Merleau-Ponty on Music: Habit, Passage, and Audience
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Diotima: The Marist Undergraduate Philosophy Journal Volume VIII
Editor-In-Chief Adam Freda
Editorial Board Carolyn Orcutt Marina Flegel Ivory Unga Sophia Clauson Faculty Advisors Dr. Sasha Biro Dr. Joseph Campisi
Department of Philosophy and Religious Studies Marist University Poughkeepsie, NY
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Table of Contents
A Letter from the Editor ...............................................................................................4 Merleau-Ponty on Music: Habit, Passage, and Audience ..........................................6 Allen Hale Vassar College Toward a Virtue Based Ethic for Nonessential Greenhouse Gas Emissions ...........18 Fisher Mallon Duke University Expert Bullshitting: Understanding Epistemic Trespassing through the Lens of Bullshit ........................................................................................................................34 Nicholas Rose Marist University A Reliance on Necessary False Belief: The Salvation of The Classical Analysis of Knowledge ....................................................................................................................48 Sebastian Smith University of Florida Interview with Dr. Yujin Nagasawa ...........................................................................64
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A Letter from the Editor
With immense eagerness, we are proud to present issue VIII of Diotima : The Marist Undergraduate Philosophy Journal . First and foremost, I want to congratulate and thank the editorial board for another amazing volume. I am so thankful for their contributions and advice as this journal would not be possible without them. I would also like to thank our former editor, Lily Jandrisevitis, for her leadership and guidance. The topics in this issue range from a phenomenological analysis of playing music to the ethical concerns of greenhouse gas emissions. Many papers are taken from the Marist 2024 Undergraduate Philosophy Conference hosted last spring. We are thankful for all those that participated and helped with the conference.
The keynote speaker for the conference was Dr. Yujin Nagasawa from the University of Oklahoma, who was interviewed on this issue.
It was a wonderful opportunity to hear Dr. Nagasawa’s lecture on the problem of consciousness and its relation to the problem of evil. In his recent book, The Problem of Evil for Atheists , Nagasawa lays out a new argument where several religious traditions must explain the problem of systemic evil. His lecture compared how different positions on evil may correlate to different metaphysical positions regarding consciousness. His lecture showed how closely linked philosophical fields may be and how the discussion can be pushed further when these similarities are shown. Afterwards, we had the pleasure of discussing how philosophy of religion can become a more diverse field and the responsibilities that come with the freedom in philosophy. His interview serves as a lens into how he thinks and his philosophical journey, so we’re thankful that he took the time to respond to our questions. Carolyn Orcutt, a philosophy student with a minor in studio arts, created our cover. She built off the inspiration of our last cover by combining a painting of Diotima with new modern elements. Thanks to her original vision, we were able to put together a
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cover that combines themes of the ancient and modern world together.
As we compiled the papers for this issue, we ran into several technical problems. From fixing footnotes to poor connectivity, it seemed improbable that this issue would be out on time. Nevertheless, with cooperation, optimism, and a little bit of patience, the issue is ready. I am deeply grateful for all the time everyone spent fixing these issues and the generosity of everyone on the team. Philosophy does not exist in a vacuum. It is an ongoing discussion to engage in the world and see it a little bit differently. We thank everyone that helped and submitted to this issue, and hope that readers engage in the beauty of discussion.
Thank you and dare to think,
Adam Freda
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Merleau-Ponty on Music: Habit, Passage, and Audience
Merleau-Ponty on Music: Habit, Passage, and Audience Allen Hale Vassar College ____________________________________________________________________ Abstract For Merleau-Ponty, the body is our means of “having” a world; its motor functions are expressive attempts to move “toward” the world. In developing his account of the body schema, Merleau-Ponty’s description of embodied habit utilizes a musical example: a pipe organist performing on an unfamiliar organ, which their habits adjust to. The “passage” from musical notation to its audible sound “resides” in the performer’s body and habits’ interaction with the instrument. I argue that Merleau-Ponty’s discussion of musical habit does not describe what occurs in habit when the passage’s sound inevitably reaches external audiences. If motor functions are an expressive attempt of the body to move towards the world, including audiences, Merleau-Ponty’s discussion of habits must account for innumerable performance scenarios. This paper then builds from Merleau-Ponty’s discussion of the body schema and music’s “passage” in order to investigate the phenomenological relationship between habit, external audiences, and musical performance 1 Maurice Merleau-Ponty, The Phenomenology of Perception , trans. Donald A. Landes (New York: Routledge, 2012), 147. A cross the Phenomenology of Perception , Maurice Merleau-Ponty develops an account of embodied perception, wherein the body is our means of “having” a world. 1
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Reality’s phenomena are approached by a study of perception and its constants, the condition of the body schema being one; through this schema, we are “geared” into the world. Merleau-Ponty understands the concept of the body schema itself to serve as a theory of perception, since perceptive subjects are always bodies. 2 Motor functions are, therefore, expressions of the body schema’s attempts to move toward the world, and the body is our means of having a world in the first place .3 In short, we are directed at the world through bodily capacities aimed at various goals. Within Merleau-Ponty’s philosophy, the act of performing music then occurs through the body, and perception of music—as a musician or an audience—is made possible by the body’s schema. To investigate this topic further, I will closely examine Merleau-Ponty’s example of the pipe organist, incorporated within his discussion of habit. After discussing this example, I move into a complication of Merleau-Ponty’s theory regarding the problem of an external audience and the “passage” of music from score to sound; the performer’s body and their instrument are the “place” of this passage. Although Merleau-Ponty’s account of habit is a useful way of phenomenologically interpreting the body’s expressive, music-making gestures, his theory is complicated by the problem of external audiences in varying performance scenarios. If motor functions are an expressive attempt of the body to move towards the world, which includes audiences, innumerable performance scenarios must be accounted for in Merleau-Ponty’s description of habit. When articulating and addressing this complication, the following essay builds from Merleau-Ponty’s view of the “passage,” rather than discarding it entirely.
