Arts and Humanities Commons^™

Against Identity: A Positionalist Approach To Resisting Identity-Based Violence, Barbara Walkowiak

Theses and Dissertations

I develop and defend a positionalist theory of identity as a basis from which to resist identity-based violence. On this account, identities are the social positions that individuals occupy due to belief that operate upon them. This contrasts with and is intended to replace the dominant intrinsicist model, which conceives of identity as something about individuals in and of themselves. Taking gender as a focal point, I develop three overarching positionalist kinds: monogyne, polygyne, and androgyne. I propose that additional sub-kinds (e.g. monogyne woman) be developed in order to more exactly track gender positionalities and the operational beliefs that produce …

Beyond Depraved: Villainy And Self-Deception In Kant's Taxonomy Of Evil, Kevin Alexander Korczyk

Theses and Dissertations

Kant’s account of evil has often been criticized for being overly restrictive in that it seems unable to account for profoundly immoral acts such as those committed by the Nazis. In response, most defenders of Kant have attempted to gerrymander his original categories of evil such that they become expansive enough to account for these cases. In this paper, I argue that such defenses fail because they rule out the possibility of immoral acts committed intentionally and in full knowledge of their immorality. However, I also show that there is room in Kant’s ethics for an additional category of evil …

Sara Rahbar And The Art Of Loving Otherwise, Michael Scott Lahti

Theses and Dissertations

Born in Iran and currently working in New York City, Sara Rahbar is a contemporary multimedia artist who gained some acclaim with her Flag series (2006-present), which was inspired by her experiences in the aftermath of 9/11. Many of these works merge Persian fabrics onto the American flag thus expressing her lived history and political views. To shed light on the political nature of Rahbar’s works writ large, I examine a textile from her War series (2009-2013), titled I Want to Shelter You (2013). Against a flat canvas bag, Rahbar attaches large-caliber bullet casings into a heart-shape to point out …

Reason And Regret, Thomas Ladendorf

Theses and Dissertations

I defend a realist, Aristotelian theory of moral normativity on which moral virtue is the natural conclusion of the successful exercise of practical reason. More specifically, I argue that the avoidance of regret is a constitutive feature of practical rationality, and that because we are social beings, moral virtue serves as a general strategy for the minimization of regrets, and especially of serious regrets. Because I draw on aspects of John McDowell's Aristotelian moral realism, I begin with an examination of his view, and a discussion of why he thinks that virtuous conclusions require the prior possession of virtuous dispositions. …

A Pedagogy Of Techno-Social Relationality: Ethics And Digital Multimodality In The Composition Classroom, Kristin M. Ravel

Theses and Dissertations

I bring together the relational ethics of feminist critical theory with approaches of multimodal rhetoric to examine the ethical implications of composing on social media platforms. Most social media platforms are designed to value consumerism, efficiency, quantity of web traffic, and constant synchronous response over concerns of responsible and critical communication. I propose a rhetorical approach of techno-social relationality (TSR) as an intervention against such corporate-minded design. Through this approach, I argue that civil engagement is not limited to people’s social responsibilities but rather is entwined in complex, material-technical contexts. By considering the responsibility of our machines as much as …

Humean Constructivism And Deliberative Coherence, Danilo Doche Linhares

Theses and Dissertations

According to Humean constructivism in metaethics, there is no incoherence in holding that different agents should act on aims that are not co-possible. I will show that this commitment undermines Humean constructivists’ own treatment of normative judgments, where these judgments are meant to function both as prescriptions and assertions of fact. When ideally coherent Humeans engage others in conversation, their claims about others’ reasons to act function as imperatives rather than as assertions; conversely, when Humean reasoners think of those claims while deliberating on their own, they carry no prescriptive weight at all. In light of these issues, I propose …

A Distinction Between Expectations And Demands: Towards A Wider Conception Of Accountability, Christiana Eltiste

Theses and Dissertations

In the literature on responsibility and blame, ‘expectations’ and ‘demands’ are often used interchangeably. Specifically, R. Jay Wallace construes expectations and demands as equivalent ways of expressing strict prohibitions or requirements. However, expectations and demands are not identical concepts and treating them as such glosses over important nuance. By using these concepts synonymously, Wallace is unable to account for how we blame and hold others responsible for actions that do not violate strict prohibitions or requirements, actions that are merely considered morally bad. In this paper I explore the distinction between expectations and demands and how ignoring this distinction ultimately …

