Digital Commons Network^™

Ethics And Epidemiology Workshop Report: Towards Ethics-Informed Epidemiology And Epidemiology-Informed Ethics, Zoe Ritchie, Brendan T. Smith Phd, Maxwell J. Smith Phd

Health Studies Publications

Two key groups of researchers have worked in parallel to advance health equity—one on the descriptive component (those in public health sciences, e.g., epidemiologists) and one on the normative component (those in the humanities and social sciences, e.g., philosophers and ethicists). Yet a significant gulf exists between their respective research. Consequently, advances in thinking regarding the philosophical underpinnings and normative requirements of health equity have been largely divorced from the design of public health interventions that seek to reduce health inequities. As a consequence, public health interventions aiming to advance health equity may fail to target the most appropriate populations …

Civil Liability For Civil Disobedience, David Lefkowitz

Philosophy Faculty Publications

In January 2023, climate activists trespassed on the site of the German energy firm RWE’s Garzweiler coal mine to protest against its plans to expand operations there. The police eventually removed the protestors (including Greta Thunberg), many of whom were charged with committing criminal offenses. A few weeks after the occupation, RWE announced plans to seek compensation from the protestors for the injuries they inflicted on the firm, which included damage to vehicles and other equipment.[1] Should the law permit it to do so? More generally, should a liberal-democratic State hold civil disobedients legally liable to compensate the private …

"For You There Are No Strangers": Albert Schweitzer And The Ethics Of Necessity In Pandemic America, Joel (J.T.) Young

Faculty Scholarship

Claiming millions of lives and affecting millions more, the Covid-19 pandemic has thrust humanity into a period of intense reflection on the fragility of life. However, in this time when people have been encouraged to care for their fellow human beings by taking the precautions necessary to protect one another, many have asked the same question as one of Jesus’ antagonistic opponents in the Gospel of Luke: “and who is my neighbor?” In addition to the virus, though, the United States has been plagued by another adversary: non-necessity toward the other. By claiming no responsibility for the well-being and care …

Phil 2103, Ethics, Syllabus, D. Robert Macdougall

Open Educational Resources

No abstract provided.

Stoicism And Just War Theory, Leonidas D. Konstantakos

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The ancient philosophy of Stoicism, itself one of the foundations for international law, can improve contemporary just war thinking by forming a coherent set of philosophical principles to serve as a foundation for a just war theory. A Stoic approach considers justifications for moral actions to come not from an appeal to human rights, conformity to deontological rules, or from the utility of the actions themselves, but from virtuous character traits and corresponding virtuous actions. As such, a Stoic approach to just war theory is a virtue ethics perspective in which metaethical incentive for moral action is the agent’s own …

Addressing The Harms Of Pornography, Gillian Allison

Honors Theses

Within this paper I look at the existing philosophical work on pornography, from scholars like Catherine MacKinnon, Ronald Dworkin, and Rae Langton to show the current state of the pornography debate that I intend to enter by presenting my own argument about the morality of pornography. I argue that while pornography is harmful, these harms are best resolved through increased sexual education and the popularization and production of more inclusive pornography. The harms pornography causes are so great because pornography is where a lot of people learn about sex. Pornography was never designed to depict an average sexual experience. If …

Toward A Feminist Ethics Of Nonviolence [Toc], Timothy J. Huzar, Clare Woodford

Philosophy & Theory

Edited collection of original essays debating Adriana Cavarero’s feminist ethics of nonviolence. Including an original essay by Adriana Cavarero and responses from Judith Butler, Bonnie Honig, Olivia Guaraldo, Simona Forti, Christine Battersby, Lorenzo Bernini, Mark Devenney, Tim Huzar and Clare Woodford. Although inspired by Cavarero’s recent work on an ethical maternal posture of inclination the responses situate Cavarero’s argument in her wider corpus of nonviolence and uniqueness, that critiques and offers an alternative to the masculine symbolic of philosophy. This introduction endeavours to not only introduce Cavarero’s work, but to chart the journey of an increasingly productive dialogue between Cavarero …

Influencing Capitalist Attitudes To Drive More Capital Towards Social Good, Leah Michelle Burton

