Environmental Heresies: The Quest for Reasonable

Juha Hiedanpää and Daniel W. Bromley

Environmental HeresiesThe Quest for Reasonable

Juha Hiedanpää

Natural Resources Institute Finland, Finland, Finland

Daniel W. Bromley

University of Wisconsin-Madison, Wisconsin, USA

ISBN 978-1-137-60082-0e-ISBN 978-1-137-60083-7

DOI 10.1057/978-1-137-60083-7

Library of Congress Control Number: 2016953622

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2016

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To:

Johanna

and Auri, and Konsta—the next generation

Joyce

For the past, the present, and the future

Acknowledgments

Juha is grateful to the Academy of Finland for Award 253750. Daniel is grateful to the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation of Germany for the Reimar Lüst Prize that supported some of the work reported here.

Several of the chapters here are modified versions of the following papers

Chapter 4:

Bromley, Daniel W. 2012. Environmental Governance as Stochastic Belief Updating: Crafting Rules to Live By. Ecology and Society , 17 (3): 14. [online] URL: http://​www.​ecologyandsociet​y.​org/​vol17/​iss3/​art14/​

Chapter 5:

Hiedanpää, Juha, and Daniel W. Bromley. 2013. The Stakeholder Game: Pleadings and Reasons in Environmental Philosophy. Journal of Speculative Philosophy 27(4): 425–441.

Chapter 7:

Hiedanpää, Juha, and Daniel W. Bromley. 2014. Payments for Ecosystem Services: Durable Habits, Dubious Nudges, and Doubtful Efficacy. Journal of Institutional Economics 10(2): 175–195.

Chapter 8:

Hiedanpää, Juha, and Daniel W. Bromley. 2012. Contestations over Biodiversity Policy: Considering Peircean Semiosis. Environmental Values 21: 357–378.

Chapter 9:

Hiedanpää, Juha, and Daniel W. Bromley. 2011. The Harmonization Game: Reasons and Rules in European Biodiversity Policy. Environmental Policy and Governance 21: 99–111.

Chapter 11:

Bromley, Daniel W. 1999. Deforestation: Institutional Causes and Solutions. In World Forests, Society and Environment, ed. by Matti Palo and Jussi Uusivuori. Dordrecht, The Netherlands: Kluwer.

Contents

1 The Consequences of Pragmatism 1

2 The Landscape Ahead 21

Part I Concepts and Concerns33

3 The Nature of Nature 35

4 Environmental Governance 55

5 Stakeholders 73

Part II Practices and Problems91

6 The Climate Problem 93

7 Paying for Ecosystem Services 115

8 The Biodiversity Problem 141

9 The Problematic Wolf 163

10 The Ocean Fisheries Problem 189

11 The Deforestation Problem 215

12 Toward the Reasonable 229

Index247

List of Figures

Fig. 6.1. The Science Mandate of the IPCC.96

Fig. 8.1. A Peircean sign process146

Fig. 8.2. The first phase of the sign process149

Fig. 8.3. The second phase of the sign process149

Fig. 8.4. The third phase of the sign process151

Fig. 8.5. The fourth phase of sign process153

Fig. 8.6. The fifth phase of the sign process155

Fig. 8.7. The sixth phase of the sign process156

© The Author(s) 2016

Juha Hiedanpää and Daniel W. BromleyEnvironmental Heresies10.1057/978-1-137-60083-7_1

1. The Consequences of Pragmatism

Juha Hiedanpää¹  and Daniel W. Bromley²

(1)

Natural Resources Institute Finland, Helsinki, Finland

(2)

University of Wisconsin-Madison, Wisconsin, USA

1 The Importance of Understanding Each Other

Grasping a concept is mastering the use of a word (Brandom 2000, p. 6).

