Deep Time and Environmental Ethics

This paper employs the concept of deep time to supply a philosophical argument about the kind of environmental ethics required in the present. Considerations from the evolutionary past are deployed to support the intrinsic value of health and well-being in addition to that of pleasure. The well-bein...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Author: Attfield, Robin 1931- (Author)
Format: Electronic Article
Language:English
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Published: Brill 2022
In: Worldviews
Year: 2022, Volume: 26, Issue: 3, Pages: 242-248
Further subjects:B a biocentric ethical theory
B the posthuman future
B evolutionary past
B the content of well-being
B Intrinsic Value
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Summary:This paper employs the concept of deep time to supply a philosophical argument about the kind of environmental ethics required in the present. Considerations from the evolutionary past are deployed to support the intrinsic value of health and well-being in addition to that of pleasure. The well-being of a species is held to consist in that of its individual members, past, present and future. Duties to species accordingly include promoting the well-being of future species members, since the impacts of human actions in a technological age are spread out across the future. These impacts include impacts on non-human species after humanity has become extinct; if these impacts matter, then a non-anthropocentric ethic is needed to explain why they do, since an anthropocentric ethics is incapable of explaining this.
ISSN:1568-5357
Contains:Enthalten in: Worldviews
Persistent identifiers:DOI: 10.1163/15685357-tat00004