Environmental Virtue Ethics Research Papers (original) (raw)

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- Religion, Environmental Studies, Sustainable Development, Catholic Social Teaching

This paper argues that environmental virtue ethics requires the
adoption of an ethical ideal in order to guide the identification and
practice of virtues. I recommend friendship as one such ideal due to
emphasis such an ideal places upon the quality of the relationship
with nature rather than the evaluation of individual actions. After
describing the value of friendship as an ethical ideal, I respond to
some of the objections that have been raised against it in the context
of environmental virtue.

- by Bryan Bannon
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- Philosophy, Environmental Philosophy, Environmental Studies, Virtue Ethics

Our ability to live well depends not only on what we do, but also on who we are. With respect to human-land relationships, we need to become more virtuous. And virtue is cultivated through practice. This paper transforms classical spiritual reading practices into a means of cultivating environmental virtue. Lectio divina is a longstanding practice for reading scripture religiously, motivated by a desire to come to a deeper understanding of and richer relationship with the sacred dimensions of experience. I describe an adaptation of lectio divina suitable for reading nature religiously and offer two illustrations. By reading nature religiously, we may develop environmental virtues, becoming more attentive, more thoughtful, more committed, more reverent, and more humble as we encounter the natural world. This model of a practice for cultivating environmental virtue enriches an essential aspect of environmental ethics, enhancing our prospects for attaining human and ecological flourishing.

In this article, I consider the claim that we ought to be grateful to nature and argue that this claim is unjustified. I proceed by arguing against the two most plausible lines of reasoning for the claim that we ought to be grateful to nature: 1) that nature is a fitting or appropriate object of our gratitude, and 2) that we ought to be grateful to nature insofar as gratitude to nature enhances, preserves or indicates in us the virtue of gratitude, a character trait we morally ought to have. My arguments against the first line of reasoning show it to be unsound, and my arguments against the second reveal that we actually have reasons to avoid being grateful to nature. If we have reasons to treat nature well, I show, those may be rooted in the appropriateness of attitudes like praise, appreciation or compassion, but not gratitude. I conclude by highlighting several implications my arguments entail about gratitude to entities other than nature and about environmental virtues other than gratitude.

- by Tony Manela
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- Philosophy, Applied Philosophy, Ethics, Environmental Philosophy

Forthcoming in the Oxford Handbook of Food Ethics

- by Paul B Thompson
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- Agrarian Studies, Food ethics, Environmental Virtue Ethics

In this book, Toby Svoboda develops and defends a Kantian environmental virtue ethic, challenging the widely-held view that Kant's moral philosophy has little to offer environmental ethics. On the contrary, Svoboda contends that on Kantian grounds, there is good moral reason to care about non-human organisms in their own right and to value their flourishing independently of human interests, since doing so is constitutive of certain (environmental) virtues. Svoboda argues that Kant’s account of indirect duties regarding nature can ground a compelling environmental ethic: the Kantian duty to develop morally virtuous dispositions strictly proscribes unnecessarily harming organisms, and it also gives us moral reason to act in ways that benefit such organisms. Svoboda’s account engages the recent literature on environmental virtue (including Rosalind Hursthouse, Philip Cafaro, Ronald Sandler, Thomas Hill, and Louke van Wensveen) and provides an original argument for an environmental ethic firmly rooted in Kant’s moral philosophy.

- by Toby Svoboda
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- Environmental Philosophy, Animal Ethics, Virtue Ethics, Environmental Ethics
- by Ronald Sandler
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- Philosophy, Environmental Ethics, Environmental Virtue Ethics

The thesis is divided into four chapters. Chapter One presents an overview of the intrinsic value debate within environmental ethics. Chapter Two, provides an ordinary language analysis of the term intrinsic value, then traces the philosophic history of the term from Plato to the present, and finally, shows the extent of the usage of this concept among contemporary writers in environmental ethics. In chapter three I distinguish and dis cuss different environmental ethics based on anthropocentric and non-anthropocentric theories of intrinsic value. In that chapter a hypothesis that there is a relationship between the range of moral considerability and what is held to be of intrinsic value is also tested. In Chapter Four I provide a critique of the attempts mentioned in Chapter Three to create or refute a new environmental ethic. There I argue that comprehensive program of environmental preservation can emerge from a mixture of weak anthropocentric and strong non-anthropocentric positons.

