In this dissertation, I analyze climate change as a collective action problem. Decades of consistent policy and indeed institutional failure suggest that climate change cannot be managed top-down by experts and politicians alone. Climate communicators must therefore take up the challenge of ethically and politically motivating public action on this issue. Unfortunately, the ethical and political logic of climate response presents profound challenges to public motivation that appears to confound thinkers in the climate literature across disciplines. I thus endeavors to rethink the climate situation today from the perspective of collective motivation. Doing justice to the complexities of this multifaceted problematic demands interdisciplinary analysis, but the equally pressing need for general comprehension requires philosophical synthesis. For the climate issue is at once global and intergenerational in scale, and is systemic to modern social and cultural institutions that have long-evolved to structure the way people relate to each other, to nature, and ultimately to the world of everyday experience. My thesis, then, is that this collective action problem is ultimately an existential problem that calls for an existential response. Specifically, I argue that the ethical and political implications of climate response are largely received as an “existential threat” to the extent that they unsettle the integrity of everyday existence lived in common. That is, the deeper implications of this issue roundly contradict the background structures of “lifeworld identity” informing collective experience at some of the most general (socio-cultural) levels of being in the world. The consequences of this existential problem present us with two “quandaries” that must be addressed coherently. The “quandary of denial” signifies the largely ethical challenges of motivating a collective response to the historical and material realities of the climate ‘problem.’ The “quandary of transition,” by contrast, speaks to the relatively political challenges of relating the climate problem as such to climate ‘solutions’ that are collectively meaningful enough to positively inspire viable ways forward. Finally, I conclude by drawing on Maurice Merleau-Ponty to advance a critical phenomenology of public motivation responsive to these two moments of the existential problem.

This work is part of a wider personal and eco-cultural wondering about how to restore and conserve the pleasure of living aligned with the ecology of life. There is a growing concern that one of the biggest challenges we have is to generate sustainable communities. Based on this, the research particularly deals with the following two questions: What is ecological design? And, how does Ecological Design both emerge from, and contribute to, the constitution and conservation of human sustainable communities in our Western-European culture? The research proposes that the only way to understand the practice of ecological design is by dealing with the broader dynamics of human ecology—or, ultimately with what it means to be a human being. Based on a systemic, interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary approach, the research first explores the phenomenological and bio-cognitive dynamics that generate an ongoing, embodied–ecological epistemology of the human-Nature relationship, thereby overcoming the modern dualism of mind-body and man-nature. It suggests that design ineluctably takes place in this embodied-ecological domain—particularly, in an ongoing eco-cultural network of interactions. Then it explores the emotional basis of human intentionality and behaviour and, based on the work of the biologist Humberto Maturana, proposes that human beings exist in a dynamic interweaving of languaging and emotioning in an eco-cultural medium. This is synthesized through the notion of conversation. The research claims that to design is to converse. Based on this, the research then explores biological and philosophical accounts of the emotion of loving. By exploring basic elements of a synthesis of the ecology of loving, the research suggests that this emotion is the only one that allows the emergence and cultivation of intimate socio-ecological relationships. Accordingly, it also argues that loving is the foundation of environmental ethics and ultimately, the practice of ecological design. The research also explores the conscious sense and practice of homing (or home-making). It argues that homing and loving are interdependent; they form a circular causality—homing-in-love. The research suggests that homing-in-love is what we do when we design ecologically. Finally, the research explores a general framework that may contribute to the process of recovering the vital dynamics of homing-in-love in a global age. In a four-month ethnographic investigation of three Western-European ecovillages, the research explores particular designed platforms of conversation as examples of the practice of ecological design from which more sustainable manner of homing are emerging and being cultivated.

