Graduate Studies in Environmental Philosophy in North America, Part I

Michigan State University, East Lansing.   Jason P. Matzke completed a Ph.D. thesis, A Pluralistic Humean Environmental Ethic: Dealing with the Individualism-Holism Problem, Spring 2003. Environmental ethicists often
argue for ethical holism, granting moral standing to ecosystems and species. However, this conflicts with traditional ethics which attributes moral standing to individual organisms. This is the individualism-holism problem. Marry Anne Warren and J. Baird Callicott have each offered solutions which they claim are monistic. I synthesize their views and reinterpret them as a pluralistic Humean environmental ethic, one which ameliorates but cannot fully eliminate the conflict.
       Warren's principles are revised in light of my contention that interests play the central role in determining the moral standing of individual organisms and this provides substance to Callicott's otherwise more abstract approach. Callicott's work, in turn, provides theoretical coherence for Warren's principles. Humean sentimentalism, however, is open to the charge of relativism, especially since Hume's appeal to universal agreement on central moral beliefs cannot be sustained in a world so obviously diverse. Humean sentimentalism can be reinterpreted pluralistically. Differences in experience and culture prevent universal agreement, but the common experience of living as humans in this world, with its particularities,
limits the range of acceptable alternatives. Furthermore, because reason informs sentiment, there are grounds for critically assessing Humean moral claims.
         A pluralistic approach to moral reasoning provides an alternative to the continuing theoretical and practical stalemate between individualists and holists. Choices may have ethical remainders, but neither side of a debate can so easily insist that compromise threatens their moral integrity. The thesis advisor was Fred Gifford.

Fordham University, Bronx, NY. Robert L. Chapman completed a Ph.D. dissertation, Values Beyond Culture: A Study in Environmental Axiology, under Elizabeth Kraus. The central argument is that nature posses non-instrumental value. Chapman is now at Pace University, New York City Campus, New York, New York, where he is teaching environmental ethics.

University of New Mexico. Lisa Gerber completed a Ph. D. thesis, Environmental Virtues and Vices (Narcissism, Misanthropy, Humility, Attentiveness, Intimacy), 1999, Department of Philosophy. Virtue ethics is a better approach to environmental ethics than the extentionist position which allocates rights to animals, or the utilitarian position which takes into moral consideration all sentient creatures, or the land ethic position which seeks to promote the integrity and beauty of the biotic community. (1) Virtue ethics coherently explains why diverse examples, such as the killing of a sled dog and the destruction of a natural formation, are wrong. (2) More importantly, virtue ethics offers concrete ways in which to cultivate our characters in order to improve our relationship with nature. I explicate the vices of narcissism and misanthropy, and the virtues of humility, attentiveness, and intimacy. The adviser was Fred Schueler.

University of Iowa. Barbara Ellen Willard completed a Ph.D. thesis, December 1997, What's for Dinner: Articulating and Antagonizing the American Foodway. Department of Communication Studies. The rhetoric, arguments and narrative influences that have shaped American meat-eating. Americans have developed a cultural heritage with such components as the myth of human dominion, the cowboy and rugged individualist myth, and the masculinization of meat myth. These are transformed in contemporary accounts by themes of stewardship, convenience, health, and sanitization. Other antecedents lie in Greek mythology and philosophy, transmigration, animal ethics, and the purity of the body and soul. Contemporary narratives of health care, high moral ground, and apocalyptic rhetoric transform these antecedents. This complex background, operating in the present, needs to be understood by any who try to persuade individuals to change dietary habits. Willard is now Assistant Professor in the Department of Speech Communication, Colorado State University.

York University, Faculty of Environmental Studies, Toronto, Ontario. Andy Fisher completed a Ph.D. thesis, Nature and Experience: A Radical Approach to Ecopsychology, 1999. I propose an approach to ecopsychology which is (1) naturalistic, in that it aims to link human nature to the larger natural world; (2) experiential, in that it uses bodily felt meaning as its touchstone; (3) and radical, in that it locates itself within critical currents within both psychology and ecology. Its method is interpretive and rhetorical, understanding the human-nature relationship in a way that normal science cannot and arguing for concerns counter to those of the dominant social order. My own version of ecopsychology, "naturalistic psychology," asserts that to be claimed by the natural order means to belong to it, to be limited by it, and to feel its demands within our bodily experience. Naturalistic psychology advocates fidelity to nature, being in service of nature, and cultivating our inherent relations with a more-than-human world. This calls for a countering of the dominant pattern of our technologized and economized society. The general advance of technology leads not to the fulfilment of our nature but to a natural rebellion that the ruling powers of our society must constantly turn to advantage, administer, or out-maneuver. The radical task is to recognize the suffering intrinsic to the modern enterprise and to create loving contexts for the bearing of this suffering. Thus may we both discover what our suffering means and work toward a society more congruent with and respectful of our nature and our experience. The advisor was Mora Campbell. This thesis has been published as Radical Ecopsychology: Psychology in the Service of Life (Albany, State University of New York Press, 2002).

York University, Toronto, Ontario. Catriona Alison Hayward Sandilands completed a Ph.D. thesis: The Good Natured Feminist: On the Subject of Ecofeminism and the Quest for Democracy, in 1995, in sociology and women's studies. Ecofeminism embodies both considerable promise and numerous problems, notably its tendency to reduce feminist-ecological collaboration to "identity." This focus causes a number of difficulties, including the reduction of women and nature to their supposed "difference" from male culture. Identity politics, including ecofeminism, are understood as embodying a democratic desire; in light of the critique of identity offered by Laclau and Mouffe, it also becomes possible to retrieve that desire into a more "radical" democratic politics. Ecofeminism has a potential ability to construct a series of democratic conversations about nature, in which identities are seen as performative and potentially subversive. At the core of this democratic possibility lies a Lacanian "ethics of the Real," in which ecofeminism recognizes the unspeakability of nature; this "lack" is not only what keeps radical democratic politics from "getting it right" (thus preserving a desirable openness), but suggests an environmental ethics of human humility toward a partially-enigmatic nature. The advisor was Karen Anderson.

University of Utah. Edward Morris Barbanell completed a Ph. D. thesis, Private Property and Common-property Arrangements: The Case of Water in the West, 1999, Department of Philosophy. Private ownership is not the preferred end state for all scarce resources, illustrated by water in the American West. Because of water's "factor endowments", e.g., its degrees of jointness, divisibility and excludability, one individual's use creates significant negative externalities for other users. Individuals' interests can be better protected by splitting the various rights of ownership between individual resource users and the "resource community" to which they belong.
     This dissertation offers an expanded framework of "ownership", or rights-relationships. Locke's account of property is inadequate for water and other resources with similar factor endowments. Economists often conflate "open access" with "common ownership." The former describes a state of affairs where there are no rights-relationships at all, whereas the latter denotes a situation where definite property rights have been established. When the rights-relationship among members of a resource community is based on shared expectations of reciprocal behavior, then a common-property arrangement can function effectively to control the overuse of scarce resources. The advisor was Bruce Landesman.

Continued in Graduate Studies in Environmental Philosophy in North America, Part 2.