The International Library of Environmental, Agricultural and Food Ethics

Transcription

1 The International Library of Environmental, Agricultural and Food Ethics Volume 26 Series editors Michiel Korthals, Wageningen, The Netherlands Paul B. Thompson, Michigan, USA

2 The ethics of food and agriculture is confronted with enormous challenges. Scientific developments in the food sciences promise to be dramatic; the concept of life sciences, that comprises the integral connection between the biological sciences, the medical sciences and the agricultural sciences, got a broad start with the genetic revolution. In the mean time, society, i.e., consumers, producers, farmers, policymakers, etc, raised lots of intriguing questions about the implications and presuppositions of this revolution, taking into account not only scientific developments, but societal as well. If so many things with respect to food and our food diet will change, will our food still be safe? Will it be produced under animal friendly conditions of husbandry and what will our definition of animal welfare be under these conditions? Will food production be sustainable and environmentally healthy? Will production consider the interest of the worst off and the small farmers? How will globalisation and liberalization of markets influence local and regional food production and consumption patterns? How will all these developments influence the rural areas and what values and policies are ethically sound? All these questions raise fundamental and broad ethical issues and require enormous ethical theorizing to be approached fruitfully. Ethical reflection on criteria of animal welfare, sustainability, liveability of the rural areas, biotechnology, policies and all the interconnections is inevitable. Library of Environmental, Agricultural and Food Ethics contributes to a sound, pluralistic and argumentative food and agricultural ethics. It brings together the most important and relevant voices in the field; by providing a platform for theoretical and practical contributors with respect to research and education on all levels. More information about this series at

3 Sahotra Sarkar Ben A. Minteer Editors A Sustainable Philosophy The Work of Bryan Norton 123

4 Editors Sahotra Sarkar Departments of Philosophy and Integrative Biology University of Texas Austin, TX USA Ben A. Minteer School of Life Sciences Arizona State University Tempe, AZ USA ISSN ISSN (electronic) The International Library of Environmental, Agricultural and Food Ethics ISBN ISBN (ebook) Library of Congress Control Number: Springer International Publishing AG, part of Springer Nature 2018 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are reserved by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, express or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. Printed on acid-free paper This Springer imprint is published by the registered company Springer International Publishing AG part of Springer Nature The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland

5 Foreword Rudolf Carnap and External Questions: My Path to Sustainability I am sometimes asked: What philosopher has most affected your work? When I respond, Rudolf Carnap, those not associated with philosophy give me a blank look, while those inquirers who know the story of philosophy in the twentieth century are even more nonplussed: How could Carnap s work, best known for its attack on the meaningfulness of metaphysics and most of traditional philosophy, support my efforts to use philosophy to address contemporary social problems, especially environmental problems? The key to this puzzle requires that we distinguish between two sometimes-clashing themes in Carnap s work: his empiricist (verificationist) view, associated with the Vienna Circle, and his principle of tolerance (PT), associated with his conventional notion of language. In my dissertation and an early book, I showed that these two themes co-existed throughout Carnap s career, with the former view being more dominant in the early decades, while the latter view emerged as more central in his more mature philosophy. In a University of Michigan seminar (1968) led by Prof. Jaegwon Kim, we read Carnap s 1950 piece, Empiricism, Semantics, and Ontology (ESO); as I was struggling to understand how to separate meaningless metaphysics from what seemed to me to be valuable philosophical insights, I came to see that Carnap s attitude toward traditional philosophy in 1950 embraced a shift away from his early emphasis on empiricism and the denigration of philosophical utterances as unverifiable (see Appendix). By the time he wrote Empiricism, Semantics, and Ontology, empiricism appears not as an essential criterion of meaningfulness but rather as posing problems for his ongoing work in semantics, in which he constructed languages that formed sentences referring to entities, some of which were not observable and would, hence, be unverifiable and meaningless according to the strict empiricism of the Vienna Circle. In particular, he was stung by criticisms from empiricists who charged him with falling into metaphysics when he introduced v

