Ronald B. Meyers
University of Chicago
meyers@uchicago.edu
"A Heuristic for Considering the Diversity of Environmental Values and Ethics"
ABSTRACT
This article describes a portion of a larger research project to develop a heuristic and set of
psychometric scales to carefully and broadly consider and measure beliefs in environmental knowledge, values,
ethics, and support for environmental protection. This article focuses upon the heuristic, that: 1) provides a set
of terms and concepts to distinguish a broad range of environmental values and ethics (twelve types of
environmental ethics are defined) ; 2) can be used to increase self-awareness of environmental values and
ethics; 3) supports value clarification efforts by those in conflict mediation by helping to identify divergent and
convergent environmental beliefs; 4) supports researchers, by providing philosophically based methods to
systematically distinguish different aspects of environmental values and ethics. The heuristic contains seven
general primary steps that explore nineteen different dimensions of beliefs about the environment, from
knowledge of ecological interdependence, to belief in capacity to suffer, a variety of value beliefs, moral
obligations, and support for environmental protection.
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Biographical Notes
Ron Meyers, Ph.D., is a Lecturer and Research Associate and the University of Chicago, in the Harris Graduate
School of Public Policy, and the Environmental Studies Program.
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A HEURISTIC FOR CONSIDERING THE DIVERSITY OF ENVIRONMENTAL VALUES AND
ETHICS
Introduction
The heuristic contains seven general primary steps that explore nineteen different dimensions of
beliefs about the environment, from knowledge of ecological interdependence, to belief in capacity to suffer, a
variety of value beliefs, moral obligations, and support for environmental protection. This paper discusses a
heuristic for considering environmental values and ethics*. While it is still a work in progress, it has been of
assistance to this researcher in exploring and systematically comparing the almost bewildering diversity of
environmental values that people hold, the various descriptions of values generated by researchers, where these
values converge or diverge, and their relationship to environmental protection. It is hoped that the heuristic will
be of use for individuals who wish to explore their beliefs, values, and ethics by using a method that does not
judge the normative correctness of the beliefs, but will support the comparison of individual beliefs to a variety
of environmental ethical beliefs. For researchers and policymakers, it provides a method for systematically
comparing several important dimensions of environmental beliefs, values, ethics, and policy. I do not claim that
the nineteen dimensions described are a complete list of the dimensions of environmental values. Nor does this
work begin to capture the diverse personal characteristics argued to be important to the formation of these
values. It is not a model of how to predict environmental behavior, as such models need to include exogenous
variables such as the barriers to conducting such actions, as so skillfully shown by Fransson and Garling (1999).
Rather, the heuristic can support the efforts of educators and researchers to have a method for conceptually
and empirically comparing various theories of the relationship of knowledge, beliefs, values, ethics, and support
for environmental protection.
Over the several years that the heuristic has been in development, it has increasingly provided this
researcher with the ability to systematically evaluate and compare theories of education and curricula to identify
important value components, and assess their plausibility, suitability or acceptability for my research goals.
Since it was initially shared, a number of educators and researchers suggested it provided similar utility for their
work, and kindly suggested it be prepared for publication. Thus, it is hoped that educators with a wide variety
of positions concerning environmental values will find the heuristic helpful.
* The author wishes to thank Joe Heimlich and Bill Hall, The Ohio State University, and Ted Steck, University of Chicago,
for significant support to conduct the research, and Michael Kuby, National Opinion Research Center, for editorial
assistance.
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The heuristic began in response to a research question that arose in response to an idea, extant among
many concerned with protecting the environment, seemingly a clarion call to many: namely, that we need to
change our environmental values in order to protect the environment. This idea occurs in many forms,
arguably inspired by a significant body of powerfully written prose, from noted authors such as Muir, Leopold,
Naess, and Rolston, a distinguished list of environmental philosophers. To this list I must add Cliff Knapp, our
own field's eminent environmental ethicist and educator. Their written works are primarily conceptual analyses
of ideas that are intended to reveal their beliefs about the morally right relationship of people to their
environment, conducted to change our beliefs and behavior towards the environment, and to improve the
environment itself, by considering our beliefs about environmental values and ethics. It is entirely reasonable
that these ideas, if they are to be justifiable as guides for our efforts in environmental education, should be able
to withstand rigorous inquiry.
As I studied environmental education and policy, the subject of environmental values and ethics
appeared so frequently that it appeared necessary to me to investigate what these writers, and others, meant, so
I could rely upon ideas that have a reasonable degree of certainty for helping us to achieve our goals of
protecting the environment. Literally thousands of journal articles and books have been written on the subject,
challenging researchers who seek to conduct "due diligence" on what has been proposed before we seek to
make our contributions. It has been eye-opening, and quite valuable, to find the depth and breadth of a
significant body of scholarly inquiry occurring in other fields, such as psychology, sociology, environmental
ethics, political science, and public policy, among other fields and disciplines. This academic interest includes
the development of numerous research projects and works in recent decades concerning environmental values
that have established the study of environmental values and ethics as an area of inquiry in many fields. One
aspect of this line of inquiry investigates the relationship of beliefs in environmental values and ethics and
support for environmental protection. Here, I do not intend to argue for which beliefs are morally correct to
hold, or what theory of values and their relationship to environmentally responsible behavior we ought to
follow. There are a striking diversity of beliefs about what is the morally correct treatment of the environment,
a clear need for additional terms to describe this diversity, and tools to organize these beliefs in a way that helps
us to compare and understand them.
One aspect of this paper is an attempt to more usefully conceptualize values and their relationship to
environmental quality. This is a challenging task, given the body of work that precedes this effort. It is a task of
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import, given the consequences that occur as a result of our beliefs about the relationship. In many
organizations, we attempt to change behavior or beliefs based upon some model of what beliefs people need to
have in order to obtain the behaviors we want them to do. In this paper, we I use the term "education" I
include all of efforts intended to change belief, or affect. Given the enormous personal, organizational and
societal resources expended in educational efforts, what we, as educators, believe about the relationship of
environmental knowledge, beliefs, and values to environmental behavior guide our choices about how to spend
our time and effort. The sum of our efforts are enormous, in time, money and personal effort, hence the care
taken here to develop methods to support research and evaluation of these complicated concepts.
We first need to briefly review the history of environmental education, focusing on how the field of
environmental education has treated environmental values, and how the heuristic can help address the
challenge of developing new concepts and approaches to considering values.
While the author holds a pragmatic epistemology (as well as philosophies of education and research)
the heuristic itself is designed to explore personal beliefs about values, the environment, and their relationship,
so it would be useful for those with a range of epistemological beliefs, from positivists to postmodernists.
Background
Environmental Education
Historical Roots of Environmental Education
The history of environmental education provides insights into the development of increased interest
in the profession in different types of environmental values, thus helping to establish the context of this study.
Roth, Cantrell, and Bosquet (1980) identified four educational movements in the 20th century that significantly
influenced the development of environmental education: nature study, conservation education, progressive
education, and science education. They explained that nature study arose from concern with teaching methods
that emphasized memorization, books and lectures, and isolation from nature, leading to efforts to teach about
the natural world in outdoor settings. They noted that the conservation movement arose out of concern for
protecting human well being from the adverse effects from environmental abuse, clearly implying that it is
human life that is of primary concern, and that the environment is to be protected to assure human survival.
These environmental concerns about misuse of soil, rangelands, forests, and wildlife, led to programs to teach
conservation practices that would protect the environment in order to improve human welfare. They stated
that John Dewey's work to develop the progressive education movement resulted in curriculum that met
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children's needs both for direct experience with the their world, and consideration of how their actions in it
affect their welfare. The application of this approach to the study of the environment led to more studentoriented approaches, including a range of outdoor educational programming. Science education brought a
more organized approach to education about the environment that was, of course, science-based, but not
ecological or sociopolitical. Each of these methods emphasized improvement of human quality of life through
education, be it to increase appreciation of nature, or to increase the short or long-term use of natural
resources. Selected aspects of how the field of environmental education built upon this history are reviewed
next.
Environmental Education Situated as Part of Larger Community
Environmental education historically has been a profession comprised of individuals with diverse
points of views concerning the appropriate human-environmental relationship, ranging from those in the
Green party and movement (Hunter, 1979; Tokar, 1987; Goodin, 1992) who developed educational materials
and programs that advocated a ban on nuclear power plants and internal combustion engines and a return to a
simpler lifestyle, to those in organizations such as the Edison Electric Institute who promoted the responsible
use of these sources of energy to maintain American lifestyles. Like other fields or professions, environmental
education occurs in a larger social setting that interacts with and affects it. (Weber, 1905; Kempton, Boster, and
Hartley, 1995). In this sense, the history of environmental education just discussed focused on the more
institutional arenas of education, in schools, outdoor education centers, and government. In a broader sense,
though, environmental education to change environmental values and behaviors is conducted by innumerable
organizations, including those with political and religious foci.
Environmental education has been concerned with the human-environment relationship and human
attitudes and behaviors toward the environment. Much curriculum and teaching effort has addressed, either
directly or tangentially, what they believe people ought to believe about the environment, and how they ought
to relate to it. For example, educational programs concerning rainforests advocate for changes in many beliefs,
including those concerning the value of rainforests, and the need for their protection. An influential aspect of
the larger setting that appears to have continuing influence on the field of environmental education is the area
of environmental ethics, especially as ideas from it are amplified in the field of environmental history.
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This view of the two fields (environmental education - environmental ethics) as subcultures within a
larger culture of environmental concern is substantiated by the similarity of language and interest in
environmental values and ethics concepts used by both cultures. For example, Knapp (1999), like many in
environmental education, discusses the virtues of a biocentric and/or ecocentric ethic, and, while cautioning
against indoctrinating students, also stresses the importance of primary and secondary educators teaching their
students the value of such beliefs, drawing upon the writings of John Muir (1916) and Aldo Leopold (1949).
The rich variety of formal and nonformal curricular resources used in environmental education contains ethical
statements and worldviews that are also found in environmental ethics. Terms such as ecocentric, biocentric,
anthropocentric are common, as are assertions that adoption of a particular environmental value or ethic is
morally required are found in the literature of both fields (Armstrong & Botzler, 1993; Van DeVeer & Pierce,
1998; NAAEE, 1995; NAAEE, 1996; NAAEE, 1997; Gigliotti, 1996). These observations show that the field
of environmental education operates in a milieu of influence about environmental values and ethics that
suggests the need for careful treatment of such values by educators.
The widespread interest in environmental values and ethics, and their relation to environmental
quality, has been a subject of academic inquiry and broadly disseminated literature for many years. From Muir's
work that argued for a pantheistic view of nature, to White's (1967) arguments that the JudeoChristian/anthropocentric view of nature led to environmental destruction, there are now a growing and
increasingly influential group of environmental ethicists and their advocates who have argued for the need for
humanity to adopt a new environmental ethic that is ecocentric or biocentric. This has inspired the
development of a number of posited environmental ethics, worldviews, and paradigms, and a body of research
to investigate these views. In addition, it appears to coincide with, and may have contributed to a growing
social movement of environmentalists with strong ecological worldviews, as measured by Dunlap, et al's New
Environmental Paradigm (1978, 2002) which has documented how an increasing number of people in the US
hold it over time. Since, the direction of my research is to investigate values and ethics in more detail, I
observed that a number of ethicists assert, to differing degrees, that adherence to a particular view is necessary
for ensuring environmental sustainability, or a morally sound relationship with the environment (e.g., Muir,
1916; Naess, 1989; Leopold, 1949; Singer, 1979; Rolston, 1988; Warren, 1990; Knapp, 1999). These works have
significantly influenced the professional and academic communities engaged in environmental issues,
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particularly those involved in environmental education and environmental policy. This influence is described in
greater detail to show the context and need for this study.
The way that the environmental ethicists concerned with beliefs about the human-environment
relationship, particularly the moral aspects of those beliefs have approached their work is important to note.
Van DeVeer and Pierce (1998), in a view frequently found by those who write about environmental ethics
(Muir, 1916, Leopold, 1949; Rolston, 1988; Singer, 1975; Naess, 1989), define an environmental ethic as the
morally proper set of beliefs and/or behaviors of people towards the environment, and state or imply that the
purpose of the field is to advance individual and societal adoption of a specific environmental ethic, usually the
ethic advocated by the author. This view differs from the dominant view of ethicists, and environmental
ethicists, like Rosen (1996), who stated that environmental ethics is the study of moral phenomenon
concerning the human-environment relationship, and show that there are many different environmental ethical
theories, some more plausible than others. For educators unfamiliar with the diversity and differential
plausibility of environmental ethical theories, it is important to note that they may encounter a number of
writers who argue that there is only one ethic, their “right” ethic. This is not a helpful approach for educators
who need assistance in understanding the diversity of environmental ethical positions that exist, who need tools
for how to compare the differences in these theories, and tools to help them undertake the extremely sensitive
work of engaging these values. Educational theorists such as Straughan (1988) and Strike and Soltis 1992, stated
that education about values in public settings (i.e., American "public" schools and institutions are those
supported by state funds, while private schools are not) by needs to compare different views in order to be
sound, not indoctrinate people into a particular set of values. Still, environmental ethicists write influential
works to change human beliefs about environmental values and ethics, an effort that is arguably concerned
with similar subject matter as environmental education. For this study, environmental ethics and environmental
education will be considered to be two fields that are subcultures of a larger culture of concerned
environmental professionals, volunteers, and activists. The influence of the field of ethics, which argues for the
adoption of particular views, necessitates that the field of environmental education be extremely careful to not
indoctrinate inadvertently, especially those in schools, to ethical views that they may personally find quite
appealing. It is hoped that the heuristic will aid educators who want to discuss values and ethics, but want to do
so without using indoctrinative methods. On the other hand, those who wish to use more indoctrinative
methods may find this to be a helpful tool for identifying the values they believe are correct.
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Evaluating what types of beliefs are appropriate for educators to change, and what educational
methods are appropriate to use, is extremely complex and a vital issue for the profession to address. This has
led the NAAEE to undertake the Guidelines for Excellence Project. Heimlich and Harako (1994), Heimlich
and Norland (1994), Heimlich and Meyers (1998), Knapp (1999), and the Materials Guidelines (1996) call for
educators to increase their self-understanding of their values, and for the field to enhance efforts to help
educators do so. This research project may help meet this call by developing and applying heuristic tools for
evaluating beliefs concerning environmental values and ethics.
History of the Purpose of Environmental Education
Despite the relative newness of the field of the environmental education, which started about the
1960's, tracing the history of the purpose of environmental education is not a straightforward task. The field is
not a profession, using Bayles' (2003) definition, as it requires certification by neither a professional
organization nor single organization in the US in order to practice, nor does it have a code of professional
conduct that guides behavior. Likewise, there is no single organization in the US, or internationally, that
represents the diverse paid and volunteer educators who teach, research or administer programs that involve
teaching about the environment. Of course, periodic international summits that have included large numbers of
governmental and non-governmental environmental educators have occurred since the 1970’s, to coordinate
efforts of many organizations that "do" environmental education. These summits have developed remarkable
statements of purpose that guided efforts. The Tblisi Declaration reads,
"The goals of environmental education are:
to foster clear awareness of, and concern about, economic, social,
political, and ecological interdependence in urban and rural areas;
to provide every person with opportunities to acquire the knowledge,
values, attitudes, commitment, and skills needed to protect and improve
the environment;
to create new patterns of behavior of individuals, groups, and society as a
whole towards the environment." (1977)
There have been many regional, national, continental and international organizations that have waxed
and waned over the years that self-identify as organizations dedicated to teaching about the environment. They
have, of course, had many different approaches and emphases that evolved over time, as organizations grew,
declined, merged and split. Given the authors familiarity with environmental education in the US, the details of
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paper will primarily focus on US history, but it is hoped that the conceptual analyses will be useful to those in
other nations, especially in developing countries, as the work was done with a sensitivity to the challenges
facing the majority of world’s population, particularly those whose income is inadequate to meet their basic
needs. I am particularly aware that a majority of world needs additional income in order to consume more
resources in order to meet their basic dietary, housing, medical, educational and cultural needs. Beyond a mere
survival level of resource use, I would argue that we should also recognize the importance of people being
given the opportunity to fully participate in economic, social and political life, which would mean that most of
the world’s population is in a position of deservedly consuming more resources. I have tried to show the field
of environmental education does not have an authoritative statement of purpose, but that there have been
many statements. We turn to examining a few of the leading contenders before showing how a conflict in
purpose helped to inspire this work.
In the US, Roth (1969) stated that the purpose of environmental education is to develop citizens who
are knowledgeable about the environment, aware of environmental problems and management alternatives
useful in solving these problems; and who are motivated to act responsibly to develop diverse environments
that are optimum for a quality life. Similarly, the Environmental Education Act of 1970 stated that
environmental education is to promote citizen understanding of and concern for the environment, and
responsible action to improve the quality of life. The Tblisi Declaration of Principles for Environmental
Education (1978) stated that environmental education should increase awareness of and sensitivity to the
environment to lead to actions to protect the environment. Hungerford, Peyton, and Wilke’s (1980) definition
has influenced many in environmental education: that environmental education aid citizens in becoming
environmentally knowledgeable, skilled and dedicated to working toward a balance between quality of life and
quality of the environment.
Education for or Education about the Environment
As with most statements of purpose, the slight differences in wording shown above reflect slight
differences of view that grew into major divergences of views. In the field of environmental education, a debate
has raged for years over whether or not we should teach about or for the environment. Roth’s, the
environmental education Act, and Hungerford, et al's purposes focus more on teaching about the environment,
to increase concern and consideration for it, and to motivate citizens to make responsible choices regarding it.
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On the other hand, the Tblisi approach, predominate in environmental education today, also teaches about the
environment, to increase concern/sensitivity for it, but emphasizes the importance of teaching that leads to
actions to protect the environment. Meyers (1996) analyzed the differences in educational philosophy that
underlie these approaches, arguing that those who teach about the environment are just as committed to
environmental protection, but also seek to use educational methods that rely upon a "democratic faith" in
people and their ability to make sound environmental decisions if they are well educated about the environment
and society.
From the view of pragmatists, educational methods that teach for the environment, by teaching
people which values to hold regarding the environment, and what choices they should make in terms of
environmental protection, are indoctrinative. For this paper, indoctrinative education is that which teachers
people what environmental values, beliefs, and/or behaviors to hold or do, based upon authority. To the extent
that teaching for the environment uses these methods, it is indoctrinative, especially when done in K-12 school
settings. Much conflict has arisen in the field between those who claim that teaching for the environment is
necessary is order to protect the environment, and is therefore right to do, and those who say that we must
teach about the environment, help students learn critical thinking skills to make choices and take actions, and
trust that people will make similar conclusions as environmental educators about the importance of protecting
the environment.