I understand pragmatism to be a method of ascertaining the meanings, not of all ideas, but only of what I call intellectual concepts …those upon the structure of which, arguments concerning objective facts may hinge (Peirce, CP 5.467)

The emergence of environmentalism gave rise to a number of ideas and concepts that now frame discussions of environmental policy . Examples include sustainability , biodiversity , global warming, the land ethic , stakeholder , the tragedy of the commons, tropical deforestation , command-and-control, payments for ecosystem services , maximum sustainable yield, and resource rent. Notice that these terms are what the philosopher F.S.C. Northrop (1967) calls concepts by postulation . That is, such concepts—words and phrases—have very explicit meanings that emerge from, and are central to, a specific community of scientific practitioners. By way of contrast, concepts by intuition are immediately apprehensible to everyday discourse. The color blue is a concept by intuition—we know something is blue because we have been taught that the sky and lakes are blue. A child will then declare, with obvious delight, that a robin’s egg is also blue. We come to know blue as a word to be applied to objects of a certain familiar color. But blue is also a concept by postulation to a physicist who understands blue by its very specific light absorbing attributes. Those physical properties give off reflected light that physicists, well aware of naming conventions, call blue.

Unlike concepts by intuition , concepts by postulation are the purposeful creation of disciplinary practitioners (an epistemic community) who then invoke those concepts to convey a very specific intellectual idea. These postulations (stipulations) play a very specific and purposeful role in all disciplinary discourse (Wittgenstein 2001). These concepts by postulation become how an epistemic community carries on a conversation. Wittgenstein insisted that language is simply a tool for doing necessary work, and this reminds us that particular disciplines are epistemic communities united by a shared set of linguistic stipulations and conventions. Those conventions are concepts by postulation. As members of a discipline carry on their work, new linguistic conventions (postulations) will emerge as the need arises. A black hole is just such an emergent concept by postulation. Who would have imagined, a few decades ago, the need for such terms as payments for ecosystem services or biodiversity ?

Clearly, individuals outside of a particular epistemic community cannot be expected to grasp the precise meaning of concepts such as biodiversity , common property , stakeholder , or sustainability . Interestingly, that rarely prevents them from invoking those concepts in a contentious environmental discourse. When this happens, such terms can become pivotal aspects of policy debates—with the unfortunate result that participants inevitably hold quite divergent understandings of the issues under discussion. In practical terms, these concepts are often introduced as trumps—conversation stoppers. Who can possibly be against sustainability? Who can oppose biodiversity? Who can object to a land ethic ? Who can possibly support policies that are characterized as command-and-control? In other words, many environmental debates are language games purposely designed to obfuscate and to deceive by the artful use of language.

The emphasis here on language and concepts arises because of the urgent need to engage the general public—including government officials—in the necessary quest for clarity about the language and concepts central to environmental policy discussions. Progress on policy debates is impossible in the absence of this shared understanding. This careful attention to the exact meaning of intellectual concepts may seem overly pedantic to those who believe that certain environmental problems—climate change —represent urgent existential threats. Such individuals may grow impatient with efforts to clarify vague language. Ironically, this reluctance to be precise about language is one reason why many serious environmental disputes persist and remain contentious. Climate change is an exemplar in this regard.

At a local level, when a speaker declares that cities or other jurisdictions must become more sustainable, the intuitive response is certainly to affirm this claim. But the obvious problem here is what exactly does the speaker mean by sustainable? Pragmatism asks us to understand sustainability as some state of affairs that matters. Then the practical state of affairs places constraints or conditions on successful signification—what is sustainability in this particular situation. Perhaps then sustainability policies can be articulated so that others might come to understand precisely what the speaker intends. Charles Sanders Peirce ’s insistence that the primary contribution of pragmatism is its commitment to an honest epistemology suddenly can be seen in a very different light. There is nothing quite as practical as being clear about what is being said. Pragmatism brings a commitment to good-faith efforts to agree on what is being discussed and debated. Here Peirce stands with Wittgenstein who insisted that all philosophical problems are nothing but the problems of meaning making. What, exactly, is the meaning—in practical terms—of claims on behalf of sustainability?