6 vi Foreword conventions that allowed reference to unverifiable (abstract) entities such as numbers, classes, properties, and relations because he included such entities in the ontologies he introduced to provide semantic content for his constructed languages, which he fashioned to allow creative improvements on the language of science. To respond to these uncomfortable criticisms, Carnap returned in Empiricism, Semantics, and Ontology to the second theme, which had been formulated in his early masterwork, The Logical Syntax of Language (1937). There, Carnap rejected attempts of philosophers to exclude some linguistic forms based on negative requirements and instead proposed his Principal of Tolerance: It is not our business to set up prohibitions, but to arrive at conventions (Carnap 1937: 51). Elaborating on this point, he said: In logic there are no morals. Everyone is at liberty to build up his own logic, i.e. his own form of language, as he wishes. All that is required of him is that, if he wishes to discuss it, he must state his methods clearly, and give syntactical rules instead of philosophical arguments (Carnap 1937: 52). PT merely dramatizes the position more commonly referred to as linguistic conventionalism, which asserts that language forms are tools for communication and that choosing linguistic forms necessarily involves choices not fully dictated by the structure and content of reality; they are better understood as proposals to adopt specific languages in particular situations which, in turn, give shape to the reality humans experience. Whereas the strict empiricism of the Vienna Circle positivists aimed to destroy and put to rest philosophical problems, PT aims more at a reconstruction of traditional philosophy. This reconstruction was accomplished by arguing that philosophical assertions such as There are material objects or There are numbers can be rehabilitated by restating them in the metalanguage as assertions about the usefulness, in particular situations, of languages that refer to material objects or to numbers, respectively. Without going into great detail here (see Norton 1977, 2005, 2015, Appendix for more detail), we can see that Carnap was advocating a new mode and purpose for philosophy. The mode was to use linguistic analysis in cooperation with active empirical scientists to improve communication of scientific findings and, in the process, to create ontologies, which represent useful interpretations of scientific observations. Chosen linguistic categories can thus reflect models of reality through semantic choices justified not by appeals to essences existing in the real world, but with a method of appealing to the practical usefulness of proposed language forms. This apparently innocuous viewpoint has deep and consequential implications for philosophy because choices legitimized by PT can only be resolved or justified by appeal to human purposes and thus require appeals to human interests and values. The linguistic choices that Carnap defends in ESO based on PT and a human interest in language reformation are pragmatic decisions. In The Logical Syntax of Language, Carnap describes his view of the nature of philosophy as follows:

7 Foreword vii The supposed peculiarly philosophical point of view from which the objects of science are to be investigated proves to be illusory. Apart from the questions of the individual sciences, only the questions of the logical analysis of science, of its sentences, terms, concepts, theories, etc, are left as genuine scientific questions. We shall call this complex of questions the logic of science. According to this view, then, once philosophy is purified of all pseudoscientific elements, only the logic of science remains. In the majority of philosophical investigations, however, a sharp division into scientific and unscientific elements is quite impossible. For this reason, we prefer to say: the logic of science takes the place of the inextricable tangle of problems which is known as philosophy (Carnap 1937: 279). Carnap s alternative view of philosophy, explicated in ESO, which sees the role of philosophy as limited to the study of the language of science, however, offers a powerful alternative. He says, Our thesis that the logic of science is syntax must therefore not be misunderstood to mean that the task of the logic of science could be carried out independently of empirical science and without regard to its empirical results. 1 (Carnap 1937: 332). So, by 1950 and the publication of Empiricism, Semantics, and Ontology, Carnap clarified the role of philosophy as the study of choices made regarding the language by which the empirical results of science can be perspicuously stated, discussed, and resolved, including syntactics, semantics, and pragmatics. 2 The main innovation in ESO was to emphasize that, properly understood, philosophical discourse mixes together two quite different types of questions he designated as internal and external in nature. Internal questions are asked within a linguistic framework already developed, and their answers are usually analytic e.g., the sentence There are numbers would be true for anyone who accepts and uses normal arithmetic. The question whether to adopt such a linguistic framework involves an external question which must be understood as a proposal made in the metalanguage; as such, it involves a choice that will depend on which linguistic rules will foster communication and improved understanding. The key point here is that Carnap saw philosophy as an activity understood as making linguistic choices at the boundary between philosophy and empirical science. This point has two further implications. First, it entails and supports the 1 Actually, this formulation, published in The Logical Syntax of Language, was altered in an important way before 1950, when these ideas were used in Empiricism, Semantics, and Ontology. In the 1930s, Carnap thought all linguistic work can be formalized into discussions of syntax (limited to the physical form of words and sentences), but subsequent work by logicians convinced him that the logic of science must include semantics, so in 1950, he would expand the domain of the logic of science to include metalinguistic discussions of the semantics and pragmatics of language. 2 The pragmatics of language studies the use of language in communication and human deliberation. Again, his later study of pragmatics, like his embrace of semantics, broadened his conception of the logic of science. In my dissertation, I formulated this point simply as a claim that, properly understood, philosophical discourse should be carried out in a metalanguage. Philosophers role, so understood, is to work closely with scientists and to help them construct languages that are both empirically grounded and useful in communicating important ideas, including ideas with empirical content.