In the analysis of the history of the purpose of environmental education, Meyers (2002) observed that
during the founding of the profession a rough consensus had developed that, whatever the private beliefs of
educator's, they should promote environmental protection by somewhat indirect means: that of promoting and
providing education that included direct experience with the environment, a scientific understanding of
environmental processes and the value of the environment to humans well-being, and developing the social
and civic skills of learners so they could make informed decisions about how to effectively advance their
environmental protection goals. The goal was to support the development of a citizenry that was well informed
about environmental issues, a citizenry that tended to cooperatively identify and work towards solutions to
environmental issues. This approach drew upon and complemented pragmatic educational approaches (Dewey,
1916).
Dennis and Knapp provided a wonderful summary of the usefulness and need for the use of his work
in environmental education (1997). At its heart, this approach requires, on the part of educators, a "democratic
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faith" in learners - a trust that people who are provided with sound education about the environment, including
the sociopolitical environment, will make, in the long run, wiser environmental decisions about how to protect
the environment, than if educators indoctrinate them into a particular view of the value of the environment and
the choices they should make for its management and preservation. It is not known how many educators are
familiar with or attempt to follow this approach to education. Ryan, 1995, argues that educators say they
believe in pragmatic education, but tend to act otherwise, for a variety of reasons. I observe that trends in
environmental education and the larger social culture reflect a growing and widely ranging methodological
pluralism regarding educational methods and purposes in environmental education. Whatever the views of the
reader in regards to pragmatic philosophies of education, it was the author’s intention to develop a heuristic
that was a tool for considering a wide variety of beliefs, and their relations, useful for those who see the need to
teach for or about the environment. I leave it to the reader to judge if their purpose for using the heuristic is to
clarify their own or others beliefs, and/or to indirectly or directly change the beliefs of their audience.
Whatever the stance of the educator, the need for a tool to clarify values has increased in recent
decades as there has been a rise in the variety of strongly felt and highly divergent positions concerning
environmental education, positions that appear to have increasing numbers of advocates. Environmental
education, as a part of a broader culture of concerned environmental professionals and activists, is increasingly
influenced by these positions, which advocate the teaching and adoption of environmental values and ethics
that recognize the rights or intrinsic value of the environment (e.g., Singer, 1975; Naess, 1989, Rolston 1988),
not just because these entities deserve it, but because it is deemed necessary to protect the environment.
These advocates for adherence to different environmental values and ethics (including animal and
earth rights) frequently encourage, sometimes in strong terms, environmental educators toward teaching
methods that advocate particular environmental values, and ethics, including adoption of ecospiritual beliefs
and specific environmental behaviors (i.e., reduction in consumption of material goods, increased usage of
public transit and recycling, etc.) Evaluating whether or not these specific behaviors are morally or practically
correct is not the purpose of this paper. Rather, it is to provide the methods support critically examination of
public attitudes, the impacts of educational efforts, by expanding the language and conceptual tools we need.
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Environmental Education’s Historical Value Bases
The sections preceding this briefly discussed how nature study transformed into environmental
education by the 1960’s, with the goal of educating people about the environment in order to protect it for
human interests. Using a human basis for environmental protection had long been subjected to strong criticism
by environmental ethicists such as Muir (1916). As is well noted in the literature in environmental studies writ
broadly, and in environmental education, the schism between Muir, who sought to preserve nature for itself,
and Pinchot (1947), who sought to conserve nature for long-term human use, became a major divide between
environmentalists that is said to continue to this day. In this work, I shall show how the customary analysis of
the value basis for that divide is problematic today, and offer a solution.
The 20th century saw the rise of a number of environmental ethicists such as Singer (1975), Rolston
(1988), and Naess (1989), who argued that animals and the environment deserved protection in and of
themselves. The works of environmental historians, such as White (1967), Nash (1983), Milbrath (1984),
Passmore (1993) were influential in persuading a generation of environmentalists to the view that the
environment not only deserved consideration in and of itself, but that the environmental degradation seen in
America (and the world) were caused by Western values. This may have started with the publication of White’s
scathing critique of Judeo-Christianity’s anthropocentrism, where he posited it as the cause of a range of
serious social and environmental ills. The debate over this view rages today among environmentalists (Norton,
1995), with a number of noteworthy scholars calling for additional theoretical tools to work with values
(Atfield, Norton, Kempton, et al). It is hoped that the tools provided in the heuristic will help support a cooler
analysis of some of the important conceptual issues involved with environmental values.
Environmental Education Research on Environmental Values and Ethics
The quantity of research work in environmental education that has explicitly investigated
environmental values and ethics is relatively small, especially in comparison to other professions. A broad
search strategy on Lexis-Nexis (in August 1996) on the terms “values", "ethics", "morals”, yielded over 2000
results. Despite the volume of work conducted, few works had more than three general types of environmental
values (anthropocentric, biocentric or ecocentric) – a number that struck me as too small (even if parsimony in
categories was sought) to do justice to the diversity of values expressed by others. As will be explored in this
paper, it does not begin to provide an adequately rich description of the number of types of environmental
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values that are logically feasible to identify. Most alarming was the dearth of conceptual or practical tools that
would help environmentalists identify where they held values in common, and where they differed, despite
Norton, Atfield, and Disinger's call for such tools to help reduce the confusion and conflict over values that
divides the environmental movement. Additionally, no evaluation or measurement instruments were found that
could characterize the range of values that were expressed in oral and written form, to provide empirical
research on beliefs in values, and how these beliefs change according to socio-demographic characteristics,
and/or are impacted by educational curricula or experiences. Valliere’s (1994) excellent work identified a
number of types of values, but it neither provides a systematic approach for identifying and comparing a broad
range of values nor develops terminology to facilitate discussion of the reasons people might use for holding
diverse values. Thus, a need was seen to develop a heuristic to assist this researcher in navigating the complex
world of values, particularly their moral aspects, and their relation to environmental protection.
The number that are about environmental values is much fewer, with environmental education's
research work on environmental affect quite small, overall, compared to the extensive research performed on
human attitudes, beliefs, and behavior conducted in the disciplines of psychology, sociology, and political
science. In the field of environmental education, Iozzi (1984) identified many studies published between 1971
and 1982, and Marcinkowski and Mraczek (1996) identified 185 studies between 1980 and 1990. Affect here
means the emotional portion of attitudes. Again, relatively few of these studies investigated the value that
people place on the environment, or their moral and ethical beliefs, but focused on the impact of educational
programs on knowledge, attitudes (primarily non-value), and behavior. Still, it should be noted that many works
in environmental education have included several value questions as elements of larger instruments. The most
significant studies are described below.
Chou and Roth (1995) compared the beliefs of faculty at The Ohio State University and the National
Taiwan University regarding the importance of what students should know about the environment. The first
part of their Q-sort study asked respondents to identify the concepts they believed were important to teach in
environmental studies. The researchers organized these into 42 environmentally-related concepts. The second
phase asked respondents to sort the 42 environmentally-related concepts into seven "piles" of relative
importance. A factor analysis identified five constructs, the most important being the teaching of
environmental ethics. For OSU respondents, five of the 42 questions were about environmental ethics, while
the Taiwan University respondents did so for seven of the 42.
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Negra and Manning (1997) conducted a superb convenience sample study to identify a range of
environmental behaviors, values and ethics of park visitors in Vermont, and analyze how these visitor
characteristics affected park programming. Their analysis began with a content review of the environmental
literature that identified seventeen environmental ethics, which they grouped into five categories: Stewardship,
Utilitarian/conservations, Benign indifference, Radical environmentalism, and Anti-environment. They
developed a questionnaire to measure seventeen of these, using three general concepts, finding three
subgroups: spiritually based stewardship, religiously based anthropocentrism, and secular ethical extensionism.
The general dearth of research into environmental ethics in environmental education has led notable
researchers to call for additional work on values Disinger (1990) and Hungerford, et al (1980, 1990). In
environmental education and related fields, this study found that no conceptual schemes had been developed
that objectively and systematically distinguished, measured, and characterized a range of beliefs in
environmental values and ethics, that placed respondents into multiple, mutually exclusive categories of ethical
belief systems.
Educational and Political Psychology and Values
In my efforts to understand environmental values I searched for theories of values in educational
psychology. In part, this reflects my belief that in environmental education, since we are not a discipline, but an
emerging field that is breathtakingly interdisciplinary, we are well positioned to engage complex environmental
issues by drawing upon our unique interdisciplinary abilities. It was valuable to identify and incorporate the
wealth of methodological advancements and the findings being made in established disciplines, such as
psychology, education, sociology and political science.
One of the first names in modern measurement of morals is Kohlberg (1984), famous for his theory
of moral development. While Kohlberg’s theory addresses how we develop morally, it did not lend itself to
modification for the task of comparing environmental values and ethics, or helping the exploration of the
relationships of environmental knowledge, values and protection. Gilligan’s (1982) and Belenky’s (1986)
theories in feminist ethics, while challenging to apprehend and compare to other moral development theories,
also did not lend itself to this project. Thus, I was interested to find an impressive body of work in educational
and political psychology (Fishbein, Ajzen, Rokeach, Krosnick), showing that we have multiple and competing
values.
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Their work satisfied me that there was sufficient evidence to warrant the conclusion that we needed to
consider multiple types of values, so I turned to how this concept might bear on the original question of this
paper: that we must change our values in order to protect the environment. I began to reflect upon the way
environmental educators generally discuss environmental values, to consider the extent to which our discussion
incorporates recognition that we have multiple types of values. At this stage of my work, I was still painfully
confused over what the different types of values might be, as I was not finding ways of distinguishing values
beyond what seemed to me to be a too simplistic approaches, what Norton (1995) assessed as value monism,
or the belief that environmentalists and the public alike need to have one value, the “right” value, in order to
protect the environment. He argued that environmentalists are too divided, and need to unite to find the
common values that environmentalist's share, to create a movement that can achieve environmental and
economic sustainability. The influence of this idea in environmental education is addressed next.
Value Monism, Pluralism and Competing Values
A number of environmental ethicists and educators write works strike me as rather bipolar, in that if
you are environmentally "correct" or sensitive you are in the "right" category, and vice versa.
I refer to those who utilize Dunlap's fine New Environmental (Ecological) Paradigm,(1978, 2002), to
say that we either we have it, and can therefore be considered to be "with" those who are pro-environmental,
or don't have it, and are, by implication, the problematic "anti-environmental" believers. Similarly, Naess argues
that it is morally correct and necessary, in order to protect the environment, to adopt "deep ecology" beliefs, or
what is called an ecocentric belief. Not doing so means we are morally incorrect anthropocentrists who are the
problematic unbelievers. A large number of environmental ethicists, and those in environmental education who
endorse their beliefs, might use slightly different principles to distinguish people's beliefs into one of two or
three groups - either as the problematic anthropocentrists, or the morally virtuous and pro-environmental
biocentrists or ecocentrists.
The different principles range from those who interpret Muir to hold an ecocentric belief that
everything -- the wildness in nature, its aesthetic beauty, the ecological interactions, the mountains, rivers, trees,
all animals -- has intrinsic value and morally deserving of protection. If you do not believe it, you are not
ecocentric, and are part of the problem. Others might say the right principle to hold is to value all life, to
respect it, as Schweitzer argues, or all things that can suffer, as Singer argues. Each of these authors is a
14
profound thinker, who may have considered the extent to which people have multiple values that they believe
they need to balance, as Singer does briefly at the end of "Animal Liberation," in noting that it may be justified
to use non-human animals in medical research, even to cause them suffering, if it was necessary to do so to
prevent human suffering. However, what really struck me was a similarity among the ideas: you had the right
beliefs, were morally correct, and were going to help solve environmental problems, or you did not, were
morally wrong, and were the cause of the problem. In the section of this paper that incorporates some insights
from philosophy, I will explore how the heuristic emerged from trying to systematically evaluate these ideas,
and how it led to the general argument I am making, namely, that we need to consider environmental values in
multiple dimensions, sometimes as competing with other values, sometimes as different types of environmental
values, some of which we may share, particularly those in environmental protection, which others we still
disagree about, especially those about why we should protect the environment. Again, what struck me was that,
for all the truly profound environmental philosophy, and sensitivity of environmental educators, I found
remarkably few categories of types of beliefs in environmental values, very polarized, and quite judgmental,
again: either with the NEP or the old dominant social paradigm; either ecocentric, biocentric, or
anthropocentric, with anthropocentric the morally wrong category. I seriously questioned why this seemed to
be so, wondering if I simply did not understand the environmental philosophers, and, if I did, would no longer
be troubled by categorizing the majority of the human population into a morally, or socially, problem category
of environmental unbelievers. Alternatively, perhaps something was problematic with the concepts used by
environmental philosophers that were, in turn, used by many in environmental education, causing problems in
environmental education, and reducing our receptivity to the clear findings of educational and political
psychologists that we have multiple values.
While the evaluative nature of these approaches may be helpful for determining the degree of “proenvironmental” belief or behavior of a person or group, they warrant careful conceptual scrutiny and use,
particularly in terms of their validity, because of the enormous difficulties we face in developing sound
measures of attitudes that have value components. This paper does have another purpose not previously stated,
which is to discuss the conceptual foundations for empirical work to develop measures of the relationship of
knowledge, attitudes (values) and pro-environmental behavior. The heuristic, which was developed to explore
these relations, had the initial purpose of identifying an approach to developing empirical methods to explore
the initial question presented in the paper, that of exploring which values needed to be changed in order to
15
protect the environment. The work of other researchers to develop empirical measures of attitudes and
behavior, and explore their relations, has been enormously helpful to this research, providing part of the base
upon which this work could proceed. A discussion, including a critical assessment, of the conceptual
foundations of their empirical work will be helpful for showing the research that was conducted in developing
the heuristic.
One methodological challenge to the behavioralist approaches that dominated the social sciences
from Skinner (until, roughly, Bem’s (1964), Rokeach’s (1973) and Fishbein and Ajzen's (1975) revolutionary
foray’s into attitudinal measures), is the need to consider how external constraints (e.g., the price of the
environmental good, like water or access to recycling facilities) are covariants for the predicted behavior. For
example, if the studied behavior, recycling, is said to depend upon a particular value, then measures of the
relationship of the value to the behavior to incorporate a measure of the degree of feasibility or difficulty of
performing the behavior. Or, as economists ask, what is the opportunity cost of the behavior? For recycling,
are the subjects merely required to put out their commingled trash, which the city then separates and recycles,
or does it require an individual to separate and transport recyclables to another town? The differences in the
costs to the subject of these recycling behaviors differ a great deal. If a measure of pro-environmental behavior
included recycling, then the availability of recycling, in terms of the cost, in time, effort, and money (the
constraint) needs to be incorporated in the measure. Kaiser and Shimoda (1999) and Kaiser, Wolfing and
Shimoda (1999) demonstrated that recycling behavior was more affected by external constraints that from the
combined input of a series of attitudinal measures. For example, we attach high value to the ability to feed
ourselves today, and high value to being able to feed ourselves tomorrow, or next year, or ten years from now.
In the United States, and industrialized countries, it is less frequent that there or competing interests for food
today versus tomorrow, but it still occurs, and does so with great frequency in most of the world. Atfield (1991)
and others have shown that it is often a false dilemma to say that we have competing interests in environmental
protection and income, because many actions to protect the environment can be achieved at little or no
economic or personal cost, when improved technologies are processes are used to reduce pollutant generation
by reducing the consumption of materials in production, or capturing and recycling waste materials. With
farmers, net profits can be increased by reducing the costs of inputs (tillage, fertilizer, pesticides) more than the
decline in output, so there is a net benefit in the input costs to total crop price. Still, we must face the fact that
there are sometimes hard choices to be made between production for food, or logging for timber for homes,
16
and maintaining ecological integrity of an area, and that these choices are more frequent in countries where
resources are so scarce that there are competing interests in clean drinking water, food, shelter, education, and
health care. In reading the literature in environmental education, I found nothing that would help me consider
these complex questions, or name an environmental value that would reflect beliefs that, in the long run, we
should protect the beauty of the natural landscape for our children, but that today we must use it for agriculture
to feed our children. One anecdote from my experience may help to illustrate this point, learned from the
people of Copapayo, El Salvador, while visiting them in the late 1980’s and early 1990’s, during their civil war.
The community, at that time about 600 members, is located in very hilly terrain, in the state of
Cuscatlan, on the banks of Lake Cuscatlan, about sixty miles northeast of San Salvador. When I visited them,
they had recently repatriated from refugee camps in Honduras, having been displaced there during that nation's
brutal civil war, their village destroyed and their people massacred by their army. Disease and severe
malnourishment were rampant in the village, because of their impoverishment, brought about by their history
of loss that was kept in place by the government's policy of refusing to allow them to engage in free trade or
travel. At that time, the only land they had available to farm, in order to grow subsistence crops upon which to
survive, was on highly sloped land. They faced the difficult choice of farming the erodible soil to grow food to
survive, or not farming and starving. They knew that farming could only continue for a few years until it eroded
away the land, but they hoped they could find new land in those few years, and then use the eroded land as
pasture for dairy cattle. What ethic can describe their choice to degrade the productivity of the land in order to
survive?
Their religion was a mixture of strong Catholicism with hints of Mayan animism, in that they
expressed beliefs that the sun was a god, and that there was a god of the corn. Thus, in their belief that the land
itself was alive, and was to be worshipped, but then they saw the need to destroy it to live, what ethic could
describe this? Unfortunately, since over half the population of the world faces malnourishment (World Health
Organization, 2003) it is conceivable that they need to make similar choices in regards to the environment. If
these people do understand the need to protect the environment in order to ensure their long-term welfare, but
also understand that they need to destroy its long-term productivity, or its aesthetic value, in order to survive,
again, what value or ethic do we have that reasonably describes them? While this paper is not a moral
evaluation of any environmental ethic, it strikes me as morally indefensible to criticize those who, by virtue of
17
the extreme constraints they face because of poverty, must ensure their short-term survival by reducing the
ecological viability of the lands they farm.
For those in the United States, or the nations in the European Union, who seek to reduce the
footprint of our nations on the environment, and who seek to employ environmental education to accomplish
this, we are challenged to be sensitive in what we recommend in our environmental education work, lest we be
insensitive to those who are in situations where they need to harm the environment in order to produce food,
or goods that that they need to sell in order to survive, or to develop or maintain an income that supports a
minimum standard of living - a standard which should be high enough to permit economic and health security,
access to good education, and culture. We are probably up to the challenge of revising the language we use to
show such sensitivity, and it is the purpose of this paper to provide additional terms, language so to speak, to
aid in this effort. The much more difficult challenge for those of us in the field of environmental education will
be in how to more sensitively and accurately employ language to describe the range of environmental ethics
that appear to exist in the "northern" nations, those industrialized and postindustrial nations which, it is
important to consider, still contain significant populations that struggle to obtain adequate health care,
education, and material security. The point here is that efforts to reduce consumption among some need to
show sensitivity to the many poor in our nation, and other nations, who struggle to increase consumption of
the goods that enable them to have safer and securer lives, and, when they finally earn enough money to have
real choices about what to consume, we should be sensitive to their pent up needs and find ways to respect
their choices.
While considering the complexities of the demands of life on the majority of the world's populations,
and the importance of applying the wisdom generated it occurred to me that I did not have a good grasp on
what was meant by values - and this paper reflects the work of trying to develop a process for helping myself
keep from getting utterly confused as I attempted to understand what others might mean when they discussed
values. This exploration foundered until methods from ethics were shared with me by Bernie Rosen and Don
Hubin. I am quite grateful for their generous and patient assistance in my tutelage, but they should be held
blameless for any errors I have made in my rough efforts to eagerly apply their carefully developed thoughts to
the questions of our field. From the discipline of philosophy, and the area of ethics, they showed me a few
methods ethicists use to distinguish values. What these ideas were, and how they were applied, led to the
heuristic that assists my efforts today. However, it was also informed by the experiences afforded me in
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environmental and civic governance work, both inside and outside government, and by those scholars who
study how it works, addressed next.
Political Science and Values
Public and Academic Concern for the Environment
Environmental issues have become a topic of great public and academic interest in this century.
Kempton, Boster and Hartley (1995), cultural anthropologists with a rich understanding of the environmental
attitudes and values of US citizens, conducted one of the most comprehensive studies of public opinion on the
environment and their environmental values to date in the US. In compiling other researchers work, and
conducting their own studies, they found that, despite the concerns of environmental activists that the public
does not care about the environment, concern for the environment has grown since the 1960's, leading to
widespread changes in beliefs, values, language and laws in the US. They found that over 90% are "concerned
about the environment," over 70% consider themselves environmentalists, that 64% were willing to pay 10%
more for groceries if doing so would protect the environment, and would pay an additional $36.99/month for
consumer goods if they would not harm the environment. They stated,
"We find that American perspectives on global environmental change are based on fundamental
moral and religious views on the relationship between nature and humanity, other species' rights, humanity's
right to change or manipulate nature, and our society's responsibility to future generations . . . enmeshed in a
core set of cultural beliefs and values." (p. 5)
Their in-depth investigation of values led them to
" . . . conclude that Americans' environmental values derive from three
sources: (1) religion, whether traditional Judeo-Christian religious teaching
or a more abstract feeling of spirituality; (2) anthropocentric (humancentered) values, which are predominantly utilitarian and are concerned
only those environmental changes that affect human welfare; and (3)
biocentric (living-thing-centered) values, which grant nature itself intrinsic
rights, particularly the right of species to continue to exist.
Kempton, et al also argued that the categories of environmental values such as anthropocentrism,
biocentrism, or ecocentrism are overly broad, and that they had no " . . . strong theoretical commitment to
organize the values I found into precisely these three categories but find them useful for ordering our
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presentation of material" (p 88). They noted that the tools to categorize theoretically environmental values into
more precise categories had not been developed, and would be a useful contribution to the field.
That values are the basis of our environmental policies seems incontrovertible, but just how to make
deeper sense of this statement is quite challenging, given the complexity of values and the relatively newness
(i.e., increasing since the 1980's) of emphasis on values in the social and behavioral sciences and environmental
education. Before proceeding to describe the heuristic, it will be helpful to discuss briefly another issue in
political science, the representation problem, begun by stepping back to look at the larger picture. This may
illuminate two points that are critical for environmental educators to understand: the problem of translating
supermajorities of public opinion favoring environmental protection into laws that protect the environment,
and the importance to do research and education that includes focus on knowledge, attitudes and skills for
taking political action to engage environmental issues.
Representation Problem
In political science, a significant body of work in the United States has observed that the political
system, and the laws generated by that system, often do not appear to reflect the opinions (preferences) of the
public for a variety of issues, a problem known as the "representation problem" (Downs, 1957). It is reasonably
clear that for the last 30 years or so supermajorities of American public opinion (i.e., over 66%) have strongly
supported existing levels of environmental protection, and majorities (i.e., over 50%) support the expenditure
of additional personal funds for taxes, governmental funds for programs, and stronger laws to protect the
environment. This statement draws upon the work of political scientists and sociologists in both the US and
throughout Europe who have developed a substantial body of work that explores how strongly the public
believes that the environment should be protected, and, to a lesser degree, beliefs about values and ethics.
Dewey (1927, 1954), provides an insightful historical analysis of the development of and challenges
facing democratic societies in "The Public and its Problems." He stated, "The essential problem of government
. . . (is): What arrangements will prevent rulers from advancing their own interests at the expense of the ruled?"
(p. 93), focusing upon the perennial problems the public faces in ensuring that their rulers act so as to advance
the public good (rather than the rulers personal interest), particularly when corporations are so well represented
in political life and provide enormous personal incentives for rulers to represent corporate interests above the
public good. Atfield's (1991) excellent work to conduct an analysis of environmental values, ethics, and their
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relationship to environmental protection clearly reflects the view that the political system does not reflect
public opinion vis-à-vis environmental issues. He indicates that we need to change political, economic and
social structures so that public opinion favoring environmental protection will be reflected in public policy. He
also suggests that personal beliefs, attitudes, including values towards the environment need to change, but
indicates that an important part of this change is to change them so that citizens who already support proenvironmental positions will act so as to create political, economic, and social change. These and other political
scientists' work shows that environmentalists face a representation problem, a finding that resonates with my
personal experience as a regulator, then activist, in international, federal, state, and local environmental
protection. Incorporating an understanding that we face a representation problem may help us to more
accurately understand the larger context within which environmental education works, but it adds a more
complex dimension, as we face the question of what we should teach for if we want to change knowledge,
beliefs, affect, attitudes (including environmental values and ethics) and behavior so that we will change
personal and societal behavior towards the environment. Atfield stated we need to change both personal and
social systems, that changing just the personal will not be sufficient, and, like many educators, emphasizes the
importance of educating citizens to be politically involved. This last point is worth serious attention, in that it
reflects what educators have said for millennia in various forms, and environmental educators in this last halfcentury: that good education must develop (among other things) in citizens the capacities (knowledge, attitudes,
and values) and tendencies to meaningfully participate in political life. For environmental education, I suggest
we can simply add, "concerning environmental issues" and have a definition quite compatible with Tblisi,
Hungerford, and others.
When it became clearer that the American public supports, fairly strongly, increased environmental
protection but that there is a representation problem that prevents passage of stronger environmental
protection policies, I became quite curious to see how this would impact the consideration of the original idea
that we must change values in order to protect the environment.
Philosophical Ethics and Values
Three Fundamental Approaches to Environmental Ethics
The first academic approach seeks to identify the one ethical theory or worldview that is most
plausibly correct to hold, from an ethical perspective, and advocates that others adopt the particular
environmental ethic. Aldo Leopold, in a Sand County Almanac, advocated for the ethical correctness of, and
21
need for the public to adopt, a "land ethic," in order to prevent environmental destruction. Leopold's "Land
Ethic" has been interpreted by White (1967) and Callicott (1989) as an ecocentric ethic, one that roughly holds
that people have direct moral obligations to protect all living things, ecosystems, and the land, due to the
intrinsic or intrinsic value of these things. Writers such as Muir (1916), Leopold (1949), Singer (1979), Rolston
(1988), Naess (1989), Warren (1990), and Knapp (1999) posited a number of different ethical theories,
worldviews, and paradigms, which are broadly known as biocentrism or ecocentrism. As indicated, these works
appear to have had, and continue to have, significant influence in the professional and academic communities
engaged in environmental issues, particularly those involved in environmental education and environmental
policy. A standard method used in these approaches is to show the beauty and value of, and human need for
the environment, and trends in the destruction or exploitation of the environment. The cause of the
destruction is usually argued next, as the writers seek to link a particular set of values and/or an environmental
paradigm, worldview, or ethic, to the human behavior and environmental degradation or mistreatment.
As previously noted, this study is not to identify the most plausible or true ethic to hold, nor to
evaluate the relative merits of such arguments: however, the contents of such arguments are used to develop
the categories used in the heuristic devices to analyze and categorize the diversity of environmental values and
ethics, and to help develop the items for the survey instrument. There are many ways that these materials can
be used in public (state supported) education to develop educated citizens who are aware of and concerned for
the environment. However, the use of these materials in such educational settings to indoctrinate students as to
the correctness of such views is of concern to the profession, as it is neither effective pedagogy nor androgogy,
nor considered appropriate use of public resources (Kauchek, Krall and Heimsath, 1978; Heimlich and Haraka,
1994; Hungerford and Volk, 1980; and NAAEE, 1996). By providing those in the field with additional tools for
evaluating their and other's environmental values, and to support efforts to increase their self-awareness of
their values and ethics, educators ability to avoid these problems may be increased (Heimlich and Meyers,
1999).
A second approach to environmental ethics and values involves a more philosophically or analytically
comparative study of ethical beliefs, with the intention of providing a systematic comparison of ethical theories.
The key distinction is in the use of philosophical techniques to compare systematically ethical beliefs. Ethicists
such as Rosen (1995) and Hubin (1997) seek to carefully distinguish and compare the content of environmental
ethical theories and beliefs that employ this approach. Ethicists may also seek to evaluate the plausibility of
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various ethical views, worldviews, and paradigms, and may seek to identify and advocate for the most plausible
and correct view, but the educational method is to develop learner capacity for independent thought, judgment,
and action, so avoiding indoctrination. Thus, this approach is consistent with the methods used by these
ethicists and will be drawn upon to help develop the heuristic devices to systematically compare beliefs in
values and ethics and select the concepts and variables used in this study.
A third approach to environmental values and ethics utilizes methods from the social sciences, such as
educational psychology, to develop methods to measure values. This can range from decidedly qualitative
methods, such as hermeneutical inquiries, to psychometrically based instruments to measure beliefs in values
across populations, and test assertions regarding the relationships of values. This study will use the latter
approach.
Given that such studies of held beliefs are studies of the beliefs of people who may not have studied
environmental values or ethics, their beliefs tend to be pretheoretical in nature. That is, their beliefs tend not to
have been subjected to a rigorous process of reflection and comparison to adjust them so they are more
consistent with each other, as part of an effort to fit within some type of theoretical framework. To reduce bias
in surveying beliefs, the survey instrument should not indicate which types of beliefs are “correct” to hold, nor
should it force beliefs into categories that are inappropriate (Babbie, 1995). This point is important for the
study of beliefs in environmental values and ethics, as the present level of resolution of instruments does not
appear to provide a sufficiently large and diverse set of categories to describe these beliefs, a point that will
shown in the section describing the environmental ethical categories developed for the heuristic.
In particular, prior studies of beliefs in environmental values and ethics, while they may be deeply
informed by psychological theories, and bring substantial perspectives on environmental values, ethics, and
worldviews, do not appear to have incorporated methods from the study of ethics to identify a number of
dimensions of beliefs in environmental values and ethics. This study incorporates elements from the social
sciences and philosophical analysis to pursue a goal of neither underspecifying nor overspecifying the wide
range and diversity of values and ethical beliefs found in the literature today.
Theories of Value Formation
Affect and Environmental Education
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For environmental education, human affect is an important component of the environment -- human
relationship. If affect is values, attitudes, and behavior, (Babbie, 1995), then environmental education's essential
purpose as stated by the field is to change affect (UNESCO/UNEP, 1978; Hungerford, 1980; Disinger, 1993).
Since affect can be defined as human characteristics as diverse as values, attitudes, and behavior, clearly
identifying what is meant by affect is sometimes critical to communicating what kind of affect is being
addressed. For environmental education, studying how affect predicts or is correlated to behavior is important,
a research priority documented by Marcinkowski and Mraczek's (1996) research. I note that Environmental
Education Research focused on "Minding the Gap”, between knowledge and environmentally responsible
behavior (in Volume 8, number 3). It is beyond the scope of this article to comment upon the contents of that
issue. However, this article, in addressing the representation problem, and through the heuristic, may provide a
useful tool for considering the relationships of different types of beliefs, knowledge, attitudes and support for
environmental protection in ways that help close the “gap”.
One aspect of affect that has received significant attention in environmental education is “sensitivity”,
a complex concept in itself. One type of sensitivity emphasizes the emotions, positing that emotions are
primary to or of more significance than cognitive aspects of affect, such as knowledge of the environmental
and sociopolitical knowledge. Research by Perry (1970), Gilligan (1982), and Belenky (1986) advocated
recognition of the emotions as an important and legitimate factor in ethics, rejecting the more cognitive view of
ethics historically held by philosophers and psychologists. Warren's (1994) germinal work integrated a critique
of patriarchy and reason with White’s (1967) critique of the Judeo-Christian, anthropocentric ethic as the cause
of the objectification and degradation of nature. This body of work supports a view held by many who have
influenced and practiced environmental education (Gough, 1990; Corcoran, 1994; Palmer 1996), that particular
types of ethics are necessary to hold, such as an ethic of caring that is biocentrist, and ecocentrist, and that
research in this arena should focus on emotion.
Scheffler (1991) and Dewey (1916) argued that direct experience with entities, when cognitively
judged to improve our well being, lead to increased emotional attachment to that thing, increased valuation of
it, and increased willingness to protect it. They also noted that reflecting upon experience to understand how
various aspects of the physical or sociopolitical environment are related to and affect our interests is a powerful
tool for increasing our knowledge, and that such reflections can change our valuation of the environment. It is
important to note that direct or reflective experience, if it shows that an entity or phenomenon is harmful to
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our well-being, leads to negative affect toward and lower valuation of the entity as part of cognitive and
affective reaction. Thus, not all increased knowledge is claimed to lead to increased valuation and positive
affect, but only knowledge that shows that something has positive utility. This account provides a theoretical
basis for linking direct experience with the environment, to cognitive recognition of the value of the
environment, increased valuation of the environment, and increased dispositions to protect it. Increased
appreciation also may lead to recognition of the existence value of entities (Dewey, 1916), a complex value
notion that is easily conflated with intrinsic value.
Rosen (1998) stated that valuation of a thing should increase as the understanding of the use value, or
use value increases. He distinguished use value, which is defined as usefulness for obtaining another thing of
value, from intrinsic value, which is something that has value in and of itself. For example, an ordinary shovel
that is useful for planting has use value for planting. While there are many differences of beliefs about what is
of intrinsic value, a number of environmental ethicists appear to believe that a plant that is an endangered
species has intrinsic value. If it is assumed that they believe that planting an endangered species as part of a
restoration project is a good thing to do, then the act of planting it would have intrinsic value. An ordinary
shovel used to plant would have use value for the planting. Thus, most people would believe that a shovel has
use value for digging, but not have a belief that the ordinary shovel has intrinsic value. Interestingly, one would
also expect that most people would believe that it is wrong to arbitrarily destroy a shovel, but the wrongness
would more than likely be because of a belief that doing so wasted the money, effort, and resources used to
make the shovel, not because they believed that the shovel has intrinsic value, or any rights or interests in
remaining a shovel. Thus, an entity may have use value, but not intrinsic value.
Many things and actions are argued to have both intrinsic and use value. For example, if the shovel
were a work of art, or made of gold, many would believe that the shovel had intrinsic value (although some
would disagree), and using it to plant would give it both use and intrinsic value. Questions to distinguish these
types of values must be carefully constructed and interpreted to maintain the integrity of the analysis of value.
As noted above, Scheffler (1991) proposed that positive emotional affect towards an entity increases
when a person has a positive experience with the entity, when they understand that an entity has use value.
Thus, increasing a person's knowledge of the value of an environmental entity leads to increase in emotional
affect toward that entity, and desire to protect the entity. This increase in affect can be measured as an increase
in valuation or an increase in concern for the entity, or an increase in willingness to protect the entity, using any
25
number of methods identified by Babbie (1995) and used in environmental education (Volk & McBeth, 1997).
The educational approach of increasing emotional and attitudinal affect by increasing knowledge is an indirect
approach to increasing affect, because it does not directly seek to increase affect by directly appealing to
emotions and avoiding engagement of the cognitive processes, even though it relies upon direct experience at
its root.
This study seeks to develop a method for considering the valuation of the environment in cognitive
terms, as a wide range of beliefs and judgments about the environment, rather than exploring the more
emotional aspects of affect. Given the significant interest in environmental education and related fields that
exist concerning affect, future work on this heuristic is being considered to incorporate measures of affect.
Theories of Environmental Ethics and Worldviews
This research project’s goal of developing a heuristic came about in part because the simple desire to
better understand environmental values and ethics became tangled in the highly complex arguments concerning
environmental ethics that can be found in the literature in environmental education, sociology, policy, or ethics.
The first two years of the project were dedicated to developing an understanding of the diversity of values,
ethical positions, ethical systems, and justifications used for the various positions. No literature which
systematically evaluated or compared the complexity of environmental ethical beliefs was found, unless it was
work that clearly attempted to persuade the reader to believe in the author's system. Most distressing was the
lack of materials that could help laypersons, or educators, evaluate their own beliefs and determine what ethical
system was best for them. As the heuristic became helpful to this researcher and educator colleagues suggested
it be further developed for others' use. This paper provides the philosophical and conceptual justification for
the steps used in the heuristic, as well as questions and concerns that remain. Other work may provide a less
academic, more accessible version for use by those who desire it. The comparison of normative ethical theories
begins with an overview.
Historically, in most systems of Western ethics, only humans beings have been considered morally
considerable, for a wide variety of reasons. The type of capacities that an entity in the environment has, such as
the capacity to have a soul, or to be self aware, use tools, make plans, or to feel pain, have been used to justify
or deny direct moral considerability to entities. It is noteworthy that this was not for lack of consideration of
animals, given that a number of Western philosophers have addressed the question of whether or not animals
26
deserve moral consideration. Jeremy Bentham (1789) in a position eventually made famous by Peter Singer
(1975) argued that the criteria for moral considerability was not whether or not an entity had the capacity to be
a moral agent, but whether or not it had the capacity to feel pain similarly to humans beings. He did not argue
explicitly that animals had this potential, but speculated over the possibility, presciently predicting that one-day
animals would be regarded as having the capacity to feel pain and be recognized as due moral considerability
for avoidance of their physical suffering. It is important to observe that while each philosopher posited
different reasons for not recognizing the moral considerability of animals or other environmental entities, the
common reason they held for this determination seems to used to this day by philosophers and the public:
animals (and the rest of the environment) did not possess adequate mental capacities, including the capacity to
feel pain, to justify their consideration. Philosophers and environmental ethicists differ in regards to what
capacities are necessary to warrant moral considerability, and what that consideration would look like, but
again, we will not digress to review this in more depth. What is significant is the rise in concern for
environmental ethics in the 19th and 20th centuries as philosophers, and many in the environmental
community, began to seriously argue to change the criterion for moral considerability from that of the ancient
criterion of capacity to reason, to various, simpler capacities, including that of existence itself.
It would appear that just as the bar for moral consideration has been lowered, philosophers, scientists,
and the public have changed their beliefs in the actual capacities of non-human animals, stunningly so in the
latter half of the 20th century. It is difficult to characterize the prevalence of public opinion regarding the
capacities of animals prior to the 1960’s, as the social sciences did not measure such belief before then.
However, individual writers and historical evidence suggests that a small portion of the European population,
beginning in the early 1800’s, then US citizens in the latter 1800’s, as part of the anti vivisection movement,
expressed different beliefs about animal’s capacities to feel pain, changing their beliefs in the moral
considerability of animals, and their beliefs about the moral appropriateness of various treatment of animals.
Building on the work of environmental ethicists, ethologists such as Herzog and Galvin (1989) and Hills (1999)
have shown through survey research that adult beliefs about animal capacities can be reliably measured, and the
first two of these have documented relationships between belief in capacities and the acceptability of actions
(i.e., use in animal research, et al) towards the animals.
Anthropocentricism
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Given the statements of purpose of the field of environmental education (Belgrade Charter,1976,
Tblisi Declaration 1978), it appears that the field has historically stated an official view that human welfare is
the reason for protecting the environment, a view that is consistent with Thompson and Barton’s definition of
an anthropocentric position. In the official statements of the purpose of environmental education, there was no
direct or implied assertion that the environment deserves protecting because it has rights or interests, thus, they
reflect a position that does not support an ecocentric belief. While it is clear that there is a deep appreciation
and respect for the value of the environment, particularly the value of wilderness, and a sense of obligation to
protect it, this position reflected a focus on the human impacts of environmental degradation and the need to
improve human welfare. The debate over whether or not it is necessary to hold an anthropocentric ethic in
order to hold a strong enough belief in environmental protection is the question that the heuristic is designed
to assist in considering. While Rosen (1997) does not argue for the moral correctness of anthropocentrism, he
has argued that nearly all environmental protection policies, including preservation of endangered species and
wilderness areas, can be justified from an anthropocentric perspective, if human well-being is broadly defined
to include the need to protect the environment for aesthetic, ecological, and sustainable interests of humans for
present and future generations. However, the term anthropocentrism does not itself distinguish between
whether or not such as broad view of the need to protect the environment is being meant when using the term.
Theoretical Challenges to Considering the Relationship of Environmental Values and Ethics to Behavior
The first challenge is terminological and methodological. While inconsistent definitions of terms are
not unusual, the failure to develop consistent definitions has resulted in significant confusion in the field
concerning environmental values and ethics. Unfortunately, beliefs in environmental values and ethics, and
beliefs concerning their relationship to support for environmental quality are sufficiently complex that this
confusion can, and has, too easily resulted in innovative research using broad concepts of worldviews and
paradigms that are defined so broadly that they lead to conflation of different types of values and ethics,
especially by those who interpret such research.
For example, the authors cited above call for educators to teach children and others to adopt
biocentric or ecocentric values or ethics. A biocentric or ecocentric value or ethic is sometimes used
synonymously, as in Thompson and Barton (1994) who define it to mean that there is some degree of human
belief in the intrinsic value of the entire environment (and the belief that there are direct moral obligations to
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protect it). They distinguish this from an anthropocentric value or ethic, which is defined as only humans have
intrinsic value (and the belief that there are no direct moral obligations to the environment to protect the
environment). Conceptually, their terms, definitions, and scale are clear and useful. However, as will be detailed
below, the items in their scale do not measure what it is stated to measure – beliefs in intrinsic value in the
environment – it measures whether or not people believe that the environment has either value, and ought to
be preserved for either reason. Thus, the operationalization of the item used to measure beliefs about sound
constructs (anthropocentrism and ecocentrism) actually measures if people believe that the environment has
either intrinsic value or use value, two distinctly different types of value. However, the anchors they used in
their Continuum of Environmental Ethics, and conceptual basis of the definitions of terms they used in their
instrument were similar to the anchors and conceptual definitions developed in this study.
Instruments and items that utilize instruments with these types of problems repeat such problems
unless corrected. For example, items intended to measure belief in whether or not an entity has intrinsic value,
frequently ask something like, “Do you think that natural areas are beautiful?” or, “Do you think that
wilderness should be preserved?” When affirmative answers to such items are interpreted to mean that the
respondent has a belief in the intrinsic value of nature and wilderness, they would have failed to allow for a
plausible alternative interpretation: that the respondent appreciates the beauty of nature because it gives them
pleasure or value, or that the respondent recognizes that wilderness provides human’s with value because human's
appreciate the existence value of wilderness, or that the respondent recognizes the value of wilderness for providing
humans with uniquely “wild” experiences, or for the value it provides to humans by sustaining endangered and
threatened species that are important to preserve because of a belief that future-human well being depends on
preserving biodiversity. Again, let us use Thompson and Barton’s (1994) definitions of anthropocentrism and
biocentrism/ecocentrism: that anthropocentrism is the belief that only humans have intrinsic value, and that
biocentrism and ecocentrism are the beliefs that everything in the environment has intrinsic value, where
intrinsic value means that the environment has value in and of itself, independent of humans. Thus, the
question “Do you consider nature to be beautiful?” only asks if the respondent has either of two notions of
value, and does not distinguish between respondent beliefs in anthropocentrism or biocentrism/ecocentrism.
Interpreting a response as an indication of the presence of anthropocentric or biocentric/ecocentric
values or attitudes would appear to be an error, unless there were other data to support such an argument, due
to the poorly defined question. If different types of values are conflated when analyzing the relationship of
29
values, the analysis can neither maintain the integrity of the relationship of the values, nor conclusions about
those relationships. Put differently, if there is a failure to maintain the integrity of the dependent variable (a
particular belief in an environmental value) to the independent variable (support for environmental protection)
the research conclusions concerning the relationship of the variables are invalid. This research develops and
documents a systematic method for distinguishing and naming different types of environmental values and
ethics, and a heuristic for evaluating beliefs in environmental values and ethics.
The second aspect of this challenge looks at the relationship within a person of their beliefs in
environmental values and ethics, and that person's willingness to support environmental protection. This goes
to the question of whether or not a particular environmental value or ethic is necessary for a person to hold for
them to have a sufficient willingness to protect the environment. A large body of the environmental values
research has developed significant interest in environmental values by using approaches that identified the
degree to which respondents agreed with what appears to be the authors view on what was the "correct" ethic,
or value to hold (Dunlap and Van Liere, 1978; Gigliotti, 1992), using, as Kempton, Boster and Hartley (1995)
argued, overly broad categories of environmental values such as anthropocentrism, biocentrism, or
ecocentrism.
Work by Kempton, et al (1995) to distinguish values found three broad sources of values in American
culture: religiously inspired, such as stewardship values to protect the environment because of religious
obligations, anthropocentric values, such as an understanding of the need to protect the environment to protect
human welfare; and biocentric values that indicate that nature should be protected because it has intrinsic
worth. They stated that they had no " . . . strong theoretical commitment to organize the values I found into
precisely these three categories but find them useful for ordering our presentation of material" (p 88). They
noted that the tools to categorize theoretically environmental values into more precise categories had not been
developed, and would be a useful contribution to the field. As previously noted, this project does not seek to
judge the normative "correctness" of the ethics or values of respondents against a predetermined standard of
correctness, but to objectively and fairly document a wide diversity of beliefs, in order to systematically
compare beliefs in environmental values and ethics and their relationship to support for environmental
protection using methods from the social sciences, so the investigation is more scientific, and less normatively
judgmental.
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The third aspect of this problem, which this study does not attempt to address, except here, arises
from the challenge of establishing whether or not particular environmental values and ethics cause, or are even
correlated to, the quality of the environment, and how portions of the environment, such as animals, are
treated. Atfield (1991) asks,
“What kind of an ethic and what kinds of international action are needed
to tackle environmental problems . . . .”
And concludes,
“The suggestion is not that changed individual attitudes would be
sufficient (as opposed to necessary) to solve the problems; for political,
economic, and social structures also need to change” (p. 95).
Atfield concisely provides a valuable statement on the role of individual attitudes and their beliefs in
environmental values and ethics to environmental quality. He indicates that attitudes need to change, but that
improvements to environmental quality also require changing social, political, and economic structures, a lesson
from the fields of public policy, political science, and political philosophy, which is important for the field of
environmental education, insomuch as it is a field concerned with the relationship of education that changes
environmental policy. Atfield's assessment that attitudes need to change leaves as an open question which
attitudes need to change, and how much, in order to help bring about changes in social, political, and economic
structures.
In order to obtain improved environmental quality and policies, it is difficult to overstate the
importance of changing environmental, economic, and social policies. The general quality of the environment,
especially the major environmental problems such as global climate change, biodiversity losses and the
ubiquitous chemical and biological contamination of surface waters, are in large part dependent upon the
policies and norms that regulate individual and collective behavior towards the environment. The fields of
public policy, political science, and sociology have significant bodies of literature that grapple with the question
of how these policies and norms are made. As noted, Kempton, et al (1995) have documented, a majority of
adults have favored stronger environmental policies for decades, and opposed weakening of existing policies,
leading to the enactment of a series of environmental policies from the 1960’s to the 1980’s. Still, the public has
consistently favored even stronger policies. They also documented that (under their three general categories for
American values towards the environment , of religious, anthropocentric, and biocentric) that there was strong
support for biocentric values, and that environmentalists should draw upon this finding in their work. This
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research project addresses the care with which environmental educators must treat such a recommendation,
given their professional responsibilities to not indoctrinate people, a point explored elsewhere. As Kempton, et
al (1995) and others (Disinger, 1990) have noted, there is a need to assess what is meant by environmental
values more precisely, so more rigorous research can be done to assess the relationship of environmental values
to support for environmental protection, the superordinate objective of this work.
Research Needs in Environmental Values and Ethics
Environmental education is a field that is historically interested in protecting the environment through
changing beliefs. The quantity of research in environmental education is significant, as Iozzi (1984) identified
numerous studies addressing environmental affect that were published between 1971 and 1982, and
Marcinkowski and Mraczek(1996) identified 185 studies between 1980 and 1990. Relatively few of these studies
investigated the value that people place on the environment, or their moral and ethical beliefs, but focused on
the impacts of educational programs on knowledge, attitudes, and behavior. Hines, Hungerford, and Tomera
(1986) research program developed a conceptual model of the relationship of environmental attitudes and proenvironmental behavior, a model tested and revised using data collected through assessment and survey
methods. These studies included limited investigation of the moral aspects of environmental values, such as
beliefs in the obligation to protect the environment but did not focus extensively upon the moral aspects of
environmental values. This study found that no instruments had been developed that objectively and
systematically distinguished, measured, and characterized beliefs in environmental values and ethics, that placed
respondents into multiple, mutually exclusive categories of ethical belief systems. In 1996, Hungerford and
Volk called for additional research into the relationships between environmental sensitivity and responsible
environmental behavior and in 1999 stated that additional research on environmental values was needed. In
1997, Volk and McBeth suggested that additional research needed to be conducted to clarify relationships
between environmental sensitivity and responsible environmental behavior. Increasingly, many in the field
advocate for changing beliefs about the moral necessity of protecting the environment because of its rights or
interests, given various asserted values, bringing another dimension to the research needs: one of the necessity
for conceptually clarifying environmental values (Disinger, 1990), their relationship to responsible
environmental behavior, and developing research tools to explore these relationships. Those writing about
environmental ethics often use terms intended to connote ethical beliefs systems, such as the words
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anthropocentric, biocentric and ecocentric, or worldviews, such as the Dominant Social Paradigm or NEnvP.
VanDeVeer and Pierce (1998) and Kempton, Boster and Hartley (1995) stated that the terms are only general
indications of an attitude toward the environment, and that the terms are philosophically loose. Given the
many writers that now use the terms anthropocentric, biocentric, and ecocentric when discussing
environmental issues and attitudes, and the disparate definitions attached to the terms his study sought to
develop a method to assess what is meant by various writers when they speak of an anthropomorphic,
biocentric or ecocentric attitude or policy, and develop rigorous definitions.
As noted, researchers in the field have investigated various aspects of affect, attitudes, values,
intentions to act responsibly, or beliefs in support for environmental protection. They seek a better
understanding of what adults and children already believe about the environment, particularly their attitudes
towards environmental protection, leading to significant investigation of beliefs about environmental values
and support for environmental protection. However, the complexity of environmental values and ethics brings
distinct challenges for researchers interested in understanding the relationship among different types of values,
and support for environmental protection. Given the complexity of values, their conflation is a risk (i.e.,
between intrinsic and use value, and direct and indirect obligations, etc). If the values are conflated when
documenting the prevalence or relationship of values, or the relationship to support for environmental
protection, such analyses are likely to arrive at erroneous conclusions about the prevalence of beliefs about a
specific value. The example of the conflation of intrinsic and use value in Thompson and Barton's (1994) work
was one such example. This presents serious challenges to the field if we cannot accurately document the
prevalence of various values that are of such interest to the field, nor maintain the integrity of the relationship
of the values, nor conclusions based upon those relationships. Given the increasing interest in values, and their
complexity, this research is focused on defining beliefs in values and ethics, developing a systematic method - a
heuristic - for considering environmental values and ethics and their relationship to support for environmental
protection, and developing two survey tools that can be tested for use as reliable and valid tools to accurately
document the prevalence of the public’s environmental values and ethics.
In 1972, Christopher Stone published his now-famous argument, "Should Trees Have Standing?" that
trees and selected other entities in the environment have intrinsic value, and that human's have direct moral
obligations to protect them. It is important to note that Stone later amended his argument (1987) significantly,
to 1) retract the claim that direct moral obligations to protect trees on the basis of any “rights” or interests they
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have, but advocate for their protection based upon moral obligations to other humans, and 2) to argue against
moral monism in environmentalism, and for moral pluralism, as both more philosophically sound and more
likely to lead to environmental protection. With the rise of the "animal rights" movement (Singer, 1975), and
the rise of environmental ethical theories that argue that all living things (Regan, 1983) have rights, or that all
things in the environment have rights (Naess, 1989), the moral integrity of anthropocentrism has been
increasingly controversial. A body of academic work has grown that seeks to establish the moral correctness of
non-anthropocentric ethical views or worldviews or paradigms. In addition, much work has explored various
aspects of environmental values and ethics. Environmental education is at a crossroads, as the growing social
movement for animal rights and earth rights includes many members of the profession who hold such views,
believe they have a moral obligation to teach such views, and believe that the profession should teach some
type of non-anthropocentric view, in ways that conflict with the historical purpose of the field. This growing
social movement includes a tremendous body of popular and academic literature. Further, many educational
materials and resources address environmental values and ethics by advocating or employing the use of highly
emotional and exhortive approaches to changing people's beliefs and feelings about the environment. These
educational methods also conflict with the historical emphasis in the field for developing learner civic capacity
to make their own choices about what are appropriate values and beliefs to hold.
For academics and professionals in the field who are interested in empirical studies of environmental
values and ethics, the tremendous complexity of these beliefs has complicated efforts to document the
prevalence of beliefs in various environmental values and ethics, to assess their relationship to environmentally
friendly behavior, and to the state of the environment. There are relatively few instruments that seek to
measure in depth the environmental values and ethics of adults, and none that draw upon analytic techniques
from ethics to identify systematically key covariants of ethical beliefs.
Existing Conceptual Schemes for Values
Within the field of environmental education there is debate over which environmental values and
ethics are necessary to hold in order to be pro-environmental, but a relative paucity of terminology, with
virtually no competing definitions of terms or conceptual schemes, to describe what I believe is rich diversity of
beliefs in environmental values. As noted earlier in this paper, the terms and concepts the field uses are drawn
from environmental ethics, environmental history, and sociology. These works tend to use the terms
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"anthropocentrism, biocentrism, and ecocentrism" to identify roughly the values and ethics in ways that are
quite problematic, since the terms are not up to the task we need them to perform. While definitions vary, it is
fair to say that each term is generally used to capture two very different types of beliefs. A third sense is often
packed onto these loaded terms, crushing them under a weight of meaning that Norton (1995) found quite
problematic. He observed that, in the preservationist-conservationist cleavage among environmentalists, the
difference, according to deep ecologists, is one of motive for beliefs or actions. Preservationists want to preserve
nature for its own sake, while conservationists want to preserve it for future use. The deep ecologists argue that
the environment has value independent of humans, deserves direct moral consideration, and that it is wrong to
intend only to protect the environment so we can use it later. Thus, they criticize conservationists as having the
wrong beliefs. The general idea that the environment has independent value is well know n as a general notion
of biocentrism or ecocentrism, a notion that needs refined to be sound. Norton observes that deep ecologists,
though, also want to argue that conservationist's anthropocentric beliefs are the cause of environmental
destruction, and that anthropocentric beliefs are incompatible with environmental protection. When this
second argument is combined with the first, the now ubiquitous (in environmental education and
environmental ethics) argument emerges that we must change people's beliefs and motives from
anthropocentrism to biocentrism (or ecocentrism), because anthropocentrists will not protect the environment,
or will not do so strongly enough. Norton showed, as did Rosen (1995), that anthropocentrists who understand
our ecological dependence, and want to conserve resources for future generations, can and do argue for strong
environmental protection. Close analysis of the policies that such anthropocentrists support, versus those that
deep ecologists, or biocentrists or ecocentrists, support, reveal little difference. The differences are actually
problematic for deep ecologists, who tend to focus upon motives and individual beliefs as deserving of
attention, disdaining political action, and thus tend not to engage the policy arena where significant
environmental protection is actually secured through legislative action. Devall and Session (, recognizing, this,
reversed an earlier commitment to deep ecologies value monism, and advocated for value pluralism in the
environmental movement, and for deep ecologists to engage the policy arena. Thus, the term, anthropocentrist,
used by deep ecologists to disparage motives and commitments (i.e., as “shallow”) makes no sense in the case
of the anthropocentrist who has the same degree of behavioral commitment to environmental protection
Having one term mix the two meanings is seriously problematic, as Norton’s analysis demonstrated.
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Norton argued that deep ecologists face a problem of justifying any use of the environment, so have
developed what they term "practical" environmental ethics that recognize that we need to use it. Some argue
(Devall & Sessions, 1984) that we are morally justified in only using what we need for vital needs, an extremely
difficult principle to apply to policy development. Thus, it conceptually appears that deep ecologists following a
principle of only using the environment for vital needs, and protecting the rest because of its independent
value, and who are biocentrists or ecocentrists, would support stronger environmental protection policies than
anthropocentric conservationists who only want to ensure that we can continue to have access to
environmental goods in the future. The deep ecologists claim that anthropocentric conservationists cannot or
do not support stronger environmental protection policies, is conceptually problematic, given Rosen's (1996)
work that shows that anthropocentrists who are concerned for their children's welfare, and who enjoy
nonconsumptive uses of the environment, can quite logically support very strong environmental protection
policies. Norton suggested that the claim is worthy of empirical investigation, a task taken up Meyers (2002).
It has struck me as narrow not to explore the range of beliefs that anthropocentrists might have in
environmental protection, or to have terms that describe the range of beliefs, other than disparaging them as
“shallow”. As noted earlier, Norton, as Atfield (1991), as Kempton, et al (1995) all observed that the public, by
supermajorities, supports environmental protection policies, and, often supports stronger policies by majorities.
They argue that the key thing environmentalists needed to do is to build stronger coalitions of
environmentalists, to overcome the value cleavages that divide them, in order to obtain passage (and
enforcement) of environmental policies that the public already supports. Atfield did call for changes in
environmental values, to strengthen the environmental movement, while Norton suggests that is not necessary.
Negra and Manning previously mentioned research (1997) identified seventeen types of posited
environmental ethics or paradigms, grouped into three subcategories held through the seventeen types of
environmental ethics. The first, an anthropocentric-biocentric continuum, where anthropocentric meant that
moral relationships with nature should be determined solely by human needs, and biocentric meant " . . . these
relationships should be determined by the intrinsic rights of both humans and nonhumans."
The second concept, ethical extensionism and egalitarian ethics, holds that humans and nonhumans
are morally equivalent. The third set of beliefs, secular, religious and spiritual beliefs, distinguished secular
beliefs as based on rationality, with religious beliefs drawing upon religious teaching, and spiritual beliefs based
upon posited spiritual qualities of nature. The three categories they found, based upon empirical analysis
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(spiritually based stewardship, religiously based anthropocentrism, and secular ethical extensionism) were
complex ethical worldviews that based upon several different motives for environmental protection (e.g.,
spiritualism, religion and secularism), the conceptual distinctions in the categories overlap, a characteristic this
research sought to avoid.
New Environmental Paradigm
As noted earlier, Dunlap et al's (1978) research to study environmental values worldviews through the
development and use of the New Environmental Paradigm (NEnvP) (1978) was recently updated to the New
Ecological Paradigm (NEcP) (2000). The original NEnvP was an instrument to measure public adoption of this
worldview, by investigating three aspects of environmental values and beliefs: 1) degree of belief in the ability
of humans to upset the balance of nature, 2) degree of belief in the existence of limits to growth for human
societies, and 3) degree of belief that humans do not have the right to rule over nature. This 2000 update
provided more gender-neutral language, created items that were both pro and anti NEP (the 1978 version was
unidirectional), and replaced the concept of environmental with ecological, and added items to investigate
belief in human exceptionalism and an ecocrisis.
The NEnvP has been regarded as a successful measure of a pro-environmental attitude or worldview
(Noe and Snow, 1990). Dunlap and Van Liere focused upon measuring beliefs about human ability to upset the
balance of nature, whether there are limits to growth for society, and human right to "rule over" nature. It has
been incorporated and slightly modified by many researchers, and was recently updated to the NEcP (Dunlap,
Van Liere, Mertig, and Jones, 2000). Their collective work contributed greatly to the study of environmental
attitudes, and has been broadly used to measure general attitudes towards the environment. The work by
Dunlap and Van Liere on the NEnvP (NEP), and Milbrath's (1984) Dominant Social Paradigm (DSP) from
environmental sociology were used as the basis for a number of studies that investigated the relationship of the
NEP and/or DSP to other variables of interest to researchers in environmental education. The NEP includes
one question that asks if "Nature should be preserved for its own sake?" which is an inquiry into the intrinsic
value of nature, and whether or not we should protect nature. Dunlap and Van Liere are clear in their writings
that such questions investigate whether or not there are beliefs that humans have dominion over nature, as one
indicator of whether a person has the NEP. Their research suggests that a "no" answer to the question,
indicates a lack of belief in the intrinsic value of nature, and a positive correlation with "no" answers to items
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that ask if there are limits to societal growth, and negative correlation to questions on the value of technology.
The broad construct of the NEP is interpreted by many to suggest that the NEP is a biocentric or ecocentric
ethic, in that nature, or living things, are assigned intrinsic value and/or rights. This is in accord with Kempton,
et al's (1995) definition of anthropocentrism and biocentrism. The NEP paradigm is widely used by
environmental educators and others who are concerned with the environment, as an indicator of whether or
not a person or group is adequately concerned about the environment, and is willing to protect it.
Dunlap, Van Liere, Mertig and Jones (2000) interpreted the three broad sources of values stated in
Kempton, et al's 1995 work quite differently from Kempton, et al, in their arguments for the content validity of
the New Environmental Paradigm (NEP) Scale. They claimed (I think correctly) that Kempton, et al found
widespread public belief in the view that a lack of contact with nature has led society to devalue nature. They
omitted Kempton, et al's finding that the same public also holds a widespread and strong belief in the need to
protect the environment, in significant part due to beliefs in the obligation to provide for future generations,
and for religious respect for a creator. The belief among the public that others do not care about the
environment, but they do, suggests that the public holds an erroneous belief about the degree of public
environmental concern that exists – and the cause of a purported lack of public support. The use of the
erroneous belief of the public that it does not support environmental protection to support conclusions that
the public does not believe in support environmental protection would also be in error. Dunlap, et al
significantly mischaracterized the three broad sources of values that Kempton, et al found, when stating that
Kempton, et al found that one of the three basic American values was that the public was materialistic, out of
contact with nature, and devalued nature. Kempton, et al did tentatively state that one of the three basic values
seemed to be anthropocentrism, (belief that humans had intrinsic value and nature did not) but that this value
was often coupled with a stewardship ethic of belief in the need for environmental protection. The other two
tentatively identified values were biocentric/ecocentric beliefs in the need to protect the environment, and a
religious belief in the need to protect the environment. These concepts are substantially different from the
three core concepts in the NEP.
However, Kempton, et al's (1995) call for more precise definitions of environmental ethical ideas,
such as anthropocentrism and biocentrism, is demonstrated by the following hypothetical. If, as Kempton, et
al, and others have found, that over 73% of Americans self-identify as environmentalists, and over 50%
consistently support stronger environmental policies, where do these people fit onto the NEP, and what
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implications are there for educators? If people believe in an anthropocentric type of environmentalism, that is,
if they believe in a stewardship ethic of conserving natural resources for human use, then they would appear to
be in the old Dominant Social Paradigm, and non-NEP. The instruments, and ways of viewing values, have
advanced awareness that there appears to be some type of change in American culture vis-a-vis their views
towards the environment, but leave a difficulty in categorizing and measuring differences between those who
support environmental protection for anthropocentric reasons, from those who do not support environmental
protection, and those who may have beliefs in the intrinsic value of the environment, the ecocentric or
biocentric ethic, but do not support environmental protection.
This becomes more problematic when strategies for increasing learner and public support for
environmental protection use morally pluralistic approaches to education and draw upon diverse value systems,
as many advocate (Dewey, 1916; Kauchek, Krall & Heimsath, 1978; Stapp & Cox, 1979; Heath & Weibel, 1980;
Dennis & Knapp, 1997; Hungerford and Volk, 1990; Gordon, 1993; Heimlich & Harako, 1994; Norton, 1995;
Connell, 1997; Gutek, 1997; Negra & Manning, 1997; Chapman, 1999). The problem in teaching people to
hold a biocentric or ecocentric ethic (defined as belief in the intrinsic value of the environment, that the
environment is valuable in and of itself and deserves protection) even if it is done without indoctrination (which is
advocated by some as a necessary evil in order to accomplish the greater moral good of protecting the
environment – an approach that this research finds too problematic (i.e., MacArthur Foundation, 2000)) in that
it is viewed as religious indoctrination by a number of people in society and government, a move which
threatens environmental education's perceived legitimacy and federal funding.
This belief appears quite influential to the personal belief systems (including spiritual and religious
beliefs) and educational efforts of many. The profound implications of applying this idea to environmental
education would include the need to develop a pedagogy/androgogy for environmental education that would
support value pluralism while teaching people to hold certain educator-endorsed values, avoid state
endorsement of a particular spiritual/religious tradition via the use of state resources to support environmental
education that teachers people to hold certain spiritual/religious views. The more immediate question, though,
that led to the project described in this paper, was deceptively simple: “What evidence do we have about the
relationship of environmental values and environmental quality?”, or, more bluntly, “Do we know enough
about the relationship of environmental values and environmental quality to justify the conclusion (and belief)
that we must change them in order to protect the environment? While there is an enormous body of attitudinal
39
research in environmental education (Marcinkowski and Mraczek, 1996) in environmental policy (Kempton,
Boster and Hartley, 1995), in political science and sociology, it is arguably less focused upon values and ethics,
and more focused upon selected attitudinal elements. It did not take long to find that the topic of
environmental values has long been recognized to need additional conceptual and practical tools to help clarify
what is meant by values and ethics, in order to facilitate more meaningful dialogue in the environmental
education community, and to support additional complexity and depth of inquiry in research efforts (Stapp &
Cox, 1979; Disinger, 1990, Roth, 1980; Kempton, Boster, Hartley, 1995; Atfield, 1991). Thus, I faced the
uneasy realization that a powerful social and educational trend in environmental education, one with enormous
implications for the field, needed additional conceptual and research tools to carefully consider and cultivate
meaningful dialogue. This paper describes a portion of a larger and ongoing research project to develop a
heuristic and survey measurement tools to consider the diversity and complexity of environmental values,
ethics, and support for environmental protection.
Without further exploration of the highly political debate over the accusations that environmental
education is too indoctrinative, it is still important to recognize that the field needs tools to assist educators and
researchers in developing clear concepts to identify and distinguish between anthropocentric, biocentric, and
ecocentric beliefs. At the present, survey instruments are not available for environmental researchers and
educators to distinguish among these beliefs so that those interested in assessing the relationship of values,
ethics, and support for environmental protection can do so. For example, no available instruments were found
that distinguish between a person who supports environmental protection for anthropocentric reasons from a
person who supports environmental protection for biocentric or ecocentric reasons. As Rothenberg (1994)
noted, the lack of definitions causes significant problems for the environmental movement, because their lack
leaves us without a common vocabulary with which to discuss a complex topic, and an inability to
communicate about the relationship of values, ethics, and the environment, at a time of great concern and
interest in the relationship. This conceptual challenge extends to the ability to measure, document, and explore
relationships among values and various moral beliefs that have import in environmental education and
environmental policy.
In addition to the previously described work, there were a series of interrelated studies from
psychology that investigated ethical ideology and moral beliefs regarding the treatment of animals, finding a
number of strong moral beliefs concerning their treatment.
40
Forsyth (1980) posited that there are two dimensions of "ethical ideology": relativism and idealism,
developed the Ethical Position Questionnaire (EPQ), a psychometric instrument, and measured "ethical
ideology" along two dimensions: relativism and idealism. Relativism is the belief that there are no universal
moral principles; while idealism is the belief that well being is maximized through cost-benefit analyses of
individual acts. Forsyth posited four ethical positions from these two dimensions: situationists (high relativism,
high idealism); absolutists (low relativism, high idealism); subjectivists (high relativism, low idealism); and
exceptionists (low relativism, low idealism). The EPQ was used by Herzog, et al (1991) to investigate attitudes
towards animals and the environment.
Herzog, et al (1991) developed the Animal Attitude Scale to assess beliefs in the acceptability of
various human behaviors towards animals. Galvin and Herzog (1992) applied a modified EPQ to "investigate
the relationship between individual differences in moral philosophy, involvement in the animal rights
movement, and attitudes toward the treatment of animals" (p. 141). Galvin and Herzog concluded, ". . .
differences in personal moral philosophy are related to how individuals feel animals should be treated" (p. 147).
Herzog and Galvin (1998) included one item related to moral consideration that should be afforded nonhuman animals versus humans, finding that the moral consideration afforded the non-human animals varied
with different animal capacities, and recommending further research into beliefs concerning the moral aspects
of animal treatment.
Purpose of the Study
The superordinate goal of the research project was to develop a method for clarifying what is meant
in discussing environmental values and ethics, in ways that help us make decisions about what we need to teach
in order to be effective environmental educators. What is meant when discussing environmental values and
ethics requires conceptual clarity about the concepts in discussion, and a shared meaning between the parties
about the concepts. To the extent that this project provides useful conceptual tools for facilitating more
meaningful dialogue about environmental values and ethics, it will be considered a contribution to our
endeavor to engage these vital and complex ideas
41
Research Objectives
1. Develop a set of heuristic tools (algorithm) for systematically disaggregating and identifying
pretheoretical beliefs environmental values and ethics. The heuristic tools should distinguish environmental
values so they are mutually exclusive.
2. Develop a more objective, discriminating and robust set of definitions of environmental ethical
categories that are normatively non-judgmental.
Methods
The methods used in this paper were those associated with the humanities, particularly those of
philosophy and history. The initial research question was stimulated by observing the rhetoric and content
found in presentation sand papers that were of interest to the author, and wondering about how to make more
sense of what I was hearing and reading in regards to values and environmental protection. From this rather
accidental beginning, a literature investigation was initiated to seek a plausible answer to my questions. With no
studies found that provided reasonable answers, and finding myself in deep confusion over values and their
relation to environmental quality, I turned for help to ethicists, whose bread and butter is the comparison of
values and ethics, and studied with them for several years. What is used in this paper is the distillation of what
they attempted to teach me, and the utilization of the least number of distinctions that would seem to do the
job that we need done in order to make better sense of environmental values and ethics. Much more can and
should be done, but for now, the number of concepts that is used reflects an interest in not introducing too
complex a work that would be unusable to the field. Additional work has begun on how to incorporate
temporal considerations and the highly challenging work of comparing the many different types of
justifications that are used to argue that we have, or do not have, moral obligation to protect the environment.
To shorten the paper, the definitions for the concepts that have been drawn from ethics for this study are
introduced as each of various dimensions of beliefs are distinguished.
Following the work to study ethics, I intensified and expanded the literature review in environmental
education, environmental sociology, environmental psychology, political science, and environmental ethics to
determine if others had already developed methods for comparing environmental values and ethics that could
be used. None were found, but the content of the rather impressive quantity of literature was helpful in
developing the heuristic, as will be shown.
42
Nineteen Continua
Two "Meta-Dimensions" for Considering Environmental Beliefs and Behavior
In the course of developing the heuristic, it became quite useful, even necessary, to be clear about
what it was in the environment I was considering, and then to consider what human beliefs or behaviors
towards the entity I was considering. Those who hold to the epistemological position argued by Warren (1994),
that it is separation of self from nature that is the cause of environmental problems, and that we should not
consider ourselves separate, but as one, perhaps it the heuristic may conclude that the heuristic's categorical
scheme implies that humans are separate from nature. No such implication was intended, rather, the author
hopes to help us explore the variety of belief’s that humans have about humans and non-human animals and
other aspects of the environment, including those about independent value, rights, , moral consideration and
protection. The horizontal axis will be used to describe what it is in the environment that we are considering,
while the vertical axis will be used to describe the human beliefs or behaviors towards the environment we are
considering. Seemingly simplistic, its usefulness has been considerable, particularly when incorporating other’s
Behaviors
Beliefs or
work into the heuristic. Figure 1 shows them below.
Environment
Figure 1: Two MetaDimensions for Considering Environmental Beliefs and Behavior
43
Drawing on the types of complex concepts used in the literature, nineteen continua were defined for our
consideration, but only seven general (and seventeen specific) steps are used in the heuristic. We will first
define and briefly introduce the continua, before exploring their use in the heuristic. A breakthrough in the
work was to conceive of seventeen of these continua as parallel dimensions, each constructed similarly to the
Continuum of Environmental Entities, described later in the paper. This aided in the ability to systematically
categorize and explore beliefs about values and ethics. The two continua that are not parallel to the other
seventeen represent two distict aspects of environmental concerns familiar to ecologists will be introduced first.
Temporal and Egalitarian Dimensions
The question of the universality of moral consideration over time is known in ethics as the scope
problem. One aspect of this is length of time into the future that we must consider when evaluating our moral
considerations. Beliefs vary considerably about the length of time we must take into account when valuing
something, and for determining if we have moral obligations. For example, deep ecologists and those following
the precautionary principle tend to express beliefs that we need to consider the very long-term consequences of
our actions, so they tend to give high value to protecting the environment long into the future. In economics
terms, they have a low, or zero, discount rate. For those more interested in sating an immediate appetite, they
argue for considering present needs. In my analysis of values and ethics, it became clear that this dimension was
most helpfully shown as a third dimension, a z axis of sorts, orthogonal to the two metadimensions shown
above. It is conceptually and empirically quite well demonstrated that belief’s about the value of goods at
different points into the future vary among individuals, and failure to take this into account can lead to
erroneous beliefs about the value that people place on the environment. Another dimension of consideration
addresses the universality of the community of consideration for the type of entity, which we have termed the
“egalitarian” dimension.
Traditional ethical theories assert that justice requires universal moral consideration such that all
humans who meet a set of specified characteristics are to be given the same moral consideration. Those
characteristics are based on species status (a view attacked by many), or by some type of unique capacity, such
as being alive, capacity to feel pain, to have aims, etc. If any entity meets the set criterion, they are due the
moral consideration, hence the term universal moral consideration. Taking a different approach, some
feminists (Gilligan, 1982; Merchant, 1983) have asserted that universality of moral consideration is problematic,
44
and that morality is a duty to care for persons with whom one is in relationship. The type of relationships can
be construed quite broadly, but the strength of moral consideration is said to diminish with the lowered degree
of relationship. This approach requires moral consideration of the relationship between individuals, and
suggests that moral obligations depend upon the particular relationship with an individual, limiting the
community of moral considerability to smaller groups of individuals, and types of obligations are more due to
the particulars of the relationship. The point of this article and the heuristic is not to argue for the author’s view
of which theory is more plausible, but to develop a way to identify and explore the diversity of beliefs. Here we
have two very different views, one arguing that all things of the same capacity and type deserve moral
consideration, the other that it is the type of relationship that matters, hence restricting moral consideration to
particular individuals. Again, a continuum of considerations can be developed, anchored by the two ends, and,
if we could conceive of it geometrically, a fourth dimension of consideration is suggested. Given their
complexity and the scope of the heuristic, the temporal and universal aspects of beliefs are given little attention,
but can be used by the reader as needed.
The Heuristic
Before we delve into the many dimensions of the heuristic, we can pause to answer a question asked
of the author, “What is a heuristic?” Webster defines it thusly, “Of or pertaining to a usually speculative
formulation serving as a guide in the study or solution of a problem.” As defined at the beginning of the paper,
the problem that this heuristic is seeking to answer is to better understand the meaning of environmental
values, and the relationship of knowledge, values, ethics, and environmental protection. I present few claims
about these relationships in this work, but present a method still in development of a series of steps (more in
the spirit of an algorithm, which Webster’s defines as, “A mathematical rule or procedure for solving a
problem.”) for avoiding common errors that arise when investigating these concepts and their relationships,
errors that I believe seriously hinder our ability to consider for ourselves what our beliefs are, and contribute to
the problem of value monism in environmental education and action. A series of terms from ethics are
introduced to our field, with definitions, to support clearer communication and appreciation of the diversity of
views that we hold. And, as series of terms have been developed to describe the rich variety and range of ethics
that are not only theoretically possible, but are found in the germinal writings and contemporary dialogues that
influence the field of environmental education.
