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The Question Concerning Endocrinology: Judith Butler's Gender Theory and Transgender Hormone Therapy
For such a vexing topic as gender identity, this dissertation asks a rather straightforward question: If gender identity is—as Judith Butler has asserted—socially constructed and discursively mediated, then why does transgender hormone therapy (THT) work? This is the question concerning endocrinology that I ask Butler, and their answer is, if requiring of delicate assessment and interpretation, clear: it doesn't. Butler's work reveals an admonishing view that the efficacity of THT is due to placebo effect, in turn brought on by the bewitchment of the trans* who seeks medical transition. In a logic similar to sin and salvation, if only the trans* had not believed in gender dysphoria, then there would be no (putative) efficacity to THT whatsoever. With our answer, we begin a perilous adventure of discovering just why such a preeminent gender theorist (and trans* themselves) with no experience of gender dysphoria, and no desire to medically transition, would say this. We examine Butler's gender theory, their concept of desire, their views on the self, on transsexuality, their rarely discussed philosophies of science and nature, and their dearth of citations of transsexual voices. Due to this lack, I lend my own, relying upon my experience with gender dysphoria, THT, and medical transitioning. Unfortunately, in the times we live with attacks against *trans people and their healthcare, these questions could not be less theoretical, and more practical. In my view, Butler simply does not believe in the physical validity and medical exigency of gender dysphoria—the primary reason that we transsexuals pursue THT. Thus, in a dissertation that addresses questions of existential urgency and indisputable suffering, I show that Butler's gender theory lacks explanatory power and conceptual coherency, at a time when medically transitioning trans* could not need it more.
An Unfortunate Unfitness: The Organismic Faults Detracting from the Probability of Sustainable Future Thriving in the Human Species
This dissertation is an investigation and analysis of the contributions of the human organism to climate change, specifically concerned with its adverse effect on the biosphere. The focus of the analysis rests on three phenomena distinctive to humans participating in globalized economies and modernized societies; the distortions of anthrosupremacy, an uncritical development of technology, and an unhealthy cathexis with economic growth. These are analyzed and identified as stark contributors to the creation, proliferation, and pervasiveness of systems contributing to the decline of the biosphere. These phenomena serve to dissociate humans from the consequences of their actions in systemic ways; thereby thriving by preying on the faults of human agency. Using a biogenic framework to analyze human agency, these faults are identified as problematic to the teleological pursuits of the human organism (i.e., extantcy). An analysis of these phenomena in relationship to the faults in human agency is done to create an awareness of how certain mythologies, technologies, and socioeconomic practices have created enabling constraints that deter a more efficacious and sustainable exercise of human agency. Existing strategies and philosophies that have been promoted to address the issue have failed to account for these enabling constraints and, have therefore, fallen short of creating their desired effect in practical ways. This dissertation concludes that, without altering these enabling constraints to allow for a more efficacious and sustainable exercise of agency, the human species is less likely to persist into the indefinite future.
Where There is No Love, Put Love: Rethinking Our Life with Technology
The bedrock of this dissertation is the idea that our patterns of thought, speech, and action can be distilled into two distinct approaches defined by (1) the use of things on one hand and (2) the relation to persons on the other. That first approach is represented in our life with technology and has expanded to the point of omnipresence. Being so ubiquitous, technology largely goes unexamined in the way it functions, the effect it has on us, and the effect it has on our neighbor. In this manner, the technological approach is an over-extension of the manipulation of things to the negation of the relation to persons. As a result, our capacity to relate to persons outside a narrow scope had been atrophied. This work is an attempt at renewing the relational approach within contexts shaped by and shaped for the manipulation of things, i.e., technically minded society. To that end, it is necessary to first explore the work of thinkers who have written on relationality in ways which address the over-extension of the technological approach. The thinkers I have chosen in this endeavor are Martin Buber, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Dorothy Day, and Ivan Illich, each of whom wrote thoughtfully about relationality as community, which I am naming to be the heart of the relational approach, as expressed in hospitality as the embrace of strangers as neighbors. Likewise, it is necessary to understand the true nature of technology, which is remarkably difficult for those of us who live in contexts shaped by and shaped for the manipulation of things. The thinkers I have chosen to draw from in exploring technology as a pattern are Ivan Illich, Albert Borgmann, and Lewis Mumford, each of whom carefully and thoughtfully explored the nature of technology beyond the obvious form of devices. I then …
Meeting Mosses: Toward a Convivial Biocultural Conservation
In this dissertation I propose an ethical framework for "meeting mosses." At first glance, mosses are a tiny type of plants that have been uncritically understood as "primitive plants," to the extent that they are defined by negation as "non-vascular plants." Hence, mosses have been considered as "primitive" relatives of "true" vascular plants. This distortion is linked to the fact that mosses have been overlooked and represented as a radical otherness in Western civilization. To critically examine this distortion of, and injustice toward mosses, I use the methodology of field environmental philosophy within the conceptual framework of biocultural ethics developed by Ricardo Rozzi. I complement these concepts with foundational philosophical work by continental philosophers Martin Buber and Immanuel Levinas, and ethnobotanist and indigenous writer Robin Wall Kimmerer, with emphasis on their discourses of meeting, "face-to-face," otherness, heterogeneity, and alterity. Collectively thinking with these philosophers, I address the possibility of genuinely "meeting mosses," valuing them as such and not merely as a primitive "relative" or "ancestor" of vascular plants. Drawing on several botanists' accounts of plant language and plant wisdom has sharpened my reading of human-moss interactions and enriched my engagement with the heterogeneity and alterity of the Western philosophical tradition. In his book Gardens: An Essay on the Human Condition, Humanist scholar Robert Pogue Harrison argues that care (for plants and life) is the human vocation. Harrison's discussion of the diversity of "gardens" helped me to clarify multi-dimensional human-moss interactions. In terms of content and structure, I organize my analysis based on two central dimensions of human-plant interactions stated in Rozzi's biocultural ethics: biophysical and cultural, particularly, symbolic-linguistic dimensions. I explore the biophysical dimension of biocultural conservation focusing on mosses in a region where they represent the most diverse and abundant type of plants, southwestern South America. In this region, …
Thinking Outside the Pipe: The Role of Participatory Water Ethics and Watershed Education Community Action Networks (WE CANs) in the Creation of a New Urban Water Narrative
According to the United Nations, two-thirds of the world's population, approximately 4 billion people, experiences water scarcity at least one month per year. To avoid the water quantity crisis experienced in many regions of the world and the United States, a path to sustainability must be forged. My research aims to identify and critique the salient features of the narrative that drives contemporary urban water decisions and practices and to provide a meta-narrative about the role of narratives as invisible lenses through which individuals see, interpret, and interact with the world often without realizing the existence of those frames. The purpose of this problem-oriented dissertation is twofold: to provide a philosophical policy analysis of contemporary water issues in the United States generally and North Central Texas in particular, and to offer a pragmatic and interdisciplinary approach to discovering a sustainable relationship to water. The intent of my research is not to produce a new metaphysical understanding of water, but to provide a pragmatic application of ideas that can be utilized in the field; ideas that can invoke a new narrative, vision, and direction for urban water issues in North Central Texas and in areas far beyond the Lone Star State. I begin my dissertation with an overview of the nature of the problems involved in managing our global and national water problems. To fully understand urban water issues requires more than just scientific knowledge, it also demands a philosophical orientation and grounding. Chapter 2 lays the philosophical foundation of my research by braiding the philosophical streams of thought inherent in Aldo Leopold's concepts of the land ethic and ecological conscience, Alfred North Whitehead and Maurice Merleau-Ponty's emphasis on relationship, Paulo Freire's pedagogy of critical consciousness, John Dewey's philosophy of experience and his perceived importance of the public and the "Great …
Epistemological, Ontological, and Ethical Dimensions of Biocultural Rights: The Case of the Atrato River, Colombia
In 2016, the Colombian Constitutional Court recognized the Atrato River as a subject of rights based on the theory of biocultural rights. This dissertation analyzes a new legal concept that aims to defend the rights to a good life for humans and other-than-human co-inhabitants who share river ecosystems, focusing on the case of the Atrato River in Colombia. The 3Hs framework of biocultural ethics is adopted to interconnect complex and interrelated historical, biophysical, cultural, and political dimensions. With this analysis, broader biocultural approaches are suggested. They could be valuable for understanding and implementing biocultural rights in other world regions. Moreover, it could transform the current situation that destroys biocultural diversity toward public policies that favor more just and sustainable forms of co-inhabiting biocultural diversity. A primary limitation of the implementation of biocultural rights is the context of a "failed state," in which the Colombian State is subject to severe problems of corruption, illegal mining, conflicts between legal and illegal armed groups, and drug trafficking. There is a need for a dialogue solution to the conflict. This requires that illegal armed groups are valued as co-inhabitants. Achieving social-environmental justice is essential for biocultural ethics. In this case, it is the condition of possibility for the ruling of biocultural rights of the Atrato River to be entirely carried out.
