Philosophy Commons^™

Abortion: Analysis Of The Bioethical And Metaphysical Standpoint, Lauren Kovarick

Richard T. Schellhase Essay Prize in Ethics

The antagonistic relationship between a mother and their unborn child creates the controversial topic of abortion. With massive moral implications and consequences associated, education on the laws and reasoning is significant to determine the direction of society. To analyze the ethics of abortion, the bioethical and metaphysical debate must be considered. With the former, the four principles of bioethics are used in healthcare practice to break down an ethical concern. On the metaphysical side, the life-status and rights of the fetus are acknowledged. With this topic, it is important not to argue in favor of one position, but instead have …

Redefining Paternalistic Practices In Women’S Health: How Dysfunctional Trust Relationships Impact Medical Autonomy Of Female Patients In The Contemporary Clinical Setting, Lauren K. O'Dell

Theses and Dissertations--Philosophy

Utilizing Trudy Govier’s (1997) conception of social trust, this dissertation will provide a framework for understanding trust in healthcare relationships and highlight some of the ways that unequal power distribution and dependency, poorly defined roles, and institutions complicate trust between women and their providers. This framework will also explain how distrust, especially prejudicial distrust, leads to paternalistic attitudes on the part of providers. Paternalism limits patient autonomy because medical autonomy is constitutively relational. This means that insofar as distrust causes paternalism, it also damages autonomy. Through negative outcomes, this lack of autonomy can cause patients to distrust healthcare, which can …

The “Community-Based Integrated Care System” And Discourse Ethics – From The Viewpoint Of Autonomy And Solidarity –, Koichi Asakura

Japanese Society and Culture

Since the establishment of the Long-term Care Insurance System in 2000, the promotion of the Community-based Integrated Care System has been promoted. The policy of the Long-term Care Insurance System sets in-home care services before reducing the economic burden in this country. However, this idea is not used in the latest report. The policy that individuals requiring care and terminal stage patients be sent into a large-scale accommodation in a depopulated area and live there until they die, is not adopted because of the belief or philosophy of the foundation of respect for dignity. In this study, I discuss the …

Wild Animal Welfare, Clare Palmer, Peter Sandøe

Animal Sentience

Rowan et al’s article provides an overview of developments in the science of animal sentience and its links to animal welfare policy, especially regarding farm animals. But changing ideas of animal sentience and welfare are also important for managing wild and other free-living animals. We ask how the welfare of these animals differs from that of farmed animals, especially how the ability to make autonomous choices may matter. We suggest that more research into wild animal welfare is needed to make informed policy decisions, for example, about using animals in rewilding projects and choosing between policies of culling and fertility …

Free And Always Will Be? On Social Media Participation As It Undermines Individual Autonomy, Kathryn Norlock

The Canadian Society for Study of Practical Ethics / Société Canadienne Pour L'étude De L'éthique Appliquée — SCEEA

Social media participation undermines individual autonomy in ways that ought to concern ethicists. Discussions in the philosophical literature are concerned primarily with egregious conduct online such as harassment and shaming, keeping the focus on obvious ills to which no one could consent; this prevents a wider understanding of the risks and harms of quotidian social media participation. Two particular concerns occupy me: social media participation carries the risks of (1) negatively formative experiences and (2) continuous partial attention due to our habituation to the variable rewards that social media platforms provide. Although social media offer benefits as well as risks, …

Another Case For Posthuman Dignity, Amy Azwell

Merge

No abstract provided.

The Choice Of Parenthood: Abortion And Protecting Autonomy, Nimmi M. Mathews

Mako: NSU Undergraduate Student Journal

This paper attempts to address the morality of abortion using a Kantian perspective on the significance of autonomy, a property that all rational beings subscribe to. I reject the oft argued notion that the ethicality of abortion is contingent on the ability to determine whether the fetus possesses the right to life. Instead, I claim that denying women the choice to obtain an abortion disrespects their autonomy, hence requiring them to take up motherhood against their will. I then discuss how Kant’s framework for morality is demonstrated heavily in the legal concept of ‘human rights', and yet this is not …

Autonomy, Oppression, And Respect, Andrea Wilson

Doctoral Dissertations

While it is intuitive to many that oppressive socialization undermines autonomy in virtue of its ability to shape the desires and values of the oppressed, it’s difficult to provide a plausible account of autonomy that can explain when and why socialization is autonomy undermining. I provide such an account, arguing that self-respect is a necessary condition for autonomous choice and that oppressive socialization functions in part by undermining the self-respect of the oppressed. On my account, our choices lack autonomy to the degree that they are motivated by a failure to respect ourselves as beings whose plans and desires matter …

