Forty-two students enrolled in an environmental ethics course at a medium-sized metropolitan university in the southeastern United States were asked to complete a survey identifying their environmental ethic, prior to and after the course. Students were likewise asked if they saw benefits to taking an environmental ethics course and to explain those benefits. Before the course, most students could not identify an environmental ethic. Afterwards, most had adopted an ecocentric mindset. It was determined through a simple chi-square test that the (...) course had an impact in terms of how the students identify. None of the students viewed the course as a waste of time, with most feeling strongly that the course was life-enriching. All students surveyed saw benefit, with over half of the students suggesting the major benefit was that they were now better able to understand themselves and others. The survey findings were confirmed through structured interviews. (shrink)

During spring of 2020, environmental ethics students at a medium sized metropolitan university in the Southeastern United States were asked to read and comment on classic essays from Robert Heilbroner and Garrett Hardin, essays regarding our responsibilities towards future generations. In general, students seemed to hold more with Heilbroner’s stance, which left room for compassion, while condemning Hardin’s harshness. Students were then asked to provide written responses stating whether they would personally sacrifice their eventual retirement in order to stop COVID-19 (...) and the reasons for their views. Responses were analyzed and categorized to detect inconsistencies between students’ described views and their willingness to personally sacrifice for the sake of others. Almost 72% of respondents asserted that they would be willing to intervene to stop the novel coronavirus by sacrificing their retirement. A fair number of respondents that stated they would sacrifice said that they would do so because they would benefit personally from the avoidance of guilt and/or from the opportunity to feel good about themselves, suggesting that even seemingly selfless behaviors are sometimes driven by egoistic motivations. Forty percent of all respondents held inconsistent views. Most notably, a number of students condemned Hardin for his lack of compassion, yet were not willing to act compassionately themselves. (shrink)

A perception-action system may underlie the mechanisms by which human speech exchange in social interaction is managed, as well as the evolutionary precursors of these mechanisms in closely related species. Some phenomena of interaction well-studied by sociologists are suggested as a point of departure for further research.