Environmental ethics (Philosophy) (Philosophy)

A discourse on water ethics has emerged as a field linking practical water demands, social practices, and hydrological constraints to philosophic norms. The field arose parallel to growing, global understandings of the interconnected nature of water management and governance challenges. As such, it has been inflected with issues and contests across a range of policy concerns—from holistic and integrated water management to economics, justice, and human rights. The emerging water ethics discourse challenges both traditional environmental ethics and conventional approaches to resource management on issues of gender, power relations, and ecological concerns. It suggests an alternate, place-specific approach for linking shared water concerns to normative contests.
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""Anthropological literature addressing conservation and development often blames ‘conservationists’ as being neo-imperialist in their attempts to institute limits to commercial activities by imposing their post-materialist eco-ideology. The
author argues that this view of conservationists is ironic in light of the fact that the very notion of ‘development’ is arguably an imposition of the (Western) elites. The anthropocentric bias in anthropology also permeates constructivist ethnographies of
human–animal ‘interactions,’ which tend to emphasize the socio-cultural complexity and interconnectivity rather than the unequal and often extractive nature of this ‘interaction.’ Anthropocentrism is argued to be counteractive to reconciling conservationists’ efforts at environmental protection with the traditional ontologies
of the interdependency of human-nature relationship.""

Environmental ethicists typically consider Jürgen Habermas's theory of communicative action to exclude moral consideration for nonhuman animals. Habermas's early work indeed limits relationships with nature to instrumental ones. Yet, interspersed throughout Habermas's writings are clear indications that nonhuman life deserves moral consideration, and that humans can enter into communicative relationships with nonhumans, however asymmetrical. Habermas's anthropocentric theoretical foundations can achieve a revised, reflective equilibrium congruent with his persistent intuitions that nonhumans also possess powers of communication (but not discourse) that would grant them moral consideration, perhaps allowing us to enter into non-linguistic interspecies communicative activity. Habermasians can incorporate non-instrumental relationships with nature into discourse ethics' set of applications without ignoring the special role of language in communication. Rather than holding that the differencia specifica between humans and nonhumans exists in communication, it makes more sense instead to displace this distinction between communicative action as a general category and the special case of discourse. Doing so permits intuitions of nonhuman moral considerability and communicative possibility without altering the discursive core of Habermas's theory.

Even though anthropogenic climate change is largely caused by industrialized nations, its burden is distributed unevenly with poor developing countries suffering the most. A common response to livelihood insecurities and destruction is migration. Using Peter Singer's ‘historical principle’, this paper argues that a morally just evaluation requires taking causality between climate change and migration under consideration. The historical principle is employed to emphasize shortcomings in commonly made philosophical arguments to oppose immigration. The article concludes that none of these arguments is able to override the moral responsibility of industrialized countries to compensate for harms that their actions have caused.

Portrayals of the anthropocene period are often dystopian or post-apocalyptic narratives of climate crises that will leave humans in horrific science-fiction scenarios. Such narratives miss the populations of people, such as Indigenous peoples, who approach climate change having already been through transformations of their societies induced by colonial violence. This essay discusses how some Indigenous perspectives on climate change can situate the present time as already dystopian. Instead of dread of an impending crisis, Indigenous approaches to climate change are motivated through dialogic narratives with their descendants and ancestors. In some cases, these narratives are like science fiction in which Indigenous peoples work to empower their own protagonists to address contemporary challenges. Yet within literatures on climate change and the Anthropocene, Indigenous peoples often get placed in historical categories designed by non-Indigenous persons, such as the holocene. In some cases, these categories serve as the backdrop for allies’ narratives that privilege themselves as the protagonists who will save Indigenous peoples from colonial violence and the climate crisis. I speculate that this tendency among allies could possibly be related to their sometimes denying that they are living in times their ancestors would have likely fantasized about. I will show how this denial threatens allies’ capacities to build coalitions with Indigenous peoples. [open access @ http://journals.sagepub.com/toc/enea/0/0]

Biodiversity has become one of the most important conservation values that drive our ecological management and directly inform our environmental policy. This paper highlights the dangers of strategically appropriating concepts from ecological sciences and also of uncritically inserting them into conservation debates as unqualified normative landmarks. Here, I marshal evidence from a cutting-edge research
program in microbial ecology, which shows that if species richness is our major normative target, then we are faced with extraordinary ethical implications. This example challenges our well-received beliefs about biodiversity and it invites us to critically rethink the nature of this concept so that a more robust understanding of biodiversity and of its role in conservation policy could emerge.

