Graduate Studies in Environmental Philosophy in North America, Part 2

University of Wisconsin-Madison. Gary E. Varner completed a Ph.D. thesis with the title: Interests: Their Nature, Scope, and Significance, in 1988. Moral agents have direct, prima facie duties toward any entity that has interests. Preference interests are probably present in all animals with a functional prefrontal cortex, and probably not present in any non-mammalian creature. Having desires does not require having true language of the kind that humans have. All and only individual living organisms have welfare interests, analyzed on the model of needs. Such a view is not impracticable but there are practicable means of adjudicating such interests. Desires ought to be given preference over biologically defined needs and the "ground projects" of humans ought to be given precedence over all interests of non- human beings. Still, humans as moral agents can, on consideration of the interests of non-human creatures, sometimes accommodate these interests. The thesis advisor was Jon H. Moline. Varner teaches philosophy at Texas A and M University.

University of St. Thomas, Saint Paul. Judith Ann Freund completed an Ed.D. thesis with the title: Landscapes of Promise: An Examination of Students' Journals Written During a Cross-cultural Wilderness Experience (High School Students), completed 1997. An examination of nature journals written by ten American and ten Russian high school students during a cross-cultural exchange that provided experiences in selected national wilderness areas designated by the respective countries. The students participated in a backpacking excursion in the Lee Metcalf Wilderness Area of Montana in the summer of 1994, and a camping experience in the wilderness areas in the provincial region of Penza, Russia in the summer of 1995. Aesthetic 'peak' experiences; spiritual inspiration derived from experiences in nature; attitudes toward the preservation of wildlife; and environmental ethics.

Dalhousie University(Canada). Michele Chauveur completed an M.A. degree in education: Ecology, Ethics, Education, in 1996. The Nova Scotia environmental movement has a wide spectrum of positions. Unification among these groups is precarious due to the incompatibility of the anthropocentric view and the biocentric view. Sustainable development is rejected by biocentric opponents. Animal rights activists defend universal justice for humans and animals alike. Ecofeminism links women/human oppression and nature's oppression, rejecting anthropocentric and androcentric values. Social ecology and deep ecology have different views. The role of education versus fears of indoctrination. For a Freirian and a feminist educational approach, understanding nuclearism as a form of oppression and violence is a way to seek empowerment and change toward a post patriarchal society based on a profound awareness of interdependence and respect for the right of all beings to life. The advisor was Ann Manicom.

San Jose State University. Varinder Singh Grewal completed a M.S. thesis, Strengthening Environmental Impact Assessment in India: Comparison of EIA in the United States, Western Australia, the Philippines, and India, 1996, in environmental sciences. In India, uncontrolled population growth, poverty, urbanization and industrialization without proper infrastructure, the abysmal state of sanitation and filth, and deforestation and unprofessional agricultural practices are pushing the nation toward ecological disaster. Behind these problems are the bureaucratic and political hurdles, the general public's lack of understanding of environmental ethics, and the government's lack of environmentally sound economic-policy making capabilities. Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) could be used to address these issues. An examination of existing administrative EIA procedures in India in comparison to the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) in the United States and different EIA models from other countries. In conclusion, eight recommendations would result in more effective implementation of EIA procedures in India. The advisor was Lynne Rulio.

University of Minnesota. Paul Kenneth Roebuck completed a Ph.D. thesis: The Geography of Nature (Environmental Ethics, Indians, Water Rights), 1996, in geography and philosophy. The Enlightenment tradition stresses scientism and instrumental reason. Reactions against this tradition--Expressivism, Romanticism and Indigenous Knowledge provide the underpinning for radical environmentalism. Insofar as naturalistic theories leave out meaning, they are implausible and distort human life and action. Enlightenment thought provided a theory of knowledge and humanity founded on atomism, mechanism, and materialism and a radically utilitarian ethics. This movement of ideas is usually treated as an epistemological revolution with anthropological consequences. Viewed differently, subjectivity underlies this revolution from the start. Western ideas of subjectivity, meaning, and identity shifted from the Medieval period through the Sturm und Drang and the Romantic period. Once we question essential notions about meaning and objectivity, social criticism can move beyond ethnocentric projection and offer a genuine critique of our practices. Native-American and European- American ideas of nature relating to water projects in the Southwest reveal this contrast. The advisor was Philip W. Porter.

