Chapter 2 Key Terms
Terms
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- ecofeminism
- a pluralistic, nonhierachical, 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
- 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 the control
- biocentrism
- belief that all creatures have rights and values; being centered on nature rather than humans
- moral agents
- beings capable of making distinctions between right and wrong and acting accordingly. those whom we hold responsible for their actionsof their existence
- moral extensionism
- expansion of our understanding of inherent value or rights to persons, organisms, or things that might not be considered worthy of value or rights under some ethical philosophies
- hypothesis
- provisional explanation that can be tested scientifically
- instrumental value
- value or worth of objects that satusfy the needs and wants or moral agents. objects that can be used as a means to some desirable end
- significant numbers
- meaningful numbers whose accuracy can be verified
- parsimony
- if two explanations appear equally plausible, choose the simpler one
- deductive reasoning
- deriving testable predictions about specific cases from general principles
- environmental racism
- decisions that restict certain people or groups of people to polluted or degraded environments on the basis of race
- paradigms
- model that provides a framework for interpreting observations
- scientific theory
- explanation supported by many tests and accepted by a general consensus of scientists
- 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
- environmental justice
- recognition that access to a clean, healthy environment is a fundamental right of all human beings
- reproducibility
- making an observation or obtaining a particular result more than once
- blind experiments
- those in which those carrying out the ea has been gathered and analyzed which was the experimental treatment and which was the control
- relativists
- those who believe moral principles are always dependent on the particular situation
- anthropocentrism
- belief that humans hold a special place in nature; being center primarily on humans and human affairs
- toxic colonialism
- shipping toxic wastes to a weaker or poorer nation
- environmental ethics
- search for moral values and ethical principles in human relations with the natural world
- morals
- set of ethical principles that guide our actions and relationships
- science
- process for producing knowledgesome
- LULUs
- Locally Unwanted Land Uses such as toxic waste dumps, incinerators, smelters, airports, freeways and other sources of environmental, economic or social degradation
- inductive reasoning
- inferring general principles from specific examples
- 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
- values
- estimation or the worth of things; a set of ethical beliefs and preferences that determine our sense of right and wrong
- 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
- stewardship
- philosophy that holds that humans have a unique responsibility to manage, care for, and improve nature
- utilitarians
- those who hold that an action is right that produces the greatest good for the greatest number of people
- nihilists
- those who believe the world has no meaning or purpose other than a dark, cruel, unceasing struggle for power and existence
- controlled studies
- those in which comparisons are made between experimental and control populoations that are identical in every factor except the one variable being studied