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Laurence Sterne: A Different Way Of Approaching The Notion Of Life In The Early Novel, Robert Metaxatos

Undergraduate Honors Theses

This thesis employs the later philosophy of Michel Foucault to think through the unique set of socio-cultural problems that emerged alongside the early novel. I endeavor to explain the development of “biopower” and the concomitant (yet historically grounded) concept of a mass population in order to round off a nettlesome tendency among historicist rise-of-the-novel critics to focus on the creation of a bourgeois individual at this time. To that end, the texts of Anglo-Irish author Laurence Sterne bear out a unique narratorial response to biopower that begins with the ‘body’ of his work: i.e., Shandeism. Signaling the importance of the …

Welcoming The Game Changer Of Human Society: A Defense Of The Moral Permissibility And Obligations Of Human Genetic Engineering, Yongkang Li

Undergraduate Honors Theses

In 2018, a Chinese scientist, Jiankun He, announced the birth of two HIV-resistant babies through his experiment of human genetic engineering. This incidence has soon shocked the entire scientific community and invoked public outrage towards He’s corrupt moral integrity.

However, this event should also act as a harbinger to the human society that the technique of human genetic engineering is rapidly approaching maturity. In that case, how should we respond?

This thesis focuses on the moral issues surrounding human genetic engineering and advertises an accepting moral attitude to this booming technology. This thesis will first discuss the types of human …

Theories Of Responsibility And Punishment In A Causally Determined World, Brett Restrick

Undergraduate Honors Theses

Imagine for instance, in fact for the remainder of this paper, that a certain doctrine turns out to be true: the doctrine of causal determinism. Causal determinism is the view that all events are causally necessitated by prior events. The truth of this doctrine would fundamentally alter life as we know it. How should we react? Do we argue that humans still have free will in the face of determinism? Do we give up the concept of free will completely? Our answers to these questions lead us to the focus of this paper: If determinism turns out to be the …

Weight Of Words: Moral Responsibility And Freedom Of Speech, Sihan Feng

Undergraduate Honors Theses

In this thesis, I will propose a moral responsibility framework termed “the Anticipation Model,” which argues that for an agent to be held morally blameworthy for any act, two necessary conditions are required. First, they can freely choose not to perform the action, and second, the committed act either violates their normative judgment at the time of action or violates the agent’s general moral beliefs. Based on the above moral framework, I will subsequently defend freedom of speech through arguing that a positive moral responsibility judgment for speech is seldom justified. If, under rare circumstances, speech responsibility can be determined, …