University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. Almut Beringer completed a Ph.D. dissertation in Natural Resources at the University of Michigan, 1992: The Moral Ideas of Care and Respect: A Hermeneutic Inquiry into Adolescents' Environmental Ethics and Moral Functioning. William B. Stapp and Martin J. Packer were principal advisors. Discontent with contemporary environmental philosophy, leads Berwinger to an inductive approach, based on real-life moral experiences. Do adolescents have the psychological capacities to put into practice what philosophers recommend? High school juniors' responses are analyzed to answer the question.

University of Arizona. Juanita Mae Simpson completed a Ph.D. thesis, The Theoretical Foundations for an Environmental Ethic (Intrinsic Value), completed 1997. An analysis of the concept of intrinsic value as a foundation for an environmental ethic. Distinguishes between a metaphysical conception of intrinsic value, having to do with its ontological status, and a normative conception which pertains solely to questions of normativity and moral obligation. There is a symmetry between certain earlier metaethical dialogues (Sidgwick and Moore) and the recent debates in environmental value theory. The latter-day Last Person thought experiment mirrors the challenge given by Sidgwick to which Moore responded with his Beautiful World analysis. Theorists have conflated a requirement for a noninstrumentalist (intrinsic) value with the requirement for a strongly objectivist ontology for value. Hence, theorists believed that what was required was a nondispositionalist, internal notion of value, abstracted from any possible evaluative stance. This confusion is expressed in the contemporary environmental ethics. Quinn offers a revised theoretical framework for an environmental ethic. The advisor was Joel Feinberg.

University of California, Riverside. Andrew Light completed a Ph.D. thesis: Nature, Class, and the Built World: Philosophical Essays between Political Ecology and Critical Technology. 1996, in philosophy. Philosophical disagreements on environmental questions can sometimes be set aside in order to achieve compatible strategies to work toward improving environmental conditions. As part of this strategy, pragmatists call for abandoning the existing prejudices of environmental philosophy, in particular nonanthropocentrism and commitments to moral monism. The social ecology- deep ecology divide in political ecology, and the debate between monists and pluralists in environmental ethics. Both debates are used to advance the pragmatist position. The privatization of environmental regulations, and restoration ecology. Questions concerning urban space and political identity. Technology and built space have traditionally been ignored by environmental philosophers. Space and place are integral to an environmental philosophy tempered by pragmatic concerns. The advisor was Bernd Magnus.

University of Miami. Sally Nelson Wiedmann completed a Ph.D. degree: Rawlsian Justice and Environmental Ethics, 1996, in philosophy. Rawls can be the source of a public environmental ethic supporting the preservation of nature on the ground of nature's intimate association with certain primary goods and an obligation to future generations. Previous attempts to adapt Rawls' initial theory to an environmental ethic are all utilitarian, and unsuccessful. The appropriate Rawlsian ethic, while anthropocentric, is not narrowly so. Potential criticisms of the Rawlsian environmental ethic are rebutted. The advisor was Ramon Lemos.

State University of New York, Stony Brook. Charles Whitmer Wright completed a Ph.D. thesis: Toward an Environmentally Responsive Ethics of Communication (Frankfurt School of Social Theory, Jurgen Habermas, Germany), in 1996, in philosophy. First generation members of the Frankfurt School of social theory--Max Horkheimer, Theodor Adorno and Herbert Marcuse-- anticipated the need for theoretical reflection concerning the causes of environmental degradation, but their philosophical approach was burdened with serious conceptual difficulties. Jurgen Habermas's reconstruction promises to resolve many of these difficulties. Yet his linguistic and pragmatic approach seems to entail an anthropocentrism that prevents an adequate environmental ethic. This thesis outlines the obstacles facing environmental thinkers in Habermas's conception of practical reason and in his conception of modernity. But his theoretical approach can be reconciled with the aims of environmental ethics and philosophy. A place for a moral dimension to human interaction with the natural world can be secured. The advisor was Kenneth Baynes.

