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Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons™

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Ethics and Political Philosophy

Selected Works

2018

Articles 1 - 5 of 5

Full-Text Articles in Social and Behavioral Sciences

Hate Speech As Theater, Adam White Jul 2018

Hate Speech As Theater, Adam White

Adam White

More public and philosophical attention has recently been given to hate speech.  Hate speech does not merely hurt feelings; it is public communication that implies that the targeted group does not merit the constitutional protections assured the speaker.  Hate speech poses a riddle given the liberal commitment to freedom of speech independent of content. 

This paper argues that philosophers misdiagnose hate speech.  The novel claim is that hate speech is a tactic in a game being played by the speakers.  The game’s prize is the same kind of personal buzz felt by effective theater actors.  Winning requires manipulating the audience’s …

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Crime Futures Market, Adam White Jul 2018

Crime Futures Market, Adam White

Adam White

Responding to the legally guilty is typically presented as a choice between incarceration and rehabilitation.  This paper suggests a third option: preemptive rehabilitation.  The argument presents an innovative institutional approach and a unique moral justification.  The vision is a crime futures market that transfers the risk of potential crime away from undeserving victims and into the portfolios of willing investors.  Instead of taxpayers paying exclusively for prisons, the proposal would allow young adults to sign contracts to not get involved in crime, but pay the award only upon their future success.  Because the contracts represent a future payment they are …

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Support For The Precautionary Principle, Jennifer Mather Jun 2018

Support For The Precautionary Principle, Jennifer Mather

Jennifer Mather, PhD

The precautionary principle gives the animal the benefit of the doubt when its sentient status is not known. This is necessary for advanced invertebrates such as cephalopods because research and evidence concerning the criteria for sentience are scattered and often insufficient to give us the background for the decision.

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Cephalopods Are Best Candidates For Invertebrate Consciousness, Jennifer A. Mather, Claudio Carere Jun 2018

Cephalopods Are Best Candidates For Invertebrate Consciousness, Jennifer A. Mather, Claudio Carere

Jennifer Mather, PhD

Insects might have been the first invertebrates to evolve sentience, but cephalopods were the first invertebrates to gain scientific recognition for it.

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An Invertebrate Perspective On Pain, Jennifer A. Mather Jun 2018

An Invertebrate Perspective On Pain, Jennifer A. Mather

Jennifer Mather, PhD

Although Key (2016) argues that mammals feel pain and fish do not, from an invertebrate perspective, it is obvious that the pain experience is shared by animals from a number of different animal groups.

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