Whose Identity? An Argument For Granting Authority Of Identity To The Individual, Demetrius A. Lalanne

CMC Senior Theses

Who are you? And did you have any say in choosing who you are? Identity is a complicated issue, it is both individualistic and necessarily relies on your environment and peers. I believe that as it stands, your identity may be a result of both solitary and societal thinking. However, I think that society and government act as the sole authenticators of an individual’s identity. I do not believe this is how an individual’s life ought to be treated. Thus, I am arguing in this thesis that the individual has the capacity to choose their own identity, and that society …

Objectivity And The Role Of Journalism In Democratic Societies, Tyler Sonnemaker

CMC Senior Theses

In this essay, I argue that the institution of journalism plays a vital role in informing citizens of a deliberative democratic society, and that to effectively fulfill this role, journalists must report the news objectively. I first examine the historical evolution of objectivity as it pertains to journalism. Then, I elaborate on some of the philosophical concepts that provide the foundation for objectivity. Next, I introduce John Rawls’ idea of public reason, which provides an improved understanding of the role of journalism within a democratic society. I claim from this that journalism must re-envision its role as guardian of the …

Moral Relativism: Can One Community Give Another A Reason To Change?, Matthew A. Crawford

CMC Senior Theses

This paper examines the popular philosophical theory of moral relativism. Traditionally, the theory argues that communities have their own conceptual frameworks of morality that are inaccessible to those outside of the community. Thus, one community cannot give another community a moral reason to change a practice. In this paper, I will examine David Velleman’s version of the theory presented in his book Foundations for Moral Relativism. This version posits that the drive towards mutual interpretability is a universal drive among human communities. From this drive stem all the practices and moral values of communities. However, Velleman does not believe …

A Promise Is A Promise: The Ethical Implications For Ceo’S Acting Socially Responsible Within A Corporation, Alexandra Sonett

CMC Senior Theses

The prevalence of corporate social responsibility has been continually increasing over recent years. The debate of whether a business should act in a manner that furthers societal needs or if they should simply focus their efforts on maximizing shareholder value is of popular interest since it affects the fundamental structures of how a business will operate. One of the major influencing theories in favor of social responsibility is the stakeholder theory. The opposing viewpoint is the shareholder theory, which highlights that the sole responsibility for a corporation is to act in a way that maximizes profits. This thesis will outline …

Ethical Decision Making And Leadership: Merging Social Role And Self-Construal Perspectives, Crystal L. Hoyt, Terry L. Price

Jepson School of Leadership Studies articles, book chapters and other publications

This research extends our understanding of ethical decision making on the part of leaders by merging social role and self-construal perspectives. Interdependent self-construal is generally seen as enhancing concern for justice and moral values. Across two studies we tested the prediction that non-leading group members’ interdependent self-construal would be associated with lower levels of unethical decision making on behalf of their group but that, in contrast, this relationship would be weaker for leaders, given their social role. These predictions were experimentally tested by assigning participants to the role of leader or non-leading group member and assessing the association between their …

Decoding "Never Again", Sherry F. Colb

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

This article, Decoding “Never Again,” narrates its author’s experience as a child of two Holocaust survivors, one of whom participated in rescuing thousands of his fellow Jews during the war. Colb meditates on this legacy and concludes that her understanding of it has played an important role in inspiring her scholarship about (and ethical commitment to) animal rights. She examines and analyzes the ways in which analogies between the Holocaust and anything else can trigger people’s anger and offense, and she then draws a distinction between occasions when offense is an appropriate response to such analogies and when it need …

Rolling Back The Luck Problem For Libertarianism, Zac Cogley

Journal Articles

I here sketch a reply to Peter van Inwagen’s Rollback Argument, which suggests that libertarian accounts of free agency are beset by problems involving luck. Van Inwagen imagines an indeterministic agent whose universe is repeatedly ‘rolled back’ by God to the time of her choice. Since the agent’s choice is indeterministic, her choices are sometimes different in the imaginary rollback scenarios. I show that although this is true, this need not impair her control over what she does. I develop an account of when and why the fact that an agent would choose differently impairs control, which provides a novel …

Wilderness And Epistemic Wildness, John T. Stanfield

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

The traditional concept of wilderness was a product of the time out of which it came. Times have changed. The social context of conservation, how humans affect nature, and scientific understanding of how ecosystems function have all shifted in ways that make the wilderness idea problematic. The values that people found in wilderness are still relevant, however. It is the way that they are tied together in the concept of wilderness that has become a problem.

