An Pragmatic Route To The Study Of Environmental Philosophy

Contemporary environmental philosophy is in the confrontation between theory and practice.On the one hand,the study of ethical and philosophical issues is going to be deeper and further,on the other hand,there is a strong desire to enhance the influence of environmental ethics and philosophy on politics and policy.The route of environmental pragmatism is one of the representative of the latter camp.It tries to get rid of the traditional paradigm of non-anthropocentrism,and is no longer concerned about those esoteric and obscure theoretical controversy,but focus on the solution of environmental policy and environmental problem,aiming to act as a bridge for communication among environmental ethicists,environmental philosophers,conservation biologists,environmental scientists,environmental economists and environmentalists.That is,it chooses the extroverted direction of development in order to narrow the huge gap between environmental philosophy and environmental practices,and to realize the practical turn of environmental ethics and environmental philosophy.This thesis systematically analyzed and integrated various and complex pragmatic routes of environmental philosophy and showed a relatively complete and consistent picture of environmental pragmatism.It mainly focused on the real implementation of environmental pragmatism,and aimed to provide a new perspective of the environment and the relationship between people and the environment,a new tool for promotion and realization of practical effects of environmental ethics and environmental philosophy,an approach to process and respond to environmental issues and environmental dilemma.To achieve these goals,this thesis was organized as the following six chapters.After analysis of the realistic background and theoretical source of environmental pragmatism,the first chapter demonstrated the possibility of pragmatic route of environmental philosophy,and distinguished two different research path:pragmatism in environmental philosophy and environmental philosophy in pragmatism,and then gave the connotation and basic content of environmental pragmatism.The second chapter explored the thinking method of environmental pragmatism,where pluralism is a prerequisite to the establishment of environmental pragmatism,avoiding metaphysical debate is a necessary way to achieve its practical participation,and practical solution to environmental issues is the ultimate ethical destination.Specifically,the support for pluralism is based on the pragmatic empiricism and the complexity of ecosystems;avoiding the metaphysical controversy is mainly shown as the refutation of dualism among anthropocentric and non-anthropocentrism,individualism and holism,instrumental value and intrinsic value;the concrete practice strategies of environment pragmatism are interpreted as two categories of mode in this chapter:applied philosophy and practical philosophy.The third chapter examined theoretical characteristics of environmental pragmatism from the aspects of worldview,values,epistemology and ethics.On the worldview,environmental pragmatism emphasizes the deep interaction between man and the environment,and takes this as a basis for viewing the world,advocates the kind of environmental philosophy which is guided by practice and action;in values,it insists on understanding and interpretation of the value from the perspective of the relationship,and thus established environmental values which taking value consensus as a benchmark;on epistemology,it supports the inquiry theory of pragmatism,and believes that the quest for truth is equal to the quest for value;in morality,it gets rid of the myth of fundamentalism and universalism,and then liberates and reforms moral practice from instrumentalism.The fourth chapter studied the core interest of environmental pragmatism-----sustainability.This chapter captured the sustainability as the common goal of environmental philosophy and environmental protection,then analyzed and explained the meaning and measurement of sustainability;with reference to economic analysis,this chapter also distinguished the strong and weak sustainability paradigm of environmental philosophy,and then demonstrated the reconstruction of sustainability from the perspective of environmental pragmatism:on the one hand,hierarchical model represents the reconstruction of the concept of sustainability,on the other hand,adaptive management is the bridge to achieve sustainability.Around sustainability,the end of this chapter discussed and analyzed how to realize the alliance of different environmental activists.It argued that seeking for broad agreement on intergenerational ethics,constructing environmental public discourse around sustainability,and focus on balance between environmental protection and social development,can truly achieve real normative role of sustainability,and ultimatcly lcad to the practical turn of environmental philosophy.The fifth chapter researched the ways of application of environmental pragmatism.The main practical concern of environment pragmatism is to help people maintain sustainable development of the environment,economy and society,and this goal can be achieved through concrete impact of environmental decisions,therefore,this chapter mainly focused on the environmental decision-making.After analysis of the ethical dimension of environmental decision-making,this chapter demonstrated the specific adaptation and improvement of environmental decision-making from environmental pragmatism-----turn to post normal science,cope with uncertainty and concern about sensitive context,and it eventually proposed a operational framework of environmental decision-making which is community-oriented,problem-solving centered,procedures and results evaluated.The sixth chapter rethought and criticized the pragmatic route of environmental philosophy.It revealed three main drawbacks of environmental pragmatism:too pessimistic about philosophical controversy,unnecessary reliance on the commitment to pragmatic philosophy,and the theoretical and practical embarrassment of the middle course.At last,this chapter tried to provide some suggestions for the future development of environmental pragmatism,such as improve its operability,deepen the understanding and thinking about meta-ethical and meta-philosophical issues,achieve communication and exchange with other research route of environmental ethics,pay attention to the construction of environmental pragmatism under realistic background of China.Overall,this thesis interpreted environmental pragmatism as a tool,as an effective method to respond to the theoretical and practical dilemma of environmental ethics and environmental philosophy,and then explored the possibilities of this approach and how to realize it in concrete background.Therefore,the construction of a new environmental ethics and environmental philosophy is not the goal of this thesis.What the thesis provided is only a guideline to environmental action,rather than the alternative theoretical versions to the old paradigm of environmental ethics.Environmental pragmatism is not yet totally out of the theoretical and practical plight of environmental ethics and not construct a mature environmental practical philosophy as it overemphasized problem-solving strategy at the expense of profundity and criticalness of theory,however,it does provide us an good tool to inquiry how to realize the practical turn of environmental ethics and environmental philosophy;it indeed takes environmental ethics and environmental philosophy back to the real life world,and make the light of environmental philosophy into the environmental practices.