Queer Phenomenological Framework of Gender and Sexuality for the Discourses of Environmental Religion and Ecofeminism
This master's thesis undertakes an analysis of the current discourse in environmental religion and ecofeminism respectively and proposes the use of queer phenomenology to provide a framework of analysis for the ways gender and sexuality are envisioned in those fields in conversation with the use of Judith Butler's theory of performativity. First, a literature review and overall analysis of the current discourse of environmental religion is established. This is followed by a literature review and overall analysis of the current discourse of ecofeminism. Finally, the last chapter describes how queer phenomenology as posited by Sara Ahmed is a useful framework for the conceptualization of gender and sexuality that can benefit both discourses.
Ontology of Avulsion: Posthuman Freedom and Accidental Becoming
Riverine avulsion is a radical divergence of a riverbed. In this dissertation, I take this movement as a paradigm for understanding the features of radical change. I develop a model for understanding the essential features of radical change. I argue that the main features involved in avulsion are tension, abandonment, and material freedom. In my analysis, tension provides the catalyst for change, such that it pressurizes complex systems of organization to the point of collapse. I use Catherine Malabou's work on denegation to understand the collapse of a system as an accident; the rupture of a system entails that it is no longer affirmed nor negated, it is abandoned by the process of becoming. Utilizing the work of Deleuze, I present the moment of rupture itself as the moment where materiality breaks free from the restrictions of an organizing system to becoming consolidated into countless new forms of organization. In my analysis of the ontology of avulsion, I employ a new materialist process of becoming to capture the complex networks of relations involved in the moment of creation. I challenge these Deleuzean and new materialist fields of philosophy over their affinity for affirmation by integrating accidental abandonment. Finally, I propose a potentiality for the freedom of materiality as a transcendental property of all systems of organization, thereby revealing their precarious continuity and inevitable abandonment.
Life and Death in the Field: Farmer Suicide and the Necessity to Feed
Farmer suicide is at crisis levels in the United States and India. This crisis is both a problem of experiential knowledge within infrastructure as well as a problem of discourse power. I argue that the logical abstraction required to conceptualize and evaluate farmer suicide cannot be separated from the overall experience of farmer suicide. Rather than existing as distinctly separate phenomena, these elements are co-constitutive. Despite the Centers' for Disease Control identification and designation of farmer suicide as complex, statistically relevant, and elevated, nearly all the policy efforts addressing farmer suicide focus on narrow economic impact and narrow economic relief. While these economic vectors are important, the problem is multifaceted and requires a broadening of policy discourse to include additional factors (e.g. philosophical, existential, psychological, etc.). Using Hannah Arendt's work on politics and the human condition, I connect the conditionality of homo faber (human fabricator/maker), animal laborans (laboring animal), and vita activa (active life) with farmer struggle and suicide. Through the work of Georges Canguilhem and Achille Mbembe, I critique and analyze the predominant discourse and framing of suicide as a disease. Last, but not least, I propose decolonial theory and degrowth theory as viable critical pathways to shift the scale of farming infrastructure towards a more equitable and just future.
Thinking Through the Ecological Crisis with Hannah Arendt
This dissertation offers a philosophical analysis of the ecological crisis through the lens of Hannah Arendt. It frames the ecological crisis as a struggle for situated cohabitation. By analyzing the work of Arendt, this dissertation shows the ways in which the ecological crisis is entwined with the political crisis of plurality. I suggest that these two issues are interconnected and that we need to address both for situated cohabitation. This dissertation is an interdisciplinary work, drawing from environmental philosophy, feminist philosophy, and educational practice. The work is intended to provide novel insight into the current ecological crisis in three ways. First, it grounds its theory in the work of Arendt, a thinker not usually situated in the prevue of environmental scholarship. Second, by synthesizing Arendt's account of plurality with the work of Judith Butler and Ricardo Rozzi, this dissertation explores a politics of plurality that can take account of social and ecological conditions of plurality. Third and finally, the dissertation merges theory with praxis by offering a practical program for doing environmental philosophy with children, a program derived from my sustained experiences working as a facilitator of a philosophy for children (P4C) program. This dissertation does not seek just a theoretical understanding of the ecological crisis, but also a practice of situated cohabitation in the crisis.
Environmental Philosophy after Standing Rock
In 2016, An estimated 15,000 people representing 400 Indigenous Nations and non-indigenous allies gathered at the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation in solidarity against the Dakota Access Pipeline to protect Mni Sose, the Missouri River. They became known as the Water Protectors. This dissertation analyzes the response in environmental philosophy journals to the #noDAPL protest at Standing Rock. Even though the Stand at Standing Rock became one of the most important and monumental environmental protests of the last decade, neither Standing Rock nor the Water Protectors appear in environmental philosophy journals at all--not once. Why? I suggest a possible answer by exploring the Stand of the Water Protectors as a moment in a much longer continuous history of resistance to settler colonialism. Settler colonialism attempts to facilitate the erasure of Indigenous populations by colonial ones, in order to gain access to territory—to land. The omission of Standing Rock from environmental philosophy journals represents the ease with which environmental philosophy can become complicit in the project of settler colonial erasure and replacement through absence. Drawing on Indigenous land-based philosophies of kinship, Latin American decolonial philosophy, settler colonial theory, and frameworks of Indigenous environmental justice, I show how the geo-politics of colonialism have come to produce environmental injustice and planetary ruin. I work to break the silence on Standing Rock in environmental philosophy and allow the Water Protectors example to guide the project toward an environmental philosophy which centers colonialism and Indigenous resurgence as core concerns.
Performative Resistance as Ecofeminist Praxis?
Erika Cudworth's Developing Ecofeminist Theory provides a helpful foundation for a non-essentialist, properly intersectional ecofeminist account of oppression, marginalization, and domination, but her rejection of what she refers to as "postmodernism" appears to be based on a misreading of Judith Butler. I attempt to provide a synthesis of Cudworth's framework with Butler, particularly through the use of Karen Barad's agential realism, in order to provide possibility for new alliances between ecofeminism and other anti-oppressive frameworks. I then examine what it might look like to do ecofeminist praxis, given the complex view of agency, ontology, and intersectionality rendered by such a synthesis. I draw from bicycling as an example from which to extrapolate what it means to resist oppression, and then draw from the Philosophy for Children movement to consider what such resistance might look like within the classroom. This dissertation thus attempts to move from theory to practice, recognizing that "the real world" is both always at hand and also subject to performative deconstruction.
