Skip to content
University of Maryland LibrariesDigital Repository at the University of Maryland
    • Login
    View Item 
    •   DRUM
    • Theses and Dissertations from UMD
    • UMD Theses and Dissertations
    • View Item
    •   DRUM
    • Theses and Dissertations from UMD
    • UMD Theses and Dissertations
    • View Item
    JavaScript is disabled for your browser. Some features of this site may not work without it.

    Environmental Human Rights, Natural Law Theory, and Nature's Aesthetic Value

    Thumbnail
    View/Open
    Stevens_umd_0117E_12675.pdf (2.295Mb)
    No. of downloads: 358

    Date
    2011
    Author
    Stevens, Christopher William
    Advisor
    Levinson, Jerrold
    Morris, Christopher
    Metadata
    Show full item record
    Abstract
    I argue that nature ought to be preserved because its existence is required for a particularly significant constituent of human well-being, a constituent so significant that the means to it -- provision of and ready access to indigenous and ecologically sound nature -- are worthy of being secured by legal right. The constituent is a complex cognitively-grounded and perceptually-induced emotive experience best characterized as an aesthetic one. In the current policy and social climate this characterization will to most policymakers and concerned citizens hardly convey its significance for either well-being or the preservationist cause. Hence the need for its presentation and defense. This view of the justification of environmental preservation is different from those common in the environmental ethics literature and in environmental policy. It includes neither an appeal to nature's purported intrinsic value nor an appeal to provisioning, regulating, or supporting ecosystem services such as clean air and water, climate control, and biomass production, though these are secured secondarily if indigenous and ecologically sound nature is primarily secured as a means to the experience. The dissertation consists of eight self-contained but interrelated chapters in which I argue for the following: interest/instrumental theory of rights; neo-sentimentalist buck-passing account of nature's value; merging of the scientific-cognitivist conception of the appropriate aesthetic experience of nature with a wonder-based account; the consistency of J. S. Mill's harm principle with the principle of utility in the context of Mill's qualitative hedonism; expansion of the philosophical aesthetician's self-understanding of his task to include the public policy-relevant aspects of his discipline in terms of the contribution that appropriate, merited aesthetic experience can make to well-being; neo-sentimentalist buck-passing account of aesthetic experience and aesthetic value.
    URI
    http://hdl.handle.net/1903/12235
    Collections
    • Philosophy Theses and Dissertations
    • UMD Theses and Dissertations

    DRUM is brought to you by the University of Maryland Libraries
    University of Maryland, College Park, MD 20742-7011 (301)314-1328.
    Please send us your comments.
    Web Accessibility
     

     

    Browse

    All of DRUMCommunities & CollectionsBy Issue DateAuthorsTitlesSubjectsThis CollectionBy Issue DateAuthorsTitlesSubjects

    My Account

    LoginRegister
    Pages
    About DRUMAbout Download Statistics

    DRUM is brought to you by the University of Maryland Libraries
    University of Maryland, College Park, MD 20742-7011 (301)314-1328.
    Please send us your comments.
    Web Accessibility