Ecophilosophy in a World of Crisis

Critical realism and the Nordic Contributions

Roy Bhaskar, Petter Naess, Karl Høyer, Karl Georg Høyer

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2011
• eBook ISBN: 9781136621543
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Sociology
• Index: Social Sciences

Building on its origins at a seminar in Oslo organized by two of the editors, this book combines classic texts of Nordic ecophilosophy and the original contributions of those influenced by this tradition to present the view that critical realism is indeed a worthy intellectual tradition to carry forward and further develop the work of the founders of Nordic ecophilosophy.

It was clear at the seminar that there was a promising convergence of interests and themes in the two approaches; while at the same time, within the Nordic ecophilosophical tradition, there was appreciation of the capacity of critical realism, with its provision of a robust philosophical ontology and generation of totalizing immanent critiques of Western philosophy, to provide an expansive and secure home for the development of ecophilosophical work generally.

If there is a single overarching theme of critical realist philosophy, it surely must be that of the unity of theory and practice, which Bhaskar, following Hegel, has also called "seriousness". This makes the applicability, relevance and actionability of critical realism key considerations for critical realists. There can be no doubt that this concern was shared fully by the Nordic ecophilosophers; and this quality of "seriousness" is a striking feature of the Nordic contributions presented in this book.

1

INTRODUCTORY PERSPECTIVES

Karl Georg Høyer and Petter Næss

‘Surely I am a critical realist now’, said the Norwegian ecophilosopher Sigmund Kvaløy Setereng at a seminar organized in the autumn of 2009 on similarities and differences between the Nordic ecophilosophical tradition and the philosophy of critical realism. We think his now departed ecophilosopher colleagues Arne Næss, Georg Henrik von Wright and Torsten Hägerstrand would have agreed if they had the opportunity, and certainly many of the other more or less active supporters and contributors to the Nordic ecophilosophical movement.

Yet, except from Sigmund Kvaløy Setereng's recent exclamation of affiliation, none of the leading figures of the Nordic ecophilosophy literature have ever, according to our knowledge, referred to the philosophy of critical realism in any of their writings or speeches. Conversely, most of the leading critical realist authors seem to have been unaware of the Nordic ecophilosophical tradition until a few years ago.¹This is a bit strange, since most of the critical realist literature and the literature within Nordic ecophilosophy has been produced during the same period of time, namely since the early and mid-1970s (with Peter Wessel Zapffe's much earlier ecophilopsophical texts as an exception). However, there are indeed several affinities and overlapping perspectives. The purpose of this book is to explore some of these arenas. In particular, we hope that the book will be a contribution to the intellectual basis for responsible, solidary and emancipatory actions in our rapidly changing world, where nature as well as the conditions for human welfare are in profound crisis.

There are indeed several arenas of common ground between critical realism and Nordic ecophilosophy. This applies to the part of critical realism often referred to as ‘basic’ (particularly developed by Bhaskar in A Realist Theory of Science (1975) and The Possibility of Naturalism (1978) and in later elaborations and applications by Bhaskar and other authors) as well as to dialectical critical realism and the philosophy of metaReality. Below, seven main arenas of common ground between Nordic ecophilosophy and critical realism will be discussed:

• critical realist ontology
• the world as differentiated, stratified and consisting of open systems
• interdisciplinarity
• structure and agency
• non-dualism between humans and nature
• fact, value and social critique
• metaReality and non-anthropocentrism.

Critical realist ontology

Critical realists and the Nordic ecophilosophers share a clear realist ontology. Both reject conflations of what there is with what we know. Instead, both the ecophilosophers and critical realists emphasize the fallibility of our knowledge – a position logically implying that there is more to the world than what we (believe we) know. Critical realism as well as the Nordic ecophilosophers express a strong anti-positivism and were to high extent developed as fundamental critiques of the then (in the late 1960s and early 1970s) dominant positivist paradigm. A common critique shared by ecophilosophers and critical realists is that positivism ignores underlying, non-actualized structures and the open systems and multi-mechanism situations characterizing societies as well as nature. Both critical realists and the Nordic ecophilosophers thus reject the empiricist limitation of the notion of knowledge to that which can be documented through exact measurement and quantification. Moreover, Arne Næss explicitly dissociated himself from the Cartesian denial of the existence of colour, taste and smell in nature as real entities. Both Næss and Kvaløy, as well as Hägerstrand, have on several occasions given very fundamental and explicit critiques of positivism in science.

