The Metaphysics of Environmental Ethics

Paper Summary:

This paper discusses the differences between moral and legal rights. Legal rights are created by conventional authorities, but moral rights are non-conventional, as they are discovered rather than created. The author defines "species-ism" as putting the interest of your own species in front of the interest of other species and claims species-ism is unjust because we must treat every being the same way. The paper concludes that all of these metaphysics may seem to be a lot of talk and no action; however, from talk comes awareness and ideas and sharing them with members of the community is the only way that we can make real changes to benefit our environmental policy.

From the Paper:

"In natural extinctions, nature takes away life when it has become unfit as Darwin would put it, or when the habitat alters, and supplies other life in its place. When artificial extinction takes place, it shuts down tomorrow because it shuts down speciation. The chief cause of artificial extinction of recent times is humans through encroachment, habitat destruction as well as many other factors caused by humans and when this happens nothing gets replaced. When natural extinction occurs, a species may be lost but this should not be viewed as a bad things because the species that is lost is replaced by another species."

More papers on The Metaphysics of Environmental Ethics:

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• Research Paper # 91208 : "The Influence of Environmental Organizations on U.S. Policy "

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