Skeptical Environmentalism: The Limits of Philosophy and Science

One: The Nature of Nature

Environmentalism will succeed only if its advocates can bring about a change in the way people behave. How can environmentalists do this? Answers come from all sides: regulate, legislate, litigate, negotiate, innovate, and educate ; restructure the marketplace to create new incentives ; restructure the schools to create a new kind of citizen ; restructure civilization itself. In the midst of all these possibilities, environmental philosophy began with the belief that the best way to change the way people behave is to change the way they think. Not just any change would do. By and large, environmental philosophers have not been content to tinker with momentary opinions on matters of politics and economics. Instead, they have insisted that people rethink their answers to the most fundamental questions of human life in the world: What is the nature of nature, and what is my place within it? [ 1 ] The Nature of Nature What is of value, and what are my obligations? For what may I hope? So the search is on for a way of thinking about nature, about the cosmos, about reality itself that might fundamentally alter the ethical and political life of modern civilization . Many of those engaged in the search think of themselves as constituting a minority tradition, swimming against the intellectual current of modernity: in opposition to the fractured metaphysics of René Descartes, which they see as having set humans at odds with nature and with themselves, they propose an ecological worldview informed by a vision of relatedness. If nature is fundamentally relational, and if humans are caught up in those relations, then there may be some metaphysical leverage for ethical obligations toward nature. If humans have obligations toward nature, then there may be some ethical leverage for better public policies regarding environmental change. This, at least, is the hope of speculative environmentalists. Descartes is important because he established the major problems of modern philosophy, contributed to the development of the modern sciences, and generally set the tone for the modern era. Critics charge that his doctrine of dualism introduced a schism into human thought, a wound that has not yet healed. Cartesian dualism holds that the world consists of two kinds of substance: mental substance, which thinks but takes up no space, and material substance, which takes up space and does not think. If Descartes is correct that material substance does nothing but take up space, it follows that material bodies can relate to each other only spatially. Suppose a number of billiard balls are resting on a pool table and that the cue ball is two feet away from the eight ball (proximity). I roll the cue ball toward the eight ball (relative motion), 18 Knowledge the cue ball strikes the eight ball (direct contact), and the two balls move off in different directions (relative motion again). Once these spatial relations—proximity, relative motion, and contact—have been measured and catalogued , there is nothing more to be learned about the situation on the pool table. In the Cartesian universe, the same applies to stars and planets, rocks and rivers, plants and animals, and even the human body. For complex material objects such as animals, though, another feature of the dualistic conception of material substance comes into play. Matter is divisible, and so reduction becomes the proper method for studying complex systems. If I want to understand a clock, I need to disassemble it, study all of the parts, and account for their relationships to one another—in spatial terms, of course. The same holds if I want to understand a maple tree, a domestic cat, the workings of the human brain, or the cosmos as a whole. In effect, the Cartesian cosmos can be thought of as a great machine, designed and set in motion by a very powerful—and very clever—mechanic. Parts may come into contact with one another, and they may move relative to one another, but each can be understood in isolation from the others and each can be replaced if necessary. A number of metaphysical and epistemological problems are associated with dualism, not least the problem of where to put the mind. If the mind takes up no space, how can it be located in space, in relation to a material body? This is an interesting puzzle, but many critics are more concerned with what they see as the pernicious ethical and political consequences of dualism—especially from an environmentalist point...