Arts and Humanities Commons^™

The Ethical Motive As Counter To Benatar’S Anti-Natalism, Eliot Cox

Global Tides

In multiple works, David Benatar defends the view that it is immoral for parents to have children under any circumstance due to the suffering inherent in human life. This essay argues that Benatar’s anti-natalist argument is not successful because of its misidentification of the proper motive humans should have if they are to exist. Instead, I argue, the benefits of an ethical motive, if such a motive is properly instilled within a child by their parents or guardians, can surmount the suffering caused by existence. An ethical motive is characterized by the goal of alleviating suffering for others before oneself. …

Sauron: Weirdly Sexy, Robert T. Tally Jr.

Journal of Tolkien Research

A popular meme depict Galadriel and Frodo admitting that Sauron is "weirdly sexy," a humorous allusion to The Rings of Power’s Halbrand. The show's controversial revelation of Halbrand as Sauron highlights the differences between Tolkien’s construction of Second and Third Age Sauron as an attractive or admirable leader compared to Peter Jackson’s portrayal of him as a monster or disembodied fiery eyeball. This, in turn, has implications for the geopolitical order of Middle-earth in which many people legitimately might wish to be on Sauron’s side. Acknowledging Sauron's "sexiness" may allow us to see Tolkien's world system in a new …

Is Ignorance Bliss?, Eliana R. Mandelberg

CAFE Symposium 2024

This project explores the ethics of telling someone factual information, even if it could hurt them. Specifically, the main question is: If a person were to learn that our world was just The Matrix, would they be obligated to tell people to be truthful or keep it to themselves to spare the feelings of others?

A More Modern Prometheus: What Frankenstein Tells Us About Genetic Modification, Allison M. Ambrose

Honors College Theses

Mary Shelley’s famous novel, Frankenstein, is often hailed as the first true science fiction novel. In my thesis, I use the premonitive lens towards creation of life provided in Frankenstein to evaluate the morality of genetic modification of children. CRISPR-Cas9 is quickly emerging as the most important development in reprogenetic technology of our time, and many argue for its merits as a method of designing our children. I argue against this trend of “designer babies,” specifically raising questions about the soundness of modifying non-disease traits in future children and encouraging a more cautious attitude in both the scientific and philosophical …

The Barriers To Implementation Of Artificial Intelligence In Human Resource Management, Maddy L. Filetti

Student Publications

The influence of Artificial Intelligence (AI) tools in Human Resource Management (HRM) has rapidly become a point of controversy in academic and applied settings. This review will specifically examine the most recent publications on the challenges of implementing these AI tools in the recruitment and selection functions of HR. I identify various issues brought forth by the literature related the adoption of AI-based hiring technology in organizations, including practical costs, bias, data privacy, adverse employee and manager perceptions, and validity and reliability assessment. Suggestions for addressing the concerns are also discussed – namely, the construction of inclusive algorithms, creation of …

Proposing A Measure Of Ethicality For Humans And Ai, Alejandro Jorge Napolitano Jawerbaum

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Smarter people or intelligent machines are able to make more accurate inferences about their environment and other agents more efficiently than less intelligent agents. Formally: ‘Intelligence measures an agent’s ability to achieve goals in a wide range of environments.’ (Legg, 2008)

In this dissertation we extend this definition to include ethical behaviour and we will offer a mathematical formalism and a way to estimate how ethical an action is or will be, both for a human and for a computer, by calculating the expected values of random variables. Formally, we propose the following measure of ethicality, which is computable, or …

Ethics In The Age Of Disruptive Technologies: An Operational Roadmap, José Roger Flahaux, Brian Patrick Green, Ann Gregg Skeet

Faculty Book Gallery

The primary goal of this handbook is to help companies developing, procuring, or adopting advanced technologies, such as artificial intelligence, understand the ethical risks that these technologies introduce, and implement the infrastructure necessary to mitigate those risks throughout the entire product and service life cycle.