In recent years, many philosophers have come to believe that virtue ethics is a particularly valuable approach to take within environmental ethics, although they do so for different reasons.
Some philosophers, such as Rosalind Hursthouse, see standard attempts to prove the intrinsic value or moral considerability of non-human beings as inconclusive or outright failures. In environmental virtue ethics they seek a more solid rational foundation for environmentalism: protecting the environment will promote human wellbeing. Others, like John O'Neill, think some intrinsic value claims are convincing, but believe that the roles healthy ecosystems play in supporting human flourishing provide further arguments for environmental protection. They seek to supplement appeals to altruism with appeals to people’s enlightened self-interest. Yet other philosophers, such as Lisa Newton, see an urgent need to specify the kinds of character traits that can help people live environmentally decent lives. For this group environmental virtue ethics provides the proper framework within which to discuss creating sustainable societies ...

- by Philip Cafaro
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- Philosophy, Ethics, Applied Ethics, Environmental Studies

This article compares how the ethical systems of Kant, Mill, and Aristotle might react towards and treat extraterrestrial non-life, extraterrestrial non-intelligent life, and extraterrestrial intelligent life. It concludes that even in the absence of extraterrestrial life, the thought experiment still leads to insights for how these systems operate, and that further investigation of ethical systems as applied to space may well lead to more insights.

- by Brian Green
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- Ethics, Applied Ethics, Aristotle, Astrobiology

In this paper I will present a general account of benevolence and then show how this virtue can be understood as an environmental virtue. After addressing some possible objections I develop an account of the environmental vices that hinder the development and expression of this virtue. I conclude with a discussion of why such a virtue should be cultivated by environmentally minded persons. I recognize that providing a full account of benevolence (a project that I reserve for a later time) will involve the additional development of the specific environmental virtues that fall under the general category of environmental benevolence, such as the environmental versions of compassion, friendship, kindness and gratitude. Nonetheless, the account of environmental benevolence presented here allows the reader to understand what are the common features such virtues will have .

- by Geoffrey B Frasz
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- Environmental Ethics, Environmental Virtue Ethics

Salah satu varian terpenting dalam pemikiran filsafat moral zaman ini yang layak untuk dipertimbangkan dan didiskusikan adalah etika keutamaan” sebuah model pendekatan dan pemikiran yang dalam bahasa keseharian masyarakat Indonesia lebih dipahami sebagai keluhuran, kearifan, kesempurnaan, kemakrifatan. Sebuah pandangan “moral spesial” yang sebetulnya telah lama, meminjam pandangan Alasdayr Macintyre, tersemai dalam setiap tradisi kebudayaan masyarakat. Dua tradisi yang menyemai keutamaan yang ditekankan dalam buku ini secara lebih spesifik adalah Barat dan Timur.
Sebagai bagian dari bangsa Timur yang lama mengenal tentang arti “keluhuran”, moralitas dengan “derajat tinggi”, istilah keutamaan bukan sesuatu yang asing bagi masyarakat Indonesia. Namun, kepada filsuf tradisi Barat yang dirintis sejak Aristoteles dan kemudian dikembangkan lagi oleh filsuf neo-aristotelian, kita patut belajar bahwa keutamaan bukan saja sekedar merupakan nilai atributif, seberapa pun tingkat keluhuran itu, tetapi juga sebagai perspektif dan teori yang memiliki bobot ilmiah tertentu dan dipahami secara rasional. Ia bukan sekedar menjadi objek yang disematkan (genetivus objektivus), tetapi juga menjadi teori keutamaan, alat analisis, cara pandang dan sudut pandang (genetivus subjektivus) yang berkontribusi memecahkan problem moral tertentu dan berdialog dengan isme-isme moral tertentu. Itu pula yang dilakukan oleh para filsuf Muslim dan Kristen pada zaman keemasan Islam dan Abad Pertengahan, misalnya, dengan banyak berguru kepada pemikiran filsafat Yunani dan mengembangkannya.
Dalam buku ini, sengaja penulis tindak menggunakan judul Etika Keutamaan, sebagaimana sudah menjadi maklum dalam disiplin keilmuan etika. Pasalnya, penulis melihat bahwa dalam kajian yang lebih serius tentang keutamaan ternyata terdapat beberapa irisan dengan “epistemologi keutamaan”, yang sebetulnya dapat dikembangkan lebih lanjut. Bahwa pada dasarnya, keutamaan tidak hanya mencakup dimensi moralitas, tetapi juga, termasuk di dalamnya, dimensi intelektualitas yang dikaji lebih jauh pada cabang filsafat epistemologi.
Penulis memaksudkan buku ini sebagai pembahasan pada tingkat dasar, untuk memasuki pembahasan lebih mendalam dan serius tentang kajian etika keutamaan.

