ABSTRACT
This chapter examines that American pragmatism provides particularly relevant guidance for cognitively demanding human failings. Typically, ethical challenges in interdisciplinary research have to do with the management of human failings. In the current economic climate opinion in the United States is sharply divided over what role the government should play in economic recovery. Some wicked problems may be traceable to human failings that are morally demanding while others may be the result of cognitively demanding failures. If wicked problems are susceptible to interpretation the theory of meaning exposes this susceptibility to scrutiny and, in case of normative underpinnings, opens the way for the application of a cognitively demanding ethics for planning. The difficulties in a substantive definition of sustainability have not stopped its popularity. Indeed, the pervasiveness of the field is felt in areas as wide as sustainable markets and sustainable economies.