Environmental unsustainability is due to both structural features and historically specific characteristics of industrial
capitalism resulting in specific patterns of production and consumption, as well as population growth. Sustainability
literature criticises the established corporate and political power hegemonies, interested in maintaining economic growth,
as well as inability or unwillingness of citizen-consumers to counteract these hegemonic tendencies. Yet, official policies are
still targeted at social and economic ‘development’ as a panacea for unsustainability challenges. Instead, renewed accent on
social and economic objectives are outlined by a set of sustainable development goals (SDG) that include objectives of
fighting poverty, promoting better health, reducing mortality, and stimulating equitable economic growth. What is less
commonly critiqued is the underlying morality of unsustainability and ethical questions concerned with the ‘victims of
unsustainability’ outside of socioeconomic discourse. The achievement of SDG goals, as will be further elaborated on in this
article, is unlikely to lead to greater social equality and economic prosperity, but to a greater spread of unsustainable
production and consumption, continuous economic as well as population growth that has caused environmental problems in
the first place and further objectification of environment and its elements. This article argues that an invocation of ethical
duty toward environment and its elements is required in order to move beyond the current status quo. Such ethical approach
to unsustainability can effectively address the shortcomings of the mainstream sustainability discourse that is mainly
anthropocentric and therefore fails to identify the correct locus of unsustainability.

Earth and nature-based spirituality is proliferating globally. In Part I of this study, I argue that although participants in countercultural movements often eschew the label religion, these are religious movements, in which these persons find ultimate meaning and transformative power in nature. Focusing on the deep ecology movement, I further argue that (1) experiences of nature spirituality are evoked by practices as
diverse as mountaineering, neo-shamanic ritualising and states of consciousness induced by hallucinogens; (2) earthen spiritualities are often contested and may be viewed as inauthentic or dangerous by practitioners of other forms of nature spirituality; and (3) despite significant diversity, a sense of connection and belonging to nature (sometimes personified as a transforming, if not transcendent power) unites these cross-fertilising and sometimes competing spiritualities. Part II examines additional forms of nature-oriented religion, searching further for continuities, discontinuities and ironies among its diverse forms.

Environmental anthropologists attempt to accommodate social justice while seeking to reconcile more-than-human relations and responsibilities towards their habitats. This article acknowledges areas of tension between local livelihoods and international conservation efforts, between indigenous peoples and wildlife, between traditional lifeways and development, and finally between different types of ethical assumptions that underlie anthropological advocacy. A number of dichotomies that are inherent in these tensions are discussed. With regard to the ecocentric/anthropocentric dichotomy, I argue that while human and environmental interests are sometimes intertwined, ecocentrism is necessary if non-humans are to be protected outside of utilitarian interests. With regard to the ‘neoliberal conservation/local communities’ dichotomy, I argue that blaming conservation for the violation of social justice depoliticises the issue of ecological injustice. Through a critical discussion of these dichotomies, this article examines the role of environmental anthropology in addressing today’s pressing environmental issues, particularly the loss of biodiversity, with respect to the ‘conservation’ of communities and that of protected areas

Through the commodification of nature, the framing of the environment as a 'natural resource' or 'ecosystem service' has become increasingly prominent in international environmental governance. The economic capture approach is promoted by international organizations such as the United Nations Environmental Program (UNEP) through Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD), Payments for Ecosystem Services (PES) and The Economics of Ecosystems and Biodiversity (TEEB). This paper will inquire as to how forest protection is related to issues of social and ecological justice, exploring whether forest exploitation based on the top-down managerial model fosters an unequitable distribution of resources. Both top-down and community-based approaches to forest protection will be critically examined and a more inclusive ethical framework to forest protection will be offered. The findings of this examination indicate the need for a renewed focus on existing examples of good practice in addressing both social and ecological need, as well as the necessity to address the less comfortable problem of where compromise appears less possible. The conclusion argues for the need to consider ecological justice as an important aspect of more socially orientated environmental justice for forest protection.

