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10Reasons to Dwell on (if Not Necessarily in) the SuburbsEnvironmental Ethics 26 (1): 77-95. 2004.Environmental philosophers should look beyond stereotypes to consider American suburbs as an environment worthy of serious philosophical scrutiny for three reasons. First, for better or worse, the suburbs are the environment of primary concern to most Americans, and suburban patterns of development have caught on elsewhere in the industrialized world. Second, the suburbs are much more of a problem than many environmental theorists suppose, in part because suburban patterns of development are ent…Read more
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24Reasons to dwell on (if not necessarily in) the suburbsEnvironmental Ethics 26 (1): 77-95. 2004.Environmental philosophers should look beyond stereotypes to consider American suburbs as an environment worthy of serious philosophical scrutiny for three reasons. First, for better or worse, the suburbs are the environment of primary concern to most Americans, and suburban patterns of development have caught on elsewhere in the industrialized world. Second, the suburbs are much more of a problem than many environmental theorists suppose, in part because suburban patterns of development are ent…Read more
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31Why Ecology Cannot Be All Things to All PeopleEnvironmental Ethics 19 (4): 375-390. 1997.On the basis of a model of the development of scientific concepts as analogous to the “adaptive radiation” of organisms, I raise questions concerning the speculative project of many environmental philosophers, especially insofar as that project reflects on the relationship between ecology (the science) and ecologism (the worldview or ideology). This relationship is often understood in terms of anopposition to the “modern” worldview, which leads to the identification of ecology as an ally or as a…Read more
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6At Home in the Seamless Web: Agency, Obduracy, and the Ethics of Metropolitan GrowthScience, Technology, and Human Values 34 (2): 234-258. 2009.Political responses to metropolitan growth in the United States and elsewhere should include careful ethical deliberation, but ethical judgment and action are limited by the involvement of individual moral agents in the complex processes that give shape to the built environment. I propose that casting the built environment as a heterogeneous sociotechnical ensemble can provide useful insight into the limits of ethics, particularly through the concept of obduracy. To the extent components of an e…Read more
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53Did Americans Choose Sprawl?Ethics and the Environment 15 (1): 123. 2010.In the debate over urban sprawl in the United States, there is serious contention concerning its origins: Does sprawl exist because of or in spite of peoples' values and choices? As the debate plays out, it becomes clear that this question has only partly to do with the historical causes of sprawl and much more to do with questions of political legitimacy in decisions about the built environment. It also becomes clear that the debate as currently framed is not very fruitful. One way of getting a…Read more
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42The Engineering and Science Issues Test (ESIT): A Discipline-Specific Approach to Assessing Moral Judgment (review)Science and Engineering Ethics 16 (2): 387-407. 2010.To assess ethics pedagogy in science and engineering, we developed a new tool called the Engineering and Science Issues Test (ESIT). ESIT measures moral judgment in a manner similar to the Defining Issues Test, second edition, but is built around technical dilemmas in science and engineering. We used a quasi-experimental approach with pre- and post-tests, and we compared the results to those of a control group with no overt ethics instruction. Our findings are that several (but not all) stand-al…Read more
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16The “tuning-in” relationship in music and in ethicsContinental Philosophy Review 56 (2): 279-293. 2023.In “Making Music Together: A Study in Social Relationship,” Alfred Schutz offers a phenomenological description of a structure he contends is at the root not only of shared musical meaning, but of human communication and social relations as such: the “tuning-in relationship.” The aim of what follows is to establish that this same structure is at the root of ethical relationships, which may shed some light on the conditions under which it is possible to respond appropriately to ethically fraught …Read more
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Environmentalism Without Illusions: Redefining the Roles of Philosophy and EcologyDissertation, State University of New York at Stony Brook. 1995.To express concern for our "relationship" with our environment is immediately to raise the questions of what our environment is and what sort of relationship we do--or ought to--have with it. While environmental thinkers frequently make broad factual and normative claims about our environment, I argue that these claims are usually based on a profound misunderstanding of the scope and limits of human knowledge; specifically, they overlook the ambiguity of our knowledge of our environment in favor…Read more
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6Getting a Feel for SystemsTeaching Ethics 20 (1-2): 1-13. 2020.In response to the challenges of teaching a course in environmental ethics to engineering majors at a technological university, I have developed an approach that emphasizes the role of moral imagination in conjunction with systems imagination in responding to problems that arise in shared environments. The course is set out on a model of problem-based learning, conceived as a cognitive apprenticeship: by working together to understand and consider responses to problems that are of interest to th…Read more