State University of New York, Stony Brook. Robert Kirkman completed a Ph.D. thesis, Environmentalism Without Illusions: Rethinking the Roles of Philosophy and Ecology, 1995. Environmental thinkers make broad factual and normative claims that are usually based on a profound misunderstanding of the scope and limits of human knowledge. The most telling symptom of this problem is the deep ambivalence of environmental thinkers toward the sciences. Speculative nature philosophy must always fall short of the mark; the world is far too complex and detailed to be fully comprehended by reason. An alternative is a model of scientific inquiry as a process by which metaphors are refined by an open- ended process of testing and criticism. Scientific knowledge is always tentative and somewhat ambiguous. An emphasis on scientific knowledge, properly understood, results in a radical revision of the meaning and the prospects of environmental thought. The advisors were Anthony Weston, Mary C. Rawlinson, and Edward S. Casey. Kirkman taught at the Department of Philosophy, University of New Hampshire, Durham, and is now with the Learning Communities Program, SUNY Stony Brook.

State University of New York, Stony Brook. David Mark Macauley completed a Ph.D. thesis, Be-wildering Order: Toward an Ecology of the Elements in Ancient Greek Philosophy and Beyond, 1998. The present environmental crisis is, in part, a crisis of our historical relation to the four classical elements: earth, air, fire and water, in ancient Greek cosmology and philosophy. A typology of the elements, their role in framing a physical and metaphysical order. Debates related to the social construction of nature, hylozoism and the significance of the elements for understanding philosophical language, Greek culture, and the environment. Particular attention to Empedocles' Peri Phuseus and Katharmoi--and their subsequent place and displacement in the thought of Plato's Timaeus and Aristotle's De Caelo, De Anima, De Generatione et Corruptione and Physics. Relevance for our conceptions of pollution, democracy, evolutionary theory, philosophy of nature and place. An "ecology of the elements" using Martin Heidegger, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Gaston Bachelard and Henry David Thoreau. The role of dwelling, walking, the body and an ontological poetics of revery. The advisor was Edward S. Casey.

State University of New York, Stony Brook. Irene Klaver completed a Ph.D. thesis, 1996, Indeterminacy in Place. A Heraclitian mode of being and thinking is preserved in Plato's notion of space. Oppositions are dealt with as mutually constitutive instead of mutually exclusive. This absence of dualistic thinking is related to the way that space is designated as an indeterminate, feminine, and material realm. There are consequences for concepts of intentionality, agency, responsibility, subjectivity, and community. Environmental ethics needs to be predicated upon the necessity to give place indeterminacy and upon a notion of place that is fundamentally indeterminate. This leads to a pragmatic environmental policy that takes specific places seriously. The advisors were Edward S. Casey, Mary Rawlinson, Anthony Weston, and Peter Manchester. Klaver, who is Dutch, afterward taught at Montana State University, Billings. She did further teaching and research at the Universities of Amsterdam and Leiden, and is now Assistant Professor of Philosophy, University of North Texas.

University of Kansas. Brian Clyde Black completed a Ph.D. thesis in environmental history: Petrolia: The Landscape of Pennsylvania's Oil Boom, 1859-1873, completed in 1996. The tapping of the first commercial oil well in 1859 and the ensuing boom in western Pennsylvania was a revolution in land use--an ecological revolution--that rationalized a method of exploiting the environment and developing resources that was unprecedented. This was a watershed in American attitudes toward future modes of industrial development. The early oil industry helped to shape the ethics with which the broader culture defined acceptable use of natural resources. Americans were given a commodity of such significance that it overwhelmed the meaning of a place and made it worth sacrificing. The advisor was Donald Worster.

University of Southern California. Margaret Anne Scully completed a Ph.D. thesis, Human Rights and the Environment (Indigenous Communities), 1997. Indigenous communities are commonly held to live in harmony with nature and yet are not immune to the environmental degradation wrought by development. Solutions to environmental problems need not be "grand schemes" or universally applicable standards. Environmental assessments intended to facilitate the "delicate balancing" of competing interests are often culturally biased. Important international agreements have broad-based aspirations but may evolve into customary norms. "Eco-cultural security" is explored in light of the desperate circumstances of many indigenous communities. Divergent cross-cultural environmental ethics can be used to privilege mainstream environmental principles. The advisor was Sheldon Kamieniecki.

