C. David Allen

Readers of reports on ethical failures by four-star general officers must wonder, “Don’t they have staffs to ensure that the general follows ethics rules?” The Department of Defense publishes robust ethics guidance in several documents; however, a staff’s best efforts to implement this guidance may fail to make an impression on a senior leader who is susceptible to the “Bathsheba syndrome,” an allusion to the biblical account where the prophet Nathan rebuked King David for his moral failings. This paper proposes a methodology to enable senior headquarters staffs to play the role of Nathan in supporting ethical behaviors by high-level officers. It examines the mechanisms that embed ethical behavior within members of those staffs in carrying out their three principal roles of advising, scheduling, and transporting the four-star officer. The authors offer a framework based on an ethical infrastructure of organizational climate that focuses the staff’s daily efforts to mitigate risk across seven ethical “danger areas” that threaten ethical failures by senior officers.

Ranging from miniaturized biological robots to organoids, multi-cellular engineered living systems (M-CELS) pose complex ethical and societal challenges. Some of these challenges, such as how to best distribute risks and benefits, are likely to arise in the development of any new technology. Other challenges arise specifically because of the particular characteristics of M-CELS. For example, as an engineered living system becomes increasingly complex, it may provoke societal debate about its moral considerability, perhaps necessitating protection from harm or recognition of positive moral and legal rights, particularly if derived from cells of human origin. The use of emergence-based principles in M-CELS development may also create unique challenges, making the technology difficult to fully control or predict in the laboratory as well as in applied medical or environmental settings. In response to these challenges, we argue that the M-CELS community has an obligation to systematically address the ethical and societal aspects of research and to seek input from and accountability to a broad range of stakeholders and publics. As a newly developing field, M-CELS has a significant opportunity to integrate ethically responsible norms and standards into its research and development practices from the start. With the aim of seizing this opportunity, we identify two general kinds of salient ethical issues arising from M-CELS research, and then present a set of commitments to and strategies for addressing these issues. If adopted, these commitments and strategies would help define M-CELS as not only an innovative field, but also as a model for responsible research and engineering.

Traditional aesthetics is often associated with the appreciation of art, Allen Carlson shows how much of our aesthetic experience does not encompass art but nature, in our response to sunsets, mountains or horizons or more mundane surroundings, like gardens or the view from our window. He argues that knowledge of what it is we are appreciating is essential to having an appropriate aesthetic experience and that scientific understanding of nature can enhance our appreciation of it, rather than denigrate it.

The roots of environmental aesthetics reach back to the ideas of eighteenth-century thinkers who found nature an ideal source of aesthetic experience. Today, having blossomed into a significant subfield of aesthetics, environmental aesthetics studies and encourages the appreciation of not just natural environments but also human-made and human-modified landscapes. _Nature and Landscape_ is an important introduction to this rapidly growing area of aesthetic understanding and appreciation. Allen Carlson begins by tracing the development of the field's historical background, and then surveys contemporary positions on the aesthetics of nature, such as scientific cognitivism, which holds that certain kinds of scientific knowledge are necessary for a full appreciation of natural environments. Carlson next turns to environments that have been created or changed by humans and the dilemmas that are posed by the appreciation of such landscapes. He examines how to aesthetically appreciate a variety of urban and rural landscapes and concludes with a discussion of whether there is, in general, a correct way to aesthetically experience the environment.

Environmental aesthetics is an emerging field of study that focuses on nature's aesthetic value as well as on its ethical and environmental implications. Drawing on the research of a number of disciplines, this exciting new area speaks to scholars working in a range of fields, including not only philosophy, but also environmental and cultural studies, public policy and planning, social and political theory, landscape design and management, and art and architecture. _Nature, Aesthetics, and Environmentalism: From Beauty to Duty_ addresses the complex relationships between aesthetic appreciation and environmental issues and emphasizes the valuable contribution that environmental aesthetics can make to environmentalism. Allen Carlson, a pioneer in environmental aesthetics, and Sheila Lintott, who has published widely in aesthetics, combine important historical essays on the appreciation of nature with the best contemporary research in the field. They begin with classic pieces by Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry Thoreau, John Muir, John Burroughs, and Aldo Leopold, as well as an essay by Eugene Hargrove that lays out the scientific, artistic, and aesthetic foundations of current environmental beliefs and attitudes. The second section of the book addresses prevailing views on the conceptualization of nature and the various debates on how to properly and respectfully appreciate nature. The third section introduces positive aesthetics, the belief that everything in nature is essentially beautiful, even the devastation caused by earthquakes or floods. The essays in the final section explicitly bring together aesthetics, ethics, and environmentalism to explore the ways in which each might affect the others.