abstract: The coyote of the natural world is an anthropomorphic figure that occupies many places within Southwestern Pueblo cultures in oral traditions as well as the natural environs. The modern-day coyote is a marginalized occupant of Southwestern milieu portrayed as an iconic character found in cartooned animations or conceptualized as a shadowed symbol of a doglike creature howling in front of a rising full moon. Coyote is also a label given to a person who transports undocumented immigrants across the United States–Mexico border. This wild dog is known as coyote, Coyote, Canis latrans, tsócki (Keresan for coyote), trickster, Wylie Coyote, and coywolf. When the biology, history, accounts, myths, and cultural constructs are placed together within the spectrum of coyote names or descriptions, a transmergent materiality emerges at the center of those contributing factors. Coyote is many things. It is constantly adapting to the environment in which it has survived for millions of years. The Southwest landscape was first occupied by rudimentary components of life evolving into a place first populated by animals, followed by humans. To a great extent, the continued existence of both animals and humans relies on their ability to obtain food and find a suitable niche in which to live. This dissertation unpacks how the coyote that is embedded in American Pueblo literature and culture depicts a transmergent materiality representing the constantly changing human–animal interface as it interprets the likewise transformative state of food systems in the American Southwest in the present day. / Dissertation/Thesis / Doctoral Dissertation English 2019

abstract: With global environmental systems under increasing Anthropogenic influence, conservationists and environmental managers are under immense pressure to protect and recover the world’s imperiled species and ecosystems. This effort is often motivated by a sense of moral responsibility, either to nature itself, or to the end of promoting human wellbeing over the long run. In other words, it is the purview of environmental ethics, a branch of applied philosophy that emerged in the 1970s and that for decades has been devoted to understanding and defending an attitude of respect for nature, usually for its own sake. Yet from the very start, environmental ethics has promoted itself as contributing to the resolution of real-world management and policy problems. By most accounts, however, the field has historically failed to deliver on this original promise, and environmental ethicists continue to miss opportunities to make intellectual inroads with key environmental decisionmakers. Inspired by classical and contemporary American philosophers such as Charles Sanders Peirce, William James, John Dewey, and Richard Rorty, I defend in this dissertation the virtues of a more explicitly pragmatic approach to environmental ethics. Specifically, I argue that environmental pragmatism is not only commensurate with pro-environmental attitudes but that it is more likely to lead to viable and sustainable outcomes, particularly in the context of eco-social resilience-building activities (e.g., local experimentation, adaptation, cooperation). In doing so, I call for a recasting of environmental ethics, a project that entails: 1) a conceptual reorientation involving the application of pragmatism applied to environmental problems; 2) a methodological approach linking a pragmatist environmentalism to the tradition and process of adaptive co-management; and 3) an empirical study of stakeholder values and perspectives in conservation collaboratives in Arizona. I conclude that a more pragmatic environmental ethics has the potential to bring a powerful set of ethical and methodological tools to bear in real-world management contexts and, where appropriate, can ground and justify coordinated conservation efforts. Finally, this research responds to critics who suggest that, because it strays too far from the ideological purity of traditional environmental ethics, the pragmatic decision-making process will, in the long run, weaken rather than bolster our commitment to conservation and environmental protection. / Dissertation/Thesis / Doctoral Dissertation Biology 2019

Le projet de cette thèse est d’examiner ce que nous avons appelé le problème du monde, en entendant par là le problème du mode d’apparition d’une totalité intotalisable qui ne se réduit pas à la somme de ce qui apparaît, et le problème du mode d’être de celui qui appartient au monde et qui est également celui pour lequel le monde comme totalité apparaît. Le problème a été examiné dans le cadre de deux philosophies privilégiées : la philosophie kantienne et la phénoménologie husserlienne. La thématique de l’homme comme habitant du monde apparaît au croisement de trois grandes entreprises kantiennes : l’élaboration d’une épistémologie de la géographie physique en tant qu’elle comporte nécessairement un examen des modalités de l’existence de l’homme sur Terre ; le projet d’une réfutation de l’idéalisme, qui conduit à définir l’homme par son appartenance au monde ; la constitution d’une anthropologie pragmatique qui, tout en unifiant les thématiques précédentes les élargit en les intégrant dans la perspective de la destination pratique de l’homme auquel incombe la tâche de réaliser les conditions de son existence mondaine d’agent moral. Chez Husserl, le mode d’apparition du monde comme totalité est expressément élucidé dans le cadre de la phénoménologie de la perception au moyen de la doctrine de l’intentionnalité horizontale, au terme d’un assez long parcours que nous nous efforçons de reconstituer. En revanche, le mode d’être de celui pour lequel le monde apparaît en tant que tel ne fait l’objet de sa part que d’analyses programmatiques, auxquelles nous proposons de donner un prolongement dans la perspective d’une philosophie de l’environnement. / The objective of this study is to inquire into what has been called the problem of the world, i.e. the problem of the mode of apparition of an intotalisable totality which cannot be reduced to the addition of what appears, and the problem of the mode of being of the subject who belongs to the world and to whom the world as totality appears. This problem has been examined with reference to two privileged philosophies : Kant’s philosophy and Husserl’s phenomenology. The theme of the inhabitant of the world appears at the meeting-point of three major Kantian undertakings, which are (1) the elaboration of an epistemology of geographical physics that necessarily contains an examination of the modalities of existence of man on Earth ; (2) the project of refuting idealism, which leads to defining man in his belonging to the world ; (3) the constitution of a pragmatic anthropology which, while unifying the foregoing topics, broadens them by integrating them into the perspective of the practical destination of man, upon whom falls the task of realising the conditions of his worldly existence as moral agent. In Husserl’s phenomenology, the concept of horizontal intentionality, developed in the phenomenology of perception, helps to explain the mode of apparition of the world as totality, at the end of a long run of thought which we try to reconstitute from the beginning. By contrast, the mode of being of the subject to whom the world as such appears is only programmatically examined in Husserl’s phenomenology. Our study seeks to give a prolongation to Husserl’s insights on this topic, in the direction of an environmental philosophy.