2 Merleau-Ponty, 217, 316. 3 Merleau-Ponty, xxiv, 103, 147.
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Merleau-Ponty on Music: Habit, Passage, and Audience
Merleau-Ponty’s general account of body schema informs his discussion of habit as embodied action. When habits are acquired, the body schema undergoes an active renewal. 4 Habit involves a process, in this sense. In habitual action, our body repeatedly gestures towards objects whose size and volume have ceased to be determined in comparison with other objects. 5 Rather, we engage with objects insofar as they enable that particular habit’s expression. Habit is not constituted by reflex or any form of knowledge such as familiarity with objects’ size and volume. When acquiring a habit, it is instead the body which “knows,” so to speak, rather than the mind’s cognition; subjects are again, for Merleau-Ponty, always bodies. 6 Habit then resides in the body, the latter of which serves as a mediator of the world. 7 Personal acts are prolonged in time and space through the body, solidified into stable dispositions. 8 Moving from this initial claim, Merleau-Ponty describes an organist’s musical performance as an example of embodied habit. As the thing which “knows” regarding habit, the body does not entrust the pipe organ pedal’s spatial positions to memory as a form of knowledge. They are incorporated into the organist’s bodily space, rather than being posited as specified or objective locations. 9 Habit, as knowledge in our hands, is given through bodily effort rather than memory of objective spatial designations. 10 The organist does not behave like someone who draws up a plan of action for each of their individual gestures. 11 An experienced organist is capable of
4 Merleau-Ponty, 143. 5 Merleau-Ponty, 144. 6 Merleau-Ponty, 145. 7 Merleau-Ponty, 146. 8 Merleau-Ponty, 147. 9 Merleau-Ponty, 146. 10 Merleau-Ponty, 145. 11 Merleau-Ponty, 146-147.
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playing a new organ they were previously unfamiliar with, needing an hour of practice to perform on the instrument without ever learning the positions of each pedal in objective space. Habit here expresses the power we have of altering our existence through the incorporation of new “instruments,” such as unfamiliar organ pedals. 12 At this point, Merleau-Ponty’s example of the organist raises no concerns regarding his account of habit and therefore his foundational concept of the body schema. Moving onwards, Merleau-Ponty highlights the relationship between the musical essence contained within a score and the sound of music which “actually resonates around the organ.” 13 In the direct relationship between the musical components of score and sound, there is necessarily a “passage” from a score’s notation to its aural realization. 14 Where does the passage between the score’s musical essence and creation of actual sound “reside,” then? For Merleau-Ponty, the body of the organist and their instrument are nothing other than the “place of passage of this relationship.” 15 In other words, “A musical score provides the form by which music itself is realized in the interaction between body and instrument.” 16 Again, “passage” designates the movement from the score’s musical essence to its audible realization. Music here is “brought into being through the embodied actions of performers in the moment, necessarily involving the body and an instrument. The habituated organist’s gestures here create an “expressive space”
12 Merleau-Ponty, 145. 13 Merleau-Ponty, 147. 14 Merleau-Ponty, 147. 15 Merleau-Ponty, 147. 16 Michael R. Kearney, “The Phenomenology of the Pipe Organ,” Phenomenology & Practice 15, no. 2 (2020), 31-32.
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without place for memory of the organ’s components, as the organist does not play music within objective space. 17 If all bodily gestures contain an amount of signification, what is signified in the expressive space of musical performance habits? Merleau-Ponty’s notion of expressive space here will complicate the earlier description of habit and the body schema. 18 As previously noted, motor functions of the body are expressions aimed at particular goals. In the following description of the “passage,” Merleau-Ponty explains that “The body is eminently an expressive space.” 19 As an extension of the body’s expressive space, the pipe organ is an instrument by which the body’s expressive performance goals “can be accomplished.” 20 Expression must always then be an expression to something as part of our body schema’s movement towards the world. More generally, expressive performances are also characterized by their audiences to a musician performs for , or what their expressive motor functions move towards in the world. What bodily gestures move towards in the world may be innumerable in nature, regarding individuals’ performance goals among differing audiences. As the way(s) in which we live and “carry ourselves” through embodied, expressive gestures, “habit is more than mere routine” assigned to memorization. 21 Across a variety of performance scenarios, habits’ expressive gestures would necessarily contain an immense variety of signification related to specific audiences and their reasons for attendance.
