Philosophy 3320: Environmental Ethics

Fall 2009

Instructor: Ian Young

This course will deal with one of the sub-branches in the field of philosophy; namely, ethics (or moral philosophy).  Ethics concerns the rightness or wrongness of actions that we humans can perform.  Further, it deals with a sub-branch of that, being in the area of applied ethics, and further still, a sub-branch of that, which is environmental ethics.  So it concerns the rightness or wrongness of human actions as applied to our natural environment.

As you are no doubt aware, this is an area of immediate concern to all of us.  Indeed, our very lives and the lives of our children may depend on how we decide to act in this regard.  In this course, we will attempt to grapple with some of the philosophical and practical issues and hopefully will come to a new understanding not only of the questions, but of our own perspectives as well.

Topics covered will include: changing human attitudes toward the environment; the value of the environment; the nature of rights and the kinds of entities that possess them; the use of cost-benefit analysis to decide questions relating to the environment; appropriate levels of development; relationships between human poverty and environmental issues.

Department of Philosophy
305 Shatzel Hall,
Bowling Green State University,
Bowling Green, OH 43403.

Phone: 419-372-2117
Fax: 419-372-8191
Email: mdeluca@bgnet.bgsu.edu