Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®

Ethics and Political Philosophy Commons™

Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®

Social and Behavioral Sciences

Institution
Keyword
Publication Year
Publication
Publication Type
File Type

Articles 421 - 450 of 1550

Full-Text Articles in Ethics and Political Philosophy

Trust, Ethnicity, And Political Approval In 21st Century South Africa, Alecia Anderson, Jonathan Bruce Santo Nov 2020

Trust, Ethnicity, And Political Approval In 21st Century South Africa, Alecia Anderson, Jonathan Bruce Santo

International Dialogue

Trust is a requirement for state legitimacy, however, the relationship between trust and political approval in South Africa is under-investigated, leaving the legitimacy of the South African state questionable. In this study, we use Afrobarometer data from 2004, 2008, and 2012 to investigate citizens’ perspectives on trust and political approval. Using structural equation modeling, we analyze the impact of ethnicity on the relationship between trust and political approval in South Africa. The results are clear that ethnic identity continues to influence the relationship between trust and approval of political offices and policies in South Africa.


For A Left Populism, Emma Murphy Nov 2020

For A Left Populism, Emma Murphy

International Dialogue

Chantal Mouffe’s brief work For a Left Populism sets out to tackle the issue of how left politics should respond to the global trend towards populism. While elections in recent years have ushered in populist leaders in states ranging from the Philippines to the United States, Mouffe focuses her analysis on Western European populism specifically. Her argument centres on the importance of recovering democracy in an increasingly “post-democratic” world; to successfully radicalise democracy, Mouffe argues, leftists must first reform existing political institutions. While Mouffe makes an original argument for a reclamation of the term ‘populism’ by a leftist audience, the …


Identifying Effective Systems And Processes To Promote Ethical Workplace Cultures In The Applied Behavior Analysis (Aba) Therapy Industry, Manuel Rodriguez Oct 2020

Identifying Effective Systems And Processes To Promote Ethical Workplace Cultures In The Applied Behavior Analysis (Aba) Therapy Industry, Manuel Rodriguez

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of the study is to identify methods and practices which encourages and enables ethics in organizations providing Applied Behavior Analysis (ABA) therapeutic services to individuals with development disabilities. The professional and organizations they represent must protect the consumer, the employees and the integrity of the practice as part of their ethical responsibilities. The specific focus of this research is the behavior analyst and the ABA industry. The behavior analyst is a practitioner who studies and applies behavior analysis, working with various populations such as individuals with development disabilities, autism, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder and learning disabilities. The subject …


The Other China Model: Daoism, Pluralism, And Political Liberalism, Devin K. Joshi Oct 2020

The Other China Model: Daoism, Pluralism, And Political Liberalism, Devin K. Joshi

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

While scholars often portray Chinese political thought and tradition as standing in opposition to Western notions of political liberalism, little consideration has been given to compatibility between liberalism and Daoism, a prominent religion and long-standing alternative school of thought among Chinese peoples. Addressing this gap in the literature, this study in comparative political thought compares Laozi’s Dao De Jing with John Stuart Mill’s On Liberty to illustrate certain core political ideas in the Dao De Jing and their treatment in Mill’s landmark text on political liberalism. Although the two texts diverge in terms of advocacy of popular representation, public contestation, …


The Politics Of Dissent: How Living Within The Truth Threatens Autocracy And Catalyzes Democratic Progress, Carter A. Hanson Oct 2020

The Politics Of Dissent: How Living Within The Truth Threatens Autocracy And Catalyzes Democratic Progress, Carter A. Hanson

Student Publications

This article examines Václav Havel’s The Power of the Powerless in the context of a broader ideation of dissent, primarily using Hannah Arendt’s The Origins of Totalitarianism and William Connolly’s The Fragility of Things as supplements. Havel’s argument remains relevant over thirty years after its initial publication, and his ideas regarding dissent as a fundamental challenge to authoritarian untruth are valuable and deserve further exploration. From this conceptualization, a “politics of dissent” is proposed as a means to express dissatisfaction with authoritarian government and to reevaluate democratic social and political discourse.


