Hostname: page-component-5d84bcc8dc-cnxnj Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2026-08-11T04:46:20.416Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The Role of Philosophers in Climate Change

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  10 March 2022

EUGENE CHISLENKO Open the ORCID record for EUGENE CHISLENKO [Opens in a new window]
EUGENE CHISLENKO*
Affiliation:
TEMPLE UNIVERSITY chislenko@temple.edu
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Some conceptions of the role of philosophers in climate change focus mainly on theoretical progress in philosophy, or on philosophers as individual citizens. Against these views, I defend a skill view: philosophers should use our characteristic skills as philosophers to combat climate change by integrating it into our teaching, research, service, and community engagement. A focus on theoretical progress, citizenship, expertise, virtue, ability, social role, or power, rather than on skill, can allow for some of these contributions. But the skill view, I argue, uniquely captures the breadth of philosophers’ role in climate change; promises to make us more effective in practice; and offers a compelling way to overcome our own lingering climate denial by integrating climate change into all aspects of philosophical activity.

Keywords

climate changesustainabilityinstitutionsjusticemetaphilosophy

Information

Type
Article
Information
Journal of the American Philosophical Association , Volume 8 , Issue 4 , Winter 2022 , pp. 780 - 798
Check for updates
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s), 2022. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of the American Philosophical Association

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Article purchase

Temporarily unavailable

Footnotes

This essay has benefited from feedback by many people, including Jeremy Bendik-Keymer, Amy Berg, Michael Brownstein, Simona Capisani, Lee-Ann Chae, Dylan Khanal, Arthur Krieger, Rebecca Millsop, Kaitlin Pettit, Robin Zheng, my anonymous reviewers, and audiences at the American Philosophical Association (Central Division), the International Society for Environmental Ethics, the Rocky Mountain Ethics Congress, the International Association for Environmental Philosophy, Next Earth, and the Great Lakes Philosophy Conference. A special thanks to Charles Goldhaber for extremely helpful feedback on several drafts.

