In this dissertation, I apply Gadamerian philosophical hermeneutics to examine interpretations of the food-drug relationship within the contexts of health and medicine. Assumptions regarding the relationship between these categories undergird a substantial academic discourse and function as key components in worldviews beyond the academy. Despite this, little work has been done in foregrounding them to allow for critique and consideration of alternative perspectives. Unearthing philosophical assumptions within various fields, epistemic systems, and regulatory bodies, I classify food-drug interpretations into two main categories: dichotomous interpretations of the categories of "food" and "drugs" as ontologically distinct, and continuum-based interpretations where these categories overlap. Rather than arguing for a single appropriate way of understanding the food-drug relationship, my project aims to disclose the complexities of both sets of interpretations, illustrating their virtues and vices, and underscoring the need for people to call their own interpretations into question while taking seriously those of others. The dialogical structure of philosophical hermeneutics provides a useful foundation for dialogue within and between dichotomous and continuum-based interpretations. We do not have unmediated access to a mind-independent reality, the terms "food" and "drugs" do not necessarily refer to natural kinds, and all interpretations likely have different degrees of strengths …

Transhumanism is the name given to the cultural and philosophical movement which advocates radical human technological enhancement. In what follows, I use perspectives drawn from existential philosophy to problematize transhumanists' desire to recast human finitude as a series of technical problems with technical solutions. The ontological account of transhumanism offered here questions the assumed benefit and inevitability across six chapters. Following an introductory chapter, Chapter 2 introduces the key players, and present the philosophy of transhumanism and the opposing view of bioconservativism. Chapter 3 offers a narrative of transhumanism beginning with its mythical antecedents, and proceeds to describe the emergence of contemporary transhumanist institutions. Chapter 4 focuses on the challenge that transhumanists Aubrey de Grey and Ray Kurzweil present to mortality. The chapter asks whether human immortality is a coherent idea, and consider the consequences of achieving a data-driven amortality. Chapter 5 continues the analysis of transhumanism as it challenges limits to knowledge (ignorance), and limits to well-being (suffering). Ray Kurzweil is presented as a key figure of transhumanist thought, along with David Pearce, who desires to eradicate suffering through genetic engineering. The hubris of transhumanism is viewed through the lens of Friedrich Nietzsche in chapter 6. Nietzsche's critique of …

In this dissertation I consider the nature of the relationship between orientation and language-habits in the context of environmental ethics. Specifically, I focus on the problem of orientation as a way of understanding the unabated trend of anthropocentrism in the dominant Western language-culture. Orientation operates as the attitudes, beliefs, and feelings in relation to something that we embody in our lived experiences. One way that we communicate our orientation in relation to the land is through our language-habits. In considering our language-habits, I conceptualize a process I call conceptual autopoiēsis. Conceptual autopoiēsis is the co-evolutionary coupling process of the language-habits and language-cultures of human orientation, which recreates the initial conditions of the reproduction of the specific concepts embodied in that given orientation, language-habit, and language-culture. I show how our orientation to the land is embodied in our language-habits and language-cultures. I show how orientation, language-habit, language-culture, and conceptual autopoiēsis all function as the environment from which we select the very conceptualization of our orientation and the language we use to do so. More specifically, metaphysical anthropocentrism is a kind of orientation that assumes a dualistic relationship to the land that perpetuates a disconnect from Nature that makes it impossible to …

This dissertation makes use of theoretical frameworks drawn from development theory, ecofeminism, climate science, environmental and distributive justice, and human rights to provide gender analysis of climate policy, including climate finance.The problem addressed is that climate impacts are exacerbating food insecurity that is women's responsibility in the global South. First, I use literature in climate science to detail the impacts of climate change on agriculture in Africa and show how this exacerbates women's poverty that is driven already by persistent socioeconomic inequalities and gender bias. I conclude that women as food producers are especially vulnerable to climate impacts on food security. Next, I assess international climate policy through gender analysis of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) against other United Nations (UN) gender policies, followed by gender assessment of Ghanaian climate policy. I conclude that both international and Ghanaian policy fail adequately to address gender and women's needs, despite making advances on gender-inclusion and gender-sensitivity since the turn of the century. I then present a case study in climate finance by evaluating the capacity of an Adaptation Fund Project (AFP) in northeast Ghana to meet women farmers' needs. I gather data from Project implementers and intended beneficiaries, …

Recent years have seen a growing interest in and the publication of more formal scholarship on philosophical hermeneutics and environmental philosophy--i.e. environmental hermeneutics. Grasping how a human understanding of environments is variously mediated and how different levels of meaning can be unconcealed permits deeper ways of looking at environmental ethics and human practices with regard to environments. Beyond supposed simple facts about environments to which humans supposedly rationally respond, environmental hermeneutics uncovers ways in which encounters with environments become meaningful. How we understand and, therefore, choose to act depends not so much on simple facts, but what those facts mean to our lives. Therefore, this dissertation explores three paths. The first is to justify the idea of an environmental hermeneutics with the hermeneutic tradition itself and what environmental hermeneutics is specifically. The second is to demonstrate the benefit of addressing environmental hermeneutics to environmental philosophy. I do this in this dissertation with regard to the debate between anthropocentrism and non-anthropocentrism, a debate which plays a central role in questions of environmental philosophy and ethics. Thirdly, I turn to environmental justice studies where I contend there are complementarities between hermeneutics and environmental justice. From this reality, environmental justice and activism benefit …

In order to meet emissions targets under the UN Paris Agreement, every nation must decarbonize its energy production. The US isn't reducing energy-related emissions fast enough to meet its targets for keeping overall warming under 2°C above pre-industrial levels. This constitutes a grave injustice to the most vulnerable populations of the world, who are suffering the ill effects of climate change already. The challenge of eliminating fossil fuels from the US energy system is not simply one of technological limitations, however. The aim of this dissertation is to provide an analysis of historical, political, and, most importantly, conceptual barriers to decarbonization of energy in the US. I believe not just our policies and our markets, but our thinking has to change if we are to avoid recapitulating the injustices of the fossil fuel energy system. I argue that energy policy in the US over time has ossified around a narrow conception of energy as fossil energy—as a substance, rather than as a service. I call this the fossil conception of energy (FCE). I follow historical traces of the FCE in three key areas: political discourse in the US, the relationships between the US dollar and OPEC oil (a complex web …