





































Microsoft Word - Hudson-final.docx


[Expositions 8.2 (2014) 59–78]  Expositions (online) ISSN: 1747–5376 
 

Does It Matter Whether Ecosystems Are Real? 
 

ROBERT HUDSON 

University of Saskatchewan 

 

 

ABSTRACT 

 

The question whether ecosystems are real has significant implications for what we perceive to be 

our moral duties towards them. In this paper I examine two environmental thinkers who reject 

the reality of ecosystems, though for widely different reasons: Bryan Norton’s (2005) rejection 

book is based on his philosophical allegiance to a pragmatic anti-essentialism, whereas Allan 

Fitzsimmons (1999) simply finds the prevalent definitions for the term ‘ecosystem’ to be circular, 

confused or empirically baseless. I argue for the claim that Fitzsimmons’ approach is preferable, 

and in fact rightfully leaves open the theoretical possibility that ecosystems are real. 

 

 

1. Are Ecosystems Real?  

 

For the purposes of this paper, I take the primordial sense of “real” to be: has an existence 

outside of mind, independent of being thought about. Many things fail this definition, such as 

when one says that a conspiracy is not real (it’s all in your head), that Sherlock Holmes is not 

real (he exists only in the book), and that the edge of the earth is not real (it’s simply an 

invention of fearful seafarers). A subsidiary sense of “real” is: has an existence independent of 

other things that are also outside the mind, to which it is not reducible. Many other things fail 

this definition, such as when one suggests that paintings are not real (they are ultimately just 

assemblages of globs of paint on a canvas), emotions are not real (they are ultimately just 

biochemical processes), nor are corporations real (they are simply groups of people). The 

strongest sense of “real” is then to say that something both exists outside the mind and is 

irreducible to other things. In this sense one can say, to an approximation, that most real things 

are just atoms: atoms exist outside the mind, and most things are simply atomic conglomerations.  

One can resist the conclusion that something is just a conglomeration of atoms, however, if it 

is an emergent entity—that is, something which has an existence above and beyond the objects 

(namely atoms) that make it up. It is sometimes said that (great) paintings are objects that are 

emergent in that they are more than just the paint that makes them up. Social groups, too, are 

sometimes said to emerge, where they acquire an identity that is more than the people that 

comprise them. And this is something that is occasionally said about ecosystems. For instance, 



Does It Matter Whether Ecosystems Are Real?  60 
 

the ecologist Eugene Odum maintains that “the old folk wisdom about ‘the forest being more 

than just a collection of trees’ is [. . .] the first working principle for ecology.”1 He analyzes what 

he means by “emergence” as the unpredictability of an object’s properties given its components, 

using as a rudimentary example of this phenomenon the emergent properties of water given the 

combination of oxygen and hydrogen atoms.2 In this sense, Odum cites as an example of an 

emergent ecosystem the coral reef at Enewetak Atoll in the Pacific Ocean which he studied along 

with his brother Harold Odum in 1954, a reef that maintains a high rate of primary productivity 

despite the low nutrient content of the surrounding ocean.3 So one might argue that ecosystems 

are real in the strong sense, in that they are both independent of people’s minds (i.e., independent 

of being thought about) and (so the ecologist Eugene Odum seems to believe) independent of (in 

the sense of irreducible to) other sorts of mind-independent objects. Of course, Odum’s analysis 

of emergence is not unassailable—it is just an illustration of how one might be a realist in the 

strong sense. 

For some writers on ecology, however, saying that ecosystems are real is problematic. For 

instance, this is the view of Bryan Norton in his (2005). Norton’s vantage-point has nothing to do 

with ecosystems, per se; rather, it is a product of a general, philosophical skepticism about the 

powers of human knowers. He calls the view he finds objectionable “essentialism,” though it is 

simply the primordial sense of “realism” we described above. Essentialism, he asserts,  

 

is the view that the categories of human thought answer to real, preexisting 

‘kinds’ or categories. [. . .] [By assigning] to nature a ‘real’ structure that exists 

prior to experience or language, [essentialism is] able to support . . . the view that 

at least on some deep, metaphysical level, the structure of the world is available 

for discovery.4 

 

Speaking as a “pragmatist,” he believes that 

 

the way forward [is] to embrace experience as the measure of all things and 

forever abandon the failed Cartesian dream of describing a human-independent 

reality as it is, corresponding to our assertions about it.5 

 

Norton advances various reasons for his anti-essentialism. To begin with, he views it as a 

philosophic consequence, in a Deweyian spirit, of the Darwinian realization that natural, 

biological categories “are not fixed but changing.”6 By extending Darwin’s insight to all forms 

of linguistic categorizations, Norton suggests that John Dewey showed how 

essentialism had become untenable after Darwin. Without essentialism, general 

words like cat and tyrannosaurus cannot be taken to denote or refer to a fixed and 



61  Hudson 
 

 
 

given kind unified by some “essence.” [. . .] [T]he idea of a rational, unchanging 

reality was inevitably undermined.7  

 

Norton also contends that the passage to anti-essentialism is a feature of the later philosophy of 

the positivist Rudolf Carnap. As Norton reads Carnap,  

 

after a career of chasing the impossible dream of a single, picture-like language 

that depicted reality as it really was, Carnap finally—in his late fifties and early 

sixties—recognized the impossibility of such a unique structure.8 

 

Carnap was, Norton believes, finally “freed of Cartesian enslavement to the belief that reality is 

imposed upon us by the world out there,” and finally convinced after a long philosophic career 

that  

 

the categories we use to study nature are not ‘given’ in prelinguistic reality, [but rather] 

language itself must give structure to the world as we encounter it and reason about it.9 

 

Though Norton does not specify the scope of his anti-essentialism, he is clear in his (2005) that 

all the key ecological concepts—such as environmental sustainability, sustainable development, 

ecological integrity, ecological health, and so on—must be so understood. As a case in point, it is 

his view that there are no ecosystems “out there,” waiting to be discovered by ecologists in some 

“mind-independent reality.” For Norton, in the primordial sense of “real,” ecosystems are not 

real.  

