Diversity Reading List

Publisher's Note: The first comprehensive treatment of environmental philosophy, going beyond ethics to address the philosophical concepts that underlie environmental thinking and policy-making today

• Encompasses all of environmental philosophy, including conservation biology, restoration ecology, sustainability, environmental justice, and more
• Offers the first treatment of decision theory in an environmental philosophy text
• Explores the conceptions of nature and ethical presuppositions that underlie contemporary environmental debates, and, moving from theory to practice, shows how decision theory translates to public policy
• Addresses both hot-button issues, including population and immigration reform, and such ongoing issues as historical legacies and nations' responsibility and obligation for environmental problems
• Anchors philosophical concepts to their practical applications, establishing the priority of the discipline's real-world importance

Abstract: This paper examines the relationship of bonding with nonhuman animals during an interactive, animal-in-the-wild science program and the science attitudes of 358 young children between the ages of 8 and 14 Talking Talons utilizes typically wild animals such as raptors, reptiles, and bats in a school-based educational science curriculum. Qualitative data from interviews with students in the program indicated that 'bonding with animals' and the educators within the program were related to increased positive attitudes toward science. The program used quantitative methods to examine these dual relationships - with animals and with educators- on student attitude toward science. The program performed a step-wise multiple regression with 'Attitude toward Science' as the dependent variable and 'Gender,' 'Age,' and 'Bonding with Animals' as independent variables. Both 'Bonding with Animals' and 'Bonding with the Educator' contributed significantly to prediction of the participants' science attitudes. Altogether 28% of the variance in 'Science Attitude' was predicted by both 'Gender' and 'Age' , 'Bonding with Animals' and 'Bonding with Educator'. Bonding with the animals had a large quantifiable relationship with student attitudes toward science.

Abstract: I address questions about values in model-making in engineering, specifically: Might the role of values be attributable solely to interests involved in specifying and using the model? Selected examples illustrate the surprisingly wide variety of things one must take into account in the model-making itself. The notions of system , and physically similar systems are important and powerful in determining what is relevant to an engineering model. Another example illustrates how an idea to completely re-characterize, or reframe, an engineering problem arose during model-making.I employ a qualitative analogue of the notion of physically similar systems. Historical cases can thus be drawn upon; I illustrate with a comparison between a geoengineering proposal to inject, or spray, sulfate aerosols, and two different historical cases involving the spraying of DDT . The current geoengineering proposal is seen to be like the disastrous and counterproductive case, and unlike the successful case, of the spraying of DDT. I conclude by explaining my view that model-making in science is analogous to moral perception in action, drawing on a view in moral theory that has come to be called moral particularism.

Summary: The importance of food in our individual lives raises moral questions from the debate over eating animals to the prominence of gourmet cookery in the popular media. Through philosophy, Elizabeth Telfer discusses issues including our obligations to those who are starving; the value of the pleasure of food; food as art; our duties to animals; and the moral virtues of hospitableness and temperance. Elizabeth Telfer shows how much traditional philosophy, from Plato to John Stuart Mill, has to say to illuminate this everyday yet complex subject.

Abstract: This article explores human-fish relations as an under-theorized “active site of engagement” in northern Canada. It examines two case studies that demonstrate how the Inuvialuit of Paulatuuq employ “fish pluralities” (multiple ways of knowing and defining fish) to negotiate the complex and dynamic pressures faced by humans, animals, and the environment in contemporary Arctic Canada. I argue that it is instructive for all Canadians to understand the central role of humans and animals, together, as active agents in political and colonial processes in northern Canada. By examining human-fish relationships, as they have unfolded in Paulatuuq over the last 50 years, we may develop a more nuanced understanding of the dynamic strategies that northern Indigenous people, including the Paulatuuqmiut (people from Paulatuuq), use to navigate shifting environmental, political, legal, social, cultural, and economic realities in Canada’s North. This article thus places fish and people, together, as central actors in the political landscape of northern Canada. I also hypothesize a relational framework for Indigenous-State reconciliation discourses in Canada today. This framework expands southern political and philosophical horizons beyond the human and toward a broader societal acknowledgement of complex and dynamic relationships between people, fish, and the land in Paulatuuq.

Abstract: This "Tending Nature" special features multiple perspectives and voices from Indigenous communities across California who are striving to keep the practices of their heritage alive. From coming-of-age rituals, seasonal food harvests, basket weaving and jewelry making, the documentary shares how traditional practices can be protected and maintained as a way of life for future generations.

Summary: A philosophical exploration of the nature, scope, and significance of ecofeminist theory and practice. This book presents the key issues, concepts, and arguments which motivate and sustain ecofeminism from a western philosophical perspective. Back Matter: How are the unjustified dominations of women and other humans connected to the unjustified domination of animals and nonhuman nature? What are the characteristics of oppressive conceptual frameworks and systems of unjustified domination? How does an ecofeminist perspective help one understand issues of environmental and social justice? In this important new work, Karen J. Warren answers these and other questions from a Western perspective. Warren looks at the variety of positions in ecofeminism, the distinctive nature of ecofeminist philosophy, ecofeminism as an ecological position, and other aspects of the movement to reveal its significance to both understanding and creatively changing patriarchal (and other) systems of unjustified domination.