Philosophy Commons^™

Ethics And Market Economic System: A General Review And A Survey, Reza G. Hamzaee

International Journal of Applied Management and Technology

Recent global recession has motivated this predominantly historical and exploratory research of thoughts and perceptions. A continuous planning of governmental correction of any market failure, such as various types of externalities and information asymmetry, has been strongly recommended by the pioneers of free enterprise systems. Capitalism—in which private ownership of means of production, physical capital, human capital, financial capital, brand-name capital, social capital, land, and mineral deposits are all protected by law without implementation of a series of certain evolving ethical standards and principles—may not continue to be the same efficient system as implied to be by the cost-benefit balancing …

Virtue Through Harmony: An Exploration Of The Ethical Role Of Music In Society, Sylvan Tovar

Senior Theses

Music can profoundly affect individuals and societies. Individuals use music to express themselves, their opinions, their worldview, their emotions, all channeled through the medium of sound. Societies use music to help give identity to their culture. Music has inspired people to take up arms for their country, or to revolt. It has gathered people of different backgrounds together under the banner of peace and of war. It has inspired people to march, it has driven them to yell, to scream, to dance, to pray, to kiss and hold, to break down and cry. Music can help people sleep, can affect …

Ethical Decision Making And Leadership: Merging Social Role And Self-Construal Perspectives, Crystal L. Hoyt, Terry L. Price

Jepson School of Leadership Studies articles, book chapters and other publications

This research extends our understanding of ethical decision making on the part of leaders by merging social role and self-construal perspectives. Interdependent self-construal is generally seen as enhancing concern for justice and moral values. Across two studies we tested the prediction that non-leading group members’ interdependent self-construal would be associated with lower levels of unethical decision making on behalf of their group but that, in contrast, this relationship would be weaker for leaders, given their social role. These predictions were experimentally tested by assigning participants to the role of leader or non-leading group member and assessing the association between their …

Homophonic Translation, Appositional Writing, And The Monster, Ryan Landry Clark

Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation features a combination of critical and creative work

exploring the ethics of appropriative writing and the reparative potential of homophonic translation. The opening essay examines the ethics of appropriation- based poetry and introduces the concept of what I call "appositional writing," a term to describe ethically-minded works of poetry that make use of appropriative writing methods. The next three parts of this dissertation are each appositional writing projects that make use of homophonic translation as the primary method of composition. "Arizona State Bill 1070: An Act" is a homophonic translation of the anti-immigration bill of the same name. …

Preserving Moral Recognition In The Face Of Aggression: Aikido As A Practice Of Physical Intersubjectivity, Charles W. Wright

Philosophy Faculty Publications

Practitioners of Aikido advance the claim, peculiar to many, that martial training can support moral action. This essay examines the claim by exploring communicative structures implicit in the response to attack made possible by this art's techniques. This exploration reveals three dimensions of intersubjectivity embedded in the practice of Aikido, dimensions that explicate the ethical imperative of the art.

Ethics Readiness: An Analysis Of Community College Students' Moral Sensitivity Scores, Julie Wallace

Doctoral Dissertations and Projects

In this retrospective causal-comparative study, the readiness of Virginia community college students to receive an accounting ethics curriculum was analyzed by measuring and comparing their moral sensitivity scores to the moral sensitivity scores of a group of four year university students. A sample of college students attending community college principles of accounting courses and a sample of college students attending four year university principles of accounting courses were administered a nationally recognized moral sensitivity survey instrument, the Defining Issues Test 2 (DIT2). The survey results were analyzed using a t-test for differences between means. It was found that there was …

Letter To The Editor: The Function Of Animal Ethics Committee, David G. Allen, Rebecca Halligan

Between the Species

No abstract provided.

Moving Forward With A Clear Conscience: A Model Conscientious Objection Policy For Canadian Colleges Of Physicians And Surgeons, Jocelyn Downie, Carolyn Mcleod, Jacquelyn Shaw

Philosophy Publications

No abstract provided.

