Ecological Philosophy Research Articles

La bio-ecología de Ortega y Gasset

En este artículo trataremos de reflexionar, con la ayuda del filósofo español Ortega y Gasset, sobre la posibilidad de una bio-ecología que problematice algunos de los enfoques y premisas habitualmente asumidos en ecología. Tras mostrar que la filosofía orteguiana es una filosofía radicalmente ecológica —y una pionera en este aspecto—, mostraremos cómo las categorías de la razón vital armonizan perfectamente con algunos de los más recientes desarrollos biológicos que nos exigen pensar en conexión más estrecha a organismos y entornos.

Application of the Principles of Ecological Philosophy in Vietnam Social Development Today

Abstract: Climate change is now considered one of the most pressing “global issues” that humanity is addressing. In that context, there appear to be more and more sciences, including ecological philosophy, specifically studying ecological issues. Ecological philosophy, a new discipline of philosophy, dates back to the 1980s. Although it has recently emerged, ecological philosophy has proved to be a growing influence not only with its interdisciplinary nature, but also with its practicality and urgency. Based on the general theory of ecological philosophy and the recent results of ecological philosophy research in Vietnam, the article proposes a number of orientations and basic solutions for applying the results of ecological philosophy research in the current social development in Vietnam.
 Keywords: Ecological philosophy, ecological ethics, ecological social model, climate change, sustainable development.

Unfashioned creatures: A study of photo-collage and its relevance in the twenty-first century

Most recently art philosophy has shifted away from postmodernist ideas. But where does the practice of photo-collage fit in? Photo-collage addresses a range of theories; it involves a particular method of cutting and pasting; it brings up metaphysical notions of ‘decoding’ artworks; and it addresses a variety of themes. This article places these ideas into the twenty-first-century cultural rhetoric, which has broadened to involve wider themes from ecological philosophy. The article suggests that in asking how photo-collage fits into the cultural scene, it is pertinent to ask how the arts fit into the bigger picture of the world.

Unifying the Debates: Mathematical and Non-Causal Explanations

In the last couple of years, a few seemingly independent debates on scientific explanation have emerged, with several key questions that take different forms in different areas. For example, the question what makes an explanation distinctly mathematical and are there any non-causal explanations in sciences (i.e. explanations that don’t cite causes in the explanans) sometimes take a form of the question what makes mathematical models explanatory, especially whether highly idealized models in science can be explanatory and in virtue of what they are explanatory. These questions raise further issues about counterfactuals, modality and explanatory asymmetries, i.e. do mathematical and non-causal explanations support counterfactuals, and how to understand explanatory asymmetries in non-causal explanations. Even though these are very common issues in the philosophy of physics and mathematics, they can be found in different guises in the philosophy of biology, where there is the statistical interpretation of the Modern Synthesis theory of evolution, according to which the post-Darwinian theory of natural selection explains evolutionary change by citing statistical properties of populations and not the causes of changes. These questions also arise in the philosophy of ecology or neuroscience in regard to the nature of topological explanations. The question here is whether in network models in biology, ecology, neuroscience, and computer science the mathematical or more precisely topological properties can be explanatory of physical phenomena, or they are just different ways to represent causal structures. The aim of the special issue is to unify all these debates around several overlapping questions.

The role of environment clubs in promoting ecocentrism in secondary schools: student identity and relationship to the earth

This qualitative study used a deep ecology lens and the New Environmental Paradigm to investigate anthropocentrism and ecocentrism in 30 secondary school environment club students from three schools in Victoria, Australia. The work repositions the deep ecology philosophy as a posthumanist/relational ideology, providing novel perspectives based on kinship with the earth. Open-ended interviews assessed the alignment of attitudes, beliefs, and behaviors along a Deep Ecology Spectrum. Key aspects of deep ecology were confirmed through the study findings including biospherical egalitarianism, limits to growth, wildlife preservation, anti-consumerism, environmental activism, and ecological identity.

Philosophy of ecology in the context of coevolution of nature and society

Solving of environmental problems in the modern world is impossible without scientifically based knowledge about the system of social-nature interactions. At the same time, the idea of coevolution of man, society and nature is a priority. Ecological knowledge is an integral component of the spiritual mastery of reality. Ecological activities, considered as a praxiological component of culture, have as their main task formation, accumulation, mastering and translation of collective values based on the principles of ecocentrism. A special interest in the functioning of the mechanism of social-nature interaction is determined by the formation of ecology aimed at deepening of its social aspects. This leads to the need for philosophical analysis of the bases and patterns of the formation of ecological knowledge, goals of civilization development and means of their achievement, importance of global processes in social-nature existence, conditions enabling sustainable development.

On Ecological Philosophy in Walden

Abstract: Walden is the representative work of Henry David Thoreau, the most influential transcendentalist writer in the United States in the 19th century. The paper discusses the relationship between man and nature from the perspectives of ecological philosophy, anti-anthropocentrism and the inner spiritual ecological connotation of man. It points out that nature can endow people with the elements of inner beauty, and her unspeakable purity and kindness always endow people with health and joy; human beings, like other animals and plants, are part of the biosphere of nature; human happiness, freedom and civilization do not necessarily depend on the abundance of material life, but, to some extent, on the harmonious coexistence with nature.

