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.

Thesis advisor: Jeffrey Bloechl / This dissertation addresses the first and most fundamental question in environmental philosophy: how should we conceive of the human place within nature? The title derives from the moment in Descartes’ second meditation when he considers what he believed himself formerly to be: a rational animal. Inquiring into what animality and rationality are would send him down a slippery slope, and he decides that he does not have the time to waste on such questions. Prioritizing the rational over the empirical, the metaphysical distinctions that follow precipitate a pivotal episode in the rise of modern science and technology: a disembodied intellect is freed to discover and manipulate the laws and forces at work in nature, conceived mechanistically. While generating many positive advances, for instance in anatomy and medicine, that break with Aristotelian ontological suppositions also marks the beginning of centuries of violence toward the animal within, not to mention the animals, or animal-machines, without. In response, many contemporary environmental thinkers swing the metaphysical pendulum in the opposite direction. Troubled by the consequences of an implicit mind-body dualism, they assume some rendition of its early modern antithesis, Spinozist ontological monism. God, or Nature is understood as comprising a single substance, with all other beings conceived as modifications of that substance. Such ontological humbling is supposed to produce an ethical humility, putting the human back in its place as one humbled part of the larger whole. Our concern is that without important qualifications, such ontological humbling merely provides another justification for man’s modern conquest of nature, in accordance with instrumentalizing, human-centered ends. If the human is conceived as merely one more species among others, we boast an equal right to act in accordance with the powers of our own natures. In response, we develop a thesis that builds from insights in the works of Maurice Merleau- Ponty. We argue that Merleau-Ponty’s thought is characterized by an “archeological,” or origin-directed orientation, according to which he eventually theorizes a phenomenological analogue to Spinoza’s ontological monism: his instigating insight is that both the perceiver, or the subject, and the perceived, or the object, derive from a common ontological fabric. Beginning from insights indicative of a contrary, but complimentary orientation present in Merleau-Ponty’s early works, we begin to construct a “developmental” account to balance out his increasingly “archeological” path, introducing qualifications that orient his thought in an ethical direction. The integrative ethical ideal that we propose entails a developmental, rather than regressive “descent” of the animal slope (le versant animal), without undermining or denying ethical capacities and responsibilities that are specifically human. Drawing from the works of Schelling’s middle period to which Merleau-Ponty turns in his late lectures on Nature, we argue that we must acknowledge tendencies toward violence and domination present within nature itself—and, consequently, present within us, as part of nature—such that becoming fully human would demand the overcoming of those tendencies in the service of a higher ethical ideal. Taking a cue from Schelling’s Freiheitsschrift, we propose an integrative ideal of self-giving love. / Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2022. / Submitted to: Boston College. Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. / Discipline: Philosophy.

In this thesis, the framework within which long-term goals are set and subsequently achieved or approached is analyzed. Sustainable development and climate change are areas in which goals have tobe set despite uncertainties. The analysis is divided into the normative motivations for setting such goals, what forms of goals could be set given the empirical and normative uncertainties, and how tomanage doubts regarding achievability or values after a goal has been set. Paper I discusses a set of questions that moral theories intended to guide goal-setting should respond to. It is often claimed that existent normative theories provide only modest guidance regarding climate change, and consequently have to be revised or supplemented. Two such suggested revisions or supplements are analyzed in order to determine whether they provide such guidance. Paper II applies the deep ecological framework to survey the extent to which it can be utilized to discuss issues concerning the management of climate change. It is suggested that the deep ecological framework can provide guidance by establishing a normative framework and an analysis of how the overarching values and principles can be specified to be relevant for actions. Paper III is focused on normative political theory, and explicates the two dimensions of empirical and normative uncertainty. By applying recent discussions in normative political theory on ideal/non-ideal theory, political realism, and the relation between normative demands and empirical constraints,strategies for managing the proposed goals are suggested. Paper IV suggests a form of goal that incorporates uncertainties. Cautious utopias allow greater uncertainty than realistic goals (goals that are known to be achievable or approachable, and desirable),but not to the same extent as utopian goals (goals wherein it is highly uncertain whether the goal can actually be achieved). Such goals have a performance-enhancing function. A definition and quality criteria for such goals are proposed. Paper V considers whether a goal that is becoming all the more unlikely to be achievable should be reconsidered. The paper focuses on the two degrees Celsius target, and asks whether it could still be a sensible goal to aspire to. By applying the principle that ‘ought’ implies ‘can’, the role of such obligations is investigated. Paper VI surveys how to treat circumstances in which an already set goal should be reconsidered and possibly revised, and what would evoke doubt in the belief upon which those goals have been set.Two situations are analyzed: (i) a problematic or surprising event occurs, upsetting confidence in one’s relevant beliefs, or (ii) respectable but dissenting views are voiced concerning one’s means and/or values. It is suggested that the validity of doubt has to be considered, in addition to the level in a goal-means hierarchy towards which doubt is raised. / <p>QC 20151204</p>

