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Anthropocentrism

Author : Rob Boddice

Publisher : BRILL

Page : 370 pages

File Size : 11,43 MB

Release : 2011-07-14

Category : Nature

ISBN : 9004214941

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Book Description

Anthropocentrism is a charge of human chauvinism and an acknowledgement of human ontological boundaries. Anthropocentrism has provided order and structure to humans’ understanding of the world, while unavoidably expressing the limits of that understanding. This collection explores the assumptions behind the label ‘anthropocentrism’, critically enquiring into the meaning of ‘human’. It addresses the epistemological and ontological problems of charges of anthropocentrism, questioning whether all human views are inherently anthropocentric. In addition, it examines the potential scope for objective, empathetic, relational, or ‘other’ views that trump anthropocentrism. With a principal focus on ethical questions concerning animals, the environment and the social, the essays ultimately cohere around the question of the non-human, be it animal, ecosystem, god, or machine.



Anthropocentrism and Its Discontents

Author : Gary Steiner

Publisher : University of Pittsburgh Pre

Page : 345 pages

File Size : 22,25 MB

Release : 2005-11-06

Category : Philosophy

ISBN : 0822970988

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Book Description

Anthropocentrism and Its Discontents is the first-ever comprehensive examination of views of animals in the history of Western philosophy, from Homeric Greece to the twentieth century. In recent decades, increased interest in this area has been accompanied by scholars' willingness to conceive of animal experience in terms of human mental capacities: consciousness, self-awareness, intention, deliberation, and in some instances, at least limited moral agency. This conception has been facilitated by a shift from behavioral to cognitive ethology (the science of animal behavior), and by attempts to affirm the essential similarities between the psychophysical makeup of human beings and animals. Gary Steiner sketches the terms of the current debates about animals and relates these to their historical antecedents, focusing on both the dominant anthropocentric voices and those recurring voices that instead assert a fundamental kinship relation between human beings and animals. He concludes with a discussion of the problem of balancing the need to recognize a human indebtedness to animals and the natural world with the need to preserve a sense of the uniqueness and dignity of the human individual.



Culture and Conservation

Author : Eleanor Shoreman-Ouimet

Publisher : Routledge

Page : 259 pages

File Size : 31,71 MB

Release : 2015-11-19

Category : Business & Economics

ISBN : 1317937295

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Book Description

Today, there is growing interest in conservation and anthropologists have an important role to play in helping conservation succeed for the sake of humanity and for the sake of other species. Equally important, however, is the fact that we, as the species that causes extinctions, have a moral responsibility to those whose evolutionary unfolding and very future we threaten. This volume is an examination of the relationship between conservation and the social sciences, particularly anthropology. It calls for increased collaboration between anthropologists, conservationists and environmental scientists, and advocates for a shift towards an environmentally focused perspective that embraces not only cultural values and human rights, but also the intrinsic value and rights to life of nonhuman species. This book demonstrates that cultural and biological diversity are intimately interlinked, and equally threatened by the industrialism that endangers the planet's life-giving processes. The consideration of ecological data, as well as an expansion of ethics that embraces more than one species, is essential to a well-rounded understanding of the connections between human behavior and environmental wellbeing. This book gives students and researchers in anthropology, conservation, environmental ethics and across the social sciences an invaluable insight into how innovative and intensive new interdisciplinary approaches, questions, ethics and subject pools can close the gap between culture and conservation.



Ecological Literature and the Critique of Anthropocentrism

Author : Bryan L. Moore

Publisher : Springer

Page : 278 pages

File Size : 37,77 MB

Release : 2017-10-14

Category : Literary Criticism

ISBN : 3319607383

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Book Description

This book is an analysis of literary texts that question, critique, or subvert anthropocentrism, the notion that the universe and everything in it exists for humans. Bryan Moore examines ancient Greek and Roman texts; medieval to twentieth-century European texts; eighteenth-century French philosophy; early to contemporary American texts and poetry; and science fiction to demonstrate a historical basis for the questioning of anthropocentrism and contemplation of responsible environmental stewardship in the twenty-first century and beyond. Ecological Literature and the Critique of Anthropocentrism is essential reading for ecocritics and ecofeminists. It will also be useful for researchers interested in the relationship between science and literature, environmental philosophy, and literature in general.



Main Currents in Western Environmental Thought

Author : P. R. Hay

Publisher : Indiana University Press

Page : 428 pages

File Size : 39,29 MB

Release : 2002

Category : Ecology

ISBN : 9780253340535

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Book Description

Topics covered include the roots of environmental philosophy; the development of ecophilosophy, deep ecology, and ecofeminism; how religion relates to environmental values; environmentalists' writings on science and epistemology; animal liberation; the role of place; the economic dimensions of environmental thought; environmental writing in various political traditions; and "green" writers' critiques of political movements. The work draws from the disciplines of philosophy, political science, psychology, sociology, and cultural studies.



Anthropocentrism in Philosophy

Author : Panayot Butchvarov

Publisher : Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG

Page : 205 pages

File Size : 25,2 MB

Release : 2015-05-19

Category : Philosophy

ISBN : 1614519471

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Book Description

Anthropocentrism in philosophy is deeply paradoxical. Ethics investigates the human good, epistemology investigates human knowledge, and antirealist metaphysics holds that the world depends on our cognitive capacities. But humans’ good and knowledge, including their language and concepts, are empirical matters, whereas philosophers do not engage in empirical research. And humans are inhabitants, not 'makers', of the world. Nevertheless, all three (ethics, epistemology, and antirealist metaphysics) can be drastically reinterpreted as making no reference to humans.