The Great Global Warmer: Jay Gatsby as a Microcosm of Climate Change

Abstract This article traces James Gatz's transformation into Jay Gatsby as a representation and personification of human-caused climate change. Gatsby's life depends on many human-centered, selfish endeavors, from his inspiration via Dan Cody's mining practices and his involvement in intense deforestation during World War I to his bootlegging enterprise dependent on South American agriculture and the rise of the automobile, all the while ignoring the waste of the valley of ashes in favor of a consumer-culture lifestyle that feeds the socioeconomic disparity and wealth gap that began in America in the 1920s. While Gatsby's life and transformation depend on these practices, each one is in some part responsible for Earth's current ecological crisis. This article uses ecological philosophy to argue further that by going too far forward in time to reclaim what he had lost, Gatsby is also representative of humanity's eventual quest for a previously inhabitable Earth after each of these selfish ventures wreak havoc on the planet's environment. After the planet has become inhospitable due to extreme climate change, human beings will seek to return to a more environmentally welcoming planet; however, we will be unable to do so. In so doing, we may be destroyed by our own selfish endeavors, unable to repeat the past; and eventually, much like Gatsby, there will be no one to attend our funeral after we have been destroyed by our own valleys of ash.

Learning from and for one another: An inquiry on symbiotic learning

Symbiosis is a biological phenomenon in which two dissimilar organisms coexist for mutual subsistence. The concept of symbiosis can be employed to foster mutual learning. In this paper, the idea of symbiotic learning is explored. To achieve this purpose, the concept of symbiosis is interpreted from a philosophical perspective, which is primarily derived from ecological philosophies such as Gestalt thinking, philosophy of coevolution, Chinese ecological wisdom from Buddhism and Daoism, and Kurokawa’s idea of the philosophy of symbiosis. These philosophies are essential for considering symbiotic learning. Furthermore, the significance and application of symbiotic learning are discussed. Specifically, this paper addresses the effect of symbiosis, demands of heterogeneous cultures, and scope of symbiotic learning. Moreover, this paper investigated the types of symbiotic learning in Chinese classics, including Xue Ji, Confucius’ Analects, and Zhuangzi. Finally, through the idea conveyed in Zhuangzi, I argue that a supreme symbiotic interaction is not maintained in purpose-built conduct but is bridged by forgetting in the mind.

Mel as Hyperobject

Through the words of Timothy Morton’s Hyperobjects: Philosophy and Ecology after the End of the World (2013), the adapted practice of distant reading, the lens of current neuroscience, and the flavor of non-philosophy, artist Mel Keiser transmutes a text about object oriented ontology and ecological philosophy into a piece that describes what it is to be an identity becoming.

Exploration of the Ecological Economy of Industrial Clusters in Jiangxi

To explore the ecological economy of industrial clusters in Jiangxi, based on the research and analysis of the industrial cluster of Poyang Lake ecological economic zone in Jiangxi province, the strengths and weaknesses of Poyang Lake’s ecological cluster and its opportunities and challenges were analysed through SWTO analysis. Through the study, the orientation of the Poyang Lake ecological industrial cluster in the process of development could be found, the opportunity in the process of development could be taken advantage and the short board could be made up at the same time. Moreover, after the comprehensive analysis of practical experience in the process of domestic and foreign ecological industrial clusters, the in-depth study of the actual situation of Poyang Lake ecological economic clusters in Jiangxi Province was made. The results showed that the ecological economic clusters needed to be improved to a certain degree. As a result, some suggestions are proposed for the industrial cluster in the economic zone. On the basis of vigorously promoting ecological philosophy and strengthening the basic infrastructure and so on, it is necessary to create qualified plant and animal products and then process the clusters, establish ecological animal husbandry, sustainably utilize local resources to develop aquatic animal and plant industry, and construct ecological economy and industrial value chain.

Editor's Column: Musings on America: Highway 31, Steinbeck, and the Future

Editor's Column: Musings on America: Highway 31, Steinbeck, and the Future

Visions from the Tide Pool: John Steinbeck's Interdependent Migrant Community

Abstract The ecological philosophy that Steinbeck sets out in his scientific travel narrative The Log from the Sea of Cortez, which I have termed Cooperative Ecology, is dramatized through the migrant community of The Grapes of Wrath in order to show the potential power residing in the structuring principles of the global ecosystem. This article delineates how Steinbeck's Cooperative Ecology illustrates the ways in which a community can achieve harmony and strength by cooperating with both natural and social environments. Steinbeck arrives at this Cooperative Ecology through a transcendent understanding of the global ecosystem, an ideology which, in The Grapes of Wrath, Jim Casy attains as an acute awareness of following his self-imposed exile in the wild. Casy becomes a prophet of Cooperative Ecology when he reveals to Tom and the wider migrant community the efficacies of cooperation. This cooperation, which occurs among the disempowered migrants, follows the ideas forwarded by Steinbeck in his unpublished essay “Argument of Phalanx,” in which it is argued that when organisms work together they form a phalanx that has greater strength than the sum of its individual components. Through Casy's transcendent understanding of nature, Steinbeck's migrant community demonstrates the effectiveness of Cooperative Ecology in attaining ecological and social harmony.