The global community faces ecological problems with the natural environment and cultural impediments to solving them. Natural systems are constantly changing and so are cultural practices. Humans need to address both: the interaction between those dynamic systems, the natural and cultural, because what happens in one system changes things in the other. The changes to the ecosystems are rapid and sometimes irreversible while dealing with them has been inadequate. Environmental movements, including deep ecology, have been at the forefront of the efforts to engage the public, various groups, politicians, and world governments to address environmental problems on a coordinated large scale, but their efforts have not produced substantive results. Cultural, ideological, and other reasons provide some insights into the reasons why this has happened. They show that the ecological crisis is now at the point at which deep ecological principles offer a way out of the crisis more clearly, given that it offers a new, ecological worldview for humans to adopt. This worldview suggests there is inherent unity between the human and natural worlds based on the concept of interdependence. This paper attempts to show that such inherent unity exists and that humans need to use precaution because the risks are too great to ignore.

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 glance, this metaphor may appear overly domineering, or uncritically paternalistic, I argue a deep understanding of its implications will be eminently beneficial for discussions of what is moral, good, right, and just to do regarding not only whether or not to terraform Mars, but for contemporary environmental concerns as well. Ultimately, extreme caution and a robust precautionary principle are the moral prescriptions arrived at in this thesis for the near term future. Until a sustainable civilization and just society can be established and effectively maintained, efforts to terraform and colonize another planet are practically certain to produce as much that is undesirable as that which might be good.

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.

<p> What is the most effective problem solving method at the environmental policy table in the context of a radical diversity of worldviews? I answer the question in the dissertation by developing a theory that accommodates diversity in policymaking. My line of reasoning is as follows. </p><p> In Chapter One, I survey the diverse discourse about Global Climate Models in detail. I demonstrate that a radical diversity of worldviews is expressed in the discourse. In Chapter Two, I advance a model of language that is an accurate foundation for discourse in policymaking. In Chapter Three, I consider the best policymaking strategy in view of the language model: idea-based policymaking. I then demonstrate that the policymaking strategy is weakly theorized. I introduce a theory of its operation at the end of Chapter Three, and develop it in detail in Chapters Four and Five. Because there is not currently a model, I consider an analogue model in play and explain the analogy in Chapter Four. I apply the analogue to the policy table in Chapter Five and fully develop an operational theory to explicate the problem solving method in policymaking. </p><p> The force of the dissertation's contribution is made in Chapters Three to Five. Chapters One and Two are a ground of the argument. </p><p> In Chapters Three to Five, I argue that idea-based policymaking is a promising form of policymaking practice because social learning is the operative problem-solving mechanism. In social learning: (1) the worldviews of the actors are leveraged in discourse and (2) power relations are dynamically distributed among actors (Hajer). The result is a fortified problem solving operation. This is because in (1) the heterogeneous problem solving resources of the group members are distributed and in (2) social learning shifts power relations by dislodging, mediating, and subsuming a new power regime. </p><p> In summary, the dissertation is a contribution in applied philosophy. I comprehensively demonstrate that an effective policymaking method will manage the incommensurability of worldview and stipulate a problem solving method that engages the basic condition of policymaking&mdash;radical diversity&mdash;rather than denies it.</p>

