John Dewey and Environmental Philosophy

John Dewey and Environmental Philosophy Hugh P. McDonald JOHN DEWEY AND ENVIRONMENTAL PHILOSOPHY SUNY series in Environmental Philosophy and Ethics J. Baird Callicott and John van Buren, editors JOHN DEWEY AND ENVIRONMENTAL PHILOSOPHY Hugh P. McDonald STATE UNIVERSITY OF NEW YORK PRESS Published by State University of New York Press, Albany © 2004 State University of New York All rights reserved Printed in the United States of America No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission. No part of this book may be stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means including electronic, electrostatic, magnetic tape, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise without the prior permission in writing of the publisher. For information, address State University of New York Press, 90 State Street, Suite 700, Albany, NY 12207 Production by Kelli Williams Marketing by Michael Campochiaro Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data McDonald, H. P. (Hugh P.) John Dewey and environmental philosophy / Hugh P. McDonald. p. cm. — (SUNY series in environmental philosophy and ethics) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-7914-5873-3 (alk. paper) — ISBN 0-7914-5874-1 (pbk. alk. paper) 1. Dewey, John, 1859–1952. 2. Pragmatism. 3. Environmental sciences—Philosophy. 4. Environmental ethics. I. Title. II. Series. B945.D44M34 2003 179'.1'092—dc22 2003060825 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 This book is dedicated to the late Professor Reuben Abel, teacher, scholar, philosopher CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGMENTS xi PREFACE xiii ONE Environmental Ethics and Intrinsic Value 1 PROLOGUE TO CHAPTER TWO 57 The Setting of the Problem of Pragmatism and the Environment: The Critique of Pragmatism as an Environmental Ethics in Taylor, Bowers, Katz, and Weston TWO Dewey’s Naturalism 67 THREE Dewey’s Instrumentalism 91 FOUR Dewey’s (Moral) Holism 109 FIVE Dewey’s Ethics as a Basis for Environmental Issues 123 EPILOGUE Pragmatism and Environmental Ethics 143 NOTES 159 BIBLIOGRAPHY 207 INDEX 215 |vii| Human nature exists and operates in an environment . as a plant is in the sunlight and soil. It is of them, continuous with their energies, dependent upon their support, capable of increase only as it utilizes them and as it gradually rebuilds from their crude indifference an environment genially civilized. —Dewey ACKNOWLEDGMENTS My thanks to Professor Richard Bernstein, who patiently read the initial drafts of this work and provided many helpful comments and criticisms. In particular, his suggestion that pragmatism might provide an alternative approach to environmental ethics, apart from intrinsic value, proved fruitful and changed the direction of the book. Chapter two, Dewey’s Naturalism, has appeared in Environmental Ethics in a slightly altered form. I also wish to acknowledge the influence of J. Baird Callicott on my thinking, despite many critical comments in chapter two. Reprinted from In Defense of the Land Ethic: Essays in Environmental Philosophy, by J. Baird Callicott, by permission of the State University of New York Press, © 1989, State University of New York. All rights reserved. Por- tions throughout. From excerpts in Environmental Ethics, Duties to and Values in the Natural World, by Holmes Rolston III. Reprinted by permission of Temple University Press. © 1988 by Temple University. All Rights Reserved. Portions throughout. From excerpts in Experience and Nature, by John Dewey. Grateful acknowledgment is made to Open Court Publishing Company, a division of Carus Publishing Company. © 1925, 1929 by Open Court Publishing Company. |xi| PREFACE Environmental ethics has recently developed as a separate field within philosophy and has a large and growing literature of its own. This field involves ethical studies of the rights of other species, of ecosystems, and of the environment of all living things as a whole. Much of the internal debate within the field has concerned issues of value and moral considerability. It is argued that if species other than humans, ecosystems, and the biosphere—the entire plan- etary zone of life—have value on their own, then they are entitled to moral consideration from humans, either some form of rights, or a duty of humans to the environment. This may take the minimal form of letting the bearer of rights alone or a larger, more activist role in managing the environment with an eye to its benefit. The central issue in this debate, which has attracted perhaps the most attention in the journals, is the issue of the value of the environment, other species, and ecosystems. One of the interesting things about this ongoing dis- cussion has been the almost exclusive concentration on issues of value in the literature of environmental ethics. This has revived value studies, which had shown recent signs of fading,1 in a vigorous way. The debate has been framed in terms of “anthropocentric” as opposed to “non-anthropocentric” values.2 “Anthropocentric” values are values that are exclusive to humans in some