The ITEC Handbook offers a thoughtful and pragmatic roadmap for providing technology ethics governance and implementing it throughout the organization. It guides enterprises on their transformation journey from adoption and implementation of ethical behavior to operationalizing ethical and humane use principles, into a new mindset and culture of technology ownership and accountability, where everyone thinks …

Analyzing Nietzsche And Darwin In Search Of Origin Of Morality: The Evolving Perspective, Anirban Ghosh, Malabika Chakrabarti

Comparative Philosophy

It is generally believed that the greatest asset of human being is the moral values and according to theist such values have been infused in human by the creator. By accepting such view we simply get rid of any effort of searching the origin of morality or ethics and also transfer the responsibility of being ethical on the almighty. But when atheist denied God, the liability of being moral comes to human and also the significant question arose why we should be moral. Probably more important is the hunt for the origin of our morality. In this article we have …

A Theistic Critique Of Secular Moral Nonnaturalism, Dale Eugene Kratt

Doctoral Dissertations and Projects

This dissertation is an exercise in Theistic moral apologetics. It will be developing both a critique of secular nonnaturalist moral theory (moral Platonism) at the level of metaethics, as well as a positive form of the moral argument for the existence of God that follows from this critique. The critique will focus on the work of five prominent metaethical theorists of secular moral non-naturalism: David Enoch, Eric Wielenberg, Russ Shafer-Landau, Michael Huemer, and Christopher Kulp. Each of these thinkers will be critically examined. Following this critique, the positive moral argument for the existence of God will be developed, combining a …

Church Music Leaders In The Usa: Prioritizing Technical Competence And Inclusion, Heather Maclachlan

Yale Journal of Music & Religion

Church music leaders in the United States pursue two priorities: technical accuracy and fluency in the music-making of their church ensembles, and, including as many volunteers as possible in those same ensembles. At times, the prioritization of technical competence and inclusion conflict, because volunteers whose playing or singing is less than competent seek to be included in church music groups. Facing this ethical dilemma, church music leaders operate ethically; that is, they employ strategies and develop policies based on their understanding of their responsibilities to other people (Warren 2014). During interviews, they verbally espouse an ethic of deontology, but in …

Book Review: Kumar, Ashwani. (Ed.). (2022). Engaging With Meditative Inquiry In Teaching, Learning, And Research: Realizing Transformative Potentials In Diverse Contexts. New York, Ny: Routledge., Giovanni Rossini Phd

Journal of Contemplative and Holistic Education

Book Review of following text:

Kumar, Ashwani. (Ed.). (2022). Engaging with Meditative Inquiry in Teaching, Learning, and Research: Realizing Transformative Potentials in Diverse Contexts. New York, NY: Routledge.

Ai Art: Artists’ Best Friend Or Mortal Enemy?, Ethan Gabrys

Tredway Library Prize for First-Year Research

This paper analyzes the impacts and implications of generative AI software on art and examines the ethics of using such tools. Through the argument that careless use of these tools presents a danger to the art world as they risk devaluing human expression, Gabrys states that “as what it means to be human changes with each generation, new artists express sentiment through their art. Art has the ability to tell us about the human experience.” He concludes that the use of AI tools takes the skill and sentiment of human artists out of the equation, begging the question: if the …

Algorithmic Bias: Causes And Effects On Marginalized Communities, Katrina M. Baha

Undergraduate Honors Theses

Individuals from marginalized backgrounds face different healthcare outcomes due to algorithmic bias in the technological healthcare industry. Algorithmic biases, which are the biases that arise from the set of steps used to solve or analyze a problem, are evident when people from marginalized communities use healthcare technology. For example, many pulse oximeters, which are the medical devices used to measure oxygen saturation in the blood, are not able to accurately read people who have darker skin tones. Thus, people with darker skin tones are not able to receive proper health care due to their pulse oximetry data being inaccurate. This …

Meaningfulness, Existentialism, And The Reverse Priority View, Aimee Adriana Santillan

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

In this thesis, I will argue that existentialism provides a more helpful guideline to understanding the relationship between meaningfulness and morality. Then, I will explain how existentialist ethics provides a good example of a moral theory that balances morality and meaningfulness. In Chapter 1, I will highlight the important considerations that philosophers like Susan Wolf, Bernard Williams, Harry Frankfurt, and Sophie Grace Chappell have pointed out could be reasons for action that are important enough to outweigh moral duty in some situations. In Chapter 2, I will further outline Wolfâ??s criticism of normative ethical theories and explain her â??meaningfulnessâ?? objection. …

The Possibility Of Relationships With Others, Joshua Severud

LSU Master's Theses

Levinas offers a rich philosophical insight into the kind of responsibility and ethics that we must have for the Other. This involves a certain conception of what it means to be hospitable which turns out to be impossible. In order to talk about how this impossible relationship can occur, I use Heidegger’s description of the existential Being-with structure and Derrida’s conception of the event in order to make sense of how this Levinasian relationship can possibly exist in spite of—or thanks to—its impossibility.

