An overview of Environmental Ethics
- Resources
- Guide Questions
- Smartboard Notes
- Submit resources for O'Neill & Rolston here: http://www.google.com/moderator/#15/e=de71&t=de71.40
Here are some web sites that will enhance your understanding of this week's reading:
Environmental Ethics & Ethics Overviews:
This Week's Authors:
John O'Neill
Holmes Rolston III:
Real TED Videos (TED.com)
- The photo director for National Geographic, David Griffin knows the power of photography to connect us to our world. In a talk filled with glorious images, he talks about how we all use photos to tell our stories.
- The legendary chimpanzee researcher Jane Goodall talks about TACARE and her other community projects, which help people in booming African towns live side-by-side with threatened animals.
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Guide Questions:
The following questions are designed to fine tune your understanding of the reading. The subject matter and answers to these questions form the basis of what you will be required to know for exams.
Objectives for this week: These are the learning objectives you should have mastered after attending the lectures and completing the questions below
- describe different types of intrinsic value and its relation to the "value of wilderness" debate
- understand the role of human observers in creating value
- explain how the notion of intrinsic value underlies many issues/debates in contemporary environmental ethics
- explain Ralston's position on the intrinsic value of: animals, organisms, species, and ecosystems
- describe the interconnections between values that are generated intrinsically instrumentally and systemically
The Varieties of Intrinsic Value (O'Neill)
Guide Questions:
- Briefly describe the three types of intrinsic value outlined at the beginning of O'Neill's essay.
- O'Neill quotes Moore: "without humans the world might have some, but only very insignificant, value." Is this true?
- Is it possible for things to possess value "independently of the valuations of valuers"? What is O'Neill's position?
- In addition, is it possible to have strong objective values or "evaluative properties that can be characterized without reference to the experiences of human observers?"
- What does O'Neill invoke as a possible ethic for valuing nature intrinsically? Describe its roots in Aristotle's ethics (end of article, 139 -- 140)
Value in Nature and the Nature of Value (Rolston)
Guide Questions:
- Rolston begins his essay with a quote from Plato's apology: "The unexamined life is not worth living; life in the unexamined world is not worth living either." The second half is Rolston's summary. What does this mean? Is it true?
- Rolston echoes the common Western ethical claim that only humans can create value: "we humans carry the lamp that lights up value,..."(144) is this true?
- Describe Ralston's claims about the value of: animals, organisms, species, and ecosystems.
- In Rolston's view are ecosystems valuable? if so, why?
- Describe the interconnections between values that are generated intrinsically, instrumentally and systemically. How are they related?
Smartboard Notes from Week 4 Lecture:
