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Full-Text Articles in Philosophy

The Failings Of Foreign Aid And Our Obligation To Consume, Gaetano Venezia May 2015

The Failings Of Foreign Aid And Our Obligation To Consume, Gaetano Venezia

Senior Honors Theses

In his well-known 1972 article, "Famine, Affluence, and Morality," and in subsequent books, Peter Singer argues that we can and should prevent the needless suffering and death of the global poor by giving to foreign aid. This call for charity and assistance is mostly uncontroversial. However, foreign aid's effectiveness is highly contested among the aid literature. As the first part of this paper shows, all aid encounters inefficiencies, with the major problems being diversion of funds and perverse incentives. I look at each of these in turn, concluding that most aid is ineffective and sometimes even harmful—with the possible exception …


Auctor In Fabula: Umberto Eco And The Intentio Of Foucault's Pendulum, Douglas Stephens Iv Apr 2015

Auctor In Fabula: Umberto Eco And The Intentio Of Foucault's Pendulum, Douglas Stephens Iv

Senior Honors Theses

Umberto Eco’s 1988 novel Foucault’s Pendulum weaves together a wide range of philosophical and literary threads. Many of these threads find their other ends in Eco’s nonfiction works, which focus primarily on the question of interpretation and the source of meaning. The novel, which follows three distinctly overinterpretive characters as they descend into ruin, has been read by some as a retraction or parody of Eco’s own position. However, if Foucault’s Pendulum is indeed polemical, it must be taken as an argument against the mindset which Eco has termed the “hermetic”. Through an examination of his larger theoretical body, including …


The Failure Of “She:" An Evaluation Of Solutions To Gendered Language, Mary L. Bobbitt Jan 2015

The Failure Of “She:" An Evaluation Of Solutions To Gendered Language, Mary L. Bobbitt

Senior Honors Theses

This thesis looks at the prevalence of gendered language in modern day English in North America. Drawing upon different analyses of masculine pronouns and slang, this paper argues that modern solutions to gendered language fail to come to terms with the contextual elements of language. While acknowledging that gendered language is a significant problem, the author argues that the solutions thus far presented, specifically replacing the generic pronoun “he” with “she,” cannot combat the way language reflects societal masculinization. Using Wittgenstein to criticize a Heidegger’s notion of language, this paper argues that societal change is a prerequisite to the success …