Philosophy Commons^™

Preparing Leaders For The Fight, Stephen Taylor

Regis University Student Publications (comprehensive collection)

Preparing Leaders for the Fight: An Attempt to get Left of the Boom There is a need, in the United States Army, to examine and refine the training of Soldiers in ethical decision making in order to better equip leaders for unforeseen dilemmas which regularly occur in both war and peace. This project includes a cursory look at several noteworthy cases which have provoked public debate and discourse about situational ethics within the military. Other cases are mentioned as emblematic examples because of their instructive value and offer various insights into the current ethical climate and moral health of the …

The Ciceronian - Volume 3, Morehead State University. Cicero Society.

Ciceronian Journal Archive

2020 issue of The Ciceronian.

What's In A Wage? A New Approach To The Justification Of Pay, Jeffrey Moriarty

Philosophy Faculty Publications

In this address, I distinguish and explore three conceptions of wages. A wage is a reward, given in recognition of the performance of a valued task. It is also an incentive: a way to entice workers to take and keep jobs, and to motivate them to work hard. Finally, a wage is a price of labor, and like all prices, conveys valuable information about relative scarcity. I show that each conception of wages has its own normative logic, or appropriate justification, and these logics can come apart. This explains some of the debate about wages and makes the project of …

On The Origin, Content, And Relevance Of The Market Failures Approach, Jeffrey Moriarty

Philosophy Faculty Publications

The view of business ethics that Christopher McMahon calls the “implicit morality of the market” and Joseph Heath calls the “market failures approach” has received a significant amount of recent attention. The idea of this view is that we can derive an ethics for market participants by thinking about the “point” of market activity, and asking what the world would have to be like for this point to be realized. While this view has been much-discussed, it is still not well-understood. This paper seeks to remedy this problem. I begin by showing, against some recent commentators, that McMahon’s view and …

My Relational Autonomy And My Relationship With Susan Sherwin, Carolyn Mcleod

Philosophy Publications

I get both personal and philosophical in this piece. I reflect on how my relationship with Sue Sherwin has fostered my own relational autonomy. At the same time, I discuss what theories of relational autonomy, like Sue’s, add to the bioethics literature on autonomy. With this second objective, I begin clearing up some confusion that I see in this literature about the nature of relational autonomy.

The Stoic Trinity, Oliver Trapp

Master of Liberal Studies Theses

The ancient philosophical school of Stoicism has experienced a revival in the past decades. Psychologists created the field of Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, inspired by Stoic techniques; self-help authors picked and chose from the Stoic canon to provide strategies for personal effectiveness; and academics attempted to reformulate Stoic theory on purely rational grounds. Yet, can Stoicism be the answer to our modern predicament of anxiousness and confusion? Can it help us live happy lives today, that is to say, satisfying lives that makes sense, and are full of purpose and meaning? In this thesis, I argue that today one still needs …

When Microcredit Doesn’T Empower Poor Women: Recognition Theory’S Contribution To The Debate Over Adaptive Preferences, David Ingram

Philosophy: Faculty Publications and Other Works

This essay proposes recognition theory as a preferred approach to explaining poor women’s puzzling preference for patriarchal subordination even after they have accessed an ostensibly empowering asset: microfinance. Neither the standard account of adaptive preference offered by Martha Nussbaum nor the competing account of constrained rational choice offered by Harriet Baber satisfactorily explains an important variation of what Serene Khader, in discussing microfinance, dubs the self-subordination social recognition paradox. The variation in question involves women who, refusing to reject the combined socio-economic benefits of patriarchal recognition and empowering microfinance, dissemble their subordination to men. In this situation, women experience …

Recognition And Positive Freedom, David Ingram

Philosophy: Faculty Publications and Other Works

A number of well-known Hegel-inspired theorists have recently defended a distinctive type of social freedom that, while bearing some resemblance to Isaiah Berlin’s famous description of positive freedom, takes its bearings from a theory of social recognition rather than a theory of moral self-determination. Berlin himself argued that recognition-based theories of freedom are really not about freedom at all (negatively or positively construed) but about solidarity, More strongly, he argued that recognition-based theories of freedom, like most accounts of solidarity, oppose what Kant originally understood to be the essence of positive freedom, namely the setting of volitional ends in accordance …

