Environmental Ethics

Here are some notes from class and answers to the handout:

Feinberg asserts that when we understand what the issue in the debate over animal rights actually is, we will have the “key to the solution of all other riddles about rights” and as a consequence of such research, that we will come to the realization that there exists no reason why we should require an animal to understand what is going on as a condition for “regarding it as a possessor of rights” (53). Further, Feinberg believes that future generations do in fact have “rights correlative to our present duties toward them” (51).

Feinberg’s premises as stated in his first paragraph: (more…)

Feinberg is a conceptual theorist who is working on the concept of rights. In this particular essay he addresses the idea of rights applied to animals and future generations. In otherwords he is in agreement that we should extend our ideas about rights to previously excluded groups. He is interested in describing our thoughts/ attitudes/ accepted principles of rights and how from this we can logically extend these ideas to other things previously excluded from our “arena of rights” (more…)

At first, just the title of Stone’s article sounded a little absurd, but after I read it I actually agreed with him. (more…)

In class on Tuesday, February 6th we briefly discussed Christopher Stone’s article Should Trees Have Standing? Toward Legal Rights for Natural Objects before we began our review for the test on Thursday. Therefore, the information is not very elaborate, but on the contrary neither is Stone’s argument.

Unlike the other authors previously analyzed, Stone is not going to argue over qualities or justify moral rights, but instead he proposes that natural objects be granted legal standing.
Stone is unique in this regard. (more…)

True or False (more…)

Thursday in class we discussed Sagoff’s article Animal Liberation and Environmental Ethics: Bad Marriage, Quick Divorce. There was a handout to help understand the article better. The title of the article means that at first animal rights and environmentalists combined and then they realized that they don’t go together so they separated quickly. (more…)

In class yesterday (February 1) we discussed Mark Sagoff’s article “Animal Liberation and Environmental Ethics: Bad Marriage, Quick Divorce.” We discussed Sagoff’s main argument that an Animal Liberationist cannot be an Environmentalist and his criticism of other philosophers. Sagoff points out that Aldo Leopold has an ambiguous goal. (more…)