Philosophy Commons^™

Brand Activism And Democratic Legitimacy: Exploring Pitfalls Through A Habermasian Analysis, Roxan Degeyter

Emancipations: A Journal of Critical Social Analysis

Brand activism has emerged as a prominent practice among corporations, as they publicly take a stand on contentious socio-political issues such as gender inequality, climate change, or discrimination, often through advertising. While extensive research has been conducted on the impact of brand activism as a marketing tool, examining its effects on sales, brand image, consumer attitudes, and authenticity, only a limited number of studies have studied its influence on public debate and processes of democratic legitimation. The latter have portrayed brand activism as an empowering force for the supported social movements, the public sphere, and democratic legitimacy, largely ignoring the …

Llms And Crisis Epistemology: The Business Of Making Old Crises Seem New, Mich Ciurria

Critical Humanities

Large Language Models (LLMs) like ChatGPT have set in motion a series of crises. These include disruptions to the labor force, education, and democracy. Some people believe that rich technocratic ‘saviors’ should solve these crises. Naomi Klein, however, argues that this is a neoliberal fantasy. Tech CEOs will not solve AI-related crises because they have a vested interest in perpetuating disaster capitalism and the social inequalities that keep wages low. Who, then, can solve the AI crisis? I submit that the answer is: oppressed groups with experiential and intergenerational knowledge of crises. To oppressed folks, technological crises are not new, …

Technological Fair Play: An Ethical Framework For Olympic Sports, Marwan Hellal

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

This research strived to address age-old concerns clouding the governance of sport technologies, specifically in sports under the Olympic umbrella. Anti-doping has long been a mandatory clause in the Olympic Charter. Yet, other forms of technological incursions have long been left unaddressed or prohibited via premature reactive judgments. Utilizing a multidimensional philosophical lens encompassing scholarship in the fields of philosophy of sport, applied ethics and the philosophy of technology - this thesis is aimed at creating an accessible, structured, and principled ethical framework to guide the integration of emerging technologies within Olympic sports. Taking an analytical look into WADA’s underlying …

Clausewitzian Theory Of War In The Age Of Cognitive Warfare, Amber Brittain-Hale

Education Division Scholarship

We can reconceptualise warfare by contrasting Clausewitz with the modern practice of cognitive warfare, as evidenced by Ukraine’s defence methodologies. The strategic orchestration of ‘infopolitik’ and the sophisticated use of social media can shape narratives and public perception. This article revisits Clausewitz’s tenet of war as a political instrument and juxtaposes it with contemporary conflict’s multidimensional tactics. By scrutinising Ukraine’s digital and psychological warfare tactics, one may question the applicability of Clausewitz’s framework, seeking to understand if these novel dimensions of warfare compel a redefinition or an expansion of his thesis to navigate the complexities of contemporary geopolitical confrontations.

Global Ethics, Religious Liberty, And Freedom Of Information Access, Paul A. Hartog

The Christian Librarian

Devout Christians work in a spectrum of library settings (including public libraries), networked by globalized information access. By nature of their employment, these librarians assist patrons in accessing and retrieving information that challenges or conflicts with a biblical worldview. How can one defend taking such an active role in this seeming contradiction? This article maintains that Christian commitment may not only co-exist with the freedom of information access but may also support it as a universal human right in our globalized, pluralistic context. To make the case, the essay contrasts two varying accounts of Global Ethics (differing in their view …

Virtue-Driven Leadership: Powering Excellence In Organizations, Joseph Scherrer

Arts & Sciences Electronic Theses and Dissertations

In this thesis, I seek to answer the question “What makes a good leader?” I approach this question systematically, starting in Chapter 1 by asking “What is Leadership?” In attempting to formulate a response, I find that the concept is slipperier than it first appears and difficult to pin down. All the same, I construct a thematic, contextually pertinent definition that provides reasonable precision for the purposes of this study. In Chapter 2, I present a representative survey of the social-scientific academic literature in order to establish the prospect that a philosophy of virtuous leadership can be empirically validated in …