<p> The author argues that ecocriticism has overlooked important works of mid-20th-century American literature because of their unorthodox approaches to writing about nature. These unorthodox approaches revolve around the use of humor and play to formulate arguments about nature. The author argues that because ecocriticism as a political critique emphasizes ecological catastrophe, humor and ludic writing tend to get ignored in the critical discussion. The author expresses the desire to expand the conversation on ludic texts. The author argues that two texts with relatively little ecocritical attention, Thomas Pynchon&rsquo;s <i>Gravity&rsquo;s Rainbow</i> and Vladimir Nabokov&rsquo;s <i>Pale Fire,</i> use the aesthetic theories of Friedrich Nietzsche to explain the role of the non-human in human civilization. </p><p> In the first chapter, Vladimir Nabokov&rsquo;s <i>Pale Fire</i> is argued to be a novel that is about the natural source of human aesthetic production. The author synthesizes studies of the novel and argues that Nabokov&rsquo;s novel, both in its language and form, valorizes mimesis as the source of all aesthetic production. Nabokov&rsquo;s belief in some form of design is examined through mimicry, and is found to permeate the novel through structural and descriptive references to games and nature. Nabokov is found to be influenced by the theories of Friedrich Nietzsche, Johan Huizinga, and Walter Benjamin. Nabokov ultimately finds that the justification for the world is aesthetic, that nature is important to humans as the origin of all artistic impulses. </p><p> The second chapter reads Thomas Pynchon&rsquo;s <i>Gravity&rsquo;s Rainbow</i> through the many references to Nietzsche&rsquo;s <i> Birth of Tragedy,</i> finding that the novel sets nature against civilization according to Nietzsche&rsquo;s distinction between the Dionysian and the Apollonian. The author finds that the novel holds up the natural world as a counter-force to the capitalist impulse to control and exploit the natural and human worlds. The author examines how Pynchon uses Dionysian tropes like drunkenness, absurdity, music, and feelings of oneness in the novel in moments of resistance to the dominant order. </p><p> The conclusion suggests that the work of Friedrich Nietzsche ought to be examined as an influential source for modern views on the value of nature. </p>

<p>Dwelling with the alterity of the deep sea, my dissertation, "Wild Blue Media: Thinking Through Seawater," considers how the ocean environment produces cognitively estranging conditions for conceptualizing media and media theory. Concepts in media theory have thus far exhibited what I call a "terrestrial bias," theorizing primarily dry technologies through a language whose metaphorics have developed through human lives lived on land, rather than in the volume of the sea. In order to better understand the "terrestrial bias" in media theory, I develop a critical method of "conceptual displacement" that involves submerging key concepts in media theory underwater, engaging both literary texts and digital media. Specifically, I turn to Vilém Flusser's speculative fiction text "Vampyroteuthis Infernalis" to rethink "inscription"; ocean data visualizations to rethink "database"; and Jacques Cousteau's diving narratives to rethink "interface." Focusing on the ocean expands the critical discussion of the relation between embodiment and knowledge taken up by feminist science studies, and necessitates the inclusion of the environmental conditions for knowing; our milieu determines the possibilities of our media, and the way that we theorize our media in language. The ocean thus serves as an epistemic environment for thought that estranges us from our terrestrial habits of perception and ways of speaking about media, providing an important check on the limits of theory and terrestrial knowledge production, compelling us to have the humility to continually try to see--and describe--differently. </p><p>Turning to the ocean to rethink concepts in media theory makes apparent the interrelation between technology, desire, ecology, and the survival of human communities. While media theory has long been oriented toward preservation and culture contexts of recording, studying media in ocean contexts requires that we consider conditions that are necessarily but contingently ephemeral. Yet to engage with the ephemeral is also to engage with issues of mortality and the desire towards preservation--of what we want to remain--a question that especially haunts coastal communities vulnerable to sea-level rise. What the ocean teaches us, then, is to reflect on what we want our media technologies to do, as well as the epistemological question of how we are habituated to see and perceive. By considering the ocean as a medium and as an estranging milieu for reconsidering media concepts, I argue for an expanded definition of "media" that accounts for the technicity of natural elements, considering how media futures are not only a matter of new digital innovations, but fundamentally imbricated with the archaic materiality of the analog.</p> / Dissertation

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.