References

American Philosophical Association. (2020) Good Practices Guide. https://cdn.ymaws.com/www.apaonline.org/resource/resmgr/docs/Good_Practices_Guide_2020.pdf.Google Scholar
Annas, Julia. (2011) Intelligent Virtue. New York: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Brister, Evelyn. (2021) ‘Field Philosophy and Social Justice’. Social Epistemology, 35, 393–404.10.1080/02691728.2020.1757176CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Brister, Evelyn, and Frodeman, Robert, eds. (2020) A Guide to Field Philosophy: Case Studies and Practical Strategies. New York: Routledge.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Callicott, J. Baird. (2010) ‘Why Study Environmental Ethics?’ In Keller, David R. (ed.), Environmental Ethics: The Big Questions (Oxford: Blackwell), 33–35.Google Scholar
Caney, Simon. (2012) ‘Addressing Poverty and Climate Change: The Varieties of Social Engagement’. Ethics & International Affairs, 26, 191–216.10.1017/S0892679412000299CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Caney, Simon. (2014) ‘Two Kinds of Climate Justice: Avoiding Harm and Sharing Burdens’. Journal of Political Philosophy, 22, 125–49.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Clowney, David, and Mosto, Patricia, eds. (2009) Earthcare: An Anthology in Environmental Ethics. New York: Rowman & Littlefield.Google Scholar
Cohen, Stanley. (2001) States of Denial: Knowing about Atrocities and Suffering. Cambridge, MA: Polity Press.Google Scholar
Collins, Patricia. (2013). On Intellectual Activism. Philadelphia: Temple University Press.Google Scholar
Driver, Julia. (2021) ‘Moral Expertise’. In Fridland, Ellen and Pavese, Carlotta (eds.), The Routledge Handbook of Philosophy of Skill and Expertise (London: Routledge), 233–44.Google Scholar
Ericsson, K. Anders, Hoffman, Robert R., and Kozbelt, Aaron, eds. (2018) The Cambridge Handbook of Expertise and Expert Performance, 2nd ed. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fridland, Ellen. (2021) ‘The Nature of Skill: Functions and Control Structures’. In Fridland, Ellen and Pavese, Carlotta (eds.), The Routledge Handbook of Philosophy of Skill and Expertise (London: Routledge), 245–57.Google Scholar
Fridland, Ellen, and Pavese, Carlotta, eds. (2021) The Routledge Handbook of Philosophy of Skill and Expertise. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Gardiner, Stephen M. (2006) ‘A Perfect Moral Storm: Climate Change, Intergenerational Ethics, and the Problem of Moral Corruption’. Environmental Values, 15, 397–413.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gardiner, Stephen M. (2011) A Perfect Moral Storm. New York: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gardiner, Stephen M., and Thompson, Allen (eds.). (2017). The Oxford Handbook of Environmental Ethics. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Goldberg, Matthew H., Gustafson, Abel, and van den Linden, Sander. (2020) ‘Leveraging Social Science to Generate Lasting Engagement with Climate Change Solutions’. One Earth, 3, 314–24.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Green, Fergus, and Brandstedt, Eric. (2021) ‘Engaged Climate Ethics’. Journal of Political Philosophy, 29, 539–63.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Heede, Richard (2014). ‘Tracing Anthropogenic Carbon Dioxide and Methane Emissions to Fossil Fuel and Cement Producers, 1854-2020’. Climatic Change, 122, 229–41.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Herzog, Lisa. (2018) Reclaiming the System: Moral Responsibility, Divided Labor, and the Role of Organizations in Society. New York: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hourdequin, Marion. (2015) Environmental Ethics: From Theory to Practice. New York: Bloomsbury Academic.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. (2018) Global Warming of 1.5°C. www.ipcc.ch/sr15.Google Scholar
Kawall, Jason. (2012) ‘Rethinking Greed’. In Thompson, and Bendik-Keymer, (eds.), Ethical Adaptation to Climate Change: Human Virtues of the Future (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press), 223–39.Google Scholar
Kawall, Jason. (2017) ‘A History of Environmental Ethics’. In Gardiner, Stephen M. and Thompson, Allen (eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Environmental Ethics (New York: Oxford University Press), 13–26.Google Scholar
Klein, Naomi. (2014) This Changes Everything. New York: Simon & Schuster.Google Scholar
Korsgaard, Christine M. (2018). Fellow Creatures: Our Obligations to the Other Animals. New York: Oxford University Press.10.1093/oso/9780198753858.001.0001CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lamb, Michael, and Lane, Melissa. (2016) ‘Aristotle on the Ethics of Communicating Climate Change’. In Heyward, Clare and Roser, Dominic (eds.), Climate Justice in a Non-ideal World (Oxford: Oxford University Press), 229–54.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Light, Andrew. (2002) ‘Taking Environmental Ethics Public’. In Schmidtz, David and Willott, Elizabeth (eds.), Environmental Ethics: What Really Matters, What Really Works (New York: Oxford University Press), 556–66.Google Scholar
Light, Andrew, and Rolston, Holmes III, eds. (2003) Environmental Ethics: An Anthology. Oxford: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Marshall, Catherine, and Anderson, Amy L., eds. (2009) Activist Educators. New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
McCaughey, Robert. (1976). ‘American University Teachers and Opposition to the Vietnam War: A Reconsideration’. Minerva, 14, 307–29.10.1007/BF01096275CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Miller, David. (2001) ‘Distributing Responsibilities’. Journal of Political Philosophy, 9, 453–71.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Miller, David. (2008) Global Justice and Climate Change: How Should Responsibilities be Distributed? The Tanner Lectures on Human Values. https://tannerlectures.utah.edu/_resources/documents/a-to-z/m/Miller_08.pdf.Google Scholar
Norgaard, Kari Marie. (2011) Living in Denial: Climate Change, Emotions, and Everyday Life. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.10.7551/mitpress/9780262015448.001.0001CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Overgaard, Søren, Gilbert, Paul, and Burwood, Stephen. (2013) An Introduction to Metaphilosophy. New York: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Oxley, Julinna C. (2020) ‘How to be a (Good) Philosopher-Activist’. Essays in Philosophy, 21, 6–28.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Pavese, Carlotta. (2021) ‘Knowledge-How’. In Edward N. Zalta (ed.), The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/sum2021/entries/knowledge-how/.Google Scholar
Pogge, Thomas, and Cabrera, Luis. (2012) ‘Outreach, Impact, Collaboration: Why Academics Should Join to Stand against Poverty’. Ethics & International Affairs, 26, 163–82.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rolston, Holmes III. (2010) ‘Why Study Environmental Ethics?’ In Keller, David R. (ed.), Environmental Ethics: The Big Questions (Oxford: Blackwell), 40–41.Google Scholar
Stichter, Matt. (2015) ‘Philosophical and Psychological Accounts of Expertise and Experts’. Humana.Mente: Journal of Philosophical Studies, 28, 105–28.Google Scholar
Stichter, Matt. (2018) The Skillfulness of Virtue. New York: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Thompson, Allen, and Bendik-Keymer, Jeremy, eds. (2012a) Ethical Adaptation to Climate Change: Human Virtues of the Future. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Thompson, Allen, and Bendik-Keymer, Jeremy. (2012b) ‘Introduction: Adapting Humanity’. In Thompson, and Bendik-Keymer, (eds.), Ethical Adaptation to Climate Change: Human Virtues of the Future (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press), 1–23.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
van Ewijk, Stijn, and Hoekman, Paul. (2021) ‘Emission Reduction Potentials for Academic Conference Travel’. Journal of Industrial Ecology, 25, 778–88.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Whyte, Kyle. (n.d.) ‘Indigenous Climate Change & Climate Justice: Teaching Materials & Advanced Bibliography’. https://kylewhyte.seas.umich.edu/climate-justice/. (Accessed January 21, 2022.)Google Scholar
Woollard, Fiona. (2012) ‘The Doctrine of Doing and Allowing I: Analysis of the Doing/Allowing Distinction’. Philosophy Compass, 7, 448–58.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Zheng, Robin. (2018) ‘What is My Role in Changing the System? A New Model of Responsibility for Structural Injustice’. Ethical Theory and Moral Practice, 21, 869–85.CrossRefGoogle Scholar