One might regard this as a somewhat negative position to adopt, a position that would likely 

startle an ecologist such as Odum. However, Norton regards this post-modern position as highly 

liberating and fundamental to a public policy that hopes to solve environmental problems. With 

language freed from the burden of describing some mind-independent reality, Norton believes  

 

we can think of language as a creative tool for characterizing and talking about 

problems and solutions, [. . .] a tool that communities can use to communicate and 

deliberate, [. . .] [and that] itself [gives] structure to the world as we encounter it 

and reason about it.10 

 

For him, 

 



Does It Matter Whether Ecosystems Are Real?  62 
 

the assertions we make about nature reflect [. . .] a socialized reality in which 

experience and communication are inevitably intertwined. [. . .] [T]hey reflect the 

“structure” we impose upon reality when we use language to describe it.11 

 

Armed with the ability to “create reality” in our choice of language, we are in a position to seek 

those “linguistic forms [that] will maximize communication and sharing of experience.”12 Indeed, 

Norton regards as the purpose of his (2005) book 

 

to ask what language, what descriptive models, and what representations will 

encourage better communication and more cooperation in the discussion and 

formation of environmental policy.13 

 

In this sense he describes his approach as “conventionalist” and “pragmatic,” one that deploys a 

liberalized view of language and communication in service of addressing environmental 

concerns. 

Another writer who rejects a realist interpretation of ecosystems is Allan Fitzsimmons in his 

(1999). The basis for his rejection is less philosophical than Norton’s—he simply points to the 

fact that there is a great deal of imprecision in how scientists and policymakers go about 

delineating the boundaries of systems. He suggests that  

 

a common trait among scholarly books presenting collections of ecosystem 

studies is the lack of any geographic consistency among the ecosystems serving as 

units of study,14 

 

and goes so far as to devote an entire chapter (chapter 2 of his 1999) to illustrate how national 

ecosystem maps of the United States substantially vary depending on which governmental, non-

governmental agency, or ecologist one cites. He attributes this imprecision to the lack of  

 

theoretical or methodological requirements imposed by ecology or any other 

branch of science regarding the size, shape, or location of any portion of the 

landscape that is to bear the ecosystem label.15 

 

But he does not think this lack of requirements is due to any laziness on the part of ecologists. 

Rather, from Arthur Tansley, the originator of the ecosystem concept, to the ecologists of the 

present day, ecosystems have been traditionally been viewed as transient and arbitrarily bounded 

entities.16 Given this indeterminateness in the identification of ecosystems, Fitzsimmons draws 

the conclusion that 



63  Hudson 
 

 
 

 

ecosystems are but mental constructs, a convenient geographic shorthand that 

analysts use to describe some particular slice of the landscape rather than 

examples of objective reality.17 

 

In our terminology, we can say that, for Fitzsimmons, ecosystems are not real in the primordial 

sense of “real,” just as they are not real in this sense for Norton. 

Now there is clearly room for a realist to contest both Norton’s and Fitzsimmons’ arguments. 

Norton is arguably wedded to a controversial anti-realism (for him, an “anti-essentialism”) based 

on a singular reading of the history of philosophy (in terms of a movement away from 

Cartesianism and towards pragmatism), as well as a dubious application of Darwinian insights to 

linguistic categorizations. And Fitzsimmons may be jumping the gun in assuming that real 

objects must have determinate boundaries and invariable constitutions: surely something can be 

real but mappable in different, even incompatible ways. (Note however that if we are trying to 

ascertain whether something is real in the first place, such an indeterminacy in mapping is an 

argument against its reality since if the object weren’t real, we’d expect there to be some dispute 

about its boundaries—our opinions about its boundaries would not be guided or adjudicated by 

the presence of the real boundaries possessed by the object.) However, let’s put aside their 

individual reasons for rejecting the reality of ecosystems and focus instead on what they believe 

their anti-realist positions imply as regards public policy pertaining to environmental (ecosystem) 

management. As it turns out, comparing the views of Norton and Fitzsimmons has interesting 

implications for how we answer the titular question, “Does it Matter Whether Ecosystems are 

Real?” 

 

2. Environmental Public Policy 

 

Fitzsimmons’ view is that since ecosystems are not real, this leaves ecologists, policymakers and 

everyone else the freedom to delimit as they please what to view as ecosystems. It also leaves 

them the freedom to fabricate as they like a host of related concepts, such as those listed above—

environmental sustainability, sustainable development, ecological integrity and ecological health. 