This essay presents a methodological framework for assessing the adequacy of philosophical accounts of the aesthetic appreciation of nature. The framework involves five requirements, each of which is labeled after a philosopher who has defended it. They are called Ziff's Anything Viewed Doctrine, Budd's As Nature Constraint, Berleant's Unified Aesthetics Requirement, Hepburn's Serious Beauty Intuition, and Thompson's Objectivity Desideratum. The conclusion of the essay is that most contemporary treatments of the aesthetics of nature fail to comply with one or more of these requirements and that only Scientific Cognitivism satisfies the framework consisting of all five.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The Journal of Aesthetic Education 40.4 (2006) 77-88 MuseSearchJournalsThis JournalContents[Access article in PDF]The Aesthetic Appreciation of Environmental Architecture under Different Conceptions of EnvironmentAllen CarlsonIntroductionIn what is in retrospect easily recognized as one of the three or four truly groundbreaking essays in environmental aesthetics, Francis Sparshott distinguishes a number of different ways of conceptualizing our relationships to our environments. Such different conceptualizations, he argues, deeply influence the ways in which we aesthetically experience both environments and the things that occupy them. 1 It follows that understanding of, and thus education about, our environmental conceptualizations are of the utmost importance to our aesthetic appreciation. In this article I follow up some of Sparshott's insights by considering the ways in which a number of rather common conceptualizations of environments relate to what is an increasingly important feature of our built environments—what is commonly referred to as "environmental architecture." In doing so, I hope to make clear how aesthetic education concerning these common conceptualizations is vital for the appreciation of not only environmental architecture but the whole of our built environment.Initially, however, some clarifications are in order. First, due to the emphasis in environmental architecture on environments in general, there is, within this area of concern, somewhat of a shift away from the idea of architecture as a fine art. Traditionally, architecture, along with painting, sculpture, poetry, and music, was regarded as one of the five founding art forms of the so-called modern system of the arts. 2 And, although architecture, given its utilitarian dimensions, has often been the poor sister of the famous five, some individuals nonetheless regard it essentially as a fine art. 3 However, given my focus on environmental architecture, I here pay equal attention to what is known as "vernacular architecture." [End Page 77]Second, the phrase "environmental architecture" refers to architecture and architectural practices that are typically promoted as "working with the environment" or as being "environmentally friendly." Such characterizations bring to mind ideas such as ecological design, sustainable development, and green architecture. They are associated with design and building practices that rely on renewable energy and materials, stress recycling and efficient use of resources, and attempt to maintain the long-term integrity of both natural and human environments. Consequently, whether exemplified in the fine art of architecture or in the vernacular, such design and building practices point initially to the ecological and, more broadly, the ethical issues associated with architecture, which are best approached within environmental ethics or traditional ethical theory. 4 Although these ethical matters are of the greatest importance, I here primarily address, as noted, aesthetic issues involved in environmental architecture.Aesthetics and Environmental ArchitectureThe aesthetics of environmental architecture, as the ethics of environmental architecture, concerns most generally the relationships between structures and their environments, and especially the environmental effects of the former on the latter. Of course, unlike ethics, which in the case of architecture considers the environmental benefits or harms brought about by design and building practices and the resultant structures, aesthetics focuses first and foremost on appearances, on that which is perceived by the senses. As is well known, the discipline takes its name from the Greek aisthetikos, meaning "of sense perception." However, to recognize that aesthetics is concerned with appearances is not necessarily to relegate it to the realm of the superficial. Even though, since the aesthetics of environmental architecture considers the relationships between structures and their environments, it initially focuses on the appearances of such relationships, it need not be restricted to questions of whether such relationships are simply "pleasing to the eye" or "pretty." Rather, the basic question in the aesthetics of environmental architecture is whether structures reside in their environments such that they appear as they should. By this I mean that they and their environments are related in such a way that the structures appear appropriate or proper within their environments. 5An emphasis on whether structures appear appropriate within their environments immediately moves the matter beyond simple appearances. This is because...

This essay is an overview of recent research aimed at establishing a link between environmental aesthetics and environmental ethics. I review the work of several prominent environmental philosophers and environmental aestheticians, spelling out some of the difficulties confronting various attempts to find such a link. While I argue that a case can be made for a connection between environmental aesthetics and environmental ethics concerning human‐created and human‐influenced environments, I find that there are a number of problems facing attempts to establish a similar connection for natural or pristine environments. I examine some attempts to support such a connection, including each of two different accounts of the aesthetic appreciation of nature in contemporary Western environmental aesthetics as well as the union of these two accounts, sometimes called ecoaesthetics. I briefly discuss two Western versions of ecoaesthetics and then turn to research by Chinese aestheticians, who defend a more robust version of ecoaesthetics. I suggest that this latter work may succeed in connecting environmental aesthetics and environmental ethics, although not in exactly the way in which such a link has been pursued by Western philosophers.

Since aesthetic experience is vital for the protection of nature, I address the relationship between environmental aesthetics and environmentalism. I first review two traditional positions, the picturesque approach and formalism. Some environmentalists fault the modes of aesthetic appreciation associated with these views, charging they are anthropocentric, scenery-obsessed, superficial, subjective, and/or morally vacuous. In light of these apparent failings of traditional aesthetics of nature, I suggest five requirements of environmentalism: that aesthetic appreciation of nature should be acentric, environment-focused, serious, objective and morally engaged. I then examine two contemporary positions concerning appropriate aesthetic appreciation of nature, the aesthetics of engagement and scientific cognitivism, assessing each in terms of the requirements of environmentalism.