Callicott held the position of Professor of Philosophy and Natural Resources at the University of Wisconsin – Stevens Point from 1969 to 1995, where he taught the world ’ s first course in environmental ethics in 1971.

Aldo Leopold's A Sand County Almanac is one of environmental philosophy ’ s seminal texts, and Callicott is widely considered to be the leading contemporary exponent of Leopold's land ethic.

Callicott ’ s book In Defense of the Land Ethic ( 1989 ) explores the intellectual foundations of Leopold's outlook and seeks to provide it with a more complete philosophical treatment ; and a following publication titled Beyond the Land Ethic ( 1999 ) further extends Leopold ’ s environmental philosophy.

Callicott ’ s Earth ’ s Insights ( 1994 ) is also considered an important contribution to the budding field of comparative environmental philosophy ; a special edition of the journal Worldviews: Environment, Culture, Religion ( Vol.

The addition of Callicott ’ s expertise helped cement its standing as the world's leading program in the field.

Callicott traces the conceptual foundations of the Leopold land ethic first back to Charles Darwin ’ s analysis of the “ moral sense ” in the Descent of Man and ultimately to David Hume ’ s grounding of ethics in the “ moral sentiments ” espoused in An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals.

The tradition of dichotomous thinking in Western philosophy inclines most philosophers to dismiss Hume ’ s ethics as a kind of irrational emotivism, despite the fact that, Callicott believes, Hume clearly provides a key role for reason in moral action and judgment.

The distinctiveness of environmental ethics turns on the question of non-anthropocentrism, and that question turns on the question of nature ’ s intrinsic value, according to Callicott.

Callicott offers a subjectivist theory of nature ’ s intrinsic value: he does not challenge the modern classical distinction between subject and object, but rather insists that all value originates in subjects ( human or otherwise ) and is conferred by those subjects on various objects.

In response to Callicott ’ s elaboration of the Aldo Leopold land ethic, the land ethic ( and, by implication, Callicott ’ s own non-anthropocentric, holistic environmental ethic to the extent that it may differ from Leopold ’ s ) has been subject to the charge of “ ecofascism ,” notably leveled by Tom Regan.

Callicott ’ s justification for this claim is an analysis based on the following criteria for tenability: self-consistency ; comprehensiveness ; self-correction ; universality ; and beauty.

Most recent criticisms have been leveled at Callicott ’ s works addressing the idea of wilderness, the sanctum sanctorum of the twentieth-century environmental movement.

Some scholars acknowledge the intellectual merits of Callicott ’ s critique of the wilderness idea, but regard it as both a betrayal of one of Aldo Leopold ’ s most cherished causes and as giving aid and comfort to the environmental movement ’ s enemies.

Worldviews: Environment, Culture, Religion ( Special Theme Issue on J. Baird Callicott ’ s Earth ’ s Insights ).

Callicott supports a holistic, non-anthropocentric environmental ethic which is in accordance with Leopold's view that " A thing is right when it tends to preserve the integrity, stability, and beauty of the biotic community.

Among many other speakers: Tyler Volk, Co-director of the Program in Earth and Environmental Science at New York University ; Dr. Donald Aitken, Principal of Donald Aitken Associates ; Dr. Thomas Lovejoy, President of the Heinz Center for Science, Economics and the Environment ; Robert Correll, Senior Fellow, Atmospheric Policy Program, American Meteorological Society and noted environmental ethicist, J. Baird Callicott.

J. Baird Callicott is an American philosopher whose work has been at the forefront of the new field of environmental philosophy and ethics.

Callicott was instrumental in developing the field of environmental philosophy and in 1971 taught the world's first course in environmental ethics.

For 26 years, Callicott lived and taught in the northern reaches of Wisconsin's sand counties, located on the Wisconsin River, just ninety miles from Aldo Leopold's storied shack and John Muir's first homestead on Fountain Lake, the region that stirred the souls of two very influential environmental thinkers.

Callicott writes that “ the landscape that had helped shape and inspire the nascent evolutionary-ecological thought of the youthful Muir and that of the mature Leopold was the perfect setting for ( me ) to inaugurate ( my ) life-long vocation as a founder of academic environmental philosophy .” In 1995, he joined the Department of Philosophy and Religion Studies at the University of North Texas in Denton.

It is wrong when it tends otherwise " — Callicott espouses a holistic, non-anthropocentric environmental ethic.

Callicott believes that an adequate environmental ethic — an environmental-ethics paradigm that addresses actual environmental concerns — must be holistic.

Callicott has explored the possibility of a Judeo-Christian “ citizenship ” environmental ethic as a more radical alternative to the familiar Judeo-Christian “ stewardship ” environmental ethic that was developed in response to criticism from environmental historians and philosophers.

Additionally, Callicott has been criticized for espousing an overbearing and impolitic monism in environmental ethics.

* J. Baird Callicott ( Philosophy Department, 1965 – 94 ) – founder of academic environmental ethics discipline ; now at the University of North Texas

In 1969, Callicott joined the philosophy department of Wisconsin State University-Stevens Point ( now the University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point ).

Callicott has worked with conservation biologists to develop a philosophy of conservation and conservation values and ethics, based in part on the recent paradigm shift in ecology from what he calls the “ balance of nature ” to the “ flux of nature .” He has been a strong critic of the “ received wilderness idea ”: the idea that wildernesses are places that are “ untrammeled by man, where man himself is a visitor who does not remain .” That idea, Callicott claims in The Great New Wilderness Debate ( 1998 ), perpetuates a pre-Darwinian human-nature dualism ; in effect, it “ erases ” from collective memory the indigenous inhabitants of North America and Australia, liberating the current inhabitants of those continents from disturbing thoughts of their own heritage of genocide.

