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  1. The Dawning of the Ethics of Environmental Robots.Justin Donhauser & Aimee van Wynsberghe - Online First - 2 - Science and Engineering Ethics 24 (6):1777-1800.
    Environmental scientists and engineers have been exploring research and monitoring applications of robotics, as well as exploring ways of integrating robotics into ecosystems to aid in responses to accelerating environmental, climatic, and biodiversity changes. These emerging applications of robots and other autonomous technologies present novel ethical and practical challenges. Yet, the critical applications of robots for environmental research, engineering, protection and remediation have received next to no attention in the ethics of robotics literature to date. This paper seeks to fill (...)
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  • Theoretical ecology as etiological from the start.Justin Donhauser - 2016 - Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part C: Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences 60:67-76.
    The world’s leading environmental advisory institutions look to ecological theory and research as an objective guide for policy and resource management decision-making. In addition to various theoretical merits of doing so, it is therefore crucially important to clear up confusions about ecology’s conceptual foundations and to make plain the basic workings of inferential methods used in the science. Through discussion of key moments in the genesis of the theoretical branch of ecology, this essay elucidates a general heuristic role of teleological (...)
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  • Differentiating and defusing theoretical Ecology's criticisms: A rejoinder to Sagoff's reply to Donhauser (2016).Justin Donhauser - 2017 - Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part C: Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences 63:70-79.
    In a (2016) paper in this journal, I defuse allegations that theoretical ecological research is problematic because it relies on teleological metaphysical assumptions. Mark Sagoff offers a formal reply. In it, he concedes that I succeeded in establishing that ecologists abandoned robust teleological views long ago and that they use teleological characterizations as metaphors that aid in developing mechanistic explanations of ecological phenomena. Yet, he contends that I did not give enduring criticisms of theoretical ecology a fair shake in my (...)
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  • The Dangers of Replacing ‘Adaptation to Climate Change’ with ‘Resilient Solutions’.Justin Donhauser - 2018 - Ethics, Policy and Environment 21 (1):34-38.
    Presidential candidate Trump vehemently denied the reality of climate change. However, President Trump and his administration have not officially taken this position. This may be because it would m...
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  • Informative ecological models without ecological forces.Justin Donhauser - 2020 - Synthese 197 (6):2721-2743.
    Sagoff (2016) criticizes widely used “theoretical” methods in ecology; arguing that those methods employ models that rely on problematic metaphysical assumptions and are therefore uninformative and useless for practical decision-making. In this paper, I show that Sagoff misconstrues how such model-based methods work in practice, that the main threads of his argument are problematic, and that his substantive conclusions are consequently unfounded. Along the way, I illuminate several ways the model-based inferential methods he criticizes can be, and have been, usefully (...)
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  • Five lessons from teleology-neutrality and metaphor in ecology: bottom-up and top-down all at once.Justin Donhauser - 2023 - Synthese 201 (3):1-17.
    This paper illuminates primary epistemic functions of teleological characterizations in ecology through discussion of the historical and conceptual origins of the theoretical branch of ecology (§§1–2). I subsequently defuse enduring confusions about the use of teleological characterizations in ecology; with a focus on recent critical arguments by Sagoff in this journal (Sagoff, Synthese 193:3003–3024, 2016) and some other places (e.g., his Sagoff, Ethics, Policy, and Environment 16:239–257, 2013 and Sagoff, Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part C, 2017) (§3). (...)
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  • Ecological Historicity, Functional Goals, and Novelty in the Anthropocene.Justin Donhauser, Eric Desjardins & Gillian Barker - 2018 - Environmental Values.
    While many recognize that rigid historical and compositional goals are inadequate in a world where climate and other global systems are undergoing unprecedented changes, others contend that promoting ecosystem services and functions encourages practices that can ultimately lower the bar of ecological management. These worries are foregrounded in discussions about Novel Ecosystems (NEs); where some researchers and conservationists claim that NEs provide a license to trash nature as long as some ecosystem services are provided. This criticism arises from what we (...)
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