California Lutheran University

Jonathan Pfeiffer is an undergraduate at California Lutheran University in Thousand Oaks, California. His concentration began in biomedical engineering. Later, however, he changed his focus to environmental science, political science, and ethics.

I will discuss the need for moral reasoning which can accommodate a conspicuous rhetorical absence of “intrinsic worth” and of an irrelevancy of nature–artifact duality. Certain kinds of ethical principles may guide the flows of temporal, genetic, emotional, cognitive, intellectual, and other resources that pervade personal and social experience.
I will conclude by claiming that risks of mistakes and unintended consequences posed by unfamiliar ethical principles should provoke humility and caution, rather than paralysis, in the face of hazards.