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946The Institutionalist Reaction to Keynesian EconomicsJournal of the History of Economic Thought 1 (30): 29-48. 2008.
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821Does environmental science crowd out non-epistemic values?Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part A 87 (C): 81-92. 2021.
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818Cambridge social ontology: an interview with Tony LawsonErasmus Journal for Philosophy and Economics 2 (1): 100. 2009.
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790On Aristotle's Natural LimitHistory of Political Economy 46 (3): 387-407. 2014.Among scholars of ancient economic thought, it is widely recognized that Aristotle established an upper limit to money-making. This “natural limit” has been variously construed, with some claiming that it might be settled independently of Aristotle’s ethical theory. This paper defends the opposite thesis: Aristotle’s natural limit is inextricably tied to his account of human flourishing. It also argues that Aristotle precludes the wealth-seeking path as coincident with a flourishing life. Why? F…Read more
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770The Concept of SustainabilityIn Byron Williston (ed.), Environmental Ethics for Canadians (3rd Edition), Oxford University Press. pp. 385-390. 2023.American philosopher Wilfrid Sellars (1962) once said that “the aim of philosophy, abstractly formulated, is to understand how things in the broadest possible sense hang together in the broadest possible sense.” My main question is this: within the context of contemporary sustainability science, how does the concept of ‘sustainability’ in the broadest possible sense of the concept hang together in the broadest possible sense? I will answer this question by advancing two new explicative definiti…Read more
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757Reliability of a New Measure to Assess Screen Time in AdultsBMC Public Health 19 (19): 1-8. 2019.Background: Screen time among adults represents a continuing and growing problem in relation to health behaviors and health outcomes. However, no instrument currently exists in the literature that quantifies the use of modern screen-based devices. The primary purpose of this study was to develop and assess the reliability of a new screen time questionnaire, an instrument designed to quantify use of multiple popular screen-based devices among the US population. Methods: An 18-item screen-time qu…Read more
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719Some Truths Don’t Matter: The Case of Strong SustainabilityEthics, Policy and Environment 22 (2): 184-196. 2019.1. Social scientific models of sustainable development show that, for the goal of sustainability, the aggregate level of capital must remain intact. With respect to these models, there is no greate...
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705On the Concept and Conservation of Critical Natural CapitalInternational Studies in the Philosophy of Science (N/A): 1-22. 2020.Ecological economics is an interdisciplinary science that is primarily concerned with developing interventions to achieve sustainable ecological and economic systems. While ecological economists have, over the last few decades, made various empirical, theoretical, and conceptual advancements, there is one concept in particular that remains subject to confusion: critical natural capital. While critical natural capital denotes parts of the environment that are essential for the continued existence…Read more
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699Philosophy of Science for Sustainability ScienceSustainability Science 1 (N/A): 1-11. 2020.Sustainability science seeks to extend scientific investigation into domains characterized by a distinct problem-solving agenda, physical and social complexity, and complex moral and ethical landscapes. In this endeavor it arguably pushes scientific investigation beyond its usual comfort zones, raising fundamental issues about how best to structure such investigation. Philosophers of science have long scrutinized the structure of science and scientific practices, and the conditions under which t…Read more
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667Value Commitment, Resolute Choice, and the Normative Foundations of Behavioural Welfare EconomicsJournal of Applied Philosophy 37 (4): 562-577. 2020.Given the endowment effect, the role of attention in decision-making, and the framing effect, most behavioral economists agree that it would be a mistake to accept the satisfaction of revealed preferences as the normative criterion of choice. Some have suggested that what makes agents better off is not the satisfaction of revealed preferences, but ‘true’ preferences, which may not always be observed through choice. While such preferences may appear to be an improvement over revealed preferences,…Read more
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601When is Green Nudging Ethically Permissible?Current Opinion in Environmental Sustainability 60 (n/a): 101236. 2023.This review article provides a new perspective on the ethics of green nudging. We advance a new model for assessing the ethical permissibility of green nudges (GNs). On this model, which provides normative guidance for policymakers, a GN is ethically permissible when the intervention is (1) efficacious, (2) cost-effective, and (3) the advantages of the GN (i.e. reducing the environmental harm) are not outweighed by countervailing costs/harms (i.e. for nudgees). While traditional ethical objectio…Read more
