Environmental Policy Commons^™

Discovering Dune: Essays On Frank Herbert’S Epic Saga., Edited By Dominic J. Nardi And N. Trevor Brierly, G. Connor Salter

Mythlore: A Journal of J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, Charles Williams, and Mythopoeic Literature

G. Connor Salter reviews Discovering Dune: Essays on Frank Herbert’s Epic Saga, edited by Dominic J. Nardi and N. Trevor Brierly, considering its new contributions to studies of Frank Herbert's work. Essays included fit into four categories (Politics and Power, History and Religion, Biology and Ecology, and Philosophy, Choice and Ethics) and range from Herbert's use of ecology in Dune to how game theory may help explain certain characters' apparent ability to see the future. Discovering Dune also includes an appendix which contains the only up-to-date bibliography of Herbert's work (primary and secondary sources).

Weathering The Storm: Navigating Urban Ecologies Of Communication In Times Of Crisis, Austin Hestdalen

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This project explores cities as urban ecologies of communication in which crises emerge and are given significance within the dialogic relations cultivated among public actors attempting to make a living, together, within the shared historical-cultural contexts of everyday life. To describe cities as urban ecologies of communication is to describe them in terms of urban communication and its interdisciplinary foundations in the study of rhetoric, philosophy, planning, policy, architecture, sociology, geography, and media. The first chapter introduces the challenges of urban risk and crisis management within the complex ecologies of communication constituted by cities and reviews how ‘risk’ and ‘crisis’ …

Why Aim Law Toward Human Survival, John William Draper

Librarian Scholarship at Penn Law

Our legal system is contributing to humanity’s demise by failing to take account of our species’ situation. For example, in some cases law works against life and supports interests such as liberty or profit maximization.

If we do not act, science tells us that humanity bears a significant (and growing) risk of catastrophic failure. The significant risk inherent in the status quo is unacceptable and requires a response. We must act. It is getting hotter. When we decide to act, we need to make the right choice.

There is no better choice. You and all your relatives have rights. The …

It's Capitalism, Stupid!: The Theoretical And Political Limitations Of The Concept Of Neoliberalism, Bryant William Sculos

Class, Race and Corporate Power

This polemical essay explores the meaning and function of the concept of neoliberalism, focusing on the serious theoretical and political limitations of the concept. The crux of the argument is that, for those interested in overcoming the exploitative and oppressively destructive elements of global capitalism, opposing "neoliberalism" (even if best understood as a process or a spectrum of "neoliberalization" or simply privatization) is both insufficient and potentially self-undermining. This article also goes into some detail on the issues of health care and climate change in relation to "neoliberalism" (both conceptually and the material processes and policies that this term refers …

Environmental Sustainability For Business Success, Kailyn Cohen

Richard T. Schellhase Essay Prize in Ethics

No abstract provided.

Corporations And Environmental Responsibility: Considering The Moral And Financial Implications Of Oil Spills, Fracking, And Controversial Pipelines, Sarah Becker

Richard T. Schellhase Essay Prize in Ethics

No abstract provided.

Different Names For Bullying, Marco Poggio

Capstones

“There's all different forms of bullying,” says Steven Gray, a Lakota rancher and former law enforcement officer living in South Dakota. In this look into Gray’s life, we learn about two instances of bullying: the psychological and physical harassment that pushed his son, Tanner Thomas Gray, to commit suicide at age 12; And the controversial construction of an oil pipeline in an ancient tribal land that belongs to the Lakota people by rights of a treaty signed in 1851, which Gray sees as an institutional abuse infringing on the sovereignty of his people. Gray is involved in the movement that …

Losing The Message: Some Policy Implications Of Anthropocentric Indirect Arguments For Environmental Protection, Chad J. Mcguire

Chad J McGuire

Managing The Polarities Of Democracy: A Theoretical Framework For Positive Social Change, William J. Benet

Journal of Sustainable Social Change

People around the globe have embraced democracy to bring about positive social change to address our environmental, economic, and militaristic challenges. Yet, there is no agreement on a definition of democracy that can guide social change efforts. The Polarities of Democracy model is a unifying theory of democracy to guide healthy, sustainable, and just social change efforts. The Polarities of Democracy model consists of ten elements, organized as five polarity pairs: freedom & authority, justice & due process, diversity & equality, human-rights & communal-obligations, and participation & representation. In this model each element has positive aspects and negative aspects and …

Catalyst: A Social Justice Forum, Volume One, Issue One, Shane Willson, Landon S. Bevier, Rachael E. Gabriel, Taylor Krcek, Alaina Elizabeth Smith