Generally, the Nordic ecophilosophical literature must be characterized – as critical realism – as being in clear opposition to irrealism and radical social constructionism. The notion that ‘there does not exist anything beyond the text’ is as utterly strange to Nordic ecophilosophers as it is to critical realists. Although the Nordic ecophilosophers’ writings in the 1970s usually did not address the postmodern non-realist positions explicitly, they implicitly clearly rejected them. Kvaløy and Hägerstrand were perhaps the ones most explicitly positioning themselves in opposition to the individualism and voluntarism that came to characterize much postmodern discourse. In later contributions, not least in Arne Johan Vetlesen's recent writings, the criticism against postmodern relativism and nihilism is stark and highly consistent with critical realist critiques.

A differentiated, stratified and open-systemic world

The critical realist view of the world as a predominantly open system characterized by the simultaneous operation of a multitude of different causal mechanisms resonates with the opinion of the Nordic ecophilosophers that ‘everything is related to everything’. For example, in clear contrast to the Humean conception of causality, Hägerstrand (1974/1991, p. 169) points to the necessity of being able to pinpoint the reasons for ‘non-events’ by tracing the barriers preventing certain types of events and states from occurring. This is, according to Hägerstrand, probably necessary in order to ‘understand in a deeper sense the nature of ecological conditions common to both living beings and the man-made world of artifacts’.

A criticism of the classical Western worldview revolving around the concepts of regularity, predictability and control is also manifest in the writings of Georg Henrik von Wright. Compared to Hägerstrand, he tends to emphasize the chaotic elements in the world to a higher extent. He also seems to be more reluctant to accept the idea of cumulative knowledge than the other Nordic ecophilosophers. The influence of chaos theory and Kuhnian paradigm theory on von Wright's ontology should however not be exaggerated.

Interdisciplinarity

With its ontology of reality as differentiated, stratified and open-systemic, critical realism understands empirical phenomena as being the results of a multitude of simultaneously working causal mechanisms. The impacts of one single causal factor are also often multiple and complex. It follows logically from this ontology that empirical phenomena can seldom be explained only by causal factors ‘belonging to’ one single discipline. The same applies to the impacts of one particular phenomenon. An interdisciplinary approach is therefore necessary in order to avoid drawing false inferences about the causes of an observed event as well as to assess the impacts of, for example, a particular technical solution. According to critical realism, perspectives of different disciplines must be acknowledged as addressing different levels or aspects of reality instead of being considered as mutually exclusive.

This emphasis on interdisciplinarity resonates very well with the thinking of the Nordic ecophilosophers, and is also explicitly expressed by all of them. Kvaløy (1974) for one stresses the need for generalist insights rather than narrow specialization, and emphasizes the importance of educating what he terms ‘super-amateurs’, i.e. generalists trained to combine very many different forms of knowledge. Such training was considered a prerequisite for the understanding of ecological complexities and conducive to the respect and love of these complexities. In particular the Norwegian ecophilosophers, Zapffe, Kvaløy and Næss, held that it was necessary to use nature as an arena of learning to study and comprehend ecological complexities. Friluftsliv – the simple outdoor life in contact with nature – was therefore pinpointed as an important source of insight.

Hägerstrand also criticized the loss of perspective resulting from the ever-increasing specialization and fragmentation of science. In particular, he was frustrated by the lack of solid analyses of how human, technical and biological systems are interwoven. According to Hägerstrand, a closer cooperation between disciplines would only be the first step. What is needed is liberation from disciplinary straitjackets to make it possible to approach reality in completely new ways (Hägerstrand, 1977/1991). Von Wright, on the other hand, was somewhat more reluctant to embracing the call for holism and synthesis.