What Fitzsimmons does is analyze a large variety of published discussions of such 

environmental concepts, and finds the definitions of these concepts found in these discussions to 

be hopelessly vague, and sometimes even circular.18 Norton himself gets tagged in the critique, 

having circularly defined sustainability and ecosystem health.19 None of this would be a problem, 

even for Fitzsimmons (as many useful areas of study contain vague, and even circular, 

definitions), were it not the case that, on his view, the setting of environmental policy (at least in 

the United States, circa 1999, when Fitzsimmons wrote his book) has been excessively 



Does It Matter Whether Ecosystems Are Real?  64 
 

influenced by the “new paradigmists” according to whom “protecting ecosystem health has 

become the highest good and that to do otherwise is immoral.”20 It is Fitzsimmons’ view that this 

influence motivates a form of environmental management that abrogates private property 

rights,21 and does so wrongfully since things like ecosystem health, integrity and sustainability 

only have value if ecosystems are real (which of course they aren’t, according to Fitzsimmons).  

As Fitzsimmons realizes, new paradigmists are doubtfully discouraged by academic 

arguments regarding the non-reality of ecosystems. As he suggests, “sustainable development,” 

along with its kindred notions, “has less to do with ecology than it has to do with power. It is 

fundamentally a ‘political concept.’”22 And when we return to Norton’s views of the topic, we 

find this to be exactly his view on the matter. Norton considers the question why he adopts the 

terms “sustainable” and “sustainable development” in discussing the aims of environmental 

policy, and he is frank that he chooses these terms 

 

not because of the strength or clarity of their current definitions-in-use. [. . .] [The] 

goal, rather, is to propose [. . .] a definition that is useful in a democratic process 

of deliberation about what to do. The advantages of the term sustainability are of 

two kinds, political and practical. Politically, this term has been accepted in global 

forums discussing global problems and policy. Some governments have 

committed themselves to sustainable policies and to achieve development that is 

sustainable. So [. . .] there is no doubt that sustainability will be a useful term in 

public discourse[.]23  

 

For Norton, it is the usefulness of the terms “sustainable,” “ecosystem,” and the rest—their 

pragmatic value—that motivates their introduction into discourse about the environment. Of 

course, such an attitude is completely in harmony with Norton’s overarching philosophical 

orientation described above—i.e., his anti-essentialism (anti-realism), combined with his liberal 

attitude concerning the choice of language as guided by the need to foster cooperation and 

communication amongst communities, here in service of solving environmental problems. The 

issue of the “reality” of the objects purportedly referred to by introduced terms is, accordingly, 

an irrelevant matter for him, having freed ourselves from the “failed Cartesian dream of 

describing a human-independent reality.” Instead, the crucial issue when we stipulate, 

specifically, a definition for the term “sustainable” is that 

 

we endow a community with the ability to choose what is important to monitor 

and what is important to protect. [. . .] The persuasiveness, in public discussion, of 

any given definition [. . .] will depend upon the plausibility of the arguments, 

provided by a community group or individual, that a given indicator should be 



65  Hudson 
 

 
 

monitored, and certain processes protected, because those process are involved in 

generating an important social value.24 

 

It is here that Fitzsimmons and Norton part ways. Up till now they have shared—though for 

different reasons—an anti-realism about ecosystems. They also share what Fitzsimmons calls a 

“people centeredness” in assessing land use management policy—a focus on producing “outputs 

useful to humans,”25 that is, outputs with pragmatic or social value, as opposed to the bio- or eco-

centeredness of new paradigmists who attach ultimate intrinsic value to biological or ecological 

entities. But apart from these points of convergence, Norton and Fitzsimmons diverge sharply on 

the question of how pragmatic or social values relate to scientific, ecological inquiry. 

Fitzsimmons bemoans the fact that  

 

within ecosystem ecology there is a movement away from an understanding of 

science as a relatively value-free pursuit of knowledge based on theory, confirmed 

observation, and verifiable experimentation and to a world wherein work that is 

distinctly value laden [. . .] is deemed scientific.26 

 

At this stage Fitzsimmons pointedly cites Norton, quoting a passage in which Norton and Robert 

Ulanowicz assert that “conservation biology is a normative science [. . .] guided most basically 

by a commitment to important social values.”27 Fitzsimmons does not hesitate to express caution 

about such an approach, lest it blur “the line between science and advocacy.”28 It is a caution 

with which Norton is familiar, as he recounts at one point being advised by the ecologist David 

Policansky that we should “do our best to segregate factual reports from evaluative 

prescriptions” since (to paraphrase Policansky) we should first get our facts straight before we 

make up our own minds about what to value.29 To be sure, the attitude that scientists should keep 

their facts separate from their values is, as Norton recognizes, quite common (see 34–37 where 

he cites a number of expressions of this attitude). In fact, he candidly suggests that his (2005) 

book is nothing less than a “detailed response to [this] attitude.”30 

So the situation we are left with, in the hands of Norton and Fitzsimmons, is this. On 

Fitzsimmons’ view, if talk about ecosystems and the related notions of ecosystem health, 

integrity and sustainability is to be meaningful, we need to have precise, non-circular definitions 

for these notions, and there needs to be empirical support for the claim that the referents for these 

notions actually exist in the world. Only after having accomplished these tasks does it make 

sense to ascribe value to ecosystems and direct public policy towards their preservation. By 

contrast, Norton maintains that we should, right from the beginning, move to preserve 

ecosystems, given that communities have made it clear to policymakers that doing so serves 

various pragmatic, social needs. For instance, sustainability is important for Norton because  



Does It Matter Whether Ecosystems Are Real?  66 
 

 

we must endow communities with the ability to choose what is important to 

monitor and what is important to protect. Choosing what to sustain is prior to 

choosing how to measure its sustenance.31 

 

As a case in point, Norton considers Federal wetlands policy which, in the past, was motivated 

by the thought that swampy areas are worthless and should be drained, but then, 

 

as ecological information came in, [. . .] it became obvious that wetlands perform 

many important, sometimes essential functions in supporting social values: flood 

control, nutrient removal, wildlife habitat, and many others.32 

 

In other words, it suddenly became important to sustain wetlands—or to put the point more 

exactly, considering Norton’s anti-essentialism according to which it does not make sense to say 

that wetlands exist in the world, independently of our minds—it became important to talk (and 

act) as though there are wetlands needing preservation, because doing so has distinct social 

benefits for human communities.  

