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Philosophy 314: Environmental Ethics

The primary goal of this course is to prepare students to understand and to critically evaluate various ethical perspectives on human beings' interactions with nature and these perspectives' applications to environmental issues. A secondary goal of the course is to familiarize students with the historical sources of these perspectives and with contemporary manifestations of them in the political arena. The principal ethical perspectives studied are:

1. anthropocentrism,
2. animal welfare and animal rights views,
3. biocentric individualism, and
4. environmental holism.

1. hunting,
2. endangered species,
3. the property "takings" issue,
4. the legal status of non-human nature,
5. wilderness preservation and management,
6. sustainable development and sustainable agriculture,
7. the place of economics in environmental policy, and
8. the place of the poor and the third world in the environmental movement.

This course is usually taught as a large lecture class (about 85 students), but because I am teaching a huge Introduction to Philosophy this semester (with about 340 students), this semester's installment of Environmental Ethics is limited to 45 students. Accordingly, I expect to be able to have more discussion than usual.

TEXTS

• Textbooks for purchase: The following texts are available for purchase at the Texas A&M University Bookstore.

  1. Aldo Leopold, A Sand County Almanac (Oxford University Press, 1949).

  2. Gary Varner, In Nature's Interests? Interests, Animal Rights and Environmental Ethics (Oxford University Press, 1998).
  Note: Two copies of In Nature's Interests? are on reserve at Evans Library. One is on 24 hour reserve and the other is on one hour reserve. As copyright holder on the book, I (Gary Varner) give any student who is officially registered for PHIL 314 at Texas A&M University during the spring semester of 2000 permission to make one (but only one) copy of part or all of the book for his or her personal use during the course. Please use the one hour reserve copy if you are just going to xerox from the book.

• Reserve materials: Additional readings will be available on reserve at Evans Library.

• Electronic resources: Some additional readings may be made available via the class web page. Also, all students are required to subscribe to the electronic mailing list for the class.

COURSE REQUIREMENTS

Students' contributions to class discussions will be taken into consideration and will raise deserving students' grades above what they have earned on the exams. In no case, however, will a student be given a course grade lower than that earned as an average on the exams, judged on the traditional scale: 90-100% = A, 80-89% = B, 70-79% = C, 60-69% = D, and <60% = F.

ATTENDANCE AND MAKEUP POLICIES

Although attendance will not always be taken, and outlines of lectures and even some of our discussions will be posted on the class calendar, students are expected to attend regularly, take careful notes and engage in constructive, critical and philosophical discussion of the course material. Experience shows that students do better in philosophy classes if they attend regularly and are actively engaged with the material, but also, if you intend to really engage the course material rather than just "take" the class, you need to be involved in the exchange of ideas that will occur during class.

Makeups for exams will be offered only to students who provide adequate evidence of a University excused absence in a timely fashion in accordance with the TAMU Student Rules.

Also, although I do not expect it to be a problem in this course, please see the notes on cheating at Texas A&M which I have included in another course's web page.

USEFUL LINKS

• The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.

• The Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy.

• Some hints about writing good philosophy essays.

• A list of philosophy colloquia (talks) this semester.

• Some answers to the question: "Why would anyone in their right mind major in philosophy?"

Please email me the URLs of suggested links.