Reactive Attitudes & The Value Of Responsibility, Andrew Lichter

Theses and Dissertations

This paper argues against the family of “reactive accounts” of moral responsibility. On such accounts, which take their cue from P.F. Strawson’s influential “Freedom and Resentment,” being morally responsible is properly understood in terms of being held responsible, which in turn is properly understood in terms of a set of moral emotions and their associated practices. This way of understanding responsibility re-frames apparently metaphysical questions about whether we are responsible in normative terms, as questions about whether and why these practices are permissible or required. I argue that we are responsible because we in some sense affirm the value of …

Attributability And Agency: Moral Attributability For Mental States As Possession Of Care-Constitutive Desires, Thomas Vincent Yamilkoski

Theses and Dissertations

A prominent line of thought owed originally to the work of Harry Frankfurt is that it is our identifying, in a certain technical sense, with our mental states which makes these states and the actions which emerge from them our own in a way distinctive of agents. Separately, moral attributability, a sort of responsibility located first by T. M. Scanlon, has recently attracted the attention of many philosophers. In this paper I will argue that we ought to aim to adopt theories of identification and moral attributability such that our capacity for the sort of agency involved in identification is …

Is It Rational To Care About The Natural Environment?, Joshua Brown

Theses and Dissertations

This paper helps address the question of how people who currently care about the natural environment, or nature, might rationally persuade those who do not currently have such concern. Philosophers have largely ignored this question, but it is important outside philosophy. For instance, many environmental advocates seem to believe that others should care about nature. At least much writing that falls under the broad category of environmentalism intends to persuade us to care about nature in one way or another.

In this paper, I argue that people should care about nature to the extent that they have three other, rationally …

Everyday Workplace Ethics For The Millennial Business And Engineering Undergraduate Student: A Situated Learning Model, Nisha Kumar

Theses and Dissertations

Undergraduate ethics instruction in business and engineering can be broadly divided into two models – disciplinary ethics (integrated within a course where discussions about ethics pertain to a particular profession or discipline) and standalone ethics (where the concept of ethics and ethical conduct are discussed in broad, theoretical terms). While both these models have educational value, they have not been able to help the millennial undergraduate student with everyday routine ethical decision making that they might encounter in the workplace. This is largely because both these models do not consider the organizational or the cultural context (the context in which …

The Cape Verde Project: Teaching Ecologically Sensitive And Socially Responsive Design, N Jonathan Unaka

Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation chronicles an evolving teaching philosophy. It was an attempt to develop a way to teach ecological design in architecture informed by ethical responses to ecological devastation and social injustice. The world faces numerous social and ecological challenges at global scales. Recent Industrialization has brought about improved life expectancies and human comforts, coinciding with expanded civic rights and personal freedom, and increased wealth and opportunities. Unfortunately, industrialization also caused wide-scale pollution, mass extinctions and anthropogenic global climate change. Industrialization also reduced the earth's capacity to meet human resource demands - demands that are ever increasing due to population growth, …

Solving The Problem Of Resultant Luck: Extrapolating From Hegel, Constance Sutter

Theses and Dissertations

The problem of resultant luck leaves us with a dilemma: Reject the intuition that agents should be blamed only to the extent that events depend on factors within their control, or reject the pre-theoretical intuition that agents should be blamed in cases of negligence. Although many potential solutions have been put forth, the problem remains unsolved. In this paper, I diagnose why the problem has been recalcitrant, and I describe what a genuine solution must explain. To illustrate what such a solution would look like, I defend an interpretation of Hegel's concept of action and moral responsibility, and I show …

The Modal Status Of Kant's Postulate Of God's Existence, Mathew Jonathan Snow

Theses and Dissertations

Kant is traditionally read as arguing that moral agents are rationally required to postulate the actual existence of God, but contemporary commentators' reconstructions of the argument only seem sufficient to warrant postulating the merely possible existence of God. There have been three attempts to address this seeming lacuna between what the argument is supposed to justify and what it does justify. Allen Wood defends the traditional interpretation - that Kant postulated the actual existence of God. M Jamie Ferreira proposes a revisionary interpretation - that Kant postulated the possible existence of God. Finally, Paul Guyer simply criticizes Kant for postulating …

Commitment And Temporal Mediation In Korsgaard's Self-Constitution, David Shope

Theses and Dissertations

In Self-Constitution Christine Korsgaard argues that our reasons are public. What she means by this is that if a rational agent has a reason to perform some action, it is a reason that has normative force for everyone who is a rational agent. Korsgaard also argues in Self-Constitution that when we will a course of action, we must do so in the form of a determinate commitment. Doing so requires determining some reasons to be bad reasons to opt out of the course of action that we will. Finally, Korsgaard claims that the selves occupying our own body at different …