Justin Donhauser
I recently joined the philosophy faculty at Bowling Green State University. I've developed components of BGSU's new Data Science PhD program, and teach Environmental Philosophy, Philosophy of Science, and Logic courses; as well as applied ethics courses including Data Science Ethics and Robot Ethics. Before the move to BG, I was a Postdoctoral Fellow at Western University's Rotman Institute of Philosophy (London, ON). I trained and earned my PhD as a doctoral fellow in the National Science Foundation’s Ecosystem Restoration through Interdisciplinary Exchange (ERIE-IGERT) program, and developed and taught an array of philosophy, applied ethics, science studies, and sustainability courses as a Service-learning Faculty Fellow during that time.
I have published work in peer-reviewed journals including: Philosophical Studies, Synthese, Studies in History & Philosophy of Science, Science & Engineering Ethics, Studies in History & Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences, Ethics & the Environment, Ethics, Policy & Environment, and Environmental Values, and I've won awards for my research and teaching.
I received my PhD in September 2015, have 20+ publications, and I've taught ~60 individual courses.
I'm also an editorial board member for Studies in History & Philosophy of Biology & Biomedical Sciences, a reviewer for several journals, and a recipient and writer of a number of grants (including NSF, SSHRC, and NSERC grants).
I specialize in policy-relevant applied philosophy of science; with recent projects on ethical issues surrounding emerging environmental robotics technologies (forthcoming in Science & Engineering Ethics) and on implications of new climate modelling techniques for UN climate policy (forthcoming in Ethics, Policy, & Environment). However, I also work on certain historied issues in analytic philosophy (with recent work in this vein appearing in Philosophical Studies).
My main research clarifies how environmental sciences can aid in public policy and resource management decision-making. I specialize in science/policy interface issues concerning the limitations of model-based ecological and climate science research methods, and focus on making plain ways in which research using such methods can usefully inform political, ethical, and management strategy decisions despite their limitations. In much of my work, I pursue a three-pronged approach that is: analytic (employs systematic methods of inference and analysis used in metaphysics and epistemology), ethnographic (seeks insights into the conceptual foundations, underlying logic, and practical exports of specific scientific practices through participation in those practices), and practical (has clear implications for political, ethical, and strategy decision-making).
This three-pronged approach is a product of my strong background in analytic metaphysics and my training as a research fellow in the ERIE program at UB. In addition to my broad training in philosophy, I draw on graduate and professional training in ecological engineering and on practical and sociopolitical issues that policymakers, resource managers, and consultants must confront in the process of determining how to respond to emerging environmental problems. I also draw upon unique experiences doing fieldwork and implementation planning on “contaminant mitigation” and “ecosystem restoration” projects, and upon experiences doing community and educational outreach with numerous multidisciplinary teams. These experiences have shown me that engaging philosophical issues and debates as they come up “on the ground,” in scientific and practical problem-solving processes, can provide interesting new insights into general philosophical issues while at once making philosophy matter outside of philosophy.
Supervisors: Gillian Barker (postdoc advisor), Eric Desjardin (postdoc advisor), Kenneth Shockley (diss. co-supervisor), and Neil E. Williams (diss. co-supervisor)
I have published work in peer-reviewed journals including: Philosophical Studies, Synthese, Studies in History & Philosophy of Science, Science & Engineering Ethics, Studies in History & Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences, Ethics & the Environment, Ethics, Policy & Environment, and Environmental Values, and I've won awards for my research and teaching.
I received my PhD in September 2015, have 20+ publications, and I've taught ~60 individual courses.
I'm also an editorial board member for Studies in History & Philosophy of Biology & Biomedical Sciences, a reviewer for several journals, and a recipient and writer of a number of grants (including NSF, SSHRC, and NSERC grants).
I specialize in policy-relevant applied philosophy of science; with recent projects on ethical issues surrounding emerging environmental robotics technologies (forthcoming in Science & Engineering Ethics) and on implications of new climate modelling techniques for UN climate policy (forthcoming in Ethics, Policy, & Environment). However, I also work on certain historied issues in analytic philosophy (with recent work in this vein appearing in Philosophical Studies).
My main research clarifies how environmental sciences can aid in public policy and resource management decision-making. I specialize in science/policy interface issues concerning the limitations of model-based ecological and climate science research methods, and focus on making plain ways in which research using such methods can usefully inform political, ethical, and management strategy decisions despite their limitations. In much of my work, I pursue a three-pronged approach that is: analytic (employs systematic methods of inference and analysis used in metaphysics and epistemology), ethnographic (seeks insights into the conceptual foundations, underlying logic, and practical exports of specific scientific practices through participation in those practices), and practical (has clear implications for political, ethical, and strategy decision-making).
This three-pronged approach is a product of my strong background in analytic metaphysics and my training as a research fellow in the ERIE program at UB. In addition to my broad training in philosophy, I draw on graduate and professional training in ecological engineering and on practical and sociopolitical issues that policymakers, resource managers, and consultants must confront in the process of determining how to respond to emerging environmental problems. I also draw upon unique experiences doing fieldwork and implementation planning on “contaminant mitigation” and “ecosystem restoration” projects, and upon experiences doing community and educational outreach with numerous multidisciplinary teams. These experiences have shown me that engaging philosophical issues and debates as they come up “on the ground,” in scientific and practical problem-solving processes, can provide interesting new insights into general philosophical issues while at once making philosophy matter outside of philosophy.