Lip(S) Service: A Socioethical Overview Of Social Media Platforms’ Censorship Policies Regarding Consensual Sexual Content, Sage Futrell

Cybersecurity Undergraduate Research Showcase

The regulation of sexual exploitation on social media is a pressing issue that has been addressed by government legislation. However, laws such as FOSTA-SESTA has inadvertently restricted consensual expressions of sexuality as well. In four social media case studies, this paper investigates the ways in which marginalized groups have been impacted by changing censorship guidelines on social media, and how content moderation methods can be inclusive of these groups. I emphasize the qualitative perspectives of sex workers and queer creators in these case studies, in addition to my own experiences as a content moderation and social media management intern for …

What Do We Owe The Other Animals In Health-Related Research?, Jessica A. Du Toit

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

In this dissertation, I provide an account of the protections to which most captive non-human animals are morally entitled when they participate in health-related research. At least in the animal ethics literature, it is uncontroversial that the protections currently afforded to captive research animals are inadequate. This has much to do with the fact that most animals who serve as research participants are 1) sentient and, thus, have important morally considerable interests; 2) unable to provide informed consent to their research participation; and 3) seriously harmed as a result of their participation.

Unsurprisingly, then, a number of authors have proposed …

On Virtue Ethics Theory And Elementary Music Education, Joshua Burgos

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation uses virtue ethics theory, teacher research method, and self-study to examine how I perceive myself as contributing to cultivating virtuous persons. Virtue ethics theory, teacher research method, and self-study are empirical, using concrete methods of data generation and analysis, and conceptual, relating to studying philosophical research, ideas, and interpretations (Annas, 2007; Check & Schutt, 2012; Kemmis & McTaggart, 1988). The study aimed to discover how virtue is cultivated through music education and improve teaching practice using virtue ethics theory and empirical research to offer insight into how virtue is cultivated. The study was conducted in an elementary school …

Lighting The Way Of The Learner: Towards A Social Virtue Epistemology In Aḥmad Al-Ṣaghīr’S The Faqīh’S Lantern, Amani Khelifa

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

This thesis offers an original translation and analysis of a West African didactic poem in Islamic ethics and law, by the Mālikī-Ashʿarī Mauritanian scholar Aḥmad al-Ṣaghīr (d. 1272 AH/1856 CE) called The Faqīh’s Lantern (Miṣbāḥ al-Faqīh). In addition to the critical translation, I examine the poem thematically through the lens of social virtue epistemology. Chapter 1 sketches the background of the text and author, positioning the author historically as a product of a rich scholarly and pedagogical tradition while noting Mauritania’s contemporary place in the North American Muslim imagination. Chapter 2 is the translation of the text, making …

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 …

The Five Factor Model Of Personality And Hr Employees’ Perceptions Of Ai Adoption, Maddy L. Filetti

Student Publications

The use of artificial intelligence (AI) tools to support Human Resources (HR) functions has recently gained influence and sparked controversy in both academic and applied settings. While studies on human-technology interaction have mainly focused on the response of humans to digital technologies in various contexts (e.g., instant messaging and social media), there remains a lack of empirical research on HR professionals’ individual perceptions of AI tools. This paper will utilize McCrae & Costa’s Big-Five Factor Model of Personality (1989) to develop five theoretical propositions about HR workers’ dispositional willingness to accept AI technology. It is proposed that while agreeableness, openness …

“Pristine Truth” Ecopsychology: The Natureness Remedy

The International Journal of Ecopsychology (IJE)

As was best seller predicted by ecological science experts in 1949, (2a) most educated people today recognize that in personal, social and environmentally hurtful ways our senselessly abused lives increasingly are breaking our world. Although no core cause or remedy for this catastrophe is known, this “Natureness” article makes both available. Sadly, by continually omitting its special “Pristine Truth,” all the knowledge in the world can’t stop modern humanity’s suicidal mismanagement of Nature’s life as it flows around and through us. (2) Instead, our present-day conquer-Nature worldview teaches us to excessively disconnect from, exploit and illegally war against Nature’s flow …

