Ethics and Political Philosophy Commons^™

From The Edge To The Grounds Of “Sentientism”, David Degrazia

Animal Sentience

Birch’s book is a remarkable exploration of the nature of sentience, its moral salience, evidence for its presence, and how to arrive at humane policies regarding our treatment of human beings, animals, brain organoids, and AI systems of uncertain sentience. Although Birch endorses the view that sentience is of fundamental moral importance, he endeavors to remain neutral among reasonable moral views and work out how to navigate through uncertainty—both ethical and epistemological—to arrive at defensible policies. While making common cause with Birch’s project, my own recent book advances a developed case in favor of the “sentientism” Birch endorses.

Natural Behavior Vs. Subjective Experience In Fish Welfare Assessments, Ronald G. Oldfield

Animal Sentience

Several commentaries on the Oldfield & Bonano (2024) target article proposed that natural behavior should play a larger role in assessing the welfare of fishes in zoos and aquariums. However, the natural-behavior concept of animal welfare has been widely criticized because natural behaviors do not necessarily improve welfare, and unnatural behaviors do not necessarily reduce it. I review the three major concepts of animal welfare — physical health, natural behavior, and affect/feelings — and argue that behavior patterns, whether natural or otherwise, should be evaluated according to their effects on health and subjective experience. Using the affect/feelings concept and the …

Human Wisdom And Artificial Intelligence: Role Of Liberal Arts Education In A Neoliberal World, Purna Chandra Bhusal

Critical Humanities

Neoliberalism is an economic and political ideology that originated in the 1930s and 40s, gained momentum in the late 70s and 80s, and peaked in the 90s and 2000s. Since its inception, neoliberalism has promoted a free-market economy with minimal state intervention, granting individuals the freedom to compete and succeed. Since the last quarter of the twentieth century, the neoliberal system has invested in, incorporated, and promoted Artificial Intelligence (AI), valuing an AI-enhanced corporate ethos. As a result, the success of higher education is generally measured by the quantity of technologically sound, market-ready, AI-trained human capital it produces for industry. …

Gramsci’S ‘Democratic Philosopher’ And The Concept’S Foundations In Marxian Social Ontology, Eli Recht-Appel

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This thesis deals with the term ‘democratic philosopher’ from Antonio Gramsci’s Prison Notebooks. In order to lay the groundwork for my distinct interpretation of the ‘democratic philosopher,’ I begin by providing an overview of Gramsci’s theory of the role of intellectuals in civil and political society. I then argue that the ‘democratic philosopher’ emerges from Gramsci’s typology of intellectuals but is a category which is both temporally and ontologically distinct from his more well-known concept of ‘organic intellectuals.’ ‘Organic intellectuals,’ intellectuals who co-develop alongside their fundamental social group or class, occupy a variety of cultural and political roles in …

Beyond The Veil Of Modernity: René Guénon, Prophet Of The Metapolitical Imaginary, Frederic Colier

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Heralded by some as one of the greatest intellectuals of the 20th century, French metaphysician René Guénon (1886-1951) is also the controversial father of Primordial Tradition, a metaphysics designed to remedy the decline of Western civilization. Guénon viewed the West in the grip of a prolonged cycle of degeneration. He sought to implement a pseudo-authoritarian spiritual reset that required a total rejection of its Western intellectual heritage and an embrace of Eastern doctrines.

Focusing on his landmark book The Crisis of the Modern World (1927), the dissertation examines how Guénon implemented his controversial reset. After outlining the religious, cultural, and …

Theatrical Agency In The Constitution Of Logical Space, Esther Marveta Neff

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation takes advantage of our current moment of collapse and shifting episteme to move from resistance and critique into modes of position, prefiguration, and praxiocentricism, giving not only a critique of the colonial-modern logical space of Theatrum Mundi, but also aiming to configure the thetic consciousness that grounds “theatrical agency” in the logic of cognitive and social epistemological modelling.  In what ways do we “build our own worlds”? What does “theatricality” tell us about human agency, especially in the domain of “theoretical attitudes,” and “consciousness”? In what ways, and to what extent, are we responsible for constituting …

Lethal Autonomous Weapons Systems And The Principles Of Distinction And Proportionality, Nicholas Cromie

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Lethal Autonomous Weapons Systems (LAWS) challenge the core principles of International Humanitarian Law (IHL), distinction and proportionality, by delegating life-and-death decisions to algorithms rather than human judgment.  This dissertation examines whether LAWS can conform to these principles and, if so, under what conditions.  Through process tracing, the study traces the historical integration of disruptive weapons technologies, including chemical, biological, nuclear, and armed drones, into IHL-compliant frameworks or their exclusion via prohibition.  Each case reveals distinct pathways: outright bans for indiscriminate or inherently inhumane systems (chemical and biological weapons), normative restraint and limited acceptance despite destructive power (nuclear weapons) and phased …

Imagination And The Self: A Cross-Cultural And Cross-Disciplinary Study, Qianyi Qin

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation is an interdisciplinary investigation of the imagination and the self that engages with cognitive science, philosophy of mind, Buddhism, ethical theories, and a variety of perspectives from Asian and Western philosophy. I address the following questions in three interrelated chapters. First, what does it mean for the self to appear in imagination? In Chapter 1, against certain narrow understandings of the self in philosophy of language, I build a multidimensional model of the self in imaginative experiences to capture the rich phenomenology, drawing on empirical findings on memory and imagination. Second, can the self be removed from imagination? …