Supervisors: Gillian Barker (postdoc advisor), Eric Desjardin (postdoc advisor), Kenneth Shockley (diss. co-supervisor), and Neil E. Williams (diss. co-supervisor)
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Research by Justin Donhauser
Select Publications and Papers by Justin Donhauser
AND HERE:
http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11098-016-0698-z?wt_mc=Internal.Event.1.SEM.ArticleAuthorAssignedToIssue
Scientific realists argue that a good track record of multi-agent, and
multiple method, validation of empirical claims is itself evidence that those claims,
at least partially and approximately, reflect ways nature actually is independent of
the ways we conceptualize it. Constructivists contend that successes in validating
empirical claims only suffice to establish that our ways of modelling the world, our
‘‘constructions,’’ are useful and adequate for beings like us. This essay presents a
thought experiment in which beings like us intersubjectively validate claims about
properties of particular things in nature under conditions in which those beings have
profoundly different personal phenomenological experiences of those properties. I
submit that the thought experiment scenario parallels our actual situation, and argue
that this shows that successes in intersubjectively validating empirical claims are
indeed enough to claim victory for the realist. More specifically, I champion a
variation of realism that marries Ronald Giere’s brand of ‘perspectival realism’ with
Philip Kitcher’s ‘real realism,’ and posits that causal relations between ourselves
and properties instantiated in nature ground our references to the relevant properties
even though our conceptions of them are perspective relative (or filtered through,
and distorted by, a perspective).
AND HERE: http://authors.elsevier.com/a/1Twba4tTwyAx2p
The world’s leading environmental advisory institutions look to ecological theory and research as an objective guide for policy and resource management decision-making. In addition to the theoretical and broadly philosophical merits of doing so, it is therefore practically significant to clear up confusions about ecology’s conceptual foundations and to clarify the basic workings of inferential methods used in the science. Through discussion of key moments in the genesis of the theoretical branch of ecology, this essay elucidates a general heuristic role of teleological metaphors in ecological research and defuses certain enduring confusions about work in ecology.
https://philpapers.org/rec/DONMEV
Value claims about ecological populations, communities, and systems appear everywhere in literature put out by leading environmental advisory institutions. This essay clarifies the content of such normatively significant value claims in two main steps. In it, I first outline the conception of ecological entities, functionality, and properties, I argue is operative in the background of modern ecology. I then assess the implications of that background theory for how policies and management strategy directives that refer to such entities, functionality, and properties, can be most reasonably interpreted and formulated.
This dissertation addresses two questions at the center of critical debate about ecology’s ability to provide scientific guidance in efforts to address mounting environmental problems. The first concerns whether and, if so, how theoretical ecological models (TEMs) can usefully inform environmental policy and resource management decision-making. The second concerns whether and, if so, in what manner the entities such models characterize (i.e., ecological populations, communities, and systems) exist. Throughout this work, I clarify how these questions are, and are not, related and infer answers to each by analyzing the arguments of critics of theoretical, TEM-based, ecological research and analyzing ecologist’s practices of using TEMs in landmark research studies.
My analyses illuminate numerous ways in which theoretical ecological research can aid in environmental policy and resource management decision-making, and show that modern ecologists embrace a largely ontology-neutral metaphysics and instrumentalist epistemology (contrary to the received view among critics of ecology). I defuse a number of popular criticisms of theoretical ecological research by showing that they rely on confusions about ecology’s conceptual foundations and the reasoning processes employed in theoretical ecological research. At the same time, I take pains to isolate the substantive point about the limitations of such research that critics can reasonably make. Accordingly, the overarching structure of this dissertation sees it as an effort to, first, isolate the substantive point critics make about the limitations of theoretical ecological research and then identify ways in which such research can aid in practical decision-making despite those limitations.
This dissertation pushes forward the philosophical and broader crossdisciplinary dialogue concerning ecology’s conceptual foundations and practical value, while at once directly addressing the ever more urgent practical need to make plain how theoretical ecological research can usefully inform crucially important political, ethical, and management decisions about how best to cope with mounting environmental problems. It contributes to multiple disciplines as such, and students and professionals of all stripes interested in ecology and its practical applications should find resources to extend their own investigations in it.
AND HERE:
http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11098-016-0698-z?wt_mc=Internal.Event.1.SEM.ArticleAuthorAssignedToIssue
Scientific realists argue that a good track record of multi-agent, and
multiple method, validation of empirical claims is itself evidence that those claims,
at least partially and approximately, reflect ways nature actually is independent of
the ways we conceptualize it. Constructivists contend that successes in validating
empirical claims only suffice to establish that our ways of modelling the world, our
‘‘constructions,’’ are useful and adequate for beings like us. This essay presents a
thought experiment in which beings like us intersubjectively validate claims about
properties of particular things in nature under conditions in which those beings have
profoundly different personal phenomenological experiences of those properties. I
submit that the thought experiment scenario parallels our actual situation, and argue
that this shows that successes in intersubjectively validating empirical claims are
indeed enough to claim victory for the realist. More specifically, I champion a
variation of realism that marries Ronald Giere’s brand of ‘perspectival realism’ with
Philip Kitcher’s ‘real realism,’ and posits that causal relations between ourselves
and properties instantiated in nature ground our references to the relevant properties
even though our conceptions of them are perspective relative (or filtered through,
and distorted by, a perspective).
