International Society for Environmental Ethics

The International Society for Environmental Ethics (ISEE) is an organization that seeks to educate people about the environmental ethics and philosophy concerning nature . An environmental ethic is the philosophy that humans have a moral duty to sustain the natural environment and attempts to answer how humans should treat other species (plant and animal), use Earth's natural resources , and place value on the aesthetic experiences of nature.

The society is an auxiliary organization of the American Philosophical Association, with about 700 members in over 20 countries. Many of ISEE's current members are philosophers, teachers, or environmentalists. The ISEE officers include president Mark Sagoff (Institute for Philosophy and Public Policy, University of Maryland) and John Baird Callicott, vice president, (professor of philosophy at the University of North Texas). Two other key members are editors of the ISEE newsletter, Jack Weir and Holmes Rolston , III (Professor of Philosophy, Colorado State University). All have contributed to the ongoing ISEE Master Environmental Ethics Bibliography.

ISEE publishes a quarterly newsletter available to members in print form and maintains an Internet site of back issues. Of special note is the ISEE Bibliography, an ongoing project that contains over 5,000 records from journals such as Environmental Ethics, Environmental Values, and the Journal of Agricultural and Environmental Ethics.

Another work in progress, the ISEE Syllabus Project, continues to be developed by Callicott and Robert Hood, doctoral candidate at Bowling Green State University. They maintain a database of course offerings in environmental philosophy and ethics, based on information from two-year community colleges and four-year state universities, private institutions, and master's- and doctorate-granting universities. ISEE supports the enviroethics program which has spurred many Internet discussion groups and is constantly expanding into new areas of communication.

[Nicole Beatty ]

RESOURCES

ORGANIZATIONS

International Society for Environmental Ethics, Environmental Philosophy Inc., Department of Philosophy, University of North Texas, P.O. Box 310980, Denton, TX USA 76203-0980, <http://www.cep.unt.edu/ISEE.html>