Philosophy Commons^™

An Economy Of Care: George Eliot's Middlemarch And Feminist Care Ethics, Madison V. Newman

Masters Theses

This thesis assesses the centrality of care relationships in George Eliot’s Middlemarch and, by doing so, seeks to provide a nuanced understanding of individual and collective morality. Using the ethics of care as a methodological framework to acknowledge the importance of care acts and successful care relations – especially those complicated by the presence of dichotomized socioeconomic hierarchies – will allow readers to engage more fully with this text, its author, her relations, her characters, and the community of readers; reading Eliot’s work from this lens will allow us to validate every interaction, every thread of connectedness, and every act …

Autonomy, Oppression, And Respect, Andrea Wilson

Doctoral Dissertations

While it is intuitive to many that oppressive socialization undermines autonomy in virtue of its ability to shape the desires and values of the oppressed, it’s difficult to provide a plausible account of autonomy that can explain when and why socialization is autonomy undermining. I provide such an account, arguing that self-respect is a necessary condition for autonomous choice and that oppressive socialization functions in part by undermining the self-respect of the oppressed. On my account, our choices lack autonomy to the degree that they are motivated by a failure to respect ourselves as beings whose plans and desires matter …

The Morality Of Chinese Legalism: Han Fei’S Advanced Philosophy, Yuan Ke

Masters Theses

Legalism, as one of the most useful philosophies of government, has attracted a great deal of scholarly attention. The work of Han Fei—one of the most influential proponents of Legalism—has been scrutinized and critiqued for centuries as immoral. I intend to show Legalism, especially the Han Feizi, is moral through focusing on four aspects of Han Fei’s work. First, his understanding of human nature. Han Fei states people are born with a hatred of harm and a love of profit. This understanding of human nature can never lead to a cognitive distortions in governing. So it is a moral basic …

The Epistemic Dimensions Of Moral Responsibility And Respect, John Robison

Doctoral Dissertations

What epistemic conditions must one satisfy to be morally responsible for an action or attitude? A common worry is that robust epistemic requirements would have disastrous implications for our responsibility attributing practices: we would be unable to make epistemically justified responsibility attributions, or we would be licensed to disrespectfully excuse agents for their sincerely held beliefs. Those more optimistic about robust epistemic requirements inadvertently make them too demanding to explain the moral successes of ordinary agents. The present project shows how both the pessimists and optimists rely on instructively mistaken assumptions in epistemology, ethics, and action theory, and it culminates …

Tourism Operators On Trial: Pushing The Animal Justice Agenda Forward In Tourism In Spite Of Theory, David Fennell, Val Sheppard

TTRA Canada 2019 Conference

Abstract:

Justice tourism is emerging to be a topic of considerable interest as scholars strive to emphasise several important themes around the fair distribution of resources and benefits between and within societies (Mihalic & Fennell, 2014; Smith & Duffy, 2003). There is the belief that tourism must be ethical, share equity, underscore solidarity between hosts and guests, and place emphasis on respect, self-determination, as well as benefits on many different social, economic, and cultural levels (Scheyvens, 2002). An example of this type of research comes from Jamal and Camargo (2014), who discuss how limited distributive justice can be within destinations …

The Mismatch Problem For Act Consequentialism, Robert Gruber

Doctoral Dissertations

I present the mismatch problem for Act Consequentialism, and I critically evaluate some popular solutions before offering my own solution to a specific version of the problem. The mismatch problem arises for Act Consequentialism when a group could have done better, but no individual in the group had an alternative with a better outcome. In such cases, the theory delivers mismatched verdicts: it condemns what the group does, but it cannot condemn any of the individual acts. In the first chapter of the dissertation, I explain exactly how this problem works. In the next four chapters, I identify a variety …

