Sample Papers

Introduction

Rather than provide an exhaustive, chronologically-ordered listing of my published papers, book chapters, encyclopedia entries, and so on (running to some 80+ in total), I think it is actually more helpful to offer a "curated" selection, ordered in a thematically organized way. I've done this under the following headings:

1. An Overview of the Development of my Work
2. General Ethics and the Theory of Responsive Cohesion
3. Humans, Other Animals, and our Obligations in Regard to Both
4. Ethics and the Built Environment
5. Introductions to and Overviews of Environmental Ethics
6. General Environmental Philosophy Topics
7. Deep Ecology
8. Miscellaneous

I also offer a offer a brief orientation to each of the papers I list under these headings so as to provide you with a better idea of what each paper is addressing, and thereby help you decide if you might wish to investigate any of them further. Even if you don’t, just skimming over these orientation notes will give you a better idea of the kinds of things I’ve been addressing in my work.

Finally, it’s worth noting that, following the opening “Overview of the Development of my Work” heading, these headings roughly reflect the recency of these emphases in my work (i.e., “General Ethics and the Theory of Responsive Cohesion” represents the most recent emphasis in my work, whereas “Deep Ecology” represents the earliest emphasis in my work). The not-sure-where-to-place-it “Miscellaneous” category is then tucked in at the end.

Here we go, then. I hope you might find something that will be of interest to you.

1. Overview of the Development of my Work

For an overview of the development of my work from the point at which I began my study of environmental philosophy in general and deep ecology in particular up to my recent work on General Ethics and the theory of responsive cohesion approach to such an ethics, see:

"From Deep Ecology to the Theory of Responsive Cohesion: A Short Overview of the Development of my Work" (edited extract from Ch. 8, “Working in Plato’s Academy”, of my book On Beautiful Days Such as This: A philosopher’s search for love, work, place, meaning, and suchlike.)

For a short overview, written for a general audience, of how I found my way to the study of environmental philosophy in the first place (initially by way of the study of “deep ecology”), see:

"Beautiful Days", Resurgence (No. 286), August/September 2014, pp. 42-44. (I submitted this short piece, also extracted from On Beautiful Days Such as This, to Resurgence under the more accurate and informative title "An Environmental Philosopher Reflects in Greece", but magazine editors often entitle pieces what they think will work best, so there you go.)

2. General Ethics and the Theory of Responsive Cohesion

By a “General Ethics” I mean a single integrated approach to ethics that encompasses the realms of interhuman ethics, the ethics of the natural environment, and the ethics of the human-constructed (or built) environment. My theory of responsive cohesion represents my approach to the development of a General Ethics.

My most detailed presentation of these matters is to be found in my book A Theory of General Ethics: Human Relationships, Nature, and the Built Environment (Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2006). But as far as papers or chapter-length presentations go, see the following:

For an introduction to the very idea of General Ethics and why we need to develop such an ethics, see:

Ch. 1: “The Idea of a General Ethics” of my book A Theory of General Ethics: Human Relationships, Nature, and the Built Environment.

A successful General Ethics has to be able to deal with a formidable array of outstanding problems in ethics. Here you’ll find an overview of what I consider to be the eighteen(!) outstanding problems – spread across interhuman ethics, the ethics of the natural environment, and the ethics of the human-constructed (or built) environment – that a General Ethics must be able to address:

"Human Relationships, Nature, and the Built Environment: Problems that Any General Ethics Must Be Able to Address", in Jules Pretty, Andrew Ball, Ted Benton, Julia Guivant, David Lee, David Orr, Max Pfeffer and Hugh Ward, eds. Sage Handbook on Environment and Society (London: Sage, 2007), pp. 107-123.

For a very short introduction, written for a general audience, of my theory of responsive cohesion approach to General Ethics, see:

"Responsive Cohesion: Thinking in Context", Resurgence (No. 241), March/April 2007, pp. 22-25.

For more detailed introductions, which place the need for the theory of responsive cohesion in a wider context, see:

“From Deep Ecology to the Theory of Responsive Cohesion: A Short Overview of the Development of my Work” (already listed under the “Overview of the Development of my Work” section, above)

"The New Ethics: Ethics in a Gaian Context", in Jules Pretty, ed., Environment Vol. 1: Thinking and Knowing about the Environment and Nature, "Key Issues for the Twenty-First Century" series (London: Sage, 2006), pp. 82-95.

For a differently approached and somewhat more formal introduction to theory of responsive cohesion ideas, see the following paper (which proceeded from a presentation to the Royal Institute of Philosophy):

"Foundations of a General Ethics: Selves, Sentient Beings, and Other Responsively Cohesive Structures", in Anthony O'Hear, ed., Philosophy and the Environment, Royal Institute of Philosophy Supplement: 69 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011), pp. 47-66.

3. Humans, Other Animals, and our Obligations in Regard to Both

I pursue the question of the cognitive differences between humans and other animals and the ethical implications of these differences through Chs. 6-8 of A Theory of General Ethics: Human Relationships, Nature, and the Built Environment as well as in my paper:

"Forms of Harm and our Obligations to Humans and Other Animals", in Evangelos Protopapadakis, ed., Animal Ethics: Past and Present Perspectives (Berlin: Logos Verlag, 2012), pp. 197-221.

