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Normative Pragmatic Selfhood: A Pragmatist Conception Of Value For Marginal Cases, Sam Noel Johnson
Normative Pragmatic Selfhood: A Pragmatist Conception Of Value For Marginal Cases, Sam Noel Johnson
Graduate Theses and Dissertations
I develop a theory of personal ontology called normative pragmatic selfhood (NPS) to explain what persons are and how they are morally valuable. I also demonstrate the applicability of NPS theory by using it to assess the moral status of marginal cases in bioethical dilemmas. I begin by discussing the concept of intrinsic value and why it is problematic when it comes to persons. I then draw upon John Dewey’s theory of value, specifically the concept of growth, and Kant’s concept of humanity to show that persons are objectively yet extrinsically valuable. Next, I discuss and argue how the psychological …
Impartialist Ethics And Psychic Disintegration: A Talking Cure, Roman Nakia Briggs
Impartialist Ethics And Psychic Disintegration: A Talking Cure, Roman Nakia Briggs
Graduate Theses and Dissertations
This dissertation deals with integrity understood as a state of the psyche. Its primary interlocutor is Professor Bernard Williams, and its point of departure is my interpretation of his Objection from Integrity to impartialist moral theories. Against Williams, I hope to show that the active adherent of impartialist ethical systems (e.g., act utilitarianism) may retain both moral integrity and integrity. In demonstrating this, I make use of a variant of Roy Schafer’s action language approach to psychoanalysis, and what I call practical aestheticism.