University of Toronto. Pamela Mae Courtenay Hall completed a Ph.D. thesis in philosophy, Ecoholism and its Critics: A Critical Exploration of Holism in Environmental Ethics and the Science of Ecology, 1995 409 pages. In the 1970's, Western philosophers such as John Rodman and Kenneth Goodpaster, began to explore the possibility that the individualist framework of modern moral philosophy might be part of the environmental problem. Intrigued by the science of ecology, they took seriously the possibility that the view of humankind as part of a more comprehensively understood nature might bring with it a new, holistic foundation for understanding what has moral significance, and why. This has expanded to include ecoholist themes in more recent work, including deep ecology and ecofeminism. I develop a topography of the types of "ecoholism" thought to support the belief that all of nature is morally significant. I critically assess their support in the science of ecology. Ecology is comprised of a diverse group of research programs none of which is a "holistic" science in the sense required to support ecoholism. In the light of feminist and other critiques of science, the project of seeking to base ethics on science is deeply problematic. The advisor was L. W. Sumner.

Carleton University (Canada). Marc A. Saner, completed a M.A. thesis in philosophy, Environmental Ethics and Biotechnology: A Test of Norton's Convergence Hypothesis, May, 1999. Bryan Norton's convergence hypothesis asserts that environmentalists "of all stripes" can achieve consensus over environmental policy if only minimal constraints are applied to the dialogue. Norton challenges that his proposition has not been falsified as yet (as of 1997). I test the hypothesis against the dialogue over the environmental use of biotechnology (genetic engineering). I discuss the environmental ethical issues raised by biotechnology and show that the convergence hypothesis is either unreasonable--applying its constraints to a environmental policy dialogue is too restrictive for environmental radicals, or can be falsified --applying its constraints does not lessen the divergence between positions in the dialogue over biotech policy. The convergence hypothesis is an over- generalization: the global claim of "unity among environmentalists of all stripes" cannot be upheld. I discuss practical consequences of this observation--how it affects risk management (and the risk/ethics boundary), biotech risk communication, the comprehensiveness of the ecosystem health concept, and the application to international agreements. The advisor was Jay Drydyk. Marc Saner, Department of Philosophy, DT 2127, Carleton University, Ottawa, Ont. K1S 5B6. Tel: (613) 520-3824, Fax: (613) 520-3962, Tel: (613) 725-5156 [home office]. E-mail: saner@magma.ca

Catholic University of America, Washington. Theodore W. Nunez completed a Ph.D. thesis, spring 1999, Holmes Rolston, Bernard Lonergan, and the Foundations of Environmental Ethics. The ecophilosophy of Holmes Rolston in dialogue with the thought of Canadian Jesuit philosopher Bernard Lonergan in an attempt to clarify and develop the foundations of a contemporary environmental ethic.
Part I. An interpretive analysis of Rolston's major writings. His meta-ethical positions in the areas of epistemology, metaphysics, axiology, and philosophical anthropology. Rolston's interpretive natural history and its relation to his theology of nature. Rolston defends a critical-realist epistemology as the meta-ethical basis for a science-based, ecocentric ethic. His most important epistemological claim is that human beings are capable of worldview-formation, moral oversight, and planetary altruism.
Part II. Aspects of Lonergan's philosophy relevant to environmental ethics: cognitional theory, transcendental method, and critical-realist epistemology. Cognitive and moral objectivity is the fruit of authentic subjectivity. Lonergan's theory of emergent probability and the related notions of development and finality. Lonergan's dialectic of progress, decline, and redemption in history and society. Lonergan's view of the humanity-nature relationship clarified and developed by drawing on Robert Doran's related notions of an ecological differentiation of consciousness, an integral dialectic of culture, and psychic conversion.
Part III. In a mutually critical dialogue between Rolston and Lonergan on foundational issues in environmental ethics, each thinker complements and corrects the other in several ways. (1) Critical realism offers the most adequate epistemological grounding for environmental ethics. (2) Meeting the eco-social crisis requires a new, nonanthropocentric ethic that is scientifically informed and religiously based (a theocentric ethic). (3) It is both necessary and possible for a new environmental ethic to integrate a nonanthropocentric theory of values in nature with a humanistic value theory. (4) A new ethic must include, as a central component, a character ethic informed by an evolutionary epic and a normative vision of sensitive earth residence.
A summary, with commentary, appears as "Rolston, Lonergan, and the Intrinsic Value of Nature, Journal of Religious Ethics 27 (no. 1, Spring 1999):105-128. Nunez is taught ethics, including environmental ethics, at Villanova University, and is now at Middlebury College, VT.

