ASC EVENT: What Does Aristotle Have to Say About “Communicating Climate Change”?

ascevent
Professor Melissa Lane, Class of 1943 Professor of Politics, Princeton University

 

Harald sends along details about an interesting talk being given at Agnes Scott College tomorrow night…

  • Thursday, March 12 at 7:30 p.m.

  • The Frannie Graves Auditorium (rm. 128), Campbell Hall

  • Agnes Scott College, 141 East College Avenue

  • Decatur, Georgia, 30030

The field of climate change communication (CCC) has recently emerged to address the gap between scientific knowledge of climate change and public motivation to respond. Psychologists in this field have offered helpful strategies for improving the effectiveness of CCC, but their empirical research tends to neglect the ethics of CCC. Philosophers have been more attentive to ethical communication, but they tend to focus on its cognitive dimensions and minimize the affective and social dimensions that contribute to effectiveness. As a result, studies that address ethics and effectiveness in tandem are lacking.

In this lecture, drawing on work with co-author Michael Lamb, I will fill this gap by recovering insights from Aristotle’s Rhetoric. By situating all communication within an ethical relationship between speaker and auditor, emphasizing the agency and judgment of auditors, and highlighting ways to build trust, Aristotle offers an art of rhetoric that can help climate scientists communicate both ethically and effectively.

9 thoughts on “ASC EVENT: What Does Aristotle Have to Say About “Communicating Climate Change”?”


    1. My thought too! Screw climate change, I want her “fountain of youth” secrets! 🙂

  10. Oh, for the love of…..is there no hyper-special interest that someone won’t invent? There’s a specific field created especially to communicate “climate change”?

    And we wonder why our students can’t repay their loans!?

  12. Considering all the courses devoted to pop culture ephemera (one I head about recently was devoted to “Saved by The Bell”), this sounds like a quite reasonable subject for study, one with real-world implications that are only going to be more important going forward. And perhaps especially important in a part of the country where politicians seek to avoid (or even prohibit) talking about the subject at all.

  14. More like the 1943 Princeton grads fund many endowed chairs…

    (trying to reply to TinMan)

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