Repository logo

Environmental Ethics: Anthologies and Journal Articles

Permanent URI for this collection

https://hdl.handle.net/10217/100486

Browse

Browsing Environmental Ethics: Anthologies and Journal Articles by Subject "altruism"

Now showing 1 - 2 of 2
  • Thumbnail Image
    ItemOpen Access
    Duties to endangered species (BioScience)
    (Colorado State University. Libraries, 1985) Rolston, Holmes, 1932-, author; American Institute of Biological Sciences, publisher
    Neither scientists nor ethicists have realized how concern for endangered species requires an unprecedented mix of biology and ethics. The usual approach says that there are only duties to other persons concerning species. Species are resources, rivets in ecosystems, a Rosetta stone for natural history. Direct duties to species requires analysis of what a species is, a dynamic life form, which the individual inherits, instantiates, and passes on. The wrong that humans are doing is stopping the historical flow in which the vitality of life is laid.
  • Thumbnail Image
    ItemOpen Access
    Terrestrial and extraterrestrial altruism
    (Colorado State University. Libraries, 2014) Rolston, Holmes, 1932-, author; Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg, publisher
    How Earthbound are values and ethics? We humans enjoy a surprising transcendence of localized body and place. We are always situated somewhere, but it does not follow that all our knowledge is situational. True, science is a human enterprise. True, ethics is a human activity - even biologically-based. But can we expect to share some of our science and ethics with extraterrestrials? Perhaps in the search for extraterrestrial intelligence, the question to ask is not about the value of pi, or the atomic number of carbon. A more revealing test might be to ask whether one should tell the truth, keep promises, or be just. The Golden Rule may be as universally true as is the theory of relativity.