Our purpose here is to demonstrate that pragmatism provides a way out of the inevitable tendency toward conflict. This promising effect emerges because pragmatism pushes antagonists to focus on the reasons being advanced for particular declarative assertions—save this wetland , impose a tax on carbon emissions , preserve more wolves . In the face of such normative demands, pragmatists insist on hearing reasons why these declarative claims should be taken seriously. Why save this wetland rather than another one over there? Why is this wetland more valuable than that one? How shall the optimal carbon tax be computed? What shall be done about the other sources of carbon that are not so easily taxed? Why is it necessary for more wolves to be protected? What, exactly, is the minimum viable number of wolves in this area? How do you know—and here we mean really know—that specific environmental policies will work as alleged? Pragmatism enriches and elaborates the nature of environmental discourse by promoting the asking for and giving of reasons. Richer discourse reduces the tendency to fight.

Depending on the context, reason giving works in several important ways. Notice that there are several classes of truth claims in the above assertions. First, there is a normative declaration —a desired end or goal (save this wetland ). Restated, the truth claim becomes it would be good to save this wetland . We call such assertions truth claims because they are offered with the aspiration—the hope—of being found true. If the wetland is indeed saved from destruction then a pragmatist would say that the discourse around saving that particular wetland resulted in an outcome in which the truth of the claim—it would be good to save this wetland —was affirmed. The truth claim is revealed to be true. But the truth claim could, with a different outcome for the wetland , be false. If the speaker is unable to bring enough others to her side, and the wetland is eventually paved over, then the truth claim—it would be good to save this wetland is obviously not true. Not all truth claims are true—they merely aspire to be true. The disappointed speaker and her allies may still regard the truth claim to be true. However, they were unable to convince enough others of its truth content. Environmental policy is not about everyone getting their way. Democracy is about affirming those normative claims that manage to bring a sufficient number of others to a winning side. Public policy produces winners and losers.

Second, the truth claim it would be good to save this wetland could be offered as a consequentialist assertion . Here, the meaning of good is that if the wetland is not saved, a number of undesirable consequences might result—loss of critical bird habitat, or diminished nutrient filtration that would then increase pollution of downstream lakes and rivers. Once again, if the speaker is able to bring enough others to her side, then her truth claim is indeed revealed to be true. But she may fail.

A third version seen above is an instrumental truth claim —a tax on carbon is the best means to reduce carbon emissions . This truth claim is also aspirational in nature . The instrumental truth claim—a carbon tax is the best means to reduce carbon emissions—most likely emerges from a disciplinary specialist, but it could also be advanced by a non-scientist who is merely reporting what other experts have said. An economist is the most likely source of this particular truth claim. But just as above, the truth content of this assertion is only as good as the collective decision concerning carbon emissions. If the political process rejects the idea of a carbon tax, then quite clearly the truth claim about a carbon tax is not true. The economist who advanced the particular claim may remain convinced of its wisdom, but enough others found it insufficiently compelling that the policy advice was rejected. The truth claim turns out not to be true in the eyes of the larger political community. Regardless of what the specific advocate of that policy option may think, the proffered truth claim is not true.

A fourth variety of truth claims combines all three versions—it is normative, it is consequentialist, and it is instrumental. Consider the truth claim—we should adopt an agenda of sustainability in this city. The speaker probably believes in the innate goodness of sustainability, the speaker apparently believes that becoming more sustainable will have agreeable consequence for environmental outcomes, and the speaker seems to believe that those improved environmental outcomes will arise because of a reduction in energy use, garbage, and water consumption—among other changes in local behaviors. We might call this fourth variety perspectivism . It is easy to imagine that others in the local community might hold different views on these matters. The task of democracy is to arrive at settled belief about the truth content of contending truth claims—different perspectives.

Indeed, all environmental discourse entails a wide range of contending truth claims . Regardless of the specifics of any particular dispute, all contestations eventually come down to understanding the practical consequences of reasons offered for a particular choice. Why must that wetland be saved? Why do you prefer carbon taxes? Why do you refer to regulations as command-and-control? Do you really believe that there is much command or control in a democratic market economy? The profound contribution of pragmatism, with its emphasis on asking for and giving reasons, is that in the course of contestation over specific environmental issues, extended discourse will reveal that not all reasons are found to be equally good. The obvious advantage of democratic discourse is that reasons, to be accepted as compelling, must be considered good by a significant proportion of individuals engaged in a debate. Reasons cannot just be good to the person advancing such reasons—reasons must be found good by a sufficient number of others pertinent to the ultimate decision. All speakers use reasons to bring others to their side. In a democracy , citizens fight each other with their reasons.

