Ethics and Political Philosophy Commons^™

Complexity Theory And Political Change: Talcott Parsons Occupies Wall Street, Martin Zwick

Complex Systems Faculty Publications and Presentations

Complexity theory can assist our understanding of social systems and social phenomena. This paper illustrates this assertion by linking Talcott Parsons' model of societal structure to the Occupy Wall Street movement. Parsons' model is used to organize ideas about the underlying causes of the recession that currently afflicts the US. While being too abstract to depict the immediate factors that precipitated this crisis, the model is employed to articulate the argument that vulnerability to this type of event results from flaws in societal structure. This implies that such crises can be avoided only if, in Parsons' terms, structural change occurs …

Complexity Theory And Political Change: Talcott Parsons Occupies Wall Street [Presentation], Martin Zwick

Complex Systems Faculty Publications and Presentations

Complexity theory can assist our understanding of social systems and social phenomena. This paper illustrates this assertion by linking Talcott Parsons' model of societal structure to the Occupy Wall Street movement. Parsons' model is used to organize ideas about the underlying causes of the recession that currently afflicts the US. While being too abstract to depict the immediate factors that precipitated this crisis, the model is employed to articulate the argument that vulnerability to this type of event results from flaws in societal structure. This implies that such crises can be avoided only if, in Parsons' terms, structural change occurs …

Scapegoats And Redemption On Shutter Island, Cari Myers

Journal of Religion & Film

The themes of redemptive violence, scapegoating, and ritual in the films of Martin Scorsese have provided much grist for critical scholarship. While it is going too far to claim that Scorsese is intentionally interpreting Girardian themes (which are themselves borrowed from a rich mythological tradition), the comparisons between the theorist and the director are compelling. My goal here is to establish the primary themes of scapegoating, mimesis, the cycle of violence, and feuding identities that occur in both Girard’s works and Scorsese’s films and pull them forward into a more recent work of Scorsese, Shutter Island.

In The Shadow Of Du Bois: Afro-Modern Political Thought In America. By Robert Gooding- Williams. (Cambridge, Ma: Harvard University Press, 2009)., Ronald Sundstrom

Philosophy

Robert Gooding-Williams’s In The Shadow of Du Bois: Afro Modern Political Thought In America offers several contributions to political theory and African American philosophy and politics.1 His conception of “Afro-Modern Politics” sharpens our understanding of the history and tradition of African American political thought, and his analyses of W.E.B. Du Bois’s The Souls of Blacks Folks and Frederick Douglass’s My Bondage and My Freedom adds to and challenges various debates about their politics and legacies.2 Gooding-Williams applies the insights from his comparative analysis of Du Bois and Douglass to distinguish a conception of politics as rule from a conception of …

Natural Selection And Moral Sentiment: Evolutionary Biology's Challenge To Moral Philosophy, Charles W. Wright

Headwaters

No abstract provided.

25 Years Of Care Ethics: A Personal Retrospective, Jean Keller

Headwaters

No abstract provided.

Breaking Free Of Managed Democracy In The United States, Sean Cunningham

Senior Honors Projects

Breaking Free of Managed Democracy in the United States Sean Cunningham Sponsor: Eske Møllgaard, Philosophy

In the last four years I have had a number of opportunities to write about democracy in the United States and around the world. In this four year period there have been major democratic movements in North Africa, the Middle East, the United States, and elsewhere. Whether or not these democratic growths can remain is an important political and philosophical question that needs addressing. So it is only fitting that I dedicate my Honors Project to collecting my previous work on democracy in my philosophy …

Steadfastness And The Epistemology Of Disagreement, Chad Andrew Bogosian

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Suppose that you and an intellectual peer disagree about some proposition P in a field like philosophy, ethics, science, religion, politics, etc. As intellectual peers, they are roughly of equal intelligence and equally virtuous with respect to evaluating the evidence E in support of P. What is the epistemic significance of you and an intellectual `peer' disagreeing about whether some body of evidence E supports a given proposition P? Can two epistemic peers reasonably disagree? In Chapter 1, I consider the Equal Weight View according to which rationality requires you to give equal weight to you peer's response to the …

Autonomy And Paternalism, Ilona K. Phipps-Morgan

Scripps Senior Theses

I wish to determine when one is justified in paternalistic interferences that override a subject’s autonomy. In order to lay the groundwork for discussing paternalistic interferences with autonomous decisions, I first consider different conceptions of autonomy, welfare, and paternalism, and determine which I mean to use. In particular, I proceed with Dworkin’s characterization of autonomy as a combination of authenticity and self-determination; Nussbaum’s capabilities theory in order to determine welfare; and a definition of paternalism as being an interference with a subject’s liberty or autonomy that is motivated exclusively by consideration for that subject’s own good or welfare.