Antioch University Dissertations & Theses

The purpose of this study is to better understand how to influence capitalist attitudes and drive more capital towards social good. This is why we must explore the prospect of emancipating the capitalists from capitalism. This study identifies capitalism as a form of oppression that is contributing to a newly developed ethics of capital, a term introduced in this study. Emancipatory action research and general systems theory were employed as the primary approaches to engaging a group of venture capitalists and finance professionals in activities and dialogues. Value2 is the theory of action I use to influence the attitudes of …

Why There Is No Ethical Reason Not To Vote (Unless You Come Down With Covid-19 On Election Day), Scott Davidson

Faculty & Staff Scholarship

'I don't like the candidates,' 'I don't know enough to make a decision,' 'I don't want to give this election legitimacy' – an ethicist takes on nonvoters.

Humanism In The Americas, Carol W. White

Faculty Contributions to Books

This chapter provides an overview of select trends, ideas, themes, and figures associated with humanism in the Americas, which comprises a diversified set of peoples, cultural traditions, religious orientations, and socio-economic groups. In acknowledging this rich tapestry of human life, the chapter emphasizes the impressive variety of developments in philosophy, the natural sciences, literature, religion, art, social science, and political thought that have contributed to the development of humanism in the Americas. The chapter also features modern usages of humanism that originated in the English-speaking world in the nineteenth century. In this context, humanism is best viewed as a contested …

Homo Ludens Moralis: Designing And Developing A Board Game To Teach Ethics For Ict Education, Damian Gordon, Dympna O'Sullivan, Ioannis Stavrakakis, Andrea Curley

Conference papers

The ICT ethical landscape is changing at an astonishing rate, as technologies become more complex, and people choose to interact with them in new and distinct ways, the resultant interactions are more novel and less easy to categorise using traditional ethical frameworks. It is vitally important that the developers of these technologies do not live in an ethical vacuum; that they think about the uses and abuses of their creations, and take some measures to prevent others being harmed by their work.

To equip these developers to rise to this challenge and to create a positive future for the use …

Disease Mongering: How Sickness Sells, Vanessa C. Iroegbulem

Augustana Center for the Study of Ethics Essay Contest

“Disease mongering” is the practice of widening diagnostic boundaries of an illness and promoting their public awareness to expand the markets for treatment and to increase profits. This tactic typically used by pharmaceutical companies, medical equipment manufacturers, insurance companies, and even some doctors and patient groups, has become a great concern. Disease mongering has since increased in parallel with “medicalization,” which attempts to label normal human conditions as medical problems, thus becoming the subject of medical study, diagnosis, prevention, or treatment. This paper first seeks to examine how an increasing amount of life’s natural conditions and ailments are being seen …

Implementation Considerations For Mitigating Bias In Supervised Machine Learning, Bardia Bijani Aval

CSB and SJU Distinguished Thesis

Machine Learning (ML) is an important component of computer science and a mainstream way of making sense of large amounts of data. Although the technology is establishing new possibilities in different fields, there are also problems to consider, one of which is bias. Due to the inductive reasoning of ML algorithms in creating mathematical models, the predictions and trends found by the models will never necessarily be true – just more or less probable. Knowing this, it is unreasonable for us to expect the applied deductive reasoning of these models to ever be fully unbiased. Therefore, it is important that …

Confucian Moral Education In The Ta Shueh And Analects, Ranier A. Ibana

Philosophy Department Faculty Publications

Confucian philosophy has always considered education as a mechanism to improve the quality of life in society. The Confucian classic, Ta Hsueh and the Analects emphasize this pivotal role of education. The ethics of education and life in the family also has a deep impact on government and business enterprises. Each one plays assigned roles and lives by the rules that govern his or her station in social life. The ninth chapter of the Ta Shueh teaches that "correct deportment" can rectify a whole country. Projecting the ethics of the family to the social order and extending the ethos of …

A Relentless War: America, Israel, And The Fight Against Terrorism, Elyse Keener

Senior Honors Theses

For Israel, terrorism has plagued the nation since its beginning. Terrorism rears its ugly head in a variety of ways and for a variety of reasons; however, in both the United States and Israel, Islamic extremism has presented itself as the largest threat. Since its birth as a nation, the United States has been involved in numerous conflicts, from the Revolutionary War to World War II and beyond. These wars were fought between nation-states and traditional powers, but since the attacks on 9/11, the United States finds itself in a new kind of conflict against a different kind of enemy. …

