A dualistic identity theory

Whilst it is accepted that humankind has been responsible for a considerable amount of environmental change, it is only recently that quantitative measures have been devised to express this. Such measures include a habitat index, the ecological footprint and the Living Planet Index. The applications and implications of these measures are discussed along with direct measures of changing atmospheric composition. All indicate that Europe is the most anthropogenically transformed continent and Australasia the least altered. In so far as a population increase of c. 36 per cent is likely to occur in the next 25 years, human induced environmental change is set to continue at a rapid pace. It is likely to be exacerbated by rapid industrialisation in some nations and increasing standards of living. Local, regional and international measures to curb environmental deterioration may temper this to a degree but new technologies e.g. biotechnology, may bring disadvantages as well as advantages.     

An Environmental Enrichment Programme to Promote Adaptive Responding in Two Children with Multiple Disabilities

Abstract

An environmental enrichment programme was used for two passive children who had visual and hearing impairments and profound intellectual disabilities. The enrichment items, selected through stimulus preference assessments, were accessible contingent on simple adaptive responses. Data showed that both children increased their adaptive responding (thus reducing their passivity) during the programme. Implications of the findings are discussed.     

An Eco-Ethical Interpretation of Confucian Tianren Heyi

Opposed to a commonly held interpretation that Confucian discourse regarding tianren heyi (天人合一) is simply a human-centred philosophical fusion of humanity and nature, this article argues that the Confucian discourse is in fact composed of two contradictory orientations, one ren-centred (roughly equivalent to “anthropocentric”) and the other tian-centred (“nature-centric” in a specific sense), which generally correspond to the two major camps of environmental philosophy in the West in the twentieth century. It will be further argued that the two orientations of the Confucian view have different yet related functions with regard to environmental protection and conservation: the tian-centred understanding establishes a metaphysical and religious framework for Confucian eco-ethical norms, in which ecological prohibitions and policies are built into the political and religious infrastructure, while the ren-centred orientation adds practical values and meanings to the ontological care of the human relation to the environment. In modern times, the two orientations of Confucian eco-ethics are under further development, moving away from being dualistic philosophies and converging on the eco-ethical way of life. Contemporary Confucians are investigating how the two traditional “orientations” can be unified as one holistic perspective which could provide theoretical and practical guidance for our understanding of the human position in the universe, the harmony between humans and nature, and the value of environmental protection and conservation.     

空气污染的不良效应及理论模型:环境心理学的视角

空气污染的不良效应不仅限于生理健康损害,还涉及认知功能、情绪和行为等多方面的消极影响。针对空气污染不良效应的形成机制,以往研究提出了环境应激模型和社会-环境交互模型,这些理论模型强调空气污染的不良效应不仅涉及污染的直接暴露程度,也取决于个体的身心状况以及他对空气污染的主观评价。基于以往研究的不足,尤其是环境心理学介入空气污染研究的可行性,未来研究可着眼于改进空气污染的心理学研究方法,开展空气污染的环境应激和风险感知研究。     

Towards Gratitude to Nature: Global Environmental Ethics for China and the World

This paper asks what should be the basis of a global environmental ethics.As Gao Shan has argued,the environmental ethics of Western philosophers such as Holmes Rolston and Paul Taylor is based on extending the notion of intrinsic value to that of objects of nature,and as such it is not very compatible with Chinese ethics.This is related to Gao's rejection of most—if not all—Western "rationalist" environmental ethics,a stance that I grant her for pragmatic reasons (though I remain neutral about it theoretically).Gao argues that the Daoist notion of living in harmony with nature can instead become the basis of a Chinese environmental ethics.However,the involved Daoist conception of living in harmony with nature is,in my view,based on an aesthetic property.The paper argues that despite the appeal of the Daoist view for a Chinese environmental ethics,an aesthetic property cannot provide the basis for a global environmental ethics.The paper also considers another version of Daoist environmental ethics,which does not rely on an aesthetic notion,but I argue that it too fails as such a candidate.As an alternative,the paper considers and applies contemporary Western thinkers on gratitude (such as Robert Emmons and Elizabeth Loder),proposing that gratitude to nature (environmental gratitude)can indeed provide the needed basis.     

Is There an Identity Crisis in Environmental Ethics?

Environmental ethics is both a moral philosophy and an applied ethics.This duality has led some people to feel confused about environmental ethics' identity and to cast doubts on its legitimacy.This paper,by distinguishing and exploding environmental ethics' two patterns of inquiry (the moral philosophy pattern and the applied ethics pattern) and their characteristics,tries to resolve the discipline's identity crisis and to argue for its legitimacy.     

Do you remember where sounds,pictures and words came from? The role of the stimulus format in object location memory

Contrasting results in visual and auditory spatial memory stimulate the debate over the role of sensory modality and attention in identity-to-location binding. We investigated the role of sensory modality in the incidental/deliberate encoding of the location of a sequence of items. In 4 separated blocks, 88 participants memorised sequences of environmental sounds, spoken words, pictures and written words, respectively. After memorisation, participants were asked to recognise old from new items in a new sequence of stimuli. They were also asked to indicate from which side of the screen (visual stimuli) or headphone channel (sounds) the old stimuli were presented in encoding. In the first block, participants were not aware of the spatial requirement while, in blocks 2, 3 and 4 they knew that their memory for item location was going to be tested. Results show significantly lower accuracy of object location memory for the auditory stimuli (environmental sounds and spoken words) than for images (pictures and written words). Awareness of spatial requirement did not influence localisation accuracy. We conclude that: (a) object location memory is more effective for visual objects; (b) object location is implicitly associated with item identity during encoding and (c) visual supremacy in spatial memory does not depend on the automaticity of object location binding.     

Beyond Eschatology: Environmental Pessimism and the Future of Human Hoping

In much environmentally concerned literature, there is a burgeoning concern for the status and sustainability of human hope. Within Christian circles, this attention has often taken the form of eschatological reflection. While there is important warrant for attention to eschatology in Christian examinations of hope, I claim that to move so quickly from hope to eschatology is to confuse a species of Christian hope for a definition of hope itself; as such, it is important for theological ethicists to examine hope also from the experiential perspective of the human hoper. In particular, this is important today given the shortcomings of an eschatological focus in addressing anxieties arising due to the environmental crisis. Through examining hope as a fallible human activity, one can come to better understand hope's importance to human life, its profound ambiguity, and the potential threat that the environmental crisis poses to it.