Ethics and Political Philosophy Commons^™

Reconciling Justice And Pleasure In Epicurean Contractarianism, John Thrasher

Philosophy Faculty Articles and Research

Epicurean contractarianism is an attempt to reconcile individualistic hedonism with a robust account of justice. The pursuit of pleasure and the requirements of justice, however, have seemed to be incompatible to many commentators, both ancient and modern. It is not clear how it is possible to reconcile hedonism with the demands of justice. Furthermore, it is not clear why, even if Epicurean contractarianism is possible, why it would be necessary for Epicureans to endorse a social contract. I argue here that Epicurean contractarianism is both possible and necessary once we understand Epicurean practical rationality in a new way. We are …

Trust And The Trickster Problem, Zac Cogley

Publication

In this paper, I articulate and defend a conception of trust that solves what I call “the trickster problem.” The problem results from the fact that many accounts of trust treat it similar to, or identical with, relying on someone’s good will. But a trickster could rely on your good will to get you to go along with his scheme, without trusting you to do so. Recent philosophical accounts of trust aim to characterize what it is for one person to trust another so as to avoid this problem, but no extant account successfully does so.

I argue that connecting …

Knowledge, Wisdom, And Service: The Meaning And Teaching Of Professionalism In Medicine, Matthew K. Wynia

Center for the Study of Ethics in Society Papers

Papers presented for the Center for the Study of Ethics in Society Western Michigan University. Presented September 29, 2011.

A Moral Paradox Of Martial Training, Charles W. Wright

Headwaters

No abstract provided.

Consolation, Anthony Cunningham

Headwaters

No abstract provided.

Ontology In Emmanuel Levinas's Philosophy, Stacy Carol Bautista

Dissertations (6 month embargo)

Taking the notion of the il y a, its prehistory and eventual fate, as an index of the development of the problem of being in Levinas's work, this thesis argues that Levinas's philosophy does not respond to a consistently articulated problem. He eventually transforms ontological evil into social evil, a shift that is visible in his handling of il y a.

A Modus Vivendi? Sex, Marriage & The Church, William L. Portier, Nancy Dallavalle, Christopher C. Roberts, Tina Beattie, R. R. Reno, Patricia Hampl, Luke Timothy Johnson, Leslie Woodcock Tentler, Paul Baumann

Theology and Religious Studies Faculty Publications

During the 1960s, nearly 80 percent of adult Americans were married. A recent analysis of U.S. census data reported that only 52 percent of adult Americans were married in 2009. That is the lowest percentage reported in the 100 years the Census Bureau has collected such information. The reasons for this dramatic cultural shift are well known: high rates of divorce; changing attitudes toward premarital sex; social acceptability of cohabitation; the weakening of the stigma surrounding out-of-wedlock births and single parenting; the postponement of marriage and children for academic or professional reasons.

Among those with only a high-school education or …

Barack Obama As Just War Theorist: The Libyan Intervention, Harry Van Der Linden

Scholarship and Professional Work - LAS

President Barack Obama has clearly placed himself in the just war tradition, and so we may ask how successful has President Obama in fact been as just war theorist? His justification of the recent NATO intervention in Libya shows that the record is at best mixed. More broadly, Obama’s failure as just war theorist is at least partly a failure of the theory itself: as long as this theory does not address issues of “just military preparedness,” it will fail to place real constraints on American resort to military force.

Two Concepts Of Community, Erica L. Neely

Philosophy and Religion Faculty Scholarship

Communities play an important role in many areas of philosophy, ranging from epistemology through social and political philosophy. However, two notions of community are often conflated. The descriptive concept of community takes a community to be a collection of individuals satisfying a particular description. The relational concept of community takes a community to consist of more than a set of members satisfying a particular trait; there must also be a relation of recognition among the members or between the members and the community as a whole. The descriptive concept is simpler, however, it does not provide a sufficiently robust concept …

Punishment And Reform, Steven Sverdlik

Philosophy Research

Reformist ideas in the philosophy of punishment can be traced back to Plato. However, it is only in the late 19^th century that explicitly reformist ‘theories’ are discussed by philosophers, and in the 20^th century that they are worked out at length. The conception of reform has recently undergone important changes. Contemporary writers who are apparently reformist utilize use an enriched moral conception of reform, which conceives of it in terms of repentance for wrongdoing and a commitment to obey the law for moral reasons. This departs from an earlier conception that places less emphasis on repentance and …

Moral Courage And Facing Others, Matthew Pianalto

Philosophy and Religion Faculty and Staff Research

Moral courage involves acting in the service of one’s convictions, in spite of the risk of retaliation or punishment. I suggest that moral courage also involves a capacity to face others as moral agents, and thus in a manner that does not objectify them. A moral stand can only be taken toward another moral agent. Often, we find ourselves unable to face others in this way, because to do so is frightening, or because we are consumed by blinding anger. But without facing others as moral subjects, we risk moral cowardice on the one hand and moral fanaticism on the …

