, author; Oxford University Press, publisher
Every biological organism is per se a conservationist, defending its life. Nonconservation is death. Although not moral agents, organisms are normative systems that value life intrinsically, for what each individual life is in itself, without further contributory reference beyond conserving that kind. An ecosystem is thus a systemic web of intrinsic values defended and instrumental values captured. Humans can and ought to use their environment resourcefully, conserving their own kind of life. But, as the sole moral agents among Earth's millions of species, humans ought also to conserve Earth's biological processes of value, processes that precede and exceed the human presence. Conservation goals, although cultural attitudes, ought not to be merely cultural attitudes, but ought to conserve nonanthropocentric biological values present. Biology without conservation is a contradiction in terms, as well as misfit in its environment.
Open Access
Biophilia, selfish genes, shared values
(Colorado State University. Libraries, 1993) Rolston, Holmes, 1932-, author; Island Press, publisher
Two central features of Edward O. Wilson's work are selfish genes and biophilia. A biophilia ethics is based in a love for all forms of life, so the chief exponent of selfish genes reaches toward a more comprehensive ethics, one even including ants. Thereby comes the puzzle. Can we get biophilia out of selfish genes? The analysis here proposes a theory that both better describes what is going on and better prescribes what ought to be. By a series of ever more extensive hookups we weave the selfish genes into global natural history. Philosophically speaking, this is a study in integration and identity in natural history.

Browse

Browsing Environmental Ethics: Anthologies and Journal Articles by Title

Results Per Page

Sort Options