This article argues that teachers of environmental ethics must more aggressively entertain questions of private property in their work and in their teaching. To make this case, it first introduces the three primary positions on property: occupation arguments, labor theory of value arguments, and efficiency arguments. It then contextualizes these arguments in light of the contemporary U.S. wise-use movement, in an attempt to make sense of the concerns that motivate wise-use activists, and also to demonstrate how intrinsic value arguments miss (...) the mark. Finally, it offers some suggestions about further directions for environmental ethics, reasoning that there is a good deal of headway to be gained for environmental ethics by accepting that nature can be owned as property, but nevertheless engaging the idea of private property critically. (shrink)

Property regimes are based on fundamental values of the society or group that designs and reproduces them. This paper analyses the ethical underpinnings of Progressive Commons in comparison to the...

John Locke occupies a central place in the contemporary philosophical literature on parental authority, and his child-centered approach has inspired a number of recognizably Lockean theories of parenthood.2 But unlike the best historically informed scholarship on other aspects of Locke's thought, those interested in his account of parental rights have not yet tried to understand its connection to debates of the period or to Locke's broader theory of natural law. In particular, Locke's relation to the seventeenth-century conversation about the role (...) of generation in grounding 'paternal power' is not well-known. Understanding this background is interesting in itself, but more importantly, it can provide us with a .. (shrink)

This essay advances a libertarian theory of moral rights, which responds effectively to some serious objections that have been raised against libertarianism. I show how libertarianism can explain children’s rights to certain physical integrity and aid. I defend strong moral rights of human, pre-natal organisms, infants and children against all agents to certain non-interference with their physical integrity. I also argue that parents’ moral obligation to aid their offspring follows from a moral principle that prohibits agents to actively harm rights-bearers. (...) Since this is the core principle of all versions of libertarianism, we gain simplicity and coherence. In chapter two, I explain my theory’s similarities and differences to a libertarian theory of moral rights advanced by Robert Nozick in his 1974 book Anarchy, State, and Utopia. I explain the structure and coherence of negative moral rights as advanced by Nozick. Then, I discuss what these negative rights are rights to, and the criteria for being a rights-bearer. In chapter three, I formulate a clear distinction between active and passive behaviour, and discuss the moral importance of foreseeing consequences of one’s active interventions. In chapter four, I claim that some pre-natal human organisms, human infants, and children, are rights-bearers. I formulate a morally relevant characterization of potentiality, and argue that possession of such potentiality is sufficient to have negative rights against all agents. In chapter five, I discuss whether potential moral subjects, in addition, have positive moral rights against all agents to means sufficient to develop into actual moral subjects. I argue that this suggestion brings some difficulties when applied to rights-conflicts. In chapter six, I argue that potential moral subjects’ rights to means necessary to develop into actual moral subjects can be defended in terms of merely negative rights. By adopting the view advanced in this chapter, we get a simple, coherent theory. It avoids the difficulties in the view advanced in chapter five, while keeping its intuitively plausible features. In chapter seven, I discuss whether the entitlement theory is contradictory and morally repugnant. I argue that my version of the entitlement theory is not. (shrink)