Recent debates around the meaning and implications of compassionate conservation suggest that some conservationists consider emotion a false and misleading basis for moral judgment and decision ...making. We trace these beliefs to a long‐standing, gendered sociocultural convention and argue that the disparagement of emotion as a source of moral understanding is both empirically and morally problematic. According to the current scientific and philosophical understanding, reason and emotion are better understood as partners, rather than opposites. Nonetheless, the two have historically been seen as separate, with reason elevated in association with masculinity and emotion (especially nurturing emotion) dismissed or delegitimated in association with femininity. These associations can be situated in a broader, dualistic, and hierarchical logic used to maintain power for a dominant male (White, able‐bodied, upper class, heterosexual) human class. We argue that emotion should be affirmed by conservationists for the novel and essential insights it contributes to conservation ethics. We consider the specific example of compassion and characterize it as an emotional experience of interdependence and shared vulnerability. This experience highlights conservationists’ responsibilities to individual beings, enhancing established and widely accepted beliefs that conservationists have a duty to protect populations, species, and ecosystems (or biodiversity). We argue compassion, thus understood, should be embraced as a core virtue of conservation.
El Sentimiento como Fuente de Entendimiento Moral en la Conservación
Resumen
Los debates recientes en torno al significado y las implicaciones de la conservación compasiva sugieren que algunos conservacionistas consideran al sentimiento como una base falsa y engañosa para el juicio moral y la toma de decisiones. Seguimos estas creencias hasta una convención sociocultural prolongada y relacionada con el género y argumentamos que el menosprecio por el sentimiento como fuente del entendimiento moral es problemático empírica y moralmente. De acuerdo con el conocimiento científico y filosófico actual, la razón y el sentimiento se entienden de mejor manera como pareja, en lugar de como opuestos. Sin embargo, ambos conceptos han estado históricamente separados, con la razón como concepto elevado asociado con la masculinidad y el sentimiento (especialmente el sentimiento de crianza) rechazado o deslegitimado en asociación con la feminidad. Estas asociaciones pueden situarse dentro de una lógica más general, dualista y jerárquica usada para mantener el poder de la clase humana del macho dominante (blanco, sin discapacidades, de clase alta, heterosexual). Sostenemos que el sentimiento debería ser ratificado por los conservacionistas por el conocimiento novedoso y esencial que contribuye a la ética de la conservación. Consideramos el ejemplo específico de la compasión y lo caracterizamos como una experiencia emocional de la interdependencia y la vulnerabilidad compartida. Esta experiencia resalta las responsabilidades que los conservacionistas tienen con los individuos, fortaleciendo las creencias establecidas y ampliamente aceptadas de que los conservacionistas tienen el deber de proteger a las poblaciones, especies y ecosistemas (o a la biodiversidad). Sostenemos que la compasión, entendida así, debería ser aceptada como una virtud nuclear de la conservación.
Article impact statement: Conservationists should accept that emotions like compassion provide insights that can help them understand and navigate their moral lives.
This article takes its bearings from Martha Nussbaum’s “Non-Relative Virtues: An Aristotelian Approach.” There, Nussbaum proposes an analytic framework that is intended to allow those who disagree ...about the virtues, in particular due to cultural differences, to engage in fruitful dialogue with one another. To explore what such an approach might look like in practice, this article considers the case study of friendship. It critiques Aristotle’s account of that virtue and provides an alternative based on contemporary understandings. By placing these two accounts into conversation, the analysis demonstrates the promise of cross-cultural and cross-historical dialogue about the virtues.
To Live Outside the Law You Must Be Honest Chappell, Sophie Grace
Supplement to the proceedings of the Aristotelian Society/Supplementary volume - Aristotelian Society,
07/2021, Volume:
95, Issue:
1
Journal Article
Peer reviewed
Open access
Elizabeth Swann: Wait! You have to take me to shore. According to the Code of the Order of the Brethren-- Hector Barbossa: First, your return to shore was not part of our negotiations nor our ...agreement, so I must do nothing. And secondly, you must be a pirate for the Pirates' Code to apply and you're not. And thirdly, the code is more what you'd call guidelines than actual rules. Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl (dir. Gore Verbinski, 2003) Section i states Sandis's view in his paper (particularism for actions, generalism for dispositions); Section ii describes and begins to criticize Dancy-style particularism; Section iii applies these criticisms to Sandis's view; Section iv delineates an alternative view (my own) about actions, dispositions, and the particularism/generalism debate; Section v raises and considers a further puzzle, about how in general we should understand virtue ascriptions anyway.
Out of the three major approaches to ethics, virtue ethics is uniquely well suited as a moral guide in the digital age, given the pace of sociotechnical change and the complexity of society. Virtue ...ethics focuses on the traits, situations and actions of moral agents, rather than on rules (as in deontology) or outcomes (consequentialism). Even as interest in ethics has grown within information behavior (IB), there has been little engagement with virtue ethics. To address this lacuna and demonstrate further research opportunities, this article provides an overview of virtue ethics for application in IB (broadly defined). It provides a primer on virtue ethics, gives examples of existing IB work that is compatible with virtue ethics, and suggests avenues for further virtue-oriented research in IB.