We need to determine, then, who has properly framed the procedure by which environmental 

public policy should be developed. As Fitzsimmons has it, should scientists first settle the 

empirical question of whether ecosystems exist, and then leave it to the public and policymakers 

to address the issue whether ecosystems are the sorts of things that deserve preservation? Or, 

following Norton, do we begin by determining what sorts of things are valued by communities, 

and on that basis frame public policy using the language of “ecosystems,” “sustainability,” and 

so on, that has the effect of upholding these community values? To start in addressing this issue, 

let us consider the reasons why, according to Norton, in order to do the science that underlies 

environmental public policy one must keep firmly in mind the social values that are at stake. 

 

3. Norton’s Infusion of Values into Facts 

 

Norton provides three reasons why scientific inquiry into environmental issues should embrace a 

consideration of social values. The first reason, less developed by him, is that a “serial approach 

to science and policy,” according to which “the process of gathering scientific data and building 

models is supposed to be completed in isolation from policy discussion and formation,”33 is an 

impossibility: “real science,” he says, 

 



67  Hudson 
 

 
 

is not done in value-neutral contexts, and especially practitioners of mission-

oriented sciences such as conservation biology and conservation ecology cannot 

seal themselves off from political issues and social values.34 

 

But surely it is too strong to suggest that people are completely unable to set aside their values 

whenever they make decisions. It may be a struggle, but people often reflect on how their 

valuational attachments might influence their decision making, and sometimes make conscious 

efforts to limit this influence. Saying that they will necessarily fail at this task is a significant 

psychological hypothesis that needs empirical backing. It may be, though, that Norton’s point is 

different—it is that any sort of thinking requires the use of assumptions to which one is 

“attached” in an irrational manner (on pain of a justificatory regress). The matter then turns on 

the nature of these assumptions, and one might suggest that proponents of the serial view have 

no objection to the use of assumptions that express commonly-held epistemic values (such as 

maintaining logical consistency, maximizing one’s access to relevant empirical evidence, and so 

on), even if they are politically or socially mandated. In other words, even if gathering scientific 

data and building models must occur in the context of policy discussion and formation, it could 

still be the case that the policy is exclusively epistemically motivated, if epistemic values are the 

main focus.   

So let us turn the second reason why Norton believes environmental scientists should affirm 

the relevance of social values to their research. He suggests that, 

 

even if a value-neutral science were possible, it would not be desirable, because 

value-neutral science has no way of telling what is important information, what 

dynamics to monitor, or what indicators indicate something important.35 

 

So far Norton’s position sounds quite reasonable. Environmental policy has as one of its goals 

the solutions of problems that have been publicly identified—here one might think of the 

common concern for sustainable waste management which has become pressing because of the 

overloading of our landfills. As such, if policymakers are going to turn to scientists for solutions 

to these problems, it is to be hoped that scientists have an idea about what these problems are and 

what would be socially favorable solutions to them. For example, if environmental engineers 

study ways of solving landfill problem by considering how high they could build a mound of 

trash adjacent to City Hall, ignoring completely the social value attached to keeping untreated 

waste outside city limits, then we could rightly criticize them for not paying attention to these 

social values in their scientific deliberations. Let us then fully endorse this reading of Norton’s 

objection to the serial view. So understood, the serial view is  

 



Does It Matter Whether Ecosystems Are Real?  68 
 

damaging in that it discourages us from even considering whether and how 

scientific study and modeling should be guided by policy problems, goals, and 

objectives. The serial view assumes a one-way flow of information from scientists 

to the public. But [as Norton argues] [. . .] action-oriented, adaptive management 

requires a multidirectional flow of information among scientists, policymakers, 

and the public.36 

 

But is this all Norton means when he suggests that scientists need to attend to social values in 

their scientific research? Is it simply that scientists, if they are tasked by policymakers to study 

and present possible solutions to environmental problems, need to be aware of what these 

problems are and what would be socially valued solutions to them? It hardly seems the case that 

we need a detour through Norton’s reconstruction of the history of philosophy, as a movement 

towards a pragmatic anti-essentialism, in order to justify counseling scientists that, if they want 

to solve public problems, they should get straight what these problems are and what would be 

worthwhile solutions to them. 

