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.