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5Sustainability as the Multigenerational Public InterestIn Stephen M. Gardiner & Allen Thompson (eds.), Oxford Handbook of Environmental Ethics, Oxford University Press. 2017.The concept of sustainability has become an important—and contested—term in politics prior to its being given a clear, academic meaning, resulting in disciplinary turf wars over defining the term. The conflict, with mainly economists on one side and ecologists and philosophers on the other, has centered on the difference between “strong” and “weak” sustainability. Weak sustainability requires only the protection of wealth across generations, while strong sustainability requires also the protecti…Read more
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11Simondon and Novalis: Notes for a Romantic MechanologySubstance 53 (1): 85-100. 2024.German Romanticism plays a central role in Gilbert Simondon's writings. In _Mode of Existence_, Simondon draws on Goethe and E. T. A. Hoffmann to illustrate the tragic consequences of failing to attend to the individuated relationship between landscape and tool. While Novalis is only mentioned in passing, his work presents the most radical form of what might be called Romantic mechanology. With the stated aim of achieving the ideal of perpetual motion, Novalis's poetics highlight the central rol…Read more
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22Philosophical Dialogues: Arne Naess and the Progress of Philosophy (edited book)Rowman & Littlefield Publishers. 1999.The volume documents, and makes an original contribution to, an astonishing period in twentieth-century philosophy—the progress of Arne Naess's ecophilosophy from its inception to the present. It includes Naess's most crucial polemics with leading thinkers, drawn from sources as diverse as scholarly articles, correspondence, TV interviews and unpublished exchanges. The book testifies to the skeptical and self-correcting aspects of Naess's vision, which has deepened and broadened to include third…Read more
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7Book Review: Sufficient Reason: Volitional Pragmatism and the Meaning of Economic Institutions (review)Environmental Values 16 (1): 125-129. 2007.
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31Ethics on the Ark: Zoos, Animal Welfare, and Wildlife ConservationSmithsonian Institution. 2012.Ethics on the Ark presents a passionate, multivocal discussion—among zoo professionals, activists, conservation biologists, and philosophers—about the future of zoos and aquariums, the treatment of animals in captivity, and the question of whether the individual, the species, or the ecosystem is the most important focus in conservation efforts. Contributors represent all sides of the issues. Moving from the fundamental to the practical, from biodiversity to population regulation, from animal res…Read more
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16Linguistic Frameworks and Ontology: A Re-Examination of Carnap’s MetaphilosophyWalter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG. 2019.No detailed description available for "Linguistic Frameworks and Ontology".
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1Philosophy and Geography Iii: Philosophies of Place (edited book)Rowman & Littlefield Publishers. 1998.A growing literature testifies to the persistence of place as an incorrigible aspect of human experience, identity, and morality. Place is a common ground for thought and action, a community of experienced particulars that avoids solipsism and universalism. It draws us into the philosophy of the ordinary, into familiarity as a form of knowledge, into the wisdom of proximity. Each of these essays offers a philosophy of place, and reminds us that such philosophies ultimately decide how we make, us…Read more
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15Biodiversity: Its Meaning and ValueIn Sahorta Sarkar & Anya Plutynski (eds.), Companion to the Philosophy of Biology, Blackwell. 2008.This chapter contains section titled: What is Biological Diversity? The Definition Problem Two Models of Biodiversity Science and Management Understanding Biodiversity in Public Policy Discourse Identifying and Measuring Values Derived from Biological Diversity Conclusion References Further Reading.
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27Population and Consumption Environmental Problems as Problems of ScaleEthics and the Environment 5 (1): 23-45. 2000.
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39Pragmatism, Adaptive Management, and SustainabilityEnvironmental Values 8 (4): 451-466. 1999.The pragmatic conception of truth, anticipated by Henry David Thoreau and developed by C.S. Peirce and subsequent pragmatists, is proposed as a useful analogy for characterising 'sustainability.' Peirce's definitions of 'truth' provides an attractive approach to sustainability because (a) it re-focuses discussions of truth and objectivity from a search for 'correspondence' to an 'external world' (the 'conform' approach) to a more forward-looking ('transform') approach; and (b) it emphasises the …Read more
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84Mark Sagoff 's price, principle, and the environment: Two commentsEthics, Place and Environment 9 (3). 2006.I will discuss two themes that can be found in Mark Sagoff's most recent book, Price, Principle, and the Environment. Built from pieces fashioned in his entertaining and incisive critical es...
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36Environmental Values and Adaptive ManagementEnvironmental Values 10 (4): 473-506. 2001.The trend in environmental management toward more adaptive, community-based, and holistic approaches will require new approaches to environmental valuation. In this paper, we offer a new valuation approach, one that embodies the core principles of adaptive management, which is experimental, multi-scalar, and place-based. In addition, we use hierarchy theory to incorporate spatial and temporal variability of natural systems into a multi-scalar management model. Our approach results in the conside…Read more
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74Conservation and PreservationEnvironmental Ethics 8 (3): 195-220. 1986.Philosophers have paid little attention to the distinction between conservation and preservation, apparently because they have accepted John Passmore’s suggestion that conservationism is an expression of anthropocentric motives and that “true” preservationism is an expression of nonanthropocentric motives. Philosophers have therefore concentrated their efforts on this distinction in motives. This reduction,however, is insensitive to important nuances of environmentalist objectives: there are a w…Read more
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123Rethinking Appropriateness of Actions in Environmental Decisions: Connecting Interest and Identity Negotiation with Plural ValuationEnvironmental Values 32 (6): 739-764. 2023.Issues of interest, identity and values intertwine in environmental conflicts, creating challenges that cannot generally be overcome using rationalities grounded in generalised argumentation and abstraction. To address the growing need to engage interests and identities along with plural values in the conservation of biodiversity and ecological systems, we introduce the concept of ‘appropriateness of actions’ and ground it in a relational understanding of environmental ethics. A determination of…Read more
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Review of Daniel W. Norton, Sufficient Reason: Volitional Pragmatism and the Meaning of Economic Institutions (review)Environmental Values 16 125-129. 2007.