The Future Of Military Virtue: Autonomous Systems And The Moral Deskilling Of The Military, Shannon Vallor

Philosophy

Autonomous systems, including unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), anti-munitions systems, armed robots, cyber attack and cyber defense systems, are projected to become the centerpiece of 21st century military and counter-terrorism operations. This trend has challenged legal experts, policymakers and military ethicists to make sense of these developments within existing normative frameworks of international law and just war theory. This paper highlights a different yet equally profound ethical challenge: understanding how this trend may lead to a moral deskilling of the military profession, potentially destabilizing traditional norms of military virtue and their power to motivate ethical restraint in the conduct of war. …

Just Because You're Offended Doesn't Mean You're In The Right: A Perspective On Language, Comedy, And Ethics, James H. Garrett

Student Publications

Some humor is offensive, but does this convey a moral constraint on what comedians can include in their jokes? Using stand up bits and reflections on comedy from George Carlin, Louis C.K., and Doug Stanhope, various philosophies of humor, and the linguistic philosophy of H.P. Grice, I explore the given question and attempt to settle the disputes about when it is prudent to be offended, in what ways comedians should be allowed to offend, and whether or not words can hurt just as much as sticks and stones.

The Stories Of Environmental Ethicists In Word And Image, Camille Robins

Scripps Senior Theses

The Stories of Environmental Ethicists in Word and Image captures the spirit of three local people: John B. Cobb, Jr., Rosemary Radford Ruether, and Dean Freudenberger. As teachers, writers, activists, and members of the progressive retirement community Pilgrim Place, they’ve had a significant influence on the global environmental movement. The photographs and small essays in this project highlight who they are and what they’ve done, and how they continue to shape contemporary intellectual discourse. An analysis of how portrait photographers use images to tell stories and how they incorporate text in their photographic collections to create fuller, more robust pictures …

Ethical Ambivalence In Local Television Weathercasting: A Rossian Analysis, Vernon Keith Thompson

Masters Theses

Today’s television weathercasters are being called upon increasingly to go beyond benign weather prognostications to become the “newsroom experts” for science topics. The expectation to act as both scientists and journalists can cause ethical ambivalence (EA), a sociological condition in which, faced with conflicting norms, the subject feels that he/she is being pulled psychologically in two different directions (Jansen & Von Glinow, 1985). This thesis presents a Rossian analysis of climate change in weathercasting, a topic that captures the most important ethical tensions arising from conflicting duties within the weathercaster role, specifically: a) how might the duties of the television …

Pornography, Ethics, And Video Games, Stephanie Patridge

Religion & Philosophy Faculty Scholarship

In a recent and provocative essay, Christopher Bartel attempts to resolve the gamer's dilemma. The dilemma, formulated by Morgan Luck, goes as follows: there is no principled distinction between virtual murder and virtual pedophilia. So, we'll have to give up either our intuition that virtual murder is morally permissible-seemingly leaving us over-moralizing our gameplay-or our intuition that acts of virtual pedophilia are morally troubling-seemingly leaving us under-moralizing our game play. Bartel's attempted resolution relies on establishing the following three theses: (1) virtual pedophilia is child pornography, (2) the consumption of child pornography is morally wrong, and (3) virtual murder is …

The Condition Of Permanent War: Is There A Way Out?, Harry Van Der Linden

Scholarship and Professional Work - LAS

In The United States, we live in a time of permanent war, not only in the sense of continuous hostilities but also in terms of the granting of political and legal emergency measures typical of war time and the maintenance of a war economy. It is a challenge to move out of this condition of permanent war since most citizens do not directly experience the costs of war. This presentation discusses a variety of steps to move from a time of “alienated” war to peacetime.

Shared Responsibility In A Multispecies Playground, Marcus Baynes-Rock

Between the Species

While conducting research on urbanised hyenas in Harar, Ethiopia, I was approached by a young hyena named Willi. In contrast to other hyenas, who tolerated my presence but otherwise had little interest in me, Willi insisted on some kind of engagement. Through biting, chase play, combing, following and standing by one other, Willi and I went beyond our species limitations and created an improvised intersubjectivity based on a will to understand. However, our friendship led to some harmful consequences for which I felt responsible. This led me to question the ethics of engagement with non-humans: if unforeseen harms can result …