Barangkali salah satu sudut pandang penting filsafat pasca-modern yang menjadi kritisisme terhadap modernitas adalah etika keutamaan. Memang keutamaan bukan konsep baru, karena sudah diperkenalkan sejak Nicomachean Ethics Aristoteles, bahkan oleh filsuf-filsuf Pra-Sokratik, dan tumbuh subur di berbagai tradisi filsafat. Bukan semangat pembaharuan yang ia bawa, melainkan semacam upaya ‘renaissans’, untuk mewujudkan kesadaran dan memberi pijakan kembali, bahwa pemikiran etis yang dikembangkan berabad-abad oleh pemikir modern ternyata tidak cukup menyelesaikan problem etis utama manusia tentang kebaikan. Bukanlah moralitas itu pertama-tama terletak pada tindakan dan aturannya, memiliki kekuatan imperatif atau tidak, memiliki konsekwensi manfaat atau tidak, melainkan pada subjek dan nilainya. Subjek yang baik adalah yang utama. Moralitas, seharusnya, dibangun di atas prinsip-prinsip keutamaan.

- by Muhammad Nur Prabowo Setyabudi
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- Ethics, Applied Ethics, Virtue Ethics, Plato's Virtue Ethics

This theme issue has the founding ambition of landscaping Data Ethics as a new branch of ethics that studies and evaluates moral problems related to data (including generation, recording, curation, processing, dissemination, sharing, and use), algorithms (including AI, artificial agents, machine learning, and robots), and corresponding practices (including responsible innovation, programming, hacking, and professional codes), in order to formulate and support morally good solutions (e.g. right conducts or right values). Data Ethics builds on the foundation provided by Computer and Information Ethics but, at the same time, it refines the approach endorsed so far in this research field, by shifting the Level of Abstraction of ethical enquiries, from being information-centric to being data-centric. This shift brings into focus the different moral dimensions of all kinds of data, even the data that never translate directly into information but can be used to support actions or generate behaviours, for example. It highlights the need for ethical analyses to concentrate on the content and nature of computational operations—the interactions among hardware, software, and data—rather than on the variety of digital technologies that enables them. And it emphasises the complexity of the ethical challenges posed by Data Science. Because of such complexity, Data Ethics should be developed from the start as a macroethics, that is, as an overall framework that avoids narrow, ad hoc approaches and addresses the ethical impact and implications of Data Science and its applications within a consistent, holistic, and inclusive framework. Only as a macroethics Data Ethics will provide the solutions that can maximise the value of Data Science for our societies, for all of us, and for our environments.

- by Luciano Floridi and +1
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- Business Ethics, Engineering, Computer Science, Algorithms
- by Purushottama Bilimoria
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- Comparative Religion, Comparative Philosophy, Indian Philosophy, Aristotle

I argue that eating meat is morally good and our duty when it is part of a practice that has benefited animals. The existence of domesticated animals depends on the practice of eating them, and the meat-eating practice benefits animals of that kind if they have good lives. The argument is not consequentialist but historical, and it does not apply to nondomesticated animals. I refine the argument and consider objections.

- by nick zangwill
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- Applied Ethics, Animal Ethics, Environmental Ethics, Animal Rights/Liberation

This dissertation argues that Aristotle's philosophy of praxis (i.e., ethics and politics) can contribute to our understanding of the contemporary question concerning the environment. Thinking seriously about the environment today calls for resisting the temptation to jump to conclusions about Aristotle's irrelevance to the environment on historicist grounds of incommensurability or the fact that Aristotle did not write specifically on environmental issues as we know them. It is true that environmental problems are basically twentieth-century phenomena, but the larger normative discourses in which the terms "environmental" and "ecological" and their cognates are situated should be approached philosophically, namely, as cross-cultural and trans-historical phenomena that touch human experience at a deeper level. The philosophical perspective exploring the discursive meaning behind contemporary environmental praxis can reveal to us that certain aspects of Aristotle's thought are relevant, or can be adapted, to the ends of environmentalists concerned with developmental problems. I argue that Aristotle's views are already accepted and adopted in political theory and the praxis of the environment in many respects. In the first half of the dissertation, I explore the common ground between contemporary theorizing on the ethical and political aspects of environmental issues and Aristotelian ethics and politics. The second half of the dissertation locates the contemporary relevance of Aristotle in the recently emerging studies of "environmental virtue ethics" as well as "environmental citizenship" and "conservative environmentalism."

