Robin Attfield
Datos Biográficos
| ID | 1016904 |
|---|---|
| NOMBRE | Robin Attfield |
| NOMBRES | Robin |
| APELLIDO | Attfield |
| FIRMA | ATTFIELD R |
| AFILIACIONES | Cardiff University |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-3387-0251 |
| VERIFICADO | Sí |
| TOTAL DE OBRAS | 54 |
| TOTAL DE CITAS | 26 |
| TOTAL COMO AUTOR | 53 |
| TOTAL COMO EDITOR | 1 |
| PRIMER AÑO DE PUBLICACIÓN | 1973 |
| AÑO MÁS RECIENTE DE PUBLICACIÓN | 2025 |
| ÍNDICE H | 3 |
Nonhuman Animals and the Scope of Justice
The Life and Thought of H. Odera Oruka
Evolution, Evil, Co-Creation and the Value of the World
This article builds on and supplements an earlier one in this journal about theodicy. It focuses on species extinctions and on the possible role of humanity as fallible co-creators. Christopher Southgate has suggested that co-creators might shoulder the task of curtailing extinctions. In appraising this view, I distinguish between extinctions resulting from evolution, which humans have limited power to reverse, but which are held to be indispensa…
Deep Time and Environmental Ethics
This paper employs the concept of deep time to supply a philosophical argument about the kind of environmental ethics required in the present. Considerations from the evolutionary past are deployed to support the intrinsic value of health and well-being in addition to that of pleasure. The well-being of a species is held to consist in that of its individual members, past, present and future. Duties to species accordingly include promoting the wel…
The Place of Animals in Theodicy and in Justice
It is widely recognized that the animal suffering of the evolutionary past is a problem for believers in a good and just God. However, this problem is not insuperable if the intrinsic value of nonhuman flourishing is recognized as integral to the Creator's plan (including the sentience that makes this flourishing possible among most species of animals), and if this intrinsic value is recognized as comparable to the intrinsic value of human suffer…
Reasons for Resisting Darwinism, and Why They Should Not Be Credited
Plantinga argues that Darwinism implies that we cannot help adopting our apparently reflective beliefs, and that this is a reason for rejecting Darwinism. I argue that similar arguments apparently apply to the beliefs crucial to deliberation, meaningful work, meaningful relationships, meaningful communication and creativity. But these arguments apply to deterministic versions of Darwinism only. Cogent non-deterministic versions have been propound…
Africa and Climate Change
Africa is affected by climate change in multiple ways. Like other continents, its coastline is in danger of being flooded, and its islands are in danger of being inundated. Many people are forced by climate change to migrate, and this increases the flows of refugees moving both north towards the Mediterranean and south towards the Cape, seeking a viable homeland. It is in the interest of African countries to develop in ways that are climate-frien…
A Theory of Value and Obligation
Originally published in 1987 and re-issued in 2020 with a new Preface, this book presents and elaborates interrelated solutions to a number of problems in moral philosophy, from the location of intrinsic value and the nature of a worthwhile life, via the limits of obligation and the nature of justice, to the status of moral utterances. After developing a biocentric account of moral standing, the author locates worthwhile life in the development o…
Reconciling the God of Traditional Theism with the World's Evils
Replying to James Sterba's argument for the incompatibility of the world's evils with the existence of the God of traditional theism, I argue for their compatibility, using the proposition that God has reasons for permitting these evils. Developing this case involves appeal to an enlarged version of both the Free Will Defence and Hick's Vale of Soul-Making Defence, in the context of God's decision to generate the kind of natural regularities cond…
Panentheisms, Creation and Evil
Can panentheism cope with the problem of evil? This problem is often understood as one for classical theists, who maintain that the cosmos, together with its evils, was created by an all-powerful and benevolent God. For classical theists need to reconcile the world’s evils with divine creation. But corresponding problems re-emerge for theologies of both pantheistic and panentheistic kinds. Thus a problem arises for panentheists, with their teachi…
Environmental Ethics
Environmental ethics studies the values and principles involved in combating environmental problems such as pollution, loss of species and habitats, and climate change. Environmental Ethics: A Very Short Introduction traces the discipline’s origins and considers how it defends the independent value of living creatures and the need to make decisions informed by the needs and interests of future generations. Exploring the diverse approaches to ethi…