The Desert Of The Ethical, Jules Simon

Selected Works Temporary Series

As far as I can tell, the concept of “desert” in Levinas’s thought seems to retain itsfamiliar associations, namely, as an environment that can be empirically characterizedas inhospitable, barren, and destitute of the kinds of material resources necessary forthe growth of the autonomous and autochthonous subjective self. It also seems plausiblethat a relevant extension of desert conditions to human community in Levinas’stopography would be the “cities” of concentration camps of the Holocaust. In otherwords, there is a correlative interior type of desert that, with Levinas, can be intuitedas what I am calling a desert of the ethical . In what …

Science, Sentience, And Animal Welfare, Robert C. Jones

Ethics and Animal Welfare Collection

I sketch briefly some of the more influential theories concerned with the moral status of nonhuman animals, highlighting their biological/physiological aspects. I then survey the most prominent empirical research on the physiological and cognitive capacities of nonhuman animals, focusing primarily on sentience, but looking also at a few other morally relevant capacities such as self-awareness, memory, and mindreading. Lastly, I discuss two examples of current animal welfare policy, namely, animals used in industrialized food production and in scientific research. I argue that even the most progressive current welfare policies lag behind, are ignorant of, or arbitrarily disregard the science on …

Self-Love And Neighbor-Love In Kierkegaard's Ethics, Antony Aumann

Book Sections/Chapters

No abstract provided.

The Common Structure Of Thresholds For Rights And Thresholds For Options, Samantha Brennan

Data and Test Instruments

This paper will assume that both rights and options have thresholds. That is to say, I assume rights and options are not absolute. The threshold of a right or an option is the point at which it can be justifiably overridden. If we think that the moral theory which best captures commonsense morality is a version of deontological ethics, the moral theory to which this paper stands to make a contribution is moderate deontology in that the rights and options it contains are moderate versions of rights and options. The question on which it will focus is whether thresholds for …

The Role Of Adaptation To Disability And Disease In Public Health, Meghan Mary Connors

Legacy Theses & Dissertations (2009 - 2024)

Some patients with chronic disabilities and diseases are able to adapt to their health states and, as a result, rate their quality of life higher than hypothetical patients imagining themselves to be in such states. Due to this phenomenon of adaptation, there is much controversy surrounding the effect of adaptation on patient preferences and the role that these adapted preferences ought to play in health care resource allocation decisions. The process of adaptation affects public health debates about whether we ought to give priority to the worst off in allocation decisions because within traditional public health frameworks, it is unclear …

Phronesis After Situationism, Edward C. Dubois

Legacy Theses & Dissertations (2009 - 2024)

Situationism, as put forward by John Doris' Lack of Character (2002) and several short articles by Gilbert Harman (2003, 2000, 1999), is the philosophical position that is skeptical of the existence of robust character traits of the kind that Aristotle described. Situationism posits that human beings lack robust character traits and are too easily made overconfident in their own behavioral abilities. Reams of social psychological data suggest that such 'thick' character traits do not exist. Doris and Harman suggest that subtle and potentially irrelevant situational cues may easily influence behavior. Moreover, situational pressures may cause people to deviate from expected …

The Case For Character : A Reply To Situationism, Brandon Lee

Legacy Theses & Dissertations (2009 - 2024)

The notion of character is a familiar and prominent part of ethical theorizing, and of our everyday discourse. Character is used to explain how people act, to predict what they will do, to judge whether they ought to be trusted, and utilized in a multitude of other ways. A camp of philosophers dubbed the "Situationists", however, argue that research in social psychology shows the notion of character as we traditionally understand it is empirically unsupported, and consequently that all our discourse and ethical thought involving character is gravely mistaken. Instead, these philosophers contend that what influences and informs our perception …

The Desert Of The Ethical, Jules Simon

Departmental Papers (Philosophy)

 As far as I can tell, the concept of “desert” in Levinas’s thought seems to retain itsfamiliar associations, namely, as an environment that can be empirically characterizedas inhospitable, barren, and destitute of the kinds of material resources necessary forthe growth of the autonomous and autochthonous subjective self. It also seems plausiblethat a relevant extension of desert conditions to human community in Levinas’stopography would be the “cities” of concentration camps of the Holocaust. In otherwords, there is a correlative interior type of desert that, with Levinas, can be intuitedas what I am calling a desert of the ethical . In what …

Comparing Consequentialist Solutions To The Nonidentity Problem, Emily K. Ott

CMC Senior Theses

This paper explores the nonidentity problem, an influential puzzle in modern ethics which addresses the nature of our moral responsibilities towards future generations. I begin by laying out the two conflicting intuitions comprising the problem and providing several examples to illustrate how we conceive of the moral status of future people. I then examine two versions of consequentialism, averagism and totalism, which circumvent the nonidentity problem. However, these two solutions each pose their own respective problems; thus, I argue that a modification of totalism – the critical level view – is the most viable consequentialist answer to the nonidentity problem.

