Ethics and Political Philosophy Commons^™

Nozick’S Libertarian Critique Of Regan, Josh Milburn

Between the Species

Robert Nozick’s oft-quoted review of Tom Regan’s The Case for Animal Rights levels a range of challenges to Regan’s philosophy. Many commentators have focussed on Nozick’s putative defence of speciesism, but this has led to them overlooking other aspects of the critique. In this paper, I draw attention to two. First is Nozick’s criticism of Regan’s political theory, which is best understood relative to Nozick’s libertarianism. Nozick’s challenge invites the possibility of a libertarian account of animal rights – which is not as oxymoronic as it may first sound. Second is Nozick’s criticism of Regan’s axiological theory, which is best …

What It Means To "Take A Knee", Shayna Kushner

CIE Essay Writing Contest

No abstract provided.

Philosophy Bakes No Bread, Babette Babich

Articles and Chapters in Academic Book Collections

Philosophy Bakes No Bread

Far from baking bread, far from practical applicability, philosophy traditionally sought to explain the world, ideally so. Thus, when Marx argued that it was high time philosophy “change the world,” his was a revolutionary challenge. Today, philosophy is an analytic affair and analytic philosophers seek less to explain the world than to squirrel out arguments or, more descriptively, to resolve the minutiae of this or that name problem. Faced with diminishing student demand, analytic philosophers have taken to urging that everyone from primary school students to scientists be required to study (analytic) philosophy. Just so, applied …

La Violenza Della Violenza, Babette Babich

Articles and Chapters in Academic Book Collections

ünther Anders, al pari di Hannah Arendt, fu un teorico del potere che sviluppò un’esplicita riflessione filosofica sulla violenza. Tuttavia, anche gli esperti delle sue opere trovano solitamente che le riflessioni di Anders sul potere (in tedesco Macht) implichino una certa difficoltà interpretativa, specialmente perché la sua scrittura è stilisticamente impegnativa, ma anche perché, in modo più decisivo, Anders scrisse sulla natura della tecnica, argomento inusuale per la maggior parte dei teorici della politica e dei filosofi. Questo interesse può essere riscontrato a cominciare dalle primissime riflessioni del filosofo tedesco sulla musica, e in tutti i suoi studi sull’essere …

Oral History Conversation With Najah Abdelkader, Evan Bui, Eric Hoster, Jesseca Bates

Philosophy 111: Philosophy of Human Nature

Najah Abdelkader, Professor of Philosophy at San Diego City College and Southwestern College, share stories and memories from her homeland of Iraq and her experiences of adapting to her new life in the US. This oral history conversation is part of an oral history project entitled "From Cradle to Cradle". In this project, students in a Philosophy of Human Nature course invites Iraqis and Syrians who have migrated to the US to share the stories and memories they have carried with them from their homelands and to explain how those stories and memories continue to shape and enrich the lives …

Fortifying The Self-Defense Justification Of Punishment, Zac Cogley

Journal Articles

David Boonin has recently advanced several challenges to the self-defense justification of punishment. Boonin argues that the self-defense justification of punishment justifies punishing the innocent, justifies disproportionate punishment, cannot account for mitigating excuses, and does not justify intentionally harming offenders as we do when we punish them. In this paper, I argue that the self-defense justification, suitably understood, can avoid all of these problems. To help demonstrate the self-defense theory’s attraction, I also develop some contrasts between the self-defense justification, Warren Quinn’s better known ‘auto-retaliator’ argument, and desert-based justifications of punishment. In sum, I show that the self-defense justification of …

W.E.B. Du Bois: Freedom, Race, And American Modernity, Elvira Basevich

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

My dissertation defends W.E.B. Du Bois’s philosophy of modern freedom, which he grounds in the historical reconstruction of the American civic community on the moral basis of free and equal citizenship. Rather than ascribe to him an elitist politics of racial ‘uplift’ and assimilation to Anglo- American folkways, I instead argue that he defends black moral and political autonomy for securing state power and civic equality. Additionally, he challenges both historical and the contemporary political philosophers, including John Rawls, Axel Honneth, and Philip Pettit, to articulate the racial dimension of the development of a social order that actualizes the moral …

Harming (Respectfully) Some To Benefit Others: Animal Rights And The Moral Imperative Of Trap-Neuter-Release Programs, Cheryl E. Abbate

Between the Species

Because spaying/neutering animals involves the harming of some animals in order to prevent harm to others, some ethicists, like David Boonin, argue that the philosophy of animal rights is committed to the view that spaying/neutering animals violates the respect principle and that Trap Neuter Release (TNR) programs are thus impermissible. In response, I demonstrate that the philosophy of animal rights holds that, under certain conditions, it is justified, and sometimes even obligatory, to cause harm to some animals (human or nonhuman) in order to prevent greater harm to others. As I will argue, causing lesser harm to some animals in …

Culturally Competent Communication, Tara Thomas, Stephanie Mohorne

Ethics Conference

Culturally-competent communication is necessary to engage all community stakeholders. Tara Thomas and Stephanie Mohorne will explain in a one-hour, interactive session how Waterloo Schools applies this strategy to effectively reach its audience—students, staff, families and the community in the 7th largest, and one of the most diverse, school districts in Iowa. Thomas, a former television news anchor and reporter, will give specific examples of how sharing messages with the media and, in turn, the public needs to be a carefully-guided process based on factors like race and socio-economic status. Mohorne, a longtime educational leader and bi-racial daughter of a single …

Addressing Wicked Problems In Practical Ways: Empowering Ethical Action In Higher Ed And Beyond, Cara B. Stone, Anne Marie Gruber