8 viii Foreword controversial argument that philosophy is intimately tied to language development and the evolution of scientific concepts. Second, this view should encourage philosophers to work closely with empirical scientists, as new observations can lead to, or even demand, conceptual/linguistic change. In my work subsequent to my examination of Carnap s later work, I built upon this creative and rehabilitative view of philosophy, and at first emphasizing work in epistemology based on pragmatic principles. During this period, I continued to learn from many philosophers other than Carnap especially, Willard Van Orman Quine and other conventionalists, but it was my early exposure to Carnap and ESO that supported my work in pragmatic thought. Then, in the late 1970s, acting on my long-standing interest in environmental problems and issues, I initiated a class, Humanities and the Environment which, in turn, led to an opportunity to do research on the question, What is the rationale for the US Endangered Species Act of 1973? This question occupied me from 1979 until the late 1980s as I prepared two books designed to bring the methods of philosophy to bear upon the policy questions provoked by the growing concern for protection of biological resources what we came to call biodiversity (Norton 1986, 1987). With those books behind me, and having learned from my experience in working with policy-oriented groups and individuals in Washington, D.C., I recognized that talk of sustainability was gaining prominence in most environmental discussions and I realized that the approach and methodology I used to clarify obligations to protect species could also be usefully employed in articulating a discourse on the meaning of sustainability. In particular, I noticed that authors discussing sustainability make very different linguistic choices, and their advocated policies tended to fall in two camps: one group embraced economic methods and set out to define sustainability in those terms, while others often ecologists by training urged that sustainability can only be achieved if it includes protection of ecological characteristics and systems, such as integrity and resilience. Building on this difference in disciplinary approaches to understanding sustainability, I emphasized a distinction to characterize these two approaches, respectively: weak and strong sustainability. I hope it is clear by now that this extremely important distinction can be usefully explored within the broadly pragmatist/conventionalist view of language and its role in public discourse. That role requires that value concepts, as well as scientific explorations, must unavoidably be involved in choices regarding how to talk and how to make policy arguments in the melees in which public values are pursued. All of my policy work has been supported on these ideas, which have coalesced in my books on sustainability. Those books articulate the argument that, while weak sustainability theorists interpret environmental problems within a single paradigm that of the economics of cost-benefit and seek algorithmic solutions to problems, strong sustainability will require richer concepts and methods than can be developed on the assumptions and definitions of economics. Two important consequences follow. First, richer concepts will require that strong sustainability theorists work closely with natural scientists such as ecologists

9 Foreword ix and foresters to develop a vocabulary richer in describing physical features associated with sustainability. Second, strong sustainability will never be defined and operationalized so definitively that problems can be solved algorithmically, once and for all. Consequently, problems encountered as we move forward toward a more sustainable future will not be resolved by deductive or academic arguments. Solutions must be sought by engaging public and interested parties in discussion and deliberation: the route to sustainability will, therefore, involve both experience and scientific learning, on the one hand, and articulation of the values and aspirations of human communities, on the other hand. My debt to Carnap has thus guided my work throughout my career: his work established for me the key premise that external questions like How should we define sustainability? will only be resolved in forums in which science, and the broadest understanding of human values, can all be brought to bear upon how we talk, how we think, and how we choose. Atlanta, Georgia Bryan G. Norton References Carnap, R The logical syntax of language. London: K. Paul, Trench, Trubner & Co. Carnap, R Empiricism, Semantics, and Ontology. Revue Internationale de Philosophie 4: Reprinted in the Supplement to R. Carnap, Meaning and necessity: A study in semantics and modal logic, enlarged edition (University of Chicago Press, 1956). Norton, B.G Linguistic frameworks and ontology: A re-examination of carnap s metaphilosophy. The Hague: Mouton Publishers, Janua Linguarum Series, #145. Norton, B.G The preservation of species, ed. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Norton, B.G Why preserve natural variety? Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Norton, B.G Sustainability: A Philosophy of Adaptive Ecosystem Management. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Norton, B.G Sustainable Values, Sustainable Change: A Guide to Environmental Decision Making. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.

