PHIL249-23SU1 (D) Summer Jan 2023 start (Distance)

Environmental Ethics

15 points

Details:
Start Date: Monday, 9 January 2023
End Date: Sunday, 12 February 2023
Withdrawal Dates
Last Day to withdraw from this course:
  • Without financial penalty (full fee refund): Sunday, 15 January 2023
  • Without academic penalty (including no fee refund): Sunday, 29 January 2023

Description

Humanity faces threatening environmental problems, not least climate change. Can science, technology and free markets provide the solutions - or must we reconsider our values and priorities? Is nature inherently valuable? What should be protected for future generations? Do we have moral duties to non-human animals, including endangered species? PHIL249 examines recent philosophical responses to these and other questions in environmental ethics. This course is for students in Arts, Science, Engineering, Business and Law; no background in philosophy is required.

Environmental ethics is about exploring our relationship with the environment and the other living things that share it with us and what moral obligations, if any, we have toward them. This course tackles these issues in a way that is accessible to those who have no prior experience with philosophy. The course is broken down into five sections:

Week one: Introduction to ethics - here we introduce philosophy, moral theories, and explain how they relate to environmental ethics.

Week two: Moral considerability - here we consider who and what matters morally, including future people, non-human animals, and the environment more generally.

Week three: Environmental actions and obligation - here we discuss topics such as collective action problems, environmental justice, and mass extinction.

Week four: Climate change - you can't have an environmental ethics course without talking about climate change. In this week, we discuss climate change and the possible responses to it.

Week five: Guest speakers - here we bring in experts in a range of topics relating to the environment and environmental ethics.

Prerequisites

Any 15 points at 100 level in PHIL, or
any 60 points at 100 level from the Schedule V of the BA or the BSc.

Recommended Preparation

15 points of 100 level Philosophy, or 30 points or more of humanities, social science, science, engineering, economics, or commerce studies and an interest in reflective critical debate.

Course Coordinator

Carolyn Mason

Assessment

Please check the course LEARN page for further details and updates.

Indicative Fees

Domestic fee $821.00

International fee $3,750.00

* All fees are inclusive of NZ GST or any equivalent overseas tax, and do not include any programme level discount or additional course-related expenses.

For further information see Humanities .

All PHIL249 Occurrences

  • PHIL249-23SU1 (C) Summer Jan 2023 start
  • PHIL249-23SU1 (D) Summer Jan 2023 start (Distance)
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