Hermeneutic Environmental Philosophy: Identity, Action, and the Imagination
One of the major themes in environmental philosophy in the twenty-first century has broadly focused on how we experience and value the natural world. Along those lines, the driving question I take up in this project is if our ordinary experiences are seen as interpretations, what is the significance of this for our moral claims about the environment? Drawing on the hermeneutic philosophies of Hans Georg-Gadamer and Paul Ricoeur, I examine environmental interpretation as it relates particularly to identity, meaningful action, and the mediating function of the imagination. These three interconnected aspects show both our capability for new understandings related to the natural world, as well as problem of conflicting, yet equally valid, views on environmental value. To explore this tension further I consider the relevance of hermeneutic conceptions of truth and translation for environmental ethics. A hermeneutic notion of truth highlights the difficulties in making strong normative claims about the environment, while a hermeneutic view of translation is helpful in thinking about the otherness of nature and what this means for ecological values. In this project I am particularly interested in the conflict of environmental interpretation and the implications that a hermeneutic frame has for the limits of environmental understanding and value. I argue that hermeneutics and narrative theory shows that we can argue for direct moral consideration of ecological others or the natural world only as merely possible interpretations among others.
Participation in the Play of Nature: A Hermeneutic Approach to Environmental Aesthetics
Within the environmental aesthetics literature, there is a noticeable schism between two general approaches to understanding the aesthetic value of nature: the ambient approach and the narrative approach. Ambient thinkers focus on the character of aesthetic appreciation of nature, the way in which one is embedded in multi-sensory environment. These ambient theorists emphasize the importance of those aesthetic experiences that are difficult to articulate. Narrative thinkers argue that aesthetic appreciation of nature is enhanced and enriched by narratives that are relevant to the natural object or environment encountered. Certain narratives – usually those based on scientific knowledge – encourage a depth of appreciation that is inaccessible to those unfamiliar with the narratives. In this dissertation, I attempt to articulate an account of environmental aesthetic experience that does justice to both of these approaches by drawing on the resources of philosophical hermeneutics, and especially on the aesthetic theory of Hans-Georg Gadamer. The most important aspects of Gadamer's work for environmental aesthetics are his phenomenology of play, his revival of practical philosophy, and his emphasis on the interpretive character of all understanding. His discussion of play fleshes out the core of ambient accounts, his focus on interpretation explains the insights of narrative accounts, and the two accounts are tied together by his attention to practice.
Orca Recovery by Changing Cultural Attitudes (ORCCA): How Anthropocentrism and Capitalism Led to an Endangered Species in Puget Sound
Ways of understanding, living, and communicating with non-human species, and more specifically endangered species, have been thought of dualistically and hierarchically in Western cultures. This type of thinking is harmful when examining environmental issues that involve more than just humans, which is arguably all environmental issues. By enforcing a nature/culture dichotomy, humans are seen as separate from nature and therefore they can ethically excuse themselves from dealing with environmental issues that happen "out there" in nature. This thesis explores two manifestations of this nature/culture separation as it continues to threaten wild orca populations in Puget Sound. The first is because of an anthropocentric culture and the second is because of the capitalist socio-economic system. The anthropocentric part of this type of thinking raises humans up on a pedestal, above all non-human species. It gives humans the excuse to only care about issues that affect them directly. The capitalistic part of this type of thinking enforces human's exploitation and commodification of nature. I argue that anthropocentrism and capitalism together create a human/nature relationship that harms nature and benefits humans. This relationship is illustrated by a small population of orcas, called the Southern Resident Killer Whales (SRKW), off the coast of Washington State that are endangered because of human interference. Lack of prey, toxic water pollution, and excessive noise from boats caused them to become endangered, and these issues are produced by Western society's anthropocentric attitudes and capitalistic systems. The SRKW's will go extinct if the environmental destruction of Puget Sound doesn't end and it will only end if the anthropocentric attitudes and capitalistic systems are dismantled.
The Serpent Symbol in Tradition: A Study of Traditional Serpent and Dragon Symbolism, Based in Part Upon the Concepts and Observations of Rene Guenon, Mircea Eliade, and Various Other Relevant Researchers
Serpent and dragon symbolism are ubiquitous in the art and mythology of premodern cultures around the world. Over the centuries, conflicting hypotheses have been proposed to interpret this symbolism which, while illuminating, have proved insufficient to the task of revealing a singular meaning for the vast majority of examples. In this dissertation I argue that, in what the symbolist Rene Guenon and the historian of religions Mircea Eliade have called ‘traditional' or ‘archaic' societies, the serpent/dragon transculturally symbolizes what I term ‘matter,' a state of being that is constituted by the perception of the physical world as ‘chaotic' in comparison to what traditional peoples believed to be the ‘higher' meta-physical source of the physical world or ‘nature.' What is called ‘nature,' I argue, is also considered in ‘Tradition' to be a perception of, from a certain state of consciousness, that aspect of existence that is called samsara in the Hindu philosophy of Vedanta, which Guenon equivalently describes, from a broadly traditional perspective in The Symbolism of the Cross, as "the indefinite series of cycles of manifestation." ‘Chaos,' according to Eliade in The Sacred and the Profane, is "the amorphous and virtual…everything that has not yet acquired a ‘form.'" The following elements have been useful in discerning the specified meaning of the serpent/dragon symbol: 1) Guenon's interpretation of the terminology of the ‘Hindu Doctrines,' as well as his interpretation of the ‘language' of traditional symbolism and the metaphysics that underlies it; 2) Eliade's interpretation of ‘traditional'/‘archaic' societies by means of his concepts of ‘chaos,' ‘creation,' Axis Mundi (‘World Axis'), and ‘Sacred and Profane'; and 3) the insights of various other researchers of serpent/dragon symbolism. Beyond purporting to resolve some of the mystery of the ancient and varied symbolism of the serpent/dragon, my dissertation strives, to a lesser degree, to serve two …
Conceptual Barriers to Decarbonization in US Energy Policy
In order to meet emissions targets under the UN Paris Agreement, every nation must decarbonize its energy production. The US isn't reducing energy-related emissions fast enough to meet its targets for keeping overall warming under 2°C above pre-industrial levels. This constitutes a grave injustice to the most vulnerable populations of the world, who are suffering the ill effects of climate change already. The challenge of eliminating fossil fuels from the US energy system is not simply one of technological limitations, however. The aim of this dissertation is to provide an analysis of historical, political, and, most importantly, conceptual barriers to decarbonization of energy in the US. I believe not just our policies and our markets, but our thinking has to change if we are to avoid recapitulating the injustices of the fossil fuel energy system. I argue that energy policy in the US over time has ossified around a narrow conception of energy as fossil energy—as a substance, rather than as a service. I call this the fossil conception of energy (FCE). I follow historical traces of the FCE in three key areas: political discourse in the US, the relationships between the US dollar and OPEC oil (a complex web called the petrodollar system), and domestic energy markets. Through William Freudenburg's "double diversion" framework for analysis of society-environment relationships, I argue that the FCE grounds a privileged discourse that legitimates the supremacy of fossil fuels and contributes to the maintenance of US hegemony worldwide. I propose that one possibility for rethinking energy may be found in systems thinking, which leads me to conclude that any energy system organized around capital will recapitulate many of the injustices of the fossil fuel system.
Hermeneutics, Environments, and Justice
Recent years have seen a growing interest in and the publication of more formal scholarship on philosophical hermeneutics and environmental philosophy--i.e. environmental hermeneutics. Grasping how a human understanding of environments is variously mediated and how different levels of meaning can be unconcealed permits deeper ways of looking at environmental ethics and human practices with regard to environments. Beyond supposed simple facts about environments to which humans supposedly rationally respond, environmental hermeneutics uncovers ways in which encounters with environments become meaningful. How we understand and, therefore, choose to act depends not so much on simple facts, but what those facts mean to our lives. Therefore, this dissertation explores three paths. The first is to justify the idea of an environmental hermeneutics with the hermeneutic tradition itself and what environmental hermeneutics is specifically. The second is to demonstrate the benefit of addressing environmental hermeneutics to environmental philosophy. I do this in this dissertation with regard to the debate between anthropocentrism and non-anthropocentrism, a debate which plays a central role in questions of environmental philosophy and ethics. Thirdly, I turn to environmental justice studies where I contend there are complementarities between hermeneutics and environmental justice. From this reality, environmental justice and activism benefit from exploring environmental justice more deeply in light of philosophical hermeneutics. This dissertation is oriented toward a continuing dialogical relation between philosophical hermeneutics and environments insofar as environments are meaningful.
