Deliberation, Adaptability And Action

Environmental pragmatism is one of the main schools in environmental ethics inAmerica, and it is also an important school in the research areas of the westernenvironmental ethics. A growing number of environmental philosophers now refer tothemselves as environmental pragmatists, including Anthony Weston, Bryan Norton, BenMinteer, Andrew Light, Mark Sagoff, Aristotelis Santas, Peter Wenz, Kelly Parker, SandraRosenthal and Rogene Buchholz. These self-proclaimed environmental pragmatists do notspeak with an entirely unified voice. While Norton and Light advocate anthropocentrism,Wenz includes nonanthropocentric values. While some, such as Weston, Norton, Wenz,Sagoff, Parker, Rosenthal and Buchholz, explicitly advocate the application of theperspectives and methods of American pragmatism to environmental philosophy, Lightdoes not. While some, such as Weston, Norton and Light, think that environmentalphilosophy must "move beyond" discussion of intrinsic value, others, such as Minteer andSantas, defend pragmatic conceptions of intrinsic value.Environmental pragmatism refuses the meaningless debates such as the one betweenanthropocentrism and non-Anthropocentrism in the process of environmental dialoguesand policy consultations. On the contrary, Norton consents a democratic and pluralisticapproach, endorses the critical and democratic consultations to the environmental ethics.Associating with rufusing the meaningless debates, Environmental pragmatism pays greatattention to action. In fact, it is an approach--or at least a set of approaches--toenvironmental issues that is practical, experimental, experiential, action-oriented, active,engaged, and empowering. According to Environmental pragmatists, Environmentalpragmatism is a kind of philosophy of environmental action. It begains with the issues inthe realistic world, and the rhetorical language connot reach the expected targets of theenvironmental actions. This provides a vaulable and historical dimension for many ideasin Environmental ethics.Bryan Norton is a leading proponent of environmental pragmatism. He is also abridle-wise scientific and language philosopher. He has both the profound academic basicand the experience of being a consultant in EPA, which make him pay attention to boththeorical research and practical environmental problems in the problem-resolving process.His research includes many disciplines, such as the biology diversity, the environmental policy, the philosophy of conservation biology, and the sustainability. Along with this, headvocate both the sustainability and the pragmatism environmental policy. He applieshimself to institute environmental policy from the sustainability, and to study, form,andimplement the sustainable environmental policy from multi-discipline and inter-disciplinedimension, in order to sustain wide value choices for the following generations.Norton's environmental pragmatism thought is affected both by American classicalpragmatists and by contemporary environmental pragmatists. By using basic pragmatismcore ideas, Norton attemps to put anthropocentrism as the foundation of environmentalethics, and he call himself as "the weak anthropocentrist". For him, the pragmatismconception of truth has a close relation to human community's sustainable principles;value diversity is contained in broad interaction between human and nature; thedevelopment of the inter-subjective validity among human community is considered as thefoundation of the active ethic policies.Sustainability is the core conception of Norton's environmental pragmatism. He usessustainability to solve the problems, such as ideology, "towering" and the indigence ofpresent environmental language. Meanwhile he puts sustainability principles as the moralguide of the environmental ethics and environmental policies. Adaptive management is thebridge to reach sustainability. In fact, he define sustainability from his description to theadaptive management. He constructs a brief model for an activist to adapt environmentand to make policies. According the model, an action is sustainable if it doesn't reduce theratio of the opportunity and constraint of the following generations. In order to reach thesustainability, Norton pays special attention to analyse environmental policies in thedimension of pragmatism, encourages to define it beyond the disciplines, and relatesenvironmental sciences with social values in the process of researching rational policies.In a sense, Norton's method is to use language analyse in the tradation of pragmatism.For him, language has close relations with action in public words. He builds hisargumentations on two assumptions. First, the manner for Americans to talk about andwrite environment is one of the main reasons that American goverments at all levels fail inthe actions of protecting common environmental goods. Second, the success and failure ofenvironmental actions are often decided by the manner of illuminating and discussing theproblems. Norton instrumentally demonstrates environmental ethic, tries to reveal thepurpose of environmental protection and its reasonality and morality. He thinks thatenvironmental ethics should not get involved in the arguments among moral philosophy, meta-ethics, metaphysics and worldviews, but pay attention to the real problems aboutenvironmental managements and policies. We should to build a public space and adialogue platform, which allow all stakeholders to express their ideas about thosecontroversial environmental issues, and allow all kinds of views to be communicated bycommon reasons. With dialog and discussion, the major controversial problems ofenvironmental policies in reality will finally get some kind of common sense. Ethic issuehas close relation with politic one. Separating one from the other will bring theenvironmental ethics with crisis of legitimacy. Today, accompanied by increasinglyprominent environmental problems, it is of great significance to study environmental ethicthoughts of American schoolars including Norton.