While acknowledging the practical need for studying fragments of reality in-depth through the ‘glasses’ of a separate discipline, Næss (1989) emphasizes the necessity of ‘seaming’ the fragments together through a more holistic synthesis. According to Næss, this is in particular required each time an eco-political decision is to be made. Although recognizing the need for cross-disciplinary synthesizing in practical decision-making, Næss’ view does not seem to incorporate the full implications of an ontology of multi-causality, since he does not explicitly mention the need for each discipline to actively make use of knowledge and perspectives from other disciplines relevant to the phenomenon studied. In the case of the discipline of (neoclassical) economics, Næss still raises a fundamental critique against the narrow and fragmentary analyses, especially when dealing with environmental issues, where both the ecological impacts and their causes are typically looked at in separation from their environmental and social context.

Structure and agency

Critical realism's transformational model of the connection between social structure and agency (Bhaskar, 1979 and 1993; Archer, 2000), where structures and agents are mutually influencing each other but with a time-lag due to which our actions in a given moment are always constrained and enabled by the structural conditions at hand, fits well with the ways in which the Nordic ecophilopsophers see the agency-structure relationship. Their emphasis is still mostly on the influence of the structural conditions, be they the natural environment, the built environment, the prevailing technologies or the growth-oriented economic system. Hägerstrand's time-geography explicitly points at the many temporal and spatial constraints which in practice limit people's opportunities for choosing what to do, together with whom, and where. Kvaløy together with Zapffe, on the other hand, depict individuals as being to a high extent alienated and trapped by ‘false consciousness’ lured by, among other things, the ‘Disneyland effect’ of commercialized leisure opportunities. Næss to a greater extent emphasizes the opportunity and responsibility of individuals in contributing to social change. This is illustrated, among other things, by his appeal to those who agree with the eight ‘deep ecological’ principles to commit themselves to ‘directly or indirectly try[ing] to implement the necessary changes’. We should still not exaggerate these differences between the Nordic ecophilosophers (nor should we exaggerate disparities between critical realist thinkers whose work focuses mainly on either agency or on structure). After all, it was the ‘structuralist’ Kvaløy who broke from his urban life as a university scholar to pursue a different individual lifestyle as a mountain farmer in a remote rural region.

Non-dualism between humans and nature

Common to critical realism and the Nordic ecophilosophers is the conception of humans as part of nature and as highly dependent on nature for our survival and flourishing. More generally, critical realism and the Nordic ecophilosophy share an understanding of the world as consisting of open systems, with interdependencies across scales as well as levels of reality. The critical realist conception of reality as stratified and differentiated, consisting of different ‘layers’ where new causal powers and properties that are irreducible to lower layers emerge when moving from a lower to a higher layer, where social life by necessity involves the powers and mechanisms of, among others, physics, chemistry and biology but cannot be reduced to the powers and mechanisms of lower strata, squares well with the ecophilosophical conceptions of non-duality between the human species and the rest of nature.

Needless to say, human dependency on nature is strongly emphasized in the Nordic ecophilosophy. Apart from the need for natural resources for nutrition and material products, our dependency on nature involves nature's positive contribution to joy, health and learning (emphasized in particular in Næss's embracing of friluftsliv – the simple outdoor life in co-presence with nature – as a practice potentially subversive to the streamlining of consumerism). There is also an opposite side of the coin: the alienating ‘pipeline environment’ where only those aspects of human nature compatible with productivism in the service of industrial growth society are allowed to unfold. The rootedness of society and humans in nature is also clearly expressed in critical realism: the ‘lower strata’ are always with us, and ‘material transactions with nature’ are one of the constitutive parts of ‘the four-planar social being’ discussed in Bhaskar's (1993) dialectical critical realism.