Gender in Climate Policy and Climate Finance in Ghana
This dissertation makes use of theoretical frameworks drawn from development theory, ecofeminism, climate science, environmental and distributive justice, and human rights to provide gender analysis of climate policy, including climate finance.The problem addressed is that climate impacts are exacerbating food insecurity that is women's responsibility in the global South. First, I use literature in climate science to detail the impacts of climate change on agriculture in Africa and show how this exacerbates women's poverty that is driven already by persistent socioeconomic inequalities and gender bias. I conclude that women as food producers are especially vulnerable to climate impacts on food security. Next, I assess international climate policy through gender analysis of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) against other United Nations (UN) gender policies, followed by gender assessment of Ghanaian climate policy. I conclude that both international and Ghanaian policy fail adequately to address gender and women's needs, despite making advances on gender-inclusion and gender-sensitivity since the turn of the century. I then present a case study in climate finance by evaluating the capacity of an Adaptation Fund Project (AFP) in northeast Ghana to meet women farmers' needs. I gather data from Project implementers and intended beneficiaries, i.e. women in village communities, using interviews and focus group discussions. I conclude that the Project is not successful in engaging women and identify reasons for this failure, including slow distribution of funds to implementers, petty corruption, and community gender biases. In the final chapter, I summarize my findings and make recommendations for policy interventions better to meet women's climate adaptation needs in order to maintain food security and avert the humanitarian crises in hunger that are already well underway in Africa.
The Conceptual Autopoiēsis of Language-Habits and Language-Cultures that Orient Humans as Separate from Nature
In this dissertation I consider the nature of the relationship between orientation and language-habits in the context of environmental ethics. Specifically, I focus on the problem of orientation as a way of understanding the unabated trend of anthropocentrism in the dominant Western language-culture. Orientation operates as the attitudes, beliefs, and feelings in relation to something that we embody in our lived experiences. One way that we communicate our orientation in relation to the land is through our language-habits. In considering our language-habits, I conceptualize a process I call conceptual autopoiēsis. Conceptual autopoiēsis is the co-evolutionary coupling process of the language-habits and language-cultures of human orientation, which recreates the initial conditions of the reproduction of the specific concepts embodied in that given orientation, language-habit, and language-culture. I show how our orientation to the land is embodied in our language-habits and language-cultures. I show how orientation, language-habit, language-culture, and conceptual autopoiēsis all function as the environment from which we select the very conceptualization of our orientation and the language we use to do so. More specifically, metaphysical anthropocentrism is a kind of orientation that assumes a dualistic relationship to the land that perpetuates a disconnect from Nature that makes it impossible to have an ecocentric land ethic. I argue that in order to advance the language-habits and language-cultures that can cultivate a more ecocentric orientation capable of living in harmony with nature, we must first understand how the conceptual autopoiēsis of language-habits and language-cultures of the current Western orientation continue to orient us as separate from Nature.
Transhumanism: An Ontology of the World's Most Dangerous Idea
Transhumanism is the name given to the cultural and philosophical movement which advocates radical human technological enhancement. In what follows, I use perspectives drawn from existential philosophy to problematize transhumanists' desire to recast human finitude as a series of technical problems with technical solutions. The ontological account of transhumanism offered here questions the assumed benefit and inevitability across six chapters. Following an introductory chapter, Chapter 2 introduces the key players, and present the philosophy of transhumanism and the opposing view of bioconservativism. Chapter 3 offers a narrative of transhumanism beginning with its mythical antecedents, and proceeds to describe the emergence of contemporary transhumanist institutions. Chapter 4 focuses on the challenge that transhumanists Aubrey de Grey and Ray Kurzweil present to mortality. The chapter asks whether human immortality is a coherent idea, and consider the consequences of achieving a data-driven amortality. Chapter 5 continues the analysis of transhumanism as it challenges limits to knowledge (ignorance), and limits to well-being (suffering). Ray Kurzweil is presented as a key figure of transhumanist thought, along with David Pearce, who desires to eradicate suffering through genetic engineering. The hubris of transhumanism is viewed through the lens of Friedrich Nietzsche in chapter 6. Nietzsche's critique of the "last human" is interpreted in terms of transhumanist thought, and a role for the philosopher in the context of transhumanism is presented. Finally, chapter 7 offers Buddhism as an alternative response to suffering. This chapter profiles "Buddhist Transhumanists," and consider what connection transhumanism has with Buddhism's philosophy of impermanence.
Art Unfettered: Bergson and a Fluid Conception of Art
This dissertation applies philosopher Henri Bergson's methodology and his ideas of duration and creativity to the definitional problem of art, particularly as formulated within analytic aesthetics. In mid-20th century, analytic aesthetics rejected essentialist definitions of art, but within a decade, two predominant definitions of art emerged as answers to the anti-essentialism of the decade prior: functionalism and proceduralism. These two definitions define art, respectively, in terms of the purpose that art serves and in terms of the conventions in place that confer the status of art onto artifacts. Despite other important definitions (including historical and intentionalist definitions), much of the literature in the analytic field of aesthetics center on the functional/procedural dichotomy, and this dichotomy is an exclusive one insofar as the two definitions appear incompatible with each other when it comes to art. I use Bergson's methodology to demonstrate that the tension between functionalism and proceduralism is an artificial one. In turn, abandoning the strict dichotomy between these two definitions of art opens the way for a more fluid conception of art. Using Bergson's application of duration and creativity to problems of laughter and morality, I draw parallels to what a Bergsonian characterization would entail.
Toward an Ecocentric Philosophy of Energy in a Time of Transition
Ecocentrism is a philosophical position developed in the field of environmental philosophy that offers an alternative view of the complex relationships between humans and the nonhuman world. This dissertation develops an ecocentric philosophy of energy in order to account for a wider set of ethics and values dimensions involved in energy politics. It focuses especially on inter-species justice as a crucial missing element behind even those energy policies that seek to transition society from fossil fuels to renewable energy sources. The goal is to develop an ecocentric philosophy of energy that accounts for the fundamental and deep ecological interdependences of human and nonhuman animals, plants, and other living and non-living beings. I start with an introduction and a summary of the chapters followed in chapter 2 by a clarification of the terms "paradigm" and "energy." In chapter 3 I offer an exploration of the origins of the "energy paradigm" or the predominant understanding of energy that emerged during modernity (18th century onwards). The modern energy paradigm progressively became a "traditional" forma mentis that is nonetheless based on flawed presuppositions about the human-energy-nature relationship. I criticize the homogeneous, colonizing and hegemonic nature of this paradigm, unveil its tacit anthropocentric and instrumental assumptions, and show how it still fuels contemporary lifestyles and policy. Chapter 4 presents a literature review that traces the most significant contributions from the humanities (broadly construed to include social sciences such as anthropology and sociology) to the study of energy. In this chapter, I also focus on the scarcer yet relevant literature on energy's metaphysical, ontological, and ethical dimensions. In chapter 5 I develop the theory of a radical, ecocentric philosophy of energy, building on the work of other ecocentric thinkers such as Holmes Rolston III, J. Baird Callicott, and Arne Naess. Chapter 6 suggests paths towards the …
Nature's Patrons: Private Sector Engagement and Powerful Environmentalisms
In this dissertation, I examine the role of private sector engagement in environmental governance. The relationship between mainstream environmentalism and the private sector has moved from one of general hostility to one of constructive engagement in recent times. As a result, the traditional distinctions between environmental non-governmental organizations and private corporations have become blurred, making way for public-private hybrids, facilitated by frameworks of philanthropy, sponsorship, and corporate social responsibility. Connected to these broader reconfigurations in environmental governance are simultaneous alterations in the normative framework of mainstream environmentalism. Ideologically, environmental policy and neoliberalism are now intertwined, entangling assumptions about nature and culture, and reflected in the popularization of environmental protection mechanisms that are deeply embedded in the values of the market economy. Analyzing particular examples of such engagements, and informed by Gramscian theory, I analyze the connections between rising corporate presence in mainstream environmentalism and broader normative and practical change, focusing, in particular, on the frameworks of ecomodernism and the Green Economy. I argue that contemporary private sector engagement in environmentalism leads to the support, production and construction of powerful environmentalisms: environmental ideologies and practices that gain power from, not in spite of, prevailing dominant interests. As such, these powerful environmentalisms tend to produce and reproduce elite processes of capitalist production and prioritize instrumental norms of human-nature relations, while marginalizing others. I conclude by outlining suggestions in support of a democratic environmental politics that represents and recognizes a more diverse array of actors, human-nature relationships, and frameworks of environmental care.
