PHL302: Environmental Ethics
Professor: Craig DeLancey
Office: Campus Center 212A
Email: craig.delancey@oswego.edu
Office Hours: MWF 3:00-4:00 and by appointment



What this course is for

Environmental ethics is a broad field of study, but our main theme will be questions like:

  • What kinds of organisms deserve moral respect? What about them is deserving of respect?
  • Do species deserve moral respect? Do ecosystems? Does land?
  • What is sustainability?
  • What is wilderness?
We will narrow our focus in two ways. First, we will primarily be concerned with ethical problems and conceptual problems. Philosophy is not a discipline to settle questions about, for example, how severe global warming will be. It is a discipline to tell us how we should react, given different estimates of how severe global warming will be. Second, we will focus on non-anthropocentric approaches, because these are the most interesting and most demanding theories to develop and clarify. This means we will be spending less time on issues like which human groups suffer the most from environmental degradation. That's an issue best discussed by classical ethics.

Your commitment: What you must do to achieve these goals

Most of our readings will be articles that I will make available using BlackBoard. We'll be using the following text:
Cradle to Cradle, by Michael Braungart and William McDonough
Don't worry about grades, except to use them as an indicator of what you need to keep working on. But, to generate a final grade, the work will be weighed in the following way:
Reading assignments: 30%
Quizes: 40% (20% each)
Final paper: 30%
If you have a disabling condition which may interfere with your ability to successfully complete this course, please contact the Disability Services Office.

A rough schedule

These will likely change, but here is a draft schedule:
  • Week 1: Methods of philosophy. Basic issues. Anthropocentric ethics.
  • Week 2: Sentiest views and Animal Rights.
  • Week 3: Biocentric views.
  • Week 4: Metaphysical conundrums of biocentrism.
  • Week 5: What is a species? Do species deserve moral respect? Species versus individual organisms.
  • Week 6: Do ecosystems deserve moral respect? Does land deserve moral respect? What is wilderness?
  • Week 7: Economics and environmental ethics.
  • Week 8: Global warming.
  • Week 9: Global warming and responsibility to future generations.
  • Week 10: What is sustainability?
  • Week 11: What is sustainability? Continued. (truncated week--sorry!)
  • Week 12: Sustainability implemented. Cradle to Cradle design.
  • Week 13: A Green political economy?
  • Week 14: Ecopolitics and social ecology. Final thoughts.

Attendance

SUNY mandates attendance for your classes. However, I do not grade you for attendance. There could be, indirectly, some grading for attendance in the sense that I might give points for answering some of questions; but my motive there is only to recognize that the questions are important and to grade them so that you have some feedback on those questions. But this part of your grade will be small if existent.

Please note the following very important fact: I respect you and believe you should be allowed to manage your own time. But because I treat you with respect I demand that you act like you deserve that respect. That is: do not come to class to talk to the person next to you, to text message your friends back in the dorm, to surf Youtube, to read the newspaper. I consider this profoundly disrespectful, it distracts me a great deal, and it distracts the people around you. You can do these things somewhere else and I won't penalize you for doing so; so just stay in your dorm room, or go to the cafeteria, or anywhere else, if you want to do these things. Class time is for logic.

Of course, I understand that people like to talk to each other during class about class, asking their neighbor "What did DeLancey just say?" and so on. That's good -- in the best of all worlds we would all be doing that often during class. But manners require some taste and I'm sure you can show good taste in not overdoing that kind of talk to the point where I can't tell whether you're discussing logic or discussing lunch plans.

Similarly, don't come to class simply to leave after you hand in your homework, or come twenty minutes late, and so on. That's very distracting also. You can hand your work in at the Philosophy Department Office, if you only want to do that.

If you miss an exam and have an excused absence for the day you miss the exam, you may make it up, by special appointment with me, when you are able to come back to class. It is your responsibility to arrange any make-up exams as soon as you know you are going to miss the exam. Otherwise you may lose the opportunity to take the test, since I cannot give make-up exams after the class has gone over the answers.

Here is how you secure an excused absence: Only prior notification with credibly documented or easily verifiable reasons (e.g., medical visits to Mary Walker, documented participation in official sporting events, etc.) will result in excused absences. You must notify in writing, call, or email me prior to your absence from class. You must notify the Philosophy Dept. secretary, Lori Reitmeier, before you are going to be absent, via email at lori.reitmeier@oswego.edu, or by phone at x2249. However, you must make sure she knows your name, the number of the course, the date, and your easily verifiable reason, along with a request to forward the information to me. It is better to give your information to me, except when you are unable to communicate with my phone or email for some reason.

A note about late homework: I go over homeworks in the class after you hand them in. That means I can't accept a homework after that review, since it would be impossible to assess how you would have done on your own at that point. If you give me a homework late but before we review it in class, I will accept it, but it goes into my LATE pile, and I get to it someday--but it may take me a long while, and sometimes I won't grade late homeworks until finals week. So, it's much less useful for you because you might not receive timely feedback that way.

College Policy on Intellectual Integrity

Intellectual integrity on the part of all students is basic to individual growth and development through college course work. When academic dishonesty occurs, the teaching/learning climate is seriously undermined and student growth and development are impeded. For these reasons, any form of intellectual dishonesty is a serious concern and is therefore prohibited.

The full intellectual integrity policy can be found at www.oswego.edu/administration/registrar/policy_text.html#cpii

Schedule

I will frequently update an online schedule of readings and yassignments. It is your responsibility to check the www pages for the class at least every other day!

Phones

Please leave your phones and pads somewhere packed away. They are just a distraction to you and the people around you. I would ask you not bring a computer either (you can't really take notes on it, because we use strange symbols) but some people claim to need them. Since I don't grade for attendance, this is not a tough policy: stay in your dorm room if you want to text message or check Facebook.

Office Hours

In addition to the listed office hours, I encourage you to make appointments. I am available quite a bit. Please try to come to office hours with specific questions in mind. You can of course come with a general request for help, but it is always helpful if you spend a little time thinking about how I can best help you out.