Recent advances in synthetic biology have made it possible to revive extinct species of animals, a process known as " de-extinction. " This paper examines two reasons for supporting de-extinction: 1) the potential for de-extinct species to play useful roles in ecosystems; and 2) human valuing of certain de-extinct species. I focus on the particular case of passenger pigeons to argue that the most critical challenge for de-extinction is that it entails significant suffering for sentient individual animals. I also provide reasons to take existence value, or valuing the mere the fact that a species exists, into consideration in debates over de-extinction.

The proceedings of the National Science Foundation supported WIS2DOM workshop state that sustainability scientists must respect the “protocols” of practitioners of Indigenous sciences if the practitioners of the two knowledge systems are to learn from each other. Indigenous persons at the workshop described protocols as referring to attitudes about how to approach the world that are inseparable from how people approach scientific inquiry; they used the terms caretaking and stewardship to characterize protocols in their Indigenous communities and nations. Yet sustainability scientists may be rather mystified by the idea of protocols as a necessary dimension of scientific inquiry. Moreover, the terms stewardship and caretaking are seldom used in sustainability science. In this case report, the authors seek to elaborate on some possible meanings of protocols for sustainability scientists who may be unaccustomed to talking about stewardship and caretaking in relation to scientific inquiry. To do so, the authors describe cases of Indigenous protocols in action in relation to scientific inquiry in two Indigenous-led sustainability initiatives in the Great Lakes/Midwest North American region. We claim that each case expresses concepts of stewardship and caretaking to describe protocols in which humans approach the world with the attitude of respectful partners in genealogical relationships of interconnected humans, non-human beings, entities and collectives who have reciprocal responsibilities to one another. We conclude with a discussion of the implications of Indigenous protocols for future dialog between practitioners of sustainability and Indigenous sciences.

Like other communities, Indigenous peoples must adapt to climate-induced ecological variations like sea level rise, glacier retreat and shifts in the habitat ranges of different species. In ongoing conversations on climate change, some Indigenous women articulate how seriously they take the specific responsibilities they perceive themselves to have within the systems of responsibilities that matter to their communities. Such responsibilities can range from acting as custodians and teachers of local ecological knowledge to acting as conveners of political movements aiming at respectful co-existence with neighbors. For these Indigenous women, the responsibilities that they assume in their communities can expose them to harms stemming from climate change and other environmental changes. Yet at the same time, their commitment to these responsibilities motivates them to serve as enablers of adaptation and mitigation. efforts.
This paper offers a starting point for the following positions: Some Indigenous women have their own unique capacities for collective action that advance adaptation and mitigation. Non-Indigenous parties’ political responsibilities should involve deferring to Indigenous women’s own knowledges of and motivations for collective action. Deference can be expressed through political institutions that bolster the conditions needed to support Indigenous women’s collective actions. In many cases, deference  is incumbent on Indigenous national governments and political organizations. Further work beyond this paper should seek to further clarify the political reforms needed to support Indigenous women’s collective agencies for adapting to and mitigating climate change.

I examine the ancient and perennial notion of the elements (stoicheia) and its relation to an idea of place proper (topos) and natural place (topos oikeios) in Aristotle's work. Through an exploration of his accounts, I argue that Aristotle develops a robust theory of place that is relevant to current environmental and geographical thought. In the process, he provides a domestic household and home for earth, air, fire and water that offers a supplement or an alternative to more abstract and controversial uses of a conception of 'nature' (physis). I identify and elaborate upon environmental aspects of place-based and elemental philosophy.

Anthropocene discourse often describes futures characterized by climate destabilization leading to the extinction of certain species. Often these futures are described using dystopian themes. As a Potawatomi person and scholar-activist, I wondered how might some Indigenous peoples interpret such futures? While similarities are present given Indigenous concern with conserving native species, it is more accurate to claim that indigenous conservationists focus more on sustaining particular plants and animals whose lives are entangled locally, over many generations, in ecological, cultural and economic relationships with human societies. Indigenous peoples learn from, adapt, and put in practice these relationships to address the conservation challenges we face today, especially the environmental destruction of settler colonialism in North America. What is more, the environmental impacts of settler colonialism have made it so that quite a few indigenous peoples in North America are already no longer able to relate locally to many of the plants and animals that are significant to them. In the Anthropocene, then, some indigenous peoples already inhabit what our ancestors would have likely characterized as a dystopian future. So we consider the future from what we believe is already a dystopia. The paper explores these ideas in relation to case examples from Indigenous conservation and restoration.

