Environmental pragmatism is a new strategy in environmental thought. It argues that theoretical debates are hindering the ability of the environmental movement to forge agreement on basic policy imperatives. This new direction in environmental thought moves beyond theory, advocating a serious inquiry into the merits of moral pluralism. Environmental pragmatism, as a coherent philosophical position, connects the methodology of classical American pragmatic thought to the explanation, solution and discussion of real issues. This concise, well-focused collection is the first comprehensive presentation (...) of environmental pragmatism as a new philosophical approach to environmental thought and policy. (shrink)

The pragmatic conception of truth, anticipated by Henry David Thoreau and developed by C.S. Peirce and subsequent pragmatists, is proposed as a useful analogy for characterising 'sustainability.' Peirce's definitions of 'truth' provides an attractive approach to sustainability because (a) it re-focuses discussions of truth and objectivity from a search for 'correspondence' to an 'external world' (the 'conform' approach) to a more forward-looking ('transform') approach; and (b) it emphasises the crucial role of an evolving, questioning community in the conduct of inquiry. (...) Any successful definition of sustainability must share these characteristics with Peircean truth. While Peirce and John Dewey never reconciled their disagreements regarding the nature and task of 'inquiry', a pragmatist resolution of their differences is offered, arguing that we need both a logic of management sciences (logica utens) and a logic of pure science (logica docens), which (perhaps among other differences) respond very differently to uncertainty. It is shown that adaptive management – can be understood as a first approximation of a logica utens for social learning in pursuit of solutions to environmental problems, and it is suggested that a pragmatist, transform approach to inquiry such as Dewey's may provide a way around the 'fact-value' gulf. (shrink)

_Pragmatism: An Introduction _provides an account of the arguments of the central figures of the most important philosophical tradition in the American history of ideas, pragmatism. This wide-ranging and accessible study explores the work of the classical pragmatists Charles Sanders Peirce, William James and John Dewey, as well as more recent philosophers including Richard Rorty, Richard J. Bernstein, Cheryl Misak, and Robert B. Brandom. Michael Bacon examines how pragmatists argue for the importance of connecting philosophy to practice. In so doing, (...) they set themselves in opposition to many of the presumptions that have dominated philosophy since Descartes. The book demonstrates how pragmatists reject the Cartesian spectator theory of knowledge, in which the mind is viewed as seeking accurately to represent items in the world, and replace it with an understanding of truth and knowledge in terms of the roles they play within our social practices. The book explores the diverse range of positions that have engendered marked and sometimes acrimonious disputes amongst pragmatists. Bacon identifies the themes underlying these differences, revealing a greater commonality than many commentators have recognized. The result is an illuminating narrative of a rich philosophical movement that will be of interest to students in philosophy, political theory, and the history of ideas. (shrink)

The reformist philosophy of the classical pragmatist tradition has gradually evolved into the now-fashionable revolutionary styles of pragmatism, some scientistic, some literary. This evolution is traced from Peirce, James, Dewey, and Mead, through Schiller, Lewis, Hook,and Quine, to Rorty’s literary-political neo-pragmatism. Rather than get hung up on the question of which variants qualify as authentic pragmatism, it is better — more fruitful, and appropriately forward looking— to ask what we can learn from the older tradition, and what we can salvage (...) from the new. (shrink)

This book continues and revises the ideas of justice as fairness that John Rawls presented in _A Theory of Justice_ but changes its philosophical interpretation in a fundamental way. That previous work assumed what Rawls calls a "well-ordered society," one that is stable and relatively homogenous in its basic moral beliefs and in which there is broad agreement about what constitutes the good life. Yet in modern democratic society a plurality of incompatible and irreconcilable doctrines--religious, philosophical, and moral--coexist within the (...) framework of democratic institutions. Recognizing this as a permanent condition of democracy, Rawls asks how a stable and just society of free and equal citizens can live in concord when divided by reasonable but incompatible doctrines? This edition includes the essay "The Idea of Public Reason Revisited," which outlines Rawls ' plans to revise _Political Liberalism,_ which were cut short by his death. "An extraordinary well-reasoned commentary on _A Theory of Justice_...a decisive turn towards political philosophy." --_Times Literary Supplement_. (shrink)

Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-226-595 19-6 (cloth : alk. paper) . A . 1. Environmental policy. 2. Environmental management — Decision making. 3. Interdisciplinary research. 4. Communication in science. 5. Sustainable ...

