Midterm review Flashcards
Give some history of environmental ethics and connections to other social movements or academic disciplines in the 1960s and 70s
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
Deontology definition
Uses rules to distinguish right from wrong
Deontology key concepts
rights, duties, rules. An action is judged proper or improper as a matter of principle rather than consequences (example: lying)
universalizability
the thesis that any moral judgment must be equally applicable to every relevantly identical situation
autonomy
the capacity of an agent to act in accordance with objective morality rather than under the influence of desires
golden mean
asserts that virtuous behavior, such as courage, falls between two extremes, one of excess, such as recklessness, and one of deficiency, such as cowardness
Utilitarianism
Greatest good for the greatest number, cost/benefit analysis, the “ends justify the means”
utilitarianism key concepts
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”
moral agents vs moral patients
moral agents are those who have moral obligations, and moral patients those to whom obligations are owed
virtue
Focus is more on the character if the agent (the person doing the action) than the action itself
anthropocentric approach
Human value is often tied to our superior intelligence
the land pyramid
the role of predators in an ecosystem - is key to Leopold’s vision of proper land ethics
ecological conscience
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)
“Thinking like a mountain”
a perspective that understands the value of predators like wolves
brain chauvinism
If your smart your safe and if you’re dumb, your dead
different types of intelligence
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)
Speciesism
discrimination or unjustified treatment based on an individual’s species membership
Subject of a life
any being with a complex mental life, including perception, desire, belief, memory, intention, and a sense of the future - among other attributes
Problem with “cruelty argument”:
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
Problem with utilitarian argument
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?
Central concepts in ecofeminism:
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
absent referent
what separates the meat eater from the animal and the animal from the end product
Privatization of consumption
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.
retrograde humanism
when people say they care more about animals than humans, when, this is usually not the case