Ethical Considerations Regarding Paternalism In Medicine, Lola Holcomb

Richard T. Schellhase Essay Prize in Ethics

Paternalism and autonomy are typically conceptualized as opposing theoretical frameworks. With respect to medical ethics, autonomy is practiced by the patient when he/she has liberty and control over his/her own medical matters, and his/her opinions supersede those of the physician. Paternalism is practiced by the physician when he/she restricts the patient’s autonomy (sometimes against the patient’s will) to promote health and well-being while discouraging undesirable behaviors. This paper details and analyzes a number of cases of medical paternalism in practice, both from the past and in the present day, with the purpose of examining associated ethical considerations. Attention is given …

The Reliable Revisionist, Caitlyn Schaffer

Philosophy: Student Scholarship & Creative Works

The present text explores how the topic of head and heart is much more complicated than one would expect, according to Paul Henne and Walter Sinnot-Armstrong, contributors of Neuroexistentialism. “Does Neuroscience Undermine Morality” aims at figuring out the problem of which moral judgments we can trust, judgments from one’s head (revisionism) or judgments from one’s heart (conservatism). My hypothesis suggests the opposite of the authors, I believe that if you are a revisionist, your first order intuitions are reliable. After setting the framework, I make three main arguments. (A.) If you are able to self-correct then you can identify errors …

Autonomy, Gideon Parchomovsky, Alex Stein

All Faculty Scholarship

Personal autonomy is a constitutive element of all rights. It confers upon a rightholder the power to decide whether, and under what circumstances, to exercise her right. Every right infringement thus invariably involves a violation of its holder’s autonomy. The autonomy violation consists of the deprivation of a rightholder of a choice that was rightfully hers — the choice as to how to go about her life.

Harms resulting from the right’s infringement and from the autonomy violation are often readily distinguishable, as is the case when someone uses the property of a rightholder without securing her permission or, worse, …

Self-Ownership As Personal Sovereignty, John Thrasher

Philosophy Faculty Articles and Research

Self-ownership has fallen out of favor as a core moral and political concept. I argue that this is because the most popular conception of self-ownership, what I call the property conception, is typically linked to a libertarian (of the left or right) political program. Seeing self-ownership and libertarianism as being necessarily linked leads those who are not inclined toward libertarianism to reject the idea of self-ownership altogether. This, I argue, is mistaken. Self-ownership is a crucial moral and political concept that can earn its keep if we understand it not as type of property right in the self, but rather …

Autonomy, Slavery, And Companion Animals, Heather M. N. Kendrick

Between the Species

I attempt to resolve the question of whether keeping animals as pets is akin to slavery by considering the significance of liberty to human beings and to nonhuman animals. I distinguish between two senses of liberty: preference liberty and autonomous liberty. Preference liberty is the freedom to satisfy the preferences that one in fact has. Autonomous liberty is the ability to satisfy the preferences that one might have regardless of whether one actually has those preferences. Preference liberty has a value for animals, but autonomous liberty is meaningless for them. As the core wrong of slavery is the restriction of …

The Philosophical Value Of Reflective Endorsement, Rachel Robison

Doctoral Dissertations

Through the years, many philosophers have appealed to reflective endorsement to address important philosophical problems. In this dissertation, I evaluate the merits of those approaches. I first consider Christine Korsgaard’s appeal to reflective endorsement to solve what she calls “the normative problem.” I then consider Harry Frankfurt’s use of reflective endorsement as part of his account of “caring,” which plays a crucial role in his accounts of agency, free will, and personhood. I then turn to Marilyn Friedman’s use of reflective endorsement to explain autonomous action. Finally, I turn to Alan Gibbard’s use of reflective endorsement as part of an …

Liberal-Democratic States Should Privilege Parental Efforts To Instill Identities And Values, Andrew M. Robinson

Political Science Faculty Publications

Liberal-democratic states’ commitments to equality and personal autonomy have always proven problematic with respect to state regulation of relations between parents and children. In the parental authority literature positions have varied from invoking children’s interests to argue for limitations on parental efforts to instill identities and values to invoking parental rights to justify state privileging of such efforts.