Oil in Ghana: a curse or not? Examining environmental justice and the social process in policymaking
There is great expectation that oil development in Ghana will catapult the nation towards prosperity and lead to drastic improvement in the wellbeing of Ghanaians. However, there is also concern that Ghana could fail to achieve these due to the resource curse notwithstanding the fact that scholars of the curse have yet to agree on the inevitability of the curse. Resource curse scholars adduce different reasons for its occurrence or absence. One thing common among the scholars, however, is that none discusses environmental justice in the context of the curse. In this dissertation, I examine Ghana's attempts at avoiding the resource curse through policymaking and implementation using the Guidelines on Environmental Assessment and Management of Ghana's offshore oil sector as a case study. I argue that a strong environmental justice frame is required to avert the curse in Ghana. Specifically, I assess the policy process in Ghana's oil sector, the institutional framework for managing the sector, and analyze the perception of environmental justice for policymaking. The outcome of these assessments show that although the policy process requires broadening for full and effective participation, Ghana has checks and balances policies to avert the resource curse and to deliver environmental justice in the oil sector. In addition, Ghana has an institutional framework that requires strengthening, in various way, in order for it to complement the checks and balances policies
Practicing Relevance: The Origins, Practices, and Future of Applied Philosophy
This dissertation takes up the question of the social function of philosophy. Popular accounts of the nature and value of philosophy reinforce long-standing perceptions that philosophy is useless or irrelevant to pressing societal problems. Yet, the increasingly neoliberal political-economic environment of higher education places a premium on mechanisms that link public funding for research to demonstrations of return on investment in the form of benefitting broader society. This institutional situation presents a philosophical problem warranting professional attention. This project offers a diagnosis of the problem and develops a way forward from it. Drawing from Foucauldian archaeological methods, my analysis focuses on the interplay of institutional structures and intellectual practices. Since the early 20th century, departments of philosophy on college and university campuses have been the center of gravity for professional philosophy in the US. Establishing this institutional ‘home' for philosophers drove the adoption of disciplinary practices, norms, and standards for inquiry. But the metaphilosophical assumptions underpinning disciplinarity have become problematic, I argue: they are poor guides for navigating the situation of higher education in the 21st century. Several movements within the profession of philosophy during the 1960s and 70s sought to reverse philosophers' general retreat from public affairs. Applied philosophy, environmental philosophy, and bioethics each offer a case study in attempts to address the problem of societal relevance. However, surveys of the journal literature in each field uncovered few reflections on whether or not individual projects, or the field as a whole, had any impact on the societal problems to which those philosophers turned their attention. This suggests a need for further thinking about implementation – how to institutionalize alternative practices of philosophy that do demonstrate societal relevance. By way of conclusion, I offer some of the necessary groundwork toward a philosophy of implementation, in the form of discussing significant …
Catastrophe in Permanence: Benjamin's Natural History of Environmental Crisis
Walter Benjamin warned in 1940 of a certain inconspicuous threat to political thinking, not least of all to materialism, that takes progress as an historical norm. Implicit in this conception is what he describes as an empty continuum of time along which the prevailing tradition chronicles its own mythic development and drains everyday life of genuine historical experience. The myth of progressive history advances insidiously today in consumeristic and technocratic attempts at reconciling cultural imagery with organic nature. In this dissertation, I pursue the contradictions of such images as they crystallize around the natural history of twenty-first century commodity society, where promises of ecological remediation, sustainable urban development, and climate change mitigation have yet to introduce a true crisis of historical experience to the ongoing environmental crisis of capitalism. A more radical way of seeing the cultural representation of nature would, I argue, penetrate its mythic determination by market forces and bear witness to the natural-historical ruins and traces that constitute, in Benjamin's terms, a single "catastrophe" where others perceive historical continuity. I argue that Benjamin's critique of progress is instructive to interpreting those utopian dreams, ablaze in consumer life and technological fantasy, that recent decades of growing environmental concern have channeled into the recovery of an experience of the natural world. His dialectics of nature and alienated history confront the wish-image of organic abundance with the transience of its appropriated expression in the commodity-form. Drawing together this confrontation with a varied literature on collective memory, nature, and the city, I suggest that our poverty of experience is more than simply a technical, economic, or even ecological problem, but rather follows from the commodification of history itself. The goal of this work is to reflect upon the potentiality of communal politics that subsist not in rushing headlong into a progressive …
Environmental Ethics from the Periphery: José Lutzenberger and the Philosophical Analysis of an Unecological Economics
This dissertation provides a philosophical analysis about the influence colonialism had over capitalism's current configuration and how their intricate interplay impacts both the social and the ecological spheres, in both central and peripheral countries. Such analysis draws from the work of José Lutzenberger, a Brazilian environmentalist. The current capitalist economic system tends to disregard the environment, since it would be greatly affected by negative externalities. A negative externality is an economic activity that imposes a negative effect on an unrelated third party. Many negative externalities are related to the environmental consequences of production and consumption. In addition, this dissertation explores the fact that an ecological crisis is also a social crisis. A genealogical and existential thread going from Brazil's early days as one of Portugal's colonies to the present is drawn, showing how colonialism helped to create the foundations and the conditions for the current exploitative capitalist system, in Brazil and elsewhere. To change this situation, the environment should not be entrusted to private interests but to an institution responsible for the good of society as a whole. Genuinely green economies are more prone to appear on the periphery, but only if global economic justice is achieved first.
Strange Matter, Strange Objects: An Ontological Reorientation of the Philosophical Concept of Wonder
Wonder has had a rich and diverse history in the western philosophical tradition. Both Plato and Aristotle claim that philosophy begins in wonder, while Descartes marks it as the first of the passions and Heidegger uses it as a signpost for a new trajectory of philosophy away from idealism and nihilism. Despite such a rich history, wonder is almost always thought to be exhausted by the acquisition of knowledge. That is, wonder is thought of almost exclusively in epistemological terms and is discarded as soon as knowledge has been achieved. In this dissertation, I argue for an ontological reorientation of wonder that values wonder beyond its epistemic uses. To do this, I read the phenomenological and ontological work of Maurice Merleau-Ponty through recent developments in object-oriented ontology and new materialism. Much of Merleau-Ponty's work is directed toward dissolving the distinction between subject and object. His insights regarding the mutual constitution of the world lead to the possibility of an operative wonder that occurs between subject and object. Both object-oriented ontology and new materialism radicalize these insights by articulating them in terms of a vibrant or quasi-agential material world. Objects and assemblages of objects are capable of performing the becoming of the world that includes human activity, but is not reduced to it. As such, the world is capable of both self-organization and practice. Ultimately I use the philosophy-physics of Karen Barad to argue that operative wonder acts like a kind of superposition of relations between objects, and thereby accounts for a concept of wonder that is both ontologically significant and acutely generative.