The audience complicates an earlier notion about where the passage from
17 Marc Duby, “‘A Unique Way of Being’: The Place of Music in Merleau-Ponty’s Phenomenology of Perception,” in Performance Phenomenology: To The Thing Itself , ed. Stuart Grant, Jodie McNeilly- Renaudie, and Matthew Wagner (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2019), 111-112; Merleau-Ponty, The Phenomenology of Perception , 147.
18 Merleau-Ponty, xxxii. 19 Merleau-Ponty, 147. 20 Kearney, “The Phenomenology of the Pipe Organ,” 29. 21 Kearney, 29.
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score to sound “resides.” Expressive meaning originating from this “passage” is inseparable from the sound which is created. 22 If the place of passage from score to actual sound resides in the interaction of a performer’s body with their instrument, the passage’s resultant sound then reaches beyond the performer to an active, listening audience. The passage which results in sound extends outside of a performer and their body to include the perceptive bodies of other listeners. The passage is only meaningfully initiated by the performer and originally resides in the interaction between performer and their instrument. The resulting sound must have a “place” beyond performer/instrument when an external audience is present. This interpretation of the “passage” necessarily goes beyond Merleau-Ponty’s text while building from his account. In playing alone, one also has oneself as an audience. Meaning emerges in the passage between the score’s signification and its audible expression, which, as an expression towards something, expresses to an audience even if it does not originally “reside” with them. From a Merleau-Ponty perspective, how might an external audience then be accounted for in the discussion of habit and the “passage?” Although Merleau-Ponty speaks to the spatial process of adjusting musical habits to a new organ’s stops, keys, or pedals, he does not discuss the process of reconfiguring habits in the presence of differing audiences. It does not suffice to say that Merleau-Ponty hastily used the organist as an example without ever considering the blatant issue of musical audiences. Elsewhere in the text, a similar external notion of the Other is elaborated upon, as one would expect in a phenomenological account. 23
22 Merleau-Ponty, 188. 23 For more, see: Merleau-Ponty, 364-379.
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Rather, the organist's example is taken to be representative of his general theory of embodied habit without an elaboration on performance adjustments occurring as habits themselves. The concern here regards the lack of discussion between varying performance scenarios—which contain distinct audiences in unique spaces—and the audience’s impact on a “passage” between score and sound. For a phenomenological account, the problem of an audience as an Other must be addressed, as the sound necessarily reaches them and expresses something towards them. Our own body, whether as performer or audience member, is not merely one expressive space among all others; instead, it serves as the origin of all others. Music invites other perceptive bodies into a shared space of reception, one in which music’s passage from score to aural realization “takes place” in the performer’s body and their instrument; again, sound is then perceived by the bodies of the audience. Our body, as a general means of having a world, necessarily involves having a world with other bodies in these performances. 24 The music is heard as much by the audience as it is by the performer, although it is received in subjectively distinct ways by each group and between individual audience members. Still, there is an intersubjective common ground between performers and audiences where music is perceived by their bodily capacities. 25 Music offers an embodied experience of shared meaning that binds its participants both audiences and performers together. 26 As a permanent field or dimension of existence, the social realm is something subjects cannot cease to be situated in relation to, necessarily a
24 Merleau-Ponty, 147. 25 Duby, “The Place of Music,” 120. 26 Kearney, “The Phenomenology of the Pipe Organ,” 32.
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component of shared musical experience. Music in the world is not merely present to the performer, meaning the “passage’s” resultant sound involves others who hear the music, even if their body is not the place where the passage from score to sound resides. 27 Performances for an external audience are not a unified category, even if the individual performer retains some consistent aims across their performances. High school bands, professional symphonies, solo auditions, chamber ensembles, street bands, and more all create music addressed to distinguished types of audiences who listen to these performances in unique spaces. Similarly, different musical systems make different cognitive demands within their respective sounds, received through different social and physical settings wherein that music comes into being. 28 The situation of playing the organ in a church service demands habitual adjustments and expectations which are not always alike to those of an organist’s concert recital program. The situation provides the organist playing with a choir, how much space there is between music, portions of the service focused on scripture, who is in the crowd and so on. Playing for a loved one, a famous music critic, or a congregation are not analogous to performance settings. How do the performers’ adjustments to their audience relate to Merleau-Ponty’s account of habit, then? Although he does not discuss the problem of an audience directly, the aforementioned, reworked version of the “passage” can address the problems that an external audience creates for Merleau-Ponty’s notion of habit. Similarly, Merleau-Ponty’s conclusion at the end of this section points the reader in a useful
