Applied Ethics Commons^™

Theater As A Civic Practice, Charlie Santos

Senior Honors Projects

Contemporary artists are working within a cultural moment saturated with political fervor. The ideologies of social and political movements such as Black Lives Matter, Queer Rights, and Gun Control weigh heavily on the minds of young artists. More and more, I see actors, writers, and creators struggling to reconcile their identities as artists and identities as political beings. How do artists resolve the internal dissonance between their artistic and political spheres? Is activist art an opportunity to synthesize these two spheres? Or might creating art for political ends pose ethical and/or aesthetic hazards? On the one hand, creating political art …

Frankenstem? Technology Ethics In Silicon Valley: Student Poster Session Program, San Jose State University, Department Of English And Comparative Literature

Frankenstein @ 200: Student Posters

Program of student posters presented as part of “Deep Humanities,” One-Day Symposium: FrankenSTEM? Technology Ethics in Silicon Valley, organized by Dr. Revathi Krishnaswamy & Dr. Katherine D. Harris, Department of English and Comparative Literature, San Jose State University on May 1, 2018, 10-4pm, Room 225, King Library, San Jose State University.

Sensibility And Self-Denial: A Christian Evaluation Of Journalistic Care Ethics And Traditional Ethics, Valerie Pors

Senior Honors Theses

Traditional ethical models within journalism have upheld truth and objectivity as the highest standard, based on a conglomeration of Western ethical traditions. However, as the age of subjective moral reasoning ushered in skepticism and independently subjective philosophies, ethicists have examined the application of care ethics to the field of journalism. Scholars have viewed care ethics and traditional ethics as conflicting theories, but both contain elements of God’s nature as revealed in the Bible. Both models also harbor secularized elements. In a biblical analysis of the two systems and their underlying assumptions, this thesis identifies crucial biblical differences in their views …

Frankenstem? Technology Ethics In Silicon Valley (Flyer With Text, Version 1), San Jose State University, Department Of English And Comparative Literature

Promotional Materials

“Deep Humanities,” One-Day Symposium, Organized by Dr. Revathi Krishnaswamy & Dr. Katherine D. Harris, Department of English and Comparative Literature, San Jose State University.

May 1, 2018, 10-4pm, Room 225, King Library, San Jose State University

Frankenstem? Technology Ethics In Silicon Valley (Flyer With Text, Version 2), San Jose State University, Department Of English And Comparative Literature

Promotional Materials

“Deep Humanities,” One-Day Symposium, Organized by Dr. Revathi Krishnaswamy & Dr. Katherine D. Harris, Department of English and Comparative Literature, San Jose State University

May 1, 2018, 10-4pm, Room 225, King Library, San Jose State University

Frankenstem? Technology Ethics In Silicon Valley (Flyer With Image Only), San Jose State University, Department Of English And Comparative Literature

Promotional Materials

“Deep Humanities,” One-Day Symposium, Organized by Dr. Revathi Krishnaswamy & Dr. Katherine D. Harris, Department of English and Comparative Literature, San Jose State University

May 1, 2018, 10-4pm, Room 225, King Library, San Jose State University

Will Artificial Intelligence Have Free-Will?, Guadalupe Rodriguez

Frankenstein @ 200: Student Posters

Will Artificial Intelligence have free will the way the Creature did?

Paternalism In Academia, Danielle Stager

Honors Projects

If a policy that is beneficial to most students nevertheless violates autonomy and harms even a minority of students in the process, then it should not be implemented. Banning laptops, requiring attendance, and other similar actions are beneficial to most students, but also violate autonomy and harm a least a minority of students to whom they are applied. Therefore, these policies, such as banning laptops and requiring attendance, should not be implemented.

Don't Call King A 'Civil Rights' Leader: Toward Abolishing Poverty And War By Correcting Our Fatally Inadequate Remembering Of Mlk Jr., Theodore Walker

Perkins Faculty Research and Special Events

Remembering Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.—primarily as a domestic “civil rights” leader—is inadequate, and sometimes harmful. The term “civil rights” fails to embrace King’s abolitionist movements toward the global abolition of poverty and war. Moreover, King was a Baptist preacher called by God. He advanced an optimistic realism (including a “realistic pacifism”) that improves upon pessimistic-cynical versions of political realism. And King went beyond advancing “civil rights” to advancing economic justice, economic rights, and human rights. He prescribed adding a social and economic bill of rights to the US Constitution, plus full-employment supplemented by “guaranteed income,” …

The Ethical Challenges Of The Marketplace, Eduardo M. Peñalver

Cornell Journal of Law and Public Policy

No abstract provided.