This article argues that liberal-democratic states should privilege parental efforts to raise their children to share their identities and values. Its approach is distinctive in two ways: i) it engages in interdisciplinary reflection upon selected findings in psychological literature on immigrant youth, …

Controlled Authenticity: A Hybrid Account Of Personal Autonomy, Eric Fox

Senior Honors Projects, 2010-2019

This thesis explores the concept of authenticity as a mode of self-identity, and how an added layer of control through the application of personal autonomy enables an agent to more readily achieve authentic states of being and satisfaction. Comparing the work of Diana Meyers and Marina Oshana, two prominent, contemporary writers in the field of personal autonomy, this paper attempts to establish the ground works for what components are necessary to a personal autonomy account as well as highlighting the contrasting aspects of both views. The paper engages in a synthesis of these two views, combining the social-relational theory of …

Neutrality, Autonomy, And Power, Eldar Sarajlic

Publications and Research

This paper critically examines Alan Patten’s theory of neutrality of treatment. It argues that the theory assumes an inadequate conception of personal autonomy, which undermines its plausibility. However, I suggest that the theory can resolve the problem by developing and reinterpreting its conception of autonomy and introducing an additional strategy for addressing the power imbalances that result from the market-based interactions between individuals and their conceptions of the good.

Private Requitals, Bailey Kuklin

Cleveland State Law Review

Previously, I examined the establishment of a person’s substantive rights and, correlatively, duties. But this was only the first step. This Article addresses the second step: the means for recognizing requital rights violations, including their articulation, adoption, and implementation. Taking a deontic, individualistic perspective on rights, this Article aims to delineate and protect one’s personal freedom, one’s autonomy. To do so, this Article, using a formal understanding of the categorical imperative, will examine whether an agent’s chosen maxims are deontically acceptable. The maxims need to be both first-order, substantive ones that establish autonomy boundary baselines, and second-order, requital ones that …

Ethical Dilemmas When Refusing Medical Treatment: Modernized Bioethical Principle Of Autonomy, Melissa A. Micek

Undergraduate Theses and Capstone Projects

In 1978, Mary C. Northern was admitted to Tennessee Nashville General Hospital for an infection in both of her feet. It was discovered that Ms. Northern was suffering from untreated and severely gangrenous frostbite, which is deemed fatal if left untreated. The healthcare professionals agreed that in order to prevent the gangrene from spreading, both of her feet would need to be amputated. However, Ms. Northern strongly refused the life-saving operation. Ms. Northern posed no threat to anyone; however, it is questionable what the most ethical course of action is when a patient refuses treatment. This raises the question, should …

Autonomy And Distributive Justice At The End Of Life, Corinna Fukushima

Scripps Senior Theses

Discussions of autonomy at the end of life in health care contexts is no new phenomenon. However, what seems to have changed in issues of autonomy is cases where patients want to refuse a treatment to cases where patients are demanding more treatment when medical professionals may not agree or be able to provide them with the medical treatment. Some key competing interests impacting patient autonomy include beneficence-doing what is in the best interests of the health or well-being of the patient- and resource limitations. Here, I will explore distributive justice theories that impact the end of life and how …

The Art Of Well-Regulated Freedom: Rousseau And Cortázar, Braden M. Goveia

Undergraduate Honors Theses

Jean-Jacques Rousseau was one of the most influential philosophers of eighteenth-century Europe. In 1762 Rousseau published his treatise on education titled Emile. In Emile, Rousseau argues that people require an education that returns them to themselves. He demonstrates how he could take on an ordinary boy (Emile) as his pupil and experiment with the possibility of raising him into an autonomous adult, both morally and intellectually. In 1963, Julio Cortázar published Hopscotch in its original Spanish title Rayuela. Cortázar wrote Hopscotch in a way that allows the reader to decide what role, if any, the last ninety-eight …

Are Liberal Perfectionism And Neutrality Mutually Exclusive?, Eldar Sarajlic

Publications and Research

In this paper, I question the view that liberal perfectionism and neutrality are mutually exclusive doctrines. I do so by criticizing two claims made by Jonathan Quong. First, I object to his claim that comprehensive anti-perfectionism is incoherent. Second, I criticize his claim that liberal perfectionism cannot avoid a paternalist stance. I argue that Quong’s substantive assumptions about personal autonomy undermine both of his arguments. I use the discussion of Quong to argue that the standard assumption in liberal theory about mutual exclusivity of liberal perfectionism and neutrality needs to be reconsidered, and I show why the argument about the …

Buddhism, Confucianism, And Western Conceptions Of Personal Autonomy, Joshua Sias

