chap. 2 vocabulary
Terms
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- Toxic colonialism
- shipping toxic wastes to a weaker or poorer nation
- Inductive reasoning
- inferring general principles from specific examples
- Anthropocentrism
- the belief that humans hold a special place in nature; being centered primarily on humans and human affairs
- Scientific theory
- an explanation supported by many tests and accepted by general consensus of scientists
- Biocentrism
- the belief that all creatures have rights and values; being centered on nature rather than humans
- Paradigms
- a model that provides a framework for interpreting observations
- LULUs
- Locally Unwanted Land Uses such as toxic waste dumps incinerators smelters airports freeways and other sources of environmental economic or social degradation
- Deductive reasoning
- deriving testable predictions about specific cases from general principles
- Morals
- the distinction between right and wrong
- Significant numbers
- meaningful numbers who accuracy can be verified
- Parsimony
- if two explanations appear equally plausible choose the simpler one
- Values
- the ultimate worth of actions or things
- Utilitarians
- those who hold that an action is right that produces the greatest good for the greatest number of people
- Controlled studies
- those in which comparisons are made between experimental and control populations that are identical (as far as possible) in every factor except the one variable being studied
- Double-blind design
- one in which neither the experimenter or the subjects know until after data has been gathered and analyzed which was the experimental treatment and which was closed
- Inherent value
- ethical values or rights that exist as an intrinsic or essential characteristic of a particular thing or class of things simply by the fact of their existence
- Moral agents
- being capable of making distinctions between right and wrong in acting accordingly; those whom we hold responsible for their actions
- Environmental justice
- recognition that access to a clean, healthy environment is a fundamental right of all human beings
- Instrumental value
- value or worth of objects that satisfy the needs and wants of moral agents; Objects that can be used as a means to some desirable end
- Environmental racism
- decisions that restrict certain people or groups of people to polluted or degraded environments on the basis of race
- Moral extensionism
- expansion of our understanding of inherit value or rights to persons organisms or things that might not be considered worthy of value or rights under some ethical philosophies
- Ecofeminism
- a pluralistic, nonhierarchical, relationship-oriented philosophy that suggests how humans could reconceive themselves and their relationships to nature in nondominating ways as an alternative to patriarchal systems of domination
- Reproducibility
- making an observation or obtaining a particular result more than once
- Universalists
- those who believe that some fundamental ethical principles are universal and unchanging. In this vision these principles are valid regardless of the context or situation
- Science
- derived from "knowing" in Latin. Is a process for producing knowledge
- Blind experiments
- those in which those carrying out the experiment don't know until after data has been gathered and analyzed which was the experimental treatment and which was the control
- Nihilists
- those who believe the world has no meaning or purpose other than dark cruel unceasing struggle for power and existence
- Moral subjects
- beings that are no capable of distinguishing between right or wrong or that are not able to act on moral principles and yet are capable of being wronged by others
- Hypothesis
- a provisional explanation that can be tested scientifically
- Stewardship
- a philosophy that holds that humans have a unique responsibility to manage care for and improve nature
- Relativists
- those who believe moral principles are always dependent on the particular situation
- Environmental ethics
- a search for moral values and ethical principles in human relations with the natural world