Environmental Ethics

Catalog description

This course will explore philosophical issues regarding humanity's impact on the natural world. It begins by asking: to whom do we owe ethical consideration and respect? While some approaches to this question emphasize human beings, other approaches broaden ethics to encompass animals, plants, ecosystems, and species. This disagreement accordingly challenges our understanding of many central ethical concepts, such as well-being, rights, justice, respect, interests, and obligation. In light of this challenge, the course will reconsider several more familiar debates about the environment. Should our diets and lifestyles radically change? Is it acceptable to take away liberty or intentionally cause harm in order to forestall environmental disaster? When do economic considerations outweigh the importance of clean air and water? How should population growth be handled? Do we have a duty to be sustainable? Students will be encouraged to adopt a reflective, critical attitude to the trade-offs these debates force us to make. This course fulfills an Applied Ethics course requirement.