Ethical Finance As A Systemic Challenge: Risk, Culture, And Structure, Saule T. Omarova

Cornell Journal of Law and Public Policy

This Article analyzes the principal themes in the newly reinvigorated public debate on the role of ethical norms and cultural factors in financial markets and identifies its key conceptual and normative limitations. It argues that the principal flaw in that debate is that it tends to ignore the critical role of systemic, structural factors in shaping individual firms' internal cultural norms and attitudes toward legitimate business conduct. Reversing the causality assumption underlying the current academic and policy discourse on institutional culture, the Article discusses how broader reform measures seeking to alter the fundamental structure and dynamics of the financial market-on …

The Possibility Of Pilgrimage In A Scientific World, Stephen F. Haller

International Journal of Religious Tourism and Pilgrimage

The paper is a philosophical argument about whether a pilgrimage can be meaningful in a scientific age. Since a scientific world-view rules out many ideas which are traditionally associated with pilgrimage, such as miracles and the effectiveness of prayer, it seems that pilgrimage might be a practice inconsistent with the modern scientific age. Attempts have been made to reconcile this conflict by arguing that science and religion do not conflict, but are non-overlapping spheres of inquiry. Thus, it is possible to make sense of pilgrimage in a scientific age, if one strips their pilgrimage of all aspects to which science …

Property And Business, Bas Van Der Vossen

Philosophy Faculty Books and Book Chapters

"This chapter gives an overview of the main foundational theories of property. As I will show, there are two major families of justification for property (with each family, of course, having many different members). After laying out those two families and their potential problems, I will then consider some of the issues that reside in intellectual property, turning subsequently to explore one way in which a theory of business ethics may either be in tension or fit with such a justification of property. In particular, I will look at the tensions that stakeholder theory, on at least one version of …

Heganism, Thomas E. Randall

Between the Species

An emblematic association exists between meat consumption and the gender identity hegemonic masculinity. This association is so strong that men who pursue meatless diets (especially vegans) are likely to be socially ostracized. Heganism is a diet/gender identity that aims to reconstruct hegemonic masculinity with the goal of removing these stigmas attached to male veganism. Yet heganism fails to do this, and, in fact, worsens the marginalization of male vegans. Therefore, heganism ought to be rejected. Instead, an alternative option for reducing the marginalization of male vegans could be found in the emergent literature on non-hegemonic masculinities. By rejecting hegemonic …

A Multi-Functional View Of Moral Disengagement: Exploring The Effects Of Learning The Consequences, C. Justice Tillman, Katerina Gonzalez, Marilyn V. Whitman, Wayne S. Crawford, Anthony C. Hood

Publications and Research

This paper takes us beyond the unethical act and explores the use of moral disengagement as a multi-stage, multi-functional regulatory, and coping mechanism that not only allows individuals to engage in unethical behavior, but also manage the negative emotions (i.e., guilt and shame) from learning the consequences of such behavior. A resource-based lens is applied to the moral disengagement process, suggesting that individuals not only morally disengage prior to committing an unethical act in order to conserve their own resources, but also morally disengage as a coping mechanism to reduce emotional duress upon learning of the consequences of their actions, …

Francis Wolff’S Flawed Philosophical Defense Of Bullfighting, Gabriel Andrade

Between the Species

As a result of Catalonia’s ban of bullfighting in 2011, in Spain there has been a renowned interest in the ethical debate about bullfighting. Most defenders of bullfighting are Spaniards, but the most systematic is French philosopher Francis Wolff. In this article, I review Wolff’s most persistent arguments in favor of bullfighting, and I offer my own refutations. Wolff argues bullfighting is not torture, bulls do not suffer, bulls must die, and bullfighting tradition must be preserved. All of these claims are dubious, as they are based on shaky assumptions and fallacious reasoning.