The scope—the discursive possibility space—of reason giving is necessarily bounded by what seems reasonable to others. Richard Bernstein insists that "all reason functions within traditions (1983, p. 130)—and traditions are simply mental habits . Each of us is embedded in specific customary livelihoods, practices, and language games. The reason individuals engage in reason giving is to find reasons for a specific problematic situation and how to bring about necessary change. And the only reasons that individuals find sufficient for action are those reasons that they come to regard as reasonable. Few people knowingly act on unreasonable reasons. And there you have the reason for our subtitle—we are interested in what is found to be reasonable." Throughout what follows we will come back to the idea of what it would be reasonable to do about wolves , about ocean fisheries, about biodiversity , about climate change , about tropical deforestation —indeed about any environmental standoff.

It is to be expected that strict moralists will object that pursuing the reasonable is being too soft on those who wish to cover wetlands with asphalt. And some economists might denounce the reasonable as being insufficiently devoted to the pursuit of economic efficiency. But of course it is precisely here that the fighting inevitably gets started. Pragmatists challenge the standard accounts of good or correct environmental policy precisely because those accounts pay insufficient attention to reason giving —not just particular reasons offered up in serious efforts to persuade, but those contrary reasons advanced by others with different interests. One of the important consequences of pragmatism is the empowerment of many speakers, not just experts. Pragmatists insist that good processes are the necessary precursors to good decisions.

Our focus on reasons and reason giving calls attention to several additional issues. First, we come to the question of what constitutes knowing . What does it mean to know something? In other words, how do people know what they claim to know? This question concerns what people believe to be the case.

2 On Knowing

We can only know what it makes sense to doubt (Grayling 1988, p. 94, on Ludwig Wittgenstein ’s philosophy of knowledge.)

When it comes to knowing , why is less interesting than how. It is common to be asked: How do you know that? We doubt that anyone has been asked Why do you know that? The state of knowing something automatically shifts attention to the question of how—by what means—that claimed knowledge was acquired. Did the knowing person read it somewhere? Did someone whisper the alleged knowledge in her ear? Is her knowing the result of some factoid retained since grammar school? Knowing comes from before—it is backward looking as it builds on and adds to understanding, character, and, perhaps, wisdom. Regardless of the origins of that alleged knowing, once something is thought to be known it is famously difficult to abandon that knowledge in favor of something else. To know something—as with diamonds—is forever. We see ample evidence that individuals hang on to what they think they know with alarming tenacity. Even scientists are not immune to this devotion to particular habits of mind. Max Planck , the famous German physicist, observed that:

An important scientific innovation rarely makes its way by gradually winning over and converting its opponents: it rarely happens that Saul becomes Paul. What does happen is that its opponents gradually die out, and that the growing generation is familiarised with the ideas from the beginning.¹

The ironic characterization of Planck ’s aphorism is that scientific progress occurs academic funeral by academic funeral. It is often said that habits die hard. Since the condition of knowing something is but a habit of mind, knowing also dies hard. And here we see why Peirce insisted that the mind tends to take habits. Indeed, pragmatists stress the practical significance of the habituated mind—habituation. To Peirce , life in general has a tendency to take habits. As above, consider a variation of knowing—believing. It is common to hear someone say: Why do you believe that? Notice that one is rarely asked How do you believe that? Again, we see that no one ever asks why we know something, or how we believe something. It is always how we know something, and why we believe something. This is so because believing is a forward-looking activity. The purpose of believing is to bring about something that is still to be done—it is now absent. Indeed, knowing (knowledge) and believing (beliefs) are two very different modes of awareness. One draws on the past, while the other looks to the future.