As “ an expatriate Southerner, fresh from the pitched battles of the Civil Rights struggle in Memphis, Tennessee ,” Callicott believed that “ the environment was under wholesale assault from every direction with no surcease in sight ” and that “ Civil Rights was a cause already won in the republic of ideas and in the courts ( if not on Main Street in Memphis ).” He “ was a concerned citizen, but was also, more particularly, a challenged philosopher .” So Callicott asked “ how, as a philosopher, could contribute to a rethinking of human nature and a reconstruction of human values to help bring them into line with the relatively new ideas about the nature of the environment emerging from ecology and the new physics .”

In response, Callicott offered two second-order principles as a framework to adjudicate between conflicting first-order duties: 1 ) “ obligations generated by membership in more venerable and intimate communities take precedence over those generated in more recently emerged and impersonal communities ”; 2 ) “ stronger interests take precedence over duties generated by weaker interests .” Because our various human community memberships are both more venerable and intimate and because human interests in enjoying rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness are very strong, Callicott argues that our traditional obligations to individual fellow human beings trump our obligations to preserve the integrity, stability, and beauty of the biotic community — at least, he believes, when it comes to the prospect of culling members of the overpopulous Homo sapiens species.

Callicott claims that philosophers and laypersons should not adopt one theory, say utilitarianism, for one purpose or in one context and another theory, say Kantian deontology, for another purpose or in another context ( this would be theoretical pluralism ).

J. Baird Callicott

Callicott is, perhaps, best known for his research which explores an Aldo Leopold ethic as a response to global climate change.

* Ransom M. Callicott, restaurateur and politician

* J. Baird Callicott

J. Baird Callicott, University Distinguished Research Professor at the University of North Texas, Denton.

Callicott is co-Editor-in-Chief with Robert Frodeman of the award-winning, two-volume A-Z Encyclopedia of Environmental Ethics and Philosophy, published by Macmillan in 2009.

Callicott was born in Memphis, Tennessee on May 9, 1941, to distinguished regional artist and art instructor Burton H. Callicott ( 1907 – 2003 ), of the Memphis Academy of Arts ( now Memphis College of Arts ).

In 1959, Callicott graduated from Memphis's then racially segregated Messick High School and attended Southwestern at Memphis ( now Rhodes College ), earning a B.

The AMPAS was originally conceived by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer studio boss Louis B. Mayer as a professional honorary organization to help improve the film industry ’ s image and help mediate labor disputes.

The International Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences defines psychological altruism as " a motivational state with the goal of increasing another ’ s welfare ".

Psychological altruism is contrasted with psychological egoism, which refers to the motivation to increase one ’ s own welfare.

One way is a sincere expression of Christian love, " motivated by a powerful feeling of security, strength, and inner salvation, of the invincible fullness of one ’ s own life and existence ".

Another way is merely " one of the many modern substitutes for love, ... nothing but the urge to turn away from oneself and to lose oneself in other people ’ s business.

* David Firestone-When Romney ’ s Reach Exceeds His Grasp-Mitt Romney quotes the song

" Swift extends the metaphor to get in a few jibes at England ’ s mistreatment of Ireland, noting that " For this kind of commodity will not bear exportation, and flesh being of too tender a consistence, to admit a long continuance in salt, although perhaps I could name a country, which would be glad to eat up our whole nation without it.

George Wittkowsky argued that Swift ’ s main target in A Modest Proposal was not the conditions in Ireland, but rather the can-do spirit of the times that led people to devise a number of illogical schemes that would purportedly solve social and economic ills.

In response, Swift ’ s Modest Proposal was " a burlesque of projects concerning the poor ", that were in vogue during the early 18th century.

Critics differ about Swift ’ s intentions in using this faux-mathematical philosophy.

Charles K. Smith argues that Swift ’ s rhetorical style persuades the reader to detest the speaker and pity the Irish.

Swift ’ s specific strategy is twofold, using a " trap " to create sympathy for the Irish and a dislike of the narrator who, in the span of one sentence, " details vividly and with rhetorical emphasis the grinding poverty " but feels emotion solely for members of his own class.

Swift ’ s use of gripping details of poverty and his narrator ’ s cool approach towards them create " two opposing points of view " that " alienate the reader, perhaps unconsciously, from a narrator who can view with ' melancholy ' detachment a subject that Swift has directed us, rhetorically, to see in a much less detached way.

Once the children have been commodified, Swift ’ s rhetoric can easily turn " people into animals, then meat, and from meat, logically, into tonnage worth a price per pound ".

Swift uses the proposer ’ s serious tone to highlight the absurdity of his proposal.

In making his argument, the speaker uses the conventional, text book approved order of argument from Swift ’ s time ( which was derived from the Latin rhetorician Quintilian ).

James Johnson argued that A Modest Proposal was largely influenced and inspired by Tertullian ’ s Apology: a satirical attack against early Roman persecution of Christianity.

Johnson notes Swift ’ s obvious affinity for Tertullian and the bold stylistic and structural similarities between the works A Modest Proposal and Apology.

He reminds readers that " there is a gap between the narrator ’ s meaning and the text ’ s, and that a moral-political argument is being carried out by means of parody ".