Book Description

Value denotes the degree of importance of some thing or action, with the aim of determining what actions are best to do or what way is best to live, or to describe the significance of different actions. It may be described as treating actions themselves as abstract objects, putting value to them. It deals with right conduct and living a good life, in the sense that a highly, or at least relatively highly, valuable action may be regarded as ethically "good", and an action of low in value, or somewhat relatively low in value, may be regarded as "bad". What makes an action valuable may in turn depend on the ethic values of the objects it increases, decreases or alters. An object with "ethic value" may be termed an "ethic or philosophic good". Values can be defined as broad preferences concerning appropriate courses of action or outcomes. As such, values reflect a person's sense of right and wrong or what "ought" to be. "Equal rights for all", "Excellence deserves admiration", and "People should be treated with respect and dignity" are representative of values. Values tend to influence attitudes and behavior. Types of values include ethical/moral values, doctrinal/ideological values, social values, and aesthetic values. It is debated whether some values that are not clearly physiologically determined, such as altruism, are intrinsic, and whether some, such as acquisitiveness, should be classified as vices or virtues. Environmental education (EE) refers to organized efforts to teach how natural environments function, and particularly, how human beings can manage behavior and ecosystems to live sustainably. It is a multi-disciplinary field integrating disciplines such as biology, chemistry, physics, ecology, earth science, atmospheric science, mathematics, and geography.