Volume 15, Issue 2, Fall 2018
Ben Mylius
Pages 159-194
https://doi.org/10.5840/envirophil20184564
Three Types of Anthropocentrism
This paper develops a language for distinguishing more rigorously between various senses of the term ¡®anthropocentrism.¡¯ Specifically, it differentiates between:
1. Perceptual anthropocentrism (which characterizes paradigms informed by sense-data from human sensory organs);
2. Descriptive anthropocentrism (which characterizes paradigms that begin from, center upon, or are ordered around Homo sapiens?/?¡®the human¡¯)
3. Normative anthropocentrism (which characterizes paradigms that constrain inquiry in a way that somehow privileges Homo sapiens?/?¡®the human¡¯ [passive normative anthropocentrism]; and which characterizes paradigms that make assumptions or assertions about the superiority of Homo sapiens, its capacities, the primacy of its values, its position in the universe, and/or make prescriptions based on these assertions and assumptions [active normative anthropocentrism]).