Exploring both sides of a contemporary conflict over whaling in Washington State, this paper explores philosophic consistency and consistency between philosophy and action.

The introduction reiterates the importance of consistency for the Western philosophic tradition, offering relevant background information concerning an unresolved conflict over whaling in Washington State.  Part I exposes philosophic inconsistency for contemporary whalers in Washington State and provides contrasting examples of similar situations where consistency has been maintained.  Part II discusses philosophic inconsistencies entailed for non-whalers if whaling is permitted in Washington State.

I conclude by noting the limitations of my work, as well as possible far-reaching implications.

In this article, I outline a logic of design of a system as a specific kind of conceptual logic of the design of the model of a system, that is, the blueprint that provides information about the system to be created. In section two, I introduce the method of levels of abstraction as a modelling tool borrowed from computer science. In section three, I use this method to clarify two main conceptual logics of information (i.e., modelling systems) inherited from modernity: Kant's transcen-dental logic of conditions of possibility of a system, and Hegel's dialectical logic of conditions of in/stability of a system. Both conceptual logics of information analyse structural properties of given systems. Strictly speaking, neither is a conceptual logic of information about (or modelling) the conditions of feasibility of a system, that is, neither is a logic of information as a logic of design. So, in section four, I outline this third conceptual logic of information and then interpret the conceptual logic of design as a logic of requirements, by introducing the relation of " suffici-entisation ". In the conclusion, I argue that the logic of requirements is exactly what we need in order to make sense of, and buttress, a constructionist (poietic) approach to knowledge.

Setting out from Jacques Derrida's assertion that every act of naming is "a foreshadowing of mourning" ([2008. The animal that therefore I am. (M.-L. Mallet, Ed., D. Wills, Trans.). New York, NY: Fordham University Press], p. 20), this paper argues that the work of earthly coexistence is underwritten by the intertwined practices of naming and mourning. The paper demonstrates that names provide access to and shape our perceptions of earthly entities; that the act of naming prepares us for the work of mourning; that the proper names given to endlings provide poignant points of access to species on the edge of extinction; that species names disclose species as such and, thus, enable us to grieve not just particular living organisms but entire ways of life; and that the name given to the current geological epoch, the "anthropocene," simultaneously reflects and engenders a mode of awareness which enables us to relinquish those ways of being human that no longer seem sustainable and carry forth those that promise to enrich earthly coexistence.

In this article, we critically reflect on the concept of biomimicry. On the basis of an analysis of the concept of biomimicry in the literature and its philosophical origin, we distinguish between a strong and a weaker concept of biomimicry. The strength of the strong concept of biomimicry is that nature is seen as a measure by which to judge the ethical rightness of our technological innovations, but its weakness is found in questionable presuppositions. These presuppositions are addressed by the weaker concept of biomimicry, but at the price that it is no longer possible to distinguish between exploitative and ecological types of technological innovations. We compare both concepts of biomimicry by critically reflecting on four dimensions of the concept of biomimicry: mimesis, technology, nature, and ethics.

This paper seeks to establish positive environmental ethics of artifacts as unique individuals embedded in the network of functionality, deserving of care and respect. Such a perspective is integrated with postnatural environmentalism and ecofeminist frameworks. By offering a new conceptualization of artifacts, it aims to transform the patterns of how humans deal with artifacts, and thereby limit consumerism, which should contribute to achieving proenvironmental goals.

For 5 years, we have taught an interdisciplinary experiential environ- mental philosophy—field philosophy—course in Isle Royale National Park. We crafted this class with a pedagogy and curriculum guided by the ethic of care (Goralnik et al. in J Experiential Education 35(3):412–428, 2012) and a Leopold- derived community-focused environmental ethic (Goralnik and Nelson in J Environ Educ 42(3):181–192, 2011) to understand whether and how wilderness experience might impact the widening of students’ moral communities. But we found that student pre-course writing already revealed a preference for nonanthropocentric and nonutilitarian ethics, albeit with a na ̈ıve understanding that enabled contradictions and confusion about how these perspectives might align with action. By the end of the course, though, we recognized a recurrent pattern of learning and moral development that provides insight into the development of morally inclusive environmental ethics. Rather than shift from a utilitarian or anthropocentric ethic to a more biocentric or ecocentric ethic, students instead demonstrated a metaphysical shift from a worldview dominated by dualistic thinking to a more complex awareness of motivations, actions, issues, and natural systems. The consistent occurrence of this pre-ethical growth, observed in student writing and resulting from environmental humanities field learning, demonstrates a possible path to ecologically informed holistic environmental ethics.

