Contextualism and Norton's convergence hypothesis

As a prominent voice in environmental philosophy for more than two decades, Bryan Norton has labored to show that the intrac table axiologi-cal debate between "anthropocentrists" and "nonanthropocentrists"- which has served to frame most discussions of environmental ethics-often distracts attention away from the fact that when it comes to practical principles of environmental management, the two opposing approaches for the most part converge.¹ His argument has been that because the nonanthropocentric position involves highly questionable metaphysical and epistemological commitments, and because nothing of normative importance contained in nonanthropocentric theories is lost in dispensing with these commitments, environmentalists would be better served by adopting what he has called a "weak anthropocentric" standpoint. More recently, Norton has also been in the forefront of efforts to develop the conceptual apparatus for an approach to environmental management that is capable of accommodating both socioeco-nomic and environmental perspectives without requiring extraordinary sacri-fices from the supporters of either position. In a number of writings, he has worked to articulate and defend an approach to environmental management that adopts as its mandate the maintenance of ecological "health" and that is loosely modeled on the paradigm of medical science. Because social and economic systems can be viewed as being contextually embedded in larger environmental systems, Norton holds that such an approach is capable of integrating socioeconomic concerns with environmental concerns, in that the maintenance of the health of the environmental context in which socioeco-nomic activity takes place is necessary if such practices are to continue to exist and flourish. These two intellectual activities converge in Toward Unity among Environmentalists, where he argues that despite divergences regarding ultimate values and justifications, "a consensus on the broad outlines of an intelligent policy" is possible among "environmentalists of different stripes" once their concerns are placed within a framework of environmental management centered on the maintenance of ecological health.² A prime example of Norton's position can be found in a chapter devoted to interspecific ethics,³ where he continues his program of reconciliation by arguing that when analyzed in detail, deep ecology-the paradigmatic example of a nonanthropocentric approach to environmental ethics-would not, in general, issue policy positions different from those advanced by "longsighted anthropocentrists." Norton's conclusion is that "introducing the idea that other species have intrinsic value, that humans should be 'fair' to all other species, provides no operationally recognizable constraints on human behavior that are not already implicit in the generalized, cross - temporal obligations to protect a healthy, complex, and autonomously functioning system for the benefit of future generations of humans."⁴ Norton's position is that this policy convergence takes the form of a bilateral commitment to the standpoint that all species should be protected as long as the socioeconomic costs of doing so are bearable, a point of view that has been labeled the "safe minimum standard" (SMS) criterion.⁵ I argue that even if one grants the premise with regard to practical policy formation that deep ecologists are committed to or would accept the SMS criterion, the possibility of convergence between deep ecol ogy and long - sighted anthropocen-trism is minimal, or even non ex is tent. This is because the overall methodological framework for policy formation within which Norton places the concerns of long-sighted anthropocentrism-a framework that he refers to as "contextualism"-is unlikely to generate an overall approach to policy formation that accommodates the axiological intuitions of deep ecologists since it allows for the disappearance of species even when the costs of preserving them are bearable. I concede that, in the presence of scientific ignorance about the structure and functioning of ecological systems, the contextualist approach might commit environmental management to something at least as strong as the SMS criterion. Nevertheless, I argue that given the directive for ecological science set by contextualism, if ecological science does at some future time develop the required body of knowledge, then the most reasonable decision criterion for environmental management will be one that is considerably weaker than the SMS criterion, and too weak to capture the axiological intuitions of deep ecologists.