CFP: The Ethics of Space: exploration, colonisation and justification
Submission deadline: January 31, 2015
Topic areas
Details
CFA : The Ethics of Space: exploration, colonisation and justification.
Abstracts of 250-300 words are invited for contributions to an edited volume on the ethics of human activity in space.
Editors: Tony Milligan (University of Hertfordshire) and Jim Schwartz (Wichita State University).
Publisher subject to confirmation but the target is the Springer 'Space and Society' series. Abstracts should be sent to [email protected]. Deadline: 31st January, 2015.
Since the publication of Jacques Arnould's Icarus' Second Chance: The Basis and Perspectives of Space Ethics (2011) there has been a steady improvement in the quality of work on the ethics of human activity offworld. Over the course of the next 18 months - 2 years, a further three books dedicated to this subject (by Lupisella, Milligan and Munevar) are due for publication. After some false starts, a consolidated discourse is now beginning to emerge. The proposed edited volume will help to articulate key positions and clarify some of the main lines of argument. Papers on practical and theoretical perspectives are welcome and there is no proposed restriction of philosophical tradition.
Possible topics
(Theoretical)
Space humanism
The idea of a cosmocentric ethic
Microbial value
Arguments for planetary integrity
The application of environmental ethics
(Practical)
Property rights offworld
Asteroid mining
Fair access to space
The ethics of risk
Planetary protection
Terraforming/ecopoesis
Justifying a mission to Mars
Invited contributors:
Jacques Arnould (Centre National d'Etudes Spatiales, CNES)
Frans von der Dunk (Othmer Professor of Space Law, University of Nebraska)
Mark Lupisella (NASA)
Gonzalo Munevar (author of The Dimming of Starlight)
Charles Cockell (UK Centre for Astrobiology)