Understanding Environmental Opinions: A Phenomenological Analysis

• In Event: 331 - Section on Environment and Technology Refereed Roundtable Session and Business Meeting
  In Refereed Roundtable 60min: Table 06. Environmental Attitudes and Concern (Group B)

Abstract

This essay provides a phenomenological analysis of mass opinion about global warming. Using ideas drawn from the writing of Alfred Schutz and other phenomenologists, statements made by William James in a 1904 in a lecture honoring John Stuart Mill concerning how opinions change is examined in the context of mass opinion about global warming. It is argued that opinion does not exist as a preconceived facticity - "I hold an opinion." Rather, opinions are sedimentations or amalgamations of prior experiences that are part of a socially derived stock of knowledge framed by social, political, and historical circumstances. Further, I demonstrate that opinion exists on the level of consciousness as a halo or orientation toward a particular subject, global warming for example, and that once oriented in a particular direction, it is very difficult to change.

Author

• Jerry L. Williams, Stephen F. Austin State University