Justifying A Standard Of Death, Michael Milhim

Honors Projects

There are three major positions in the legal definition of death debate: the cardio-pulmonary standard, the whole-brain standard, and the higher-brain standard. Prominent arguments for each standard appeal to a theory of human persistence. I’ll contend that these arguments fail for two reasons: the metaphysical underpinnings of the arguments are not decisive, and even if they are decisive, they may not be the right policy to enact. The later of these is more practically important than the former.

Martin Luther King Jr. On Economy, Ecology, And Civilization: Toward A Mlk Jr-Inspired Ecotheology, Theodore Walker

Perkins Faculty Research and Special Events

This MLK Jr-inspired ecotheology [eco-theology] connects “economics,” “ecology,” and “ecological civilization” to the theological ethics of Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

Though we often remember King primarily as a domestic civil rights leader; attention to King’s book—Where Do We Go from Here: Chaos or Community? (1967) reveals that he advanced a global ethics. King called for replacing recourse to war with nonviolent resistance to evil, and for abolishing poverty throughout “the world house.” He prescribed that we “civilize ourselves by the total, direct and immediate abolition of poverty.” King was concerned with civilizing “the world house” (house …

The Confucian Puzzle: Justice And Care In Aquinas, Audra Goodnight

Comparative Philosophy

Ethical theories of justice and care are often presented in opposition to each other. Eleonore Stump argues that Aquinas’s moral theory has the resources to bring justice and care together. There is, however, a potential worry for her view raised by the ‘Confucian Puzzle’. The puzzle poses a moral dilemma between care and justice that serves as a test case for Stump’s picture. In this paper, I provide a brief overview of the justice and care debate along with the subsequent challenges that both positions face in order to situate Aquinas’s position as Stump defends it. Next, I present the …

The Ethics Of Racist Monuments, Dan Demetriou, Ajume Wingo

Philosophy Publications

We focus on the debate over racist monuments as it manifests in the mid-2010s Anglosphere, primarily in the US (chiefly regarding the over 700 monuments devoted to the Confederacy),2 but to some degree also in Britain and commonwealth countries, especially South Africa (chiefly regarding monuments devoted to figures and events associated with colonialism and apartheid). Even with this limited scope, we will not recommend any sweeping policy for many lands, histories, peoples, and monuments in this immensely difficult and emotionally fraught controversy. Our aim rather is to categorize arguments, voice some un-asked questions, and offer a few guidelines for policymakers …

Lying, Accuracy, And Credence, Matthew A. Benton

SPU Works

Traditional definitions of lying require that a speaker believe that what she asserts is false. Sam Fox Krauss (Analysis, 2017) seeks to jettison the traditional belief requirement in favour of a necessary condition given in a credence-accuracy framework, on which the liar expects to impose the risk of increased inaccuracy on the hearer. He argues that this necessary condition importantly captures nearby cases as lies which the traditional view neglects. I argue, however, that Krauss's own account suffers from an identical drawback of being unable to explain nearby cases; and even worse, that account fails to distinguish cases …

Sr. Sarah Grace: The Common Good, Caleb Wright

Ask a Sister: Interview Wisdom from Catholic Women Religious

This paper includes part of an interview with Sr. Sarah Grace from January 2, 2018. She is a women religious who has worked in education for 25 years. This paper includes a portion of the interview where she shared her perspective on the common good.

A Website Supporting Sensitive Religious And Cultural Advance Care Planning (Acptalk): Formative And Summative Evaluation, Amanda Pereira-Salgado, Patrick Mader, Clare O'Callaghan, Leanne Boyd

Philosophy Papers and Journal Articles

Background: Advance care planning (ACP) promotes conversations about future health care needs, enacted if a person is incapable of making decisions at end-of-life that may be communicated through written documentation such as advance care directives. To meet the needs of multicultural and multifaith populations in Australia, an advance care planning website, ACPTalk, was funded to support health professionals in conducting conversations within diverse religious and cultural populations. ACPTalk aimed to provide religion-specific advance care planning content and complement existing resources.