The focus of this paper is environmental virtue ethics as presented by Ronald Sandler. I shall examine how Sandler’s account compares to other environmental virtue approaches, paying particular attention to the relative strengths and weaknesses of the scientific naturalist basis of his work, his moderate plurality in dealing with questions about moral considerability, how to define relationships between human and non-human entities, and how to characterise an environmental virtue. There will be an examination of Sandler’s claim that his account is able to generate norms regarding environmentally sensitive action. I will conclude that Sandler’s outline of a theory, which entails a variety of principles rather than establishing a single code, is a largely successful application of virtue theory to environmental ethics. There are aspects of his account however, including his treatment of value and meaning, species neutrality, ecosystems, and how institutional structures impinge on environmental virtue, that all need to be developed further.

This review is part of the backdrop to the debate that I had with Marcel Wissenburg in the pages of "Environmental Politics" in autumn 2001 (Vol. 10, No. 3) over his book "Green Liberalism", and is thus probably one of the more significant reviews I have done. If you are interested in these issues, I would urge you to read my extended critical paper "Green Liberalisms: Nature, Agency and the Good" and the shorter "The Green Only Blooms amid the Millian Flowers: A Reply to Marcel Wissenburg", both available here on Academia.edu, rather than simply skimming through this short book review; for some unknown reason, only Marcel's response in the debate and Robyn Eckersley's book review are given in the "related papers" section here. Somewhat embarrassingly, I now think that in my review I was a bit too generous to the account of value given in the book and various modifications were made to my stance in the later course of discussion with Marcel, but this is overall a fair indicator of what was to come.

Anthropocentrism literally means human-centered, but in its most relevant philosophical form it is the ethical belief that humans alone possess intrinsic value. In contradistinction, all other beings hold value only in their ability to serve humans, or in their instrumental value. From an anthropocentric position, humans possess direct moral standing because they are ends in and of them selves; other things (individual living beings, systems) are means to human ends. In one sense, all ethics are anthropocentric, for arguably humans alone possess the cognitive ability to formulate and recognize moral value. This agency places humans at the center of whatever ethical system we devise, and this moral reality drives some scholars to claim that anthropocentrism is the only logical ethical system available to us. But many other scholars argue this circumstance is an ethically uninteresting fact, not a limiting factor in the type of ethical system we devise to help us determine good and bad, right and wrong. We can accept the limitation of our human lens and still make choices about where we find value in the world. Because we are moral agents, the same cognitive ability that allows us to see the world in comparison to ourselves also allows us to treat with respect, or value as ends in themselves, other things. We can refer to this conception of a human-centered world in which human cognition determines our ethical approach as ontological anthropocentrism. Alternately, the definition of anthropocentrism that understands humans as the sole possessors of intrinsic value is ethical anthropocentrism.

Discussing environmental virtue ethics means to some extent discussing virtue ethics itself, which does not come without a history and, therefore, reputation within our culture. The nature of virtue ethics is closely linked to its focus on character and the lack of clear rules, both characteristics that are thought of as indulgence in the political discourses of our society. These are the same discourses of power and domination that are
involved in the repression and exploitation of the non-human world. Environmentalism is a critique of environmental destruction caused by the establishment. It could be argued that it is damaging its own cause, by using a language that is equally on the outside of the hegemonic discourses. Instead this thesis has taken the view that virtue
ethics has advantages over more popular rule-based schools of ethics when it comes to framing environmentalism.
In the following chapters, this thesis seeks to critically approach environmental virtue ethics; it’s potential to tell the story of environmentalism, it’s justification of environmental concern and how it proposes to promote change in the world.