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31Environmental Philosophy at the Edges of ScienceThe Harvard Review of Philosophy 29 1-20. 2022.While environmental ethics has flourished and contributed to the discussion of environmental policy, other areas of philosophy (epistemology, for example), have been less in evidence in these discussions. In this paper, we explore a role for these neglected areas: they are best viewed as meta-level discussions of the conceptual and linguistic problems that arise as scientists develop models at the edges of scientific fields relevant to our understanding of environmental problems and possible sol…Read more
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Review of Searching for Sustainability: Interdisciplinary Essays in the Philosophy of Conservation Biology (review)Environmental Ethics 27 93-96. 2005.
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32The Power of Three: Leopold and Muller on Scales and HorizonsThe Pluralist 11 (1): 93-100. 2016.the number three has played a remarkably active role in many theories, philosophical and otherwise, from the Holy Trinity of Christianity to Aristotle’s golden mean, and to the dialectical thinking of Hegel and Marx. Given the variety of roles the number has played, it might seem an over-reach to find important similarities between two thinkers—one a forester and land manager of the last century, and the other a contemporary architect—based on a shared use of the number. Nevertheless, I will not…Read more
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67Ética ambiental y Antropocentrismo débilHumanitas Hodie 2 (2). 2020.La suposición de que una ética ambiental adecuada debe ser no-antropocéntrica es errónea. Hay dos formas de antropocentrismo: débil y fuerte, y el primero es suficiente para mantener una ética ambien¬tal. Sin embargo, la ética ambiental sí difiere de los sistemas éticos británicos y norteamericanos en la medida en que, para ser adecuada, debe ser no-individualista. La ética ambiental contiene dos niveles de decisión: el primero refiere a las decisiones usuales que afectan la equidad individual, …Read more
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106Relational Values: A Unifying Idea in Environmental Ethics and Evaluation?Environmental Values 30 (6): 695-714. 2021.There has been a recent spate of publications on how we should evaluate change to ecological systems, some of which have introduced the concept of 'relational values'. Environmental ethicists have, with a few exceptions, not engaged with this debate. We survey the literature on relational values, noting that most advocates of the concept introduce relational values as an additional type of value, in addition to 'instrumental' and 'intrinsic' values. In this paper, we explore the idea that all en…Read more
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1Searching for Sustainability: Interdisciplinary Essays in the Philosophy of Conservation BiologyCambridge University Press. 2002.This book examines from a multidisciplinary viewpoint the question of what we mean - what we should mean - by setting sustainability as a goal for environmental management. The author, trained as a philosopher of science and language, explores ways to break down the disciplinary barriers to communication and deliberation about environment policy, and to integrate science and evaluations into a more comprehensive environmental policy. Choosing sustainability as the keystone concept of environment…Read more
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3Ecology and opportunity: intergenerational equity and sustainable optionsIn Andrew Dobson (ed.), Fairness and Futurity: Essays on Environmental Sustainability and Social Justice, Oxford University Press. pp. 118--150. 1999.
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99Sustainability : A Philosophy of Adaptive Ecosystem Management (edited book)University of Chicago Press. 2005.Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-226-595 19-6 (cloth : alk. paper) . A . 1. Environmental policy. 2. Environmental management — Decision making. 3. Interdisciplinary research. 4. Communication in science. 5. Sustainable ...
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21Politics and EpistemologyEnvironmental Ethics 29 (3): 299-306. 2007.Kevin Elliott has argued that I defend two “conceptions” of adaptive management processes in my book, Sustainability: A Philosophy of Adaptive Ecosystem Management, calling the conceptions “political” and “metaphysical,” respectively. Elliott claims that I must choose between them. Elliott has not sufficiently explained how he proceeds from the claim that I provide two separable arguments for my adaptive management process to his conclusion that I have two conceptions of this process. Once this …Read more
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3Convergence and divergence: the convergence hypothesis twenty years laterIn Ben Minteer (ed.), Nature in Common?: Environmental Ethics and the Contested Foundations of Environmental Policy, Temple University Press. 2009.
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66The Ways of Wickedness: Analyzing Messiness with Messy Tools (review)Journal of Agricultural and Environmental Ethics 25 (4): 447-465. 2012.The revelatory paper, “Dilemmas in the General Theory of Planning,” by Rittel and Webber (Policy Sci 4:155–169, 1973 ) has had great impact because it provides one example of an emergent consensus across many disciplines. Many “problems,” as addressed in real-world situations, involve elements that exceed the complexity of any known or hoped-for model, or are “wicked.” Many who encounter this work for the first time find that their concept of wicked problems aptly describes many environmental di…Read more