Objective: The purpose of this paper was to utilize the context, input, process, and product (CIPP) framework to …

Nature-Based Supportive Care Opportunities: A Conceptual Framework, Sarah Blaschke, Clare O'Callaghan, Penelope Schofield

Philosophy Papers and Journal Articles

Objective: Given preliminary evidence for positive health outcomes related to contact with nature for cancer populations, research is warranted to ascertain possible strategies for incorporating nature-based care opportunities into oncology contexts as additional strategies for addressing multidimensional aspects of cancer patients’ health and recovery needs. The objective of this study was to consolidate existing research related to nature-based supportive care opportunities and generate a conceptual framework for discerning relevant applications in the supportive care setting.

Methods: Drawing on research investigating nature-based engagement in oncology contexts, a two-step analytic process was used to construct a conceptual framework for guiding nature-based supportive …

Ethics And Effectiveness Of Medical Brigades As A Primary Care Method In Rural And Remote Areas, Emilie Christie

Senior Honors Projects

Medical brigades, also known as mobile health clinics, are temporary primary care stations set up by volunteer students and health professionals to bring basic healthcare to remote areas free of charge. The present review aims to explore the effectiveness and ethics of brigades, concluding in recommendations to improve these aspects of brigades. Literature regarding brigade effectiveness was examined and synthesized, while brigade ethics were analyzed through four main ethical principles of medicine: respect for autonomy, beneficence, non-maleficence, and justice. Proposed improvements to brigades include rapid testing and connection to care for chronic diseases such as HIV/AIDS, access to mental health …

Preparing Millennials As Digital Citizens And Socially And Environmentally Responsible Business Professionals In A Socially Irresponsible Climate, Barbara Burgess-Wilkerson, Clovia Hamilton, Chlotia Garrison, Keith Robbins

Winthrop Faculty and Staff Publications

No abstract provided.

Animal Suicide: An Account Worth Giving?, Irina Mikhalevich

Animal Sentience

Peña-Guzmán (2017) argues that empirical evidence and evolutionary theory compel us to treat the phenomenon of suicide as continuous in the animal kingdom. He defends a “continuist” account in which suicide is a multiply-realizable phenomenon characterized by self-injurious and self-annihilative behaviors. This view is problematic for several reasons. First, it appears to mischaracterize the Darwinian view that mind is continuous in nature. Second, by focusing only on surface-level features of behavior, it groups causally and etiologically disparate phenomena under a single conceptual umbrella, thereby reducing the account’s explanatory power. Third, it obscures existing analyses of suicide in biomedical ethics and …

Race And The Extra-Legal Punishment Of Professional Athletes, Samuel V. Bruton, Donald F. Sacco, Earl W. Spurgin, Kori N. Armstrong

2018 Faculty Bibliography

In recent years, major American sports teams and leagues have responded increasingly to players’ off-field, off-court wrongdoing by imposing extra-legal punishments (ELPs) on offending athletes. This paper focuses on an unexplored ethical concern raised by ELPs: teams’ and leagues’ economic incentive for racial bias in the imposed sanctions. In an experimental study, Black and White participants read a series of vignettes about fictional professional athletes who received ELPs for various off-field transgressions. Black participants evaluating punishments imposed on Black athletes found the ELPs inappropriate and overly punitive relative to punishments imposed on White or racially neutral athletes. Conversely, Whites assessing …

Against Pay Secrecy, Jeffrey Moriarty

Philosophy Faculty Publications

Many firms keep pay secret. They do not make information about what their employees are paid available inside or outside of the firm, i.e., to other employees or to the public at large. Indeed, many firms discourage their employees from, or sanction them for, disclosing their pay. Against this, I argue that there are good moral reasons for firms to be transparent about pay. Pay transparency prevents injustice, promotes autonomy, and increases efficiency. After presenting the positive case for pay transparency, I defend it against objections, including the most common reasons firms give for keeping pay secret.

Risky Pay And The Financial Crisis: Who's Responsible?, Jeffrey Moriarty

Philosophy Faculty Publications

According to an existing “environmental” narrative, the financial crisis of 2007-2009 was due in part to executive compensation packages in the financial services industry that incentivized excessive risk-taking. Also according to this narrative, those who have a duty to protect society – principally, government regulators, but also firms themselves – are open to blame for how executives were paid, and must take steps to change executive compensation. This narrative is important but incomplete. I offer a supplementary “agential” narrative. According to this narrative, executives are open to blame for the financial crisis for taking socially excessive risks. Moreover, since executives …