Laudato Si’, Pope Francis’ recent encyclical on care for our common home, invites humanity to cultivate “ecological virtues” in order to become more responsible stewards of our imperilled common home. According to the Pope, the formation of healthy habitus for the stewardship of Earth can be achieved only through the cultivation of appropriate ecological virtues. It may be recalled that there is a growing awareness of the importance of the role of ecological virtues in environmental ethics today. In this paper we shall reflect on seven ecological virtues: praise, gratitude, care, justice, work, sobriety, and humility. They do not receive a separate treatment in Laudato Si’, but are mentioned throughout the encyclical. They are like signposts that indicate the road that we need to travel in caring for our common planetary home.

Like other communities, Indigenous peoples must adapt to climate-induced ecological variations like sea level rise, glacier retreat and shifts in the habitat ranges of different species. In ongoing conversations on climate change, some Indigenous women articulate how seriously they take the specific responsibilities they perceive themselves to have within the systems of responsibilities that matter to their communities. Such responsibilities can range from acting as custodians and teachers of local ecological knowledge to acting as conveners of political movements aiming at respectful co-existence with neighbors. For these Indigenous women, the responsibilities that they assume in their communities can expose them to harms stemming from climate change and other environmental changes. Yet at the same time, their commitment to these responsibilities motivates them to serve as enablers of adaptation and mitigation. efforts.
This paper offers a starting point for the following positions: Some Indigenous women have their own unique capacities for collective action that advance adaptation and mitigation. Non-Indigenous parties’ political responsibilities should involve deferring to Indigenous women’s own knowledges of and motivations for collective action. Deference can be expressed through political institutions that bolster the conditions needed to support Indigenous women’s collective actions. In many cases, deference is incumbent on Indigenous national governments and political organizations. Further work beyond this paper should seek to further clarify the political reforms needed to support Indigenous women’s collective agencies for adapting to and mitigating climate change.

- by Kyle Whyte
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- Social Movements, Native American Studies, Environmental Science, Indigenous Studies
- by John R Berkman
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- Ethology, Ethics, Human-Animal Relations, Animal Behavior
- by Luciano Floridi
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- Business, Business Ethics, Computer Science, Information Technology

This poster of the Virtues adapted from the Virtues Project is intended to inform the Lusoga reader of the possibility of reinforcing a value-based interaction. It highlights vocabulary, skills and morals that parents, children and community need to excel. By gaining these virtues their levels of productivity and development is heightened as violence and corruption are checked and success levels are increased.

- by Cornelius W Gulere
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- Discourse Analysis, Sociology, Education, Values Education

Environmental virtue ethics (EVE) is an emerging approach in environmental ethics that offers fruitful new ways of examining the issues of how and why we should live in environmentally sound ways. It involves a reconsideration of questions of virtue and human life that was begun in the Classical Period and revisited in the last 50 years. It, however, has also been axiomatic that what is needed is a new ethic of the environment, that the application of traditional moral theories to environmental issues is inadequate and thus EVE is open to this same challenge. I respond in three ways. First I argue that EVE is not merely an extension of virtue ethics into new areas, but a rethinking of what it means to be a good person, an environmentally good person. I argue that the insights of EVE can guide people in leading lives that are better, fuller and happier. Second, using Deep Ecology as the example I argue that EVE can support and complement the attempts to develop new environmental theories. Finally, using the example of Barbara McClintock I argue EVE can provide insight into our understanding of exemplar environmental thinkers, naturalists and scientists.

- by Geoffrey B Frasz
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- Environmental Ethics, Environmental Virtue Ethics

The proceedings of the National Science Foundation supported WIS2DOM workshop state that sustainability scientists must respect the “protocols” of practitioners of Indigenous sciences if the practitioners of the two knowledge systems are to learn from each other. Indigenous persons at the workshop described protocols as referring to attitudes about how to approach the world that are inseparable from how people approach scientific inquiry; they used the terms caretaking and stewardship to characterize protocols in their Indigenous communities and nations. Yet sustainability scientists may be rather mystified by the idea of protocols as a necessary dimension of scientific inquiry. Moreover, the terms stewardship and caretaking are seldom used in sustainability science. In this case report, the authors seek to elaborate on some possible meanings of protocols for sustainability scientists who may be unaccustomed to talking about stewardship and caretaking in relation to scientific inquiry. To do so, the authors describe cases of Indigenous protocols in action in relation to scientific inquiry in two Indigenous-led sustainability initiatives in the Great Lakes/Midwest North American region. We claim that each case expresses concepts of stewardship and caretaking to describe protocols in which humans approach the world with the attitude of respectful partners in genealogical relationships of interconnected humans, non-human beings, entities and collectives who have reciprocal responsibilities to one another. We conclude with a discussion of the implications of Indigenous protocols for future dialog between practitioners of sustainability and Indigenous sciences.

