There is no such thing as environmental ethics |
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Authors: | Professor P Aarne Vesilind |
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Institution: | (1) Center for Applied Ethics, Duke University, 27708-0290 Durham, NC, USA |
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Abstract: | Engineers and scientists, whose professional responsibilities often influence the natural environment, have sought to develop
an environmental ethic that will be in tune with their attitudes toward the non-human environment, and that will assist them
in decision making regarding questions of environmental quality. In this paper the classical traditions in normative ethics
are explored in an attempt to formulate such an environmental ethic. I conclude, however, that because the discipline of ethics
is directed at person-person interactions, ethics as a scholarly discipline does not help us understand how we ought to treat
non-human nature. We therefore cannot look to ethics as a source for understanding our attitudes and for providing guidance
to our actions with regard to the environment. To do so is to ask too much of ethics.
If we are to find an acceptable environmental morality, it must come from a new paradigm. One approach might be to understand
our attitudes on the basis of spirituality, modeled after animistic religions. |
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Keywords: | Ethics environment philosophy engineering |
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