<p> This thesis explores the question: can an ecocritical approach to environmental virtue ethics (EVE) in undergraduate climate change education inform students' understanding of the ethical issues of climate change and promote environmental responsibility and action? Philosophical theories of virtue ethics will be discussed from an historical perspective as well as to its renewal in the 20^th century, especially within the context of the wicked dimensions of the climate change crisis. Dominant themes in climate change ethics including concerns over the scientific complexity, global dimensions, temporal issues, intergenerational fairness and responsibility, justice, and human rights will be presented and used to devise a compendium of climate change virtues and vices. Environmental and climate change education research will be reviewed as well as the reasons for its failure to produce a substantial shift in attitudes and behavior of people especially in the global North will be deliberated. Ecocriticism, which studies the relationship between literature and visual and audial art will be explored, and a novel curriculum based on theoretical elements from climate change virtue ethics and supported with examples of the ecocritical arts will be proposed. It is my belief that an interdisciplinary framework supported and illustrated by climate change ecocriticism from any and all of the literary, visual, audial, and performance arts will create deeper understandings of climate change complexity.</p>

abstract: This dissertation analyzes the way in which leaders of certain Taiwanese Buddhist organizations associated with a strand of Buddhist modernism called "humanistic Buddhism" use discourse and rhetoric to make environmentalism meaningful to their members. It begins with an assessment of the field of religion and ecology, situating it in the context of secular environmental ethics. It identifies rhetoric and discourse as important but under acknowledged elements in literature on environmental ethics, both religious and secular, and relates this lack of attention to rhetoric to the presence of a problematic gap between environmental ethics theory and environmentalist practice. This dissertation develops a methodology of rhetorical analysis that seeks to assess how rhetoric contributes to alleviating this gap in religious environmentalism. In particular, this dissertation analyzes the development of environmentalism as a major element of humanistic Buddhist groups in Taiwan and seeks to show that a rhetorical analysis helps demonstrate how these organizations have sought to make environmentalism a meaningful subject of contemporary Buddhist religiosity. This dissertation will present an extended analysis of the concept of "spiritual environmentalism," a term developed and promoted by the late Ven. Shengyan (1930-2009), founder of the Taiwanese Buddhist organization Dharma Drum Mountain. Furthermore, this dissertation suggests that the rhetorical methodology proposed herein offers offers a direction for scholars to more effectively engage with religion and ecology in ways that address both descriptive/analytic approaches and constructive engagements with various forms of religious environmentalism. / Dissertation/Thesis / Ph.D. Religious Studies 2012

This thesis is an examination of transformative effects of literature on environmental identity. The work begins by examining and expanding the Deep Ecology concept of identification-with-nature. The potential problems with identification through direct encounters are used to argue for the relevance of the possibility of identification-through-literature. Identification-through-literature is then argued for using the hermeneutic and narrative theories of Hans-Georg Gadamer and Paul Ricoeur, as well as various examples of nature writing and fiction.

No description available.

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.