The Political Aesthetic Of Hannah Arendt: Modernity, Judgment, And Culture, Quixote R. Vassilakis Sep 2020

The Political Aesthetic Of Hannah Arendt: Modernity, Judgment, And Culture, Quixote R. Vassilakis

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The plan of this thesis is, first, to interpret Arendt’s critique of the modern age. Next, this paper outlines Arendt’s reconceptualization of Kant’s theory of judgment as the basis for a novel model of the public sphere in light of the conditions of modernity. Finally, this paper explores Arendt’s poetics as a means of activating the faculty of judgment in order to reconcile with the modern world. In order to address the political crises of modernity, Arendt develops a political aesthetic alive to the role of narrative and culture in reconstituting political communities. I argue that Hannah Arendt develops a …


The Law Of Black Mirror - Syllabus, Yafit Lev-Aretz, Nizan Packin Aug 2020

The Law Of Black Mirror - Syllabus, Yafit Lev-Aretz, Nizan Packin

Open Educational Resources

Using episodes from the show Black Mirror as a study tool - a show that features tales that explore techno-paranoia - the course analyzes legal and policy considerations of futuristic or hypothetical case studies. The case studies tap into the collective unease about the modern world and bring up a variety of fascinating key philosophical, legal, and economic-based questions.


Consider The Agent In The Arthropod, Nicolas Delon, Peter Cook, Gordon Bauer, Heidi Harley Jul 2020

Consider The Agent In The Arthropod, Nicolas Delon, Peter Cook, Gordon Bauer, Heidi Harley

Animal Sentience

Whether or not arthropods are sentient, they can have moral standing. Appeals to sentience are not necessary and retard progress in human treatment of other species, including invertebrates. Other increasingly well-documented aspects of invertebrate minds are pertinent to their welfare. Even if arthropods are not sentient, they can be agents whose goals—and therefore interests—can be frustrated. This kind of agency is sufficient for moral status and requires that we consider their welfare.


Alternate Warfare: The Unseen Weapons Of Mass Destruction, Elyse Keener Jul 2020

Alternate Warfare: The Unseen Weapons Of Mass Destruction, Elyse Keener

Liberty University Journal of Statesmanship & Public Policy

Biological warfare is a national security concern that transcends centuries. In the current international climate, biowarfare is of particular interest due to the COVID-19 pandemic. This article seeks to follow historical cases of biological warfare and international response to these cases in order to understand the implications of COVID-19, if it were to be weaponized. Also covered is the current capabilities that Russia, China, and Iran are assessed to possess.


Biblical Principles Of Government And Criminal Justice, Kahlib J. Fischer Jul 2020

Biblical Principles Of Government And Criminal Justice, Kahlib J. Fischer

Liberty University Journal of Statesmanship & Public Policy

This article formulates a Biblical perspective on government, public policy, and criminal justice. It does so emphasizing themes of covenant, justice, inalienable rights, and proper boundaries and cooperation between Church and State, and other spheres of sovereignty within a society. These themes are predicated upon central tenants of Scripture--the sovereignty of God, the imago dei of all humans, and the and the centrality of the Gospel.


Philosophy 21: Moral Problems - Oer Course Syllabus, Lou Matz Jul 2020

Philosophy 21: Moral Problems - Oer Course Syllabus, Lou Matz

Pacific Open Texts

Course Syllabus for an OER / Open Access version of PHIL 21: Moral Problems at University of the Pacific during Summer 2020.


