This contribution will explore the methodological significance of value experiences for the ethics of human interactions with nature. I begin by detailing how environmentally disruptive technologies often pose “techno-environmental dilemmas.” For example, offshore windfarms enable us to mitigate global environmental harm. Simultaneously, they disrupt the environments in which they are built, negatively impacting human and nonhuman lives. How should we decide what to do in the face of these environmental dilemmas?

Building on recent developments in moral epistemology, I argue for a methodology in which emotional value experiences are used as defeasible starting points for ethical reasoning. Relevant value experiences include the wonder people feel for animals, plants, landscapes, and ecosystems; the distress people experience towards environmental degradation and dislocation; compassion for the suffering of humans and animals; and anger towards climate injustice. I explain how we can build a process of deliberation about human interactions with nature using these starting points. This requires developing some epistemological principles about whose emotions to consult in the deliberation-process and how to proceed when different people’s emotional intuitions conflict. The upshot is a promising methodology for participatory decision-making in the face of techno-environmental dilemmas, and the beginnings of a research-programme for reassessing the foundations of environmental ethics.

This presentation is part of the panel Value Experiences & Technomoral Deliberation