Ethical Subjectivism: A Lost Cause, Carlo Alvaro

Publications and Research

Individual relativism, also known as ethical subjectivism, is an attractive theory about morality. It argues that morality is a matter relative to the individual in a way akin to personal taste. For example, subjectivists regard the ethical judgment ‘Stealing is wrong’ as comparable with the judgment of taste ‘I dislike Brussels sprouts’. Yet, subjectivism is not nihilism. While nihilism denies the existence of moral value, duties, principles and truths, subjectivism claims that they exist, but they are subjective like taste. In this paper, I argue that ethical subjectivism ought to be rejected as it is an incoherent, undefendable, and a …

Bioethics And Vaccines: Scientific Facts, Values, And Conflict, Amanda Roth

Myth and Science, 2023-24

This lesson plan and slide deck focuses on Bioethics and Vaccinations in relation to the theme of Myths and Science. Topics include: moral questions around vaccine mandates, intergenerational justice and the varicella vaccine, and justice in vaccine distribution.

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 …

A World Of Difference: The Fundamental Opposition Between Transhumanist “Welfarism” And Disability Advocacy, Susan B. Levin

Philosophy: Faculty Publications

From the standpoint of disability advocacy, further exploration of the concept of well-being stands to be availing. The notion that “welfarism” about disability, which Julian Savulescu and Guy Kahane debuted, qualifies as helpful is encouraged by their claim that welfarism shares important commitments with that advocacy. As becomes clear when they apply their welfarist frame to procreative decisions, endorsing welfarism would, in fact, sharply undermine it. Savulescu and Kahane's Principle of Procreative Beneficence—which reflects transhumanism, or advocacy of radical bioenhancement—morally requires parents to choose the child who will, in all probability, have “the best life.” Assuming the emergence of potent …

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 …

King Charles' Character Education: His Australian School, Now And Then, Elizabeth Summerfield

The Journal of Values-Based Leadership

As a 17 year old in 1966, the then Prince Charles, spent two terms at Geelong Grammar School in Victoria, Australia. He described the experience as the best part of his secondary schooling, and formative of his character. The School was founded in the 1850s as an educational institution of the Anglican Church. By the twenty-first century it became a leading exponent globally of the Positive Education (PE) movement, which has its foundation in Positive Psychology (PP). Critics of PE have argued that it diminishes, even supersedes, the tenets of the School’s Anglican tradition. This paper tests the School’s assertion …

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 …

Reasoning In Transitions: A Critique For Social Values, Shawn Robert Stickney Mr.

Major Papers

I consider two variants of immanent critique ala Jaeggi and Putnam which both seem wedded to forms of metaphysical realism, and I intend to show how Rorty’s denial of the ‘functional’ as a category weighs against Jaeggi’s account of the role of “functional-ethical” norms in the analysis of real crisis. I argue that Jaeggi’s ‘immanent’ criticism relies on untenable metaphysical notions of progress and that, despite her argument that immanent critique draws its own standards from the object of criticism, she ends up sneaking strong foundations into her critique through her notion of crisis. Charles Taylor provides a non-foundational model …

The Juris Master: A Proposal For Reducing Excessive Public Defender Caseloads, Blake Comeaux

Senior Honors Papers / Undergraduate Theses

The US public defense system is underfunded, understaffed, and underdelivering on the Constitutional promises of the 6^th Amendment, the right to a fair and speedy trial. This state of our public defense system results in monstrous impacts for indigent defendants nationwide. Through indefinite delays in litigation, being abandoned in jail while sitting on waiting lists for public defenders, and being outright denied representation, indigent defendants are deprived of their rights. Beyond just defendant neglect, our current system puts immense strain on public defenders, prosecutors, and state budgets. In an attempt to combat this current state of affairs, this paper …