As it happens, Norton has a third suggestion for why scientists need to incorporate social 

values into their research, which we find in his discussion of what he calls “bridge terms,”  

 

terms that have empirical, operational, and measurable descriptive content and 

therefore have a connection to the descriptive discourse and the literature of 

science, but [that] also connect to social values and our evaluative discourse by 

embodying or evoking important social values.37 

 

An excellent example of a bridge term, provided by Norton, is “obese.”38 When used in medical 

science, the term “obesity” can be given a precise, empirically-based definition, and on the basis 

of that definition various correlations can be discovered linking obesity with a host of medical 

ailments. Still, one cannot pretend that in describing someone as obese one is also not making an 

evaluative judgment: to say someone is obese is also to say he needs to lose weight, to get more 

exercise, to live more “healthily.” And now the connection with environmental science is clear, 

for the battery of environmental concepts that Norton focusses on—sustainability, sustainable 

development, ecological integrity, ecological health, and so on—also share the feature of 

combining descriptive discourse with normative aims. In saying that a forestry practice is 

unsustainable, we additionally say that it should be stopped; in suggesting that our goal is the 

preserve the health of an ecosystem, we imply that we are pursuing a worthwhile goal. From here 

we can give sense to Norton and Ulanowicz’s assertion, quoted above, that “conservation 

biology is a normative science,” for some of the concepts of conservation biology clearly have 

this feature of linking a description with an evaluation. Moreover, we can further see the 



69  Hudson 
 

 
 

relevance of Norton’s pragmatic, anti-essentialist, linguistic philosophy to his assessment of 

environmental policymaking. He wishes for scientists to recognize, even affirm the normative 

dimensions of their descriptive discourse, even though engaging in such a task is problematic 

since normative categories from a strictly physicalist viewpoint have a questionable ontological 

status. Understood normatively, concepts like health, sustainability and integrity seem to have 

little relevance to the physicalistic categories that scientists typically use—strictly speaking we 

can’t measure or observe things like health, sustainability or integrity—and in fact it isn’t a far 

stretch to say that such normative categories are utterly mind-dependent and so, given the 

primordial sense of “real,” refer to unreal things. It is crucial then, if scientific talk about these 

things is to be accepted, that we do away with the philosophical tradition that postulates a mind-

independent reality and that further sees scientific advance as the task of correctly describing this 

world.  

It helps even further if we put in place of this tradition an alternative tradition that is open-

minded about the linguistic categories that we choose to use, a tradition that (as Norton has it) 

recommends the adoption of categories for the sole pragmatic goal of serving community 

interests. Having so renovated this philosophical backdrop, Norton can now make the suggestion 

that scientists should not only be aware of the prevailing social values that bear on their work, 

but that they can and even should even infuse these values into their scientific categorizations. 

There is, from his philosophical standpoint, nothing that makes such an expansion of scientific 

discourse unreasonable. 

How then might Fitzsimmons, and others who reject the infusion of evaluative judgments into 

scientific investigation, respond to Norton’s position? There are at least three sorts of replies here. 

 

4. Problems with Norton’s Infusion of Values into Facts  

 

To begin with, there is plenty room to question Norton’s general philosophical attitude. He 

provides no compelling reasons for either his assertion that people are unable to arrive at 

justified conclusions about a mind-independent world, or for his even more startling assertion 

that there is no justification for a belief in a mind-independent world “out there,” one with its 

own set of pre-existing, fixed categories. In the end, his argument on behalf of these assertions 

seems to boil down to an idiosyncratic reconstruction of the history of philosophy, and even if 

it’s the case that philosophers should buy into this history, I doubt most scientists, laypeople or 

policymakers have much interest in, much less a stake in this reconstructed history. Notably, we 

would expect the new paradigmists to be especially wary of Norton’s anti-essentialism. The new 

paradigmists are painfully aware of the resistance they meet when they suggest that the health of 

a particular ecosystem should outweigh someone’s property rights. It is a resistance they counter 

by suggesting that ecosystems, despite appearances, exist in a mind-independent world and are 



Does It Matter Whether Ecosystems Are Real?  70 
 

real in the same sense that you and I are real, from which it follows that they are just as morally 

considerable as you and I. As such, the battle Fitzsimmons is engaged in with the new 

paradigmists concerns whether ecosystems in fact possess this degree of mind-independent 

reality, and it is arguably a feature of Fitzsimmons’ position that, if the new paradigmists were 

able to make their case by (at least) having a consistent and empirically supported definition for 

what constitutes an ecosystem, then he leaves it as an option to become a new paradigmist as 

well. Yet none of this debate makes much sense to Norton, since on his view there is no 

(knowable) mind-independent world about which to even argue. Much to the surprise of 

Fitzsimmons and the new paradigmists, their controversy on whether ecosystems are real is, if 

Norton is right, actually a debate about who is right as regards how best to serve the prevailing 

set of community values. The new paradigmists, under the assumption that their view is the 

minority view (given the strong tradition of property rights in the US), believe that they need to 

push for the mind-independent, moral considerability of ecosystems if they are to convincingly 

argue that ecosystems deserve strong protection. However, this is a strategy and point of debate 

that Norton’s pragmatic anti-essentialism pre-emptively rules as illegitimate. The point is that 

Norton could be more charitable in discussing the sorts of ontological issues dividing 

Fitzsimmons and the new paradigmists. 