Catalyst: A Social Justice Forum

It is with great pride that we present to you the inaugural issue of Catalyst: A Social Justice Forum. Here we have attempted to create an innovative, peer-reviewed space in which people from numerous disciplines, or even those claiming no discipline, can present research, multimedia, and art aimed at furthering the ideals of social justice, broadly defined. Social justice is not a concept owned by the academy, for attempts to create a more just world can come from many professions, or even from no profession at all. By applying the traditionally academic peer-review process to work done by activists, artists, …

Global Warming: At What Point Does Atmospheric Greenhouse Gas Release Become Unethical?, Luke Good, Gladys Lopez

Festival of Communities: UG Symposium (Posters)

In recent decades, the concept of global warming has developed increasing concern among the scientific community and general public alike. What was initially dismissed as little more than unlikely has now become a severe warning for global climate crisis threatening not only our way of life but ultimate future existence on this planet? Global warming is defined as the steady mean increase in atmospheric temperature, the primary asserted cause thereof being increased emissions and inherent atmospheric concentrations of “greenhouse gases” – carbon dioxide in particular. These gases contribute to the greenhouse effect by trapping radiation (from the sun) in the …

Climate Change Mitigation And Intergenerational Justice, Fabian Schuppert

Fabian Schuppert

No abstract provided.

“Theoric Transformations” And A New Classification Of Abductive Inferences, Michael H.G. Hoffmann

Michael H.G. Hoffmann

Based on a definition of “abductive insight” and a critical discussion of G. Schurz’s (2008) distinction of eleven “patterns of abduction” that he organizes in four groups, I suggest an even more comprehensive classification that distinguishes 15 forms in an alternative structure. These forms are organized, on the one hand, with regard to what is abductively inferred—singular facts; types; laws; theoretical models; or representation systems—and, on the other, with regard to the question whether the abductive procedure is selective or creative (including a distinction between “psychologically creative,” as in school learning, or “historically creative”). Moreover, I argue that theoretical-model abduction—which …

Lam Map Of Nagel's Core Argument In "The Problem Of Global Justice" (2005), Michael H.G. Hoffmann

Michael H.G. Hoffmann

This map is also available online: http://tinyurl.com/23vweqm

Lam Map Of Thomas Nagel (2005), The Problem Of Global Justice, Michael H.G. Hoffmann

Michael H.G. Hoffmann

This map is also available online: http://tinyurl.com/22o9q9q

The Debate About The Stern-Review And The Economics Of Climate Change, Michael H.G. Hoffmann

Michael H.G. Hoffmann

This map is -- in a different form, with linked sub-maps -- also available online: http://tinyurl.com/y9jlsxv

Future Generations: A Prioritarian View, Matthew D. Adler

All Faculty Scholarship

Should we remain neutral between our interests and those of future generations? Or are we ethically permitted or even required to depart from neutrality and engage in some measure of intergenerational discounting? This Article addresses the problem of intergenerational discounting by drawing on two different intellectual traditions: the social welfare function (“SWF”) tradition in welfare economics, and scholarship on “prioritarianism” in moral philosophy. Unlike utilitarians, prioritarians are sensitive to the distribution of well-being. They give greater weight to well-being changes affecting worse-off individuals. Prioritarianism can be captured, formally, through an SWF which sums a concave transformation of individual utility, rather …

Argument Visualization In The Political Arena: The Debate On Global Climate Engineering, Michael H.G. Hoffmann

Michael H.G. Hoffmann

A map that shows a certain point in a fictitious deliberation which is supposed to be ongoing and open-ended, driven by the motive of participants to support or to criticize any of the assumptions mapped out so far by further arguments. This map is mainly based on recent publications on geo-engineering

Learning From People, Things, And Signs, Michael H.G. Hoffmann

Michael H.G. Hoffmann

Starting from the observation that small children can count more objects than numbers—a phenomenon that I am calling the “lifeworld dependency of cognition”—and an analysis of finger calculation, the paper shows how learning can be explained as the development of cognitive systems. Parts of those systems are not only an individual's different forms of knowledge and cognitive abilities, but also other people, things, and signs. The paper argues that cognitive systems are first of all semiotic systems since they are dependent on signs and representations as mediators. The two main questions discussed here are how the external world constrains and …

The Complementarity Of A Representational And An Epistemological Function Of Signs In Scientific Activity, Michael H.G. Hoffmann, Wolff-Michael Roth

Michael H.G. Hoffmann

Signs do not only “represent” something for somebody, as Peirce’s definition goes, but also “mediate” relations between us and our world, including ourselves, as has been elaborated by Vygotsky. We call the first the representational function of a sign and the second the epistemological function since in using signs we make distinctions, specify objects and relations, structure our observations, and organize societal and cognitive activity. The goal of this paper is, on the one hand, to develop a model in which both these functions appear as complementary and, on the other, to show that this complementarity is essential for the …

Limits Of Truth: Exploring Epistemological Approaches To Argumentation, Michael H.G. Hoffmann

Michael H.G. Hoffmann

Some proponents of epistemological approaches to argumentation (Biro, Siegel, Lumer, Goldman) assume that it should be possible to develop non-relative criteria of argument evaluation. By contrast, this paper argues that any evaluation of an argument depends (a) on the cognitive situation of the evaluator, (b) on background knowledge that is available for this evaluator in a certain situation, and (c)—in some cases—on the belief-value-system this person shares.

