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Paul Ott, PhD - on leave Spring 2025

Advanced Lecturer


I am a Lecturer in the Department of Philosophy. My areas of research are American pragmatism (esp. Dewey), environmental philosophy and ethics, ethical theory, and social and political philosophy. While my primary methodological approach is pragmatism, I also incorporate analytic and continental traditions in my work. I am currently working on papers in environmental philosophy on the relation between Aldo Leopold’s land ethic and Native American land ethics and a functionalist interpretation of the concept of nature as a middle position between post-naturalism and nature/culture dualism. In ethical theory, I am developing papers on a fully relational view of value and a pragmatic and pluralistic metaethics.

Education

PhD, 2010, SUNY Buffalo

MA, 2002, San Francisco State University

BA, 1997, UC San Diego

Research Interests

American pragmatism, environmental philosophy and ethics, ethical theory, social-political philosophy, Foucault

Published articles

  • Ecological Freedom. Environmental Philosophy 16 (2): 245-273. 2019.
    This article develops the idea of ‘ecological freedom’ from Aldo Leopold’s account of ecological relations in terms of the dual notions of the “freedom from want and fear” and the “freedom to make mistakes.” Through an analysis of Leopold’s thought on technology and civilization, I develop and argue for the claim that direct experience of ecological relations, or ecological freedom, is vital to me…Read more
  • In this paper, I address the motivation gap that prevents many people from acquiring and activating environmental values. In the face of this gap, I analyze Aldo Leopold’s conservation philosophy as a potential solution. This is done by reading Leopold through John Dewey’s theory of aesthetic experience, in which motivated action develops out of unified aesthetic experience made up of three phases…Read more
  • In Democracy and Moral Conflict, Robert Talisse defends a folk epistemological justification of democracy. This is a universalist and non-moral justification that he deems necessary to accommodate moral pluralism. In contrast, I argue that this attempt fails to justify democracy, on three grounds. First, democracy cannot accommodate moral pluralism, as Talisse understands it. Second, Talisse's own…Read more
  • Value as Practice and the Practice of Value. Environmental Ethics 32 (3): 285-304. 2010.
    John Dewey’s theory of value provides a strong alternative to traditional intrinsic value theory that can better address the need for a wide distribution of environmental values. Grounded in his theories of experience and inquiry, Dewey understands values as concrete practices acquired through the interaction of the human organism with its surroundings. Dividing value into acts of immediate valuat…Read more
  • World and Earth: Hannah Arendt and the Human Relationship to Nature. Ethics, Place and Environment 12 (1): 1-16. 2009.
    In place of traditional approaches in environmental ethics, I suggest an improved approach, with respect to the goal of improving the condition of the natural environment, called 'world mediation' through the use of Hannah Arendt's theory of the vita activa . This approach focuses on the relationship between human made worlds and nature, from which a theory of value is suggested. Intrinsic value t…Read more

Book reviews

  • Cultural Revolutions. Newsletter of the Society for the Advancement of American Philosophy 34 (105): 37-39. 2006.