It seems that many people imagine there to be a progression from ignorance, through believing, and then finally arriving at knowing . To know something can often seem like the final step in the acquisition of certitude—knowing is more secure than mere believing. In an environmental dispute, believing that carbon taxes are the preferred policy instrument is a weaker position than knowing that carbon taxes reduce emissions. And since policy disputes often push people to make stronger claims than they are justifiably capable of defending, it is common to see few claims about believing, and an abundance of claims about knowing. We see that habituation encourages a certain laziness of action—it is easier to know something than it is to undertake change in the face of some inconvenient problem. It is no surprise that many environmental debates entail competing knowledge claims. As a counterfactual, imagine environmental policy debates in which contending interests presented what they believed to be the case? Would it make a difference? Pragmatists suggest that it would.

Consider Wittgenstein ’s famous argument with G.E. Moore over Moore’s claim that he knew he had two hands because he could see (and count) them. Wittgenstein objected to this claim of knowing on the grounds that to observe something is not the same as knowing something. In Moore’s case, since it was impossible for him to reach any other conclusion about the number of his hands, it was wrong for him to use the word know. The impossibility of being wrong about the number of hands undermined Moore’s claim that he knew that he had two hands. He only saw that he had two hands. Knowing, Wittgenstein insisted, required more than mere observation. Real knowing must start with doubt, and in Moore’s case, it was silly to suppose that inquiry as to the number of his hands began with doubt. Everyone could see two of them.

Notice the difference between observing and informed diagnostics —alone by which understanding and knowledge can emerge. Only if it makes good sense to investigate something, motivated by doubt and surprise, will we be able to come to know or understand it. And once our investigations have settled down to a consistent set of results, it will no longer be reasonable to doubt what we have produced. In other words, to know something we must first hold it in doubt. Once we have investigated the matter thoroughly, and conducted our investigations with an abundance of serious challenges, we are then—and only then—justified in claiming to know (understand) the topic of interest. As Peirce put the matter:

The opinion which is fated to be ultimately agreed to by all who investigate, is what we mean by the truth , and the object represented in this opinion is the real. That is the way that I would explain reality (Peirce , CP 5.407). (emphasis added)²

In practical terms, when members of an epistemic community, after much study, have arrived at settled belief about a particular matter, they are often called upon to offer public statements on specific matters of interest to the rest of us—smoking is a plausible cause of lung cancer, second-hand smoke can be hazardous, chlorinated fluorocarbons are plausible causes of the depletion of atmospheric ozone , surface temperatures of the earth do seem on an upward trajectory. When a discipline speaks with one voice on such matters, the rest of us, not experts, will generally regard their statements as warranted. That warrant comes from the fact that a specific epistemic community has investigated a particular matter, and now that community seems to have arrived at settled belief—the matter is no longer in doubt. We will usually regard these announcements as constituting warranted assertions (Dewey 2008).

It was not until the twentieth century, with the increased role for governments in large-scale investments and policy initiatives, that the role of secular experts—scientists—grew to the level we now take to be the norm. The role of such experts is to bring warranted assertions to the discussion about what would be the better thing to do. However, pragmatists remain skeptical and insist that not all assertions from an epistemic community (a scientific discipline) are warranted assertions. Only those assertions based on beliefs that enjoy widespread agreement within that specific scientific discipline can be regarded as warranted assertions. John Dewey considered such claims to have warranted assertability (Dewey 2008).

When warranted assertions are projected into the public arena—beyond the confines of disciplinary practitioners who produce those assertions—the central issue becomes whether or not those assertions find wide agreement. It is common that the warranted assertions often meet considerable resistance. The long-standing denial of climate change by a segment of the general public is an example of this (Chap. 6). For a variety of reasons , some segment of the general public chooses to doubt the warranted assertions of particular epistemic communities. We also see this phenomenon at work in the area of genetically modified foods where repeated assurance from scientists that such foods are safe is not sufficient reason for many individuals to welcome their presence in the food system. Not all scientifically warranted belief is valuable belief .

This suggests that