I propose a revised concept of wilderness that meets the concerns of critics of wilderness, and accounts for the tension between the wild and …

Humorous Developments: Ridicule, Recognition, And The Development Of Agency, Kevin Andrew Afflerbach

UNF Graduate Theses and Dissertations

In this thesis I examine various theories of humor to establish an account of the functional roles of humor in social interaction and agentive development. These roles are integrated into a view of agency developed by G.H. Mead, and further refined by the recognition theory of Axel Honneth. The core thesis is: Humor is under-examined as an aspect of human interaction, because it plays such an integral role in individual agency and social development. Understanding how humor works helps to explain how agents are formed through the internalization of the expectations of others via processes of recognition, either positively or …

Armed With An Easel: Understanding Artistic Political Praxis Through The Works Of Theodor Adorno And Chantal Mouffe, Evelyn Yu Yu Swe

Senior Independent Study Theses

This Independent Study is divided into four chapters. The first chapter examines the role of capitalism in the formation of our culture. The argument presented here is that culture plays an important role in reinforcing modern neoliberal capitalism and that neoliberal capitalism has massive control over the dissemination of culture and the arts. The chapter concludes that it is necessary to utilize socio-cultural means in combating the influence of capitalism, and there does indeed exist emancipatory potential in artistic political praxis.

The second chapter focuses on Theodor Adorno’s aesthetic theory in articulating his conception of the emancipatory potential of art. …

Dispersal: A Multidisciplinary Investigation Of Plant Life, Alexandra E. Arzt

Theses and Dissertations

Using plants as a basis for exploring the interstices between the human and nonhuman, this thesis investigates ideas of awareness, intelligence, deep time, animism, and the fluctuating human perception of the agency of Nature. It outlines environmental art practices since the 1950s involving vegetal life. In addition, the paper provides a critical analysis of plant perception of Jakob von Uexküll’s work and theories of vital materialism and “critical plant studies” while noting recent studies in plant neurobiology. In my work, plants become active participants via their movement, seeding, and smell. This study takes the form of imitation, purposeful symbiosis, anthropomorphism, …

Antitrust, Competition Policy, And Inequality, Jonathan B. Baker, Steven C. Salop

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

Economic inequality recently has entered the political discourse in a highly visible way. This political impact is not a surprise. As the U.S. economy has begun to recover from the Great Recession since mid-2009, economic growth has effectively been appropriated by those already well off, leaving the median household less well off. The serious economic, political and moral issues raised by inequality can be addressed through a panoply of public policies including competition policy, the focus of this article. The article describes the channels through which market power contributes to inequality, and sets forth a range of possible antitrust policy …

Weakness Of Will: An Inquiry On Value, Michael Funke

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

One dominant scientific view holds that willpower is a type of muscle which can be weakened through use in the short term and strengthened through use over time. However, evidence from neuroscience, social psychology and behavioral economics suggest that willpower is regional, subverted through desire and strengthened by strategy--these are features a muscular account would not predict. It is better to think about willpower as a skill with a physiological component. Willpower strategies extend the brute effort of self-control through the use of reason and have the practical effect of increasing self-regulation. Willpower is "worth wanting" because there is a …

