Author's Keywords: Idols, Bacon, Enlightenment, Deliberative Democracy, Environment, Ecological Rationality	Convention Submission, Review, and Scheduling! All Academic Convention can help with all of your abstract management needs and many more. Contact us today for a quote! Submission - Custom fields, multiple submission types, tracks, audio visual, multiple upload formats, automatic conversion to pdf. Review - Peer Review, Bulk reviewer assignment, bulk emails, ranking, z-score statistics, and multiple worksheets! Reports - Many standard and custom reports generated while you wait. Print programs with participant indexes, event grids, and more! Scheduling - Flexible and convenient grid scheduling within rooms and buildings. Conflict checking and advanced filtering. Communication - Bulk email tools to help your administrators send reminders and responses. Use form letters, a message center, and much more! Management - Search tools, duplicate people management, editing tools, submission transfers, many tools to manage a variety of conference management headaches! Click here for more information.
Association: Name: American Political Science Association URL: http://www.apsanet.org
Citation: URL: http://www.allacademic.com/meta/p60886_index.html Direct Link: HTML Code:

Baber, Walter. and Bartlett, Robert. "Banishing Idols: Toward the Reconciliation of Democracy and Environmentalism" Paper presented at the annual meeting of the American Political Science Association, Hilton Chicago and the Palmer House Hilton, Chicago, IL, Sep 02, 2004 <Not Available>. 2009-05-26 <http://www.allacademic.com/meta/p60886_index.html>

Baber, W. F. and Bartlett, R. , 2004-09-02 "Banishing Idols: Toward the Reconciliation of Democracy and Environmentalism" Paper presented at the annual meeting of the American Political Science Association, Hilton Chicago and the Palmer House Hilton, Chicago, IL Online <.PDF>. 2009-05-26 from http://www.allacademic.com/meta/p60886_index.html

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript Review Method: Peer Reviewed Abstract: The Enlightenment plays a prominent and yet problematic role in the efforts of deliberative democrats to reconcile democracy and the environment. The Enlightenment values of individualism and rationality that appear central to the deliberative democratic project are often regarded by environmentalists as primary sources of both ecological degradation and social injustice. We argue that this apparent conflict does not result from inherent contradictions of the Enlightenment, as early critical theorists have asserted. Rather, we suggest that it is a result of the fact that the Enlightenment is, as yet, an incomplete project. The principal failing of the Enlightenment at this point is its inability to banish Sir Frances Bacon's "idols" of the human mind. In Novum Organum, Bacon described these as the idols of the Tribe, Den, Market, and Theater. Idols of the Tribe are errors of perception, the tendency (common to all humans) to impose an order on their perceptions that is more a function of their own minds than a feature of reality. Idols of the Den are errors grounded in individual and group experience, in other words, misperceptions of reality grounded in socialization. Idols of the Market are errors of perception born of our discourse with others. Where we interact with those whose language differs from our own, we are apt to overestimate the level of mutual understanding that we share. Finally, Idols of the Theater are errors into which we fall as a result of our commitment to the dogmas of various philosophical systems. Bacon's prescription for these failings is to "destroy the authority of the senses and understanding, whilst we invent and supply them with assistance." Deliberative environmentalism can be construed as an attempt to do just that. For instance, it is an error of perception (an idol of the tribe) to view environmental issues as conflicts between racial and ethnic groups or between preservationists and workers in industry and resource extraction. Furthermore, it is an error of group experience (an idol of the den) to assume that all who differ with us on an environmental issue are partisans in a zero-sum political struggle who must be opposed through similar partisanship on our part. And we fall into errors of discourse (idols of the market) when we fail to fully credit the views of others when they are expressed in terms that are part of a specialized or foreign language. Finally, we commit dogmatic errors (idols of the theater) when we oppose others based on our own abstract perspectives that can neither be tested nor shared by all. Our propensity to commit these errors leads, indeed requires, deliberative environmentalism to advocate (1) a critical empiricism that challenges tribal preconceptions, (2) a form of public reason that eschews the rhetoric of partisanship, (3) a commitment to the rule of law and globalism that bridges language gaps, and (4) a political culture that subjects ideologies to validity testing.

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