Suppose one of your actions imposes a risk of harm that, on its own, would be excessive; but a second reduces the risk of harm by a corresponding amount. By pairing the two actions together to form a set of actions that is risk-neutral, can you thereby make your overall course of conduct permissible? We argue that the answer to this is sometimes yes and sometimes no. We propose a criterion, the Principle of Aggregate Risk-Imposition, that distinguishes the two kinds of case, and apply it to the offsetting of personal greenhouse gas emissions.

Many agents have failed to comply with their responsibilities to take the action needed to avoid dangerous anthropogenic climate change.  This pervasive noncompliance raises two questions of nonideal political theory.

First, it raises the question of what agents should do when others do not discharge their climate responsibilities. (the Responsibility Question)  In this paper I put forward four principles that we need to employ to answer the Responsibility Question (Sections II-V).  I then illustrate my account, by outlining four kinds of action that should be undertaken (Section VI).

Pervasive noncompliance also raises a second question: Given the lack of progress in combating climate change, should existing governance structures be maintained or changed (and if they should be changed, in what ways)? (the Governance Question).  The paper briefly outlines a methodology for addressing this question and outlines what a nonideal response to the existing institutional structures would be (Section VII).  It does so with reference to the Paris Agreement, and in particular the creation of a "global stocktake" (Article 14, Paris Agreement) and the "facilitative dialogue" (paragraph 20 of the ‘Adoption of the Paris Agreement’).

The aim, then, is to set out an account of a nonideal theory of climate justice.

In the 1960s, western societies discovered that unlimited technological progress has a very high price that the environment pays. This was also the beginning of the discussions on the role of ethics in the protection of the environment and the moral aspects of nature exploitation. Even though the state of nature was not better in Poland, it took Polish philosophers a few decades to recognize the moral problem and to address it. The prevailing communistic propaganda of progress had blurred the perception of Polish people and they are unable to notice the environmental problem. Thus, only in the 1990s, after the fall of communism, Polish philosophers noticed that our approach to nature can have a moral aspect and we are exhausting the resources of the Earth. Since then, Environmental Ethics in Poland has been developed. Polish Environmental Ethics (PEE) is an interesting blend of inspiration from internationally recognized thinkers as well as original approaches to the ecological problem. The first wave of PEE addresses problems discussed abroad, namely the range of ethics (whom do we include into ethical consideration?) and the problem of values, analyzing them in the context of Polish culture and philosophical traditions. It also proposed original approaches developed by Henryk Skolimowski as well as approaches inspired by the problems considered from the perspective of Catholic theology. The article will give an insight into PEE and will present how these applied ethics have been received and cultivated in Poland in the so called first wave. It will also highlight the problems of the second wave of PEE.

Debates about individual responsibility for climate change revolve mainly around individual mitigation duties. Mitigation duties concern future impacts of climate change. Unfortunately, climate change has already caused important harms and it is foreseeable that it will cause more in the future, in spite of our best efforts. Thus, arguably, individuals might also have duties related to those harms. In this paper, I address the question of whether individuals are obligated to provide compensation for climate related harms that have already occurred. I explore two possible strate- gies to answer that question. The straightforward strategy answers in the affirma- tive. Two approaches embrace this strategy: the ‘ecological citizenship’ approach and the benefits-based approach. I challenge those two approaches and rule out an affirmative answer. The alternative strategy answers in the negative but provides a way to respond to why currently living individuals should pay for burdens created for past individuals. Two possible approaches embrace this alternative: the com- munity-based approach and my own state-based benefits approach. I will argue that individual duties do not fall under the realm of compensatory justice, but they have nonetheless a duty to bear compensatory burdens allocated to their states.

