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Much of early environmental ethics was born out of the belief that the ecological crisis can only truly be solved by overcoming a pernicious worldview that limits all intrinsic value to human beings. Returning to this originating impulse, Value, Beauty, and Nature contends that, to make progress within environmental ethics, philosophers must explicitly engage in environmental metaphysics. Grounded in an organicist process worldview, Brian G. Henning shows that it is possible to make progress in key debates within environmental philosophy, including those concerning the nature of intrinsic value; anthropocentrism; hierarchy; the moral significance of beauty; the nature of individuality; teleology and the naturalistic fallacy; and worldview reconstruction. A Whiteheadian fallibilistic, naturalistic, event ontology allows for the recovery of systematic, speculative metaphysical thought without a revanchist movement toward a necessitarian philosophia perennis. Thus, in contrast to the claims of environmental pragmatists, Value, Beauty, and Nature demonstrates that environmental ethics would greatly benefit from an adequate metaphysical foundation and, of the candidate metaphysical systems, Alfred North Whitehead's philosophy of organism is the most adequate.
What is intrinsic value? What is the origin of value? Are people always superior to nature? This book is a philosophical analysis of the human relationship to the non-human world. It is a pioneering study of the philosophy of nature-conservation in relation to the discussion of intrinsic value. Vilkka develops a naturalistic or naturocentric theory of value that is based on ethical extensionism and pluralism. Vilkka analyzes natural values and environmental attitudes: zoocentrism, biocentrism, and ecocentrism. This book forms a taxonomy for nature having intrinsic value. The theory of intrinsic value is based on naturocentric and naturogenic values. The book questions the thesis of weak anthropocentrism that denies the existence of naturogenic values. In Vilkka's theory, animals and nature are the origin of value. She defends the existence of zoogenic and biogenic values in the non-human world and discusses the possibility of ecogenic value, nature as a whole having value independent of human or animal minds. Vilkka analyzes the goodness and rights of nature, the problem of priorities, and ecological humanism. A naturocentric recommendation is that the well-being of animals and nature should have priority over human values at least in some real decision contexts. Ecological humanism recommends an attitude of respect for people, animals, and nature. The book includes an extensive glossary, index, and bibliography.
The Nature of Value presents a theory of how economic value functions and how it drives growth, starting with tiny sparks of innovation and scaling all the way up to the full scope of the economy. Nick GogertyÕs exploration of value borrows from a wide array of disciplines, including anthropology, psychology, physics, sociology, and ethics, but most of all, it examines how evolutionÕs processes can help investors understand the economy and how investors can use this new understanding to improve their allocation decisions. Starting with a look at how innovations can help firms succeed, Gogerty looks at the economic niches in which firms compete and explores how firms can create defensive ÒmoatsÓ to enhance their chances of survival. He shows allocators how to adjust their actions for best performance and returns and what to look for when assessing company management, supporting his arguments with extensive data and years of practitioner experience from scientific, social, and economic disciplines. Intuitive illustrations are used to illuminate central concepts and ideas. GogertyÕs practical takeaways, couched in vivid explanations, will help investors of all backgrounds gain fresh insight into market mechanics.
'The peacock's tail makes me sick!' said Charles Darwin. That's because the theory of evolution as adaptation can't explain why nature is so beautiful. It took the concept of sexual selection for Darwin to explain that, a process that has more to do with aesthetic taste than adaptive fitness. Survival of the Beautiful is a revolutionary new examination of the interplay of beauty, art, and culture in evolution. Taking inspiration from Darwin's observation that animals have a natural aesthetic sense, philosopher and musician David Rothenberg probes why animals, humans included, have an innate appreciation for beauty - and why nature is, indeed, beautiful.
Nature, Aesthetics, and Environmentalism: From Beauty to Duty addresses the complex relationships between aesthetic appreciation and environmental issues and emphasizes the valuable contribution that environmental aesthetics can make to environmentalism. Allen Carlson, a pioneer in environmental aesthetics, and Sheila Lintott, who has published widely in aesthetics, combine important historical essays on the appreciation of nature with the best contemporary research in the field. They begin with the scientific, artistic, and aesthetic foundations of current environmental beliefs and attitudes. Then they offer views on the conceptualization of nature and the various debates on how to properly and respectfully appreciate nature. The book introduces positive aesthetics, the belief that everything in nature is essentially beautiful, even the devastation caused by earthquakes or floods, and the essays in the final section explicitly bring together aesthetics, ethics, and environmentalism to explore the ways in which each might affect the others. Book jacket.
In a book that is itself beautifully written, renowned philosopher Roger Scruton explores this timeless concept, asking what makes an object--either in art, in nature, or the human form--beautiful.--From publisher description.
This is a collection of contemporary writings on the work of Holmes Rolston, III. The authors contributing to this volume are a mixture of senior scholars in environmental ethics and new voices in philosophy and in literature. Together they provide an in depth evaluation of many of the topics discussed by Rolston. Rolston himself, in a detailed reply to each of his critics at the end of the volume, reveals where some of these criticisms sting him the most.
No values figure as pervasively and intimately in our lives as beauty and other aesthetic values. They animate the arts, as well as design, fashion, food, and entertainment. They orient us upon the natural world. And we even find them in the deepest insights of science and mathematics. For centuries, however, philosophers and other thinkers have identified beauty with what brings pleasure. Concerned that aesthetic hedonism has led us to question beauty's significance, Dominic McIver Lopes offers an entirely new theory of beauty in this volume. Beauty engages us in action, in concert with others, in the context of social networks. Lopes's 'network theory' explains the social dimension of aesthetic agency, the tie between beauty and pleasure, the importance of disagreement in matters of taste, and the reality of aesthetic values as denizens of the natural world. The two closing chapters shed light on why aesthetic engagement is so important to quality of life, and why it deserves (and gets) lavish public support. Being for Beauty offers a fresh contribution to aesthetics but also to thinking about metanormativity, the metaphysics of value, and virtue theory.
Environmental scientist and writer Haydn Washington argues that we will not solve the environmental crisis unless we change our worldview and ethics, and to do so we must rejuvenate our sense of wonder at nature. This book focuses on humanity’s relation with nature, and the sense of wonder and belonging common to indigenous cultures and children everywhere. Drawing on events in the author’s own four decades working to protect wild places, and the current literature on wonder, it examines what a sense of wonder is, what it has been called in different cultures, and our high points of wonder at nature. It also looks at the ‘Great Divide’ in worldview between anthropocentrism and ecocentrism, and considers the problem of anthropocentric theory in academia, arguing that the focus should instead be on harmony with nature. The book concludes with an examination of why wonder has become buried in Western society and considers ways in which it can be revived, including rituals and education. It also considers how wonder helps humanity to become ‘whole’. The final chapter presents the road back to wonder and how wonder towards nature can be restored in Western society. This book will be of great interest to environmental scientists, conservation biologists, environmental philosophers and ecological ethicists, as well as environmentalists, educators, eco-psychologists, and students looking at sustainability, deep ecology, and environmental philosophy and ethics.