Do Beetles Have Experiences? How Can We Tell?, Matt Cartmill Jul 2020

Do Beetles Have Experiences? How Can We Tell?, Matt Cartmill

Animal Sentience

We attribute consciousness to other humans because their anatomy and behavior resembles our own and their verbal descriptions of subjective experiences correspond to ours. Nonhuman mammals have somewhat humanlike behavior and anatomy, but without the verbal descriptions. Their sentience is therefore open to Cartesian doubt. Robot "minds" lack humanlike behavior and anatomy, and so their sentience is generally discounted no matter what sentences they generate. Invertebrates lack both neurological similarity and language. Although it may be safest in making moral judgments to assume that some invertebrates are sentient, cogent reasons for thinking so must await an objective causal explanation for …


Spineless And Sentient: A Challenge For Moral Comparison, Patrick Forber, Robert C. Jones Jul 2020

Spineless And Sentient: A Challenge For Moral Comparison, Patrick Forber, Robert C. Jones

Animal Sentience

We agree with Mikhalevich & Powell but take issue with their criteria for attributing sentience. This problem is connected with difficult issues concerning moral comparisons and evaluating moral decisions when interspecific moral interests conflict.


Avoiding Anthropocentrism In Evolutionarily Inclusive Ethics, Simon Fitzpatrick Jul 2020

Avoiding Anthropocentrism In Evolutionarily Inclusive Ethics, Simon Fitzpatrick

Animal Sentience

Mikhalevich & Powell are to be commended for challenging the “invertebrate dogma” that invertebrates are unworthy of ethical concern. However, developing an evolutionarily inclusive ethics requires facing some of the more radical implications of rejecting hierarchical scala naturae and human-centered conceptions of the biological world. In particular, we need to question the anthropocentric assumptions that still linger in discussions like these.


Zones Of Precaution, Jonathan Birch Jul 2020

Zones Of Precaution, Jonathan Birch

Animal Sentience

My commentary focusses on Mikhalevich & Powell’s criticisms of the Animal Sentience Precautionary Principle. I emphasize the pragmatic nature of my rationale for proposing that, rather than extending the scope of animal welfare protection on a species-by-species basis, we should be willing to protect entire Linnaean orders on the basis of evidence from a single species.


Brain Complexity, Sentience And Welfare, Donald M. Broom Jul 2020

Brain Complexity, Sentience And Welfare, Donald M. Broom

Animal Sentience

Neither sentience nor moral standing is confined to animals with large or human-like brains. Invertebrates deserve moral consideration. Definition of terms clarifies the relationship between sentience and welfare. All animals have welfare but humans give more protection to sentient animals. Humans should be less human-centred.


Invertebrate Cognition, Sentience And Biology, Georges Chapouthier Jul 2020

Invertebrate Cognition, Sentience And Biology, Georges Chapouthier

Animal Sentience

All animal species have adapted for survival and no species is superior overall. For cognitive capacities and sentience, invertebrates such as the octopus, although quite unlike vertebrates, can achieve similar performance levels. So can other invertebrates with small brains; hence they too, as sentient beings, deserve moral consideration from humans. How are we to identify these species? Only though a detailed analysis of their behavior. The decision, which is a moral judgment, depends on biological knowledge that still needs to be acquired.


Convergent Evolution Of Sentience?, Culum Brown Prof. Jul 2020

Convergent Evolution Of Sentience?, Culum Brown Prof.

Animal Sentience

Mikhalevich & Powell make a compelling case that some invertebrates may be sentient and that our moral obligations in the context of welfare should hence extend to them. Although the case is similar to that made for fishes, there is one obvious difference in that examples of invertebrate sentience probably arose independently from vertebrate sentience. We have unequivocal proof that complex cognition arose multiple times over evolutionary history. Given that cognition is our best tool for indirectly quantifying sentience, it seems highly likely that this multiple polygenesis may also have occurred for sentience. In acknowledging this, we must accept that …


Finding Commonality: The First Principles Of The Leadership Thought Of Theodore Roosevelt And Traditional Chinese Culture, Elizabeth Summerfield, Yumin Dai Jul 2020

Finding Commonality: The First Principles Of The Leadership Thought Of Theodore Roosevelt And Traditional Chinese Culture, Elizabeth Summerfield, Yumin Dai