Search, Seizure, And Immunity: Second-Order Normative Authority And Rights, Stephen E. Henderson, Kelly Sorensen

Faculty Articles

A paradigmatic aspect of a paradigmatic kind of right is that the rights holder is the only one who can alienate it. When individuals waive rights, the normative source of that waiving is normally taken to be the individual herself. This moral feature—immunity—is usually in the background of discussions about rights. We bring it into the foreground here, with specific attention to a recent U.S. Supreme Court decision, Kentucky v. King (2011), concerning search and seizure rights. An entailment of the Court’s decision is that, at least in some cases, a right can be removed by the intentional actions of …

Kant's Change Of Heart: Radical Evil And Moral Transformation, Christina Drogalis

Dissertations

In Religion within the Boundaries of Mere Reason (1793), Kant makes the claim that all humans are radically evil, both by nature and through a free choice. This radical evil, which is the state of having a Gesinnung (disposition) that commits oneself to prioritizing incentives of inclination above incentives of duty, throws into question whether humans can ever become morally good. For this reason, many commentators have dismissed the Religion as not cohesive with Kant's corpus and do not consider it to play an important role in his ethical theory, in particular. Contrary to this traditionally-held interpretation, I show in …

Alchemy And Inquiry: Reflections On An Inside-Out Research Roundtable, Sarah Allred, Angela Bryant, Simone Weil Davis, Kurt Fowler, Phil Goodman, Jim Nolan, Lori Pompa, Barbara Sherr Roswell, Daniel L. Stageman

Publications and Research

In 2008, The Inside-Out Prison Exchange Program convened a Research Committee to (1) facilitate a collective, critical, and professional consciousness about social justice, crime, and incarceration through the exploration of the Inside-Out program pedagogy, impact, and effectiveness; (2) develop and encourage proposals for various types of research that focus on The Inside-Out Prison Exchange Program; and (3) establish ethical guidelines for inquiry that would meet and exceed the federal human subjects guidelines in research practices. In fall 2012, Research Committee members Sarah Allred, Angela Bryant, Phil Goodman, Kurt Fowler, Jim Nolan, Lori Pompa, and Dan Stageman joined with Simone Davis …

Ethics, Society, And You, Peter Dong

Considerations in Ethics

No abstract provided.

A ‘‘Practical’’ Ethic For Animals, David Fraser

Ethics and Animal Welfare Collection

Drawing on the features of ‘‘practical philosophy’’ described by Toulmin (1990), a ‘‘practical’’ ethic for animals would be rooted in knowledge of how people affect animals, and would provide guidance on the diverse ethical concerns that arise. Human activities affect animals in four broad ways: (1) keeping animals, for example, on farms and as companions, (2) causing intentional harm to animals, for example through slaughter and hunting, (3) causing direct but unintended harm to animals, for example by cropping practices and vehicle collisions, and (4) harming animals indirectly by disturbing life-sustaining processes and balances of nature, for example by habitat …

What The Wild Things Are: A Critique On Clare Palmer’S “What (If Anything) Do We Owe Wild Animals?”, Joel P. Macclellan

Between the Species

In this critique of “Clare Palmer’s “What (if anything) do we owe wild animals?”, I develop three points. First, I consider the case study which opens her essay and argue that that there are good empirical reasons to think that we should assist domesticated horses and not wild deer. Then, I critique Palmer’s claim that “wildness is not a capacity”, arguing that wildness connotes certain capacities which wild animals generally have and which domesticated animals generally lack. Lastly, I develop what I call the “supererogation problem” against Palmer’s preferred contextualist view, claiming that while the contextualist view doesn’t obligate us …