Beyond anthropocentrism

Author : Roberto Marchesini

Publisher : Mimesis

Page : 103 pages

File Size : 13,64 MB

Release : 2019-01-18T00:00:00+01:00

Category : Philosophy

ISBN : 8869772063

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Book Description

Roberto Marchesini presents a timely proposal within post-human philosophy in order to overcome the centuries-long separation between human beings, non-human animals and technology. This book highlights the inspiring nature of the relationship with non-human beings – what Marchesini calls “Epiphany” – and how its enhancement can open new existential dimensions. Technology is also reinterpreted, no longer as a performative tool, but as a virus that infiltrates the human dimension and changes its predicates. Technopoietic events are not just the product of human intelligence, but they arise from an epiphany (a becoming alterity), thus positioning technology well within the ontological and somatic dimension of human beings. This book lays the foundations for a new and non-anthropocentric Humanism, which is able to recognize the essential role that non-human alterities have had throughout our history.



Encyclopedia of Applied Ethics

Author :

Publisher : Academic Press

Page : 3467 pages

File Size : 33,61 MB

Release : 2012-01-10

Category : Social Science

ISBN : 0123739322

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Book Description

The Encyclopedia of Applied Ethics, Second Edition, Four Volume Set addresses both the physiological and the psychological aspects of human behavior. Carefully crafted, well written, and thoroughly indexed, the encyclopedia helps users - whether they are students just beginning formal study of the broad field or specialists in a branch of psychology - understand the field and how and why humans behave as we do. The work is an all-encompassing reference providing a comprehensive and definitive review of the field. A broad and inclusive table of contents ensures detailed investigation of historical and theoretical material as well as in-depth analysis of current issues. Several disciplines may be involved in applied ethics: one branch of applied ethics, for example, bioethics, is commonly explicated in terms of ethical, legal, social, and philosophical issues. Editor-in-Chief Ruth Chadwick has put together a group of leading contributors ranging from philosophers to practitioners in the particular fields in question, to academics from disciplines such as law and economics. The 376 chapters are divided into 4 volumes, each chapter falling into a subject category including Applied Ethics; Bioethics; Computers and Information Management; Economics/Business; Environmental Ethics; Ethics and Politics; Legal; Medical Ethics; Philosophy/Theories; Social; and Social/Media. Concise entries (ten pages on average) provide foundational knowledge of the field Each article will features suggested readings pointing readers to additional sources for more information, a list of related websites, a 5-10 word glossary and a definition paragraph, and cross-references to related articles in the encyclopedia Newly expanded editorial board and a host of international contributors from the US, Australia, Belgium, Canada, France, Germany, Ireland, Israel, Japan, Sweden, and the United Kingdom The 376 chapters are divided into 4 volumes, each chapter falling into a subject category including Applied Ethics; Bioethics; Computers and Information Management; Economics/Business; Environmental Ethics; Ethics and Politics; Legal; Medical Ethics; Philosophy/Theories; Social; and Social/Media



What Comes after Entanglement?

Author : Eva Haifa Giraud

Publisher : Duke University Press Books

Page : 0 pages

File Size : 39,45 MB

Release : 2019-10-18

Category : Social Science

ISBN : 9781478005483

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Book Description

By foregrounding the ways that human existence is bound together with the lives of other entities, contemporary cultural theorists have sought to move beyond an anthropocentric worldview. Yet as Eva Haifa Giraud contends in What Comes after Entanglement?, for all their conceptual power in implicating humans in ecologically damaging practices, these theories can undermine scope for political action. Drawing inspiration from activist projects between the 1980s and the present that range from anticapitalist media experiments and vegan food activism to social media campaigns against animal research, Giraud explores possibilities for action while fleshing out the tensions between theory and practice. Rather than an activist ethics based solely on relationality and entanglement, Giraud calls for what she describes as an ethics of exclusion, which would attend to the entities, practices, and ways of being that are foreclosed when other entangled realities are realized. Such an ethics of exclusion emphasizes foreclosures in the context of human entanglement in order to foster the conditions for people to create meaningful political change.



The Intrinsic Value of Nature

Author : Leena Vilkka

Publisher : BRILL

Page : 185 pages

File Size : 33,94 MB

Release : 2021-11-15

Category : Science

ISBN : 900449510X

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Book Description

What is intrinsic value? What is the origin of value? Are people always superior to nature? This book is a philosophical analysis of the human relationship to the non-human world. It is a pioneering study of the philosophy of nature-conservation in relation to the discussion of intrinsic value. Vilkka develops a naturalistic or naturocentric theory of value that is based on ethical extensionism and pluralism. Vilkka analyzes natural values and environmental attitudes: zoocentrism, biocentrism, and ecocentrism. This book forms a taxonomy for nature having intrinsic value. The theory of intrinsic value is based on naturocentric and naturogenic values. The book questions the thesis of weak anthropocentrism that denies the existence of naturogenic values. In Vilkka's theory, animals and nature are the origin of value. She defends the existence of zoogenic and biogenic values in the non-human world and discusses the possibility of ecogenic value, nature as a whole having value independent of human or animal minds. Vilkka analyzes the goodness and rights of nature, the problem of priorities, and ecological humanism. A naturocentric recommendation is that the well-being of animals and nature should have priority over human values at least in some real decision contexts. Ecological humanism recommends an attitude of respect for people, animals, and nature. The book includes an extensive glossary, index, and bibliography.