University of Massachusetts. Nancy Huffman Shea completed a Ph.D. thesis, The Status of Ecophilosophy and the Ideology of Nature, 1991. Ecophilosophy is an attempt to render a new philosophy of nature, generated by the need to liberate nature from the inherently domineering disposition of humankind. Although I am sympathetic to this effort, I believe that the current ambiguity of its content (who or what is to survive) carries with it the potentiality for new forms of oppression. I argue that ecophilosophy suffers from a kind of Habermasian self-deception, taking on a vague concept of nature that deceptively appears to do the philosophical work of healing the epistemological gap between nature and humans. My reconstruction unifies this loosely-defined vision along the lines of an equivocal use of two key concepts, the domination of nature and nature itself, revealing the potentially subversive character of its implicitly universalist philosophy of nature.
Ecophilosophers, rather than distinguishing themselves, fail to improve upon Francis Bacon's suggestion that attention to nature will liberate us. Their satisfaction with ecological solutions indicates that they miss the essential ideological consequence of the modern project: the domination by some humans over others has been covered over by a self-deceptive belief in the liberating character of scientific methodology. By arguing for the emancipatory capacity of ecology, they get themselves into a Marcusian-like bind, advocating this new science while at the same time rejecting scientific rationality as a pivotal component of their notion of the domination of nature. Because of this they are forced to argue that ecology is qualitatively different, offering a new kind of rationality that contains the necessary ingredients for radically changing society.
Ecophilosophers must reconsider the epistemologically naive and ideologically negative repercussions of this position as I demonstrate with an analysis of the potentially repressive relationships that exist between fourth world cultures and the environmental community. I conclude by subjecting the Habermasian universalist framework to revision as indicated by the possibilities of a new eco-vision, emerging from the contextual episteme of a reworked ecofeminist perspective. The advisor was Robert Paul Wolff. Shea is now director of the Murie Center in Grand Teton National Park.

Duke University. Paul Joseph Medeiros completed a Ph.D. thesis, Juxtaposing Aldo Leopold and Martin Heidegger: Interpretation, Time, and the Environment, May, 2000. The concepts of authentic time, inauthentic time, and everyday time, articulated by Martin Heidegger in the 1924 lecture "The Concept of Time" and in Being and Time, are used to disclose American environmentalism as a tradition calling for a temporal modification of everyday life through engaged contact with the wild. The essays of conservationist Aldo Leopold, forerunner of contemporary environmental ethics, are chosen as representative of a tradition that includes Emerson, Thoreau, and Muir. The three main themes intrinsic to Leopold's essays--that our historical roots in the wild yield cultural values, that the whole of nature can be perceived as a community, and that we ought to respect and care for the land (the famous "land ethic")--are interpreted in terms of Heidegger's concepts of the authentic past, present, and future, respectively.
Issues of interpretation, specifically the linguistic and metaphysical obstacles to our understanding of Heidegger and the problem of a philosophical representation appropriate to Leopold and the American environmental tradition in general, are a major concern of the dissertation. These problems are unraveled by virtue of the dissertation's hermeneutical structure: Part I presents the evolution of the three themes in Leopold's essays leading up to their explicit formulation in A Sand County Almanac, Part II is a tripartite analysis of Heidegger's translated works from the 1966 Der Spiegel interview back to "The Concept of Time" guided by Leopold's themes, and Part III reinterprets Leopold's environmental philosophy, including the land ethic, in light of the results of Part II i.e., Heidegger's phenomenological conception of past, present, and future. The dissertation concludes that the possibility of authentically interpreting both Leopold and Heidegger in this circular manner is grounded in their common heritage in German Romanticism. Principal advisors were Alasdair MacIntyre and Gregory Cooper. Medeiros is teaching environmental ethics at Oregon State University, Corvallis.

Duke University. Penka Dinkova Kouneva completed a Ph.D, thesis, writing a cantata for soprano and baritone soloists, mixed chorus and chamber orchestra, entitled Where Nature and Soul Meet, completed 1997. The advisor was Stephen Jaffe. The cantata addresses the relationship between humans and nature. The subject was prompted by two concerns: first, that an attitude of condescension, exploitation and senseless destruction of nature will deepen the present ecological crisis; second, that dualisms such as nature/culture, emotion/reason, matter/spirit, body/soul, historically formative in much of Western culture, result in alienation and division, and in turn, reinforce such an attitude. The underlying poetic premise of the cantata is that the human soul can be fully realized only through a new environmental ethics based on integration and partnership with nature. The cantata is an attempt to critique, through music and poetic texts, an alienated world view, and to celebrate in song a new environmental ethic.