Aristotle and Plato were the chief architects of virtue ethics, but their own formulation of virtue ethics was mostly subdued with the appearance of consequentialism as well as Kantian deontology. ...However, modem thinkers have attempted to revive virtue ethics in its new form and in this regard the name which is popularly known is G.E.M. Anscombe. In fact Anscombe clearly indicates in what sense virtue ethics can be revived and what was wrong with the traditional virtue ethics as expounded by Aristotle and Plato. Anscombe points out three important issues for which traditional virtue ethics perhaps lost its glory. First, moral philosophy in general cannot survive without an adequate philosophy of psychology and this thing was absent in the traditional virtue ethics. Secondly, without psychological possibility the concepts of moral obligation and moral duty, the moral sense of ought to be jeopardized. Thirdly and importantly, the differences between the well-known English writers on moral philosophy from Sidgwick to the present day are of little importance. This task of this paper is to review the revival of virtue ethics
Virtue ethics is an approach to normative ethics that emphasizes the great character traits of moral agents. As many authors have pointed out, this approach also has great potential in contemporary ...ethical education. The following text will focus on the possibility practically utilising virtue ethics in ethical education in Slovakia. One of the most influential figures in the development of this topic in Slovakia is Ladislav Lencz, who also created key texts for teachers of ethical education. His concept is based primarily on a pedagogical and psychological basis, inspired by Spanish psychologist R.R. Olivar’s concept of prosociality. However, some of L. Lencz’s texts also display elements of virtue ethics. This article will point out the possibilities of implementing virtue ethics in ethical education.
Etika vrlina pristup je normativne etike koji naglašava izvrsne karakterne osobine moralnih subjekata. Značajan broj autora ističe da ovaj pristup ima veliki potencijal u suvremenom etičkom obrazovanju. Rad se usmjerava na mogućnost uporabe etike vrlina u etičkom obrazovanju u Slovačkoj. Jedan od najznačajnijih autora u razvoju ove teme je Ladislav Lenz koji je napisao i ključne tekstove za nastavnike o etičkom obrazovanju. Njegov se koncept temelji na pedagoškim i psihologijskim osnovama, a inspiriran je konceptom prosocijalnosti španjolskog psihologa R. R. Olivara. Ipak, neki od Lenczovih radova iskazuju i elemente etike vrlina. U ovome radu istaknut ćemo mogućnosti uključivanja etike vrlina u etičko obrazovanje.
Honesty as a Virtue Wilson, Alan T.
Metaphilosophy,
April 2018, 2018-04-00, 20180401, Volume:
49, Issue:
3
Journal Article
Peer reviewed
Open access
Honesty is widely accepted as a prime example of a moral virtue. And yet, honesty has been surprisingly neglected in the recent drive to account for specific virtuous traits. This paper provides a ...framework for an increased focus on honesty by proposing success criteria that will need to be met by any plausible account of honesty. It then proposes a motivational account on which honesty centrally involves a deep motivation to avoid deception. It argues that this account satisfies the required success criteria and discusses why (and when) honesty can be accepted as a moral virtue. Finally, it highlights some implications of accepting a motivational account of honesty for future work on encouraging the development of honesty, and on the relationship between different types of virtue.
Animal welfare and ethics are important factors influencing wildlife conservation practice, and critics are increasingly challenging the underlying ethics and motivations supporting common ...conservation practices. “Compassionate Conservationists” argue that all conservationists should respect the rights of individual sentient animals and approach conservation problems from a position of compassion, and that doing so requires implementing practices that avoid direct harm to individual animals. In this way Compassionate Conservationists seek to contrast themselves with “Traditional Conservationists” who often express consequentialist decision-making processes that ostensibly aim to dispassionately minimize net animal harms, resulting in the common use of practices that directly harm or kill some animals. Conservationists and other observers might therefore conclude that the two sides of this debate are distinct and/or that their policy proscriptions produce different welfare outcomes for animals. To explore the validity of this conclusion we review the ethical philosophies underpinning two types of Compassionate Conservation—deontology and virtue ethics. Deontology focusses on animal rights or the moral duties or obligations of conservationists, whereas virtue ethics focusses on acting in ways that are virtuous or compassionate. We demonstrate that both types permit the intentional harm and killing of animals when faced with common conservation problems where animals will be harmed no matter what the conservationist does or does not do. We then describe the applied decision-making processes exhibited by Compassionate Conservationists (of both types) and Traditional Conservationists to show that they may each lead to the implementation of similar conservation practices (including lethal control) and produce similar outcomes for animals, despite the perceived differences in their ethical motivations. The widespread presence of wildlife conservation problems that cannot be resolved without causing at least some harm to some animals means that conservationists of all persuasions must routinely make trade-offs between the welfare of some animals over others. Compassionate Conservationists do this from an explicit position of animal rights and/or compassion, whereas Traditional Conservationists respect animal rights and exhibit this same compassion implicitly. These observations lead to the conclusion that Compassionate Conservation is indistinguishable from traditional forms of conservation in practice, and that the apparent disagreement among conservationists primarily concerns the effectiveness of various wildlife management practices at minimizing animal harm, and not the underlying ethics, motivations or morality of those practices.
The ethics of offsetting nature Ives, Christopher D; Bekessy, Sarah A
Frontiers in ecology and the environment,
December 2015, Volume:
13, Issue:
10
Journal Article
Peer reviewed
Open access
Biodiversity offsetting is transforming conservation practice around the world. Development activities that degrade or destroy biodiversity at one location are now increasingly acceptable because of ...compensatory environmental gains generated elsewhere. This change represents a major shift in how nature is protected, and yet its philosophical justification has received little attention. We argue that biodiversity offsetting aligns most easily with a utilitarian ethic, where outcomes rather than actions are the focus. However, offsetting schemes often neglect to account for the multiple values that people assign to biodiversity - including unique, place-based values. Furthermore, the implications of defining nature as a tradeable commodity may affect our sense of obligation to protect biodiversity. Ironically, offsetting may exacerbate environmental harm because it erodes ethical barriers based on moral objections to the destruction of biodiversity. By failing to consider the ethical implications of biodiversity offsetting, we risk compromising the underlying motivations for protecting nature.
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