Secondly, one needs to be cautious in endowing scientists with the power to make value 

judgments an intrinsic part of their factual investigations, in light of the culture of scientific 

expertise that typifies our modern, technological society. Norton cites a number of scientists who 

explicitly refrain from the practice of mixing values with facts—the concerns expressed by 

Policansky above are typical. I believe such demurrals are to be praised, and not criticized as 

being short-sighted, given the astounding technological and scientific advances that characterize 

modern life. Given the high degree of expertise needed to understand these advances, the views 

of the non-expert can easily be dismissed as simply uninformed. Norton asks that discussions 

about environmental policy be “multidirectional” involving a sharing of information amongst 

scientists, policymakers, and the public. But think about the relative influence on this discussion 

by scientists as compared to laypeople, for example, when it comes to a topic such as the 

technological feasibility of wetlands banking.39 What could a layperson possibly say to a 

professional ecologist on this topic that would be of any practical significance? Or consider once 

more the question of obesity with respect to its genetic determinants, its effects on the endocrine 

system, the presence of pathophysiological causes, and so on—what sort of constructive dialogue 

is going to occur between a layperson and a medical expert when it comes to the scientific fine 

details of this condition? It is because of this imbalance in both power and knowledge that the 

expert needs to be especially careful not to import value considerations into her factual 

pronouncements: sometimes laypeople just don’t have the capacity to distinguish the factual 

from the evaluative. As such, when I hear Policansky, Fitzsimmons, and others, counseling that 



71  Hudson 
 

 
 

they see the need to separate the factual from the evaluative, for me that is a hopeful sign, as it 

should be to any non-expert. It means that as a non-expert I won’t be inundated with technical 

details hosting concealed norms. It means that when it finally comes to an open discussion of 

values with the technical, scientific details suitably framed, I will actually have a chance to say 

something productive. One would think, after decades of laypeople being implicitly fed 

normative judgments concealed in factual descriptions—think of the variety of implicit sexist, 

racist and homophobic norms that have been passed off as “good science”—that the separation 

of facts from values would finally be, for us, a practice with incontrovertible merit. 

 Nevertheless, let’s suppose that in a particular community there is a synchronicity in the 

value judgments of scientists, policymakers and laypeople, and a basic agreement occurs 

regarding what actions to take in addressing environmental problems. This leads to a third 

problem with Norton’s approach ultimately stemming from his non-essentialist, pluralist 

philosophical orientation—i.e., his basically non-committal attitude regarding what specific steps 

communities should take in any decision scenario. This non-committal attitude is implicit in 

what Norton calls “community-procedural values” according to which the fundamental goal of a 

community is to cooperatively arrive at a decision through a process that is “fair and open.”40 In 

response to the concern that, as Norton puts it, the rules for decision making “are all ‘procedural’ 

and imply nothing about what is valued”, he responds, 

 

in a democratic process, substance arises from process and that sustainability 

commitments must, if they are to guide communities toward effective cooperative 

action, be perceived as results of a fair and open process.41 

 

The problem in emphasizing procedural fairness to such a degree is that it has the potential to 

license results that, even though they are arrived at in a procedurally fair manner, are unfortunate 

in other ways—unfortunate even for the environment. As Norton acknowledges, 

 

we must face a choice. We must decide whether we are first and foremost 

environmentalists or first and foremost democrats. [. . .] For my part, given these 

alternatives, I choose democracy.42 

 

This choice he supports even if we “accept the undeniable evidence that some democracies are 

environmentally destructive, at least in the short run.”43 My sense is that Norton, with his 

keenness for pluralism, procedural fairness, and democratic ideals, recognizes the hazard of 

permitting a free-for-all in values. We thus find him repelling this hazard by tacitly advocating a 

form of teleology whereby, miraculously, democratically governed communities find themselves 

converging on a unique (and sensible) set of value judgments. For example, he discusses the type 



Does It Matter Whether Ecosystems Are Real?  72 
 

of values that “emerge on a community scale,” which he calls “community-identity values,” and 

suggests that they will be of the sort to “create cohesiveness within human communities” and 

bind “individuals and communities to their natural habitat.”44 When faced with the question 

whether a community will establish a policy that reduces the economic welfare of future 

generations, he rejoinders that “it will be a very unusual community that intentionally chooses to 

reduce the levels of individual welfare over time.”45 When communities consider the potential 

risk for a nuclear accident in their decision making, Norton asserts that “most communities will 

adopt safeguards against inflicting dangerous and preventable risks on future people.”46 In other 

words, procedural fairness is leading communities to a particular set of “correct” value 

judgments, the correctness of which is not due to the fairness of the decision making—otherwise, 

any result arrived at fairly would be correct—but is rather explained by some prior, unspoken set 

of substantive values that Norton endorses, but won’t openly commit to. 

Norton is thus left with a problem, one faced by any value pluralist: how does one censure 

those values to which one is opposed, especially in a community which has a policy of 

supporting whichever values are produced by means of a procedurally fair, democratic process? 

The quick answer for Norton is that he shouldn’t censure them (nor should he resort to a form of 

teleology that will naturally weed out undesirable values), for if he is truly an anti-essentialist 

then there is no “mind-independent world” of “true” values to which we must adhere, and if he is 

truly a pluralist there is not even a preferred set of mind-dependent values to which people ought 

to be committed. A more nuanced answer for him is to abandon his unrestrained pluralism and 

anti-essentialism, and allow an incursion into his philosophical mind-set of a small set of 

substantive, fundamental values (values to which he is likely committed anyway). Speaking of 

environmentalism, this small set could focus on attaching intrinsic value to living entities (which 

one would naturally suppose to exist in a mind-independent world). All living things share in this 

value, though we can leave aside a detailed assessment of the quantum of value and the sorts of 

obligations this value imposes on moral agents—at the very least, there will be a duty to support 

an environment able to “sustain” these living things. The next question is, what sorts of things do 

we include in the class of “living things,” and this is where the debate between Fitzsimmons and 

the new paradigmists comes into play, for their debate concerns the question, not just whether 

ecosystems are living, but whether they are real to begin with. If they are real, though non-living, 

yet also are fundamentally needed to ensure the sustainability of a variety of living things, then 

this would impose on policymakers and moral agents generally the obligation to preserve them. 

