Abstract
An influential idea in environmental ethics has been the claim that today’s environmental crises are rooted in a mechanistic, scientific worldview which entails dualism, anthropocentrism, and instrumentalism. It is therefore argued that we need to adopt an alternative, ecological worldview in order to resolve these crises and to develop the correct environmental values and practices. This argument carries several significant implications both internally to the field of environmental ethics, as well as to philosophy more generally. In particular, the argument suggests that our basic metaphysical ideas about the world have a significant influence on our values and practical behaviour. Furthermore, it implies that changing our basic metaphysical beliefs will in turn produce a significant practical and moral change. In this thesis, I defend the first claim and argue that our basic metaphysical beliefs will circumscribe ethics by providing an ontological account of what the world is like, as well as of our identity and place in the world. However, I criticize the second idea that adopting an alternative, ecological worldview will produce a change in our values and actions. Instead, I argue that the opposite is the case, namely that practical behaviour will produce certain metaphysical beliefs, which in turn will circumscribe ethics. Therefore, by changing our practice, we may eventually be able to adopt a different worldview. The primary aim of the thesis is to gain a better understanding of the claim that the way in which we think the world is like has consequences for how we act and what we value. A secondary aim is then to defend the claim that we need a reorientation towards an ecological worldview and identify a way for it to still be valid and useful to environmental philosophy. As such, I also hope to point out a way in which a revised version of the worldview argument may contribute with important insights into the problem of how we can realize the practical and moral change necessary for resolving today’s environmental crises.