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600The World as a Garden: A Philosophical Analysis of Natural Capital in EconomicsDissertation, University of British Columbia. 2015.This dissertation undertakes a philosophical analysis of “natural capital” and argues that this concept has prompted economists to view Nature in a radically novel manner. Formerly, economists referred to Nature and natural products as a collection of inert materials to be drawn upon in isolation and then rearranged by human agents to produce commodities. More recently, nature is depicted as a collection of active, modifiable, and economically valuable processes, often construed as ecosystems th…Read more
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591Sustainable Consumption Communication: A Review of an Emerging Field of ResearchJournal of Cleaner Production 1 (300): 126880. 2021.Communication plays an important role in promoting sustainable consumption. Yet how the academic literature conceptualizes and relates communication and sustainable consumption remains poorly understood, despite growing research on communication in the context of sustainable consumption. This article presents the first comprehensive review of sustainable consumption communication (SCC) research as a young and evolving field of scholarly work. Through a systematic review and narrative synthesis o…Read more
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538Virtual Consumption, Sustainability & Human Well-BeingEnvironmental Values 29 (3): 361-378. 2020.There is widespread consensus that present patterns of consumption could lead to the permanent impossibility of maintaining those patterns and, perhaps, the existence of the human race. While many patterns of consumption qualify as ‘sustainable’ there is one in particular that deserves greater attention: virtual consumption. We argue that virtual consumption — the experience of authentic consumptive experiences replicated by alternative means — has the potential to reduce the deleterious consequ…Read more
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533The Relatively Infinite Value of the EnvironmentAustralasian Journal of Philosophy 95 (2): 328-353. 2017.Some environmental ethicists and economists argue that attributing infinite value to the environment is a good way to represent an absolute obligation to protect it. Others argue against modelling the value of the environment in this way: the assignment of infinite value leads to immense technical and philosophical difficulties that undermine the environmentalist project. First, there is a problem of discrimination: saving a large region of habitat is better than saving a small region; yet if bo…Read more
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479On the Historical Roots of Natural Capital in the Writings of Carl LinnaeusIn Luca Fiorito, Scott Scheall & Carlos Eduardo Suprinyak (eds.), Research in the History of Economic Thought and Methodology, Emerald Publishing. pp. 103-117. 2018.
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474When Ecology Needs Economics and Economics Needs Ecology: Interdisciplinary Exchange during the AnthropoceneEthics, Policy and Environment 23 (2): 203-221. 2020.1. A multidisciplinary group of scholars within the International Commission on Stratigraphy – known as the Anthropocene Working Group – recently recommended the Anthropocene as a new geological ep...
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423Situating Environmental Philosophy in CanadaIn C. Tyler DesRoches, Frank Jankunis & Byron Williston (eds.), Canadian Environmental Philosophy, Mcgill-queen's University Press. 2019.The volume includes topics from political philosophy and normative ethics on the one hand to philosophy of science and the philosophical underpinnings of water management policy on the other. It contains reflections on ecological nationalism, the legacy of Grey Owl, the meaning of ‘outside’ to Canadians, the paradigm shift from mechanism to ecology in our understanding of nature, the meaning of the concept of the Anthropocene, the importance of humans self-identifying as ‘earthlings’, the challe…Read more
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422The Oeconomy of Nature: an Interview with Margaret SchabasErasmus Journal for Philosophy and Economics 6 (2): 66. 2013.MARGARET LYNN SCHABAS (Toronto, 1954) is professor of philosophy at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver and served as the head of the Philosophy Department from 2004-2009. She has held professoriate positions at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and at York University, and has also taught as a visiting professor at Michigan State University, University of Colorado-Boulder, Harvard, CalTech, the Sorbonne, and the École Normale de Cachan. As the recipient of several fellowships, she …Read more
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400Revamping the Image of Science for the AnthropocenePhilosophy, Theory, and Practice in Biology 11. 2019.In 2016, a multidisciplinary body of scholars within the International Commission on Stratigraphy—the Anthropocene Working Group—recommended that the world officially recognize the Anthropocene as a new geological epoch. The most contested claim about the Anthropocene, that humans are a major geological and environmental force on par with natural forces, has proven to be a hotbed for discussion well beyond the science of geology. One reason for this is that it compels many natural and social sci…Read more
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363The Preservation Paradox and Natural CapitalEcosystem Services: Science, Policy and Practice 101058 (N/A): 1-7. 2020.Many ecological economists have argued that some natural capital should be preserved for posterity. Yet, among environmental philosophers, the preservation paradox entails that preserving parts of nature, including those denoted by natural capital, is impossible. The paradox claims that nature is a realm of phenomena independent of intentional human agency, that preserving and restoring nature require intentional human agency, and, therefore, no one can preserve or restore nature (without making…Read more