On the other hand, if ecosystems are both real and living, then there will be a fairly clear, prima 

facie obligation to preserve them directly.  

The point is that attaching intrinsic value (which may itself be mind-dependent) to living 

things in a mind-independent world should not be thought of as an oppressive gesture. For 



73  Hudson 
 

 
 

instance, in responding to the views of Laura Westra, a classic new paradigmist (and also one of 

Fitzsimmons’ targets), Norton asserts that her principled defense of ecological integrity  

 

violates an essential precondition of open democracy by holding her views to be “non-

negotiable” and above challenge. [S]he disconnects reason from the political process and 

is led to embrace coercion in favour of her principles over those of others who may 

disagree.47 

 

Here, Norton seems to think that any challenge to the result of a democratic decision process is 

unfair, and that any attempt to reverse this result non-democratically is an unfair form of 

coercion. But surely whether this is true depends on what this result is: I suspect that, if a 

procedurally fair decision process resulted in society’s choice to lay the environment to complete 

waste, Norton, if he had the power to coerce an alternate decision, would do so, and feel justified 

in doing so. Moreover, his pleading impotence in such a case—citing his philosophical 

commitment to a pluralism (much less an anti-essentialism) about moral principles—would 

surely be an irresponsible abdication of his moral duty. Fitzsimmons, by comparison, despite his 

railings against Westra and other new paradigmists, never comes across as quite so ideological: 

he simply wants the new paradigmists to provide clear, consistent and empirically grounded 

definitions for their terms, and once provided with them he might even join their ranks, and try to 

convince property-owners to do the same. 

 

5. Summary of the Argument  

 

Both Norton and Fitzsimmons are anti-realists about ecosystems, though for very different 

reasons. Norton’s anti-realism is motivated by an idiosyncratic philosophical commitment to a 

pragmatic anti-essentialism, one that sees natural categories as the product of a social consensus 

on how to use language with the ultimate goal of enhancing public communication and 

cooperation. Conversely, Fitzsimmons’ anti-realism is motivated by his concern that the 

empirical boundaries of ecosystems, as they are drawn by scientists and policymakers, are 

indeterminate and arbitrary, and so in all likelihood are simply convenient mental constructions. 

To an extent, then, their views converge: both see ecosystems as human intellectual fabrications 

aimed at serving pragmatic, social values. But whereas Norton embraces this constructivism as 

enlightened and liberating, Fitzsimmons regards it as regressive and anti-scientific. That is, 

whereas Norton would encourage scientists and policymakers to freely construct ecosystems 

with an eye to servicing the policy needs of human communities, Fitzsimmons recommends that 

we try to tighten up the empirical analysis of ecosystems, making their boundaries more 

determinate and less subject to subjective manipulation. The question I propose to address, then, 



Does It Matter Whether Ecosystems Are Real?  74 
 

is this: in developing an environmental public policy, should we follow Fitzsimmons and 

encourage scientists to first settle the empirical question of whether ecosystems exist (and if so, 

what their boundaries are), and then leave it to the public and policymakers to determine whether 

ecosystems are worth preserving in the face of competing moral and public duties, or should we 

follow Norton, first identifying what sorts of things communities value, and then framing a 

public policy that selectively introduces expressions such as “ecosystem health” and 

“sustainability” with the goal of upholding this chosen set of community values?  

The latter half of the paper answers this question by siding with Fitzsimmons. As I argue, 

there are three key problems that afflict the broad value pluralism that results from Norton’s 

pragmatic anti-essentialism, a pluralism that infuses normative content into scientific (here, 

ecological) concepts (most especially in the case of what Norton calls “bridge terms”). I criticize 

Norton’s approach on three grounds. First, it pre-emptively cuts off a certain line of support for 

certain kinds of ethical perspectives that, for all their foibles, deserve a better hearing. Here I 

have in mind the ethical perspective advocated by the new paradigmists who view ecosystems as 

existing mind-independently (and so count as “real,” as we are using this term here) and as 

having a moral considerability comparable to that possessed by human beings (which explains 

why this view is so harshly derided by some human beings). Basically, new paradigmism has no 

ground to stand on at all if it is denied the ability to say that ecosystems have (as morally 

considerable) a real, mind-independent existence—yet it is a dialectical position that Norton’s 

anti-essentialism permanently renders illegitimate. Secondly, the incorporation of normative 

features into scientific discourse, such as through the vehicle of bridge terms, raises the hazard of 

scientists exerting inordinate influence over public policy decisions. This is because laypeople 

lack the expertise to challenge the work of scientists as regards the framing of scientific concepts, 

and if these concepts incorporate normative features, laypeople will correlatively lack the 

expertise to question the normatively significant judgments of scientists. (Indeed, one would 

expect such a concern to move Norton with his emphasis on democratic decision making). Third, 

Norton’s value pluralism, constrained only by the principle of democratic procedural fairness, 

runs the risk of being turned into an ethical relativism, one that could lead to disastrous results 

for the environment. This is hardly a promising result for someone apparently supportive of 

environmental health and sustainability.  

