Experiencing Ecological Events: Bernstein, Dewey, and the Critique of Event Causality

In the “Concluding Remarks” of his final book The Vicissitudes of Nature, Richard J. Bernstein makes an appeal to his readers urging that “we need to face the full complexity of developing new ways of speaking of causality if we are to develop an adequate conception of the relations of humans to the rest of nature” (206). Bernstein refers to the modern ways in which we speak of causality as “event causality” (Vicissitudes 206). He calls to mind Kant's deterministic claim that the principle of causality requires that events relate to one another through synthetic a priori judgments, known through pure reason alone. At the end of his book, Bernstein quickly shifts from redressing event causality to calling on philosophers to assist in addressing our current ecological crisis (Vicissitudes 206–08).In his major work Experience and Nature, John Dewey relies on his own idiosyncratic use of the term “event” to fund his theory of experience. In an early review of Experience and Nature, George Santayana recognized the importance of events in Dewey's metaphysics, noting his “choice of ‘events’ to be his metaphysical elements” (250). Raymond D. Boisvert goes so far as to claim that the event serves as the prototypical ontological category in Experience and Nature (Boisvert, Dewey's Metaphysics 60). David T. Hansen argues that Dewey's literary essay “Events and Meanings” published in The New Republic in 1922 can be read as a prologue to Experience and Nature (Hansen, “Dewey's Call for Meaning” 20). Apart from the commentary scattered over a century by the abovementioned authors and a few select others, debate on Dewey's metaphysics neglects detailed analysis of his elemental concept. This is even more perplexing given that the notion of event spans much of Dewey's later works. In agreement with Hugh McDonald (154), I contend that the event is a central concept in Dewey's late work. Dewey relies on the concept in his books Experience and Nature, Logic: The Theory of Inquiry, Knowing and the Known, and such important articles as “Time and Individuality,” “Context and Thought,” “Events and Meanings,” “Meaning and Existence,” and “Events and the Future,” where Dewey provides a critical commentary of the description of events made by C. D. Broad in his 1923 publication Scientific Thought. Even though the notion appears to hold importance in framing their pragmatic naturalisms, both Dewey and Bernstein leave the notion of events undeveloped and ambiguous.After an analysis of Bernstein's critique of event causality, I will reconstruct Dewey's undeveloped notion of events to address pragmatic naturalism's task before us—our ecological crisis. Along with Bernstein, I contend that we cannot appropriately address our contemporary ecological crisis without ridding ourselves of the belief that our minds and experiences lie outside an ecological world. We must develop as a method and as a culture a framework and habit of living within and as ecological-minded earthly inhabitants. This is why Bernstein urges us in the conclusion of his final book to address event causality as contributing to the misconceptions of, and faulty approaches to, our ecological crisis. Invoking the recent work on pragmatic naturalism and pragmatist ecologies (Alexander; Alhanen; Browne; Crippen and Schulkin; Godfrey-Smith; Johnson and Schulkin), I argue that to address the problems of our time, it is best to understand most—if not all—events as “ecological events.”Before I begin an argument for recognizing events as ecological events, it is important to say a few words about the permanent Deweyan deposit in Richard J. Bernstein's pragmatic naturalism. Doing so will place Dewey's theory of events as a fitting alternative to Bernstein's critique of event causality.It may be said that Bernstein's Vicissitudes of Nature is best understood as a commentary and complement to Dewey's Experience and Nature. In many ways, The Vicissitudes of Nature can be read as a genealogical account of modernity's concepts of nature. In contrast to Bernstein's structured, chronological critical analysis of specific iterations of naturalism, Dewey's Experience and Nature is, to quote Peter Godfrey-Smith, “full of sweeping historical stories, running back and forth over the centuries [describing] how the political and economic context of philosophical work interacts with evident features of everyday experience to produce errors and distortions” (Godfrey-Smith, “Dewey's Experience and Nature” 286). Thus, in The Vicissitudes of Nature, Bernstein takes the time to do what Dewey should have spent at least a chapter doing. While Dewey dialectically presents sweeping remarks on the genesis of ideas pertaining to experience and nature throughout centuries, Bernstein gives detailed accounts of the precarious and the stable, specific to the concept of nature, in such thinkers as Spinoza, Hume, Kant, Hegel, Marx, Freud, and Nietzsche. If we take the preface to Bernstein's final book for its word, The Vicissitudes of Nature is a tribute to Dewey and a pronouncement of his early and unending romance with Dewey's pragmatic naturalism. In the preface, he champions how “Dewey challenged all metaphysical and epistemological dichotomies; [and] argued for an enriched (naturalistic Hegelian) conception of experience that is continuous with the rest of nature” (Bernstein, Vicissitudes vii). At the twilight of his life, Bernstein ends his philosophical curiosities where they began, a complete consummation (in the Deweyan sense) of a life of philosophical thought. Bernstein hopes his Vicissitudes of Nature be read as a companion to his Pragmatic Naturalism: John Dewey's Living Legacy. Part of that living legacy is writ throughout Bernstein's last book. For example, in the same way that Dewey argues in Experience and Nature that everything natural is historical (LW 1:55; see also McDonald 69),1 Bernstein emphatically states that his approach is thoroughly historical: I reject such an ahistorical view [of nature]. I accept Hegel's dictum that philosophy is its own time comprehended in thoughts. This means that the task of understanding nature must meet new challenges and developments; this is an open task that must be performed over and over again. Many of these new challenges arise from the emergence of new scientific disciplines, such as neuroscience, cognitive science, and ecology, as well as from the changing understanding of the nature of science itself. (Vicissitudes 11; see also 204)This commitment to a continuity between nature and history, or to borrow a phrase from Thomas M. Alexander (Human Eros 64), to think of events as “evolutionary histories,” has spanned Bernstein's career. Bernstein adds later in his final book: “[T]he various conceptions of nature are rooted in the historical intellectual environment that sets the context for the issues that each thinker confronts” (Vicissitudes 205; emphasis added). For instance, he reads the Critique of Pure Reason as Kant's grappling with an existential crisis of his time, specifically the tension between freedom and the determinism of Newtonian science (Bernstein, Vicissitudes 73). In this sense, even ideas such as the concept of nature are events constructed within environmental interactions. I would argue such cultural transactions as “historical intellectual environments” are themselves ecological events.Bernstein hopes his survey of modern conceptions of nature serve as a “warning of [the] obstacles and limitations” of, among other things, but primarily, causal explanation (Vicissitudes 206). He intends for his book to be a prolegomenon, “a guide to what we can know.” In Deweyan fashion, Bernstein's book surveys the philosophical history of what impedes and advances our human experience of nature. Like Dewey, Bernstein's prolegomenon implores us to participate critically in the constant renewal of human experience. Bernstein specifically calls attention to the inadequate ways in which we speak of the transactions between humans and nature (Vicissitudes 205–07). As it is with Marx's famous eleventh thesis on Feuerbach, any worthwhile study into the nature of nature must produce fruitful ways to address our ecological crisis. One such obstacle in confronting the challenges of our ecological crisis is, as Bernstein states, “event causality.”Bernstein illustrates this by reference to Kant. For the sake of space, I will not provide an argument for or against Bernstein's critique of Kant's event causality.2 What is of most importance is the lasting impact of a specific interpretation of Kant's views on causality. I intend simply to clarify Bernstein's remarks and follow his line of argument through, enhancing it with reference to Dewey's pragmatic naturalistic account of cause and effect.Kant's response to Hume's psychological account of causality has left an enduring impact. Hume's version of causality is the result of a psychological inference between two discrete events that occur together with regularity. Under this view, there is no objective causality between events. Given Kant's allegiance to Newtonian physics, this was unacceptable. Kant sidesteps Hume's psychological account, recognizing the difficulty in providing an experiential account of causality. In the first edition of Critique of Pure Reason, Kant proclaims in his Second Analogy: “Everything that happens (begins to be) presupposes something which it follows in accordance with a rule” (Kant 1998; A189/B232, B304). This rule is not psychological but a synthetic a priori judgment because, although it lies outside the realm of experience, it is, he believes, necessary for understanding all experience as sequential. Kant's restatement in the second edition is as follows: “All alterations occur in accordance with the law of the connection of cause and effect” (Kant 1998; A189/B232, B304). Requiring that events relate to one another through synthetic a priori judgments, Bernstein reminds us that Kant's causal laws do not adequately permit novelty or freedom understood as the of a cause leave no for a natural account of the or also In to more and the notion of events is by Kant in the and events are with in from of to discrete of Thus, for Hume, events are for Kant, they are each a line of or of borrow a phrase from Kant's events are in are for Bernstein Kant's causal to nature or are of Vicissitudes Kant and to event causality on the of where events are and As we will see for Dewey, nature is as of events it is by that is, by continuity of from to (LW For Bernstein, nature is as of it is by discrete are by causal causality, in contrast to Dewey's events, how each is full of and by a Kant the ways in which experience can be as an of an existential need to a current and Dewey this in his is at For events are there is no event which is or any more it is or The same may be in other words by that no event to us or event has to be to be a cause or would be if there not a and to be Given the of a and of events into a continuous history, there is and necessary for one event as or and other as or For the is, for the event of the history and the is an or event in the same The events in are from of a of events in which there is no such as an existential or an existential as begin an is with The is that the category of to existential as a and problems about such are The problems can be by