27 Merleau-Ponty, The Phenomenology of Perception , 379. 28 Duby, “The Place of Music,” 125.
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direction. Habit has been acquired when the body “allows itself to be penetrated by new signification, when it has assimilated a new meaningful core.” 29 These “cores” must contain a set of bodily gestures which we can call a habit, such as those involving musical performance on a particular instrument. The habits of musical performance, as a unified set of gestures, involve a variety of embodied behaviors. These enable the experienced performer to continually express their music in consistent technical manners across inconsistent expressive scenarios, which can include performance settings. The previously noted spatial process of adjusting to a new organ’s stops, pedals, and keys could then resemble the process of adjusting to different types of performance situations or demands. Once a performer has experienced an archetypal performance scenario enough, a motor habit responding to its demands is acquired. The body, having the fundamental power to “lend a bit of renewable action.” 30 to otherwise momentary movements, again enables the acquisition of these habits. For example, musicians who pursue performance opportunities outside of voluntary settings often audition in order to participate in select ensembles. Although the process of auditioning is unfamiliar (and perhaps frightening) at first, even to a musician with previously well-developed habits on their instrument, musicians frequently participate in these audition activities. By consistently using one’s body in this repeated performance scenario, a new “core” of experiences related to this specific setting will accumulate, eventually acquired as a habit of auditioning .
In my own auditions, I acquired a habitual process which prepared me to
29 Merleau-Ponty, 148. 30 Merleau-Ponty, 148.
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play, including: sitting rather than standing, adjusting my chair and music stand to avoid eye contact with the adjudicator, using distinct warmups, and concluding with deep breathing before I play (in this order). After auditioning enough times, this generalized, conscious routine became an ingrained, embodied habit which responded to a particular audience (i.e., the adjudicator). Like the organist “settling” into a new organ space, I found it increasingly easy to “settle” into new audition rooms, even as I played different audition pieces with unique purposes each time. If habit expresses the body’s ability to dilate our being in its incorporation of new instruments, the incorporation of new performance scenarios also seems possible, 31 especially as those scenarios rely upon other pre-acquired musical habits. Even with innumerable performance scenarios, associations conducive to habit may be drawn between related “types” of performances that occur in similar settings—like a church or a concert hall. Familiarizing oneself with the expressive meaning an audience listens for (think of the difference between a sermon’s musical experience for worshippers and an audition’s purpose) enables habits to be built as a response to distinct performance scenarios. Performers’ acquired habits enable their music to express particular significations to particular audiences. As a result, it is possible to use Merleau-Ponty’s discussion of the “passage” to address the problem of external audiences in varying performance scenarios. Although the passage is only described as residing in the performer’s body and their instrument, the sound it creates can reach other listening bodies in an audience. Here, Merleau-Ponty’s other philosophical conclusions enable one to
31 Merleau-Ponty, 145.
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build from his account of the organist and the body schema, addressing the complications and limitations of the original organist example. Additional elaboration here can provide a Merleau-Ponty means of interpreting musical habit’s relationships to an audience, even as that interpretation does not appear within the original text.
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Bibliography Duby, Marc. “‘A Unique Way of Being’: The Place of Music in Merleau-Ponty’s Phenomenology of Perception.” In Performance Phenomenology: To The Thing Itself , 111-131. Edited by Stuart Grant, Jodie McNeilly-Renaudie, and Matthew Wagner. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2019. Kearney, Michael R. “The Phenomenology of the Pipe Organ.” Phenomenology & Practice 15, no. 2 (2020): 24-38. Merleau-Ponty, Maurice. The Phenomenology of Perception . Translated by Donald A. Landes. New York: Routledge, 2012.
