The Death of the Ethic of Life

ISBN-13: 9780190923877 / Angielski / Twarda / 2019 / 224 str.

John Basl

Recenzje

This book declares the death of biocentric individualism, the view that all and only individual living organisms are morally considerable. Basl first provides a useful review of argument strategies that proponents have used to defend the view. He then makes a compelling case that the view is untenable, because a plausible account of the interests of non-conscious organisms will imply both that certain 'collectives' of living organisms have interests and that artifacts do too. Basl's sophisticated critique will need to be addressed by any future proponent of biocentric individualism, and if a scholar is interested only in understanding where biocentric individualism came from and why it is a minority position in environmental ethics, then this book contains all that an environmental ethicist who isnt a champion of the view needs to know about it.

O autorze

John Basl is Assistant Professor of Philosophy at Northeastern University. He works in normative philosophy and applied ethics, with emphasis on the ethical and epistemological challenges raised by emerging technologies. He is the co-editor of Designer Biology: The Ethics of Intensively Engineering Biological and Ecological Systems (Lexington Books, 2013).