- by Kyle Whyte
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- Environmental Science, Ethics, Indigenous Studies, Indigenous or Aboriginal Studies
- by Allen Thompson
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- Environmental Ethics, Environmental Virtue Ethics

This article argues that the dominant sustainable development approach fails to acknowledge the interconnectedness and interrelatedness of social and environmental issues, and that sustainability requires a ‘transformational’ approach, involving a fundamental change in how humans relate to each other and to nature. The authors propose that virtue ethics, grounded in Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics, provides a framework with which to tackle such a transformation; to redress the human-nature relationship and help foster a more ecological perspective; to facilitate a more holistic and integrative view of sustainability; and to explore questions of how to live and flourish within a more sustainable world. Beginning with an overview of virtue ethics and critique of current approaches in environmental virtue ethics, this article proposes a new virtue, ‘harmony with nature’, that addresses the interconnectedness of our relationship with nature. This is followed by a proposal for the re-visioning of human flourishing as being necessarily situated within nature. The article concludes with some of the implications of a virtue ethics approach to sustainability, and the new virtue, for both sustainability education and moral education.

Environmental philosophy is a promising branch of philosophy to renew the ancient tradition of philosophy as a way of life. I contend that to practice philosophy as a way of life involves both some conception of the good life and an array of spiritual exercises that assists one in living according to that conception. I then offer an argument for why this tradition of philosophy is worth reviving at the present time. The second half of the paper is devoted to exploring the prospects for a distinctively environmental approach to philosophy as a way of life. Give its emphasis on environmental virtue and its rich resources for developing spiritual exercises, I argue that environmental philosophy as a way of life is both a robust and attractive option.

Die eudaimonistische Tugendethik sieht sich, was ihre innere Struktur anbelangt, standardmäßig mit den Vorwürfen des Egoismus und Anthropozentrismus konfrontiert, was auch das Projekt einer ökologischen Tugendethik zu gefährden scheint. Der vorliegende Artikel versucht, ausgehend von der Tugendethik Erich Fromms, eine neue Perspektive auf diese Standardvorwürfe zu entwickeln, indem er den theoretischen Implikationen nachgeht, die die Anerkennung der Biophilie – der Liebe zum Leben – als eine der Tugenden des Menschen für den Frommschen Ansatz hat. Die zunächst noch exegetisch ausgerichtete Diskussion der werkinternen Relation von humanistischer und biophiler Ethik bei Erich Fromm leitet schließlich zu einer stärker systematisch ausgerichteten Diskussion der inneren Dynamik von selbst- und umweltbezogenen Tugenden im tugendhaften Akteur über. In diesem Zuge wird deutlich gemacht, dass das selbstbezogene Streben nach eigener Eudaimonie und das umweltbezogene Streben nach der Förderung des Objekts der eigenen Liebe zwar durchaus miteinander in einen Konflikt geraten können, dass dieser Konflikt aber nicht zur Selbstauslöschung der Tugendethik führt, sondern stattdessen im tugendhaften Akteur eine produktive Dynamik entfaltet. Die klassische Gegenüberstellung von Anthropozentrismus und Biozentrismus innerhalb der Ethik lässt sich auf diese Weise unterlaufen.

- by Richard F Runge
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- Environmental Virtue Ethics, Erich Fromm, Moral Particularism, Biocentrism

The transformation of farm animals into industry-produced " biomachines " explains that the plight of animals worldwide has never been more serious than it is today. The description of the abuse of animals raised for food and the denunciation of the painful death they experience in slaughterhouses were the starting point of the animal movement in the 1970s. Promoting activism as well as academic studies, this movement, which first brought analytical ethics, and particularly utilitarianism, to bear on many animal welfare issues, goes hand in hand with the rejection of speciesism. Coined in 1971, this word suggests that membership in the Homo sapiens species is not a sufficient measure of moral worth. Animal ethics is an inquiry into the criteria that are decisive to grant a being moral consideration and evaluate the rightness or wrongness of some practices involving animals. Although Peter Singer and Tom Regan do not have the same arguments, they both provide an alternative to speciesism by referring to some value-laden labels that pertain to a cognitive ontology. This is why many ethicists coming from different countries are trying today to think through the animal question in order to overcome the dichotomies human/man, body/mind, and nature/culture we find in humanism.

