Research interests: ethics, moral psychology and neuroscience, philosophy of law, epistemology, philosophy of religion, and informal logic.
Distinguishes between collective and individual moral obligations.
Example: Government responsibility to fix a collapsing bridge vs. individual responsibility.
Individual rationality may differ from collective rationality.
Example: Fisheries vs. individual fishing boats.
Focuses on individual responsibility for reducing carbon emissions, specifically questioning the morality of taking a frivolous drive in a gas-guzzling SUV.
Examines this through utilitarianism, deontology, and virtue ethics.
Utilitarianism and the Harm Principle
Considers whether a weekend drive causes harm to others.
Argues that under normal circumstances, it does not.
Addresses the potential harm caused by global climate change.
Analogy: Pouring cyanide into a river vs. contributing to global climate change.
Cyanide: Direct link between the act (pouring cyanide) and the harm (death).
Global climate change: Contribution is like pouring a quart of water into a river before a flood; not a direct cause.
Conclusion: Weekend drive is not directly the cause of global climate change, and therefore not directly the cause of any harm.
Deontology and the Categorical Imperative
Identifies the maxim: "Drive a gas guzzling SUV just for fun this weekend in order to have some fun."
Asks if there is anything self-contradictory about this maxim.
Considers universalizing the maxim: even if everyone did this, it wouldn't prevent future people from doing the same.
Addresses whether this is a case of using other people merely as a means.
Argues that driving for fun does not necessarily involve lying, coercing, or using others merely as a means, even if it contributes to climate change.
Conclusion: No individual moral obligation to reduce one's own carbon emissions based on deontology.
Virtue Ethics
Argues that a moral obligation exists not to go for a wasteful weekend drive if doing so expresses advice or is contrary to some virtue.
Poses the question: What virtue is at play here?
Argues that there is nothing inherently vicious about having fun in moderation.
Conclusion: Virtue ethics does not provide a good reason to think that we have an individual moral obligation to limit our carbon emissions.
Overall conclusion according to Armstrong
If it is wrong to drive a gas-guzzling SUV for fun, he can't really say why that is the case, according to the three common ethical frameworks.
Even if there is no moral obligation not to waste gas, that doesn't mean that we can't praise people for not wasting gas.
Problem is too big for individuals to address effectively.
Advocates for electing politicians who will work for policies that reduce carbon emissions on a national scale.
Marian Hordeken
Philosophy professor at Colorado College.
Research focus: environmental philosophy, ethics, animal studies, and philosophy of science.
Challenges Senator Armstrong's assumptions about the impact of individual carbon emissions.
Focuses on virtue ethics and the virtue of integrity as a potential basis for an obligation to reduce wasteful driving.
Integrity involves internalizing commitments such that they are central to one's identity.
Integrity requires that one's thoughts and actions reflect one's commitments.
If a person is committed to electing officials who will reduce carbon emissions, integrity requires that they also reduce their own carbon emissions.
Addresses the case of Al Gore, who emits large amounts of greenhouse gases to promote climate change awareness.
Argues that Gore's actions are morally justified if they are part of an effort to enact social change.
Suggests that it would be hypocritical for Gore to be wasteful in his everyday life.
Virtue ethics provides a standpoint that tells us to practice what we preach.
As long as people are doing that, then we can say that there's an individual obligation to limit one's emissions.
Thomas Hill, Jr.
Professor Emeritus at the University of North Carolina.
Wrote primarily on ethics, political philosophy, and Kantian ethics.
Addresses the wrong of environmental destruction more generally.
Notes the difficulty of making a utilitarian or deontological case against environmental destruction.
Takes a virtue ethical approach.
Focuses on the type of person that one ought to be, rather than the morality of specific acts.
Identifies character traits reflected in a lack of concern for environmental destruction: lack of humility and lack of aesthetic sensibility.
Lack of Humility
Two main features: lack of understanding about one's place in the universe and a lack of self-acceptance.
Experiencing natural phenomena such as the Alps, a storm at sea, the Grand Canyon, Redwoods, and a good view of the stars and the galaxies in the night sky tend to cause people to think about the bigger picture and our own relative insignificance.
Lack of concern about the natural environment reflects a lack of humility to realize that we aren't at the center of the universe.
These sorts of feelings could lead us to accept our place within nature instead of setting ourselves over and above the natural environment and treating it as something to exploit for our own benefit.
Lack of Aesthetic Sense
Seeing a strip mine or a forest completely leveled evokes a sense of revulsion at the ugliness of it all.
Those who wish to destroy the natural environment for human use seem to ignore the beauty of nature and instead focus solely on what can be gained by it.
Lack of aesthetic sense is paired with a lack of gratitude for the natural world.
Hill thinks that there's something sort of morally flawed in those who have those sorts of character traits.
Preservation of the natural environment is a matter of holding appropriate virtuous dispositions towards these things.