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328The Eroding Artificial/Natural Distinction: Some Consequences for Ecology and EconomicsIn Michiru Nagatsu & Attilia Ruzzene (eds.), Contemporary Philosophy and Social Science: An Interdisciplinary Dialogue, . pp. 39-57. 2019.Since Thomas Kuhn’s The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (1962), historians and philosophers of science have paid increasing attention to the implications of disciplinarity. In this chapter we consider restrictions posed to interdisciplinary exchange between ecology and economics that result from a particular kind of commitment to the ideal of disciplinary purity, that is, that each discipline is defined by an appropriate, unique set of objects, methods, theories, and aims. We argue that, whe…Read more
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320Water Rights and Moral Limits to Water MarketsIn C. Tyler DesRoches, Frank Jankunis & Byron Williston (eds.), Canadian Environmental Philosophy, Mcgill-queen's University Press. pp. 217-233. 2019.This chapter argues that the human right to water entails specific moral limits to commodifying water. While free-market economists have generally recognized no such limits, the famous Canadian environmental thinker Maude Barlow has claimed that the human right to water entails that no water markets should be permitted. With a Lockean conception of the human right to water, this chapter argues that both views are mistaken. If water markets prevent people from obtaining some minimal and proportio…Read more
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319Partha Dasgupta. Time and the Generations: Population Ethics for a Diminishing Planet. New York: Columbia University Press. 2019. 344 pages. $28 (review)Environmental Ethics 43 (1): 83-84. 2021.
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311What is Natural about Natural Capital during the Anthropocene?Sustainability 1 (10): 806. 2018.The concept of natural capital denotes a rich variety of natural processes, such as ecosystems, that produce economically valuable goods and services. The Anthropocene signals a diminished state of nature, however, with some scholars claiming that no part of the Earth’s surface remains untouched. What are ecological economists to make of natural capital during the Anthropocene? Is natural capital still a coherent concept? What is the conceptual relationship between nature and natural capital? Th…Read more
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280Canadian Environmental Philosophy (edited book)Mcgill-Queen's University Press. 2019.Canadian Environmental Philosophy is the first collection of essays to take up theoretical and practical issues in environmental philosophy today, from a Canadian perspective. The essays cover various subjects, including ecological nationalism, the legacy of Grey Owl, the meaning of “outside” to Canadians, the paradigm shift from mechanism to ecology in our understanding of nature, the meaning and significance of the Anthropocene, the challenges of biodiversity protection in Canada, the conserva…Read more
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274The World as a Garden: a Philosophical Analysis of Natural Capital in EconomicsErasmus Journal for Philosophy and Economics 8 (2): 121. 2015.This dissertation undertakes a philosophical analysis of “natural capital” and argues that this concept has prompted economists to view nature in a radically novel manner. Formerly, economists referred to nature and natural products as a collection of inert materials to be drawn upon in isolation and then rearranged by human agents to produce commodities. More recently, however, nature is depicted as a collection of active, modifiable, and economically valuable processes, often construed as ecos…Read more
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274Linking Forests and Economic Well-Being: A Four-Quadrant ApproachCanadian Journal of Forest Research 1 (37): 1821-1831. 2007.
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261Energy Decisions within an Applied Ethics Framework: An Analysis of Five Recent ControversiesEnergy, Sustainability and Society 10 (10): 29. 2020.Everywhere in the world, and in every period of human history, it has been common for energy decisions to be made in an ethically haphazard manner. With growing population pressure and increasing demand for energy, this approach is no longer viable. We believe that decision makers must include ethical considerations in energy decisions more routinely and systematically. To this end, we propose an applied ethics framework that accommodates principles from three classical ethical theories—virtue e…Read more
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257Welcome to the inaugural issue of the EJPEErasmus Journal for Philosophy and Economics 1 (1). 2008.Introduction to the Inaugural Issue of the Erasmus Journal for Philosophy and Economics
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Arizona State UniversityPhilosophy - School of Historical, Philosophical, and Religious Studies
School of SustainabilityAssociate Professor (Part-time) -
Tempe, Arizona, United States of America
Areas of Specialization
2 more
Sustainability |
Well-Being |
Well-Being, Misc |
Philosophy of Social Science |
Philosophy of Economics |
Applied Ethics |
Social and Political Philosophy |
Areas of Interest
Sustainability |
Well-Being |