respect, whether involving a uniquely human capacity such as some would claim reason to be; or the purported unique moral agency of humans, that humans alone are rights bearers, agents of duty, or the like. Non-anthro- pocentrists locate value in a larger set of members or a set with larger scope. This may include higher animals, all living things, ecosystems, species, and the biosphere. The value structure that has framed the debate has not so much challenged traditional divisions of values, namely, instrumental and intrinsic values, as the exclusivity of human value and human valuing. Non-anthro- pocentrists have argued that anthropocentric value theories, as their etymol- ogy would imply, are oriented exclusively toward humans. They are arbitrary |xiii| |xiv| Preface and “speciesist” in their view of value as based solely in human being and as excluding all other species and the environment itself from moral consideration. Other species and the environment are treated exclusively as instruments for human use, and not given consideration in their own right as worthy of preservation, survival, and autonomy. Because, it is charged, traditional West- ern ethics is almost universally anthropocentric, a new, environmental ethic is needed, which will challenge the primacy or even exclusivity of humans to ethical consideration.3 It is not enough for some of the radicals in this move- ment to merely rework traditional ethics with an eye to the environment. Environmental ethics is considered by some to be a revolution in ethics, which will completely change the human-centered orientation of morals to include all species, ecosystems, or the larger biosphere. The critique of Western philosophy as a whole has been extended by individual authors to criticisms of particular schools of philosophy in the West, for example, utilitarianism and other prominent ethical theories. Recently, there have been criticisms of pragmatism as a whole, as well as more specific criticisms of James and Dewey, two of its more accessible and prominent members.4 Pragmatism has been criticized as being inherently anthropocentric and thus implicitly anti-environmental in the strong sense that environmentalism cannot be anthropocentric. These criticisms of pragmatism have as a premise that all the various authors who have been identified as pragmatists have some common elements that make them pragmatists and that these are implicitly hostile or indifferent to environmentalism or environmental ethics. More specifically, the instrumental theory of values in Dewey is regarded as an implicit critique of the very possibility of assigning or locating intrinsic value in any of the candidates for such a larger set or locus of intrinsic value, for example, higher animals or ecosystems. Thus pragmatism, it is alleged, would undermine the very possibility of an environmental ethic by arguing against its central and ultimate foundation, intrinsic value, if it were to be used as the basis for environmental ethics. My main argument will be that the pragmatism of Dewey can be defended against charges of anti-environmentalism and anthropocentricity.5 Dewey was picked to represent pragmatism not only because of his highly developed and intricate theory of values and his naturalistic approach but because his naturalism already is environmentally minded. In order to inves- tigate the critique of pragmatism by certain authors from the point of view of environmental ethics, I will also include an analysis of these criticisms as a prologue to chapter two. In chapter one, I will analyze several representative philosophies that argue for the intrinsic value of nature: those of J. Baird Callicott, Tom Regan, and Holmes Rolston III. These are three of the most prominent environmental philosophers, who have published the most thoroughgoing and articulate Preface |xv| theories of intrinsic value in environmental philosophy. This chapter will introduce and critically examine the concept of the intrinsic value of nonhu- man life and the ecology.6 I will also consider a prominent critic of non- anthropocentric intrinsic value theories from within the environmental literature, Bryan Norton. The next four chapters will present a detailed analysis of the (practical) philosophy of John Dewey. However, I will also include a brief examination of some elements of his naturalism, especially in chapter two. The second chapter is in a sense central to the book as it directly refutes the notion that pragmatism could not serve as an environmental ethic. I argue that Dewey brings human nature back into nature as a whole, ending the isolation and detach- ment of the subject. Values are treated along with natural processes in a way that provides an alternative model for environmental ethics, one that is more closely in accord with the formal requirements of such an ethic. Dewey’s naturalism could be used, I will argue, for such an alternative model. Thus the criticism of pragmatism as a whole as undermining the central foundation of environmental ethics will be challenged.

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