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9Getting a Feel for SystemsTeaching Ethics 20 (1-2): 1-13. 2020.In response to the challenges of teaching a course in environmental ethics to engineering majors at a technological university, I have developed an approach that emphasizes the role of moral imagination in conjunction with systems imagination in responding to problems that arise in shared environments. The course is set out on a model of problem-based learning, conceived as a cognitive apprenticeship: by working together to understand and consider responses to problems that are of interest to th…Read more
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10Skeptical Environmentalism: The Limits of Philosophy and ScienceIndiana University Press. 2002.In Skeptical Environmentalism, Robert Kirkman raises doubts about the speculative tendencies elaborated in environmental ethics, deep ecology, social ecology, postmodern ecology, ecofeminism, and environmental pragmatism. Drawing on skeptical principles introduced by David Hume, Kirkman takes issue with key tenets of speculative environmentalism, namely that the natural world is fundamentally relational, that humans have a moral obligation to protect the order of nature, and that understanding t…Read more
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13Earth Ways: Framing Geographical Meanings (edited book)Lexington Books. 2004.How do you connect the discipline of anthropology to both philosophy and geography? What about history, sociology, and other applied and theoretical forms of knowledge? In Earth Ways: Framing Geographical Meanings, Gary Backhaus and John Murungi challenge contributors to find the organizing component, or "framings," that enables them to bridge their own work to philosophy and geography. What emerges are truly creative contributions to interdisciplinary thought
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57Teaching for Moral ImaginationTeaching Philosophy 31 (4): 333-350. 2008.This paper reports the results of an assessment project conducted in a semester-length course in environmental ethics. The first goal of the project was to measure the degree to which the course succeeded in meeting its overarching goal of enriching students’ moral imagination and its more particular objectives relating to ethics in the built environment. The second goal of the project was to contribute toward a broader effort to develop assessment tools for ethics education. Through qualitative…Read more
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Skeptical Environmentalism: The Limits of Philosophy and ScienceEnvironmental Values 14 (4): 519-522. 2005.
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47Through the looking-glass: Environmentalism and the problem of freedom (review)Journal of Value Inquiry 36 (1): 29-43. 2002.
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4Ingrid Leman Stefanovic and Stephen Bede Scharper, eds. The Natural City: Re-Envisioning the Built Environment (review)Environmental Ethics 35 (4): 503-504. 2013.
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9Darwinian Humanism and the End of NatureEnvironmental Values 18 (2). 2009.Darwinian humanism proposes that environmental philosophers pursue their work in full recognition of an irreducible ambiguity at the heart of human experience: we may legitimately regard moral action as fully free and fully natural at the same time, since neither perspective can be taken as the whole truth. A serious objection to this proposal holds that freedom and nature may be unified as an organic whole, and their unity posited as a matter of substantive truth, by appeal to teleology. In par…Read more
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32The ethics of metropolitan growth: A frameworkPhilosophy and Geography 7 (2). 2004.Although debates about the shape and future of the built environment are usually cast in economic and political terms, they also have an irreducible ethical component that stands in need of careful examination. This paper is the report of an exploratory study in descriptive ethics carried out in Atlanta, Georgia. Archival sources and semi-structured interviews provide the basis for identifying and sorting the diverse value judgments and value conflicts that come into play in a rapidly growing me…Read more
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4Why Ecology Cannot Be All Things to All PeopleEnvironmental Ethics 19 (4): 375-390. 1997.On the basis of a model of the development of scientific concepts as analogous to the “adaptive radiation” of organisms, I raise questions concerning the speculative project of many environmental philosophers, especially insofar as that project reflects on the relationship between ecology (the science) and ecologism (the worldview or ideology). This relationship is often understood in terms of anopposition to the “modern” worldview, which leads to the identification of ecology as an ally or as a…Read more
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28Mindful Conservatism: Rethinking the Ideological and Educational Basis of an Ecologically Sustainable Future (review)Environmental Ethics 29 (2): 217-218. 2007.
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26Darwinian Humanism: A Proposal for Environmental PhilosophyEnvironmental Values 16 (1). 2007.There are two distinct strands within modern philosophical ethics that are relevant to environmental philosophy: an empiricist strand that seeks a naturalist account of human conduct and a humanist strand rooted in a conception of transcendent human freedom. Each strand has its appeal, but each also raises both strategic and theoretical problems for environmental philosophers. Based on a reading of Kant's critical solution to the antinomy of freedom and nature, I recommend that environmental phi…Read more
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56Transitory PlacesEnvironmental Philosophy 9 (1): 95-108. 2012.As a contribution to an experiential approach to environmental ethics, I seek to incorporate into the experience of place a sense of the passing of time across multiple scales. This may spur the recognition that places we are pleased to experience as stable backdrops for our projects may be transitory, in the short or long term, with important consequences for ethical deliberation. The occasion for this essay is a visit to the Karori Sanctuary in Wellington, New Zealand, the site of an ambitious…Read more
Atlanta, Georgia, United States of America
Areas of Interest
Normative Ethics |
Social and Political Philosophy |