The Journal of Values-Based Leadership

This paper argues that, while the imperative to find global solutions to complex problems like climate change and resource management is agreed, dominant ethical and intellectual thought leadership in many western nations impedes progress. The Cartesian binaries of western post-Enlightenment culture tend instead toward oppositional binary divides where each ‘side’ assumes to be the whole and not a part. And the present and future similarly assume precedence over the past. The paper points to systems thinking as both a method and a practice of wise leadership of past western and eastern societies, including their conservation of natural resources. Two historical …


Minds, Morality And Midgies, Brian Key, Deborah Brown Jul 2020

Minds, Morality And Midgies, Brian Key, Deborah Brown

Animal Sentience

Mikhalevich & Powell argue that the exclusion of the vast majority of arthropods from moral standing is unwarranted, particularly given the purported evidence for cognition and sentience in these organisms. The implied association between consciousness and moral standing is questionable and their assumption that rich forms of cognition and flexible behavior are dependent on phenomenal consciousness needs to be reconsidered in light of current neuroscientific evidence. We conclude by proposing a neural algorithmic approach for deciphering whether organisms are capable of subjective experience.


Human Supremacy As Posthuman Risk, Daniel Estrada Jul 2020

Human Supremacy As Posthuman Risk, Daniel Estrada

The Journal of Sociotechnical Critique

Human supremacy is the widely held view that human interests ought to be privileged over other interests as a matter of ethics and public policy. Posthumanism is the historical situation characterized by a critical reevaluation of anthropocentrist theory and practice. This paper draws on animal studies, critical posthumanism, and the critique of ideal theory in Charles Mills and Serene Khader to address the appeal to human supremacist rhetoric in AI ethics and policy discussions, particularly in the work of Joanna Bryson. This analysis identifies a specific risk posed by human supremacist policy in a posthuman context, namely the classification of …


The Data City, The Idiom And Questions Of Locality, Noel Fitzpatrick Jul 2020

The Data City, The Idiom And Questions Of Locality, Noel Fitzpatrick

Articles

The paper aims to provide both a radical critique of the “smart city” as a techno-ideological apparatus,that through data analysis and algorithmic forms of governmentality tends to colonize space and time, and an attempt to reframe the very concept of intelligence within the smart cities. Two concepts are presented as tools for such a reframing: locality and idiom, where the first is conceived as openness of meaning generated by a territory, while the latter,analysed througha paradigmatic Irish example (Friel’s play Translations), prepares the ground for the pars construensof the paper. The claim, built by intertwining a set of authors (Ricoeur, …


Economies Of Security: Foucault And The Genealogy Of Neoliberal Reason, Marshall Scheider Jun 2020

Economies Of Security: Foucault And The Genealogy Of Neoliberal Reason, Marshall Scheider

Gettysburg Social Sciences Review

Michel Foucault is well-known for his theorizations of institutional power, normativity, and biopolitics. Less well-known is the fact that Foucault developed his analysis of biopolitics in and through his historical investigation of neoliberalism. Today, while critique of neoliberalism has become a commonplace of humanities discourse, and popular resistance to neoliberalization rocks the southern hemisphere, it remains unclear that the historical specificity of neoliberalism is well-understood. In particular, the relation between classical liberalism and neoliberal governance remains murky in popular debate. As Foucault powerfully illustrates, this relation is far from clear-cut, and neoliberalism is not reducible to a simple extension of …


The Ethics Of Capitalism: An Introduction, Daniel Halliday, John Thrasher Jun 2020

The Ethics Of Capitalism: An Introduction, Daniel Halliday, John Thrasher

Philosophy Faculty Books and Book Chapters

"The textbook covers longstanding problems that are as old as the discussion of capitalism itself, such as wage inequality, global trade, and the connection between paid labor and human flourishing. It also addresses new challenges, such as climate change, the welfare state, and competitive consumption, and provides topical global case studies. Additionally, it includes study questions at the end of each chapter and an author-created companion website to help guide classroom discussion."