10 Contents 1 Introduction... 1 Sahotra Sarkar and Ben A. Minteer 2 Norton and Sustainability as Such... 7 Paul B. Thompson 3 Ecological Sustainability J. Baird Callicott 4 Sustainability and the Currency of Intergenerational Obligations: Norton, Solow, Rawls, Mill, and Sen on Problems of Intergenerational Allocation Clark Wolf 5 Norton and the Search for Sustainability in Hawai i Jennifer M. Chirico 6 Sustainable Change in a Fractured World Paul D. Hirsch 7 Leadership for Sustainability R. Bruce Hull 8 Norton Versus Callicott on Interpreting Aldo Leopold: A Jamesian View Piers H. G. Stephens 9 The Problem of (with) Environmental Ethics Daniel W. Bromley 10 Proceduralism and Expertise in Local Environmental Decision-Making Evelyn Brister xi

11 xii Contents 11 Adaptive Management in Social Ecological Systems: Taming the Wicked? Asim Zia 12 Does Deliberation Promote Ecological Citizenship? The Convergence Hypothesis and the Reality of Polarization Jozef Keulartz 13 Deliberative Decisions and Formal Multicriteria Analysis: Addressing Norton s Skepticism Sahotra Sarkar 14 Ecology, Economics and Ethics: The Three Es Required for the Sustainable Management of Wild Sentient Species Bruce Warburton and Dean Anderson 15 The Transformative Ark Ben A. Minteer and Christopher Rojas 16 The Pragmatist s View: A Conversation with Bryan Norton Curt Meine Appendix: Reflections on the 1970 Norton-Carnap Correspondence

12 Contributors Dean Anderson Manaaki Whenua-Landcare Research, Lincoln, New Zealand Evelyn Brister Philosophy Department, Rochester Institute of Technology, Rochester, NY, USA Daniel W. Bromley Department of Agricultural and Applied Economics, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Madison, WI, USA J. Baird Callicott University Distinguished Research Professor Emeritus, University of North Texas, Denton, USA Jennifer M. Chirico Sustainable Pacific Consulting, Paia, HI, USA Paul D. Hirsch Department of Environmental Studies, State University of New York College of Environmental Science and Forestry, Syracuse, NY, USA R. Bruce Hull College of Natural Resources and Environment, Virginia Tech (0324), Blacksburg, VA, USA Jozef Keulartz Institute for Science in Society, Radboud University, Nijmegen, The Netherlands Curt Meine Aldo Leopold Foundation and Center for Humans and Nature, Prairie du Sac, WI, USA Ben A. Minteer School of Life Sciences, Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ, USA Bryan G. Norton Distinguished Professor Emeritus in Philosophy and Policy, Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, GA, USA Christopher Rojas School of Life Sciences, Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ, USA Sahotra Sarkar Departments of Philosophy and Integrative Biology, University of Texas at Austin, Austin, TX, USA; Presidency University, Kolkata, India xiii

13 xiv Contributors Piers H. G. Stephens Philosophy Department, University of Georgia, Athens, GA, USA Paul B. Thompson Department of Philosophy, Michigan State University, East Lansing, MI, USA Bruce Warburton Manaaki Whenua-Landcare Research, Lincoln, New Zealand Clark Wolf Departments of Philosophy, Political Science, and Sustainable Agriculture, Iowa State University, Ames, IA, USA Asim Zia Department of Community Development & Applied Economics, University of Vermont, Burlington, VT, USA