ABSTRACT While processes of ruination can help understand urban ecologies and make sense of today’s urban nature, ruins as dynamic entities rather than objectified matters are still absent from ecological narratives. By engaging with the urban ruins of 19th century Manchester, known as Cottonopolis – that was paradoxically a botanical field of study and site of pleasurable excursions while transforming as an industrial city of polluting mass production – architectural, botanical, environmental, and legal entangled stories of unnoticed but constructed urban ruin are unravelled. However, these stories are narrated by plants as witnesses of the city’s industrial ruination. The research draws on a multidisciplinary archival material, aiming to disentangle the colonial practice and knowledge underlying ruination indicated by native and neophyte plants. The archival findings speculate on the legal rights of urban nature and its collaborative agency with the nonhuman ruin in a historical context in which theories of ecology, multispecies justice and posthumanism were non-existent. This contemporary re-reading of 19th century Manchester will allow first the construction of a just eco-historical narrative of the ruin in its architectural discourse and beyond, and then, potentially to ideate on ways of bringing together practices and disciplines to provide future ruins with epistemic ecological agency.
ABSTRACT This paper presents a new philosophical rendering of the concept “domestication”. Updated from its use in anthropology and biology, domestication is examined not as a fixed biological or cultural category but as a critical tool for examining colonial power, ecological loss and relational ways of being. In this paper the concept is introduced in dialogue with Walter Benjamin and Martin Heidegger’s thinking on dwelling and habitation, broadening their critiques of modernity by attending to modernity’s colonial underside. Domestication is defined as the naming, taming, and maintaining of relations of dependence and difference. With the historical contextualization of modernity as coloniality in place, domestication as a dialectic of nature and culture is brought into dialogue with Thom Van Dooren’s account of snail extinction in Hawai’i. Domestication is employed as a heuristic to trace the repression and representation of nature and culture in colonial modernity, providing a generative way to consider anti-colonial practices of inhabitation in this era of ecological devastation.
ABSTRACT Editor’s note: This text is an edited rendition of Timothy Morton’s keynote. It condenses, rearranges, and lightly stylizes oral remarks for readability while preserving the voice and argument. Any errors of interpretation are the editor’s.
ABSTRACT This article examines how Karen Barad’s concept of intra-action as intrinsically queer dismantles human exceptionalism and fosters more fluid relationships between self and others. By emphasizing boundaries and identities as fluid and performative, embracing radical kinship, reworking environmental ethics, and fostering new modes of community, queer posthuman ecology offers a theoretical framework that problematizes normative notions of human subjectivity in relation to the ecological realm. Drawing from queer theory’s critique of heteronormativity and posthuman thought’s challenging of anthropocentrism, this article argues that environmental ethics can be deepened by making explicit the queerness inherent in our relationality with the non-human world. This contributes to conversations surrounding environmental ethics and human/non-human relationality. Queerness operates at the intersection of self and other, in conversation and co-constituted within the structures of cisgender-heteronormative patriarchy. Within a queer posthuman ecology, the human entity is not separated from animal, plant, or inorganic entities. In order to dissolve perceived boundaries that contribute to ecological degradation and extractivist perspectives, queerness must intervene to question such delineations on an intrinsic level. Just as queer identity and subjectivity is always in flux and in relationship to larger hegemonic structures, queer posthuman ecology disrupts and reorients existing conversations.
ABSTRACT This article examines shifting methods of plankton research within contemporary oceanography through direct participatory engagement on a ten-day research cruise off the Santa Lucia Escarpment in February 2025. As a feminist visual science studies researcher, I reflect on how seasickness, sensory immersion, and embodied participation shaped my experience of plankton sampling and reveal the entanglement of oceanographic knowledge with its contexts. While remote sensing technologies – such as satellites, digital twins, and remotely operated vehicles – are increasingly shaping oceanography and producing intensified modes of ocean quantification, I argue that tactile, physical sampling methods remain indispensable in plankton research. Rather than being supplanted, these transform into ground truth methods: observed and situated instances of contact between plankton and scientist used to calibrate, validate, and enrich remote sensed data. By juxtaposing physical collection methods with abstractions of remote sensing, I demonstrate how different technologies generate distinct ways of seeing plankton. Drawing on feminist, visual, and disability theories of science, I emphasize that oceanographic research, even when using remote sensing, is inherently embodied, situated, and coproduced through constant acts of negotiation with the ocean itself. Ground truth methods, I contend, are essential hinges that tether remotely sensed ocean data to direct, embodied ocean encounters.