that select and more and as that in their with one a history with its own and (LW see also Hume's event causality is Kant's event causality is and Dewey's is thoroughly such a of cause and is not to borrow a phrase from Dewey Thomas given that and are in to environmental transactions from which are what ecological calls see also Johnson and Crippen and In other the cause is a history of what a specific has an within an Bernstein not to Dewey's events in his of Kant's event causality for that in his work on as George Santayana remarks in an early review of Experience and Nature, Dewey events as his a tribute to Dewey's Experience and Nature is left without reference to this central concept I take Dewey's events to be central for his later but I also think he is in his on events together in one one may as Bernstein may well that the notion of events is more a it is but response would be that if the concept is so important to Dewey to to it it simply means we have more work to do in the not in Dewey's events as a central concept. The most accounts of the event in Dewey are made by Boisvert and McDonald In what I intend to to these important in Dewey I to the term “event” from its history of causal by and Dewey's concept of events. Doing so will complement Bernstein's last work with a version of Dewey's pragmatic naturalism that the importance of events as the it is important to a understanding of what Dewey means by events. will that he is to address the same issues of cause and that Bernstein are to our understanding of nature and its on our ecological much as the event is a central concept for Dewey, he neglects to provide a description of the Experience and Nature Dewey at least of are two important to take from The event is an term in Dewey's and the event is a concept in Dewey's work. In Logic: The Theory of Inquiry, Dewey us what events are not by us what is by the is not a or event or a of and events. or event is a or of an (LW We experience events in connection with a but events themselves are not that events and their to have many for Dewey's the of the to us and remarks on the event in Dewey's I will on in Experience and Nature, on from other later In Experience and Nature, we are that events to more that the event is a of nature (LW events their and to their events are of a of each with its a and a events have no existential or (LW As all events and all events are (LW as all experience is all events are (LW see also for Dewey, all are events, known or (LW Thus, the ontological of events. We are also that all experience is (LW see also events our (LW see a with metaphysics, which that is Dewey's events for that occur before and One way to understand Dewey's events is to view the event as a developing that is, not in a to so as from This view the of Dewey's principle of as events our us a for the to The for events the from which experience gives us a of the of nature (LW provide us context (LW events a of and of what Dewey and to as the description the of the and environment in to their with the natural precarious and of ecological events (LW In this as we can both and events (LW see also the ecological notion of argues that the of ecological is the of the of in nature that with it the of complexity also He at the among science, and the the is a between such as the or the between a and are of where and are This also in cultural an of an existential and and its and we may think of events as in a necessary to the analysis of events as cause and which for a description of cause and that is not deterministic but thoroughly and natural (LW in “Context and Thought,” Dewey (LW us that events are by such that for that may be Dewey that we from natural to that is, that nature is an of is to that there is no one and of is but another way of nature is an of each no how it may be with others, has its own (LW it events as I The of experience is the event as I full of which one has a or of, not in the way that it may be in words would for Dewey, a where is into of and relations or has an of Thus, the principle of continuity and the emergence of are by a account of the Dewey “Events that are or in a context where they new ways of and new (LW all are events, but not all events are are events with (LW not can be to through a method (LW see also appears that although events on may not arise to the of we may of events, or not an event as was an “event is a or of an (LW In his important Thought,” Dewey (LW say I have a or that so and so is the is to that the in is not into and it a conclusion without of the for the which it is the first in the of in with such an it is what Dewey means by or and (LW see also In the of the nature of events that are but not the description of such events as or (LW as they are in their own (LW The nature of is the and the of The quote also that events that are the Deweyan and open themselves to the of events (LW is a continuity between events, and events, and events continuity as well between nature and and experience and that we have a though no account of Dewey's events and have Bernstein's event causality, us what is, how events are best as and why a notion ecological events serve as an alternative to the event causality of the is as much a as it is a As a science, it the of and in of the between and their is argued that makes in view of theory The same can be said of Dewey's and Bernstein's pragmatic naturalism (Boisvert, Dewey's Metaphysics As “ecological are in that as well as and as well as are of nature This Dewey's description of nature (LW much Dewey's and Bernstein's pragmatic naturalism, with the and description of and continuity between experience and nature and the precarious and the within the (LW as a is in many