The Moral Argument, Existential Problems Of Evil, And A Non-Existential Alternative, Jonathan Smith

Senior Honors Theses

Within this paper, it is shown that certain ethical assumptions are implicit within the claim that certain kinds of evil exist. When taken in tandem with the moral argument for the existence of God, these assumptions can be arranged in such a way as to provide a contradiction. To avoid this contradiction, I posit a non-existential alternative to direct inductive arguments from evil, but the non-existential alternative gives rise to novel objections. When considering their respective ethical implications, both the existential and non-existential variations of direct inductive arguments fail. Since any direct inductive problem of evil must be either existential …

The Moral Argument For God’S Existence; Or, How I Learned To Stop Worrying And Love Godless Morality, Erik J. Wielenberg

Philosophy Faculty publications

No abstract provided.

Climate Change Mitigation And The U.N. Security Council: A Just War Analysis, Harry Van Der Linden

Scholarship and Professional Work - LAS

Should the U.N. Security Council (unsc) use its coercive powers to bring about effective climate change mitigation? This question remains relevant considering the inadequate mitigation goals set by the signatories of the Paris Climate Accord and the ramifications of U.S. withdrawal from the Accord. This paper argues that the option of the unsc coercing climate change mitigation through military action, or the threat thereof, is morally flawed and ultimately antithetical to effectively addressing climate change. This assessment is based significantly on the application of jus ad bellum principles of just war theory, incorporating some feminist critiques of this theory.

A Zhuangzian Ethic Of Openness And Hospitality For Contemporary Filipino Society, Joseph Emmanuel D. Sta. Maria

Philosophy Department Faculty Publications

In this article, I wish to show that Dr. Agustin Rodriguez's idea of how government institutions in Philippine society should practice hospitality towards the marginalized Other, resonates with and can be complemented by a personal ethic of openness and hospitality drawn from the Daoist work Zhuangzi. According to Rodriguez, poor Filipinos living in urban areas, tend to be misunderstood and marginalized by the rest of the well-to-do class. The reason for this is that these poor live out an alternative rationality or way of life as compared to that of the elite. This marginalized rationality finds it difficult to fit …

Solicitude: Towards A Heideggerian Care Ethics-Of-Assistance, Babette Babich

Articles and Chapters in Academic Book Collections

No abstract provided.

Informed Consent And The Role Of The Treating Physician, Eric Feldman, Holly Fernandez Lynch, Steven Joffe

All Faculty Scholarship

In the century since Justice Benjamin N. Cardozo famously declared that “[e]very human being of adult years and sound mind has a right to determine what shall be done with his own body,” informed consent has become a central feature of American medical practice. In an increasingly team-based and technology-driven system, however, who is — or ought to be — responsible for obtaining a patient’s consent? Must the treating physician personally provide all the necessary disclosures, or can the consent process, like other aspects of modern medicine, take advantage of specialization and division of labor? Analysis of Shinal v. Toms, …

Drone Warfare And Just War Theory, Harry Van Der Linden

Scholarship and Professional Work - LAS

This book chapter addresses two questions. First, can targeted killing by drones in non-battlefield zones be justified on basis of just war theory? Second, will the proliferation and expansion of combat drones in warfare, including the introduction of autonomous drones, be an obstacle to initiating or executing wars in a just manner in the future? The first question is answered by applying traditional jus ad bellum (justice in the resort to war) and jus in bello (justice in the execution of war) principles to the American targeted killing campaign in Pakistan; the second question is answered on basis of principles …

Determinism And The Problem Of Individual Freedom In Li Zehou’S Thought, Andrew Lambert

Publications and Research

Li Zehou’s work can be understood as an account of a Chinese modernity, a vision for Chinese society that seeks to integrate three distinct philosophical approaches. These are Chinese history and culture, which Li understands as largely Confucian; Marxism, which has exerted such influence on a modernizing China; and Western learning more generally, as expressed by figures such as Immanuel Kant and Sigmund Freud. Li also frequently expresses the hope that a Chinese modernity will be one in which the importance of the individual is recognized, and rights and freedoms upheld (e.g., 2006, p. 182). But this stance raises an …

