Chapter II Key Terms
Terms
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- 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.
- Parsimony
- If two explanations appear equally plausible, choose the simpler one.
- Paradigms
- A model that provides framework for interpreting observations.
- Biocentrism
- The belief that all creatures have rights and values; being centered on nature rather than humans.
- Ecofeminism
- A pluralistic, nonhierarchical, relationship-oriented philosophy that suggests how humans could reconceive themselves and their relationships to nature in non-dominating ways as an alternative to patriarchal system of domination.
- Moral Agents
- Beings capable of making distinctions between right or wrong and acting accordingly. Those who hold responsible for their actions.
- Toxic Colonialism
- Shipping toxic wastes to a weaker or poorer nation.
- Environmental Racism
- Decisions that restrict certain people or groups of people to polluted or degraded environments on the basis of race.
- Stewardship
- A philosophy that holds that humans have a unique responsibility to manage, care for, and improve nature.
- Values
- A estimation of worth of things; a set of ethical beliefs and preferences that determine our sense of right and wrong.
- Morals
- A set of ethical principles that guide our actions and relationships.
- Hypothesis
- A provisional explanation that can be tested scientifically.
- Moral Extensionism
- Expansion of our understanding of inherent value or rights to persons, organisms, or things that might not be considered worthy or value or rights under some ethical philosophies.
- Scientific Theory
- An explanation, supported by many tests and accepted by a general concensus 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.
- Inductive Reasoning
- Inferring general principles from specific examples.
- Reproducibility
- Making an observation or obtaining a particular result more than once.
- Deductive Reasoning
- Deriving testable predictions about specific cases from general principles.
- Environmental Ethics
- A search for moral values and ethical principles in human relations with the natural world.
- 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 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.
- Relativists
- Those who believe moral principles are always dependent on the particular situation.
- Anthropocentrism
- The belief that humans hold a special place in nature; begin centered primarily on humans and human affairs.
- 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.
- 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.
- Environmental Justice
- A recognition that access to a clean, healthy environment is a fundamental right of all human beings.
- 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.
- Science
- A process for producing knowledge.
- 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.
- LULUs
- Locally Unwanted Land Uses such as toxic waste dumps, incinerators, smelters, airports, freeways, and other sources of environmental, economic or social degradation.
- Significant Numbers
- Meaningful numbers whose accuracy can be verified.