Creation, Evolution and Meaning
This book presents the case for belief in both creation and evolution at the same time as rejecting creationism. Issues of meaning supply the context of inquiry; the book defends the meaningfulness of language about God, and also relates belief in both creation and evolution to the meaning of life. Meaning, it claims, can be found in consciously adopting the role of stewards of the planetary biosphere, and thus of the fruits of creation. Distinct…
The Ethics of the Environment
Contents: Introduction Part I Values and the Environment: Is there a need for a new, an environmental, ethic?, Richard Sylvan (Routley) Is there an ecological ethic?, Holmes Rolston III Anthropocentrism, atomism, and environmental ethics, Donald Scherer Postmodernism, value, and objectivity, Robin Attfield Why environmental ethics shouldn't give up on intrinsic value, Katie McShane Nature a every last drop of it a is good, Alan Holland. Part II T…
Progress and Directionality in Science, the Humanities, Society and Evolution
This essay discusses progress and directionality, both in nature, in science and in society, treating as its starting-point the reflections, parallelisms and comparisons of Ruse’s essay, ‘A Threefold Parallelism for Our Time? Progressive Development in Society, Science and the Organic World’, but reaching substantially different conclusions. The essay thus ranges over progress and directionality in the world of natural evolution, in the sciences …
Biocentrism, Religion and Synthetic Biology
Biocentrism maintains that all living creatures have moral standing, but need not claim that all have equal moral significance. This moral standing extends to organisms generated through human interventions, whether by conventional breeding, genetic engineering, or synthetic biology. Our responsibilities with regard to future generations are relevant to non-human species as well as future human generations. Likewise, the Precautionary Principle r…
The moral urgency of mitigation
Sober, Environmentalists, Species, and Ignorance
Saving Creation
Ecological issues of justice
In the first part of this article the author explores the implications for justice of the wider range of parties holding moral standing that environmental ethics has recently disclosed. These implications concern the equitable treatment of future generations and nonhuman creatures, and are relevant both to policies, such as approaches to global warming, and procedures, which may need to be revised to give an equitable voice to unrepresented inter…
Social History, Religion, and Technology
Non-reciprocal responsibilities and the banquet of the kingdom
Granted the far-flung impacts of humanity on the future and the biosphere, Hans Jonas has rightly called for our responsibilities to be reconceptualised, and where responsibilities are non-reciprocal Chris Groves has put forward a model of the ethics of care to underpin them. In view, however, of Derek Parfit's work on responsibilities with regard to the possible but unidentifiable people of alternative possible futures, the author suggests that …
Beyond the Earth Charter
The shape of a global ethic
A global ethic needs to be cosmopolitan in a sense which is explained; this excludes certain kinds of communitarian ethic. Contracttheories, Kantianism, basic-rights theories, Ross-type deontology and theories of virtue ethics are reviewed and found to encounter severe problems. Consequentialist theories, however, are found capable of coping with Williams’ objections, and practice-consequentialist theories capable of coping with right-making prac…
Creation, Evolution and Meaning
International Justice and the Third World
Value, Obligation, and Meta-Ethics
This work defends an interrelated set of theses in value-theory, normative ethics and meta-ethics. The three Parts correspond to these three areas. Part One (Value) defends a biocentric theory of moral standing, and then the coherence and objectivity of belief in intrinsic value, despite recent objections. Intrinsic value is located in the flourishing of living creatures; specifically, a neo-Aristotelian, species-relative account is supplied of w…
A Theory of Value and Obligation
Originally published in 1987 and re-issued in 2020 with a new Preface, this book presents and elaborates interrelated solutions to a number of problems in moral philosophy, from the location of intrinsic value and the nature of a worthwhile life, via the limits of obligation and the nature of justice, to the status of moral utterances. After developing a biocentric account of moral standing, the author locates worthwhile life in the development o…