An Ethical Framework For Library Publishing Version 2.0, Tina Baich, Nina Collins, Jaime Ding, Abigail Gulya, Zoe Wake Hyde, Bernadette A. Lear, Joshua Neds-Fox, Charlotte Roh, Melanie Schlosser, Kate Shuttleworth, Christine Turner

LPC Publications

Conceived at the Library Publishing Forum in 2017, the Ethical Framework for Library Publishing was a first-of-its-kind document for the LPC and the library publishing community. But remarkable social upheaval in the ensuing years, along with the continued maturation of our discipline, prompted the LPC to convene a task force to update the Framework for our current environment. What the task force developed, to our surprise, looks very little like the original document. An Ethical Framework for Library Publishing Version 2.0 is a true framework to help library publishers set an ethical baseline for their programs and activities. Consisting of …

Artistic, Artworld, And Aesthetic Disobedience, Adam Burgos, Sheila Lintott

Faculty Journal Articles

Jonathan Neufeld proposes a concept of aesthetic disobedience that parallels the political concept of civil disobedience articulated by John Rawls in A Theory of Justice. The artistic transgressions he calls aesthetic disobedience are distinctive in being public and deliberative in their aim to bring about specific changes in accepted artworld norms. We argue that Neufeld has offered us valuable insight into the dynamic and potent nature of art and the artworld; however, we contend that Neufeld errs by constraining aesthetic disobedience to the artworld. Through a reconsideration of the parallel between aesthetic and civil disobedience, we illustrate how aesthetic disobedience …

Review Of Socrates In The City: Conversations On “Life, God, And Other Small Topics”, Crystal Hurd

Sehnsucht: The C. S. Lewis Journal

Review of Eric Metaxas, ed., Socrates in the City: Conversations on “Life, God, and Other Small Topics” (Boston, 2011). 400 pages. Kindle Edition $7.99. ISBN: 9780525952558.

Combating Systemic Racism With Truth Commissions, Katherine E. Miles

Theses

The main form of justice practiced in the United States when it comes to criminal proceedings and individual wrongdoings is a form of justice called Retributive Justice. Retributive justice is committed to following these three principles, 1: that those who commit certain kinds of wrongful acts, morally deserve to suffer an equivalent punishment; 2: that it is intrinsically morally good—good without reference to any other goods if some legitimate punisher gives them the punishment they deserve; and 3: that it is morally impermissible to punish the innocent intentionally or to inflict disproportionately large punishments on offenders. From the three principles …

The Cut To The Heart Of The Matter: Justice, Morality, And Virtue Ethics In Intimate Relationships, Quinn Heiser

Honors Theses

Since the Enlightenment project to reconstruct morality using purely rational grounds failed, modern moral debate has been fragmented. Furthermore, intimate relationships, whether romantic or marital, are plagued with all kinds of injustices that have not been formally addressed in a philosophical investigation. The purpose of this thesis is to argue that the moral theory to restore interpersonal justice in intimate relationships is the notion of ‘practice’, founded by Alasdair MacIntyre under the Aristotelian virtue ethics tradition. What is meant by the notion of practice is any human activity with goods exclusive to its extent, as well as cooperative, objective, and …

A Critical Review Of Animal And Fetus Rights In Utilitarianism Or “How Come When It’S Us, It’S An Abortion, And When It’S A Chicken, It’S An Omelette?”, Katharine Mcdaid

Student Research Submissions

In this paper, I will be considering the moral standing of animals and fetuses within utilitarianism—by discussing the Time Relative Interest Account and Harm-Based Account—and how the question of moral standing relates to discussions of abortion. The Time Relative Interest Account provides a more effective framework for considering the rights of both animals and fetuses in utilitarianism, and a lack of access to abortion poses a significant challenge to the utilitarian viewpoint often espoused by anti-abortion advocates because they fail to consider the lack of access implications within their utilitarian approach. Therefore, the utilitarianism that is animal rights-based arguments used …