Reconciling Realism and Constructivism in Environmental Ethics

Abstract

This paper outlines a constructivist approach to environmental ethics which attempts to reconcile realism in the ontological sense, i.e., the view that there is an objective material world existing outside of human consciousness, with the view that how nature is understood and acted in are epistemologically and morally constructed. It is argued that while knowledge and ethics are indeed culturally variable, social constructions of nature are nonetheless constrained by how things actually stand in the world. The ʻrealistʼ version of constructivism proposed here can be linked to dialectical forms of reasoning which see knowledge and ethics as arising out of human interactions with an objectively real environment, and contrasted with strong constructivist views which see nature as ʻnothing more thanʼ a social construct. While both the physical environment and human attitudes towards it are in part socially constructed, nature also retains a measure of autonomy, or ʻwildnessʼ, apart from human constructions. KEYWORDSConstructivism, guiding visions, autonomy of nature, dialectics State University New York At Buffalo = username $REMOTE_ASSR = IP address Tue, 14 Jun 2016 04:39:41 = Date & Time RICHARD J. EVANOFF 62 tendency to equate epistemological and moral constructions of nature with its ontological reality. In Soperʼs words,It is true that we can make no distinction between the ʻrealityʼ of nature and its cultural representation that is not itself conceptual, but this does not justify the conclusion that there is no ontological distinction between the ideas we have of nature and that which the ideas are about: that since nature is only signified in human discourse, inverted commas ʻnatureʼ is nature, and we should therefore remove the inverted comma (1995, p. 151).Contemporary debates about constructivism, which have influenced a variety of disciplines particularly in the social sciences (for good overviews see Holstein and Miller 1993;Burr 1995;Benton and Craib 2001), have tended to revolve around the question of whether objective evidence can be appealed to in settling disputes about how things actually stand in the world. Social constructionism, particularly in its postmodern variations, has tended towards a reductive idealism which sees reality itself as ʻnothing more thanʼ a social construct. Edwards, Ashmore and Potterʼs contention that there is no ʻ...objective world as given, as distinct from processes of representation; as directly apprehended, independent of any particular descriptionʼ (1995, p. 26) typifies the view that ʻnatureʼ has no reality apart from how it has been socially constructed. Global warming, for example, is seen not as a ʻrealʼ phenomenon which can be empirically observed and scientifically explained but rather as something which people situated in different social groups have conflicting views about, none of which can be privileged over any other. The relativism implicit in this approach suggests that political debate and public policy are largely decided on the basis of which side can ...

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