Reconciling the God of Traditional Theism with the World's Evils
Replying to James Sterba's argument for the incompatibility of the world's evils with the existence of the God of traditional theism, I argue for their compatibility, using the proposition that God has reasons for permitting these evils. Developing this case involves appeal to an enlarged version of both the Free Will Defence and Hick's Vale of Soul-Making Defence, in the context of God's decision to generate the kind of natural regularities cond…
Sustainable development, sustainable livelihoods and land reform in South Africa
In this article various necessary conceptual linkages as well as contingent discontinuities between the concepts of land reform, sustainable livelihoods and sustainable development are studied. Exploring the complex relationship between land reform and sustainable development through a critical analysis of the concept of sustainable livelihoods, we argue that a strong ethical case for land reform as a component of sustainable development can be c…
Christian Attitudes to Nature
Postmodernism, Value and Objectivity
The first half of this paper replies to three postmodernist challenges to belief in objective intrinsic value. One lies in the claim that the language of objective value presupposes a flawed, dualistic distinction between subjects and objects. The second lies in the claim that there are no objective values which do not arise within and/or depend upon particular cultures or valuational frameworks. The third comprises the suggestion that belief in …
Biocentric Consequentialism and Value-Pluralism
My theory of biocentric consequentialism is first shown not to be significantly inegalitarian, despite not advocating treating all creatures equally. I then respond to Carter's objections concerning population, species extinctions, the supposed minimax implication, endangered interests, autonomy and thought-experiments. Biocentric consequentialism is capable of supporting a sustainable human population at a level compatible with preserving most n…
The God of Religion and the God of Philosophy
Ever since the time of Pascal men have feared that the ‘God’ worshipped by believers and the ‘God’ contemplated by philosophers were somehow different. The former was personal, historically active, slow to anger and plentiful in mercy: the latter was dubiously able to be described in personal terms at all, and infinite in such a way as to baffle the imagination. The ‘God’ of the former at least had the advantage of complying with what was alleged…
The Lord is God
As I shall be taking issue with Michael Durrant for the bulk of this paper, it is appropriate, as well as a good way to start, to register my endorsement of his arguments in chapter 4 of The Logical Status of God l for the conclusion that sentences about God are typically used to express propositions, and that acts of thanksgiving and petition to God presuppose that some such propositions are true. The present paper is therefore a continuation of…
Science and Creation
The good of trees
Moral Scepticism and Moral Knowledge
Journal Article Book Reviews Get access Moral Scepticism and Moral Knowledge. By Renford Bambrough. ( Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1979. Pp. 166. Price £5.50) Robin Attfield Robin Attfield Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar The Philosophical Quarterly, Volume 31, Issue 123, April 1981, Pages 177–178, https://doi.org/10.2307/2218729 Published: 01 April 1981
The threat of wrong
Like Goodwin's collection, McMahan's book is entirely and Hare and Joynt's book largely concerned with the merits and demerits of nuclear deterrence; and so is one contribution (Edward Rogers') to Sims' collection. This latter work, besides other essays on ethical topics, is also concerned with international law and institutions, as is Geoffrey Best's essay in Goodwin. But the three works dealing with the ethics of deterrence are more internally …
Christian Attitudes to Nature
Man and the Natural World
Balthasar Bekker and the decline of the Witch-Craze
The logical links between the Judaeo-Christian doctrine of creation and the practice of natural philosophy on the one hand, and the rejection of belief in demonic agency on the other, were made explicit in the seventeenth century by, among others, Balthasar Bekker (1634–98), whose ideas I argue to have been not without influence. In section 1, I present the accounts of three historians of the opposition to belief in witchcraft and of the decline …
In Defense of The Ethics of Environmental
Progress and Privilege
Derek Parfit and the history of ethics
Holmes Rolston, III
The Ethics of Environmental Concern