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Toward a Virtue Based Ethic for Nonessential Greenhouse Gas Emissions
Toward a Virtue Based Ethic for Nonessential Greenhouse Gas Emissions
Fisher Mallon Duke University
Abstract
Dramatic greenhouse gas (GHG) emission reductions are necessary to avert the most serious consequences of climate change. Despite the magnitude of this challenge, how individuals ought to regulate their personal GHG emissions is controversial within the philosophic community. This paper argues that it is most appropriate to conceive obligation and assess the morality of individual GHG emissions through a virtue ethics perspective. An individual who embodies the virtues of justice, compassion, and responsibility will have a strong preference to avoid GHG-emitting behaviors when accessible, and less emission-intensive alternatives exist. A virtue-ethical framework is most appropriate to guide moral choices regarding individual GHG emissions because virtue ethics focuses on cultivating traits that will lead individuals to make moral choices “all the time.” This avoids the equity challenges posed when applying a generalizable deontological or consequentialist approach to the diverse contexts in which individuals make decisions with GHG implications. trajectories will cause 250,000 additional deaths per year O bserved and predicted impacts of climate change are ubiquitous; current anthropogenic greenhouse gas (GHG) emission
Introduction
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between 2030-2050 1 , at least $1.7 trillion in economic damages by 2050 2 and the extinction of one third of plant and animal species. 3 Dramatic GHG emission reductions are necessary to avert the most serious consequences of climate change. Despite the magnitude of this challenge, how individuals ought to regulate their personal GHG emissions is controversial within the philosophic community. This paper argues that it is most appropriate to conceive obligation and assess the morality of individual GHG emissions through a virtue ethics perspective. An individual who embodies the virtues of justice, compassion, and responsibility will have a strong preference to avoid GHG-emitting behaviors when accessible, and less emission-intensive alternatives exist. There is rich debate about how we ought to establish moral obligations to reduce individual GHG emissions. I will highlight dominant perspectives, inform the working assumptions for this paper, and identify gaps in the existing body of knowledge that this paper aims to fill. The conversation begins with controversy regarding the moral relevance of individual GHG emissions. Walter Sinnott-Armstrong argues that individual GHG emissions lack causal impact in isolation and therefore cannot be the subject of moral condemnation. 4 However, a strong body of philosophical and empirical evidence refutes Armstrong’s position. Marion Hourdequin proposes a Confucian, relational conception of people, contending that individual actions to reduce 1 “Climate Change,” World Health Organization, https://www.who.int/health-topics/climate-change/. 2 “Climate Change is Costing the World $16 Million per Hour,” World Economic Forum , 2023, https://www.weforum.org/stories/2023/10/climate-loss-and-damage-cost-16-million-per-hour/. 3 "Global Warming and Endangered Species Initiative," Biologicaldiversity.org. https://www.biologicaldiversity.org/campaigns/global_warming_and_endangered_specie s/# (2024). 4 Walter Sinnott-Armstrong, “ It's Not My Fault: Global Warming and Individual Moral Obligations” in Perspectives on Climate Change , edited by Walter Sinnott-Armstrong and Richard B. Howarth. Elsevier. pp. 221–253.
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emissions have an outsized impact because they influence others. 5 John Nolt attempts to dismiss the perception of an individual’s emissions as negligibly small by calculating the expected harm of an American's lifetime GHG emissions (he estimates that the average American causes “serious suffering and/or death of two future people” from their GHG emissions). 6 Although there is no consensus on the material impact of individual emissions, this paper will operate with the understanding that an individual’s GHG emissions can do harm. There is also debate about the moral permissibility of subsistence emissions. Goran Duus-Otterstrom argues that while individual subsistence emissions are morally permissible, people have an obligation to “correct” for emitting them, either via offsets or financial contributions to adaptation and compensation initiatives. 7 However, most take a more lenient perspective, asserting the unconditional permissibility of subsistence emissions. 8 This paper will operate with the understanding that all subsistence emissions are morally permissible, and that the individual emitter is not independently responsible for correcting for associated harms. Although there is consensus that some groups and individuals bear more responsibility for implementing climate change mitigation and adaptation measures, the division of responsibility is contentious. Differing levels of responsibility are often dictated by a laundry list of factors, including socioeconomic
5 Marion Hordequin, “Climate, Collective Action and Individual Ethical Obligations.” Environmental Values , no. 19 (4), 2010: 443 - 464. 6 James Nolt, “How Harmful Are the Average American's Greenhouse Gas Emissions?” in Ethics, Policy & Environment, (2011). 7 Göran Duus-Otterström, "Subsistence Emissions and Climate Justice," in British Journal of Political Science (2022). 8 Henry Shue, Climate Justice: Vulnerability and Protection , (Oxford University Press, 2014).
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vulnerability, institutional coordination, past emissions, resource availability, and competing moral duties. There is disagreement about whether “the right to pollute” should be ascribed such that individuals have an equal burden or equal absolute share of emissions reductions. Anil Agarwal and Sunita Narain assert that individuals should be granted an equal “per capita” emissions quota. 9 Others argue that we phase in the equal “per capita” view over time so that individuals who reside in countries with currently high per capita emissions begin with a greater- than-equal share of emissions, which would decrease over time as economies trend towards decarbonization. There is further disagreement about the extent to which we consider past emissions. Some assert that emissions rights should be primarily linked to countries, so that a country's past emissions are deducted from the per capita emissions quota of its citizens. 10 To navigate this minefield of equity considerations, philosophers have advocated broad principles that assign responsibility, including the polluter pays, beneficiary pays, and able to pay principles. 11 However, these principles are designed for application on global scales in which nations are rights-bearers. If applied at the individual level, these principles again become inequitable because different additional inequalities exist within nationals, states, communities, etc. The literature review underscores a major deficiency in philosophy attempting to guide the ethical reduction of GHG emissions. Since the majority of literature considers how responsibility ought to be attributed on national and 9 Anil Agarwal, & Sunita Narain, “Global Warming in an Unequal World” in India in a Warming World , 81–91. https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780199498734.003.0005. 10 Eric Neumayer, “In Defense of Historical Accountability for Greenhouse Gas Emissions,” Ecological Economics , 33 (2), 2000: 185–192. https://doi.org/10.1016/s0921-8009(00)00135-x. 11 Rebecca Buxton, “Reparative Justice for Climate Refugees,” Philosophy , 94 (02), 2019: 193–219. https://doi.org/10.1017/s0031819119000019