Logical Argument Mapping: A Method For Overcoming Cognitive Problems Of Conflict Management, Michael H.G. Hoffmann

Michael H.G. Hoffmann

A crucial problem of conflict management is that whatever happens in negotiations will be interpreted and framed by stakeholders based on their different belief-value systems and world views. This problem will be discussed in the first part of this article as the main cognitive problem of conflict management. The second part develops a general semiotic solution of this problem, based on Charles Peirce's concept of "diagrammatic reasoning." The basic idea is that by representing one 's thought in diagrams, the conditions that determine interpretations can become visible, we can "experiment" with them, and we can change them eventually. The third …

What You Should Know To Survive In Knowledge Societies. On A Semiotic Understanding Of 'Knowledge', Michael H.G. Hoffmann

Michael H.G. Hoffmann

Different situations - like school and workplace - demand different forms of knowledge. Even more important, in particular for lifelong learning, are forms of knowledge we need for managing movements between those situations. To develop a better understanding of how to 'navigate' knowledge boundaries, this paper analyzes, firstly, interviews with scientists interpreting familiar and unfamiliar graphs. Our goal is to identify those forms of knowledge that should receive special attention in education. Secondly, the article elaborates - based on Peirce's semiotic - an epistemologically reflected semiotic model to describe the role and conditions of knowledge.

How To Get It. Diagrammatic Reasoning As A Tool Of Knowledge Development And Its Pragmatic Dimension, Michael H.G. Hoffmann

Michael H.G. Hoffmann

Discussions concerning belief revision, theory development, and "creativity" in philosophy and AI, reveal a growing interest in Peirce's concept of abduction. Peirce introduced abduction in an attempt to provide theoretical dignity and clarification to the difficult problem of knowledge generation. He wrote that "An Abduction is Originary in respect to being the only kind of argument which starts a new idea." These discussions, however, have led to considerable debates about the precise way in which Peirce's abduction can be used to explain knowledge generation. The crucial question is that of understanding how we can get the new elements capable of …

Learning By Developing Knowledge Networks. A Semiotic Approach Within A Dialectical Framework, Michael H.G. Hoffmann, Wolf-Michael Roth

Michael H.G. Hoffmann

A central challenge for research on how we should prepare students to manage crossing boundaries between different knowledge settings in life long learning processes is to identify those forms of knowledge that are particularly relevant here. In this paper, we develop by philosophical means the concept of a dialectical system as a general framework to describe the development of knowledge networks that mark the starting point for learning processes, and we use semiotics to discuss (a) the epistemological thesis that any cognitive access to our world of objects is mediated by signs and (b) diagrammatic reasoning and abduction as those …

Peirce's "Diagrammatic Reasoning" As A Solution Of The Learning Paradox, Michael H.G. Hoffmann

Michael H.G. Hoffmann

How can we reach “new” levels of knowledge if “new” means that there is something “evolved” that cannot be generated simply by deduction or by induction from what has been given before. The paper’s first goal is to show that two paradigmatic attempts at solving this so-called “learning paradox,” Plato’s apriorism and Aristotle’s inductivism, form two horns of a dilemma: While the inductivist cannot justify any representation of data without assuming a priori given hypotheses, the apriorist cannot justify why a certain application of given ideas is correct without being caught in an infinite regress. The second goal is to …

Lernende Lernen Abduktiv: Eine Methodologie Kreativen Denkens, Michael H.G. Hoffmann

Michael H.G. Hoffmann

No abstract provided.

Trends. Environmental Issues: Struggles To Think Globally, Ibpp Editor

International Bulletin of Political Psychology

This article discusses the difficulties of thinking globally in the context of environmentalism and environmental policy, even for proponents of environmental stewardship.

Peirces Zeichenbegriff: Seine Funktionen, Seine Phänomenologische Grundlegung Und Seine Differenzierung, Michael H.G. Hoffmann

Michael H.G. Hoffmann

No abstract provided.

Die Paradoxie Des Lernens Und Ein Semiotischer Ansatz Zu Ihrer Auflösung, Michael H.G. Hoffmann

Michael H.G. Hoffmann

No abstract provided.