By comparison, Fitzsimmons’ anti-realism does not suffer from the three flaws described 

above. To be sure, he is concerned with the imprecision with which ecosystems are often defined, 

their lack of determinate, fixed boundaries. But this is not an irremediable flaw: distinct and clear 

empirical criteria for ecosystems could be found, and such criteria may point to the mind-

independent reality of ecosystems, thus buoying the new paradigmist, who now at least has a fair 

chance to defend her view. Further, Fitzsimmons’ approach is clearly one that shuns the 

applicability of non-epistemic values to scientific concepts (which, if we accept the presence of 



75  Hudson 
 

 
 

epistemic values, does not imply that for Fitzsimmons scientific research is value-free). Of 

course, it might be the case nevertheless that non-epistemic values find their way into scientific 

theorizing. But at least the layperson can be assured that scientists keep as their goal the 

separation of epistemic from non-epistemic values and strive to ensure the epistemic purity of 

their work. This is much different from Norton’s approach that seeks no remedy for the intrusion 

of non-epistemic values, and perhaps even endorses this intrusion. Finally, there is no 

commitment on Fitzsimmons’ behalf to value pluralism, and so no obstacle to his choosing and 

advocating the best ethical values there are in considering how the environment should be treated. 

More to the point, Fitzsimmons does not see his perspective work as having any ethical 

implications—he just wants to get it straight whether ecosystems exist, and if so, what is their 

extent and basic constitution. Once that issue is sorted out, the ethical analysis can then 

productively begin. 

So to answer the titular question, it does matter for Fitzsimmons whether ecosystems are real 

as regards the moral imperative to preserve them, just as it matters to the new paradigmists. 

Conversely, for Norton, it doesn’t matter whether ecosystems are real (actually, for him, it 

doesn’t matter whether anything is real in the sense of “real” we are working with here). Real or 

not, it is Norton’s view that the moral imperative to preserve ecosystems stems solely from the 

occurrence of contingent, democratic, procedurally fair, community decisions. In this paper, I 

have argued against Norton’s position and for Fitzsimmons’ view: let’s get clear about whether 

ecosystems exist and what their boundaries are before we formulate public policy about them. 

 

 

Endnotes  
 

1. Odum 1977, 1289; see also Odum and Barrett 2005, 8. 

2. Odum and Barrett 2005, 7. 

3. First described in Odum and Odum 1955, 319; see Odum and Barrett 2005, 7–8. 

4. Norton 2005, 78 (Norton’s italics). 

5. Norton 2005, 79. 

6. Norton 2005, 77. 

7. Norton 2005, 78 (Norton’s italics). 

8. Norton 2005, 555. 



Does It Matter Whether Ecosystems Are Real?  76 
 

9. Norton 2005, 554. 

10. Ibid. 

11. Ibid. 

12. Norton 2005, 556. 

13. Ibid. 

14. Fitzsimmons 1999, 24. 

15. Ibid. 

16. Fitzsimmons 1999, 25–26. 

17. Fitzsimmons 1999, 24. 

18. Fitzsimmons 1999, 142–154. 

19. Fitzsimmons 1999, 150. 

20. Fitzsimmons 1999, 7. 

21. Fitzsimmons 1999, 232–238. 

22. Fitzsimmons 1999, 149. 

23. Fitzsimmons 1999, 451 (Fitzsimmons’ italics). 

24. Norton 2005, 364–365. 

25. Fitzsimmons 1999, 3. 

26. Fitzsimmons 1999, 142. 

27. Norton and Ulanowicz 1996, 424 (quoted in Fitzsimmons 1999, 142). 

28. Fitzsimmons 1999, 142. 

29. Norton 2005, 445. 

30. Norton 2005, 446. 

31. Norton 2005, 364. 

32. Norton 2005, 32. 



77  Hudson 
 

 
 

33. Norton 2005, 138–139. 

34. Norton 2005, 446. 

35. Ibid. 

36. Norton 2005, 143. 

37. Norton 2005, 38. 

38. Norton 2005, 38–39. 

39. Discussed in Norton 2005, 30–42. 

40. Norton 2005, 366. 

41. Norton 2005, 367. 

42. Norton 2005, 251. 

43. Ibid. 

44. Norton 2005, 371. 

45. Norton 2005, 370. 

46. Norton 2005, 371. 

47. Norton 2005, 252. 

 

Works Cited 
 

Fitzsimmons, Allan K. 1999. Defending Illusions: Federal Protection of Ecosystems. Oxford: 

Rowman & Littlefield. 

Norton, Bryan G. 2005. Sustainability: A Philosophy of Adaptive Ecosystem Management. 

Chicago: University of Chicago Press. 

Norton, Bryan G., and Robert E. Ulanowicz. 1996. “Scale and Biodiversity Policy: A 

Hierarchical Approach.” In Ecosystem Management: Selected Readings. Edited by Fred 

B. Samson and Fritz L. Knopf. New York: Springer. 

Odum, Eugene P. 1977. “The Emergence of Ecology as a New Integrative Discipline.” 

Science 195: 1289–1293. 



Does It Matter Whether Ecosystems Are Real?  78 
 

Odum, Eugene, and Gary W. Barrett. 2005. Fundamentals of Ecology. 5th ed. Belmont, CA: 

Thomson Brooks/Cole. 

 Odum, Howard T., and Eugene P. Odum. 1955. “Trophic Structure and Productivity of a 

Windward Coral Reef Community on Eniwetok Atoll.” Ecological Monographs 25: 291–

320. 