First published in 1983, The Ethics of Environmental Concern has become a classic in the relatively new field of environmental ethics. Examining traditional attitudes toward nature, and the degree to which these attitudes enable us to cope with modern ecological problems, Robin Attfield looks particularly at the Judeo-Christian heritage of belief in humankind's dominion, the tradition of stewardship, and the more recent belief in progress to dete…
Has the History of Philosophy Ruined the Environment
I review and appraise Eugene C. Hargrove's account of the adverse impacts of Western philosophy of attitudes to the environment. Although significant qualifications have to be entered, for there are grounds to hold that philosophical traditions which have encouraged taking nature seriously are not always given their due by Hargrove, and that environmental thought can draw upon deeper roots than he allows, his verdict that history of philosophy ha…
A Theory of Value and Obligation
Educating the Virtues
Journal Article Book Reviews Get access Educating the Virtues: An Essay on the Philosophical Psychology of Moral Development and Education. By David Carr. (London and New York: Routledge, 1991. Pp. x + 294. Price £35.00 hbk.) Robin Attfield Robin Attfield University of Wales College of Cardiff Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar The Philosophical Quarterly, Volume 42, Issue 168, July 1992, Pages 379–382, https…
Philosophy and the Natural Environment
In this volume leading international environmental philosophers further the debate about the value of nature, the concept of the environment, and the metaphysical, ethical, social and international implications of these concepts. Philosophers have to some extent neglected the study of nature and the natural environment, and this collection not only provides a long-overdue contribution to that study, but also points to inadequacies of much contemp…
John Laird andThe idea of value
Value, Obligation, and Meta-Ethics
This work defends an interrelated set of theses in value-theory, normative ethics and meta-ethics. The three Parts correspond to these three areas. Part One (Value) defends a biocentric theory of moral standing, and then the coherence and objectivity of belief in intrinsic value, despite recent objections. Intrinsic value is located in the flourishing of living creatures; specifically, a neo-Aristotelian, species-relative account is supplied of w…
Environmental Philosophy
Journal Article Book Reviews Get access Environmental Philosophy: Principles and Prospects. By Robin Attfield. (Aldershot: Avebury, 1994. Pp. viii + 262. Price £35.00.) Andrew Brennan Andrew Brennan University of Western Australia Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar The Philosophical Quarterly, Volume 46, Issue 183, April 1996, Pages 266–268, https://doi.org/10.2307/2956402 Published: 01 April 1996
Existence value and intrinsic value
Postmodernism, Value and Objectivity
The first half of this paper replies to three postmodernist challenges to belief in objective intrinsic value. One lies in the claim that the language of objective value presupposes a flawed, dualistic distinction between subjects and objects. The second lies in the claim that there are no objective values which do not arise within and/or depend upon particular cultures or valuational frameworks. The third comprises the suggestion that belief in …
Ecological Sustainability in a Developing Country such as South Africa? A Philosophical and Ethical Inquiry
Although South Africa has adopted the notion of ecologically sustainable development not only as a human right entrenched in its Constitution, but also as one of its major policy objectives, there are major practical, conceptual, and ethical stumbling blocks impeding the achievement of this goal. In this article we investigate the conceptual and some of the ethical problems, including apparent conflicts with other pressing goals such as the allev…
Biocentric Consequentialism, Pluralism, and ‘The Minimax Implication’
Alan Carter's recent review in Mind of my Ethics of the Global Environment combines praise of biocentric consequentialism (as presented there and in Value, Obligation and Meta-Ethics ) with criticisms that it could advocate both minimal satisfaction of human needs and the extinction of ‘inessential species’ for the sake of generating extra people; Carter also maintains that as a monistic theory it is predictably inadequate to cover the full range…
Philosophy (38 obras) · Epistemology (34 obras) · Sociology (26 obras) · Political science (25 obras) · Environmental ethics (22 obras) · Law (22 obras) · Religion, Ecology, and Ethics (15 obras) · Computer Science (13 obras) · Philosophy (13 obras) · Environmental Philosophy and Ethics (11 obras)