Quasi-Subjectivity And Ethics In Non-Modernity, Justin T. Simpson

UNF Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The inspiration behind this philosophical endeavor is an ethical one: interested in what it means to flourish as a human being – how to live well and authentically. Similar to medicine and how the ability to prescribe the appropriate treatment depends on first making a diagnosis, the focus of this work will to be understand the human condition and the ways in which subjectivity, one’s sense of self, is constituted. Given the general dissatisfaction with the modern metaphysical picture of the world, which analyzes the world in terms of the mutually exclusive and completely separate categories of nature/objects and society/subjects, …

The Difference Principle In Rawls: Pragmatic Or Infertile?, Farzaneh Esmaeili

UNF Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This thesis attempts to provide a coherent view of the idea of ‘justice as fairness’ and, in particular, the ‘difference principle’ expressed by John Rawls in A Theory of Justice. The main focus of the thesis is the difference principle and its limits. Rawls’s conception of ‘justice as fairness’ is based on the thought experiment of the ‘original position’ in which people, considered as free and equal, deliberate under an imagined ‘veil of ignorance,’ i.e. not knowing which social roles or status they would occupy in their society. Rawls then argues that in the original position people come up with …

Multi-Cultural Model Of Relational Personhood And Implementing Philosophy For Children (P4c): A Refusal Of The Illusion Of Individualism In America, Aron J. Burnett

UNF Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The goal of this thesis is to influence a re-evaluation of self conceptions in America in order to influence an alternative relational understanding of one’s self and others. This thesis begins based on the premise that individualism is a prominent aspect of American societies meaning its member’s understandings of their selves are self-centered, often non-empathetic, and in general more concerned with their own lives than that of others. The first half of this thesis is dedicated analyzing the American situation through an analysis of the sources of individualism and proving that individualism is actually an illusion that individuals falsely believe …

Role Tension In The Academy: A Philosophical Inquiry Into Faculty Teaching And Research, Nicolas Michaud

UNF Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation seeks to understand the conjunction of faculty roles as teachers and as researchers. This understanding is pursued through philosophical analysis. Discourse ethics, in particular, is used as a framework by which to best understand the roles played by faculty and if the roles of teacher and researcher are, in fact, commensurable. The purpose of the work is two-fold: 1) to develop a construct that may be used by future researchers to better understand the roles played by faculty, and 2) to suggest a best-construct that enables future researchers to propose how actual lived roles should be instantiated in …

Orange Is The New Golgotha, Kerry S. Walters

Philosophy Faculty Publications

The Roman soldiers jeered at Jesus, called him "towelhead" and "sand monkey," ripped off his garments and clad him in an orange jumpsuit. Then they pulled a black sack over his head and led him to an interrogation cell, where CIA operatives awaited him. They shackled Jesus's wrists and strung him up so that he dangled from the ceiling. One of them questioned him, and when his responses weren't to their liking, the other beat him. [excerpt]

Lisbeth Salander Lost In Translation - An Exploration Of The English Version Of The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo, Kajsa Paludan

LSU New Orleans Theses and Dissertations

Abstract

This thesis sets out to explore the cultural differences between Sweden and the United States by examining the substantial changes made to Men Who Hate Women, including the change in the book’s title in English to The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo. My thesis focuses in particular on changes in the depiction of the female protagonist: Lisbeth Salander. Unfortunately we do not have access to translator Steven T. Murray’s original translation, though we know that the English publisher and rights holder Christopher MacLehose chose to enhance Larsson’s work in order to make the novel more interesting for English-speaking …

Contextual Evidence: A Collection Of Vignettes, Tess Pieragostini (Class Of 2016)

PTRS Undergraduate Publications

The perfect curve of a circle, gently overlapping the curve of another. Two primary shapes, intersecting to form an almond of sorts. Segregating. Separating the things that are just so dissimilar that they cannot share space. Good and bad, black and white, rich and poor: the dichotomies that fuel the human condition. These things seem absolute. It is one or the other. Yet sometimes, you get the almond. The commonalities. The proportionately smaller region of the diagram. Those rare spaces that illustrate two diverging concepts on common ground. Those grey, ambiguous areas that eclipse the two circles entirely.