Sustainability
A Philosophy of Adaptive Ecosystem Management
9780226595214
9780226595191
9780226595221
Sustainability
A Philosophy of Adaptive Ecosystem Management
While many disciplines contribute to environmental conservation, there is little successful integration of science and social values. Arguing that the central problem in conservation is a lack of effective communication, Bryan Norton shows in Sustainability how current linguistic resources discourage any shared, multidisciplinary public deliberation over environmental goals and policy. In response, Norton develops a new, interdisciplinary approach to defining sustainability—the cornerstone of environmental policy—using philosophical and linguistic analyses to create a nonideological vocabulary that can accommodate scientific and evaluative environmental discourse.
Emphasizing cooperation and adaptation through social learning, Norton provides a practical framework that encourages an experimental approach to language clarification and problem formulation, as well as an interdisciplinary approach to creating solutions. By moving beyond the scientific arena to acknowledge the importance of public discourse, Sustainability offers an entirely novel approach to environmentalism.
Emphasizing cooperation and adaptation through social learning, Norton provides a practical framework that encourages an experimental approach to language clarification and problem formulation, as well as an interdisciplinary approach to creating solutions. By moving beyond the scientific arena to acknowledge the importance of public discourse, Sustainability offers an entirely novel approach to environmentalism.
608 pages | 12 line drawings | 6 x 9 | © 2005
Biological Sciences: Conservation, Ecology
Earth Sciences: Environment
Philosophy: Philosophy of Society
Reviews
Table of Contents
Preface: Beyond Ideology
A Note to the Busy Reader: Some Shorter Paths
Chapter 1An Innocent at EPA
1.1 The Old EPA Building
1.2 Towers of Babel: The Structural Problems at EPA
1.3 The Costs of Not Being Able to Get There from Here (Conceptually)
1.4 Hijinks and Political Hijackings
Part I: Setting the Stage for Adaptive Management
Chapter 2Language as Our Environment
2.1 Introduction: The Importance of Language
2.2 Of Hedgehogs and Foxes
2.3 Progressivism, Pragmatism, and the Method of Experience
2.4 Environmental Pragmatism and Action-Based Logic
Chapter 3Epistemology and Adaptive Management
3.1 Aldo Leopold and Adaptive Management
3.2 What Is Adaptive Management?
3.3 Uncertainty, Objectivity, and Sustainability
3.4 A Pragmatist Epistemology for Adaptive Management
3.5 Uncertainty, Pragmatism, and Mission-Oriented Science
3.6 How Adaptive Management Is Adaptive
Chapter 4Interlude: Removing Barriers to Integrative Solutions
4.1 Avoiding Ideology by Rethinking Environmental Problems
4.2 Overcoming the Serial Approach to Environmental Science and Policy
Part II: Value Pluralism and Cooperation
Chapter 5Where We Are and Where We Want to Be
5.1 The Practical Problem about Theory
5.2 Four Problems of Environmental Values
5.3 Where We Are: A Beginning-of-the-Century Look at Environmental Ethics
5.4 Economism as an Ontological Theory
5.5 Breaking the Spell of Economism and IV Theory
5.6 Pluralism and Adaptive Management: What the Study of Environmental Values Could Be
Chapter 6Re-modeling Nature as Valued
6.1 Radical, but How New?
6.2 A Naturalistic Method and a Procedure
6.3 Re-modeling Nature: Learning to Think like a Mountain
6.4 Hierarchy Theory and Multiscalar Management
Chapter 7Environmental Values as Community Commitments
7.1 Public Goods and Communal Goods
7.2 The Advantages of Democratic Experimentalism
7.3 Environmental Problems as Problems of Cooperative Behavior
7.4 Discourse Ethics
7.5 Experimental Pluralism: Naturalism and Environmental Values
Chapter 8Sustainability and Our Obligations to Future Generations
8.1 Intertemporal Ethics
8.2 Strong versus Weak Sustainability
8.3 Philosophers and the Grand Simplification
8.4 Grandly Oversimplified?
8.5 Passmore and Shared Moral Communities
8.6 What We Owe the Future
8.7 The Logic of Intergenerational Obligation
Chapter 9Environmental Values and Community Goals
9.1 A Schematic Definition of Sustainability
9.2 A Catalog of Sustainability Values
9.3 Beyond the Fact-Value Divide
9.4 Choosing Indicators as Community Self-Definition
Part III: Integrated Environmental Action
Chapter 10Improving the Decision Process
10.1 Decision Analysis and Community-Based Decision Making
10.2 What Does Not Work: The Red Book
10.3 Heading in the Right Direction: The Changing Field of Decision Science
10.4 Getting It Mostly Right: Understanding Risk
10.5 The Two Phases Revisited: Putting Multicriteria Analysis to Work
Chapter 11Disciplinary Stew
