Pathways to a New Environmental Ethic

We live under the threat of humanity's self-inflicted extinction. While technological approaches to climate mitigation are admirable, our ecological crisis results ultimately from an inherited, unexamined concept of selfhood and a misconceived view of nature. The received idea that our self exists inside our skull engenders an assumption that nature is &quote;out there,&quote; with devastating results. This book explores three new ways of thinking about the interrelation of ourselves and &quote;nature&quote;: Merleau-Ponty's notion of embodiment, the connection between enactivism and affordances, and object oriented ontology. These approaches to selfhood reorder our moral obligations: What are our responsibilities to ourselves, our children, and nature itself? An embodied ethic can transcend cultural biases and offer a new way of confronting climate change. To meet environmental challenges, we need to change our minds about our minds.