- by Corine PELLUCHON
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- Political Philosophy, Bioethics, Animal Ethics, Environmental Virtue Ethics

The paper reviews the history of applied ethics and applied virtue ethics in particular, before advancing to methodological issues and to a broad survey of recent work in applied areas of environmental virtue ethics, virtue jurisprudence, aretaic medical ethics, professional ethics, educational theory, civic virtue and deliberative democracy, and philosophy of love and sex. The paper concludes with reflections on the vibrancy of contemporary work in applied virtue ethics, along with discussion of prospects and challenges.

- by Guy Axtell
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- Applied Ethics, Virtue Ethics, Medical Ethics, Environmental Virtue Ethics

The European Medical Information Framework (EMIF) project, funded through the IMI programme (Innovative Medicines Initiative Joint Undertaking under Grant Agreement No. 115372), has designed and implemented a federated platform to connect health data from a variety of sources across Europe, to facilitate large scale clinical and life sciences research. It enables approved users to analyse securely multiple, diverse, data via a single portal, thereby mediating research opportunities across a large quantity of research data. EMIF developed a code of practice (ECoP) to ensure the privacy protection of data subjects, protect the interests of data sharing parties, comply with legislation and various organisational policies on data protection, uphold best practices in the protection of personal privacy and information governance, and eventually promote these best practices more widely. EMIF convened an Ethics Advisory Board (EAB), to provide feedback on its approach, platform, and the EcoP. The most important challenges the ECoP team faced were: how to define, control and monitor the purposes (kinds of research) for which fed-erated health data are used; the kinds of organisation that should be permitted to conduct permitted research; and how to monitor this. This manuscript explores those issues, offering the combined insights of the EAB and EMIF core ECoP team. For some issues, a consensus on how to approach them is proposed. For other issues, a singular approach may be premature but the challenges are summarised to help the community to debate the topic further. Arguably, the issues and their analyses have application beyond EMIF, to many research infrastructures connected to health data sources.

- by Luciano Floridi and +2
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- Business Ethics, Medical Sociology, Computer Science, Robotics (Computer Science)

A eudaimonist interpretation of ecological virtue is both conceptually and practically preferable to non-eudaimonist or hybrid understandings. Concern for our own flourishing as human beings, properly understood as rational but interdependent and ecologically situated creatures, is sufficient to ground a fully formed and operationalisable conception of ecological virtue. Adding in ideas of the intrinsic value of the nonhuman world is unnecessary as well as meta-ethically problematic. Ecocentric objections to the alleged anthropocentrism of ecological eudaimonism rest on a false dichotomy between human and non-human interests. Ecological eudaimonism also has important strategic and political value since from this perspective, an appeal to virtue is not a moral injunction to act contrary to one's self-interest, but an invitation to consider more deeply what that self-interest really consists in. Only if ecological virtue is understood to contribute directly to human flourishing can such appeals be coherent or effective, particularly if they are to be linked with concepts of citizenship. A eudaimonist perspective makes clear that egalitarianism may be seen as an important ecological virtue, reflecting insights long held in some 'non-Western' cultures.

- by Mike Hannis
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- Virtue Ethics, Environmental Ethics, Environmental Virtue Ethics, Eudaimonism

There has been an increase of interest in the development of what I call environmental virtue ethics (EVE). This paper presents what are some of the central features of this project. The first part is a general description of EVE, showing why there is a need for it and how EVE fits within the general framework of environmental ethics. The second part spells out some of the central features of EVE including an account of the good life as flourishing in an expanded or mixed biotic community, and provides a tentative list of important environmental virtues. The third part is an examination of one such virtue: friendship, showing how and understanding of it can provide insight to some current issues in environmental ethics. The final section addresses a challenge to the project of EVE and concludes with a discussion of some implications that follow from this project

- by Geoffrey B Frasz
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- Environmental Ethics, Environmental Virtue Ethics