45
Seven general steps are included in this version of the heuristic, which includes seventeen specific
steps. The complexity of values and ethics is such that no claim is made here that I have begun to capture the
complexity of values or ethics, rather, I hope to have begun a more systematic approach to their exploration
that will aid dedicated volunteers and professionals in their endeavors to incorporate the important and
challenging beliefs into their work. Not all seventeen are suggested to be used for any question, but are
provided for use as needed. It is hoped that this will reduce the potential for the heuristic to “overspecify” the
problem. Still, each step was generated only after struggling with some significant aspect of the literature and
finding that a distinction needed to be made and kept in order to reduce conflation of concepts and
questionable conclusions.
Heuristic Summarized
In sum, the heuristic provides a series of questions that ask individuals or groups what beliefs we have
about: 1) Which entity is being considered?; 2) Ecological knowledge about the entity, in terms of ; 2a)
knowledge of how humans’ need the entity for our welfare, and; 2b) knowledge of the ecological sensitivity of
the entity; 3) the entity’s capacity for mind? 3a)the entity’s capacity for having conscious aims?; 3b) the entity’s
capacity for feeling pain similar to humans?; 4) the total value of the entity?, 4A) the entity’s use value to
humans, broadly writ (i.e., including nonconsumptive use value and existence value); 4B)the intrinsic value does
the entity have?; 4) the moral obligations humans have to protect the entity, 4A) the indirect moral obligations
humans have to protect the entity?; 4B) the indirect moral obligations humans have to protect the entity? 6)
beliefs in total willingness to protect the environment; 5a) beliefs in willingness to engage in responsible
individual environmental behavior; and 5b) beliefs in willingness to engage in responsible social environmental
behavior (policy); and 6) belief in twelve environmental ethics? The point of the heuristic is not to judge the
justifiability or moral acceptability of the responses from the researchers perspective, but to help elucidate and
clarify existing beliefs, for self-reflection, clearer communication. This also provides the conceptual foundation
for empirical methods for assessing the prevalence and relationship of these values and ethics through
attitudinal surveys.(Meyers, 2002). The steps in the heuristic are shown below in Figure 2.
46
Steps in the Heuristic
Continuum of Environmental Entities
Only
Humans
All conative
entities
All sentient
entities
All biotic entities
All material
entities
All entities and
ecological
phenomenon
(beauty,
wildness, etc)
1. What environmental entity are you considering, on the Continuum of Entities?
2. What do we know about our ecological interdependence on the entity?
2a) What do we know about our human need for entity?
2b) What do we know about the ecological constraints on entity?
3. What is believed about the total mental capacities of the entity?
3a) What is believed about the conative capacities of entities?
3b) What is believed about the sentient capacities of entities?
4. What is believed about the total value of entities?
4a) What is believed about the use value of entities?
4b) What is believed about the intrinsic value of entities?
5. What is believed about the total moral considerability due entities?
5a) What is believed about the indirect moral consideration due entities?
5b) What is believed about the direct moral consideration due entities?
6. What is believed about total willingness to protect the environment?
6a) What is believed about willingness to engage in responsible individual environmental behavior?
6b) What is believed about willingness to engage in responsible social environmental behavior (policy)?
7. Consider which environmental ethic is most preferred:
Anthropocentrism
Conativism
Sentientism
Biocentrism
Ecocentrism
Phenomenalism
Ecological
Anthropocentrism
Ecological
Conativism
Ecological
Sentientism
Ecological
Biocentrism
Ecological
Ecocentrism
Ecological
Phenomenalism
Figure 2: Seven general steps in the heuristic
The heuristic is presented as seventeen specific steps, but the reflection it engenders usually requires
multiple iterations of various steps in order to arrive at well considered conclusions. This is considered a virtue
of the heuristic, in that ethics, like much of philosophy, requires reflective consideration of various parts of a
problem, and the use of judgments made about one part of a problem to help inform the analysis of a separate
but related aspect of a larger problem. Again, it is not the purpose of this heuristic or project to evaluate
whether or not the beliefs of those using the heuristic are scientifically supported, or meet the beliefs of the
researcher, so responses that indicate that some parts of the environment are not believed to be useful, or
should not be given direct moral consideration or protected, are regarded as helpful, in that the provide useful
information about the beliefs of the respondents. However, it may of use to those who wish to do so. The
47
provision of a heuristic to aid in the critical thinking skills of those who are considering environmental values is
seen as valuable enterprise.
Nineteen Continua of environmental beliefs related to environmental values, ethics, and support for
environmental protection
Babbie (1995) provided very useful recommendations for researchers to carefully define the concepts
they are investigating before attempting to develop measures for them (the conceptual level variables), to
continue to consider if the measures as operationalized (operational measures) reflect the original concepts, and
if needed, to revise the conceptual and operational measures to reflect new insights. Following his
recommendation, this work did so, revising the initial concepts over time. The generation of the conceptual
level variables within a theoretical framework of ethics and the interpretation of the literature was a significant
portion of this research. One of the conceptual level variables has been discussed so far, the Continuum of
Environmental Entities. The final sixteen are derived from the methods used to distinguish various aspects of
Environmental Normative Ethical Theories (ENETs). They are listed in Figure 3 below, and their use is
described below.
48
Continuum
Environmental entities
Knowledge of ecological interdependence
Knowledge of human need for entity
Knowledge of ecological constraints
Beliefs about mental capacities of
environmental entities
Beliefs about conative capacities of
environmental entities
Beliefs about sentient capacities of
environmental entities
Beliefs about total value of entities
Beliefs about use value of entities
Beliefs about intrinsic value of entities
Beliefs about total moral considerability
due entities
Beliefs about indirect moral consideration
due entities
Beliefs about direct moral consideration
due entities
Definition
A tool to consider which entity or entities are under consideration, prior
to use of any other continua, where the range of entities is from humans
only to everything in the environment
A tool for evaluating the degree of understanding of ecological
interdependence
A tool for evaluating knowledge of the value of the environment for
human welfare, including nonconsumptive uses
A tool for evaluating knowledge of the ecological interactions of the entity
with its environment, including human interactions, and of the sensitivity
of the entity in its ecological context.
A tool to consider the total mental capacities that are believed to exist in
an entity, where the primary interests are in capacity to feel pain and
capacity to have aims
A tool to consider the conative mental capacities that are believed to exist
in an entity, where conative capacities are the capacity to have aims
A tool to consider the sentient mental capacities that are believed to exist
in an entity, where sentient capacity is the capacity to feel pain similarly to
humans
A tool to consider the total value that is believed to exist for an entity on
the Continuum of Environmental Entities.
A tool to consider the total moral consideration that is believed due an
entity on the Continuum of Environmental Entities.
A tool to consider the intrinsic value that is believed to exist for an entity
on the Continuum of Environmental Entities.
A tool to consider the total moral consideration that is believed due an
entity on the Continuum of Environmental Entities.
A tool to consider how much, if any, indirect moral consideration and
obligation are believed due an entity on the Continuum of Environmental
Entities
A tool to consider how much, if any, direct moral consideration and
obligation are believed due an entity on the Continuum of Environmental
Entities
Beliefs in total willingness to protect the
environment
Beliefs in willingness to engage in
responsible individual environmental
behavior
Beliefs in willingness to support socially
responsible environmental behavior
(policy)
A tool to consider how much, if any, a person believes that we need to act
individually or socially to protect the environment
A tool to consider how much, if any, a person is willing to engage in
individual responsible environmental behavior
Beliefs in environmental ethics
A two-dimensional, twelve-category theoretical system of ethical
categories to reflect theoretically diverse beliefs in intrinsic value, use
value and the need to protect the environment.
A tool to consider what time frame is being considered
A tool to consider the extent of beliefs in the egalitarianism of moral
consideration due , in terms of whether or not all members of a species
are given consideration, or only those in a particular relationships or
regions.
Temporal Beliefs
Egalitarian Beliefs
A tool to consider how much, if any, a person believes that we need to
engage in socially responsible environmental behavior (customs, laws) to
protect the environment
Figure 3: Nineteen Dimensions of Environmental Beliefs
In essence, the nineteen continua represent a portion of an emerging theory of how to describe 17
selected dimensions (there are many more) of beliefs related to the environment, and describing them in such a
way that we can more easily observe and consider their interrelationships, building upon the twelve dimensions
49
discussed by Meyers ( 2002). The dimensions, or Continuums, are constructed so as to show a wide range of
views, anchored on both ends with absolutely inclusive views (the right-hand boundary of each Continua) and
least inclusive (only humans) on the left hand boundary. There are multiple ways to utilize these conceptual
devices. The first use was to organize the different types of beliefs into their constitutive dimensions, thus
helping the researcher reduce the conflation of different types of values. For example, a belief about the
capacity of an entity would be assigned to that continuum for further consideration. The further consideration
would generally include determining if the entity was believed to be a phenomenon, a material entity, alive,
sentient, or conative. Thus, the belief about the capacity of the entity would be relatively quickly assigned it’s
location along the continuum. Some might wish to draw a new distinction, and a location along the continuum
can be accommodated if it based upon a physical or mental capacity. If new criterion are introduced for
evaluation, its relationship to other’s beliefs about the capacity of the entity, can be shown by where along the
continuum they would place their belief about the entity. Interestingly, the continuum, and the categories, have
been easily used by many to categorize beliefs about many things in the environment into their respective
locales. And, where users cannot easily do so, a valuable step is often made, that of initiating inquiry into what
others think about where an entity should go on the continuum, and of asking what evidence researchers have
on these questions. Beliefs, though, clearly are stronger or weaker, depending upon a variety of factors. So a
further element can be naturally included, which is to consider how strong a belief one has in the placement of
the belief along the continuum. For example, one could claim to be absolutely certain that plants have conative
capacities, or absolutely certain that they do not, etc. Thus, it has shown potential as an educational tool for
reflecting upon subtle differences in beliefs, comparing them, and facilitating the inquiry into the sciences of
the capacities of animals and plants, and doing so in a more organized framework than is customarily provided
in discussion of ethics, which tend to focus upon the justifications for the theories of value and obligation, and
quickly descend into complex philosophical analysis and or argument.
Each continua was developed for use in a similar fashion: to organize different dimensions of beliefs
onto their respective continua, and to consider where to place these beliefs along the continua. Then,
comparison between different dimensions is facilitated, yielding most interesting results. Empirical work
(Herzog, 1993) shows that beliefs about the capacities of animals is strongly correlated to beliefs about their
treatment.
50
After carefully defining what it is that is under consideration, an ethicist using NET analysis would
find it helpful to distinguish what is a theory of value from a theory of obligation, from the justificatory
statements used for each theory, from the statements of how to link the theory of value to the theory of
obligation. For simplification, the heuristic does not engage the justificatory statements, or the linkages between
the theory of value and obligation.
Each continuum is parallel, using the same categories used for the Continuum of Environmental
Entities. When the continuums are used sequentially, in the order shown above, they are provide a heuristic
device for considering different moral aspects of environmental values and ethics. Figure 4 below shows a
useful method for grouping the Continua so it works as the Heuristic.
Continuum
1. Environmental entities
2. Knowledge of ecological interdependence
3. Knowledge of human need for entity
4. Knowledge of ecological constraints on entity
5. Beliefs about total mental capacities of entities
6. Beliefs about conative capacities of entities
7. Beliefs about sentient capacities of entities
8. Beliefs about total value of entities
9. Beliefs about use value of entities
10. Beliefs about intrinsic value of entities
11. Beliefs about total moral considerability due entities
12. Beliefs about indirect moral consideration due entities
13. Beliefs about direct moral consideration due entities
14. Beliefs in total willingness to protect the environment
15. Beliefs in willingness to engage in responsible individual environmental behavior
16. Beliefs in willingness to engage in responsible social environmental behavior (policy)
17. Beliefs in environmental ethics
Figure 4: Sequential Order for Seventeen Continua in Heuristic
Continuum of Environmental Entities
The Continuum of Environmental Entities was developed to ensure that the type, or types, of entity
being considered was/were made clear. To reduce awkward sentences, we shall refer to both possibilities of the
singular entity and plural entities by using the term entity. The Continuum was seen as necessary given the
enormous complexity and diversity of things to which we refer when we use the term environment. While this
51
point may be obvious, the methodological problems it generates for both qualitative and quantitative research
is quite problematic. For example, if urban sprawl is the environmental concern being considered, let us take an
example of urban growth that is scheduled to log an ancient forest, such as we might see along the western
coast of the US, in California, Oregon, or Washington. With the timbering example, the environmental impacts
can be many, creating a problem I have observed in environmental conflicts repeatedly, a failure to
communicate very specifically what parts of the environment are of concern. The environmental problems that
could be of primary concern might (probably would) range from concerns over the loss of landscape level
aesthetics, such as a view of a remaining ancient forest that is threatened by clearcutting, or timber thinning for
“fire control”, as proposed by the Bush administration. This loss of aesthetics would lead many who enjoy
these areas for recreational or spiritual uses to lose significant portions of their enjoyment of these areas. In
economic terms, their nonconsumptive use value might be reduced from the hundreds of dollars they would
spend to enjoy the experience or to protect the woods, to virtually zero, once an area has been logged and its
aesthetic properties destroyed. For those whose aesthetic experience is more spiritual, they might use spiritual
or religious terms to connote the depth of their loss, and strongly object to the previous sentences efforts to
describe the loss in economic terms. There are those who enjoy wilder areas for recreational pursuits, perhaps
with less spiritual concerns involved, who would not describe the loss in such spiritual or religious terms, and
who might not object to using the language of economics to discuss the value they attach to their experience in
the woods. This example shows two different types of value – inherent value (or intrinsic value), and use value,
that form basis for much of the analysis that follows. To continue this example, we should note that timbering
can have serious adverse affect upon water supplies, both in quantity and quality, if erosion occurs on cleared
land or timber roads, filling streams with sediment that runs into a drinking water supply, increasing the cost of
treating the water. Those concerned with water quality could have a purely economic objection to timbering on
this account. Additionally, if clearcutting is performed, it is not unusual for replanting to be accompanied by
spraying of pesticides and herbicides, which can enter water supplies, thus creating human health risks. Those
in charge of the water supply may be quite concerned with the additional costs of treatment, and increased
health risks, but may not be so concerned with the aesthetic issues just reviewed. Of course, clearcutting can
also increase the volume of water that runs off the land when it rains, leading to downstream flooding that kills
people and destroys property, as seen in West Virginia and other locales. Concerns of this type would be over
the impacts to soil and water resources that then affect human interests. And, for those concerned with the
52
health of local fisheries, the adverse impacts on streams of the this type of timbering has been shown by
reduced or eliminated fish populations, as sediments cover the streambeds, reduce the water quality, reduce the
habitat fish use for reproduction, and reduce the organisms they eat. For those who enjoy fishing, this
eliminates the use value of the streams for fishing. For those who fish for their living, it reduces or eliminates
their incomes, all human impacts of reduced use value. For those who value being able to enjoy the aesthetic
beauty of a relatively pristine stream, their use value is reduced or eliminated. And for those who attach a
spiritual or religious value to the presence of such streams, that value is reduced, which is again a more intrinsic
or inherent value. We could continue to describe the different types of impacts on the local ecology that can
happen from timbering, and then discuss how some of these can be ameliorated b y timbering in different
ways. Hopefully, the point has been made that an orderly way of describing such impacts might be helpful to
our consideration of these issues, especially when there are conflicts. The previous discussion was conducted
using elements of the heuristic which will be explicated.
Given the diversity of objective things and phenomena in the environment, and Hardin's (1968)
observation that it is important to be clear about what part of the environment is being considered, a method
was sought for categorizing the environment. The categories needed to be relevant to beliefs about
environmental values and ethics, so the writings of environmental ethicists were used to identify the types of
entities in the environment that were given different types of moral considerations. The Continuum of
Environmental Entities was developed to provide a tool for making clearer what part of the objective
environment was being referred to by a writer or respondent.
All entities and
ecologically
Phenomenon
(wildness, beauty,
etc.)
Only
Humans
Figure 5: Anchors for Continuum of Environmental Entities
The anchors of, and categories within, the continuum were derived from assessing and consolidating
the criterion used in the environmental ethical literature to distinguish what types of environmental entities
were due moral considerability.
53
The first anchor reflects Guthrie’s (1967) sharply defined position, asserting that, ". . . the inclusion of
other organisms as primary participants in our ethical system is both logically unsound and operationally
unfeasible." This criterion about a class of entities in the environment restricts moral consideration only to
human beings, and excludes all other entities in the environment, including all non-human animals, etc.
The opposite of restricting moral considerability to only humans is to provide it to everything in the
objective environment, and this construct will anchor the other end of the continuum. Naess (1989) and
Rolston (1988) both argue (as do religions such as the Janists) that everything in the environment has intrinsic
value and deserves direct moral consideration. Before we describe each of the six types of entities that are in
the Continuum, they are shown below in Figure 6 for reference. Each of the criterion for distinguishing the six
categories will be addressed in order, and can be thought to be the lines that separate each category.
Only
Humans
All conative
entities
All sentient
entities
All biotic
entities
All material
entities
All entities and
ecological
phenomenon
(beauty, wildness,
etc.)
Figure 6: Continuum of Environmental Entities
In a more inclusive view (than Guthrie) of what entities deserve moral consideration, Feinberg (1974)
argued, simplified, that the ability to have conscious aims, called conativity, conferred moral considerability, and
that any species that has that capacity ought to be given moral consideration. Here, a conscious aim should be
understood to include the capacity for self awareness and conscious choice. The careful reader may believe that
some humans do not show such capacities, and that no other animals do so: in such cases, this heuristic does
not reject such conclusions as absurd, but shows how we might categorize such beliefs by putting humans into
the sentient category, presuming such readers believe that humans have the capacity to feel pain. If they do not
believe so, but they believe that humans are alive, then they are free to put humans into the alive category.
Feinberg’s criterion of conativity, taken very roughly, will be used to distinguish another type of environmental
entity. It is important to acknowledge that all the Continuums are based upon the criterion of potential for
conativity or sentience, because this includes the younger of those entities that will eventually possess such
capacities once they are more mature, and the mature who show such capacities when awake, or on occasion,
54
but who do not show such capacities when asleep, or otherwise. If the reader wishes to reject this and use a
criterion of actual capacity, that is their choice.
The third type of environmental entity is defined as that type of entity that is sentient, or has the
capacity to suffer similarly to humans. Bentham (1789) argued that sentient entities deserve moral
considerability, because the suffering is a disvalue, and causing disvalue is wrong, causing suffering
unnecessarily is a disvalue, and therefore causing suffering unnecessarily is wrong. This view was extended by
Singer (1975) who argued that many animals could suffer, and for the extension of moral consideration and
protection to many types of animals.
The fourth type of environmental entities are those that are alive. This criterion arises from the many
influential environmental ethicists who posit criteria for moral considerability that depend upon the criterion of
being alive, as well as other posited principles (Schweitzer, 1948; Regan, 1983; Taylor, 1986; and Goodpastor,
1978). To simplify this study, which is not a philosophical study of the arguments used to justify beliefs, the
differences of their complex justifications, and the meaning of their difference, are not investigated further,
leaving that for others, but the likeness of the criterion they have drawn is used.