This book is Dewey's most fully developed treatment of logic as the theory of Inquiry. It is a later work which reflects, in part, Dewey's readings of C.S. Peirce during the 1930's. -/- Reprinted in Series: The collected works of John Dewey / ed. by Jo Ann Boydston, 3,12.; The later works, 1925 - 1953, Vol. 12.

In recent years there has been a renewed interest in American pragmatism. In political philosophy, the revival of pragmatism has led to a new appreciation for the democratic theory of John Dewey. In this book, Robert B. Talisse advances a series of pragmatic arguments against Deweyan democracy. Particularly, Talisse argues that Deweyan democracy cannot adequately recognize pluralism, the fact that intelligent, sincere, and well-intentioned persons can disagree sharply and reasonably over moral ideals. Drawing upon the epistemology of the founder of (...) pragmatism, Charles S. Peirce, Talisse develops a conception of democracy that is anti-Deweyan but nonetheless pragmatist. Talisse then brings the Peircean view into critical conversation with contemporary developments in democratic theory, including deliberative democracy, Rawlsian political liberalism, and Richard Posner's democratic realism. The result is a new pragmatist option in democratic theory. (shrink)

Arranged and integrated to reveal epistemology, phenomenology, theory of signs, other major topics.

In this book Putnam turns to pragmatism - and confronts the teachings of James, Peirce, Dewey, and Wittgenstein - not solely out of an interest in theoretical ...