Initiating Research On Igniting Fires In The Blue Ridge Mountains During The Autumn 2016 Conflagration, Cynthia Twyford Fowler, Cynthia Fowler

Faculty Scholarship

An unprecedented moment in the fire ecology of the Blue Ridge Mountains occurred in Autumn 2016 when severe drought, frequent anthropogenic ignitions, and seasonality in disturbed deciduous forests fueled widespread burning. As the wildfires burned, wildland firefighters from around the U.S. temporarily moved into the region to assist local land managers. As wildfire risks increased and air quality decreased, local residents became increasingly interested in fire ecology. The community shifted continuously as wildfires were extinguished, wildland firefighters returned home, and local residents disengaged. In conducting research during the conflagration, obtaining consent from community members varied depending on whether or not …

Defining Biometrics: Toward A Transnational Ethic Of Personal Information, Nicola Morrow

International Studies Honors Projects

Innovations in biotechnology, computer science, and engineering throughout the late 20^th and early 21^st centuries dramatically expanded possible modes of data-based surveillance and personal identification. More specifically, new technologies facilitated enormous growth in the biometrics sector. The response to the explosion of biometric technologies was two-fold. While intelligence agencies, militaries, and multinational corporations embraced new opportunities to fortify and expand security measures, many individuals objected to what they perceived as serious threats to privacy and bodily autonomy. These reactions spurred both further technological innovation, and a simultaneous proliferation of hastily drafted policies, laws, and regulations governing the collection, …

Moral Reasoning: An Intentional Approach To Distinguishing Right From Wrong, Michael Jones

Faculty Publications and Presentations

This book represents a unique contribution to the study of ethics: an introductory textbook that is designed to be very readable while at the same time being deeply philosophical. It leads the reader on an exploration of the major approaches to ethics that have developed in the Western philosophical tradition: Ethical Relativism, Virtue Ethics, Natural Law Ethics, Ethical Egoism, Utilitarianism, Duty Ethics, Social Contract Theory, and Divine Command Theory. It discusses the chief strengths and weaknesses of each and opts for a modified Divine Command Theory while retaining the useful elements of each of the other theories. Written in a …

The Noble Art Of Lying, James E. Mahon

Publications and Research

In this chapter I examine the writings of Mark Twain on lying, especially his essays "On the decay of the Art of Lying" and "My First Lie, and How I Got Out of It." I show that Twain held that there were two kinds of lies: the spoken lie and the silent lie. The silent lie is the lie of not saying what one is thinking, and is far more common than the spoken lie. The greatest silent lies, according to Twain, were the national silent lies that there was nothing wrong with slavery (the U.S.), that there was nothing …

The Ethics Of Reparations For Slavery, Kyla A. Jermin

Philosophy Summer Fellows

Reparations has always been a lingering topic in American history – one that is heavily discussed, but never quite put into action. Though there are many who agree that payment is owed for slavery, or that a crime was committed, they are often dissuaded by various issues, or by the idea that reparations are “too divisive” and would encourage racial dissension. In my project, I address these arguments, and establish a case for reparations and the ethical responsibility behind it. My project explores themes of duty, responsibility, and compensation for wrongdoing as applied to the American slave trade. In this …

Learning To Think Ethically: Moral Development For University Students, Kevin Twain Lowery

Faculty Scholarship – Theology

This short article briefly describes all of the different dynamics and factors that make moral theory rather complex. Some examples are provided to illustrate how these complexities can be addressed and explained in the classroom. The author also notes how social science informs ethics and how theological and biblical hermeneutics shape Christian ethics in particular.

Arguments Against Drone Warfare With A Focus On The Immorality Of Remote Control Killing And “Deadly Surveillance”, Harry Van Der Linden

Scholarship and Professional Work - LAS

Drone warfare, particularly in the form of targeted killing, has serious legal, moral, and political costs so that a case can be made for an international treaty prohibiting this type of warfare. However, the case would be stronger if it could be shown that killing by drones is inherently immoral. From this angle I explore the moral significance of two features of this technology of killing: the killing is done by remote control with the operators geographically far away from the target zone and the killing is typically the outcome of a long process of surveillance. I argue that remote …