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international scales, there is insufficient evidence on how ethical principles should be applied at the individual level. The existing principles for individual application are largely deontological or consequentialist and are hampered by equity issues because they cannot account for the myriad contexts in which individuals make choices with GHG implications. However, little attention has been given to what virtue ethics offers in response to climate change. 12 This paper will suggest that a moral framework grounded in virtue is best suited to provide individuals with clarity on how to behave ethically with respect to their individual GHG emissions. Virtue Ethics as Grounds for an Individual Obligation to Reduce GHG Emissions In virtue-ethical theory, virtues are thought of as ideal moral character traits from which moral action will naturally follow. 13 Virtue ethics are distinct from other major approaches in normative ethics (e.g., deontology, utilitarianism) because instead of identifying universal principles that can be applied to specific situations, virtue ethics focuses on honing virtuous traits that will lead individuals to make moral choices “all the time.” 14 Possession of a virtue is “a matter of degree;” an individual must wholeheartedly embody virtue through their motives, dispositions, and actions. 15 Applying a virtue ethics framework transfers the focus of moral decision making from specific dilemmas to the cultivation of character traits over a lifetime. This transfer is desirable when attempting to apply an ethical
12 Dominic Lenzi, “How Should We Respond to Climate Change? Virtue Ethics and Aggregation Problems,” Journal of Social Philosophy , 54 (3), 2023: 421–436. 13 Nafsika Athanassoulis, “Virtue Ethics,” in Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy ,
https://iep.utm.edu/virtue/#SH6b. 14 Athanassoulis, “Virtue Ethics.” 15 Rosalind Hursthouse, “Virtue Ethics.” Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, October 2022, https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/ethics-virtue/.
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framework to govern the morality of individual GHG emissions. Focusing on the development of virtuous traits simplifies decision-making and alleviates equity concerns that arise when attempting to apply a generalizable rule to specific cases. The virtues of justice, compassion, and responsibility are relevant to how individuals ought to manage their individual GHG emissions. Justice and compassion work in tandem to create a profound aversion to emitting GHGs, while responsibility permits an agent to consider their individual GHG emissions in a global context. Justice is defined by Plato as fulfilling one's agreements and not inflicting wrong on others. He also argues that societal justice depends on justice being upheld at the individual level. 16 It follows that an individual possessing the virtue of justice is opposed to the maldistribution of goods, including common goods. 17 Climate change is an unjust process because it has global impacts that negatively impact individuals irrespective of their role in generating emissions. Additionally, climate change disproportionately impacts the socially vulnerable, coastal communities, outdoor laborers, etc. According to Davidson, complicity in unjust systems can lead to magnified harm beyond the scale of any one individual. 18 Therefore, non-subsistence individual GHG emissions represent complicity in the unjust system of climate change. An individual possessing the virtue of justice would be opposed to participating in unjust systems and therefore averse to generating GHG emissions.
16 Mark LeBar, “Justice as a Virtue,” Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy , https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/fall2025/entries/justice-virtue/. 17 Lebar, “Justice as a Virtue.” 18 Marc Davidson, “Individual Responsibility to Reduce Greenhouse Gas Emissions from a Kantian Deontological Perspective,” Environmental Values 32 (6), 2023: 683-699.
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Toward a Virtue Based Ethic for Nonessential Greenhouse Gas Emissions
The virtue of compassion allows us to empathize when pain befalls an undeserving individual. 19 An individual possessing the virtue of compassion would therefore be disinclined to take actions that would do harm to underserving individuals. Philosophers such as Broome have argued with certainty that individual GHG emissions do "expected harm” to others. 20 The possibility of their GHG emissions doing harm to another individual would be deeply disturbing to an individual with a compassionate character, so the individual would seek to avoid generating GHG emissions. This paper will deal with the virtue of responsibility primarily in the sense of social responsibility: how individuals perceive their relationships and accountability to others. An individual possessing the virtue of responsibility recognizes the ways in which they’ve benefitted from the responsibility that individuals and institutions feel towards them and that they have a moral obligation to carry that forward . 21 With respect to climate change, a responsible individual has the capacity to appropriately consider the GHG impact of their individual actions within the larger context of global decarbonization. They will prioritize supporting their peers in emissions reduction if they have the potential to affect change on a larger scale. While not an exhaustive list of the virtues that ought to influence individual behavior with respect to emission generating activities, possessing the virtues of justice, compassion, and responsibility is sufficient to cultivate a profound aversion to the emission of GHGs. Individuals who possess these virtues will be in the habit
19 John Saunders, “Compassion.” Clinical Medicine , 15(2), 2015: 121– 124. https://doi.org/10.7861/clinmedicine.15-2-121. 20 John Broome, “Against Denialism,” The Monist , 102 (1), 2018: 110– 129. https://doi.org/10.1093/monist/ony024. 21 Garreth Williams, “Responsibility as a Virtue,” Ethic Theory Moral Practice 11 (4), 2008. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10677-008-9109-7.