On Research Ethics: A Proposal For An Undergraduate Ethics Course Using A Graduate Research Ethics Course As A Baseline, Jordan Sawyer

WWU Honors College Senior Projects

In the biology department at Western Washington University, there has been a lack of research ethics courses that students can take, with one of the first being taught in Spring Quarter of 2023. This paper goes through the co-development process of making a graduate-student level ethics course, using Responsible Conduct of Research as a guideline, as well as the schedule for the course. In addition, the paper offers a proposal on how the course could be altered to fit an undergraduate student audience, with the goal of accessibility in mind.

Karl Marx On Human Flourishing And Proletarian Ethics, Sam Badger

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation will show that Marx’s philosophy contains a notion of human “second nature” centered on the activity of labor with a corresponding class-centered theory of flourishing and emancipation. This notion shares important similarities with that of Aristotle but also differs in significant ways. Second nature for Marx is created and habituated through education and social labor. Moreover, human nature is molded into different forms as history progresses and modes and means of production change. In a class society everyone becomes is alienated from their nature in a way that inhibits their flourishing. This contrasts with an emancipated society, where …

Review Of Social Defense, Eli Mccarthy

The Journal of Social Encounters

No abstract provided.

Recognizing Exploitation And Rejecting Analogy: An Analysis Of The Meat-Commodity, Teddy Duncan Jr.

Between the Species

This paper is a two-part project. First, I reject the analogous relationship between the Holocaust and slaughterhouses (found in the anti-meat novel The Lives of Animals) and cross-species analogical thinking entirely; instead, I opt for modes of analysis that can examine the specific circumstances of animals within slaughterhouses. Secondly, I assert that a socio-economic Marxist analysis is the best prism in which to recognize the suffering of pre-slaughter animals and the causation of their suffering (the ostensibly necessary circulation and production of the meat-commodity).

Ethics And Epidemiology Workshop Report: Towards Ethics-Informed Epidemiology And Epidemiology-Informed Ethics, Zoe Ritchie, Brendan T. Smith Phd, Maxwell J. Smith Phd

Health Studies Publications

Two key groups of researchers have worked in parallel to advance health equity—one on the descriptive component (those in public health sciences, e.g., epidemiologists) and one on the normative component (those in the humanities and social sciences, e.g., philosophers and ethicists). Yet a significant gulf exists between their respective research. Consequently, advances in thinking regarding the philosophical underpinnings and normative requirements of health equity have been largely divorced from the design of public health interventions that seek to reduce health inequities. As a consequence, public health interventions aiming to advance health equity may fail to target the most appropriate populations …

Engaging Bhakti As/In Translation: An Outline Of A Methodological Approach To Analyse Ranade's Views About The "Saints And Prophets Of Maharashtra", Rinku Lamba

Articles

The analysis in this article suggests that M G Ranade’s reflections in his essay about the ‘Saints and Prophets of Maharashtra’ are significant because they offer a site to unravel shifts from a premodern to a modern conception of moral order on the Indian subcontinent, in the context of the encounter with colonialism. For its role in allowing such unravelling, and for the way it permits attention to hitherto neglected dimensions of Ranade’s comparison between bhakti and the Protestant Reformation, this article argues for the value of investigating Ranade’s reflections through the framework of translation. While doing the above, the …

Plurality And Epistemic Injustice: A Neo-Arendtian Reading Of Miranda Fricker's Epistemic Injustice, David Casciola

West Chester University Master’s Theses

In this thesis I bring the philosophies of Hannah Arendt and Miranda Fricker into conversation. Specifically, I argue that through Fricker’s concept of epistemic injustice (EI) we are able to see more clearly the importance of testimony—lexis as an aspect of Action for Arendt—in Arendt’s socio-political framework. Arendt divides the world into the Private, Social, and Public as separate realms of human activity (Labor, Work, and Action respectively); it is in the Public where we are able to appear and express our plurality. According to Arendt this is the only space where equality must be ensured. However, in using …