Among other things, this above paper introduces two distinctions that I think ought be recognized in this area of discussion: the first is a distinction between damage and harm, and the second is a distinction between what I take to be the two basic forms of harm.

4. Ethics and the Built Environment

I helped to pioneer work in this area by running the first international conference on Ethics and the Built Environment in 1999. This was followed up with an edited collection published in 2000. From that collection, see the following:

"Introduction: Ethics and the Built Environment", in Warwick Fox, ed., Ethics and the Built Environment (London: Routledge, 2000), pp. 1-12.

"Towards an Ethics (or at Least a Value Theory) of the Built Environment", in Warwick Fox, ed., Ethics and the Built Environment (London: Routledge, 2000), pp. 207-21. (This paper represents the first published presentation of my theory of responsive cohesion.)

See also my short article:

"Architecture Ethics", in Jan-Kyrre Berg Olsen, Stig Andur Pedersen, and Vincent F. Hendricks, eds., A Companion to the Philosophy of Technology (Oxford: Blackwell, 2009), pp. 387-91.

For a longer paper that covers a lot of ground in this area (e.g., the section headings of this paper are: The Architecture of Ethics; What is Ethics About?; From Interhuman Ethics to Ethics of the Natural Environment to General Ethics; The Significance of Architecture and the Built Environment to General Ethics; The Architecture of Value: Responsive Cohesion; and The Transition to a More Habitable Future), but does so in a way that is accessible to a general audience, see:

"Ethics, Architecture, Responsive Cohesion, and the Transition to a More Habitable Future", Paper presented to the "Ethics and the Built Environment 2009" conference, Nottingham University, 9-11 September 2009.

5. Introductions to and Overviews of Environmental Ethics

For a very brief introduction to ethics in general, see the first 7 pages of "Ethics, Architecture, Responsive Cohesion, and the Transition to a More Habitable Future", immediately above.

For a short encyclopaedia overview of environmental ethics, see:

"Environmental Ethics", in The Encyclopedia of Population, eds., Paul Demeny and Geoffrey McNicoll (New York: Macmillan Reference USA, 2003) pp. 292-96.

For a more detailed overview of environmental ethics, well, which one to choose? I've written a number of more detailed overviews of environmental ethics over the years, beginning with Ch. 6 of my book Toward a Transpersonal Ecology: Developing New Foundations for Environmentalism (which one reviewer - see the previous page on my books - praised as being worth the price of the book in itself), but perhaps the one I would most want to suggest here is:

"A Critical Overview of Environmental Ethics", World Futures 46 (1996): 1-21.

For a different kind of overview of environmental ethics, in the form of an outline of the range of central problems that such an ethics must be able to address, see "Human Relationships, Nature, and the Built Environment: Problems that Any General Ethics Must Be Able to Address", already cited under the “General Ethics and the Theory of Responsive Cohesion” heading, above.

6. General environmental philosophy topics

Self-explanatory:

“Why Study Environmental Ethics?” In Environmental Ethics: The Big Questions, pp. 35-36. Edited by David Keller. Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell, 2010.

For a short history of the astonishingly anthropocentric nature of the leading ideas in Western thinking, see:

"Human Empire", Resurgence, September/October 1997, pp. 10-12.

The notion of an entity having “intrinsic value” – i.e., value in and of itself as distinct from having merely “instrumental (or use) value” – plays a crucial role in environmental ethics, but what follows from it? See:

"What Does the Recognition of Intrinsic Value Entail?" The Trumpeter: Journal of Ecosophy 10 (1993): 101.

7. Deep Ecology

My most detailed presentation on deep ecology is to be found in my book Toward a Transpersonal Ecology: Developing New Foundations for Environmentalism (US reprint edition: New York: The State University of New York Press, 1995; UK and European reprint edition: Totnes, Devon: Green Books, 1995). But as far as papers or chapter-length presentations go, you can find short overviews of deep ecology in the first section of “From Deep Ecology to the Theory of Responsive Cohesion: A Short Overview of the Development of my Work”, previously cited under the first, “Overview of the Development of my Work”, section, above, as well as in:

"Deep Ecology and Virtue Ethics", Philosophy Now, April-May 2000, pp. 24-26.

For a brief examination of the the intellectual origins of the "depth" theme in the philosophy of Arne Naess, the founding father of the deep ecology appraoch to environmental philosophy, see the obviously titled:

"Intellectual Origins of the 'Depth' Theme in the Philosophy of Arne Naess". The Trumpeter: Journal of Ecosophy 9 (1992): 68-73.

8. Miscellaneous

Think you want to play "the ideas game"? Or maybe you already are. Then you might want to bear the following lightly put, but nonetheless seriously intended meditations in mind as you do so:

"The Ideas Game" (edited extract from Chapter 9: “The Ideas Game” of my book On Beautiful Days Such as This: A philosopher’s search for love, work, place, meaning, and suchlike).

For a spirited deconstruction of an ill-posed question that was set for a 2003 essay competition run by Shell and The Economist, see:

"Do We Need Nature? Getting to Grips with a Doubly Misleading Question", Think, Summer, 2005, pp. 79-85.