The Downtown Review

The contemporary conversation surrounding personal autonomy theory is primarily concerned with discussing autonomy in relation to western liberal conceptions of individualism, society, and other elements surrounding modern understandings of personal autonomy. An outsider reviewing the modern discourse over personal autonomy theory may be led to believe that either those within the conversation are simply indifferent to the exclusion of eastern philosophical notions relevant to self-government (and self-determination), or that eastern classical models are incapable of offering much to the discussion of personal autonomy. The following paper is aimed at addressing common components of the modern discussion over personal autonomy theory …

Violent Sex Versus Sexual Violence: Constructing A Consensual Moral Framework, Katherine A. Barnekow

Honors Program Theses

This project aims to, through an analysis of existing frameworks and their resulting harms, justify the need for a new sexual ethical framework. Such a framework is then constructed, employing three discrete philosophical tools, and justified by existing theory and answers to potential objections.

Immigration And Self-Determination, Bas Van Der Vossen

Philosophy Faculty Articles and Research

This article asks whether states have a right to close their borders because of their right to self-determination, as proposed recently by Christopher Wellman, Michael Walzer, and others. It asks the fundamental question whether self-determination can, in even its most unrestricted form, support the exclusion of immigrants. I argue that the answer is no. To show this, I construct three different ways in which one might use the idea of self-determination to justify immigration restrictions and show that each of these arguments fails. My conclusion is that the nature and value of self-determination have to do with the conditions of …

Mindful Mending: The Repair Of Thought And Action Amidst Technologies, Bryan Kibbe

Dissertations

My thesis is that the concept and practice of repair, properly understood and circumscribed, can serve to: (1) specify a responsibility to care for individuals who are cognitively dependent on particular configurations of technologies and suffer cognitively significant harms following damage to various technologies, and (2) to act as a standard by which to regulate the design, implementation, and selection of technologies available for human use and appropriation. I begin (Chapters One and Two) by providing a critical investigation of the concept and practice of repair. In Chapters Three and Four, I set forth a proposal to consider what I …

Realizing What Matters, Benjamin M. Yelle

Benjamin M Yelle

Two thoughts dominate much of the literature on well-being: “What is good for an individual depends upon what that individual is like” and “In some cases an individual is worse off because she is deprived of some putatively essential or basic good even if she cannot be brought to appreciate this fact.” This work is an attempt to capture both of these intuitions to a greater extent than prior theories of well-being. Many well-being theorists call the first thought “the subjective intuition” and consider the latter to concern our intuitions about “deprivation.” While many theories of well- being are able …

Autonomy And Paternalism, Ilona K. Phipps-Morgan

Scripps Senior Theses

I wish to determine when one is justified in paternalistic interferences that override a subject’s autonomy. In order to lay the groundwork for discussing paternalistic interferences with autonomous decisions, I first consider different conceptions of autonomy, welfare, and paternalism, and determine which I mean to use. In particular, I proceed with Dworkin’s characterization of autonomy as a combination of authenticity and self-determination; Nussbaum’s capabilities theory in order to determine welfare; and a definition of paternalism as being an interference with a subject’s liberty or autonomy that is motivated exclusively by consideration for that subject’s own good or welfare.

Once I …

How Should Feminist Autonomy Theorists Respond To The Problem Of Internalized Oppression?, Sonya Charles

Philosophy and Religious Studies Department Faculty Publications

In "Autonomy and the Feminist Intuition," Natalie Stoljar asks whether a procedural or a substantive approach to autonomy is best for addressing feminist concerns. In this paper, I build on Stoljar's argument that feminists should adopt a strong substantive approach to autonomy. After briefly reviewing the problems with a purely procedural approach, I begin to articulate my own strong substantive theory by focusing specifically on the problem of internalized oppression. In the final section, I briefly address some of the concerns raised by procedural theorists who are leery of a substantive approach.

Critical Remarks On The Dutch Policy And Practice Of Euthanasia And Proposed Guidelines For Physician-Assisted Suicide, Raphael Cohen-Almagor

raphael cohen-almagor

My essay opens with some personal words about my acquaintance with Ivan Šegota. I proceed by explaining the methodology of my research on euthanasia in the Netherlands. I then detail the major findings and end with guidelines for physician-assisted suicide (PAS). My research in the Netherlands made me change my mind: from supporter of euthanasia I became an ardent opposer of this practice. I think, however, that physicians should not turn a deaf ear to patients at the end of life, who suffer miserably and request to die. Therefore, PAS is suggested. To prevent potential abuse, we need to devise …