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of avoiding emission-generating behaviors whenever possible if there is an accessible alternative that does not compromise their virtues in other ways. Seeking to make choices in alignment with these virtues is far preferable to applying a utilitarian calculus or universal rule to specific cases because it acknowledges the diverse situations of individuals around the globe while still promoting the universal need for GHG reductions. Virtue Ethics as the Preferable Framework for Guiding Individual GHG Emissions The following section will expound why a virtue-ethical approach grounded in the virtues of justice, compassion, and responsibility is well-equipped to inform individual decisions about the morality of their individual GHG emissions. This section will also detail why a virtue-ethical approach is preferable to those grounded in utilitarianism or deontology. First, the balanced nature of virtues makes them suitable for guiding GHG-emitting actions because decisions often occur in varied contexts with competing interests. Aristotle defines virtues as “lying in a mean” between deficiency and excess. 22 A virtuous agent will act in alignment with a specific virtue at a level appropriate to what the situation demands. 23 By defining virtues as the appropriate means between excess and deficiency, a virtue-ethical approach encourages the use of context-dependent decision making. The nuance demanded by using a virtue-ethical framework helps achieve outcomes that match our intuition. For example, consider a parent living in a rural community who has been hired for work in a city with a 30-mile commute. No public transportation
22 Athanassoulis, “Virtue Ethics,” IEP . 23 Athanassoulis, “Virtue Ethics,” IEP .
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infrastructure exists between the home and their job, but the parents own an internal combustion engine (ICE) vehicle. Although the parent’s commitment to virtues of justice and compassion makes them averse to emitting GHGs, this is not an overriding reason to avoid a GHG-generating activity. In this case, the virtuous parent would choose to drive their ICE car to work because there is no easily accessible alternative. A desire so strong to avoid emitting GHG emissions that the parent does not go to work would represent an excess of justice and compassion. It is appropriate to recognize that the lack of public transportation is a systematic problem, so trying to compensate for a systematic injustice in an individual choice represents an excess of justice—vigilantism. Additionally, the parent is presumably dependent on their pay to provide for their children. In this case, not attending work to avoid emitting GHGs would represent a deficiency in the virtue of responsibility to their family. Although a virtue ethics framework would not encourage the most dramatic GHG-avoidance behavior in this instance, a virtuous parent would still be averse to emitting GHG emission and could take remedial actions to reduce the GHG intensity of their commute, such as not idling their vehicle or purchasing a more fuel-efficient vehicle if their finances permit. Virtue ethics is also best suited to provide guidance for individual GHG emissions because it is a relational philosophy. Virtue ethicists assert that we define our moral concepts of virtues by “encounter[ing] a wide variety of exemplars” and that we cultivate a habit of virtuous behavior by emulating “the virtuous agent.” 24 This aligns with the Confucian, relational conception of people that Hourdequin uses to justify the moral relevance of GHG emissions. Indeed, there is a
24 Hursthouse, 2022; Athanassoulis.
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significant body of scholars who contend that Confucian ethics is a virtue ethic. 25 The implication is that virtue ethics supports a relational theory of change: by making virtuous decisions we can influence others. In the context of climate change, our individual decisions to limit GHG emissions can have an outsized impact. Therefore, the virtuous person has an additional responsibility to avoid emission-intensive behaviors so that they can serve as a role model for others. The magnified impact of personal GHG reductions implied by virtue ethics should strengthen individual preference to avoid GHG emissions, making virtue ethics a more effective philosophical framework for governing the morality of individual GHG emissions. Virtue ethics is a better guide than utilitarianism or deontology for regulating the morality of individual GHG emissions, because it produces workable outcomes better aligned with moral intuition. Consider an individual who must take a plane to deliver a speech that could positively impact climate policy. A deontological approach may prescribe a strict rule that does not account for the positive externalities of taking the flight. A virtuous person would recognize a social responsibility to reduce emissions on a larger scale and take the flight. However, their aversion to producing GHG emissions would likely prompt them to consider individual methods of reducing their climate impact, such as purchasing GHG offsets. Now, consider an individual who wants to bathe in a large bath with steaming water. Utilitarian calculus may allow them to value their enjoyment from the bath over the GHG harm it causes. However, this is not a workable standard if
25 David Wong, "Chinese Ethics," The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Summer 2024 Edition), edited by Edward N. Zalta & Uri Nodelman, https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/sum2024/entries/ethics-chinese/.