This paper addresses two issues: the controversy over pragmatism in environmental philosophy, and the habitual exclusion of William James's work from serious examination. Addressing critiques of pragmatic naturalism from Max Horkheimer, Eugene Hargrove and Holmes Rolston, I argue that their criticisms misfire, primarily due to skewed perception derived from mis-interpretative projections of views to which pragmatism is not committed. I conclude that the critics' major concerns are largely groundless, but that greater emphasis on pragmatism's experiential aspect would clarify this.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The Past and Future of Environmental Ethics/PhilosophyBryan Norton (bio)About 15 years ago, at one of the first meetings of the group known as the International Society for Environmental Ethics (ISEE) at American Philosophical Association (APA) meetings, I drew an analogy with the field of medical ethics, arguing that environmental ethicists should look beyond philosophy departments and seek liaisons with Schools of Forestry, Schools of Marine Science, and Environmental Studies (...) Programs, and that philosophers should take a more active role in policy discussions and process. At that time, I was actively engaged in the actual policy processes, at the Environmental Protection Agency and other agencies, and perceived that: (a) These agencies desperately needed the kinds of conceptual and normative analysis philosophers could provide; but that (b) Practitioners of environmental policy did not find that the categories and concepts of traditional "metaphysical" approaches to environmental value provided them with useful guidance in policy decision making.My urging gained me some heavy criticism, and even made me some enemies, as leading members of the environmental ethics establishment openly complained that my judgment—in seeing philosophy of environmental protection as needing a basis in analysis of possible actions—had been compromised by "spending too much time inside the beltway."Since those early years, I have watched my colleagues in environmental ethics debate this point, but mainly as a sideline to their metaphysical speculation.In the meantime, my colleagues in medical ethics have populated medical schools, formed liaisons with medical research institutions, and become regular commentators on newscasts about ethically controversial medical issues. Meanwhile, Chris Stone, the legal scholar, had his students do a word search of the Congressional Record over several years, and found almost no references to "environmental ethics."As I see it, there are three differences between the environmental ethics and the medical ethics cases: (1) Philosophers have responded to medical issues by engaging practitioners, while most environmental ethicists have become, at best, "token" members of philosophy departments and, whereas medical ethics practitioners tend to talk about decision criteria [End Page 134] ("informed consent", etc.), environmental ethicist continue to concentrate on the metaphysical foundations of environmental values; (2) The medical profession, beset with public controversies, recognized the need for more ethical discourse about medical choices, and actively embraced philosophers in their programs, whereas most environmental practioners cannot see how philosophical analysis will help them to make better decisions; and (3) Being much wealthier than environmentalists, the medical schools and professionals were able to initiate positions and offer financial support, while environmental ethicists have to compete with other environmental researchers and commentators for small pots of funding.While we can't do much about (3), we can, I assert, do a lot more about (1) and (2). With respect to philosophy departments, the trend may be(and in my view should be) toward developing joint appointments between philosophy departments and policy schools, forestry schools, and environmental studies programs. This will bring philosophers and students into more direct contact with real problems and the language of decision making, rather than metaphysics. And with respect to point (2), I continue to urge environmental philosophers to address real problems, rather than operating on an abstract level and then finding "applications" of these abstractions.Philosophers, in other words, should become more "pragmatic" in their approach to both policy and philosophy. One aspect of this move is the need—after years of thinking of environmental philosophy as environmental ethics—to concentrate on epistemological, not metaphysical, aspects of environmental science and decision making.Let me expand on this last point, because it seems to me to be the most important consideration affecting the future of environmental ethics, at least in the short and medium run. I think the central debates about whether nonhumans have "intrinsic value" will be (and should be) replaced with a vigorous discussion of the epistemology of all environmental values. Recently, two leading environmental philosophers, Baird Callicott and Mark Sagoff, have strongly endorsed what would traditionally be called "non-naturalist" approaches to the epistemology of environmental ethics. For Sagoff, this involved positing "ethical and aesthetic" facts which should guide environmental policy discourse away from any discussion of the utilitarian benefits of an improved... (shrink)

This book provides a richly interdisciplinary assessment of the thought and work of Bryan Norton, one of most innovative and influential environmental philosophers of the past thirty years. In landmark works such as Toward Unity Among Environmentalists and Sustainability: A Philosophy of Adaptive Ecosystem Management, Norton charted a new and highly productive course for an applied environmental philosophy, one fully engaged with the natural and social sciences as well as the management professions. A Sustainable Philosophy gathers together a distinguished group (...) of scholars and professionals from a wide array of fields to engage Norton’s work and its legacy for our shared environmental future. A study in the power of intellectual legacy and the real-world influence of philosophy, the book will be of great interest scholars and students in environmental philosophy, public policy and management, and environmental and sustainability studies. By considering the value and impact of Norton’s body of work it will also chart a course for the next generation of pragmatic environmental philosophers and sustainability scholars grappling with questions of environmental value, knowledge, and practice in a rapidly changing world. (shrink)

This chapter will subject Bryan Norton’s well-known ‘convergence hypothesis’ to a critical assessment with a view to improve our understanding of the possibilities and difficulties of environmental citizenship. I will argue that Norton holds overly optimistic expectations regarding the transformative force of democratic deliberation. Firstly, Norton consciously ignores the role of power relationships and strategic negotiations in political will-formation. Secondly, Norton also has a too narrow view on ethical discourse itself: he only focuses on conceptions of the good life within (...) single communities and neglects the plurality of often incompatible conceptions between different communities. To illustrate the inevitability of bargaining on the one hand and the importance of inter-communal ethical tensions on the other, I will discuss the wolf debate in Finland that started after the country’s accession to the EU in 1995. (shrink)