Examining Jack Kerouac's Role In The Beat Generation: Exploring Place In On The Road And The Dharma Bums, Kimberly Ann Tucker

Master's Theses

This examination of two of Jack Kerouac’s roman-á-clefs, On the Road (1957) and The Dharma Bums (1958), illuminates characteristics of Kerouac’s personality and writing that are often ignored by current criticism. I will attempt to enhance current Kerouac scholarship by further analyzing the physical and spiritual journeys that Kerouac’s personas experience in these novels, contrasting Kerouac’s personas’ development with that of his Beat Generation companions. Despite his admiration for Dean Moriarty (Neal Cassady) and Japhy Ryder (Gary Snyder), Kerouac does not present these individuals as American heroes. Indeed, Kerouac’s cynical narration suggests that these Beat characters cannot offer him the …

Genomic Justice: The Distribution Of Human Flourishing, Robert Flores

CGU Theses & Dissertations

Genes are functional cell segments of DNA within an organism, as well as basic physical units of biological inheritance, which have consequences for human dignity and public interest. Genes and genetic material (DNA strands of nucleotides, genetically altered plants and animals e.g., see Appendix B) are patentable. In the US and around the globe, governments grant genetic patents for new, non-obvious, and useful gene inventions. A wide range of interest groups such as religious leaders, scientists, biotech pharmaceuticals, medical practitioners, health care providers, venture capitalists, medical patients and persons have interests in defining what is subject to patents. Yet, it …

I. Expect The Unexpected: Heraclitus, Kant And The Æsthetics Of Fine Wine, Charles S. Taylor

Wine Journey: Tasting Dwelling Learning at The Kitchen Table

Actually, you do not even have to taste this wine,” said the owner of a high-end fruit market who, due to his own passion, sold wine as well. “Just smell it!” He was right. I opened that 1947 Giacomo Borgogno Barolo Riserva a year later to celebrate my wife’s 35th birthday, when the wine was also 35 years old. I expected that the wine would be good, a library release only one year earlier from what was considered the best Barolo vintage of the 20th century by a well-regarded producer. The wine was wonderful to smell and, indeed, to taste. …

Universality And Modeling Limiting Behaviors, Collin Rice

Philosophy Faculty Research and Scholarship

Most attempts to justify the use of idealized models to explain

appeal to the accuracy of the model with respect to difference-making causes.

In this paper, I argue for an alternative way to justify using idealized models

to explain that appeals to universality classes. In support of this view, I show

that scientific modelers seeking to explain stable limiting behaviors often

explicitly appeal to universality classes in order to justify their use of idealized

models to explain.

Death In Berlin: Hegel On Mortality And The Social Order, Thimo Heisenberg

Philosophy Faculty Research and Scholarship

It is widely acknowledged that Hegel holds the view that a rational social order needs to reconcile us to our status as natural beings, with bodily needs and desires. But while this general view is well-known, one of its most surprising implications is rarely explored: namely the implication that, for Hegel, a rational social order also has to reconcile us to the inevitable fate of everything natural and organic – it needs to reconcile ourselves to our own mortality. This paper explains this largely unknown dimension of Hegel’s view, as well as its implications for contemporary social philosophy. The …

Baudrillard And The Viral Violence Of Cyber Security, Alex Rivera

Mahurin Honors College Capstone Experience/Thesis Projects

This paper explores Jean Baudrillard’s theorization on war and communication, connecting it to recent developments in the field of cyber security. With the important elevation of military forces such as the United States Cyber Command, critical theory needs to interrogate the increasing stature and seriousness of the cyber domain in global military strategies. Baudrillard’s critique shifts the focus from simple military strategies to the globe’s consumption of the information that is offered by the global information complex. This paper explains the nuances of violence surrounding the exchange of media surrounding war, criticizing both pro-war and anti-war stances, to examine the …