ways a response to the of to account for emergence in nature without to version of or Dewey's of as it is in Experience and Nature, is also a response to the of metaphysics to of and have that Godfrey-Smith, metaphysics has accounts that states “ecological laws are more the importance of historical in ecological and in are as much by of what before as they are by current ecological argument for all experience as ecological events is an at of a pragmatist in the and ecological of the of nature, what he calls (Human Eros are by Dewey's pragmatic naturalism, which the nature of and environment and the principle of continuity between the human and and and nature and For pragmatist an of ecological with the and that can from that and such an of cultural to the of that ecological to alterations in so that the human can his or as within natural and to alterations of cognitive a that can as an to with the recent of pragmatist can be in in which Crippen and the late a version of Deweyan pragmatic naturalism I Bernstein would have argue that minds are living ecologies from their or natural and in each of the pragmatist ecologies is an account of all as in ecological example, even it to the without the Dewey that as a way of life is, at its the and of ecological transactions In The and Dewey but they has which in The of everything is with the of other The is of such a that the of each is by its connection with are which can in a of many can and develop by the of other of is the of which about The life history of an is connection with what other are doing. and the of (LW are Dewey's where and as was “ecological are in and it is best think of events as Eros 64), events themselves are ecological and most to The of an event is to of experience. ecological events for the emergence and of ecological to address environmental Dewey is to in their and without about if one sets to understand the of he is to something about the of and that the of (LW see also Hansen the he that and an event its its place in the of this events as ecological events with the epistemological view of ecological minds by Crippen and a more description of experience and its is to view most—if not as ecological to the of events by Dewey, that Bernstein and events as a Bernstein see the in in the metaphysical of events. I he that it a to interpretation of Dewey's events, or he events with or which Bernstein as a in Dewey's (Bernstein, and In the first instance, Bernstein is and in the he Dewey's between these as in his What is of Bernstein's view of Dewey's events is that he it an Bernstein, Johnson and and as if events and and events and are is that their use of events is not in reference to Dewey's specific given that the of events is, I a Deweyan any commentary on Dewey's metaphysics of experience that not clarify this the at a more analysis of his pragmatic his Bernstein Dewey's of and transactions as central to his metaphysics of experience Bernstein, John Dewey I would argue that Dewey's concept of events is an notion his views of or transactions and within a this view, Bernstein is in and transactions as of Dewey's theory of experience and nature, but he far in the two important Deweyan concepts of experience together (Bernstein, John Dewey This is because, at the event may be read as a an a an experience, a or even a experience Bernstein, Pragmatic Dewey, In many ways, as we have the event many of Dewey's major concepts What his major concepts together is the and nature of the of “Events and Meanings,” Dewey us that that have no are and if they are are What do we of of Dewey's metaphysics of experience without a of For Dewey, it it may be to his pragmatic naturalistic I this it is that this his concept of events from an without to a and so event with framing events as ecological events that events are rooted in the ecological means that all events have on the and this view, all pragmatic naturalistic environmental understood for and given the understanding of events and experience I contend that the term the and ecological nature of that and experience that is in this as with the notion of Dewey's concepts of are not events, and events are as much of a central in his later work as While experience and are events are As events provide a into in Deweyan For the of our events understood as ecological provides a for on a Deweyan of As events a a and are “a of in that I do not think Dewey's other concepts do Given it can be argued that Bernstein's not to Dewey's events as a to the ecological of event causality is a he that his final book is a it is noting that a Dewey he the term of in his Experience and Nature. in its much to what is to be in the concept “ecological the term as a notion has its own address our ecological we need to an ecological-minded is that recognizing events as ecological will if even a a in our of reference to our relations with Vicissitudes of Nature is an to the for a pragmatic naturalism that can have for addressing our ecological crisis. Dewey, Bernstein reminds us that to and we must be of our natural and is that a view of experience and nature, in line with the of pragmatic naturalism, that all as ecological with an emphasis on the and nature of all of us to ecological-minded of the If a way of and with a that is as much there as it is a of as by a of ecological a event is a fitting alternative to Bernstein's critique of event causality. This is the This work calls for an and political thesis that to account for themselves both as and within ecological Bernstein's was that we addressing our ecological crisis from a view of is that in addressing the of event causality by ecological events as its we may be more in our for in our against our ecological crisis.