Ethics and Political Philosophy Commons^™

Place: Dwelling Within The Built And Natural Environments, Christine Gratia

Publications and Research

This study argues that “place” is not simply physical, it is actualized by the relationship between human beings and the environments they inhabit. This research will spotlight various philosophical theories that pertain to where humans do human activities, the ever evolving containers of socialization and how the external environment informs self-concept. This research narrows in on Edward Relph’s phenomenology of “place” and Martin Heidegger's concept of dwelling. Both concepts are defined as foundational structures of human existence which create an interdependent relationship between humans and the places we inhabit. From that relationship stems a responsibility of caretaking. Through a conceptual …

Disaster Resilience And Normalization: Facing Facts, Naomi Zack Phd

Publications and Research

Disaster resilience requires acknowledgment and preparation to be normalized or integrated into normal life. But denial without preparation normalizes disaster by  leaving it out of normal life. In Disaster Resilience and Normalization: Facing Facts, Naomi Zack explores the normative and factual dimensions of a Climate Change Paradigm, through a global scope. Apart from the normative issues of who is responsible and who should pay for mitigation, the facts of Rising Average Earth Temperatures and more Intense and Frequent Disasters must still be faced.

But facing those facts has always been voluntary for powerful signatories to the 2015 Paris Climate …

Querying The Ecological Sublime: Colonial Aesthetics, Anticolonial Thought, And The ‘Double Fracture’, Tacuma Peters

Publications and Research

This article examines the ecological sublime in its relationship to the history of colonial aesthetics, anticolonial thought, and contemporary colonialism. It argues that, while Edmund Burke utilized the sublime in support of colonialism (including settler colonialism) in North America and colonial slavery, Samson Occom and Ottobah Cugoano developed versions of the sublime to contest British colonialism in the Americas. The history of this aesthetic contestation has not been represented in scholarship on the ecological sublime, which, this article shows, has a vexed relationship with historical and contemporary colonialism. The article argues that the ecological sublime exhibits the “double fracture” of …

Introducing Justice And Rights To Students Of Economics, Mark D. White

Publications and Research

Most economics instruction is focused on outcomes, whether evaluated in terms of individual or collective welfare or well-being. This is consistent with economics’ roots in classical utilitarianism, and no consideration is usually given to the process by which these results obtain, which is a deontological concern of right and wrong. This can seem odd to economics students, especially in the context of trade-offs in which one party is benefited at the expense of another, or aggregate welfare is maximized while some individuals are harmed, with no consideration in either of rights, desert, or justice. This chapter argues for the importance …

Punishment And Resources, Mark D. White

Publications and Research

Philosophers of punishment have paid little attention to resource constraints, which have an undeniable impact on how various approaches to punishment work in the real world. It has fallen on economists, with their central focus on scarcity and opportunity cost, to analyze the resource demands of different philosophies of punishment. However, the utilitarian nature of mainstream economics limits the scope of economic theories of punishment to deterrence, which fits naturally into mathematical economic techniques, as opposed to retributivism, the principled nature of which resists quantification. This chapter explores the resource implications of punishment. It starts by identifying shortcomings of the …

On The Sublime And Beautiful: Edmund Burke, Ottobah Cugoano, And Reverberations Of Eighteenth-Century Racial Aesthetics, Tacuma Peters

Publications and Research

This article examines Edmund Burke and Ottobah Cugoano’s aesthetic thought in relation to eighteenth-century racial slavery. It interrogates their ideas of the sublime and beautiful which contribute to their different political positions on the abolition of slavery: whereas the former advocated the gradual abolition of the slave trade and distant emancipation, the latter sought the immediate abolition of the trade and rapid emancipation. It contends that Burke’s discussions of the sublime and beautiful were racialized, his advocacy of white authority on plantation slavery was rooted in his aesthetics, and his evocation of the Black sublime throughout his long career fit …

Black Skin, White Masks And The Paradoxical Politics Of Black Historiography, Tacuma Peters

Publications and Research

Frantz Fanon’s Black Skin, White Masks has the paradoxical status of being a text that rejects historiography and History as a primary means of facilitating radical political transformation while also being a key point of departure for histories concerning modern colonial and decolonial thought. This reflection is an examination of the tensions in Black Skin, White Masks as a political work and as an intervention into philosophical, psychoanalytic, literary, and existential debates. Prompted by the 70th anniversary of the publication of Black Skin, White Masks, I examine the richness of the past two decades of historiographical scholarship on slavery, …

Righting Health Policy: Bioethics, Political Philosophy, And The Normative Justification Of Health Law And Policy, D. Robert Macdougall

