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Conceptual Barriers to Decarbonization in US Energy Policy

Description: 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 t… more
Date: December 2019
Creator: Rowland, Jennifer Joy
Partner: UNT Libraries
open access

The Conceptual Autopoiēsis of Language-Habits and Language-Cultures that Orient Humans as Separate from Nature

Description: 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… more
Date: August 2019
Creator: Williams, Justin W
Partner: UNT Libraries
open access

Gender in Climate Policy and Climate Finance in Ghana

Description: 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 thi… more
Date: August 2019
Creator: Opoku, Emmanuela A
Partner: UNT Libraries

The Food-Drug Relationship in Health and Medicine

Description: In this dissertation, I apply Gadamerian philosophical hermeneutics to examine interpretations of the food-drug relationship within the contexts of health and medicine. Assumptions regarding the relationship between these categories undergird a substantial academic discourse and function as key components in worldviews beyond the academy. Despite this, little work has been done in foregrounding them to allow for critique and consideration of alternative perspectives. Unearthing philosophical as… more
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Date: May 2019
Creator: Tuminello, Joseph Anthony, III
Partner: UNT Libraries
open access

Transhumanism: An Ontology of the World's Most Dangerous Idea

Description: 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 intro… more
Date: May 2019
Creator: Ross, Benjamin David
Partner: UNT Libraries
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Art Unfettered: Bergson and a Fluid Conception of Art

Description: 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 … more
Date: August 2018
Creator: Thompson, Seth Aaron
Partner: UNT Libraries
open access

Toward an Ecocentric Philosophy of Energy in a Time of Transition

Description: 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 fo… more
Date: August 2018
Creator: Frigo, Giovanni
Partner: UNT Libraries
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Oil in Ghana: a curse or not? Examining environmental justice and the social process in policymaking

Description: 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 … more
Date: May 2018
Creator: Akon Yamga, Gordon
Partner: UNT Libraries
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Catastrophe in Permanence: Benjamin's Natural History of Environmental Crisis

Description: 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 cultu… more
Date: May 2017
Creator: Bower, Matthew S.
Partner: UNT Libraries
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Practicing Relevance: The Origins, Practices, and Future of Applied Philosophy

Description: 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 … more
Date: May 2017
Creator: Barr, Kelli Ray
Partner: UNT Libraries
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Environmental Ethics from the Periphery: José Lutzenberger and the Philosophical Analysis of an Unecological Economics

Description: 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 externali… more
Date: August 2016
Creator: Valenti Possamai, Fabio
Partner: UNT Libraries
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Strange Matter, Strange Objects: An Ontological Reorientation of the Philosophical Concept of Wonder

Description: 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 dis… more
Date: May 2016
Creator: Onishi, Brian Hisao
Partner: UNT Libraries
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Expertise Revisited: Reflecting on the Intersection of Science and Democracy in the Case of Fracking

Description: 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 th… more
Date: December 2015
Creator: Ahmadi, Mahdi
Partner: UNT Libraries
open access

On City Identity and Its Moral Dimensions

Description: 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 n… more
Date: December 2015
Creator: Epting, Shane Ray
Partner: UNT Libraries
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Urban Sustainability and the Extinction of Experience: Acknowledging Drivers of Biocultural Loss for Socio-ecological Well-being

Description: 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… more
Date: December 2015
Creator: Poole, Alexandria K.
Partner: UNT Libraries
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A Restorative Environmental Justice for the Prison Industrial Complex: a Transformative Feminist Theory of Justice

Description: 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 us… more
Date: May 2015
Creator: Conrad, Sarah M.
Partner: UNT Libraries
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