Where the wild things are: environmental preservation and human nature

Biology and Philosophy 22 (1):57-72 (2007)
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Abstract

Environmental philosophers spend considerable time drawing the divide between humans and the rest of nature. Some argue that humans and our actions are unnatural. Others allow that humans are natural, but maintain that humans are nevertheless distinct. The motivation for distinguishing humans from the rest of nature is the desire to determine what aspects of the environment should be preserved. The standard view is that we should preserve those aspects of the environment outside of humans and our influence. This paper examines the standard view by asking two questions. First, are the suggested grounds for distinguishing humans from the rest of the environment viable? Second, is such a distinction even needed for determining what to preserve? The paper concludes that debates over whether humans are natural and whether humans are unique are unhelpful when deciding what to preserve.

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Marc Ereshefsky
University of Calgary

Citations of this work

The Future of Human Evolution.Russell Powell - 2012 - British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 63 (1):145-175.
Synthetic Biology and the Goals of Conservation.Christopher Hunter Lean - forthcoming - Ethics, Policy and Environment.
Natural Food.Antoine C. Dussault & Élise Desaulniers - 2012 - In Paul B. Thompson & David M. Kaplan (eds.), Encyclopedia of Food and Agricultural Ethics. New York: Springer Verlag.

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