ABSTRACT Veganism as an ethical and political movement to abolish the mass exploitation of animals has been one prominent response to the ethical and ecological calamities of industrial animal agriculture. In this article, I draw on post-anthropocentric and decolonial tributaries to critically examine some problematic undercurrents that occasionally resurface in mainstream vegan discourses as evident amongst prominent organisations like PETA and The Vegan Society, namely a pervasive zoocentrism that redeploys rigid binaries between humans, plants and animals and ultimately excludes members of the wider biospheric community. I argue that such approaches ultimately reinforce human exceptionalism and undermine the objective of total liberation that vegan movements seek to achieve. Forging more ethical multispecies relations requires humbly embracing the inescapable indeterminateness of biospheric entanglements, and widening understandings of personhood. I close with indicative case studies and reflections on how the movements’ transformative political potential might be strengthened, namely by deconstructing the counterproductive emphasis on respect for (sentient) animal life, whilst underscoring noncompliance with intersecting oppressive systems.
ABSTRACT According to Thomas Nagel’s thought, human beings are incapable of subjectively experiencing what a bat experiences. The only possibilities outlined by the philosopher are: (1) the objective analysis of ethological expressions, that is, the description of the phenomenon of the bat; (2) analogical projection, which we shall refer to as analogism to distinguish it from the concept of analogy used in evolutionary biology – effectively, anthropomorphism. If, by definition, objective analysis cannot be considered subjective, the second point entails an even more radical negation, as it relies on a human-centred projection. The human perspective undoubtedly possesses specific characteristics, yet the error lies in viewing these as exclusive. This mistake stems from the enduring influence of an essentialist conception of living beings that characterises the humanist approach. Such a view tends to treat the umwelt as a kind of self-contained monad, shared solely within the human species. From an evolutionary standpoint, however, different species share broad traits, meaning that various umwelten exhibit overlapping domains. Given that the strict distinction between objectivity and subjectivity is itself debatable – Nagel himself refers to the bat’s echolocation – the true error lies in assuming that analogism is the only available approach.
ABSTRACT Environmental ethicists have long debated which nonhuman entities bear intrinsic value, or matter for their own sake. I assess the merits of arguments that sentient nonhuman animals matter, and that nonsentient species and ecosystems matter, and argue that the former case is far more convincing, while the latter case is uncertain at best. For this reason, I argue that sentient animals should take moral priority over nonsentient entities. However, drawing on and reinterpreting the arguments of holists, I make the case that many nonsentient entities can be understood as communities that are deeply important to, and in some ways inseparable from, the well-being of individual sentient animals. Because of this, while I lean toward ethical individualism when it comes to who bears intrinsic value, I argue against an atomistic individualism and instead advocate attention to relationships and interdependence. In at least some cases, such a modified, non-atomistic individualism may create practical overlap with holist prescriptions.
ABSTRACT This article explores how marine organisms can be reconsidered as epistemic figures within posthumanist thought. While posthumanism has advanced significant critiques of anthropocentrism, it has often privileged terrestrial animals and land-based metaphors in its rethinking of human-nonhuman relations. By contrast, many oceanic lifeforms – such as corals and “Pinna nobilis” – have remained epistemologically marginalized, ethically invisible, and conceptually under-theorized. This paper challenges the dominant frameworks that overlook marine beings whose bodies, temporalities, and ecological functions do not easily lend themselves to anthropomorphic identification. Drawing on feminist materialisms, critical posthumanist theories, and marine humanities, the article proposes an expanded oceanic posthumanism that foregrounds the ontological opacity, multispecies entanglements, and sensory alterities of sea creatures. Rather than treating marine life as passive matter or solely conservation targets, this study positions them as methodological provocations, inviting alternative imaginaries and forms of knowledge beyond terrestrial and ocular-centric paradigms.
Environmental awareness is a widely debated topic. This awareness is a general philosophy, an attitude towards life, which has gained particular importance in recent years, when the scientific community has shown that anthropogenic action has a direct and negative impact on the environment. This preliminary study aims to develop a valid and reliable instrument to diagnose knowledge and awareness of the environment and climate change. The ad hoc instrument consists of 41 items grouped into five factors elaborated from the literature review in the state of the art phase. Following an ex post facto design with an empirical-analytical perspective, it was applied to a sample (n = 99) of students representative by gender and modalities of 1st year of Bachillerato, obtaining a reliability of 0.9106 calculated by Cronbach’s test. In addition to having created a reliable instrument, its application reveals the degree of ignorance of different factors, especially environmental factors from a humanistic-social perspective and sustainable habits. This leads us to the conclusion that some elements are not working in the way climate change is communicated in the current Spanish educational context.