On The Violence Of Systemic Violence: A Critique Of Slavoj Žižek, Harry Van Der Linden

Scholarship and Professional Work - LAS

This paper questions the extension of the common notion of violence, i.e., “subjective violence,” involving the intentional use of force to inflict injury or damage, towards social injustice as “systemic violence.” Systemic violence is altogether unlike subjective violence and the work of Slavoj Žižek illustrates that conceptual obfuscation in this regard may lead to an overly broad and facile justification of revolutionary violence as counter-violence to systemic violence, appealing to the ethics of self-defense. I argue that revolutionary violence is only justified to counter subjective violence inflicted or organized by the state. Thus I reject in conclusion Žižek’s further defense …

Martin Heidegger On Günther Anders And Technology: On Ray Kurzweil, Fritz Lang, And Transhumanism, Babette Babich

Articles and Chapters in Academic Book Collections

No abstract provided.

Values And Beliefs: A Pragmatist Critique Of Moral Nihilism, J.P. Weismuller

Philosophy Honors Projects

Moral nihilism maintains that value judgments cannot be justified. In this paper I argue against two prominent nihilistic theories: error theory and expressivism. First I present a meta-valuation thesis, which holds that it would be more valuable if at least some value judgments were justified. Second I argue for a value-justification thesis, which holds that the greater value of value-justifying theories warrants a rejection of nihilistic theories. This latter thesis requires a pragmatist premise: justified beliefs are the most valuable of possible beliefs. With this premise and a critique of meta-ethical theory choice, I argue that meta-ethical justification proceeds …

Taking The “Pest” Out Of Pest Control: Humaneness And Wildlife Damage Management, John Hadidian

Attitudes Towards Animals Collection

Humans have been in the pest control business for a long time. At least 3 major foci of pest control activity currently can be found in governmental and private sectors, with private services focused on both traditional commensal rodent work as well as the more recent control of “nuisance” wildlife in cities and towns. Beyond the traditional approaches and techniques historically employed, animal damage managers are increasingly faced with the challenge of addressing the social context within which their work occurs. An ever-increasing variety of stakeholders have brought new concerns, new thinking, and new approaches to the table in a …

Libertas Philosophandi And Freedom Of Mind In Spinoza’S Tractatus Theologico-Politicus, J. Thomas Cook

Faculty Publications

Isaiah Berlin famously distinguished between “negative” and “positive” liberty, arguing that in practice the two are often in tension with each other. This paper uses Berlin’s distinction to analyze Spinoza’s discussion of freedom in the Tractatus Theologico-Politicus. Libertas philosophandi is Spinoza’s shorthand for freedom of thought and expression – an important element in traditional liberal (“negative”) freedom. The TTP (as its subtitle announces) is devoted in great part to defending the value and importance of permitting such freedom in the state. But as commentators have often noted, Spinoza is reluctant to extend this liberty to the clerics of his …

The Three-Fold Significance Of The Blaming Emotions, Zac Cogley

Publication

Much of the philosophical work on moral responsibility assumes that we should understand people’s moral responsibility for the actions they take in terms of the appropriateness of the blaming emotions—resentment, anger, and indignation. However, current theorizing about the blaming emotions is often psychologically uninformed. Drawing on work in empirical psychology, I have recently argued that anger serves three functions in human psychology: appraisal, motivation, and communication. In this project, I propose to extend that analysis to the entire class of blaming emotions. I will show that theorizing about moral responsibility is myopic if it focuses on one of the functions …

Aldo Leopold’S Concept Of Land Health: Implications For Sound Public Health Policy, Paul Carrick

Philosophy Faculty Publications

I show that the late American ecologist and philosopher Aldo Leopold's concept of 'land health,' connects his holistic understanding of man and nature to core principles of public health policy at the center of today's global health concerns, e.g., world hunger, pandemics, sanitation.

Aesthetics And Art Of Friendship, Sheila Lintott

Faculty Contributions to Books

In the spirit of exploring fresh perspectives, I offer this investigation into the aesthetic aspects of personal relationships with a focus on friendship.1 Glossing the aesthetic aspects of friendship, as we too often do, impoverishes our understanding of the value and meaning of friendships, relationships which give shape and content to our lives, which animate our lives or, as Nancy Sherman (1993) puts it, relationships which structure the good life. The friendships we forge and those we forgo, the loves we cultivate and those we lose, these varying and variable relations broaden (or impoverish) our experiences, intensify (or diminish) our …

Ethics And Critical Thinking, Jonathan B. Wight

Economics Faculty Publications

This chapter seeks to demonstrate that investigations in positive economics rely on ethical perspectives and practices, and further, that critical thinking requires a wider ethical viewpoint than normative economics generally permits. Positive economics generally relies, for example, on the unsung virtues of the investigator who demonstrates honesty and transparency in the search for truth. Ethical failures in this regard are not uncommon (DeMartino, 2011). But another unstated ethical perspective appears in the worldview from which a researcher sets out to model behavior. Modelers almost always assume that rationality requires that an economic actor undertake an action in pursuit of a …