Thesis (M.S.)--West Virginia University, 2001. / Vita. Includes abstract. Typescript. Bibliography : leaves 22-27.

Thesis (Masters of philosophy)--Washington State University, May 2008. / Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--New York University, 2009. / Adviser: Dale Jamieson. Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (M.A. in philosophy)--Washington State University, May 2006. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 53-56).

This study probes the ethics-oriented reflexive deliberations of three novice environmental education practitioners in South Africa. Two of the cases examined work in a local government context, and the third in an environmental non-governmental organisation context. All three practitioners are studying a one-year professional development course in environmental education. The research asks how their ethical deliberations ‘come to be what they are’, at the interface of their workplace and course-based learning processes. Working within a relational, social realist ontology, the study takes a sociocultural-historical approach to learning, development and social change. Cultural-historical activity theory (CHAT) provides theoretical tools and a descriptive language to approach the rich, qualitative data derived from workplace and course observations, extensive interviews, and document review. Critical discourse analysis was used as a secondary analytical tool to probe ethical and environmental discourses that were found to be influential in the course and workplace activity systems. Data from the three case studies was analysed in stages. In the first stage, CHAT provided a theoretical perspective and language of description to analyse the interacting activity systems in which each learner-practitioner’s ethics-oriented reflexive deliberations occurred. This provided a platform for the second stage of analysis which was framed by Margaret Archer’s (1995) social realist theory of morphogenesis/ morphostasis, followed by a summative retroductive analysis, to give an account of the interplay of historically-emergent social and cultural structures and individual reflexivity in relation to the ethical dimensions of environmental education practice. The study traces how ethics-oriented reflexive deliberations occur at the untidy, unpredictable intersection of workplace, course and personal contexts, and are strongest when they are situated in authentic contexts that resonate with learner-practitioners’ ‘ultimate concerns’ (after Archer, 2003; 2007). In this study, the learner-practitioners’ ‘ultimate concerns’ included family, personal well-being, social justice, cultural identity and religious commitments. The scope and depth of learner-practitioners’ social-ecological knowledge was also identified as a key factor influencing ethics-oriented reflexive deliberations, although the mediation of such knowledge can be hindered by language and conceptual ii barriers, amongst others. The study also noted how ethical positions circulating in the workplace, course and personal contexts were diverse, uneven and dynamic. Some ethical positions were found to be more explicitly differentiated than others, either resonating with or being overlooked by the learner-practitioners as they deliberated the ethical dimensions of their environmental education practice. In situations where there was limited depth, conceptual clarity and/ or confidence to engage directly with ethical concerns, there was a tendency towards (inadvertent) ethical relativism. Insights derived from the study suggest that these factors have limiting effects on the ethics-oriented reflexive deliberations of novice environmental educators. These insights point to the need for ethical deliberations to be re-personalised in context and underpinned by depth knowledge. A relational and pragmatic approach to environmental ethics (that recognises the validity of judgemental rationality – which can be fallible – and which seeks out practical adequacy) is put forward as appropriate and potentially generative in environmental education and training processes. This would need to be supported by careful attention to the influence of environmental discourses and practices in shaping ethical deliberations, and may also be helpful in developing a much-needed accessible, everyday language of ethical engagement. This study’s contribution to new knowledge in the field of environmental education is through its account of ethics-oriented reflexive deliberations emerging (in the Archerian morphogenetic sense) in complex, indeterminate ways at the interface of sociocultural and social-ecological contexts. The ethics-oriented reflexive deliberations of novice environmental educators occur in relation to their ‘ultimate concerns’ and are advanced or hindered by the historically-emergent practices, discourses and material realities of their workplace, personal and educational contexts. These insights require that the complex interplay of intersecting contexts and concerns that shape ethics-oriented reflexive deliberations be acknowledged and carefully mediated in both workplace-based and coursebased professional development processes.