University of Western Ontario. Kevin de Laplante completed a Ph.D thesis, Toward a General Philosophy of Ecology, 1998. Department of Philosophy. Examines the role that ecological concepts and theories play in environmental philosophy and defends a conception of ecological science that is broad enough to address the philosophical and scientific concerns of environmental philosophers. These aims are consistent with the dominant tradition in contemporary environmental philosophy, but the argument is highly critical of the way the ecology-environmental philosophy relationship is conceived in contemporary environmental philosophy. Rather than view ecology as a conceptual and scientific resource that is relevant to environmental philosophy only insofar as it provides support for the ethical, social and political aims of environmentalism, deLaplante argues that the core problems of environmental philosophy are essentially problems for a general science and philosophy of ecology. The thesis defends the robustness of a conception of ecology that is sufficiently broad to encompass "ecological psychology", "ecological economics", and "ecological anthropology", as well as traditional ecological science.
Part One is a survey and critique of the role of ecology in environmental philosophy. Part Two develops a conceptual framework for a general philosophy of ecology based on developments in complex systems approaches in theoretical ecology and ecological psychology. Part Three explores in greater detail certain issues in the foundations of the relevant complex systems sciences. The supervisor was Kathleen Okruhlik. Kevin deLaplante is now teaching at Iowa State University, Ames.

University of Texas-Austin. Cynthia Ann Botteron completed a Ph.D. thesis in political science, What the Study of Tiger Preservation in India Reveals about Science, Advocacy, and Policy Change, 2000. Investigates the legitimacy of the claim that imperialism was the motive and mode of transferring from one cultural context to another the "wilderness" version of "national parks" as a means of saving species and habitat, specifically with reference to tigers in India. The vast and powerful role played by the coalition of conservation scientists and international environmental organizations in creating and promoting this "ethic" is analyzed as is the impact on the development of science by its close association with environmental advocacy organizations. This "constructed" science was used to delegitimize alternative interpretations of the problem of species decline, habitat degradation, and the role and function of humans in the environment. The advisor was David Braybrooke. Botteron taught political science at Colorado State University, and is now teaching political science at Shippensburg University of Pennsylvania, Shippensburg, PA.

Michigan State University. Adeyinka Christopher Thompson completed a Ph.D. thesis, Ethics in International Politics? The Contradictions and Ethical Implications of Foreign Aid in Africa, 2000. Independence brought, for many African peoples, a return not only to repressive government, but also to economic decline and hardship. Some have blamed the international community--primarily the Western or developed nations. I make an ethical analysis of the relationship between African nations and the developed world--with specific reference to foreign aid. Normative questions are central to international relations; actors in international relations cannot but raise normative questions. There is an obligation for Western developed nations to assist poor under-developed Third world (in particular African) nations. A case study of aid to Somalia. Three key issues facing African nations--(1) what type of democracy is suitable; (b) corruption; and (c) compromising sovereignty by allowing intervention. This complexity reinforces the need for ethics in international politics. Without morality to evaluate our actions we will be unaware of what we are doing. The advisor was Martin Benjamin.

University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. Katie McShane completed a Ph.D. thesis, The Nature of Value: Environmentalist Challenges to Moral Theories, 2002 in the Department of Philosophy. Environmentalists have argued that contemporary ethical theories have overly strict rules about what kinds of things can be intrinsically valuable. These rules make it impossible for many of the things that environmentalists care deeply about to be considered bearers of intrinsic value--things which are not rational, sentient, or in some cases, even alive. In this dissertation I consider possible responses to this environmentalist criticism from within mainstream ethical theories. Using the value of ecosystems as a test case, I analyze what features a thing must have, and why, in order to be a (potential) possessor of intrinsic value on each of three ethical theories: wellbeing-based, Moorean, and rational attitude accounts. Ultimately, I argue that while a place can be made for the intrinsic value of ecosystems on all three theories, rational attitude accounts do the best job of accommodating environmentalist concerns without incurring other significant theoretical costs. McShane is in philosophy at North Carolina State University, but this year a visiting professor at the Center for Ethics and the Professions at the Kennedy School, Harvard University. Her committee was: Elizabeth Anderson (chair), Stephen Darwall, P. J. Ivanhoe, John Vandermeer (Biology).