Midterm review

Question 1

Give some history of environmental ethics and connections to other social movements or academic disciplines in the 1960s and 70s

Answer 1

Rachel Carson published Silent Spring

NASA missions to space/moon; Earth seen from space (1960 to 1972)

Rise of “counterculture” - grassroots environmentalism in 60s

Civil rights movement + protests in 1950’s-1970’s

First Earth day, 1970

Recognition of parallels between discrimination and “speciesism”

Philosophers grapple “new” field of environmental ethics

Religion scholars/theologians grapple with troubled legacy of religion for the environment

Lynn White, 1967, “Historical roots of the ecological crisis”

Problems of the anthropocentrism is existing ethical, religious frameworks

Question 2

Deontology definition

Answer 2

Uses rules to distinguish right from wrong

Question 3

Deontology key concepts

Answer 3

rights, duties, rules. An action is judged proper or improper as a matter of principle rather than consequences (example: lying)

Question 4

universalizability

Answer 4

the thesis that any moral judgment must be equally applicable to every relevantly identical situation

Question 5

autonomy

Answer 5

the capacity of an agent to act in accordance with objective morality rather than under the influence of desires

Question 6

golden mean

Answer 6

asserts that virtuous behavior, such as courage, falls between two extremes, one of excess, such as recklessness, and one of deficiency, such as cowardness

Question 7

Utilitarianism

Answer 7

Greatest good for the greatest number, cost/benefit analysis, the “ends justify the means”

Question 8

utilitarianism key concepts

Answer 8

actions are evaluated according to consequences. E.g. “the greatest good for the greatest number” or “the ends justify the means” or “all’s well that ends well”

Question 9

moral agents vs moral patients

Answer 9

moral agents are those who have moral obligations, and moral patients those to whom obligations are owed

Question 9

virtue

Answer 9

Focus is more on the character if the agent (the person doing the action) than the action itself

Question 10

anthropocentric approach

Answer 10

Human value is often tied to our superior intelligence

Question 11

the land pyramid

Answer 11

the role of predators in an ecosystem - is key to Leopold’s vision of proper land ethics

Question 12

ecological conscience

Answer 12

awareness of the human impact on the environment and other living organisms and the need for humans to adjust their behaviors and thinking to ensure that the environment and its resources are not destroyed

An ecological conscience is a key concept in what Leopold means by land ethics (land ethic challenges narrow “economic” assessments of value)

Question 13

“Thinking like a mountain”

Answer 13

a perspective that understands the value of predators like wolves

Question 14

brain chauvinism

Answer 14

If your smart your safe and if you’re dumb, your dead

Question 15

different types of intelligence

Answer 15

Abilities to learn from experience (moths, microbes, slime molds)

Pattern recognition and communication/information sharing - bees, fungi

“Swarm” intelligence/self-organized: insects colonies; “Gaia” (Earth systems)

Question 16

Speciesism

Answer 16

discrimination or unjustified treatment based on an individual’s species membership

Question 17

Subject of a life

Answer 17

any being with a complex mental life, including perception, desire, belief, memory, intention, and a sense of the future - among other attributes

Question 18

Problem with “cruelty argument”:

Answer 18

cruelty is a characteristic or state of mind of the person performing an action. It does not say why an action is wrong in itself

Question 19

Problem with utilitarian argument

Answer 19

The rightness or wrongness of an action in utilitarian ethics depends on the outcome. What if the outcome changes? What if it turns out that practices that cause animal suffering actually create more good, overall, than harm?

Question 20

Central concepts in ecofeminism:

Answer 20

Dualism and logic of domination: (assumed) superiority justifies subordination

Connection of women with nature, the body, etc are cultural, historical, and symbolic

Similar oppression that women and animals nature are subject to

Question 21

absent referent

Answer 21

what separates the meat eater from the animal and the animal from the end product

Question 22

Privatization of consumption

Answer 22

present how people do not see the drawbacks of their decisions on a global standpoint. It is easy for people to go somewhere and order a burger, not realizing the effects that burger has on animals, greenhouse gas emissions, etc.

Question 23

retrograde humanism

Answer 23

when people say they care more about animals than humans, when, this is usually not the case