Ethical Anxiety: Establishing Morals In An Amoral World, Gabriel Jay Hummel

Senior Projects Spring 2023

This is a project founded on uncertainty. How can we ever judge anyone else when we can never know them as we do ourselves? How can we say that someone does wrong when they believe themselves to be doing right? Since at least the nineteenth century ethics, and philosophy as a whole, carved a new path without the aid of stabilizing pillars of objective, eternal truths. The following work demonstrates how a sense of vertigo descends on one who is forced to question the existence of those objective truths and how that fearful confusion can lead to dangerous refuges, yet …

A Defense Of Kantian Ethics Against Rigorism, Leyna Hong

CMC Senior Theses

Kantian ethics has prevailed as one of the most popular ethical theories due to its appeal to our moral intuitions. The good will is the good with the most intrinsic value, and respect for others as rational beings is at the core of the moral principles. Despite its appeal, Kantian Ethics faces some difficult challenges. One challenge with great force is that of rigorism. The charge is that the moral principles outlined by Kant should allow for exceptions; if they don't, Kantian ethics is too rigorous and inflexible to fit our moral intuitions.

One particular essay of Kant that has …

Dementia And The Fragility Of Self: Navigating Ethical Considerations In Medical Decision-Making, Grace Sauers

Scripps Senior Theses

As the global population ages, the incidence of degenerative memory disorders such as Alzheimer's and dementia is expected to rise. The frequency of complex medical decision-making challenges for these patients will subsequently increase. It is now common practice for patients to provide advance directives outlining the care they wish to receive; in the case they are deemed incompetent to perform adequate decision making. However, patients with dementia occasionally express wishes contrary to those stated in their advance directives. This divergence creates ambiguity about which wishes should be honored and for who those wishes are being honored for. I aim to …

Introduction To Volume 4, Issue 1 (December 2022), Brent Jesiek

Journal of International Engineering Education

This editorial introduces this new issue of JIEE, featuring three papers that cover a wide variety of perspectives and topics. The first two papers originated in our late 2020 call for manuscripts addressing how the COVID-19 pandemic has impacted international engineering education. These papers once again underscore how the pandemic has spurred innovations in global program design. We close with a third paper that presents a wide-ranging review and synthesis of prior scholarship in the area of global engineering ethics.

Traveling Epistemology, Or An Intersection Between Ethics And Epistemology Through The Philosophy Of Pragmatism., Pablo Patricio Olivas

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

The concept of traditional epistemology carries with it values and expectations that are rarely talked about. Based on the critiques of traditional epistemology by the pragmatist tradition, there is an opportunity to think of an alternative to the traditional view of epistemology as solely a theory of knowledge based on theories like the correspondence theory of truth. The concept of traveling epistemology serves as an alternative that questions the values of traditional epistemology, where things like certainty, and authority are expected in conjunction with a view of knowledge that rests on a mind-independent reality. Traveling epistemology offers a view that …

Computers And The Moral Imagination, James Addington

Augsburg Honors Review

In this paper I want to look more closely at the relationship between new tools and historical challenges that threaten social well being and see human responses. My focus will be the technology which has come to symbolize, most characteristically, the last third of the twentieth century: computer technology. In order to discuss the impact of this I technology and its application to present challenges, it will be necessary to explore briefly some secondary themes: 1) the common sense of our age; 2) the meaning of freedom and authentic selfhood; 3) social contradiction and the moral imagination; and, one of …

Heidegger And The Origin Of Authenticity, John J. Preston

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Since the publication of Sein und Zeit in 1927, scholars have coupled Martin Heidegger’s reflections on authenticity with a rich tradition of thought which reminds us that philosophy can, from time to time, function as a catalyst for self-discovery. While this function is an undeniable feature of Heideggerian authenticity, I would like to suggest that it is secondary to the role that authenticity plays in Heidegger’s philosophical investigations. By analyzing the full phenomena of authenticity and tracing its first technical uses back to Heidegger’s early lectures on Aristotle, I show that Heidegger’s methodological breakthrough in the early 1920s, the development …

An Enterprise Risk Management Framework To Design Pro-Ethical Ai Solutions, Quintin P. Mcgrath

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The effective use of Artificial Intelligence (AI) has immediate business benefits for an organization and its stakeholders through efficiency and quality gains, and the potential to explore and implement new business models. However, there are risks of unintended ethical consequences. Enterprise Risk Management (ERM) focuses on managing risk while maximizing business value from exploiting opportunities. Using applied ethics as a basis and the perspective that ethics includes both enabling human flourishing and not violating accepted norms, I argue that greater business value is achieved when an organization simultaneously targets the maximization of benefits and the minimization of harms for the …