Browsing by Author "Jankunis, Frank"

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    Rethinking Environment: The Ethics of a Constructionist View of Our Relation to Nature
    (2016) Jankunis, Frank; Habib, Allen; McShane, Katie; Ereshefsky, Marc; Gerlach, S. Craig; Framarin, Chris
    In this thesis I argue that the constructionist theory of the relation between organism and environment has several important implications for ethics. Chapter 1 lays the groundwork for later chapters by elucidating the concepts and terms used in later discussions and providing the motivation for the project. In Chapter 2 I introduce the constructionist theory of the relation between organism and environment. In Chapter 3 I argue that the constructionist theory can be used to criticize exemplars of individualism and holism in ethics and to criticize the idea that individualism and holism are incompatible. In Chapter 4 I turn to climate change and geoengineering, arguing that a class of objection to geoengineering cannot be sustained in light of the theory of the constructed niche. In Chapter 5 I argue that the constructionist theory provides reason to recognize moral obligations to environments, providing a convincing answer to a central theoretical problem in environmental ethics.