Publications and Research

In Righting Health Policy, D. Robert MacDougall argues that bioethics needs but does not have adequate tools for justifying law and policy. Bioethics’ tools are mostly theories about what we owe each other. But justifying laws and policies requires more; at a minimum, it requires tools for explaining the legitimacy of actions intended to control or influence others. It consequently requires political, rather than moral, philosophy. After showing how bioethicists have consistently failed to use tools suitable for achieving their political aims, MacDougall develops an interpretation of Kant’s political philosophy. On this account the legitimacy of health laws does …

Meat May Never Die, Carlo Alvaro

Publications and Research

The goal of ethical veganism is a vegan world or, at least, a significantly vegan world. However, despite the hard work done by vegan activists, global meat consumption has been increasing. Vegan advocates have focused on ethics but have ignored the importance of tradition and identity. And the advent of veggie meat alternatives has promoted food that emulates animal products thereby perpetuating the meat paradigm. I suggest that, in order to make significant changes toward ending animal exploitation, ethical vegans give more attention to tradition and identity. Furthermore, I propose that raw veganism is the most ethical diet and can …

Philosophy In The Narrative Mode: Alexander The Great As An Ethical Character From Roman To Medieval Islamicate Literature, Anna Ayşe Akasoy

Publications and Research

Histories of Arabic and Islamic philosophy tend to focus on texts which are systematic in nature and conventionally classified as philosophy or related scholarly disciplines. Philosophical principles, however, are also defining features of texts associated with other genres. Within the larger field of philosophy, this might be especially true of ethics and within the larger body of literature this might be especially the case for stories. Indeed, it is sometimes argued that the very purpose of storytelling is to reinforce and disseminate moral conventions. Likewise, the moral philosopher can be conceptualized as a homo narrans.

The aim of this …

Scarcity Or Economic Insecurity? Two Yardsticks For Measuring Capitalism’S Performance, Costas Panayotakis

Publications and Research

This article argues that capitalism’s relationship to economic insecurity is as important for the evaluation of that system as its relationship to scarcity. Critically analyzing the neoclassical and Marxist focus on capitalism’s relationship to scarcity, the article describes how capitalism’s relationship to economic insecurity offers a more cogent elaboration of these traditions’ shared belief that the economic system should serve people. In particular, while critical of the neoclassical portrayal of capitalism as a system using scarce resources efficiently, this paper also argues, against Marxism, that an alternative to capitalism might be preferable even if scarcity is not abolished.

God And Kant’S Suicide Maxim, Carlo Alvaro

Publications and Research

Kant’s argument against suicide is widely dismissed by scholars and often avoided by teachers because it is deemed inconsistent with Kant’s moral philosophy. This paper attempts to show a way to make sense of Kant’s injunction against suicide that is consistent with his moral system. One of the strategies adopted in order to accomplish my goal is a de-secularization of Kant’s ethics. I argue that all actions of self-killing (or suicide) are morally impermissible because they are inconsistent with God’s established nature and order. It is argued that the existence of God as the locus of moral value and duty …

Must Consent Be Informed? Patient Rights, State Authority, And The Moral Basis Of The Physician's Duties Of Disclosure, D. Robert Macdougall

Publications and Research

Legal standards of disclosure in a variety of jurisdictions require physicians to inform patients about the likely consequences of treatment, as a condition for obtaining the patient’s consent. Such a duty to inform is special insofar as extensive disclosure of risks and potential benefits is not usually a condition for obtaining consent in non-medical transactions.

What could morally justify the physician’s special legal duty to inform? I argue that existing justifications have tried but failed to ground such special duties directly in basic and general rights, such as autonomy rights. As an alternative to such direct justifications, I develop an …

Are Delusions Beliefs?, Dorothy Reviss

Publications and Research

A belief is one’s personal attitude regarding an issue in the universe that contains evidence of truth to it. A delusion can be defined as a peculiar belief that contradicts reality, scientific evidence, and rational thinking, and may be attributed to personality disorders. In order to determine where a delusion is a belief, it is important to recognize the circumstances under which certain beliefs are held. While a delusion sounds similar to a false belief, it is an entirely unique phenomenon. In the case of personality disorders like the Capgras delusion, schizophrenia, and Reverse Othello syndrome individuals genuinely believe in …