This essay explores the relationship between two recent books on the scope of moral consideration: “The Edge of Sentience” (Birch 2024a) and “The Moral Circle” (Sebo 2025). Both books address the ethical and scientific challenge of determining how to interact with beings of uncertain sentience and moral status. They also argue for similar conclusions: they develop precautionary frameworks for guiding these decisions, and they argue that many invertebrates, future AI systems, and other beings merit moral consideration or, at least, further investigation. However, the books differ in focus and scope: “The Moral Circle” focuses more on ethical theory and long-term progress, while “The Edge of Sentience” focuses more on public policy and short-term progress. This essay highlights the complementary nature of these works and identifies key areas for further research, including how to navigate moral uncertainty and how to reconcile ethical principles with practical and political realities.
The recognition of human-caused environmental crises has increased the need to think and act in a way that bridges the ecosocial realities of humans and the rest of nature. Therefore, this theoretical article challenges the anthropocentric assumption of human social life and communication. We formulate an educational philosophy on the nature of sociality, that recognizes the intertwining of human and other realities, and we ask how this kind of multispecies approach can guide education towards an eco-socially sustainable transformation. Based on biological and phenomenological perspectives, we describe the multispecies social community through three concepts: holobiont, flesh, and umwelt. First, human sociality must be understood in a multispecies context. Second, the ontological intertwining of humans and other living beings forms an interdependent and non-hierarchical web of life. Third, the social interaction in this multispecies society must begin by recognizing different perceptual realities. The inability to interact and participate amid different perceptual realities within the same flesh of the world with other species has proved destructive to both fellow living beings and humans. Thus, we conclude that bringing different perceptual realities to education could make learners more sensitive to different manifestations of life and create aptitudes for living together in a more-than-human world.
This paper examines the urgent need for a transformative shift in environmental ethics education, specifically challenging the pervasive ideology of human supremacy that shapes contemporary pedagogical approaches. Following ecopedagogy and the critical pedagogy movements, it critiques current educational frameworks that implicitly reinforce human dominance over the more-than-human world. The paper explores the ethical consequences of disembodied, humancentered education, which alienates students from ecological realities and perpetuates environmental degradation and social inequities. In response to these challenges, the paper proposes an alternative ethical framework grounded in cross-species solidarity, relational ethics, and embodied learning. Utilizing approaches such as wild pedagogy and self-rewilding, it emphasizes the importance of immersive, hands-on educational practices that cultivate empathy, multispecies kinship, and ecological consciousness. By fostering these connections, the paper advocates for a reimagined education system that not only dismantles human supremacy but also nurtures more just, regenerative relationships between humans, other-than-human species, and ecosystems. This reorientation in environmental ethics pedagogy offers a critical pathway to confronting the interconnected ecological, social, and cultural crises of our time, while promoting long-term multispecies justice and ecological flourishing.
This paper introduces the groundbreaking concept of Cenozoic community ethics or Cenozoic ecocentrism, which signifies a shift away from the anthropocentric perspective that has largely fueled environmental degradation. It advocates for a new ethical framework beyond anthropocentrism, one that integrates the principles of sentiocentrism (valuing sentient beings), biocentrism (valuing all living things), and ecocentrism (valuing ecosystems as wholes), thereby acknowledging the intrinsic value of everything from individual organisms to entire ecosystems. This forwardthinking approach leverages insights from geology and evolution to highlight the interconnectedness and essential worth of all life forms during the Cenozoic era. Instead of seeking to resolve the conflict between individual rights and the health of ecosystems, this document proposes a flexible, situation-aware balancing of these diverse ethical views. It envisions humans as considerate partners within a thriving, multi-species community, prompting us to rethink our moral obligations to the vast non-human world. The aim is to shed light on the intricate moral relationships we share with the broader living world, calling for a deeper empathy and fairer coexistence among all species.
The paper presents the theoretical background and structure, as well as pedagogical activities, of an Environmental Philosophy course – a large, general intro for third-year undergraduate students – dedicated to a critical analysis of the idea of nature and its meaning(s) for environmentalism. It centers around the consideration that the idea of nature seems at the same time unavoidable in environmental policy and untenable due to its colonial heritage and dualistic ontology. It is designed as an interdisciplinary, hands-on, critical analysis of the role of “nature” in environmental praxis, its coloniality, and alternative understandings of and relationships to “nature”. Conceptually, “nature” is framed as the “transcendental” of Western modernity: both a necessary condition of possibility for its self-understanding and an a priori unification of the manifold that seems so “obviously” subsumed under it. By drawing on interdisciplinary literature including eco-phenomenology, environmental hermeneutics, political ecology, anthropology, and decolonial thought, students are confronted with different approaches to the question of “nature” and invited to critically analyze assumptions, implications, and uses of the term. They are guided by the hermeneutical consideration that the question “what is nature?” reveals just as much about who asks the question as about what is asked.