Urban Sustainability and the Extinction of Experience: Acknowledging Drivers of Biocultural Loss for Socio-ecological Well-being
In this dissertation I address urban sustainability with a focus on loss of cultural heritage and ecological knowledge by expanding the concept “extinction of experience” (EoE). Conceptualized by conservationist Robert Michael Pyle, EoE is the loss of nature experiences leading to apathy towards biodiversity and degradation of the common habitat. I expand upon Pyle’s formulation of the concept by considering the EoE cycle as an indirect driver that amplifies biodiversity losses. Additionally, I introduce the analysis of interrelated losses of biological and cultural diversity in relation to EoE. With a biocultural approach I discuss that EoE is tied to the infrastructural inertia within the global urban economy. I propose that addressing the EoE cycle is critical in that as a complex and multi-faceted process, it cements threats to biological and cultural diversity as permanent fixtures within society by obscuring their significance in light of economic development. This cycle remains a hidden problematic in that it perpetuates the environmental crisis while making such losses invisible within day-to-day lifestyle habits, constructing an emerging urban culture within the global economy that is ignorant of ecological processes and sustainability requirements. I frame the implications of EoE with an analysis of the newly proposed revisions of the UN Sustainable Development Goals voted on in September 2015 to prioritize local ecological knowledge and biocultural heritage.
On City Identity and Its Moral Dimensions
The majority of people on Earth now live in cities, and estimates hold that 60 percent of the world’s cities have yet to be built. Now is the time for philosophers to develop a philosophy of the city to address the forthcoming issues that urbanization will bring. In this dissertation, I respond to this need for a philosophy of the city by developing a theory of city identity, developing some of the theory’s normative implications, illustrating the theory with a case study, and outlining the nature and future of philosophy of the city more generally. Indeed, this dissertation is only a part of my larger project of founding and institutionalizing this new field of both academic and socially-engaged philosophical activity. Throughout the history of the discipline, other areas such a personal identity have received numerous considerations, along with the concept of identity as an abstraction. For example, there is a bounty of research addressing problems pertaining to how objects and people retain an identity over time and claims about identity in general. While one could argue that cities are not any different than any other object, such an account fails to consider that a city’s dynamic nature makes it dissimilar to other things. To illustrate this point, I develop a position called dynamic composition as identity theory that provides a framework for understanding the identity of a city, exhibiting that views within analytic metaphysics are too narrow to apply to all cases. After establishing a concept of city identity, I use an applied mereology to develop a model of city identity that shows how the parts of a city fit together to form a complete city. This model introduces the normative dimension of my project by providing a way to identify how incongruence between a city’s parts can cause problems …
Expertise Revisited: Reflecting on the Intersection of Science and Democracy in the Case of Fracking
This dissertation aims to explain the conditions under which expertise can undermine democratic decision making. I argue that the root of the conflict between expertise and democracy lies in what I call insufficiently “representative” expertise – that is forms of scientific research that are not relevant to the policy questions at hand and that fail to make visible their hidden values dimensions. I claim that the scholarly literature on the problem of expertise fails to recognize and address the issue correctly, because it does not open the black box of scientific methodologies. I maintain that only by making sense of the methodological choices of experts in the context of policy making can we determine the relevance of research and reveal the hidden socio-political values and consequences. Using the case of natural gas fracking, I demonstrate how expert contributions – even though epistemically sound – can muddle democratic policy processes. I present four case studies from controversies about fracking to show how to contextualize scientific methodologies in the pertinent political process. I argue that the common problem across all case studies is the failure of expertise to sufficiently represent stakeholders’ problems and concerns. In this context, “representation” has three criteria: (1) the operational research questions on which the qualified experts work are relevant to stakeholders’ problems and concerns; (2) the non-epistemic values and consequences of epistemic choices of experts are compatible with social and political values and priorities; and (3) hidden values attached to facts are fully transparent and openly debated. In the conclusion, I propose a normative version of this representation theory that can be used to evaluate the appropriateness of expertise for democratic policy making. Instead of the value-free science ideal, I propose a new ideal to legitimately allow non-epistemic values in scientific reasoning without compromising the soundness of …
Indigenous Knowledge on the Marshall Islands: a Case for Recognition Justice
Recent decades have marked growing academic and scientific attention to the role of indigenous knowledge in climate change adaptation, mitigation, and detection strategies. However, how indigenous knowledge is incorporated is a point of contention between self-identifying indigenous groups and existing institutions which combat climate change. In this thesis, I argue that the full inclusion of indigenous knowledge is deterred by certain aspects of modernity. In order to overcome the problems of modernity, I argue that a recognition theory of justice is needed as it regards to indigenous knowledge. Recognition justice calls for indigenous groups to retain meaningful control over how and when their indigenous knowledge is shared. To supplement this, I use the Marshall Islands as a case study. The Marshall Islands afford a nice particular case because of their longstanding colonial relationship with the United States and the impending danger they face of rising sea levels. Despite this danger, the Republic of the Marshall Islands calls for increased recognition as leaders in addressing climate change.
A Restorative Environmental Justice for the Prison Industrial Complex: a Transformative Feminist Theory of Justice
This dissertation provides a feminist restorative model of environmental justice that addresses the injustices found within UNICOR’s e-waste recycling operations. A feminist restorative environmental justice challenges the presupposition that grassroots efforts, law and policy, medical and scientific research, and theoretical pursuits (alone or in conjunction) are sufficient to address the emotional and relational harm of environmental injustices. To eliminate environmental harms, this model uses collaborative dialogue for interested parties to prevent environmental harm. To encourage participation, a feminist restorative model accepts many forms of knowledge and truth as ‘legitimate’ and offers an opportunity for women to share how their personal experiences of love, violence, and caring differ from men and other women and connect to larger social practices. This method of environmental justice offers opportunities for repair, reparation and reintegration that can transform perspectives on criminality, dangerous practices and structures in the PIC, and all persons who share in a restorative encounter.
Mapping Overlapping Constellations: Nature and Technology in Research in Philosophy and Technology/Techné and Environmental Ethics
The overlap between the separate fields of philosophy of technology and environmental philosophy can be investigated using the two longest running flagship journals for each field, Environmental Ethics (EE) and Research in Philosophy and Technology, which is now published as Techné: Research in Philosophy and Technology (RPT/Techné). By looking at the theoretical and conceptual ideas on nature and the environment expressed in RPT/Techné, at those on technology and artifacts expressed in EE, and at the individuals who contributed them using the principles of social epistemology as developed by Steve Fuller, a stereoscopic view incorporating the insights from both specializations can be constructed. The ideas developed in the articles can be charted like stars within constellations, loosely connected in groupings that are neither clear nor evident. Five constellations can be discerned from the relevant articles in each journal, and while there is some overlap, there is considerable difference. The stereoscopic view is developed in three ways: first, by reviewing the contributions of authors who have published in both journals; second, by utilizing resources in both specializations to add subtlety and depth to the ideas expressed, starting in this case from Jacques Ellul’s “Nature, Technique and Artificiality”; and third, by using W. D. Ross’s ethical theory, which fuses prima facie duties with virtues, to integrate traditional ethical concerns with those raised by philosophers focused on technology and those concerned with the environment.
Environmental Imagination: the Constitution and Projection of a Sustainable Ethos
This dissertation provides a theoretical analysis and examination of the role of imagination in the formation of an environmental ethos. The majority of ethical theories in environmental thought largely neglect the role that imagination plays in both the relationships that humans form with their environment, and the subsequent role that imagination plays in constituting the way that those relationships are understood ethically. To explore the role of imagination in constituting and subsequently projecting such an ethical way of being, this dissertation selectively analyzes the history of imagination in philosophy, cognitive science, and environmental thought. In addition, this dissertation also explores the role that images play in forming collective responses to environmental disasters, and the further role that imagination plays in overcoming the moral motivation gap.
Discursive Horizons of Human Identity and Wilderness in Postmodern Environmental Ethics: A Case Study of the Guadalupe Mountains of Texas
Using a genealogy of the narratives of the Guadalupes, I explore three moral identities. The Mescalero Apache exist as caretakers of sacred space. Spanish and Anglo settlers exist as conquerors of a hostile land. The park service exists as captives, imprisoned in the belief that economic justifications can protect the intrinsic value of wilderness. The narrative shift from oral to abstract text-based culture entails a shift from intrinsic to instrumental valuation. I conclude that interpretation of narratives, such as those of the Guadalupes, is not by itself a sufficient condition for change. Interpretation is, however, a necessary condition for expanding the cultural conversation beyond merely instrumental justifications to include caring for wilderness's intrinsic values.