In line with the strong non-anthropocentrism of Nordic ecophilosophy, critical realism goes against ‘the anthropic fallacy’, which, according to Bhaskar is ‘the exegesis of being in terms of human being’. Critical realism's rejection of anthropocentrism applies to ontological as well as ethical anthropocentrism. The ‘sixth level of ontology’ referred to in the philosophy of metaReality involves a re-enchantment of the world, including acknowledgment that all species have value in themselves, irrespectively of their utility for humans. Needless to say, this is consistent with the non-anthropocentric and ecocentric views of the Nordic ecophilosophers. Moreover, critical realism's rejection of cognitive triumphalism (Bhaskar, 1993, 2002) is in line with the underlying ideas of the precautionary principle, which has been strongly supported by the Nordic ecophilosophers as a guideline for environmental policy.

Fact, value and social critique

Both critical realism and the Nordic ecophilosophical tradition consider that values can be rationally justified, i.e. fact-value dualism is rejected. Whereas Næss and other Nordic ecophilosophers stressed that the science of ecology cannot itself prescribe how humans ought to act in relation to the natural environment, they also rejected the notion that values and norms cannot be subject to rational justification or critique. Næss contended that many of the norms guiding social practices and individual behaviour are based on some tacit normative and descriptive premises. Sometimes, the descriptive premises are false, and the practice-level norms should then be changed in order to conform to more fundamental values. Often, however, there is a lack of reflection about the consistency of practice-guiding norms and higher-level values, resulting in a situation of ‘norm pyramids with hollow middle parts’, as metaphorically depicted by Næss (1989). Critical realist arguments, put forward by Bhaskar (1998) in The Possibility of Naturalism and later developed further by himself as well as by Alan Norrie (2010) and Andrew Sayer (2000 and 2011), are much in line with the above lines of thought. For example, taking the satisfaction of some basic human need (like nutrition) as a supposedly widely agreed-on normative premise, knowledge about conditions causing starvation can be used to underpin norms of emancipating people from such conditions (Bhaskar, 1998).

Moreover, critical realism as well as the Nordic ecophilosophy have functioned as platforms – or as underlabourers, to use a relevant critical realist term – for critique of ‘industrial growth society’ with its technocracy and monodisciplinary ‘tunnel vision’. In particular, neoclassical economics has been a target of criticism from critical realists as well as from the Nordic ecophilosophers.

MetaReality and non-anthropocentrism

The above similarities between Nordic ecophilosophy and critical realism mainly refer to ‘basic’ and ‘dialectical’ critical realism. But there are also clear commonalities between ecophilosophical thinking and the philosophy of metaReality. Næss’ notion that when the Self (and the idea of self-realization) is expanded to encompass nature, then hurting nature will be hurting yourself, has much in common with metaReality's emphasis on the shift away from Western dualism to a non-dual model in which emancipation entails ‘a breakdown, an overcoming, of the duality and separateness between things’ – and also between humans and nature. The metaReality principle of universal solidarity is rooted in a line of argument very similar to Arne Næss's ideas of the expansion of the Self displayed in his personal normative system, the Ecosophy T. Although not emphasized to the same extent as by Næss, Hägerstrand (1974/1991, p. 16...

Table of contents

• Front Cover
• ECOPHILOSOPHY IN A WORLD OF CRISIS
• Ontological Explorations
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Dedicaction
• Contents
• Preface (Roy Bhaskar)
• Acknowledgements
• 1 Introductory perspectives
• 2 Critical realism in resonance with Nordic ecophilosophy
• 3 Technology, nature and ethics
• 4 Ecophilosophy and the contemporary environmental debate
• 5 A biosophical perspective: humans as a tragic species
• 6 The deep ecological movement: some philosophical aspects
• 7 Gaia versus Servoglobe
• 8 A provocative pessimism: a postscript on the scientific worldview and global order
• 9 Global and local
• 10 On making sense of the human environment: the problem
• 11 Human rights and ecology as premises for taking practical standpoints
• 12 Precautionary science: the ecophilosophical foundation
• 13 Nordic ecophilosophy and critical realism
• 14 From ecophilosophy to degrowth
• Selected titles on Nordic ecophilosophy
• Index