Adam Auch

I consider hype as it relates to discourse surrounding climate change. The presence of hype about a subject can make it difficult to judge what and whom one should believe. This may lead to concerns about climate change to be unfairly dismissed. For this reason, I argue that advocating for climate change mitigation efforts requires not only reiterating the soundness of the underlying science, but also understanding the social and psychological phenomena that produce the confusion.

In this paper, I consider the virtue of proportionality in relation to reasoning in what I call ‘hype contexts’. I conclude that a virtuous arguer is one that neither accepts nor rejects a claim based on its ubiquity alone, but who evaluates its importance with reference to the social context in which it is made.

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