The Good Life and Climate Adaptation
Udo Pesch (TU Delft - Ethics & Philosophy of Technology)
More Info
expand_more
Other than for strictly personal use, it is not permitted to download, forward or distribute the text or part of it, without the consent of the author(s) and/or copyright holder(s), unless the work is under an open content license such as Creative Commons.
Abstract
The need to adapt to climate change brings about moral concerns that according to ‘eco-centric’ critiques cannot be resolved by modernist ethics, as this takes humans as the only beings capable of intentionality and rationality. However, if intentionality and rationality are reconsidered as ‘counterfactual hypotheses’ it becomes possible to align modernist ethics with the eco-centric approaches. These counterfactual hypotheses guide the development of institutions, so as to allow the pursuit of a ‘good life’. This mean that society should be organized as if humans are intentional and, following Habermas’s idea of ‘communicative rationality’, as if humans are capable of collective deliberation. Given the ecological challenges, the question becomes how to give ecological concerns a voice in deliberative processes
help_outline