Philosophy Commons^™

Formation-Based Ai Ethics: Ethical Formation, Responsibility, And Opportunity Cost In Ai Ecosystems, Maurice Emelu

2026 Faculty Bibliography

Recent efforts in AI ethics have been dominated by the proliferation of high-level principles intended to guide responsible development and deployment. Yet persistent implementation failures suggest that principlism and tool-based approaches alone do not cultivate the moral capacity required to govern sociotechnical systems. This article advances a formation based framework for AI ethics that situates moral agency throughout the developmental conditions of design, use, and the AI lifecycle. Drawing on Aristotelian-MacIntyrean virtue ethics applied to media ecology, and sociotechnical responsibility, the argument reframes AI as a formative environment that shapes patterns of attention, judgment, delegation, and accountability over time. Against …

Some Assembly Required, Tanner Maxey

College of Graduate Studies: Theses & Dissertations

The dead do not carry their memory. We do. But when memory becomes the only way we can continue to hold on to our loved ones, how do we derive meaning from the fragments when memory begins to fade? Some Assembly Required examines loss as a condition in which meaning is no longer stable, but must be constructed from what remains. Through an interdisciplinary practice that combines ceramics, textiles, and installation, this work explores how domestic objects—once associated with care, function, and familiarity—can be transformed into fragile, unusable forms that persist as evidence of what has been lost. These objects …

The Influence Of Scale In Modeling Social Vulnerability And Disaster Assistance, Sina Razzaghi Asl, Oronde Drakes, Eric Tate, Samuel Brody, Wesley Highfield, Kayode Atoba

Political Science & Geography Faculty Publications

Understanding how social vulnerability relates to disaster impacts is critical for addressing social equity, yet the role of spatial scale in this relationship is often overlooked. Most studies use aggregated data, risking ecological fallacy-misinterpreting individual outcomes from group-level data. This study examines how spatial scale influences the relationship between social vulnerability and federal disaster assistance after Hurricane Harvey. Using spatial econometric models at both household and census tract levels, we assessed the strength of key vulnerability indicators in explaining disaster assistance. Results show that disability, housing tenure, household size, and income predict assistance at the household level, but their influence …

Tensions And Possibilities: A Study Of International Graduate Students' Encounters With Critical Pedagogy In The United States, Munchuree Kaosayapandhu

Theses and Dissertations

This study investigates the question, “How do international graduate students experience and negotiate their encounters with critical pedagogy across time and educational contexts?” The research was motivated by the researcher’s own experience in encountering critical pedagogy and prior studies focusing on critical pedagogy from the teacher perspective. This left a gap in understanding the student experience. The research used the phenomenology paradigm. The participants included six international graduate students in education studies programs. Using the phenomenological interview approach, each participant was asked over a series of three interviews about past experiences of education, their initial encounters with critical pedagogy and …

Humanities And The Moral Vision Of Dentistry, Toni M. Roucka Rn, Dds, Ma, Facd

Journal of the American College of Dentists

The Editorial is a feature in each issue of the JACD. It includes commentary on issue content, relevant topics, or other items of interest to the fellowship.

How Dentists Can Remain Advisors Of Merit To Their Patients, Daniel L. Orr Ii, Dds, Ms (Anesth), Phd, Jd, Md, Facd (Nevada Section Chair)

Journal of the American College of Dentists

This article examines how members of the dental profession can sustain their longstanding reputation as trusted advisors amid declining public confidence in major institutions. Grounded in ethical principles, informed consent, and professional self-regulation, dentistry has historically ranked among the most trusted professions. The discussion explores challenges to credibility, including media scrutiny, concerns about anesthesia safety, controversial treatment hesitancy, and debates over community water fluoridation. Emphasizing the concept of the “advisor of merit,” the author argues that continued trust depends on truthful communication, transparency about risks, respect for patient autonomy, and freedom from conflicts of interest in clinical and public health …