The Philosophical Value Of Reflective Endorsement, Rachel Robison

Doctoral Dissertations

Through the years, many philosophers have appealed to reflective endorsement to address important philosophical problems. In this dissertation, I evaluate the merits of those approaches. I first consider Christine Korsgaard’s appeal to reflective endorsement to solve what she calls “the normative problem.” I then consider Harry Frankfurt’s use of reflective endorsement as part of his account of “caring,” which plays a crucial role in his accounts of agency, free will, and personhood. I then turn to Marilyn Friedman’s use of reflective endorsement to explain autonomous action. Finally, I turn to Alan Gibbard’s use of reflective endorsement as part of an …

The Concept Of Intrinsic Goodness: Essays In Moorean Moral Philosophy, Miles Tucker

Doctoral Dissertations

I defend and explicate a Moorean program in value theory. I claim that intrinsic goodness is the fundamental concept of axiology, and argue that the notion should be understood as G.E. Moore suggested in the Principia Ethica. In the first three chapters, I address popular challenges to the Moorean project, including objections raised by Judith Jarvis Thomson, Shelly Kagan, and Christine Korsgaard. After, I turn to explication: I attend to the connection between goodness and other normative notions, and present what I take to be the most attractive version of the Moorean view. Finally, I address a perennial puzzle …

Fallibility And Normativity, Joshua Dipaolo

Doctoral Dissertations

We are fallible, and knowledge of our fallibility has normative implications. But these normative implications appear to conflict with other compelling epistemic norms. We therefore appear to face a choice: reject fallibility-based norms or reject these other epistemic norms. I argue that there is a plausible third option: reconcile these two sets of norms. Once we properly understand the nature of each of these norms, we aren’t forced to reject either.

Time To Leave Uchronia: Queer Eco-Temporalities For A Livable World, Claire S. Brault

Doctoral Dissertations

My dissertation is a Feminist contribution to Environmental Political Theory focused on temporality. My research investigates the tension between the urgent need to act fast in a fast-changing world, and the necessity for time to pause and think through such radical and rapid changes. As it signals our nearing the planet’s limits, the emergence of the “anthropocene” crisis challenges growth-driven “progress.” I begin this dissertation with a survey of Environmental Thought that helps situate my contribution to the ongoing debates in this field, underscoring that as ecosophers pose the question of the nonhuman, in so doing they also are confronted …

Variations On Some Rossian Themes, Kristian Olsen

Doctoral Dissertations

In this dissertation, I develop and defend some of W. D. Ross’s moral views. Ross’s views, I argue, are often highly plausible, though it is also often the case that variations on (or modifications to) his views are needed in order to remain philosophically tenable. In my dissertation, I explain why these variations are necessary and what they should look like. In chapter 1, I discuss Ross’s theory of moral rightness in his most important work, The Right and the Good. In chapters 2 and 3, I correct various misunderstandings about Ross’s position: I argue that he is no …

Antigone Claimed, "I Am A Stranger": Democracy, Membership And Unauthorized Immigration, Andres Fabian Henao Castro

Doctoral Dissertations

My dissertation offers a new framework through which to theorize contemporary democratic practices by attending to the political agency of unauthorized immigrants. I argue that unauthorized immigrants themselves, by claiming their own ambiguous legal condition as a legitimate basis for public speech, are able to open up the boundaries of political membership and to render the foundations of democracy contingent, that is to say, they are able to reopen the question about who counts as a member of the demos. I develop this argument by way of a close reading of Sophocles’ tragedy Antigone[1], which allows me to …

Synthetic Ethical Naturalism, Michael Rubin

Open Access Dissertations

This dissertation is a critique of synthetic ethical naturalism (SEN). SEN is a view in metaethics that comprises three key theses: first, there are moral properties and facts that are independent of the beliefs and attitudes of moral appraisers (moral realism); second, moral properties and facts are identical to (or constituted only by) natural properties and facts (ethical naturalism); and third, sentences used to assert identity or constitution relations between moral and natural properties are expressions of synthetic, a posteriori necessities. The last of these theses, which distinguishes SEN from other forms of ethical naturalism, is supported by a fourth: …