On the role of intrinsic value in terms of environmental education

Aydın Bayram S.

Cyprus International Conference on Educational Research (CY-ICER), CYPRUS, 8 - 11 February 2012, vol.47, pp.1087-1091 identifier

  • Publication Type: Conference Paper / Full Text
  • Volume: 47
  • Doi Number: 10.1016/j.sbspro.2012.06.783
  • Country: CYPRUS
  • Page Numbers: pp.1087-1091
  • Keywords: Intrinsic value, environmental ethics, environmental education, anthropocentrism
  • Middle East Technical University Affiliated: Yes

Abstract

An understanding of instrumentally valuable nature resulted from anthropocentrism is incapable of producing long-term, real solutions to deal with environmental problems. It is obvious that these problems cannot be handled staying within the current understanding of nature-human relationship and without broaden the extent of ethics in a way to involve non-human entities. Human beings are prone to protect what they consider as intrinsically valuable. Further, they have a tendency to value the things around them and it can be improved. Thus, a big part of this can be succeeded through environmental education. Therefore, in this paper, I discuss the role of intrinsic value in terms of environmental education to handle the environmental problems, and investigate a new account of subjective intrinsic value about nature. (c) 2012 Published by Elsevier Ltd.