The structures and processes which provide a context favourable to commoditization are sedimented into our lives so that they become taken-for-granted and apparently unproblematic aspects of the cultural scenery. Language, economic 'realities', our styles of thought and categorisation, education, the infrastructure we inhabit, and subjectivity itself have all been shaped in ways that make commoditization seem inevitable and even natural. Consequently, the more noticeable excesses of commoditization are the symptoms of a much more pervasive colonisation of the world and our own lives. In this paper I explore some of the historical and contemporary factors involved in a system of commoditizing pressures that is deeply woven into the fabric of industrial society.

Every field of science, but especially biology, contains particular conceptions of nature. These conceptions are not merely epistemological or ontological, but also have normative dimensions; they provide an ethos, a framework for moral orientation. These normative dimensions, whilst often remaining 'hidden' and inarticulate, influence the way in which biologists practice their profession. In this paper, I explore what happens when different versions of these implicit normative frameworks collide. To do so,

This paper is about the practice of evaluating ecosystems on the basis of the cultural services they provide. My first aim is to assess the various objections that have been made to this practice. My second is to argue that when particular places are integral to people’s lives, their value cannot be adequately conceived in terms of the provision of cultural ecosystem services. It follows, I conclude, that the ecosystem services framework can provide only a very limited account of the value of places.

This is a final draft of the article published in Environmental Ethics 11 (Fall 1989): 243-258. This assessment of  the Promethean dimension of Marx's thought is accurate, but though it mentions Marx's more dialectical side and its potential implications, this aspect is seriously neglected in the article . A more balanced assessment is presented in "Marx's Natures," a draft version of which can be found on this site. This article should be read in connection with the latter one.

In an article titled “Robochop,” The Economist reported a practical problem and its technological solution. The problem was that swarms of jellyfish clogged up the pipes of a Swedish nuclear power plant on the Baltic Sea coast, forcing the plant’s temporary shutdown. The proposed solution involved utilizing an invention of “a fleet of killer robots that turn jellyfish into mush.” The devices known as JEROS (Jellyfish Elimination Robotic Swarms) are designed to follow a lead robot and work in formation: they can apparently chop up to 900 kilograms of jellyfish an hour.''

The report raises an irrepressible question: Is there not something wrong—even deeply disturbing—about this picture?

Although the contemporary biomimicry movement is associated primarily with the idea of taking Nature as model for technological innovation, it also contains a normative or ethical principle – Nature as measure – that may be treated in relative isolation from the better known principle of Nature as model. Drawing on discussions of the principle of Nature as measure put forward by biomimicry theorist, Janine Benyus (1997), and agro-ecologist, Wes Jackson (2010, 2011), while at the same time situating this principle in relation to contemporary debates in the philosophy of biomimicry (Mathews 2011, Dicks 2015, Blok and Gremmen 2016), this paper explores the relation between the principle of Nature as measure and environmental ethics. This leads to the argument that mainstream formulations of environmental ethics share the common trait of seeing our ethical relation to Nature as primarily involving duties to protect, preserve, or conserve various values in Nature, and that, in doing so, they problematically either overlook or dismiss as anthropocentric the possibility that Nature may provide measures, understood in terms of ecological laws and principles, against which our own practices, or at least some of them, may be judged – a way of thinking I call “biomimetic ethics”. The practical consequences of this argument are significant. Whereas mainstream environmental ethics is applicable above all to such issues as wilderness preservation, natural resource management, and animal rights and welfare, biomimetic ethics applies rather to the question of how we produce, use, and consume things, and, as such, may potentially provide the basic ethical framework required to underpin the transition to a circular, bio-based, solar economy.

This paper argues that environmental virtue ethics requires the
adoption of an ethical ideal in order to guide the identification and
practice of virtues. I recommend friendship as one such ideal due to
emphasis such an ideal places upon the quality of the relationship
with nature rather than the evaluation of individual actions. After
describing the value of friendship as an ethical ideal, I respond to
some of the objections that have been raised against it in the context
of environmental virtue.