Ethics Conference

This discussion-based workshop will engage faculty and students alike in identifying problem areas related to social responsibility and action. Using a “Wicked Problems” framework, the presenters will provide examples of and opportunities for participants to reflect on challenges they observe in their disciplines/professional lives and on their campuses. Wicked Problems are complex and multifaceted, do not have a simple description or solution, and “are different because traditional processes can’t resolve them” (Camillus, 2008). In a higher education context, faculty and students can address these problems but this will require “new ways of learning, new ways of working together, and new …

The Inconvenient Truth About Thinking Chickens, Lori Marino

Animal Sentience

Original Abstract: Domestic chickens are members of an order, Aves, which has been the focus of a revolution in our understanding of neuroanatomical, cognitive, and social complexity. Some birds are now known to be on a par with many mammals in their intelligence, emotional sophistication, and social interaction. Yet views of chickens have largely remained unrevised in light of this new evidence. In this paper, I examine the data on cognition, emotions, personality, and sociality in chickens, exploring such areas as self-awareness, cognitive bias, social learning and self-control, and comparing their abilities with other birds and other vertebrates, particularly …

Walking As Ontological Shifter: Thoughts In The Key Of Life, Bibi (Silvina) Calderaro

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

With walking as ontological shifter I pursue an alternative to the dominant modernist episteme that offers either/or onto-epistemologies of opposition and their reifying engagements. I propose this type of walking is an intentional turning towards a set of radical positions that, as integrative aesthetic and therapeutic practice, brings multiplicity and synchronicity to experience and being in an expanded sociality. This practice facilitates the conditions of possibility for recurring points of contact between the interiority perceived as ‘body’ and the exteriority perceived as ‘world.’ While making evident the self’s at once incoherence with it-self, it opens to a space beyond the …

What Kind Of Is-Ought Gap Is There And What Kind Ought There Be?, P.D. Magnus, Jon Mandle

Philosophy Faculty Scholarship

Some philosophers think that there is a gap between is and ought which necessarily makes normative enquiry a different kind of thing than empirical science. This position gains support from our ability to explicate our inferential practices in a way that makes it impermissible to move from descriptive premises to a normative conclusion. But we can also explicate them in a way that allows such moves. So there is no categorical answer as to whether there is or is not a gap. The question of an is-ought gap is a practical and strategic matter rather than a logical one, and …

Tools For Subversion: Illich And Žižek On Changing The World, Babette Babich

Articles and Chapters in Academic Book Collections

Reviewing the work of Ivan Illich, Robert Kurz and Stanley Aronowitz together with Slavoj Žižek, this essay includes a discussion of Heidegger’s technically economic articulation of standing reserve correspondent to challenging forth (the world, ourselves, animals, plants, whatever), this essay takes up “the thought of the weak in search of alternatives” as Vattimo and Zabala argue for the possibility of interpretive transformation. In addition to Slavoj Žižek’s analysis of the resistance to revolution that functions as corollary to the existential stress of the dislocated mind, this reflection includes a discussion of media and illusion via Adorno.

Nietzsche’S Posthuman Imperative: On The Human, All Too Human Dream Of Transhumanism, Babette Babich

Articles and Chapters in Academic Book Collections

No abstract provided.

Civic Tenderness: Love's Role In Achieving Justice, Justin Leonard Clardy

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Martha Nussbaum’s work Political Emotions: Why Love Matters for Justice identifies the role that compassion plays in motivating citizens in a just society. I expand on this discussion by considering how attitudes of indifference pose a challenge to the extension of compassion in our society. If we are indifferent to others who are in situations of need, we are not equipped to experience compassion for them. Building on Nussbaum’s account, I develop an analytic framework for the public emotion of Civic Tenderness to combat indifference.

Civic tenderness is an orientation of concern that is generated for people and groups that …

The Self: Kierkegaard And Buddhism In Dialogue, David Wisdo

Comparative Philosophy

Is it possible for there to be a fruitful dialogue between Søren Kierkegaard and Buddhists regarding the understanding of the self? In this paper, I explore the possibilities for such a dialogue by first discussing the rejection of substantialism shared by Kierkegaard and Buddhists. Next, although many Buddhists accept a reductionist account of the kind found in the Abhidharma tradition, Madhyamaka thinkers such as Nāgārjuna and Candrakīrti are well-known for offering an account of the self, based on the notion of emptiness (śūnyatā), which resembles in some ways the account of the self that is proposed by Kierkegaard’s pseudonym Anti-Climacus …

The Quest For Ethical Truth: Wang Yangming On The Unity Of Knowing And Acting, Weimin Shi

Comparative Philosophy

Drawing an analogy between Wang Yangming’s endeavor to know ethical truth and Descartes’ quest for epistemic certainty, this paper proposes a reading of Wang's doctrine of the unity of knowing and acting to the effect that the doctrine does not express an ethical teaching about how the knowledge that is already acquired is to be related to acting, but an epistemological claim as to how we know ethical truths. A detailed analysis of Wang’s relevant texts is offered to support the claim.

Reflective Knowledge: Confucius And Virtue Epistemology, Chienkuo Mi

Comparative Philosophy

Most of sScholars have typically regarded Confucius as an ethical thinker broadly construed and not as an epistemological thinker. This paper seeks to overturn that view and, in doing so, has three basic goals. The first goal is to make the case that Confucian thought of the Analects is of epistemological significance. Goal two is to locate the significance of the Confucian thought within epistemology while accounting for the past overlooking of this significance. The third goal is to show that the Confucian thought is not only of epistemological significance, but that it can make a contribution to progressing contemporary …

Vol 8 No 2 Editor's Words, Bo Mou

Comparative Philosophy

No abstract provided.