Among Bryan Norton’s most influential contributions to environmental philosophy has been his analysis and evaluation of democratic processes for environmental decision-making. He examines actual cases of environmental decision-making in their legal, political, ethical and scientific contexts, and, with contextual constraints and goals in mind, he theorizes concerning what they accomplish and how they can be improved. Informed by the political theories of both John Dewey and Jürgen Habermas, Norton’s pragmatist approach holds that appropriate democratic decision procedures will generate broadly defensible (...) decisions. Thus, his view of environmental decision-making is based in—and requires—inclusive, democratic, empirical inquiry. While accepting these criteria, I examine how, in practice, it is difficult to identify when these conditions have been adequately met. I investigate the limitations of Norton’s proceduralist approach through a case study in community-based forest management in a New York State urban old-growth park. I argue that Norton’s procedural priorities are too rigid given the contextual constraints of local decision-making. While they are useful for guiding an ideal, high standards sense of the decision-making process, less rigid Deweyan considerations of social learning and community engagement often provide sufficient guidelines for evaluating success. (shrink)

This book examines from a multidisciplinary viewpoint the question of what we mean - what we should mean - by setting sustainability as a goal for environmental management. The author, trained as a philosopher of science and language, explores ways to break down the disciplinary barriers to communication and deliberation about environment policy, and to integrate science and evaluations into a more comprehensive environmental policy. Choosing sustainability as the keystone concept of environmental policy, the author explores what we can learn (...) about sustainable living from the philosophy of pragmatism, from ecology, from economics, from planning, from conservation biology and from related disciplines. The idea of adaptive, or experimental, management provides the context, while insights from various disciplines are integrated into a comprehensive philosophy of environmental management. The book will appeal to students and professionals in the fields of environmental policy and ethics, conservation biology, and philosophy of science. (shrink)

Since its appearance in English translation in 1996, Jurgen Habermas's Between Facts and Norms has become the focus of a productive dialogue between German and Anglo-American legal and political theorists. The present volume contains ten essays that provide an overview of Habermas's political thought since the original appearance of Between Facts and Norms in 1992 and extend his model of deliberative democracy in novel ways to issues untreated in the earlier work. Habermas's theory of democracy has at least three features (...) that set it apart from competing positions. First, it combines a concern with questions of normative justification with an empirical analysis of the social conditions necessary for the realization of democratic institutions. Second, at the heart of his model is the assertion of an internal relationship between liberalism and democracy. Finally, Habermas defends a conception of universal human rights that is not only sensitive to cultural differences but also calls for legal and political institutions that facilitate the cultivation of cultural and religious identities within pluralistic societies. These essays demonstrate the extraordinary power of Habermas's theory of democracy through a further engagement with Rawls's political liberalism and through original contributions to current debates over nationalism, multiculturalism, and the viability of supranational political institutions. (shrink)

In On Truth and the Representation of Reality, Dan Nesher develops a new theory of truth in the framework of pragmatist theory of representation. Using the pragmatist theory of perception for the basis of his epistemological explanation of our confrontation with external Reality and how it's represented, Nesher shows that in our perceptual operations we quasi-prove the truth of our perceptual judgments.

Providing a bold and original rethinking of environmental ethics, Ben Minteer's Refounding Environmental Ethics will help ethicists and their allies resolve critical debates in environmental policy and conservation practice. Minteer considers the implications of John Dewey's pragmatist philosophy for environmental ethics, politics, and practice. He provides a new and compelling intellectual foundation for the field - one that supports a more activist, collaborative, and problem-solving philosophical enterprise. Combining environmental ethics, democratic theory, philosophical pragmatism, and the environmental social sciences, Minteer makes (...) the case for a more experimental, interdisciplinary, and democratic style of environmental ethics - one that stands as an alternative to the field's historically dominant "nature-centred" outlook. Minteer also provides examples of his pragmatic approach in action, considering a wide range of application and issues, including invasive species, ecological research, biodiversity loss, protected area management, and conservation under global climate change. (shrink)