Welcoming Newcomers And Becoming Native To A Place_ Arendt’S Polis And The City Beautiful Of Detroit.Pdf, Jules Simon

Departmental Papers (Philosophy)

My goal, in interpreting Arendt’s analyses of the polis – both modern and ancient – is to conceptualize the role that ‘healthy’ public spaces can play in modern cities. What distinguishes my interpretation of her work is how I integrate her seminal conception of a philosophy of natality in the constellation of elemental concepts: labor, work, and action, as a way to understand the rise and fall of Detroit and to set the possible horizon for its reincarnation as a ‘sustainable’ and flourishing city beautiful. For me, it is precisely this conceptualization, as a philosophy of natality, that enables us …

Decolonizing Climate Discourse And Legitimating Indigenous Wisdom: Toward An Ecosystemic Episteme, Caitlin Robison

Honors Program Theses

Devoted to redefining western capitalist epistemologies through recognition and acceptance of Indigenous wisdom in modern sociopolitical structures, I use this paper to expose theoretical and material flaws in western neoliberal capitalism as an implicitly colonial knowledge system incapable of sufficiently addressing the climate crisis. Here, colonialism is broadly understood as ideological and/or material practices of exploitation and domination within social, cultural, economic, and ecological frameworks. Colonialism, in this paper, is further characterized by having particular philosophical commitments to notions of binarism, individualism, and consumerism which reveal capitalism’s structure and function as neocolonial by nature. Most evidently, today’s global climate crisis …

Against Monetary Functionalism: A Social Ontology Of Money, James Payne

Honors Program Theses

This paper explores the concepts of individualism and holism in social ontology through an analysis of the ontology of money by integrating insights from the Critical Realist tradition as well as the distinction between metaphysical grounds and anchors. In doing so it examines alternative explanations of money's ontology like the paradigmatic approach of John Searle. The results of the inquiry are then connected in relation to the models of social explanation in mainstream economics.

Idealism In Spinoza’S Metaphysics, Epistemology, And Ethics: A Friendly And Judicious Revision To The Active/Passive Distinction As Solution To Spinoza’S Attribute And Parallelism Problems, Sean Butler

CGU Theses & Dissertations

Spinoza’s doctrine of parallelism admits of certain observed inconsistencies that have long troubled Spinoza scholars. The scholarship over the last one hundred and thirty years or so has offered three dominant interpretations of Spinoza’s metaphysics as a result of the deficiencies with the doctrine of parallelism. These are 1) the subjective/objective distinction according to which the attribute of thought is understood as subjective and the attribute of extension is understood as objective, 2) materialism according to which the attribute of thought is claimed to depend on the attribute of extension, and 3) idealism according to which the attribute of extension …

Aristotle On Practical Reasoning: Perception, Reason And Action In Aristotle’S Thought, Kyu-Been Chun

CGU Theses & Dissertations

This study aims to clarify Aristotle’s practical reason and how his flexible but, nonetheless nonarbitrary ethical teaching works. By doing so, I hope to provide an alternative way of understanding practical reason in contradistinction to a modern view of practical reason and its assumptions about thinking through moral and political issues. In this dissertation, I argue that Aristotle’s discussion of practical reason shows that any attempts to formalize morality in the abstract are limited by the complexity of each particular situation, the variability in perception/cognition of the agent as well as a human longing that is inextricably linked to practical …

The Revealing Love Of God: A Systematic, Hermeneutic, And Phenomenological Approach To Thinking Well About The Love Of God, Daniel L. Nelson

CGU Theses & Dissertations

“The medium is the message:” theological reflections on the idea that God is love. I am proposing that the idea of the self-revelational nature of God’s being functions, among other ways, rhetorically, such that the content of revelation (God’s love) determines the rhetorical mode of its communication (giving orders, inviting, begging, etc.). The three aspects of rhetoric that Kenneth Burke emphasizes in A Rhetoric of Motives—the use of identification, that it is addressed and, as such, is convincing (persuasive)—are examined in terms of revelation. Chapter one seeks to clear the way for what is commonly understood as special revelation by …