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      The environment and natural rights

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      Date
      2004-11-01
      Author
      Osigwe, Uchenna W.
      Type
      Thesis
      Degree Level
      Masters
      Metadata
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      Abstract
      The argument advanced is this thesis is that the entities that make up the environment are those that do not owe their origin to any willful creative activity but have evolved through accidental natural processes. This fact of not being willfully created makes the environment ontologically independent and confers on it intrinsic value as opposed to instrumental value. This intrinsic value is one that all the entities that make up the environment share. It is further argued that this intrinsic value is aesthetic rather than moral. Only beings that are specially endowed with certain capacities, like reflection and understanding, could be said, in the context of this work, to have intrinsic moral value in the sense of being moral agents. But as moral agents, we need to give moral considerability to all the natural entities in the environment since they share the same natural right with us, based on our common origin. So, even though the nonhuman, natural entities in the environment do not have moral rights, they have natural rights. It is further argued that this natural right could be best safeguarded in a legal framework.
      Degree
      Master of Arts (M.A.)
      Department
      Philosophy
      Program
      Philosophy
      Supervisor
      Howe, Leslie A.
      Committee
      Reed, Maureen; O'Hagan, Emer; Hudson, Robert G.; Dwyer, Philip
      Copyright Date
      November 2004
      URI
      http://hdl.handle.net/10388/etd-12212004-163822
      Subject
      Nature
      ethic of the environment
      Platonism
      the ontological independence of the environment
      the pre-Socratics
      the intrinsic aesthetic value of the environment
      the Igbo traditional attitude to the environment
      dualistic attitude regarding the environment
      Hinduism
      Buddhism and Christianity and their attitudes to
      the dominance of Christian dogmatic attitude to t
      independent and accidental natural processes
      conceptlessness of the aesthetic value of nature
      the theory of creation ex nihilo
      the purposelessness of the environment
      Intrinsic and instrumental values
      natural objects and artifacts
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      • Graduate Theses and Dissertations

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