Climate Science Denial as Willful Hermeneutical Ignorance.

Climate science denial results from ignorance and perpetuates ignorance about scientific facts and methods of inquiry. In this paper, I explore climate science denial as a type of active ignorance called willful hermeneutical ignorance, where ignorance is actively maintained by a gap in a person's conceptual resources. This kind of ignorance is active in the sense that it resists correction. For instance, climate science denial may be motivated by ideological reasoning and other biases, it is often not responsive to the introduction of more evidence, and it can be maintained as consequence of conceptual gaps, or hermeneutical lacunas, that make possible a certain degree of blindness to evidence. I then identify three hermeneutical lacunas in the epistemology of science that prevent the uptake of evidence for anthropogenic climate change – one from Lawrence Torcello and two from the work of Dale Jamieson. Finally, while climate science denial's resistance to correction poses significant challenges for effective education about climate science, this framework also suggests a way forward: education that emphasizes building basic concepts required for understanding and interpreting scientific research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]