Some years ago, John Nolt, a professor in the department of Philosophy, decided to pursue a new research agenda. Although his career had been built around the philosophy of logic, he began looking at the philosophical issues raised by our pressing need to better understand and evaluate human impacts on the environment. He has now begun to harvest significant fruit from this research. His most recently published article, “Hope, Self-Transcendence and Environmental Ethics,” appeared this April in the journal Inquiry. Nolt has also recently given lectures on environmental ethics at Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands, Nanjing University in China, and the annual meeting of the International Society for Environmental Ethics held in Colorado this past spring.
Nolt also continues to work in logic and the philosophy of logic. Most recently, he published the entry on “Free Logic” in the prestigious Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
Nolt was president of the UT Knoxville faculty senate in 2008-09 and president of Tennessee University Faculty Senates in 2009-10. He also chairs UT’s Committee on the Campus Environment, which recently developed a 25-year energy plan for the campus and is currently preparing its second environmental progress report for the campus.
Selected Publications
Nolt, J., 2010, “Hope, Self-Transcendence and Environmental Ethics,” Inquiry, Vol. 53.2: 162-182.
Nolt, J., 2010, “Sustainability and Hope,” in Sustainability Ethics: 5 Questions, Evan Selinger, Ryan Raffelle and Wade Robison, eds., Automatic/VIP Press, pp. 139-65.
Nolt, J., 2010, “Free Logic,” Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/logic-free/.
Nolt, J., 2009, “The Move from Is to Good in Environmental Ethics,” Environmental Ethics, Vol. 31(2): 135-154
Nolt, J., 2008, “Truth as an Epistemic Ideal,” Journal of Philosophical Logic, Vol. 37(3): 203-237.
Nolt, J., 2006, “The Move from Good to Ought in Environmental Ethics,” Environmental Ethics, Vol. 28(4): 355-374.
Nolt, J., ed. , 2005, A Land Imperiled: The Declining Health of the Southern Appalachian Bioregion, University of Tennessee Press.
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