The Motivation Problem: Jamieson, Gardiner, and the Institutional Barriers to Climate Responsibility

ABSTRACT

After decades of institutional failure to address climate change, the need for ethically-motivated collective action is clear. It is equally clear that this issue is not widely perceived as an ethical problem. As founders of climate ethics research, Dale Jamieson and Stephen Gardiner offer compelling accounts to explain why. Nevertheless, questions of ethical motivation in the face of institutional failure arguably mark an impasse in these otherwise essential contributions. This essay identifies the philosophical limits of Jamieson and Gardiner’s accounts of ethical motivation while advancing an alternative philosophy of motivation that reframes the institutional barriers to climate responsibility.

KEYWORDS:

• Climate Ethics
• Motivation
• Institutions
• Affectivity

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. Although cultural and social institutions cannot be understood independently of one another and resist simple definition, we can analytically distinguish the in terms of collective experience and motivation. By ‘cultural’ institutions, I generally mean the normative structures of meaning – concepts, values, sensibilities, and what some call a worldview – that historically evolved to afford a common perspective and intrinsically motivate a common purpose. By contrast, I refer to ‘social’ institutions as the general structures of coexistence extrinsically motivating decision-making behavior in pursuit of practical interests. Beyond these rough definitions, I will gradually clarify and complicate this analytic distinction in the course of the essay.

2. The ‘Jevon’s Paradox’ in economic theory demonstrates this point. Overall energy consumption tends to increase with the development of energy-efficient technologies, not decrease, because cost-savings motivate greater demand.

3. This point doesn’t conflict with Gardiner’s view, since externalism merely states that cognitive recognition isn’t necessarily sufficient to motivate moral action (because other motives are involved). Hence, his claim that ‘Sometimes, “sunlight is the best antiseptic”’ is consistent with externalism (italics added).

4. In contrast to Jamieson’s rather linear view where motivation proceeds from recognition to response, Gardiner appears to adopt a relatively competitive view (as if decisions were determined by competing motives on a balance scale). Here, moral motives weigh against practical/corrupted motives in the decision-making process.

5. Research supporting this thesis links climate denial with identity in general (Fritsche & Häfner, 2012) and system-identity in particular (Feygina et al., 2010; Jylhä & Akrami, 2015). Of course, socio-cultural differences in system-identity mean different people will perceive the climate problem differently. Demographic research suggests discernable differences in climate denial along traditional lines of power vis-à-vis class, race, gender, nationality, etc. (Kahan et al., 2007; Leiserowitz & Akerlof, 2010; McCright & Dunlap, 2011; McCright, 2010; Sandvik, 2008). These findings make sense if those most privileged by – and invested in – the institutions driving climate change are less likely than their marginalized counterparts to show concern.

6. Considering the old divide, and sometimes rivalry, between continental and analytic philosophy, perhaps it’s worth mentioning here that I intend phenomenology to supplement, not replace, the accomplishments of analytic philosophers like Jamieson and Gardiner. Both traditions have their strengths and blind spots. Although I do believe that the phenomenological tradition is better equipped to address questions of collective motivation in response to a systemic problem like climate change, it is certainly true that this tradition is far behind their analytic counterpart in addressing environmental issues (perhaps owing to long-standing suspicions on the continent concerning science).

7. To exemplify this point, compare the experience of small problems like a broken hammer or car with a systemic problem like climate change. When things break, we can easily fix or replace them. Specific problems like this can be handled consciously by the individual. Indeed, cultural consumerism prompts us to buy a replacement and living in an industrialized society makes it easy and affordable to do so in practice. But what happens when the hammer works fine but using it to add on to the house becomes an issue because heating and cooling a larger house will increase emissions? Or what happens when the car works but one’s everyday driving routines become questionable? Systemic problems like these cannot be handled by individuals alone because here it is the socio-cultural projects integral to lifeworld identity that are problematic – not the particular things that stand out against this larger background.

8. This phenomenological distinction between ‘motivating’ and ‘motivated’ informs my analytic distinction between cultural and social institutions. For phenomenological philosophies of motivation, see Husserl’s Ideas II, Edith Stein’s Philosophy and Psychology of the Humanities, and Merleau-Ponty’s Phenomenology of Perception.

9. For a phenomenological account of institutions ranging from the personal to historical dimensions of experience, see Merleau-Ponty’s course notes collected in Institution and Passivity.

10. Gardiner (2010) identifies many of these coping strategies as symptoms of moral corruption (p. 94).

11. This point applies to philosophical divisions (e.g. realism vs. idealism). For Merleau-Ponty, competing schools of thought typically define themselves in opposition by reducing their premises to one motivation type or the other. Hence, both schools miss the essentially ambiguous relation of motivation defining experience. Insofar as Jamieson’s cultural internalism privileges ‘motivating’ norms and Gardiner’s social externalism privileges ‘motivated’ decisions, perhaps this charge applies to them as well.