Social Contract Theory And Transitional Justice: A Philosophical Approach To A Problem Of Global Importance, Brendan Moriarty Jun 2020

Social Contract Theory And Transitional Justice: A Philosophical Approach To A Problem Of Global Importance, Brendan Moriarty

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

In this thesis, I seek to bring together two areas of scholarly work to see how each can inform the other: social contract theory and transitional justice. The social contract, as it exists and as it was theorized about by Rousseau, was born from the world-historic forces that spread capitalism across the globe, stirring up nationalism everywhere it went. In its wake, there was vast inequality and new legal regimes which protected the hoarded wealth of the capitalist class by enshrining the right of private property along with life and liberty. To examine the intricacies of transitional justice and its …


Backing Up Into Advocacy: The Case Of Smartphone Driver Distraction, Robert Rosenberger May 2020

Backing Up Into Advocacy: The Case Of Smartphone Driver Distraction, Robert Rosenberger

The Journal of Sociotechnical Critique

For the last decade, I’ve been studying the topic of the driving impairment of smartphones. While this began as an exclusively academic project, it has increasingly compelled public engagement. One example of this came in an opinion piece I wrote in 2018 in response to a new traffic law. I take the opportunity here to fill out the academic backstory of this particular op-ed, reflect on how this larger project has evolved to include an unanticipated public-facing edge, and abstract some lessons about public writing.


From Protecting To Performing Privacy, Garfield Benjamin May 2020

From Protecting To Performing Privacy, Garfield Benjamin

The Journal of Sociotechnical Critique

Privacy is increasingly important in an age of facial recognition technologies, mass data collection, and algorithmic decision-making. Yet it persists as a contested term, a behavioural paradox, and often fails users in practice. This article critiques current methods of thinking privacy in protectionist terms, building on Deleuze's conception of the society of control, through its problematic relation to freedom, property and power. Instead, a new mode of understanding privacy in terms of performativity is provided, drawing on Butler and Sedgwick as well as Cohen and Nissenbaum. This new form of privacy is based on identity, consent and collective action, a …


Agreeing To Disagree: Diversity, Political Contractualism, And The Open Society, John Thrasher May 2020

Agreeing To Disagree: Diversity, Political Contractualism, And The Open Society, John Thrasher

Philosophy Faculty Articles and Research

Political contractualism is important in societies characterized by substantial moral and political disagreement and diversity. The very disagreement that makes the social contract necessary, however, also makes agreement difficult. Call this the paradox of diversity, which is the result of a tension between two necessary conditions of political contractualism: existence and stability. The first involves showing the possibility of some agreement, while the second involves showing that the agreement can persist. To solve both of these problems, I develop a multilevel contract theory that I call the “open society” model of political contractualism that incorporates diversity into the contractual model …


Community Psychology's Impact On Public Health And The Experience Of Marginalization, Katie Hudick Apr 2020

Community Psychology's Impact On Public Health And The Experience Of Marginalization, Katie Hudick

Richard T. Schellhase Essay Prize in Ethics

Vulnerable and marginalized populations face a series of risks and dangers throughout their daily lives. This is not simply limited to explicit forms of discrimination and hatred, but systemic forms of oppression and discrimination which limit those not belonging to more privileged and affluent socioeconomic or sociocultural groups. Community psychology operates as a means of analyzing how environmental and social factors impact specific demographic groups within a larger population and by extension the experience of mental health specific to these groups (Townley, Brown, & Sylvestre, 2018). In the application of this field, it is critical to understand the dynamics of …


Archaeology And The Philosopher's Stance: An Advance In Ethics And Information Accessibility, Dina Rivera Mar 2020

Archaeology And The Philosopher's Stance: An Advance In Ethics And Information Accessibility, Dina Rivera

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Ancient Greek scholars have scaffolded ethical examination for several fields beyond philosophy, providing essential guidance for management and practicum within professions. From the Society of Antiquaries of London (1718) to the Society of American Archaeology (1934), the professional study has continued to evolve as new translations of the past and new models for predicting human behavior in the future would underpin the development of ethics in academic archaeology. Database enabled study creates opportunities for open research, expanding data pools and scientific perspectives and becomes essential for providing inclusivity, respect, and cooperation in order to build and rebuild paradigms.