So far, the categories include everything in the environment that is alive. On the continuum of
entities, this leaves abiotic entities and immaterial environmental phenomenon. A number of environmental
ethicists confer moral considerability on living as well as the inanimate environment, such as the air, the waters
in lakes, rivers, and oceans, the soil, mountains, earth, and the beauty that people observe in the landscape
(Muir 1899; Rolston, 1988; Naess, 1989; Callicott, 1989; and Hargrove, 1989). Again, the authors provide
different justifications for their positions, yet they hold roughly similar views on the types of environmental
entities that deserve direct moral consideration. The abiotic elements of the environment, such as rocks, water,
and air can logically be held to have value, and direct moral considerability, without requiring commitment to
intrinsic value or direct moral considerability to phenomena such as beauty and wildness. Thus, a category for
abiotic entities is included.
The last category includes ecological, aesthetic, and other unique environmental phenomena. It arises
from the intangible elements of the landscape, such as wildness, aesthetic phenomenon, and group's properties,
such as ecosystems, and species. Hargrove (1989), Muir (1916), Leopold (1949), Rolston (1989) and Callicott
(1989) refer to wildness and aesthetic beauty as unique values deserving of direct moral rights to protection.
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The placement of phenomenological characteristics on the “right-hand side of the Continuum requires some
explanation, as does the general ordering of the categories and the criterion used to generate them.
Their arrangement grew from the long-standing notion in ethics that there has been a growing circle
of moral consideration in western human history. In ancient Greece, only male citizens had full rights, with
citizenship restricted to propertied men, an arrangement that continued through the founding of United States,
which in addition disenfranchised non-white men. With time, non-whites gained some degree of moral
consideration, as did women, eventually achieving full citizens in terms of legal recognition. Today, the moral
sphere is legally expanding to include non-human animals, as evidenced by anti-cruelty laws in their various
forms, and what I will term anti-suffering laws, such as those in the European Union and United States
governing animal husbandry to prevent animal suffering (Council of Europe 1976) and professional codes in
the United States governing treatment of animals in zoological gardens. Rolston (1988) and others have argued
for extending the circle of moral consideration to plants, such as trees and other entities in the environment. As
noted at the beginning of this section, the opposite of restricting moral consideration to just humans is to
recognize for everything. Thus, when I sought a way to explore graphically these ideas, the idea of a continuum
occurred to me, was tested, and became of use to me. Logically, extending the moral circle from plants would
next include lower orders of living things, but for simplicity, these were added. One could then expand it to
nonliving entities, but, as is done in the Continuum, not include phenomenological elements. The logic of this
approach relies upon distinctions based upon mental capacity for the left hand of the scale, given the attention
that ethicists give to mental capacities. In addition, an extensive literature review in biology and zoology to find
a systematic method for comparing the complexity of animals and plants based upon taxonomic classifications
failed, thus, the Continuum, and the heuristic, was developed to allow the reader to decide what capacity the
entity has, and assign the entity its place along the continuum, separately from allowing the reader to decide the
value and moral considerations due the entity. This freed the heuristic from imposing a moral scheme on the
reader and enables it to better function in exploring the beliefs of others.
Still, a logical problem with the Continuum persists, and I thank Howard Margolis of the University
of Chicago for bringing this to my attention. Since the Continuum ranges from the least inclusive to most
inclusive, it is also an order that is also from most complex (on the left hand side) to least complex (on the right
hand side). This ordering tends to reflect things that are held to be of higher value on the left, such as conative
activities that include choice, compassion, reason, virtues (loyalty, compassion, brotherhood, etc). Additionally,
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the logic of the Continuum is that it is of increasing inclusivity from the right hand side to the left hand side, as
those who hold that everything is of value include everything, and those who restrict moral considerability to
living things do so for all living things, which are portrayed on the “left hand” side of the Continuum, but do
not extend it to the “right-hand” side. Margolis’ objection was to the placement of “phenomenological entities”
is to the right of “abiotic entities,” given that this implies that phenomenon are simpler than material goods,
and of less value, quite counterintuitive to the notion that aesthetic properties of the arts are simpler than
abiotic entities such as rocks. The original decision to distinguish abiotic entities was informed in part by my
reluctance to attempt to solve the ancient problem of where phenomelogical properties exist (i.e., do they exist
in the object, or are they in the mind of the perceiver) thus creating a category for the phenomenon, without
attempting to define (which would have required a resolution) where these properties belong, or if they even
existed, since the Continuum is for “beliefs” about, not the actual existence of such properties. Making a
commitment to their being in the mind of the observer would place them into high end (left side) of the
conative category. Determining that it is a property of the object would seem to require a completely new
dimension of distinction, where one would evaluate beliefs about the presence (if any) of such properties as
“beauty or “wildness" for each entity in the remaining five entities along the Continuum. One could imagine
generating multiple subdimensions for each aesthetic or phenomenological property that is of interest, one each
for beauty, wildness, naturalness, integrity, etc. As of this writing, where to better place these phenomenon has
not been resolved and deserves further work. Still, it appears that all six categories are ordered in logical
fashion, anchored with two absolute points.
This leaves the question of where to assign in the Continuum of Environmental Entities the
phenomena of ecosystems and species. My thanks to Harold Hungerford for bringing this to my attention. If
environmental studies and ecology have brought anything into our environmental consciousness, it has been
the importance of recognizing the complexity interactions that occur between and within the abiotic and biotic
elements of the environment, of the importance of ecosystems. Yet philosophers sometimes treat the ideas of
ecosystems and even species as epistemologically questionable entities, in that they are groups, and groups do
not exist, but only their constitutive elements. Dawkins (1996) noted that the idea of a species is an artificial
construct, because no physical or biological criterion or criteria can be drawn to define precisely a species. Since
the preservation of a species is linked closely to the preservation of a number of the individual of a species, the
preservation of a minimum number of individuals will be considered the preservation of the species. Therefore,
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no separate category for species will be provided. This notion is controversial among environmentalists, who
are aware of the synergistic nature of the constitutive parts of the environment. Despite this view, recent work
in ecology suggests that ecosystems that were once thought to be “real” ought to be recognized as regions
defined for the convenience of scientific or policy work. To prevent the conflation of categories of entities in
this continuum, ecosystems will be treated as their constitutive elements, an unsatisfactory compromise done
for the goal of not conflating any parts of the continuum. Users of the heuristic should map the specific
ecological concerns onto the continuum and their relations. Additional work has been done on the heuristic
since 2002b to provide for consideration of ecological concepts and is shown in the section on the nineteen
continuums.
Continuum of Environmental Capacities
After clarifying what parts of the environment, and what relationships are being considered, it has
been found, both conceptually (Meyers, 2002) and empirically (Herzog and Galvin, 1992, Somers-Griffin,
1999) quite helpful to consider what morally unique properties the part(s) of the environment being considered
are thought to possess. Thus, step xx is to identify what things in the environment are being considered, and
what kinds of capacities the environmental entity has. The terms used are the same terms used in the
Continuum of Environmental Entities, which do not reflect any moral or value judgments about the entities
being considered. In fact, the judgments about what entities have what capacities are most helpfully made by
using empirical evidence about their capacities. Romanes (1883) provided a brilliant analysis for ethologists and
those interested in the mental capacities of animals and environment, on the usefulness of assuming that
humans can infer animal capacities from careful interpretation of animal behavioral. He thought it absurd to
accept the argument that humans could not know if animals had any capacities because we can never
experience what the animal's experience. Rather, he thought that careful observation of animals showed that if
they acted similarly enough to humans in like situations, that we should consider this sufficient evidence for
their capacity, and that observational data provided stronger evidence. For a fuller account, see Romanes. The
story of why Skinner’s (1967) behavioralism developed and maintained such dominance in human psychology
and ethology is too long to engage here. I find it helpful to use Romane’s view, which would seem justified
from Dewey’s view, in that there is sufficient evidence to warrant the judgment that animals other than humans
can experience some degree of mental states that are similar to humans. Since the heuristic does not require
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researchers to prove that animals or the environmental actually possess mental capacities, but only to assess
beliefs about such capacities, the issue of whether or not one is a behavioralist does not need resolved here. For
those who still hold to a behavioralist view, they can find use in the way this heuristic carefully distinguishes
between beliefs that humans have about animal and environment’s capacities, and any claims about what
capacities the environment actually has. The categories used in the Continuum of Environmental Capacities are
in Figure 7 below.
Humans
Conative
Sentient
Biotic
Material
Environmental
phenomenon
Figure 7: Continuum of Environmental Capacities
To use the Continuum of Environmental Capacities, just reflect on each of the environmental entities
you are considering and judge for yourself where you believe the entity best fits, using the definitions of the
categories provided in the Continuum of Environmental Entities, and summarized next.
The categories in the Continuum of Environmental Capacities are parallel to the categories used in the
Continuum of Environmental Entities. This is done quite purposively, to develop a relatively simple tool for
comparing quite different beliefs. The definitions for the categories reflect a simplification of the views of a
number of ethicists, but do provide “bright” lines of distinctions between categories. Starting at the left side of
the Continuum first is to carefully consider if the environmental entity can feel pain similar to humans (if so, it
is considered sentient), and secondly, if it can experience mental or emotional suffering similar to humans, in
which case it is conative. If it is regarded as neither alive but neither conative nor sentient, it is in the category
called biotic, and if it is considered a material type of entity, be it air, or water, that is not considered sentient,
conative, or alive, it is in the category called material entity. Likewise, if an entity is not conative, sentient, alive,
or material, but is a phenomenon such as beauty, or wildness, then it is in the category called. The point of the
heuristic is not to impose this categorical schema upon others, but to provide a method for the clarifying of
beliefs. Therefore, what entities that are assigned to these categories should be clearly defined by the researcher,
educator or learner. Subsequent steps in the heuristic will provide opportunity to define clearly what types of
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entities are believed to have which type of characteristic. For example, if environmental phenomenon such as
beauty is considered sentient, then it should be categorized as a sentient entity
For educators, it is an excellent resource for engaging people in self-reflection and group dialogue. For
this researcher, it has been useful to interpret others work to interpret if they systematically (or not) have
investigated or more types of entities with their questions, or if they assign different values or obligations to
different types of entities. If others work has developed a different criterion for distinguishing entities, it has
been quite helpful to this researcher to consider where on the Continuum their criterion lay. If it does, then it is
easier to compare to others work. If it does not, then it has helped to show this researcher that another’s work
uses different criterion that are generally not based upon empirical evidence of the capacity of an entity. If the
other Continua in this heuristic capture their criterion, then it shows which dimension another’s work falls into,
and thus helps me organize my comparison and understanding of the diversity of work that is being done.
Normative Ethical Theories and Environmental Normative Ethical Theories
A Normative Ethical Theory (NET) is a moral or ethical theory that includes a proposed theory of
obligation, a theory of value, and how the two combine to provide moral guidance. A theory of obligation
asserts what actions or belief are considered permissible, impermissible, obligated and forbidden under the
NET, while the theory of value states what is of intrinsic, inherent, extrinsic, or use value. In order to be a
complete moral theory, a theory of value and theory of obligation are well developed and are linked to provide
a picture of what types of entities are due what types of moral considerations (Rosen, 1993).
For this study, NETs that address environmental issues will be termed environmental NETs, or
ENETs. Since environmental ethics is concerned with the human-environmental ethical relationship, ENETs
propose various theories about what moral considerations exist and do not exist. Using a philosophical
approach to understand environmental issues provides a well-developed method to examine critically the moral
and ethical holdings about the human-environment relationship.
Continuum of Total Value of the Environment
The original and primary focus of the work was to help the researcher when engaging values and
ethics, therefore, this continuum is the core of the heuristic. To summarize the continuum of total value, it
represents the total environmental value that is believed to exist for an entity, where the total value is a simple
aggregation of two different types of value explained below, intrinsic value and use value. The heuristic is not
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itself a numerical measure, so we are not doing a scoring procedure here, rather we are observing phenomenon
regarding beliefs. Keeping in mind that the heuristic works better when we define what entities we are
considering, let us use an example of trees. Rather, we are exploring the phenomenon that a person with beliefs
that trees are both intrinsically valuable to them and of use value to them would somehow attach more total
value to trees than someone who believes that trees have only use value to them, but not intrinsic value. And,
someone who has low use value and intrinsic value for trees would also have lower total value for trees than
either of our two first examples. The import of this approach, and the meaning of the terms follows.
The complexity and multidimensionality of values puzzled me for years, especially when I challenged
myself not to accept the first interesting and plausible explanation of what they are, or what view I should hold,
but to compare and critically evaluate different views. Many environmental writers and researchers have
struggled, in many impressive efforts, to understand our environmental values and their relationship to
environmental quality. It is quite beyond the scope of this paper to review and compare this history, nor to
undertake the detailed philosophical treatment that various environmental ethical theories, worldviews, and
paradigms deserve. It is also quite outside the range of the heuristic as developed to date to claim that the
nineteen dimensions presented here begin to account for all likely dimensions of environmental values, or the
many combinations of them that account for complex worldviews or paradigms. Still, the use of the heuristic
has made it clear that analyses of environmental values tend to fail to maintain the distinctions they start with,
or conflate various dimensions, and the heuristic has been helpful in keeping my own research more consistent.
Clearly, to anyone familiar with the physical and social sciences, avoiding the conflation of variables in any
analysis is important in order to avoid questionable research. The reader is entitled to observe how the heuristic
has been helpful in evaluating if problems in values analysis and research may be related to the conflation of
certain types of values, so I build upon an analysis provided by Norton, to show how the heuristic adds a
distinction that provides for new categories of values that are of use in many analyses.
Norton (1995), in his excellent analysis of environmental values, asks, "What makes deep ecology
deep?" (p. 220) and states " . . . there seems to be some agreement that the movement gains its unity and
identify from a shared belief that nature has value independent of its uses for human purposes. . . . (and that)
current environmental policies are in a profound sense "unjust" to other species" (p. 220). He notes that deep
ecologists ". . . represent a modern version of the idea that environmentalists sort themselves into two broad
classifications based on opposed motives . . . some believe, while others do not, that elements of nature have
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independent value. The two classes are deep ecologists and shallow ecologists, echoing the long-standing
cleavage in environmentalisms between preservationists and conservationists. The deep ecologists claim that all
mainstream environmental groups are shallow ecologists who are interested in conserving natural resources for
humans to use in the future, not to protect nature for its own sake. Norton shows that,
". . . however interesting and important the philosophical question of whether nonhuman elements of
nature have intrinsic value, answers to this question do not correspond in any direct way to important
disagreements regarding environmental objectives and policies. Long-sighted anthropocentrists and
ecocentrists tend to adopt more and more similar policies as scientific evidence is gathered, because both value
systems - and several others as well - point toward the common-denominator objective of protecting ecological
contests." (p. 246).
One of the primary methods used in ethics when evaluating values and moral obligations is to first
focus upon value concepts. For this researcher, it seemed curious that few theories in environmental ethics, or
ethics in general, had well developed theories of values, theories of obligation, and how these were linked, but
that the analytical methods used to deconstruct ethical ideas worked best when used in a particular order. Since
we have introduced a number of moral terms key to the discussion, before defining them, let us turn to that
task. We turn first to what is meant here when discussing moral theories, values and obligations.
In sum, a normative Ethical Theory (NET) is a moral or ethical theory that includes a proposed
theory of obligation, a theory of value, and how the two combine to provide moral guidance for actions or
beliefs. A theory of obligation asserts what actions or belief are considered permissible, impermissible,
obligated and forbidden under the NET, while the theory of value states what is of intrinsic, inherent, extrinsic,
or use value. In order to be a complete moral theory, a theory of value and theory of obligation are well
developed and are linked to provide a picture of what types of entities are due what types of moral
considerations (Rosen, 1993). Figure 8 provides a conceptual scheme for the primary components of a NET,
and the components that will be explained in subsequent sections.
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Use Value
Intrinsic Value
Indirect Moral Obligation
Direct Moral Obligation
Theory of Value
Theory of Moral Obligation
Plus, linkage of theories
Figure 8: A conceptual scheme for a normative ethical theory
For this study, NETs that address environmental issues will be termed environmental NETs, or
ENETs. Since environmental ethics is concerned with the human-environmental ethical relationship, ENETs
propose various theories about what moral considerations exist and do not exist. Using a philosophical
approach to understand environmental issues provides a well-developed method to examine moral and ethical
holdings about the human-environment relationship. Let us apply the simple tools from ethics of NETS and
value theory to Norton's analysis, also drawing on our plant example.
Deep ecology is sometimes viewed as an environmental ethic, despite Devall and Session's realization
that it is more of a worldview, a set of beliefs that interrelate, than a coherent and formal ethical theory that
provides unique value and moral conclusions. Still, let us treat it as an ENET in the heuristic and observe what
happens. When Norton observes that deep ecologists believe that nature has independent value, he could easily
mean that trees have intrinsic value, that is, they have value in and of themselves, independent of humans. This
accords with my reading of Naess. So, if we use the heuristic to interpret beliefs, we would conclude that Naess
expresses strong beliefs in the intrinsic value of plants, on the Continuum of Intrinsic Value. If we ask where
Naess' expressed beliefs lay on the Continuum of Use Value, it is clear that his appreciation of the aesthetic
properties of trees, and understanding of their use value to maintaining ecosystem integrity that human life
needs to survive, demonstrate strong beliefs in the use value of trees. Thus, he has shown beliefs that trees
have both types of value, intrinsic value and use value, and he would have a very strong belief in total value of
trees. Let us compare Naess to Pinchot, using this approach. Pinchot argued strongly for the need to conserve
trees because they were valuable to humans, and we needed to secure their use in the long run. Thus, if we ask
where Pinchot's expressed beliefs would lay on the Continuum of Use Value, it seems clear that he also had
strong belief in the use value of trees. If we inquire into where he may lay on the Continuum of Intrinsic Value,
it would be difficult to find statements that suggest that he believed that trees had independent value, or
intrinsic value, despite his deep appreciation of them. So, we would interpret him to have a low belief in
intrinsic value of trees, and, summed with his high belief in use value, a moderate level of total belief in value of
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trees. Deep ecologists belief that they have a stronger belief in the value of nature and trees may be explained as
a subconscious understanding this analysis. But their move to argue that they therefore have a stronger
commitment to environmental protection is problematic, as Norton suggests. The portion of the heuristic that
engages beliefs in moral obligations will build on this analysis, and then ties it to support for environmental
protection before linking it to the development of a series of environmental ethics. The empirical work to test
these relationships is being undertaken by Meyers (2002xx). This introduction to how the heuristic addresses
values is further refined below.
Continuum of Use Value of the Environment
Step xx is the consideration of the environment's value. This distinction is one of the most critical,
and oft neglected, to make. Two distinct types were developed for this, based upon the scheme outlined by
Rosen (1996). It is a simplification of the five types of values defined in the Cambridge Dictionary of
Philosophy (1997) (inherent, intrinsic, contributory, use and instrumental). As noted earlier in the paper, the
key distinction developed here is between belief that an entity has use value to humans, and beliefs that an
entity has intrinsic value. Extending Rosen’s work, this project notes that belief in use value includes use,
instrumental and contributory values, while intrinsic value includes intrinsic and inherent values, as defined by
the Cambridge Dictionary. Use value is defined as usefulness for obtaining another thing of value, from
intrinsic value, which is something that has value in and of itself.