11.1 Beyond Towering
11.2 Philosophical Analysis and Policy Choice
11.3 Scale and Value: The Key to It All
11.4 Disciplinary Stew: The Prospects for an Integrated Environmental Science
11.5 Environmental Evaluation: A Fresh Start in the World of What-If
Chapter 12Integrated Environmental Analysis and Action
12.1 Conservation: Moral Crusade or Environmental Public Philosophy?
12.2 An Alternative: The Dutch System
12.3 EPA and Environmental Policy Today: A Report Card
12.4 Constitutive Values and Constitutional Environmentalism
12.5 Problem-Solving Environmentalism
12.6 Seeking Convergence
12.7 Ecology and Opportunity
AppendixJustifying the Method
A.1 Philosophy’s Abdication
A.2 The Rise of Linguistic Philosophy: Its Inevitability and Meaning
A.3 The Rise and Transformation of Logical Empiricism, aka Positivism
A.4 Pragmatism: The New Way Forward
A.5 Pragmatism and Environmental Policy
A.6 Philosophy’s Role: An Epilogue
Notes
Index
A Note to the Busy Reader: Some Shorter Paths
Chapter 1An Innocent at EPA
1.1 The Old EPA Building
1.2 Towers of Babel: The Structural Problems at EPA
1.3 The Costs of Not Being Able to Get There from Here (Conceptually)
1.4 Hijinks and Political Hijackings
Part I: Setting the Stage for Adaptive Management
Chapter 2Language as Our Environment
2.1 Introduction: The Importance of Language
2.2 Of Hedgehogs and Foxes
2.3 Progressivism, Pragmatism, and the Method of Experience
2.4 Environmental Pragmatism and Action-Based Logic
Chapter 3Epistemology and Adaptive Management
3.1 Aldo Leopold and Adaptive Management
3.2 What Is Adaptive Management?
3.3 Uncertainty, Objectivity, and Sustainability
3.4 A Pragmatist Epistemology for Adaptive Management
3.5 Uncertainty, Pragmatism, and Mission-Oriented Science
3.6 How Adaptive Management Is Adaptive
Chapter 4Interlude: Removing Barriers to Integrative Solutions
4.1 Avoiding Ideology by Rethinking Environmental Problems
4.2 Overcoming the Serial Approach to Environmental Science and Policy
Part II: Value Pluralism and Cooperation
Chapter 5Where We Are and Where We Want to Be
5.1 The Practical Problem about Theory
5.2 Four Problems of Environmental Values
5.3 Where We Are: A Beginning-of-the-Century Look at Environmental Ethics
5.4 Economism as an Ontological Theory
5.5 Breaking the Spell of Economism and IV Theory
5.6 Pluralism and Adaptive Management: What the Study of Environmental Values Could Be
Chapter 6Re-modeling Nature as Valued
6.1 Radical, but How New?
6.2 A Naturalistic Method and a Procedure
6.3 Re-modeling Nature: Learning to Think like a Mountain
6.4 Hierarchy Theory and Multiscalar Management
Chapter 7Environmental Values as Community Commitments
7.1 Public Goods and Communal Goods
7.2 The Advantages of Democratic Experimentalism
7.3 Environmental Problems as Problems of Cooperative Behavior
7.4 Discourse Ethics
7.5 Experimental Pluralism: Naturalism and Environmental Values
Chapter 8Sustainability and Our Obligations to Future Generations
8.1 Intertemporal Ethics
8.2 Strong versus Weak Sustainability
8.3 Philosophers and the Grand Simplification
8.4 Grandly Oversimplified?
8.5 Passmore and Shared Moral Communities
8.6 What We Owe the Future
8.7 The Logic of Intergenerational Obligation
Chapter 9Environmental Values and Community Goals
9.1 A Schematic Definition of Sustainability
9.2 A Catalog of Sustainability Values
9.3 Beyond the Fact-Value Divide
9.4 Choosing Indicators as Community Self-Definition
Part III: Integrated Environmental Action
Chapter 10Improving the Decision Process
10.1 Decision Analysis and Community-Based Decision Making
10.2 What Does Not Work: The Red Book
10.3 Heading in the Right Direction: The Changing Field of Decision Science
10.4 Getting It Mostly Right: Understanding Risk
10.5 The Two Phases Revisited: Putting Multicriteria Analysis to Work
Chapter 11Disciplinary Stew
11.1 Beyond Towering
11.2 Philosophical Analysis and Policy Choice
11.3 Scale and Value: The Key to It All
11.4 Disciplinary Stew: The Prospects for an Integrated Environmental Science
11.5 Environmental Evaluation: A Fresh Start in the World of What-If
Chapter 12Integrated Environmental Analysis and Action
12.1 Conservation: Moral Crusade or Environmental Public Philosophy?
12.2 An Alternative: The Dutch System
12.3 EPA and Environmental Policy Today: A Report Card
12.4 Constitutive Values and Constitutional Environmentalism
12.5 Problem-Solving Environmentalism
12.6 Seeking Convergence
12.7 Ecology and Opportunity
AppendixJustifying the Method
A.1 Philosophy’s Abdication
A.2 The Rise of Linguistic Philosophy: Its Inevitability and Meaning
A.3 The Rise and Transformation of Logical Empiricism, aka Positivism
A.4 Pragmatism: The New Way Forward
A.5 Pragmatism and Environmental Policy
A.6 Philosophy’s Role: An Epilogue
Notes
Index