AND HERE: http://authors.elsevier.com/a/1Twba4tTwyAx2p
The world’s leading environmental advisory institutions look to ecological theory and research as an objective guide for policy and resource management decision-making. In addition to the theoretical and broadly philosophical merits of doing so, it is therefore practically significant to clear up confusions about ecology’s conceptual foundations and to clarify the basic workings of inferential methods used in the science. Through discussion of key moments in the genesis of the theoretical branch of ecology, this essay elucidates a general heuristic role of teleological metaphors in ecological research and defuses certain enduring confusions about work in ecology.
https://philpapers.org/rec/DONMEV
Value claims about ecological populations, communities, and systems appear everywhere in literature put out by leading environmental advisory institutions. This essay clarifies the content of such normatively significant value claims in two main steps. In it, I first outline the conception of ecological entities, functionality, and properties, I argue is operative in the background of modern ecology. I then assess the implications of that background theory for how policies and management strategy directives that refer to such entities, functionality, and properties, can be most reasonably interpreted and formulated.
This dissertation addresses two questions at the center of critical debate about ecology’s ability to provide scientific guidance in efforts to address mounting environmental problems. The first concerns whether and, if so, how theoretical ecological models (TEMs) can usefully inform environmental policy and resource management decision-making. The second concerns whether and, if so, in what manner the entities such models characterize (i.e., ecological populations, communities, and systems) exist. Throughout this work, I clarify how these questions are, and are not, related and infer answers to each by analyzing the arguments of critics of theoretical, TEM-based, ecological research and analyzing ecologist’s practices of using TEMs in landmark research studies.
My analyses illuminate numerous ways in which theoretical ecological research can aid in environmental policy and resource management decision-making, and show that modern ecologists embrace a largely ontology-neutral metaphysics and instrumentalist epistemology (contrary to the received view among critics of ecology). I defuse a number of popular criticisms of theoretical ecological research by showing that they rely on confusions about ecology’s conceptual foundations and the reasoning processes employed in theoretical ecological research. At the same time, I take pains to isolate the substantive point about the limitations of such research that critics can reasonably make. Accordingly, the overarching structure of this dissertation sees it as an effort to, first, isolate the substantive point critics make about the limitations of theoretical ecological research and then identify ways in which such research can aid in practical decision-making despite those limitations.
This dissertation pushes forward the philosophical and broader crossdisciplinary dialogue concerning ecology’s conceptual foundations and practical value, while at once directly addressing the ever more urgent practical need to make plain how theoretical ecological research can usefully inform crucially important political, ethical, and management decisions about how best to cope with mounting environmental problems. It contributes to multiple disciplines as such, and students and professionals of all stripes interested in ecology and its practical applications should find resources to extend their own investigations in it.
This is a measure to reduce plagiarism, as this is a highly unique (and in demand) program.
This is a measure to reduce plagiarism, as this is a highly unique (and in demand) course.
In this crossdisciplinary course, we will examine the practical, political, and ethical aspects of coping with what are now agreed to be the “inevitable losses and damages” that will be experienced due to human driven climate change. We will progress by looking at the policy, economics, science, and ethics of climate change adaptation and mitigation. We will begin by examining the evolution and current state of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) policy framework, and considering the complex economic considerations that undergird that policy framework’s current structure. Students will then learn the basics of the key climate sciences that inform climate policy negotiations—climate change modelling with “super-ensemble data models,” “probabilistic weather event attribution” using such models, and “solar radiation management” research—and consider the implications of what has been established using the methods of those sciences. In the second half of the course, we will look at emerging ethical concerns regarding how to appropriately respond to the impacts of climate change and how best to mitigate losses of human life, culture, and other goods on a global scale. Considered issues will include, but not be limited to, emerging issues surrounding: “climate refugee” migrations; species migrations and extinctions, international justice and torte law, and culture preservation and culture clash.
*PLEASE EMAIL ME FOR A COPY
This is a measure to reduce plagiarism, as this is a highly unique (and in demand) course.
In this course, we will look at issues of environmentalism from a variety of perspectives. The purpose of the course is simple: to give students a more robustly informed view of environmental issues by way of considering an array of perspectives on the ‘environment’ and environmentalist issues. The eight perspectives we will consider are listed below, along with readings.
*PLEASE EMAIL ME FOR A COPY
This is a measure to reduce plagiarism, as this is a highly unique (and in demand) course.
This is a measure to reduce plagiarism, as this is an "in demand" course.
This is a measure to reduce plagiarism, as this is a highly unique (and in demand) course.