The notion of wildness as a concept that is essentially intractable to definition has profound linguistic and ethical implications for wilderness preservation and environmental education. A survey of the ways in which wilderness value is expressed through language reveals much confusion and repression regarding our understanding of the autonomy of nature. By framing discussions of wilderness through fact-driven language games, the value of the wild autonomy in nature becomes ineffable. In removing wildness from the discourse on wilderness we convert wilderness value from an intrinsic value into a distorted instrumental value. If we want to teach others that wilderness value means something more than a recreational, scientific, or economic opportunity, we need to include other ways of articulating this value in our education programs. Through linking the wildness of natural systems with the wild forms in human language games, I examine the conceptual freedom required for valuing autonomy in nature. The focus on what is required of language in expressing the intrinsic value of wilderness reveals that wilderness preservation and environmental education need complementary approaches to the current science-based frameworks, such as those used by the National Park Service. The disciplines of poetry, literature, ethics, and aesthetics offer alternative language games that allow for a more fluid, imaginative, and open-ended understanding of the autonomy of nature, and a means for articulating the value of this wildness that implies an ethical position of humility.

A process-information approach is examined as a foundation for an environmental philosophy that is dynamic and elastic, with particular emphasis on value, beauty, integrity and stability supporting Aldo Leopold's vision. I challenge one of the basic assumptions of Western philosophy, namely the metaphysical primacy of substance. The classical, medieval and modern metaphysics of substance is presented with particular attention given the paradoxes of substance. Starting from the philosophy of Heraclitus, relatively ignored by the Western tradition of philosophy, a process philosophy is developed as an alternative to standard metaphysical attitudes in philosophy. A possible resolution of Zeno's paradoxes leads to consideration of other paradoxes of substance metaphysics. It is argued that substance metaphysics is incompatible with evidence found in the shifting paradigms of ecology and general science. Process philosophy is explored as a basis for an environmental philosophy, attempting to put the environment back into philosophy.

Wilderness has been a central value in the development of the American environmental tradition and has been established in our laws and institutions, first in the National Park System and then more extensively through the Wilderness Act. Some have suggested that valuing wilderness, understood as nature without people or culture, is a peculiarly modern sentiment and that it is internally inconsistent, pathological, and a hindrance to solving real environmental problems. Contrary to this approach, I defend a richer conception of wilderness that undermines each of these claims. Beginning with an etymology of wilderness and a history of the development of wilderness appreciation, I argue that wilderness is not essentially an absence of people or culture but the flourishing of natural purposes: land characterized by untamed animals and plants in untamed relations. This interpretation of wilderness allows for a more cogent reading of the wilderness preservation tradition and the Wilderness Act. It also elucidates philosophical difficulties surrounding the practices of wilderness management and ecological restoration.

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This thesis aims to show that Martin Heidegger’s notion of fundamental ontology can serve as the foundation for a new approach to environmental ethics. The thesis begins with a brief introduction to the traditional approaches of environmental thought and a description of how Heidegger’s interpretation of human existence as Dasein provides a new perspective from which to approach questions of the fitting relation between human beings and the nonhuman world. While traditional environmental thought approaches nature primarily as the object of modern science and technology, Heidegger’s thought allows nature to become meaningful for human beings as an important part of their everyday lives. The first chapter begins with an examination of the wilderness and environmental justice debates and argues that Anglo-American environmental thought has yet to understand and define the natural environment in a way that encompasses the needs of both human and nonhuman life. Heidegger’s existential analytic of Dasein describes human existence in a way that demonstrates its interconnectedness with the nonhuman world and can be used to rethink the fitting place of human existence within the natural environment. The second chapter demonstrates that Heidegger’s critique of the metaphysical foundations of modern science and technology clears the way for a renewed understanding of the interconnectedness of human and nonhuman life. Heidegger’s critique demonstrates that an authentic understanding of human existence necessarily entails a new approach to interpreting being. The final chapter of the thesis analyses Heidegger’s retrieval of the early Greek understanding of being as phusis together with Heidegger’s notion of poetic dwelling in order to provide a new perspective for interpreting the scope of a fitting relation between human beings and natural environment. Heidegger’s thought demonstrates that the natural environment must be understood as an essential condition of human existence and can thereby allow human beings to interpret the nonhuman world in a way that would encompass the needs of both human and nonhuman life.