The Rhetoric of Ecofeminism: A Postmodern Inquiry
Ecofeminism is a mixture of two important contemporary schools of thought; feminism and ecology. The rhetoric generated from ecofeminism focuses on language, on its potential to reconstruct deeply embedded attitudes and beliefs. Thus, ecofeminists attempt to transform society through the redescription and redefinition of modern concepts into postmodern concepts. The rhetoric of ecofeminism, set in postmodern context, is a fusion of substantive and stylistic features that simultaneously deconstruct patriarchal structures of exploitation and domination and reconstruct lateral-collaborative structures of cooperation and liberation. In short, ecofeminist rhetoric portends a persuasive transformation of the social-natural conditions of existence.
The Contribution of Mira Behn and Sarala Behn to Social and Environmental Transformation in the Indian State of Uttarakhand
The influence of Mohandas K. Gandhi on social and environmental movements in post-colonial India has been widely acknowledged. Yet, the contributions of two European associates of Gandhi, Madeleine Slade and Catherine Mary Heilemann, better known in India as Mira Behn and Sarala Behn, have not received the due attention of the academic community. This dissertation is an examination of the philosophy and social activism of Mira Behn and Sarala Behn and their roles in the evolution of Gandhian philosophy of socioeconomic reconstruction and environmental conservation in the present Indian state of Uttarakhand. Instead of just being acolytes of Gandhi, I argue that these women developed ideas and practices that drew upon from an extensive intellectual terrain that cannot be limited to Gandhi’s work. I delineate the directions in which Gandhian thought and experiments in rural development work evolved through the lives, activism, and written contributions of these two women. Particularly, I examine their influence on social and environmental movements, such as the Chipko and the Anti-Tehri Dam movements, and their roles in promoting grassroots social development and environmental sustainability in the mountain communities of Uttarakhand. Mira Behn and Sarala Behn’s integrative philosophical worldviews present epistemological, sociopolitical, ethical, and metaphysical principles and practices that have local and global significance for understanding interfaith dialog, social justice, and environmental sustainability and thus constitute a useful contribution to the theory and practice of human emancipation in our times.
Ye Si Ye Jong: a Martial Arts Approach to Business Ethics
The purpose of this dissertation is to offer a new approach to business ethics grounded in the martial arts. This dissertation argues that traditional rules and regulations approaches to business ethics, though important, are inadequate. Such “top down” approaches must be complimented with corporate reform that comes “from the inside out.” The dissertation consults the martial arts to develop a core, multifaceted virtue – Ye Si Ye Jong – that ought to form the foundation for creating a corporate culture (or an ethos for business) that embraces a new approach to decision-making at every level of the organization – from the boards of directors, to individual employees. This dissertation frames the problem as a matter of corporate culture or ethos. This framing is a distinctive approach to corporate or business ethics in two respects: its emphasis on virtue and its integration of core concepts from the martial arts. This dissertation utilizes an uncommon example of business decision-making as its source for a case-study – a prominent university. While many may not think of colleges or universities as exemplars of common business activities, they do, in fact, provide a source of many ethical business dilemmas, both common and unique. Universities have boards of directors, consumers (students and others), and regularly evaluate many financial and cost accounting situations that are not unusual to most businesses. The Jerry Sandusky case at Penn State University provides an opportunity that is ripe for consideration of various business ethics decision-making and, as such, is analyzed later in this paper.
Environmental Philosophy and the Ethics of Terraforming Mars: Adding the Voices of Environmental Justice and Ecofeminism to the Ongoing Debate
Questions concerning the ethics of terraforming Mars have received some attention from both philosophers and scientists during recent decades. A variety of theoretical approaches have been supplied by a number of authors, however research pursuant to this thesis has indicated at least two major blindspots in the published literature on the topic. First, a broad category of human considerations involving risks, dangers, and social, political, and economic inequalities that would likely be associated with efforts to terraform Mars have been woefully overlooked in the published literature to date. I attempt to rectify that oversight by employing the interpretive lens of environmental justice to address questions of environmental colonialism, equality in terms of political participation and inclusion in decision making structures, risks associated with technological progressivism, and responses to anthropogenic climate change. Only by including the historically marginalized and politically disenfranchised "voices," of both humans and nonhumans, can any future plan to terraform Mars be deemed ethical, moral or just according to the framework provided by environmental justice. Furthermore, broader political inclusion of this sort conforms to what ecofeminist author Val Plumwood calls the "intentional recognition stance" and provides an avenue through which globally societies can include nonanthropocentric considerations in decision making frameworks both for questions of terraforming Mars and also for a more local, contemporary set of environmental issues. The second blindspot I seek to correct concerns motivations for attempting terraforming on Mars previously inadequately philosophically elaborated in the published discourse. Specifically, the nonanthropocentric considerations postulated in the second chapter by various authors writing about terraforming, and elaborated in third with regard to environmental justice, reach their culmination in an ecofeminist ethic of care, sustainability, reproduction, and healthy growth which I uniquely elaborate based on a metaphorical similarity to the relationship between a gardener and a garden. Although at first …
Expendable Creation: Classical Pentecostalism and Environmental Disregard
Whereas the ecological crisis has elicited a response from many quarters of American Christianity, classical (or denominational) Pentecostals have expressed almost no concern about environmental problems. The reasons for their disregard of the environment lie in the Pentecostal worldview which finds expression in their: (1) tradition; (2) view of human and natural history; (3) common theological beliefs; and (4) scriptural interpretation. All these aspects of Pentecostalism emphasize and value the supernatural--conversely viewing nature as subordinate, dependent and temporary. Therefore, the ecocrisis is not problematic because, for Pentecostals, the natural environment is: of only relative value; must serve the divine plan; and will soon be destroyed and replaced. Furthermore, Pentecostals are likely to continue their environmental disregard, since the supernaturalism which spawns it is key to Pentecostal identity.
The Ways of Reflection: Heidegger, Science, Reflection, and Critical Interdisciplinarity
This thesis argues that there is a philosophical attempt directed at combating the fragmentation of the sciences that starts with Heidegger and continues today through Trish Glazebrook's interpretations of the former's concept of "reflection," and Carl Mitcham and Robert Frodeman's concept of "critical interdisciplinarity" (CID). This is important as the sciences are both more implicated in our lives and more fragmented than ever. While scientific knowledge is pursued for its own sake, the pertinent facts, meaning, and application of the science is ignored. By linking Heidegger's views on the fragmentation of the sciences to Glazebrook's interpretations of reflection and Mitcham and Frodeman's CID, I show that CID is a concrete realization of Heidegger's reflection.
Ecological Forms of Life: Wittgenstein and Ecolinguistics
The present philosophical literature on philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein tends to either stagnate by focusing upon issues particular to Wittgenstein's philosophy or expand the boundaries of Wittgenstein's thought to shed light onto other areas of study. One area that has largely been ignored is the realm of environmental philosophy. I prepare the way for a solution to this by first arguing that Wittgenstein's later philosophy of language shows 'proto-ecolinguistic' concerns, sharing much in common with the ecolinguistic thought of both Peter Mühlhäusler and Luisa Maffi. This reading, as well as the work of Mühlhäusler and Maffi, is a starting point for an opposition to a common trend in much of contemporary linguistics of adhering to a linguistic paradigm of universalizing linguistic atomism that gives an impoverished account of language. This impoverished account is argued to have potential environmental and ecological consequences which the universalizing atomistic paradigm is ill-equipped to address.
