| Title | Author | Created | Published | Tags | | ------------------------------------ | ---------- | ------------------ | ------------------ | ------------------------------------------------------ | | Traditional Anthropocentric Paradigm | Jon Marien | September 21, 2025 | September 21, 2025 | [[#classes\|#classes]], [[#PHIL28877GD\|#PHIL28877GD]] | # Traditional Anthropocentric Paradigm Last week we looked general introduction to Environmental Philosophy and its history. Environmental philosophy is generally concerned with ethics (from the Ancient Greek word ēthikos) or the character, dispositions, or patterns of one's intentions and actions. In environmental ethics, we are concerned with the patterns of intentions and actions towards the environment. We learned that the history of environmental ethics is intertwined helix of our ideas and our surrounding environments over time. The ideas side of the helix is often form the basis of how we justify our ethical actions and judge if they are right or wrong. This week we look more closely at some of the influential ideas of our contemporary world that have helped shape our character towards the environment: utilitarianism, deontology, and anthropocentrism. Then we will consider if these ideas help justify or create some of the contemporary issues we are facing (example: waste in Canada) or if they can be used to help solve the problem. Note that these are not the only perspectives and we will investigate more as we progress through the course. By the end of the unit, you should be able to summarize the key terminology and use them to analyze an environmental case. Keep notes for use in your evaluations. ## Key Ethical Terms: ## Utilitarianism Probably the most famous normative ethical doctrine (see ethics) in the English-speaking tradition of moral philosophy, designed to explain why some actions are right and some wrong. Although it had precursors throughout philosophical history, and although it is still accepted by many moral philosophers today, its heyday was undoubtedly from the late 18th century through to the last quarter of the 19th. Its three classical exponents were Jeremy Bentham, John Stuart Mill and Henry Sidgwick. In its original formulation, utilitarianism was very simple, perhaps deceptively so. J. S. Mill wrote “The creed which accepts as the foundation of morals, Utility or the Greatest Happiness Principle, holds that actions are right in proportion as they tend to promote happiness, wrong as they tend to produce the reverse of happiness. By happiness is intended pleasure and the absence of pain; by unhappiness, pain, and the privation of pleasure.” Thus actions are judged by their consequences and the amount of pleasure all concerned derive from those consequences; the aim is the greatest happiness of the greatest number. In recent years the theory has been subdivided into two variants. Act utilitarianism is the simpler, being the view that each individual action taken should be assessed on the results it alone produces, so that if the question, for example, is one of paying a debt or giving to charity one must try to estimate the gains in terms of happiness to be made by either act on that particular occasion. Rule utilitarianism is not concerned to assess individual acts but considers the utility of a rule for action types, for example, 'Everyone should pay their debts.' The idea is to do whatever would be prescribed by the optimum set of rules even if on the occasion concerned less total happiness would result. Thus where the act utilitarian asks, 'What will be the outcome of my doing that?', the rule utilitarian's question would be, 'What if everyone did that?'. There are three most obvious criticisms of utilitarianism: (1) the practical difficulty of its application - how can we accurately assess the amounts of happiness likely to be yielded by either individual action tokens or general rules?; (2) its unfairness - the majority happiness may best be served by the sacrifice of some innocent party or by some manifestly unjust institution like slavery; and (3) its one-sidedness in that morality is analysed entirely through actions and their consequences, never through motives or intentions. Source: "utilitarianism." A Dictionary of Philosophy, Macmillan, edited by Antony Flew, Macmillan Publishers Ltd, 3rd edition, 2002. Credo Reference, https://login.library.sheridanc.on.ca/login?url=https://search.credoreference.com/content/entry/macdphil/utilitarianism/0?institutionId=1988. Accessed 10 Jan. 2023. ### Deontology The thesis in moral philosophy that acts or omissions are right or wrong on grounds other than their consequences. For example, Kant argues that an act is good if done with a good will (i.e. intention), whatever the consequences. A good intention is an intention to do one's duty, which is to obey the categorical imperative. Nozick argues that it is wrong to bring about good consequences by violating someone's rights. Deontology is prima facie inconsistent with utilitarianism because that is a kind of consequentialism. Source: deontology. (2002). In A. Flew (Ed.), A dictionary of philosophy, MacMillan (3rd ed.). Macmillan Publishers Ltd. Credo Reference: https://login.library.sheridanc.on.ca/login?url=https://search.credoreference.com/content/entry/macdphil/deontology/0?institutionId=1988 Name given to a species of ethical theory that places duty at the core of moral value. Deontology is particularly associated with Kant, and with the idea that a set of moral prescriptions that is objectively true, generally in the form of a set of rules, can be proposed by rational and conceptual analysis, not empirical inquiry. In this way, and many others, deontological ethics is opposed to the two other great species of ethical theory – consequentialism and virtue theory, both of which give a role