The recent shift towards the interdisciplinary study of the human-environment relationship is largely driven by environmental justice debates. This article will distinguish four types of environmental justice and link them to questions of neoliberalism and altruism. First, environmental justice seeks to redress inequitable distribution of environmental burdens to vulnerable groups and economically disadvantaged populations. Second, environmental justice highlights the developed and developing countries’ unequal exposure to environmental risks and benefits.
Third, temporal environmental justice refers to the issues associated with intergenerational justice or concern for future generations of humans. In all three cases, environmental justice entails equitable distribution of burdens and benefits to different nations or social groups. By contrast, ecological justice involves biospheric egalitarianism or justice between species. This article will focus on ecological justice since the rights of non-human species lags behind social justice debates and discuss the implications of including biospheric egalitarianism in environmental justice debates.

Contemporary science seems to be caught in a strange predicament. On the one hand, it holds a firm and reasonable commitment to a healthy naturalistic methodology, according to which explanations of natural phenomena should never overstep the limits of the natural itself. On the other hand, contemporary science is also inextricably and now inevitably dependent on ever more complex technologies, especially Information and Communication Technologies, which it exploits as well as fosters. Yet such technologies are increasingly " artificialising " or " denaturalis-ing " the world, human experiences and interactions, as well as what qualifies as real. So the search for the ultimate explanation of the natural seems to rely upon, and promote, the development of the artificial, seen here as an instantiation of the non-natural. In this article, I would like to try and find a way out of this apparently strange predicament. I shall argue that the naturalisation of our knowledge of the world is either philosophically trivial (naturalism as anti-supernaturalism and anti-preternaturalism), or mistaken (naturalism as anti-constructionism). First, I shall distinguish between different kinds of naturalism. Second, I shall remind the reader that the kinds of naturalism that are justified today need to be protected and supported pragmatically, but they are no longer very interesting conceptually. We know how to win the argument. We just have to keep winning it. Whereas the kind of naturalism that is still interesting today is now in need of revision in order to remain acceptable. Such a kind of naturalism may be revised on the basis of a realistic philosophy of information, according to which knowing is a constructive activity, through which we do not merely represent the phenomena we investigate passively, but create more or less correct informational models (semantic artefacts) of them, proactively and interactively. I shall conclude that the natural is in itself artefactual (a semantic construction), and that the information revolution is disclosing a tension not between the natural and the non-natural, but a deeper one between a user's and a producer's interpretation of knowledge. The outcome is a philosophical view of knowledge and science in the information age that may be called constructionist and a revival of philosophy as a classic, foundationalist enterprise.

Keywords Constructionism · Closure · Level of abstraction · Naturalism · Naturalisation · Open question argument · Reasonably reiterable query test

The problem we face today is that there is a huge gap between our ethical judgments about the ecological crisis on the one hand and our ethical behavior according to these judgments on the other. In this article, we ask to what extent a phenomenology of the ecological crisis enables us to bridge this gap and display more ethical or pro-environmental behavior. To answer this question, our point of departure is the affordance theory of the American psychologist and
founding father of ecological psychology, James Gibson. There are two reasons for taking this approach. First of all, an ontological reading of Gibson’s affordance theory provides a concept of nature which is non-dualistic, non-anthropocentric and eco-centric, but is not seen as an ‘intrinsic value’ or product of ‘human valuation’. Secondly, the affordance ontology provides us with a concept of nature which in itself calls for certain action and behavior. If we indeed face a gap between ethical judgment and ethical behavior with regard to the current ecological crisis, an affordance of nature could bridge this gap. Based on our ontological reading of Gibson’s affordance theory, we open a radically new perspective on the current ecological crisis and the responsibility of mankind with regard to this crisis.

In a discussion of the "rules of Gandhian nonviolence" Arne Naess proposes a number of hypotheses and norms that are highly relevant to recent debates in ecophilosophy. For example, he suggests that the "character of the means used in a group struggle determines the character of the results," and that one should "choose that personal action or attitude which most probably reduces the tendency towards violence of all parties in a struggle." One should not, he says, "act as a mere functionary, a representative of an institution or an underling, but always as an autonomous, fully responsible person." Mistrust, he suggests, "stems from misjudgement, especially of the disposition of [one's] opponent to answer trust with trust, mistrust with mistrust." One should "fight antagonisms, not antagonists" and "formulate the essential interests which [one] and [one's] opponent share and try to cooperate upon this basis." Furthermore, one should not "humiliate or provoke [an] opponent" or "judge [an] opponent harder than [one]self."