America's Founding Theology, Michael Payne

Bound Away: The Liberty Journal of History

Building off of Mark David Hall's thesis that America had a Christian founding, this paper seeks to explore the theology of this Christian founding. While acknowledging that Enlightenment and English Common Law also influenced American founding thought, the paper seeks to look specifically at America's theological outlook. It concludes that American founding theology was overwhelmingly Reformed but with some key influences from the Baptist, Quaker, and even Catholic traditions. These influences can be found in the writings of the founders as well as in America's founding documents such as the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence. The point of the …

Reading Exercise (You Are The Hero): Dedicated To The Providence River Under The Mall, 02.17.2026, Deborah Fischer

Masters Theses

This play uses the performative potential of guilt, forgiveness, and self-help techniques as a catalyst for a new dynamic, one in which the pursuit of a false narrative, along with the structures it generates, becomes more real than reality itself. It employs “bad acting” and the practice of cold reading to stage a series of acts that function as an entry point into one’s own psyche, leveraging the peripheral space around familiar actions to allow chance, free will, and the experience of “real time” to temporarily come into effect. PLAYER 1: The bad actor is the most utopian one. CLOWN: …

Operational Responsibility In Ai Governance: A User-Centric Liability Framework, Zhengyang Chen

Faculty Publications

Who bears responsibility when artificial intelligence systems cause harm? This question has become central to AI ethics and governance. Most existing approaches focus on developers, yet this faces serious practical and theoretical problems. Drawing on tort law, agency law, and philosophy of technology, this paper argues that AI should be understood as an instrument whose outputs remain the responsibility of human operators rather than developers. We call this 'user-centric governance.' Placing accountability with deployers promotes public trust by creating clear lines of responsibility, a concern that governance approaches have often overlooked. It preserves democratic accountability by keeping human actors answerable …

How Religion, Morality, And Worldview Impact Public Policy, Adam Opp

Journal of Statesmanship & Public Policy: Briefs and Commentaries

It is important to examine the intersection between religion, morality, and worldview when analyzing the creation of public policy. Faith and spiritual beliefs play a key role in how an individual behaves as a policymaker and how they view the role of government. Religion considers the critical role of authority, which the government must analyze if the people have given it the authority to take a course of action. Morality asserts that the purpose of government is to maintain a system of justice that protects individual rights. Worldview highlights the framework individuals take in approaching the role of government and …

War Photography & The Limits Of Empathy, Andrea Shi

Student Theses and Dissertations

The proliferation of photography, particularly war and poverty photography, has had massive implications for the level of vividness with which Americans are able to picture suffering beyond their doors. The mass atrocities that have occurred since the advent of photography – that is to say, the last 200 years – are so relentlessly circulated that they feel, sometimes, as an inevitable byproduct of human nature. It’s not surprising, then, that a lot of media theory and analysis reduce the dilemma of atrocity photographs to a psychological level. Do they numb us, or do they incite empathy? Are they a call …

Toward A Corporeal Materialism. Response To Reviewers, Banu Bargu

Emancipations: A Journal of Critical Social Analysis

No abstract provided.

Embodying The Masses. Review Of Banu Bargu's Disembodiment: Corporeal Politics Of Radical Refusal (Oxford University Press, 2024), James Martel

Emancipations: A Journal of Critical Social Analysis

No abstract provided.

Worldmaking Against Disposability: Review Of Banu Bargu’S Disembodiment: Corporeal Politics Of Radical Refusal (Oxford University Press, 2024), Daniel Loick

Emancipations: A Journal of Critical Social Analysis

No abstract provided.

Toward A Non- Or Post-Historical Materialism. Review Of Banu Bargu'sdisembodiment: Corporeal Politics Of Radical Refusal (Oxford University Press, 2024), Amy Allen

Emancipations: A Journal of Critical Social Analysis

No abstract provided.

The Politics Of Literature In Dider Eribon’S Returning To Reims: An Emancipatory Review, Noa De Kievit

Emancipations: A Journal of Critical Social Analysis

This paper examines Didier Eribon’s Returning to Reims (2009) as a model for understanding how literary and autobiographical writing can enact ''the politics of literature.'' While Eribon is widely recognized as a sociologist, his “autosociobiography”—tracing his trajectory from a working-class upbringing to an academic career alongside his coming out—blends personal narrative and sociological insight to illuminate structural inequalities and social marginalization. Reading the text through Jacques Rancière’s concept of the politics of literature, I argue that Eribon simultaneously expands the scope of what is visible, sayable, and thinkable, while reflecting critically on the interpretive authority he exercises. Building on Caroline …

Is Health Deserved? Personal Autonomy, Framing, Ethical Intimidation, And The Politicization Of Healthcare In The United States V. Japan, Ava C. Azucenas

Undergraduate Honors Theses

Is health deserved? Is your health owed to you? What does this mean, and whose responsibility is it? I argue that American culture’s use of  personal autonomy, “framing”, and ethical intimidation has stunted the improvement of both political and legal structures. This is evident in the politicization of the ‘for-profit’ healthcare system in the United States. American policymakers frequently weaponize moral foundations in order to coerce voters into supporting or opposing certain healthcare policies derived from the principle that some people are more "deserving" of health than others. This calculated “framing” of health concepts has deeply politicized such an ethical …

Aquinas In The Twenty-First Century: A Reconciliation With The Catholic Church’S Teaching On The Death Penalty, Diego G. T. Abele

Honors Theses

The Catholic Church, when it revised its paragraph in the Catechism that concerned the teaching on the death penalty, many believed that this seemed to contradict the Church’s traditional teaching on the death penalty, which has included the writings of thinkers like St. Thomas Aquinas. However, after applying principles of his natural law theory, this apparent contradiction goes away, and the full Catholic teaching on the death penalty comes to light. Several key theses of Thomist natural law will be described which pertain to the metaphysical, epistemological, and ethical questions it seeks to answer. This will be the backbone of …