Murderer At The Switch: Thomson, Kant, And The Trolley Problem, James E. Mahon

Publications and Research

In this book chapter I argue that contrary to what is said by Paul Guyer in Kant (Routledge, 2006) Kant's moral philosophy prohibits the bystander from throwing the switch to divert the runaway trolley to a side track with an innocent person on it in order to save more people who are in the path of the trolley in the "Trolley Problem" case made famous by Judith Jarvis Thomson (1976; 1985). Furthermore, Thomson herself (2008) came to agree that it would be wrong to throw the switch, just as it is wrong to push the person off the bridge to …

Profile Evidence, Fairness, And The Risks Of Mistaken Convictions, Collin O'Neil, Marcello Di Bello

Publications and Research

Many oppose the use of profile evidence against defendants at trial, even when the statistical correlations are reliable and the jury is free from prejudice. The literature has struggled to justify this opposition. We argue that admitting profile evidence is objectionable because it violates what we call “equal protection”—that is, a right of innocent defendants not to be exposed to higher ex ante risks of mistaken conviction compared to other innocent defendants facing similar charges. We also show why admitting other forms of evidence, such as eyewitness, trace, and motive evidence, does not violate equal protection.

The Incoherence Of Moral Relativism, Carlo Alvaro

Publications and Research

This paper is a response to Park Seungbae’s article, “Defence of Cultural Relativism”. Some of the typical criticisms of moral relativism are the following: moral relativism is erroneously committed to the principle of tolerance, which is a universal principle; there are a number of objective moral rules; a moral relativist must admit that Hitler was right, which is absurd; a moral relativist must deny, in the face of evidence, that moral progress is possible; and, since every individual belongs to multiple cultures at once, the concept of moral relativism is vague. Park argues that such contentions do not affect moral …

The Making And Silencing Of “Axé-Ocracy” In Brazil: Black Women Writers’ Spiritual, Political And Literary Movement In São Paulo, Sarah S. Ohmer

Publications and Research

In this article, I will focus on two influential writers from the south of Brazil, Cristiane Sobral who currently lives in Brasília, from Rio de Janeiro, and Conceição Evaristo who currently lives in Rio de Janeiro state, from Minas Gerais. I got to know them in São Paulo in 2015 at a public event: the “Afroétnica Flink! Sampa Festival of Black Thought, Literature and Culture.” I will include references to some of their younger contemporaries such as Raquel Almeida, Jenyffer Nascimento, and Elizandra Souza, all of whom reside in São Paulo, in order to illustrate the Black Brazilian women writers’ …

In Anthropocene Air: Deleuze's Encounter With Shakespeare, Steven Swarbrick

Publications and Research

No abstract provided.

Classical Philosophical Approaches To Lying And Deception, James E. Mahon

Publications and Research

This chapter examines the views of Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle on lying. It it outlines the differences between different kinds of falsehoods in Plato (real falsehoods and falsehoods in words), the difference between myths and lies, the 'noble' (i.e., pedigree) lie in The Republic, and how Plato defended rulers lying to non-rulers about, for example, eugenics. It considers whether Socrates's opposition to lying is consistent with Socratic irony, and especially with his praise of his interlocutors as wise. Finally, it looks at Aristotle's condemnation of lies, and asks whether lies to enemies, and self-deprecating lies by the magnanimous person, are …

Contemporary Approaches To The Philosophy Of Lying, James E. Mahon

Publications and Research

The chapter examines fifty years of philosophers working on lying - from the 1970s to the current day – focusing on how lying is defined (descriptively and normatively), whether lying involves an intention to deceive (Deceptionists) or not (Non-Deceptionists), why lying is wrong, and whether lying is worse than other forms of deception, including misleading with the truth. Philosophers discussed include Roderick Chisholm and Thomas Feehan, Alan Donagan, Sissela Boy, Charles Fried, David Simpson, David Simpson, Bernard Williams, Paul Faulkner, Thomas Carson, Roy Sorensen, Don Fallis, Jennifer Saul, Andreas Stoke, Jonathan Webber and Clea Rees

Secrets Vs. Lies: Is There A Moral Asymmetry?, James E. Mahon

Publications and Research

In this chapter I argue that the traditional interpretation of the commonly accepted moral asymmetry between secrets and lies is incorrect. On the standard interpretation of the commonly accepted view, lies are prima facie or pro tango morally wrong, whereas secrets are morally permissible. I argue that, when secrets are distinguished from mere acts of reticence and non-acknowledgement, as well as from acts of deception, so that they are defined as acts of not sharing believed-information while believing that the believed-information is relevant, the correct interpretation of the commonly accepted moral asymmetry between secrets and lies is that secrets are …

Determinism And The Problem Of Individual Freedom In Li Zehou’S Thought, Andrew Lambert