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applied on a global scale. A virtuous individual would be strongly disinclined to produce unnecessary emissions and opt for a less GHG-intensive option, such as taking a short shower. A virtue-ethical approach is more often aligned with moral intuition and real-world decarbonization needs, because deontological approaches are too rigid to govern nuanced cases with externalities and utilitarian approaches are made too lenient by privileging subjective emotional experience. Objections Encouraging a virtue-ethical framework grounded in the virtues of justice, compassion, and responsibility to guide decisions related to the morality of individual GHG emissions is likely to attract several objections. If a virtuous person seeks to avoid GHG emitting behaviors, then knowledge of the emission intensity of the alternatives is a prerequisite. For example, if a virtuous individual seeks to reduce the GHG footprint associated with their protein consumption, but they do not know the relative GHG intensity of different protein sources, they presumably cannot make a moral judgement. This could pose challenges to the efficacy of a virtue ethics framework, particularly in communities that are less familiar with the relative GHG impacts of their decisions, or in fields where data is scarce. However, this limitation reflects a societal issue that is nonspecific to individuals. While individuals should not be blamed for practical problems owed to systemic causes of climate issues, virtuous individuals would still seek to educate themselves or push for greater transparency about the GHG impact of their behaviors as a means to the end of minimizing unnecessary emissions. This response would facilitate global decarbonization by resulting in a populace better informed on the GHG impact of
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their decisions and by pressuring industries to better disclose emission information (and likely decrease the carbon intensity of products). Another likely criticism is that a virtue-ethical approach is susceptible to moral luck. Following Aristotle’s contention that virtue ethics is relational, and that individuals learn virtuous traits from friends, communities, and education, then which influences an individual is exposed to will influence their ability to cultivate virtuous habits. 26 A critic would likely point to a child “X” growing up in a community without compassionate role models or that does not recognize the legitimacy of the climate crisis. They could argue that this child would have a more difficult time embracing the virtue of compassion and deriving from it a preference to avoid emitting GHGs. However, the impact of moral luck as it relates to climate change is exaggerated. Increasing climate literacy mitigates the likelihood that individuals equipped with virtues of justice and compassion cannot imagine the negative impact of their individual GHG emissions. Additionally, because shaping virtuous habits and dispositions requires consistent dedication over a lifetime, a “distanced traveled” standard is appropriate when assessing if an individual is acting virtuously with respect to their individual GHG emissions. For example, if over the course of their lifetime child X moves from a low to moderate degree of aversion to unnecessary GHG emissions, while child Y moves from moderate to high degree of aversion, both outcomes are equally laudable. By refining their virtues of justice and compassion, both individuals have “traveled equal distance” in terms of their aversion to emitting GHGs. In the fight against climate change, these outcomes are
26 Athanassoulis, “Virtue Ethics,” IEP.
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equally significant for driving global decarbonization. Thus, the impact of moral luck on the efficacy of a virtue-ethical approach is negligible. Conclusion This paper argues that a virtue-ethical approach grounded in the virtues of justice, compassion, and responsibility is best suited to guide decisions regarding the morality of individual GHG emissions. This is accomplished first through a literature review that identifies challenges in formulating universal principles for individual GHG emissions and the scant consideration that has been given to virtue ethics. Next, the relevance of justice, compassion, and responsibility on the morality of individual GHG emissions is defined. Next, this paper asserts that the balanced nature of virtue ethics, the relational aspect of virtue ethics, and successful applications of the virtue approach demonstrate that it is the most apt tool to govern the morality of individual GHG emissions. Finally, possible objections are considered and addressed. The desired outcome of this paper is that individuals strive to develop virtues of justice, compassion, and responsibility and apply them in the manner described herein to decisions involving GHG emissions. While it is expected that the adoption of this approach will produce different outcomes for different individuals in different contexts, one thing is certain: a global population that is consistently considering how to act in alignment with their profound aversion to producing unnecessary GHG emissions would not only reduce individual emissions but create a sentiment of solidarity and drive systems-level climate action.
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Bibliography
Agarwal, Anil., & Narain, Sunita. “Global Warming in an Unequal World: A Case of Environmental Colonialism.” In India in a Warming World: Integrating Climate Change and Development. Edited by Navroz K. Dubash. Oxford University Press, 2019 . https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780199498734.003.0005
Athanassoulis, Nafsika. “Virtue Ethics.” Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy . Retrieved December 16, 2024, from https://iep.utm.edu/virtue/#SH6b
Broome, John. “Against Denialism.” The Monist , 102 (1), 2018.110–129. https://doi.org/10.1093/monist/ony024
Bennett, Paige. Climate Change is Costing the World $16 million per Hour . World Economic Forum. October 12, 2023. https://www.weforum.org/stories/2023/10/climate-loss-and-damage-cost-16- million-per-hour/ . Buxton, Rebecca. “Reparative Justice for Climate Refugees.” Philosophy , 94 (2), 2019. 193–219. https://doi.org/10.1017/s0031819119000019 Davidson, Marc D. “Individual Responsibility to Reduce Greenhouse Gas Emissions from a Kantian Deontological Perspective.” Environmental Values 32 (6), 2023. 683-699. https://doi.org/10.3197/096327123x16800137060203 Duus-Otterström, Göran. “Subsistence Emissions and Climate Justice.” British Journal of Political Science 53 (3), 2023. 919-33. https://doi.org/10.1017/s0007123422000485
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