The Philosophy of Ecology and Sustainability: New Logical and Informational Dimensions

Ecology and sustainability are current narratives about the behavior of humans toward themselves and the environment. Ecology is defined as a science, and a philosophy of ecology has become a recognized domain of the philosophy of science. For some, sustainability is an accepted, important moral goal. In 2013, a Special Issue of the journal Sustainability dealt with many of the relevant issues. Unfortunately, the economic, ideological, and psychological barriers to ethical behavior and corresponding social action remain great as well as obvious. In this paper, I propose that a new, non-standard and non-propositional logic of real processes, Logic in Reality (LIR) grounded in physics applies to the science and philosophy of these narratives and helps to explicate them. Given the ecological role of organizations and institutions, reference is often made to organizational or institutional logics as guides to ecological practice. This paper suggests that these logics are either too abstract or too informal to have an impact in a conflictual world. Recognition of the suggested new, transdisciplinary logical dimension of ecological processes may provide credibility and support to new initiatives in ecology and its philosophy.

Enacting food sovereignty in Aotearoa New Zealand and Peru: revitalizing Indigenous knowledge, food practices and ecological philosophies

ABSTRACTThis article reports on a cross-cultural study of two Indigenous1 knowledge and food security systems: Quechua2 people of Peru and Māori3 of Aotearoa – New Zealand, and implications for food systems sustainability and traditional knowledge. This study takes a novel approach by using a traditional ecological knowledge (TEK) lens to examine respective “good living principles” of Allin Kawsay/Buen Vivir in Peru and of Mauri Ora in Aotearoa in safeguarding food security. In this study, I introduce the “Khipu Model” as a source of knowledge production and sovereignty guiding the development of an Indigenous research-based framework. Drawing on over 45 interviews, with elders, community leaders, and people engaged in sustainable food production in Peru and Aotearoa. I show that an Indigenous “food security policy framework” underpinned by a set of cultural and environmental indicators of wellbeing resonates with conceptualizations of food sovereignty, whereas the dominant food security approaches do not. I argue that such a framework enacts practices of food sovereignty and represents a tool of Indigenous resurgence and social change in food politics for the revitalization of Indigenous food sovereignty as an alternative sustainable food system.

The Utilitarian Aspect of the Philosophy of Ecology: The Case of Corporate Social Responsibility

This study aims to combine the philosophical perspective and the practical ethics of ecology in the everyday with a more pragmatic concept of corporate social responsibility. The importance of the latter is shown to be based in the abandonment of the distinction of subject and object and the development of personal as well as cultural ecological consciousness embedded in the notion of unity between man and nature. This philosophical shift in the consciousness is also reflected in terms of utility. Hence, the study examines whether the relationship between corporate social responsibility and firm’s sales growth is mediated by competitive advantage, and whether employees’ individual perception in the everyday and beliefs of social responsibility can play a moderating role on CSR-sales growth relationship. The analysis revealed that there is the link between CSR and sales growth and that there is a positive effect of CSR on sales growth which is positively moderated by employees’ individual beliefs of social responsibility which has been implied by the ecological consciousness.

Myśl humanistyczna na rzecz ochrony środowiska przyrodniczego

Humanities have important roles to play in actions aimed on preventing environmental degradation. They present the deep analysis of cultural determinants and conditions of ecological crisis, they elaborate a new dimension in relations between humans, culture and nature, they provide necessary justifications and motivations for environment – friendly actions, they build the ecological consciousness and create environmentally-oriented attitudes and activities. This humanistic dimension of the environment protection is often defined as the ecological humanism. Its integrate constituents are newly evolved disciplines, such as ecological philosophy, environmental ethics, eco-aesthetics, ecological psychology, eco-theology, eco-pedagogy. Here we present a concise characteristic of this field and the sub-disciplines comprised within this area of thinking.

自然观的重塑：生态哲学感性现实性的缘起

自然观的重塑：生态哲学感性现实性的缘起

Indigenous Environmental Education: The Case of Renewable Energy Projects

This article presents insights from an inquiry into renewable energy development by Indigenous communities across Canada. The focus is on Indigenous leadership in developing renewable energy projects that align with traditional ecological philosophies while also providing increased economic and energy security, sovereignty, and educational opportunities. These projects build new STEM knowledges and practices across cultural divides. The article also discusses broader sociocritical concerns regarding renewable energy development, the associated challenges of renewable energy education, and Indigenous environmental education in the context of capitalist and nationalist agendas.

Tempering the Foolish Faiths: William James and Ecology

Abstract Though William James was not an ecologist, his intellectual contributions are rich in implications for an informed philosophy of ecology. James repeatedly called attention to the importanc...