Publications and Research

Li Zehou’s work can be understood as an account of a Chinese modernity, a vision for Chinese society that seeks to integrate three distinct philosophical approaches. These are Chinese history and culture, which Li understands as largely Confucian; Marxism, which has exerted such influence on a modernizing China; and Western learning more generally, as expressed by figures such as Immanuel Kant and Sigmund Freud. Li also frequently expresses the hope that a Chinese modernity will be one in which the importance of the individual is recognized, and rights and freedoms upheld (e.g., 2006, p. 182). But this stance raises an …

The Noble Art Of Lying, James E. Mahon

Publications and Research

In this chapter I examine the writings of Mark Twain on lying, especially his essays "On the decay of the Art of Lying" and "My First Lie, and How I Got Out of It." I show that Twain held that there were two kinds of lies: the spoken lie and the silent lie. The silent lie is the lie of not saying what one is thinking, and is far more common than the spoken lie. The greatest silent lies, according to Twain, were the national silent lies that there was nothing wrong with slavery (the U.S.), that there was nothing …

The Anti-Imperialism Of Ottobah Cugoano: Slavery, Abolition, And Colonialism In Thoughts And Sentiments On The Evil Of Slavery, Tacuma Peters

Publications and Research

This article argues that the work of Ottobah Cugoano provides readers with a robust anti-imperial analysis of European modernity. For Cugoano, slavery and colonialism are coeval and mutually constitutive processes. I argue that Cugoano’s Thoughts and Sentiments on the Evil of Slavery which has been accepted as a tract of radical abolitionism should also be interpreted as an anti-imperial text. I contend that we must attend to the global scope of Cugoano’s anti-imperialism which includes critiques of European colonialism in Asia, Africa, and the Americas, as well as provides recommendations for radical changes in the relationship between Europe and …

Impartiality, Close Friendship And The Confucian Tradition, Andrew Lambert

Publications and Research

This paper explores the relationship between friendship and morality. Two ideas have been influential in the history of moral philosophy: the impartial standpoint and close friendship. These two perspectives on thought and action can conflict, however, and such a case is presented.

In an attempt to resolve this tension, and understand the assumptions that give rise to it, I explore an alternative conception of moral conduct and friendship suggested by early Confucian thought. Within this account, moral conduct is that which aims at harmony, understood as the appropriate blending of different elements. This suggests a conception of friendship, ‘event friendship’, …

Neutrality, Autonomy, And Power, Eldar Sarajlic

Publications and Research

This paper critically examines Alan Patten’s theory of neutrality of treatment. It argues that the theory assumes an inadequate conception of personal autonomy, which undermines its plausibility. However, I suggest that the theory can resolve the problem by developing and reinterpreting its conception of autonomy and introducing an additional strategy for addressing the power imbalances that result from the market-based interactions between individuals and their conceptions of the good.

The Challenge Of Teaching Chinese Philosophy: Some Thoughts On Method, Andrew Lambert

Publications and Research

In this essay I offer an alternative perspective on how to organize class material for courses in Chinese philosophy for predominately American students. Instead of selecting topics taken from common themes in Western discourses, I suggest a variety of organizational strategies based on themes from the Chinese texts themselves, such as tradition, ritual, family, and guanxi (關係), which are rooted in the Chinese tradition but flexible enough to organize a broad range of philosophical material.

Abortion And The Right To Not Be Pregnant, James E. Mahon

Publications and Research

In this paper I defend Judith Jarvis Thomson's 'Good Samaritan Argument' (otherwise known as the 'feminist argument') for the permissibility of abortion, first advanced in her important, ground-breaking article 'A Defense of Abortion' (1971), against objections from Joseph Mahon (1979, 1984). I also highlight two problems with Thomson's argument as presented, and offer remedies for both of these problems. The article begins with a short history of the importance of the article to the development of practical ethics. Not alone did this article put the topic of the abortion on the philosophical map, but it made 'practical ethics' in the …

Daoism And Disability, Andrew Lambert

Publications and Research

Ideas found in the early Daoist texts can inform current debates about disability, since the latter often involve assumptions about personhood and agency that Daoist texts do not share. The two canonical texts of classical Daoism, the Daodejing and the Zhuangzi, do not explicitly discuss disability as an object of theory or offer a model of it. They do, however, provide conceptual resources that can enrich contemporary discussions of disability. Two particular ideas are discussed here. Classical Daoist thinking about the body undermines normative assumptions about it that attributions of ‘disabled’ often depend upon; and Daoism vividly problematises the …