PHIL 208 - Introduction to Environmental Ethics

Something is morally considerable if we have a moral obligation with respect to it. The first half of the class will address the question of whether nonhuman animals are morally considerable: that is, do we have moral obligations to nonhuman animals? What grounds these obligations: their welfare, their rights, their interests? What are rights, anyway? The second half of the class will address the question of whether plants, species, and ecosystems are morally considerable, and what might ground their moral considerability. Do they have intrinsic worth independent of their worth to humans or is their worth of solely instrumental value? Do they have aesthetic value? What is aesthetic value anyway? If they are merely instrumentally valuable, how do we take into consideration their instrumental value to future humans who don’t yet exist? Are nonexistent humans morally considerable? If so, how?

Unit(s): 1
Group Distribution Requirement(s): Distribution Group I
Instructional Method: Conference
Grading Mode: Letter grading (A-F)
Group Distribution Learning Outcome(s):

Understand how arguments can be made, visions presented, or feelings or ideas conveyed through language or other modes of expression (symbols, movement, images, sounds, etc.).
Analyze and interpret texts, whether literary or philosophical, in English or a foreign language, or works of the visual or performing arts.
Evaluate arguments made in or about texts (whether literary or philosophical, in English or a foreign language, or works of the visual or performing arts).