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47 virtues that might replace those first articulated in the sportsman thesis? This is the project of the next chapter. Conclusion The biotic good is the integrity, stability, and beauty of the community. Conservation practices must aim at this goal. These practices are not just field sports, but also include farming, logging, and ranching; in addition those professional practices of conservation found in state and federal agencies must also direct their efforts to this goal. The three perspectives provided by integrity, stability, and beauty are unified in the concept of diversity, and they evoke values to mitigate the standard economic model. I have argued that field sports are the kinds of activities capable of generating virtue. There are two broad conditions necessary for attaining this status. First, such activities must be teachers of practical reasoning, the precondition for virtue formation. Certainly, the problem solving of field sports fits this model. In Chapter Two, we examined this role of practical reason in developing expertise: making good diagnostic decisions in the face of uncertainties and being able to act on them at the right time in the right way. Whether the skill is navigation, medicine, hunting, or angling, the same educational goals of expertise are present. The education of practical reason trains one’s diagnostic ability based on sufficient background knowledge, the experience and skill to habitually perform the right actions, and finally as a consequence of these, the expert’s summative ability to just “see” what needs to be done. The connection between practical reason and the possibility of virtue generation lies in its ultimate adaptability to other circumstances and the educational need for mentorship in the face of unpredictable circumstances. Second, virtue-generating activities are chosen for their own sakes, which means, so I’ve argued, for the sake of excellence. Participants are motivated by their desire for the pleasures and satisfactions that accompany their pursuit of excellences or virtues. In Chapter Three, I noted that hunting and fishing are lifelong, self-chosen activities for some of us. The ChapterSix:EnvironmentalVirtues 48 Chapter Six character building that we begin in childhood is expected to continue throughout our lives. Expertise is a constant goal, and the difficulties in achieving it are apparent. The pursuit of excellence encourages us to understand the various stages necessary for its achievement. Those character-enriching activities are leisure activities where, besides the practical problems, e.g., which fly to use, one also faces ethical challenges and intellectual puzzles. One’s success in solving these problems and puzzles depends on practice under the supervision of a community of like-minded people. Excellences of moral and intellectual character are developed right alongside of those other excellences of skill and expertise, given the right guidance. So, field sports are capable of generating excellences, as claimed by the sportsman thesis, if chosen for the right reasons and taught in the right way. But the good served by field sports is not just that of excellence of the participant. There must be an environmental goal as well: the biotic good. Now, any specific list of desirable virtues is ultimately arrived at by considerations of the desired goals and ends of activities. As I argued in the previous two chapters, this goal has correctly been shifted for field sports from the pursuit of a gentlemanly status, then to an old-style, game-animal-centered conservation, and finally to the preservation of the biotic good. Once this shift is accepted, we are in a position to identify a list of excellences field sports should inculcate in their practitioners to serve this end. Happily, to some extent we will find that these environmental virtues are already present in field sports, but my point will be that field sports must, if they are to maintain an environmentally secure ethical base, be redirected as far as possible to bring these virtues about. This chapter will identify these virtues and point out actual instances of them in the literature of field sports. The remaining issues of making these virtues more precise and modifying field sports to inculcate these virtues will be addressed in Parts Three and Four. ThreeComponentsoftheLandEthic The good of the biotic community, as discussed in the last chapter, will guide us in identifying several environmental virtues necessary for its preservation. If the educational goal of field sports is excellence and the ecological goal is the biotic good, as Leopold believes, then we need to determine which habits or excellences we wish young people and [3...

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