To Print A Remake: An Analysis Of Hollywood Remakes And Their Cultural Value, Connor F. Seaton

Honors Undergraduate Theses

In recent years, audiences and movie critics have expressed concern that Hollywood’s growing reliance on remakes, sequels, franchises, and similar adaptations has led to a broader worry that originality is fading from modern cinema and that the industry is instead focused on using adaptations to maximize profits. Although adaptation is often seen as a commercially driven framework for reproducing existing intellectual property in a new media format, this thesis argues that it should be recognized as an autonomous cultural category with its own artistic, historical, and social significance and merit. By analyzing adaptation scholarship and reviewing its complex historical development, …

Illusions Of Fairness And Sacrifice, Brady Schwertfeger

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

The American West is a shifting landscape. An incongruous expanse of isolation and urbanity, wilderness and extraction, wealth and welfare, clear water and fire. Fifteen years ago, I moved to my mother’s ancestral homeland of Montana, and have been here ever since. Before that, I was born and raised in Texas, both the West and the South (and often something else entirely), depending on who you ask. My experiences in this region have shaped me indelibly, and have inspired this collection of essays built around culture, politics, and justice in the West. “Pinedale, Wyoming” considers the musician as itinerant wanderer …

Cormac’S Court: Knights Without God In A Savage Land; Or, Chivalry And Existentialism In Cormac Mccarthy’S The Road, Zoë Margaret Metelerkamp

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Cormac McCarthy scholars have examined the influence of romantic grail quest literature and existential philosophy on McCarthy’s oeuvre, but they have treated these subjects independently of each other. This thesis offers a novel exploration of McCarthy’s use of these specific philosophical and literary precedents by focusing on the ways The Road unifies medieval literary principles in Chretien’s Perceval with the existential chivalry Søren Kierkegaard extrapolates in Fear and Trembling.

On The Reasonableness Of Religious Belief According To W. James' "The Will To Believe" With Reference To Alvin Plantinga's “The Nature Of Necessity”, Maria Gadelrad Shenouda Nakhla

Theses and Dissertations

Analytically, I follow William James's approach in his paper "The Will to Believe" to demonstrate that holding a religious belief is reasonable and it is not incompatible with being a philosophy scholar. I do this through explaining the way James addressed the main obstacle that Clifford puts against belief (in general) which is ‘the lack of sufficient evidence’. Clifford claims that belief cannot be accepted without evidence on it.

James breaks apart this obstacle through many steps. First, analyzing the nature of belief itself, showing that belief cannot be attained based on intellectual grounds alone (which needs sufficient evidence), but …

Reconciling Discretion With The Rule Of Law: A Rawlsian Analysis Of Civil Disobedience By State Actors In Liberal-Democratic Schemes, Reid Devoge

Dissertations, Master's Theses and Master's Reports

This dissertation starts from the position that the stability of liberal-democratic political schemes relies on its citizens mutually accepting a basic conception of political justice. While these conceptions of justice may vary, most incorporate the inter-connected concepts of autonomy, liberty, liberalism, and the rule of law. Within this conception of a liberal democracy, a potentially destabilizing issue arises when a legislatively passed law is put into effect, but a portion of the citizens perceive it as unjust. If legitimate (i.e., lawful) actions do not sufficiently resolve the concern, civil disobedience (i.e., disobeying the law) is a potential recourse, but this …

Archives And Children's Knowledge, Elliott Kuecker, Ashley Rockenbach

Publications and Research

This article argues for the importance of collecting works created by children—not just about and not just for—in formal archival collections. Framed through the ideas of legitimate knowledge and epistemic injustice, this piece combines notions important to children’s rights activists and childhood studies scholars with the role archives can play in preserving children’s knowledge through child-created materials. The authors describe how researchers struggle to find work created by children within archives, impacting the ability to create child-centered research that centers children’s views of the world as prominently as adult views of the world. Some collections that do include child-created materials …