Ch. 2
Terms
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- Stewardship
- Responsibility to look after, protect, and share the Earths resources
- Relativists
- Those who believe moral principles are always dependent on the particular situation.
- 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.
- Biocentrism
- belief that all creatures have rights and values; being centered on nature rather than humans
- values
- estimation of the worth of things
- Reproducibility
- Making an observation or obtaining a particular result more than once.
- Science
- A body of knowledge gained through observation and experimentation; latin scientia "knowledge"
- deductive reasoning
- reached from previously known facts
- Morals
- Set of ethical principles that guide our actions/relationships
- hypothesis
- a message expressing an opinion based on incomplete evidence
- Moral Extensionism
- Extending rights/values to those who might not be considered worthy of them by other philosophies
- Anthropocentrism
- belief that humans hold a special place in nature; being center primarily on humans and human affairs
- Instrumental value
- the worth that something has because of its use
- Double-blind
- one in which neither the experimenter nor the subjects know until after data has been gathered and analyzed which was the experimental treatment and which was the control
- 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.
- Ecofeminism
- Suggests how humans could reconceive themselves and their relationships to nature in nondominating ways as an alternative to the patriarchal systems of domination
- Toxic Colonialism
- shipping toxic wastes to poorer nations
- Inductive reason
- inferring general principles from specific examples.
- parsimony
- In scientific studies, the assumption that the least complicated explanation is probably the correct one(based on Occam's razor)
- Moral Subjects
- Beings that are not 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.
- 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.
- Significant Numbers
- Meaningful numbers whose accuracy can be verified.
- Paradigms
- A model that provides framework for interpreting observations.
- Environmental Ethics
- Search for moral values and ethical principles in human relations with the natural world
- Environmental Justice
- A recognition that access to a clean, healthy environment is a fundamental right of all human beings.
- scientific theory
- is a well tested concept that explains a wide range of observations.
- Environmental Racism
- Decisions that restrict certain people or groups of people to polluted or degraded environments on the basis of race.
- Moral Agents
- Beings capable of making distinctions between right or wrong and acting accordingly. Those who hold responsible for their actions.
- LULUs
- Locally Unwanted Land Uses such as toxic waste dumps, incinerators, smelters, airports, freeways, and other sources of environmental, economic or social degradation.
- Nihilists
- Those who believe the world has no meaning/ purpose other than a dark, cruel, unceasing struggle for power and existence (MALTHUS)
- 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