The Character of Environmental Citizenship: Virtue Education for Raising Morally Responsible Individuals
Surely, moral education is not merely intended to result in theoretical knowledge, but instead attempts to change people's behavior. However, when examining and evaluating current trends in moral education, it appears that hitherto moral education has fallen short of its goal to make people better. In this paper, I try to determine what has caused this perceived failure of moral education and conclude that approaches that focus on teaching moral reasoning skills rather than on teaching actual moral content, i.e., values and virtues, are generally ineffective for moral improvement. However, a more traditional form of moral education, namely character education, appears to be a viable alternative to the moral reasoning methods. Since character education can be regarded as the practical application of virtue ethics, I first describe and evaluate virtue ethics and defend it against potential criticisms. I then examine what methods are effective for teaching virtues, and how such methods can potentially be incorporated into the curriculum. Since virtues cannot be taught through theoretical instruction, the acquisition of good habits constitutes the necessary foundation for the establishment of good moral character. Some methods that have been suggested for laying the foundation for virtue are the use of stories, role play, as well as the inclusion of physical and outdoor activities, etc. Furthermore, habituation constitutes the basis for the acquisition of good habits, and as such it requires the application of rewards and punishment by a caring tutor, who at the same time can serve as a role model for virtuous behavior. Finally, I extrapolate if and how character education can be employed to make people more environmentally conscious citizens. I conclude that environmental virtue or character education is the most effective method of environmental education, since it affects how an individual understands, views, and subsequently interacts with the natural …
Sustainable Environmental Identities for Environmental Sustainability: Remaking Environmental Identities with the Help of Indigenous Knowledge
Early literature in the field of environmental ethics suggests that environmental problems are not technological problems requiring technological solutions, but rather are problems deeply rooted in Western value systems calling for a reorientation of our values. This dissertation examines what resources are available to us in reorienting our values if this starting point is correct. Three positions can be observed in the environmental ethics literature on this issue: 1. We can go back and reinterpret our Western canonical texts and figures to determine if they can be useful in providing fresh insight on today's environmental challenges; 2. We abandon the traditional approaches, since these are what led to the crisis in the first place, and we seek to establish entirely new approaches and new environmental identities to face the environmental challenges of the 21st century; 3. We look outside of the Western tradition for guidance from other cultures to see how they inhabit and interact with the natural world. This dissertation presents and evaluates these three options and ultimately argues for an approach similar to the third option, suggesting that dialogue with indigenous cultures and traditions can help us to reorient our values and assist in developing more sustainable environmental identities.
The Beauty of Nature As a Foundation for Environmental Ethics: China and the West
My dissertation aims at constructing an environmental ethics theory based on environmental aesthetics in order to advocate and promote environmentally sustainable practices, policies, and lifestyles. I attempt to construct an integrated environmental aesthetics in order to inspire people’s feelings of love towards nature and motivate them to protect it. In order to achieve this goal, I first examine the philosophical understanding and aesthetic appreciation of nature from philosophical traditions of China, which have an impact on the general public’s attitude towards nature. in chapter one of my dissertation, I point out that nature is viewed as an organic system which is always in a self-generating process of production and reproduction of life. the metaphysical foundation for this perspective of nature is ch’i. Therefore the aesthetic appreciation of nature in China is also the aesthetic appreciation of ch’i. with regard to the concept of ch’i, I focus on the following three questions: (1) what are the objective and aesthetic features of ch’i? (2) How do the Chinese appreciate aesthetic features of ch’i? (3) Why the objective features of ch’i are regarded as the objects of aesthetic appreciation? I argue that the Chinese appreciate the aesthetic features of ch’i by using intellectual intuition and that empathy is the reason why the objective features of ch’i are considered to be aesthetic features. in Chapter 2, I explain in detail the two aesthetic categories for aesthetic appreciation of nature in two major philosophical schools in China: emptiness and creativity. in Chapter 3, I examine the philosophical foundations for aesthetic appreciation of nature in the West. I first investigate the influence of traditional Western philosophy on the perceptions of nature. I argue that traditional Western philosophical thinking doesn’t support aesthetic appreciation of nature. I point out that aesthetic appreciation of nature started from eighteenth century …
Biodiversity Loss, the Motivation Problem, and the Future of Conservation Education in the United States
The purpose of this dissertation is to make sense of two sets of reactions. On the one hand, Americans can barely lift a finger to help threatened and endangered species while on the other, they routinely come to the aid of human victims of disaster. I argue that in contrast to cases of human tragedy, for the biodiversity crisis conservationists are faced not only with the familiar yet arduous task of motivating the American public to care for living other-than-humans, but they are also saddled with having to overcome the motivation problem of future ethics. The motivation problem consists in eliminating or bridging a motivational gap that lies between knowledge of the effects of our actions on future generations and action taken based upon such knowledge. The gap exists because motives that typically move people to action are either ineffective or unavailable. What is more, the gap influences not only our ability to care for future humans, but it affects our ability to care for future other-than-humans as well. Biodiversity loss is in fact a subset of the problem of future generations, an identification hitherto little appreciated. I argue that conservationists can overcome the motivational gap not by appealing directly to the value of species or biodiversity, both of which are temporally distant, abstract and general moral patients, but indirectly, by focusing on the concrete and particular lives of extant and near future moral patients. By applying techniques that have been developed to overcome the motivation problem as it pertains to distant future human generations, conservationists have additional resources to draw upon in their efforts to motivate American citizens to preserve biodiversity. This dissertation’s contribution to the fields of environmental philosophy and conservation biology is both theoretical and practical. It is theoretically significant to elucidate the nature of moral failure …
Redacted Dominionism: An Evangelical, Environmentally Sympathetic Reading of the Early Genesis Narrative
Critiques of the environmental ramifications of the early Genesis narrative by environmental thinkers such as Aldo Leopold, Ian McHarg, and Lynn White underscore a longstanding tension between the environmental movement and Western Christianity. The evangelical community (EC) especially, has been at odds with the environmental movement, as the EC grounds its theology regarding human relations to nature on the Genesis narrative—and especially the Genesis 1:26-28 dominion mandate— interpreted with a literal hermeneutic. The EC generally concludes in favor of either a dominionist interpretation, that mankind has dominion over nature, or a stewardship interpretation, that mankind’s dominion is more akin to tending or stewarding than to domination. Both interpretations trend toward the anthropocentrism that Leopold, McHarg, and White criticize. J. Baird Callicott postulates a third, less anthropocentric view: the citizenship interpretation, that humanity is co-citizen with nonhuman beings, rather than a superior. Callicott’s view, while commendable on key points, is incompatible with EC methodology because it is grounded only on Genesis 2 and subsequent passages, rejecting the legitimacy of Genesis 1:26-28 altogether. A fourth interpretation is proposed here, redacted dominionism, derived using EC methodology, and claiming that human relations to nature are based on theocentric themes. Redacted dominionism understands humanity as initially given dominion over nature by virtue of the imago Dei, but human disobedience to God, tarnished that image, and human qualification for dominion was lost. Post-fall, the dominion mandate is never repeated, and seems even to be replaced. In consideration of early Genesis and related passages, understood within EC methodology, redacted dominionism argues for theocentrism, thus grounding a biblical environmental ethic that escapes the indictments of Leopold, McHarg, and White. Such an ethic could be useful within the EC to motivate greater environmental consideration. It could likewise be beneficial to those within and without the EC, as a catalyst …
Wilderness and Everyday Life.
I challenge the dualistic view of wilderness that has influenced wilderness philosophy, politics and experience in recent years. In its place, I offer an alternative vision that recognizes wilderness areas and working landscapes as complementary elements of a larger, inhabited landscape characterized by a heterogeneous mixture of human-land relational patterns representing various points along an urban-wilderness continuum. In chapters 2 through 4, I explore the philosophical, political and experiential implications of this wilderness-in-context vision. Experienced and understood as part of the landscape we call home, wilderness may engender, renew, and sustain an engaged and integrated wilderness practice involving regular contact with wilderness places, committed activism on behalf of wild lands and their inhabitants, and grounded reflection on the meaning and value of wilderness in our everyday lives.
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