The Accidental Environmentalist: Elliott on Anthropocentric Indirect Arguments

摘要

As Kevin Elliott notes in his introduction, his piece emerges from and contributes to a debate in the literature concerning the role of public philosophy. Should environmental philosophers carry on the tradition of developing theoretical moral frameworks, particularly of the nonanthropocentric variety, or should they instead focus primarily on influencing policy and thus appeal to the public using more effective anthropocentric justifications? Elliott not only supports the latter, he takes it a step further in extolling anthropocentric indirect arguments (AIAs)-ones that drop all reference to environmental harm or welfare and instead refer only to human benefits that accompany ('correlate' with) the policy that also happens to benefit the environment.