Here is an example of use value that builds upon our timbering example. The forests (or, to tie this
into the Continuum of Environmental Entities the many trees and plants that are biotic entities in a forest)
provide humans with erosion protection and water filtration that is of use value for protecting the water
quantity and quality of drinking water supplies. One point of environmental education is to teach others the use
value of the environment, and to consider the implications of humans' actions on the use value of the
environment. An interesting characteristic of the Continuum of Use Value is that it provides a tool to explore
beliefs about the use value of a wide ranging of environmental entities. This may seem simplistic for those
familiar with environmental issues, but the consideration of the use value of sentience and conativity requires a
subtly and complexity of treatment. For example, considering the use value of sentience can lead to a
realization that it is the conativity of other creatures that makes them, in an odd way, useful to humans. For
example, humans have an increasing sense of wonder and appreciation of non-human primates intelligence.
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The sensitive reader’s patience is requested lest they regard this writer as an advocate of believing that
everything should be considered to be of mere use value to humans. This is not only irrelevant to the task at
hand (developing a method to increase our appreciation of the diversity of views, particularly those we tend to
disagree with), but it is not the case, as will be shown in the section on intrinsic value. What I do recommend is
that we realize that beliefs about the usefulness of various entities in the environment to human welfare can
and is writ very broadly by many. The conative capacity (i.e., their ability to express emotions, to apparently
need us, to bond with us, to demonstrate affection, loyalty) of companion animals, such as dogs and cats, is of
such tremendous value to humans that it is almost inexpressible. Consider the delight and wonder expressed by
ethologists and nature writers over the capacities of primates, cetaceans and myriads of other creatures. If it is
considered crude of this researcher to observe that humans obtain joy over the capacities of other creatures,
and satisfaction in interactions with them, let it be because of my inability to express this more sensitively, not
because the observation is false. This project is not to judge whether others beliefs are reasonable, but to
increase our ability to appreciate, understand, communicate and study the marvelous complexity of our
environmental values and beliefs. Without further justification, let us turn to the next Continuum, and
dimension of value beliefs, that of intrinsic value.
Continuum of Intrinsic Value of the Environment
While there are many differences of beliefs about what is of intrinsic value, a number of
environmental ethicists argue that plants have intrinsic value (Rolston, Naess). While the human act of planting
is sometime viewed as interference in nature, and of disvalue, let us assume that they believe that planting an
endangered species as part of a restoration project on disturbed land is a good thing to do, so that the act of
planting would have intrinsic value. An ordinary shovel used to plant would have use value for the planting.
Thus, most people would believe that a shovel has use value for digging, but not have a belief that the ordinary
shovel has intrinsic value. Interestingly, one would also expect that most people would believe that it is wrong
to arbitrarily destroy a shovel, but the wrongness would more than likely be because of a belief that doing so
wasted the money, effort, and resources used to make the shovel, not because they believed that the shovel has
intrinsic value, or any rights or interests in remaining a shovel. Thus, an entity may have use value, but not
intrinsic value.
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Many things and actions are argued to have both intrinsic and use value. For example, if the shovel
were a work of art, or made of gold, many would believe that the shovel had intrinsic value (although some
would disagree), and using it to plant would give it both use and intrinsic value. Questions to distinguish these
types of values must be carefully constructed and interpreted to maintain the integrity of the analysis of value.
Use value is first considered, as these values are the most easily recognizable and noncontroversial
values. Again, the Continuum of Environmental Entities was more functional when used as a framework to ask
systematically the questions of what things in the environment have use value to humans, moving from one
end of the continuum to the other. If respondents wish to disaggregate the categories so they are more finely
resolved or they wish to make other distinctions, this is entirely acceptable, and occurred in the course of the
research. The goal is to facilitate the critical inquiry into personal beliefs.
Continuum of Intrinsic Value of the Environment
Step xx is to consider what things in the environment have intrinsic value, or are believed to be of
value in and of themselves. Things or phenomena may have both use value and intrinsic value, so it is
important to allow something to have both types of value. This may be the most challenging part of the
heuristic. The capacity of people to recognize and attach high use value of things appears to be well developed,
while the capability of people to distinguish those things that are of intrinsic value appears less well developed,
leading to conflation of the two. In the course of using the heuristic in the research, once the researcher was
satisfied that he had identified that a thing had either intrinsic value or use value, or both, and then the step was
completed unless the question arose again. A range of questions were developed for use in the instrumentation
phase that can be used in the heuristic to help respondents to consider systematically whether or not each type
of environmental entity has intrinsic value. These questions take several forms. Some help respondents
determine beliefs about intrinsic value of things in the environment by asking what types of actions are morally
permitted to do to those things, or about important characteristics of entities that are often associated with
beliefs in intrinsic value, such as if it is believed that an entity has a soul or spirit, has rights, or if it is morally
permitted or forbidden for human’s to use an entity in a zoo, for medical research, or as food. Different
answers to these questions are given by people when they considered them, and enabled them to identify
systematically where the particular environmental entity should be placed on the continuum, after some
consideration.
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Continuum of Moral Obligations to Protect the Environment
This Continuum aggregates beliefs for two other continua: beliefs in indirect moral obligations to
protect and for indirect moral obligations to protect the environment. Thus, it shows if there is a moral belief
in the need to protect an entity for any reason. The distinction between direct and indirect moral obligations
may be challenging at first, but is of enormous use, and draws upon a principle found to be quite practical and
necessary in ethics. It may help to referring back to Figure 8, "A conceptual scheme for a normative ethical
theory," where we distinguished two general types of value, use and intrinsic, and two types of obligations,
direct and indirect. For this work, I will define a moral obligation as a belief that a moral agent has an
obligation to take an action, or refrain from an action, for moral reasons. A moral agent is an entity that has the
mental capacity to be aware of their actions, has the free will to make a choice about their actions, and is acting
in the moral domain. Given that some humans, and animals, are argued to have too little mental capacity to be
moral agents (i.e., the criminally insane, an infant, a dog), but to have enough capacity of some kind so as to
deserve moral consideration. For example, dogs aren't generally considered to be of sufficient mind to be moral
agents, but many consider them to be able to suffer physically, so they would be considered moral patients by
those who believe that the capacity to suffer is the mark of moral consideration. But humans who are adults,
and well, acting of free volition, are usually believed to be moral agents who have moral obligations to dogs.
(Using the Continuum of Environmental Entities to compare beliefs about capacity of the entity, and beliefs
about what criterion should be used to confer moral considerability is an interesting exercise.) Again, two types
of obligations need to be considered, and are distinguished below. Failure to distinguish them leads to serious
conceptual problems in the analyses of beliefs and constructions of scales and instruments, as will be shown.
Continuum of Indirect Moral Obligations to Protect the Environment
Building upon the steps in the heuristic developed so far, the essential distinction made between direct
and indirect moral obligations to protect an entity is straightforward: an indirect moral obligations to protect an
entity is one that is made to protect it because of obligations to humans (or other things) to protect it. They are
usually linked to beliefs in use value and knowledge of ecological interdependence. For example, beliefs that a
tree has use value, couple with beliefs that trees are becoming scarce because of ecological constraints, are
often related to beliefs that we have a moral obligation to protect trees so we have them in the future to use.
Thus, conservationism. Another example concerns a shovel we have borrowed from a friend and an
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endangered plant we are planting in a restoration effort. If we have borrowed the shovel from a friend, it
belongs to another, and we have an obligation to them, a moral one, to not wantonly destroy the shovel. The
moral obligation is directly to our friend, to not destroy their property. It would be odd to say that we have a
moral obligation directly to the shovel (but some do, and we can map such a belief using the heuristic).
However, it would seem quite logical to have a belief that we an indirect obligation to protect the shovel,
because we have a direct obligation to protect our friend's property we have borrowed. As noted previously,
Rosen (1996) and Norton (1995) show how, in the long run, strong environmental protection policies can be
supported from beliefs in the need to protect the use value of the environment (use value writ broadly), using
precautionary principles. In moral terms, these authors argue that we have strong indirect moral obligations to
protect the environment. Others, a famous example being James Watts, Secretary of the Interior for President
Reagan, expressed beliefs that we do not have obligations to protect the environment, but rather to use the
environment quickly. Clearly, a variety of beliefs exist concerning what entities in the environment are due
indirect moral consideration, and the strength of beliefs for the different entities. For many environmentalists,
especially deep ecologists, the commitment to beliefs in independent value are quite strong and closely related
to the other type of moral obligation: direct moral obligation.
Continuum of Direct Moral Obligations to Protect the Environment
We distinguished indirect moral obligations from direct moral obligations in the preceding section,
focusing upon indirect obligations. A direct obligation was held to be a moral obligation directly to an entity, a
rather tautological definition. In ethical analysis, direct obligations are usually derived from beliefs about what is
of intrinsic value, and a story is developed of what we are obligated to do in order to maximize what is of
intrinsic value. To avoid a lengthy interpretation of the application of formal ethical theory to explain how to
logically generate beliefs in direct moral consideration in environmental ethics, (a task also better left for
others), we will make a simplifying move, based on our approach of wanting to categorize the beliefs that
people express. For this continuum, then, if people express that they believe that we direct obligations to
protect something, because it deserves it, independent of any obligations to humans to protect it, that will be
considered a belief in a direct obligation. When the heuristic is used to help people discern beliefs, or to
interpret literature, it usually becomes clear fairly quickly if a person believes that we have direct or indirect
obligations to protect an entity. It may require reconsideration of the capacity of the entity, but doing so usually
68
leads to a clear identification of what things are due direct consideration. For example, many people believe we
have an indirect obligation to protect trees, due to direct obligations to their children to leave an environment
that has trees and forests. But they do not believe (have a low belief) that they have direct obligations to the
trees. As Negra and Manning found, and Kempton, et al, there may be a strong religious belief in the need to
protect trees in light of obligations to be stewards for God's creation. But these obligations are not believed to
be directly to the trees, rather they are to God, and indirectly to trees.
In practice, it is interesting to observe that after people identify the entities believe they have direct
obligations to, and those they do not, they quickly identify those that they cannot resolve. For educators, this
provides a valuable learning opportunity, as beliefs about capacities and intrinsic value can be examined, and
subtler beliefs about different types of obligations can be used to discern subtler differences in beliefs. These
subtler beliefs go to the heart of the animal welfare and rights debates, which the heuristic is designed to
engage, as it was developed to incorporate both general environmental ethics and animal issues. Sublevels of
the Continuum of Direct Moral Obligations were developed for the instrumentation phase of Meyers'
dissertation (2002xx). Beliefs in whether or not use of animals in medical research, in zoos, and for food were
explored, and whether or not these beliefs varied if steps were taken to avoid animal suffering.
The heuristic has been of use to this researcher as he finds others works and categorizes the types of
beliefs that have been explored according to the type of entity that is explored, and the type of belief explored.
Continuum of Beliefs in Total Willingness to Protect the Environment
This paper began by discussing the importance of understanding the relationship of values to
environmental quality, proceeded to introduce a number of continuums to help maintain clarity in the beliefs
we were exploring. This Continuum returns to the original subject of interest, the willingness to protect the
environment, to provide an anchor point for comparing other beliefs to it. Total willingness to protect the
environment is the combination of beliefs in willingness to engage in responsible individual environmental
behavior and beliefs in willingness to engage in responsible social environmental behavior (policy). This is
modified from Meyers (2002) which focused exclusively on willingness to protect the environment, with policy.
That orientation arose from the pragmatic interest in developing an instrument that measure beliefs about
support for environmental policies, given the enormous impact that policies have on environmental quality,
and the minor impact that voluntary efforts to modifying individual behavior has on the environment. Because
69
this research has a policy orientation, in seeking to measure support for policies to protect the environment, the
firm version of policy support was considered to be a good indicator of willingness to pass a law for protection.
However, since the research is also interested in capturing the diversity of environmental beliefs that exist, and
extensive research has focused on individual responsible behavior, a new continuum has been added to explore
beliefs in individual behavior.
Continuum of Beliefs in Willingness to Engage in Responsible Individual Environmental Behavior
This continuum is to explore beliefs about responsibilities to undertake individual actions to protect
the environment. These can range from having a certain set of beliefs, or behaviors. For example, Norton
observes that deep ecologists in America are concerned with improving their individual lives, in self reflection,
and changing individual behavior. The group Simply Living, following deep ecology, advocates for a simpler
lifestyle that will leave resources for others and reduce pollution production from the refusal to be consumerist.
Here, the willingness to protect the environment is expressed as a willingness to forgo consumption, an
expressed strong willingness to engage in individual responsible environmental behavior. Different individuals
express different beliefs about the types of behavior that are required, and this Continuum is the locale for
organizing such beliefs. If the beliefs focus upon water conservation, they could be categorized as beliefs about
abiotic entities, or if they are about trees, into the biotic entities. Of course, any environmentalists with such
beliefs will have strong beliefs about ecological interdependence. The strength of association proves interesting
when attempts are made to disaggregate such beliefs. These types of beliefs concern individual beliefs and
actions that are thought to be important to protecting the environment, on the argument that a "deep"
commitment to environmental protection and an associated lifestyle will lead to stronger environmental
protection policies in the future.
In a different approach that focuses on individual behavior for measurement purposes, Hungerford,
et al's work to develop a theory of Responsible Environmental Behavior. For measurement purposes, they look
at willingness to conserve or protect resources through individual actions, but their educational theories focus
upon developing many other aspects of the learner, including citizenship skills, and learner sensitivity to the
environment. This researcher would interpret their works to seek deep appreciation of the use value of the
environment, and for strong indirect moral obligations to protect the environment, but trusting people to make
70
their own decisions on what particular actions are environmentally responsible. Their work bridges both
individual and social behavior, in the emphasis on preparing people to act socially to protect the environment.
Continuum of Beliefs in Willingness to Engage in Socially Responsible Environmental Behavior (Policy)
This Continuum involves consideration of whether or not the person believes that policies and laws
should exist to protect the environment. This places the consideration of environmental protection support as
a distinct notion, separate from the other questions of value. Deep ecologists in the green, social action
tradition, tend to focus more upon the need for policy change, as do conservationists and preservationists alike.
The difference is support for policies to protect different types of entities can be explored here, and the relation
to different continua, given the previously drawn distinctions. Animal rightists, based upon the expressed
beliefs of PETA, show strong beliefs in intrinsic value of all living entities, strong beliefs in direct moral
obligations to protect all living entities, and strong beliefs in the need to pass laws to protect these entities
(socially responsible action), as well as very strong beliefs in the need to act individually in environmentally
responsible ways towards living entities. Their focus on animals can be discerned by inquiring as to what types
of entities they are concerned with on the Continuum of Environmental Entities, the first step.
Continuum of Environmental Ethics
The final step in the heuristic is to consider which environmental ethic is most preferred. Steps 4b and
5 b facilitate the user in determining which of the six categories on the "upper part" of the Continuum of
Environmental Ethics they most prefer, depending on what entities they believe have inherent value and
deserve direct moral consideration. This shows their orientation along the horizontal axis of the Continuum.
Their determination of what types of things in the environment have intrinsic value and deserve direct moral
obligations to be protected identifies the upper category. Step 6 is to identify how much of the environment
needs to be protected, for any reason. If a person says we do need to protect the environment, they are on the
"lower part" of the Continuum. And, if they we do not need to protect the environment, they are on the
"upper part" of the Continuum. If they determine that it is important to protect the overall environment, then
they move from the upper category of the continuum to the category that is below it, the category that adds the
term "ecological" before their ethic, in recognition of their belief that it is important to protect the overall
environment. This shows their location on the vertical axis of the Continuum. Some theories and scales hold
that a person needs to support a specifically strong degree of environmental protection, or act in certain ways
71
to protect the environment in order to be considered pro-environmental. The Continuum helps this researcher
to compare the strengths of these different theories by simply identifying the strength component of the
criterion on the vertical axis. For example, if one needs to obtain a score of x on a measure of responsible
environmental behavior to be pro-environmental, one can set that score as the horizontal line between the
upper and lower dimensions of the Continuum. If alternative theories hold that one must believe that a certain
type of entity, or specific entity is of intrinsic value, then the type of ethical theory that is being advocated for
can be located on the Continuum, makes the comparison of various theories much easier. This has enabled this
researcher to compare the criterion that are used. Together, these steps in considering their values and
obligations help them find a category that they believe makes sense for them. The complexity of values and the
environment led respondents to respond favorably to multiple environmental ethics that were close to each
other on the Continuum. Given the intricacy of values, it was recognized that the categories of environmental
ethics were developed to be logically distinct and mutually exclusive – but that the lack of empirical knowledge
of the capacities of environmental entities, and the competing values are brought into play in determining
whether or not to support legal the protection of those entities, resulted in the appreciation that respondents
may support multiple, similar ethics when considering the actual environment and socio-political
considerations. Nonetheless, the Continuum of Environmental Ethics provides a systematic and usable
graphical tool to clarify environmental ethics and find the one ethic, or set of ethics, that best fits the person.
The Continuum of Environmental Ethics is shown in Figure 9, and definitions in Figure 10.
Anthropocentrism
Conativism
Sentientism
Biocentrism
Ecocentrism
Ecological
Anthropocentrism
Ecological
Conativism
Ecological
Sentientism
Ecological
Biocentrism
Ecological
Ecocentrism
Figure 9: Continuum of Environmental Ethics
72
Phenomenalism
Ecological
Phenomenalism
Anthropocentrism
Conativism
Sentientism
Biocentrism
Only humans deserve direct moral consideration. There is little need to protect the environment.
All things that are self-aware deserve direct moral consideration. There is little need to protect the
environment.
All things that can suffer deserve direct moral consideration. There is little need to protect the
environment.
Everything that is alive deserves direct moral consideration. There is little need to protect the
environment.
Ecocentrism
Every material thing in the environment, such as water, air, rocks, deserves direct moral consideration.
We need to protect the environment
Phenomenalism
Everything in the environment deserves direct moral consideration. We need to protect the
environment
Ecological
Anthro
pocentrism
Ecological
Conativism
Ecological
Sentientism
Ecological
Biocentrism
Ecological
Ecocentrism
Ecological
Phenomenalism
Only humans deserve direct moral consideration. We need to protect the environment
All things that are self-aware deserve direct moral consideration. We need to protect the environment.
All things that can suffer deserve direct moral consideration. We need to protect the environment
Everything that is alive deserves direct moral consideration. We need to protect the environment
Every material thing in the environment, such as water, air, rocks, deserves direct moral consideration.
We need to protect the environment
Everything in the environment deserves direct moral consideration. We need to protect the
environment
Figure 10: Definitions of Twelve Environmental Ethics
73
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