6 End-of-course summary

This free course, Exploring philosophy: faking nature, has explored an intriguing issue. Usually, things are thought of as valuable because of the effects they have on people – they make their lives better in various ways. By considering the difference between originals and copies, pristine nature and restored nature, you have had to confront the possibility that there bits of the world that are valuable precisely because they have nothing to do with people at all; they are ‘outside our dominion’. The view that the value of things can always be cashed out in terms of human experience does not seem able to account for some of the differences there are between originals and copies.

This OpenLearn course is an adapted extract from the Open University course A853 MA Philosophy Part 1 [Tip: hold Ctrl and click a link to open it in a new tab. (Hide tip)] .