Field philosophy: dualism to complexity through the borderland

Abstract

For 5 years, we have taught an interdisciplinary experiential environmental philosophy—field philosophy—course in Isle Royale National Park. We crafted this class with a pedagogy and curriculum guided by the ethic of care (Goralnik et al. in J Experiential Education 35(3):412–428, 2012) and a Leopold-derived community-focused environmental ethic (Goralnik and Nelson in J Environ Educ 42(3):181–192, 2011) to understand whether and how wilderness experience might impact the widening of students’ moral communities. But we found that student pre-course writing already revealed a preference for nonanthropocentric and nonutilitarian ethics, albeit with a naïve understanding that enabled contradictions and confusion about how these perspectives might align with action. By the end of the course, though, we recognized a recurrent pattern of learning and moral development that provides insight into the development of morally inclusive environmental ethics. Rather than shift from a utilitarian or anthropocentric ethic to a more biocentric or ecocentric ethic, students instead demonstrated a metaphysical shift from a worldview dominated by dualistic thinking to a more complex awareness of motivations, actions, issues, and natural systems. The consistent occurrence of this preethical growth, observed in student writing and resulting from environmental humanities field learning, demonstrates a possible path to ecologically informed holistic environmental ethics.