to the empirical. Deontological theories insist upon our duties to treat others as rational beings. Deontological ethics focuses on how we ought to treat each other, given that we are rational and autonomous beings. One short answer is that we ought to treat people precisely as rational and autonomous beings, which we fail to do if we treat them solely as a means to an end that they cannot share. This, and other forms of the same basic idea, expressed in the categorical imperative form the basis of the deontological approach to politics. Such restrictions on how we ought to treat each other fit well with theories of human rights (though these can have a non-deontological grounding) and with the liberal idea of limited government, and the key role of consent in determining what is and is not politically justifiable. If I consent to your actions (and I am consenting under conditions of autonomy) then you are entitled to act. If I do not consent, then you are treating me instrumentally. Furthermore, Kantian ethics of this sort seems to underpin an emphasis on reasonable persuasion rather than coercion as a key value – it seems, then, a good fit with many democratic presumptions. Critics of deontology point out that it is possible to found a liberal democratic polity on a quite different basis (though it might be doubted whether the foundations are so secure) and point to the austere and unforgiving prescriptions of some deontologists, including Kant himself. The abstraction of deontology can be contrasted unfavourably with the down-to-earth approach taken by utilitarians, and the way in which virtue theory captures our intuitions about special duties to particular people – our own parents or children, for example. Source: "deontology." Political Philosophy A-Z, Jon Pike, Edinburgh University Press, 1st edition, 2007. Credo Reference, https://login.library.sheridanc.on.ca/login?url=https://search.credoreference.com/content/entry/edinburghppaz/deontology/0?institutionId=1988. Accessed 10 Jan. 2023. ### Anthropocentrism From the Greek anthropos, i.e. human, and kentron, i.e. center, this term (as well as its Latin-derived synonym, homocentrism, from the Latin homo, i.e. “human being,” and centrum, i.e. “center”) denotes the view that, implicitly or explicitly, places humans at the center of the universe, and considers the rest of the universe subservient to and a resource for humans. This view is akin to that expressed by the Greek philosopher Protagoras (490–410 BCE): “man is the measure of all things” (see Greek philosophy). The latter can be interpreted in two ways: first, each individual human being is the measure of all things, and, second, humans as a species are the measure of all things. Anthropocentrism fits the latter interpretation. This view has been held in much of the history of philosophy, but has acquired particular poignancy in ethics during the twentieth century. In environmental ethics, a traditional anthropocentric (also called homocentric) position has been conservationism, the view that the environment – e.g. forests, clean rivers and lakes, clean air – should be conserved for future human use. That is, the environment and its components are purely and simply resources for humans. On this view, whenever conflicts arise between some interest of humans, e.g. to build housing around a city, say, Houston, and the conservation of non-humans, e.g. the conservation of the Houston toad, the conservation of the latter takes precedence if, and only if, it can be shown to constitute a resource for humans and, further, to satisfy an even greater human interest. This position is opposed to preservationism, the view that the environment and its components should be preserved for their own sake. On this view, many accommodations between humans and non-humans are possible; but, if non-humans are endangered by plans aimed at satisfying human interests, these interests do not necessarily take precedence. The question here arises: what criteria for resolving conflicts such as these are sound from a preservationism standpoint? A range of views, from ecocentrism, which invariably gives precedence to non-humans (sometimes even considering humans a plague), to other, more compromising positions, have been advanced. These views are sometimes defended on the grounds that non-humans have rights. Others, however, deny that nonhumans have rights, but argue that non-human welfare can, and often does, override human interests or wants. Either way, those holding these views have accused anthropocentric thinkers of speciesism, or discrimination against non-human animals. Anthropocentric thinkers reply that, in practice, preservationism is hardly an alternative, because what is good for non-humans must invariably be decided by humans. However, preservationists reply that, even if humans must do this job, from a preservationism standpoint, they should ask questions such as “What is good for the nonhumans likely to be affected by human activities in the case, say, of building housing around Houston?” These questions are simply precluded by anthropocentric positions such as conservationism. The question here arises whether preservationism can be practical to any significant extent and whether, to the extent it can, it in effect leads to different results from those likely to be achieved through conservationism. The ethical and sociopolitical aspects of this controversy do not simply concern environmental matters. For example, they also concern the use of nonhuman animals in scientific experimentation. Source: "anthropocentrism." Dictionary of World Philosophy, A. Pablo Iannone, Routledge, 1st edition, 2001. Credo Reference, https://login.library.sheridanc.on.ca/login?url=https://search.credoreference.com/content/entry/routwp/anthropocentrism/0?institutionId=1988. Accessed 10 Jan. 2023.