Once I …

Une Éthique De La Modestie Dans Les Essais De Montaigne (Towards A Modest Ethics In Montaigne's Essays), Catherine Parker Sweatt

Scripps Senior Theses

La plupart des lectures contemporaines des Essais ignore la pensée morale de Montaigne. Ici, je maintiens que Montaigne épouse ‘une éthique de la modestie’ en même temps qu’il rejette toute éthique normative. En particulier, je cherche à aborder comment Montaigne suggère que nous connaissons la vertu et agissons si deux individus ne partagent pas le même perspective et on ne peut pas être le même sujet éthique deux fois. Je vais commencer par discuter la position épistémique de Montaigne par rapport aux universels pour illustrer comment Montaigne met en question l’universalité des lois éthiques et un bien connu a priori …

Discovering The Literary Relevancy Of Watchmen: A Review Of The Graphic Novel's Philosophical Themes, Tyler Flynn

Senior Honors Theses

The American comic book, specifically those of the superhero genre, is a medium that has been associated with stagnant, morally upright characters and formulaic plots. However, author Alan Moore and artist Dave Gibbons changed said stigma with their groundbreaking series Watchmen. An analysis of the work’s storyline, as well as some of the main characters, will reveal the deep philosophical and psychological underpinnings of the graphic novel, and, more importantly, its literary merit. A Christian interpretation of the work will also be presented.

Review: Christopher Ives, Imperial-Way Zen: Ichikawa Hakugen’S Critique And Lingering Questions For Buddhist Ethics (Uhp, 2009), James Mark Shields

Other Faculty Research and Publications

Review of Christopher Ives, Imperial-Way Zen: Ichikawa Hakugen’s Critique and Lingering Questions for Buddhist Ethics (UHP, 2009)

Sacrée Et Inviolable: The Hiv+ Mother In Ivoirian Health Policy, Amber Alaniz

Annual Undergraduate Conference on Health and Society

« La personne humaine est sacrée (2)… Le domicile est inviolable. Les atteintes ou restrictions ne peuvent y être apportées que par la loi. (4) La famille constitue la cellule de base de la société. L'État assure sa protection. (5)» Constitution of La Côte d’Ivoire, Articles 2,4,5[1]

The Ivoirian national constitution, authored and enacted in July of 2000, while expressing a devotion to democratic thought (Preamble) and to the sovereignty of the individual (Article 2), also acknowledges the primacy of the Ivoirian family and collective identity as the basis of society and advances a moral duty on the part …

The Purpose Of Personal Value, Erica Stonestreet

Philosophy Faculty Publications

It seems as if there are things that have what we might call personal value—special objects, artwork by our children, etc. This term is meant to mark a difference between things whose value seems tied to a particular person, as opposed to things (like the Mona Lisa) that are valuable, period. The concept of personal value hasn’t received much focused attention, but I believe that it is of not only theoretical, but practical importance. In this paper, I explore the practical angle, arguing that personal value is important to our ability to make sense of ourselves. I give …

Reconciling Justice And Pleasure In Epicurean Contractarianism, John Thrasher

Philosophy Faculty Articles and Research

Epicurean contractarianism is an attempt to reconcile individualistic hedonism with a robust account of justice. The pursuit of pleasure and the requirements of justice, however, have seemed to be incompatible to many commentators, both ancient and modern. It is not clear how it is possible to reconcile hedonism with the demands of justice. Furthermore, it is not clear why, even if Epicurean contractarianism is possible, why it would be necessary for Epicureans to endorse a social contract. I argue here that Epicurean contractarianism is both possible and necessary once we understand Epicurean practical rationality in a new way. We are …

Trust And The Trickster Problem, Zac Cogley

Publication

In this paper, I articulate and defend a conception of trust that solves what I call “the trickster problem.” The problem results from the fact that many accounts of trust treat it similar to, or identical with, relying on someone’s good will. But a trickster could rely on your good will to get you to go along with his scheme, without trusting you to do so. Recent philosophical accounts of trust aim to characterize what it is for one person to trust another so as to avoid this problem, but no extant account successfully does so.

I argue that connecting …

Knowledge, Wisdom, And Service: The Meaning And Teaching Of Professionalism In Medicine, Matthew K. Wynia

Center for the Study of Ethics in Society Papers

Papers presented for the Center for the Study of Ethics in Society Western Michigan University. Presented September 29, 2011.

A Moral Paradox Of Martial Training, Charles W. Wright

Headwaters

No abstract provided.

Consolation, Anthony Cunningham

Headwaters

No abstract provided.

Ontology In Emmanuel Levinas's Philosophy, Stacy Carol Bautista

Dissertations (6 month embargo)

Taking the notion of the il y a, its prehistory and eventual fate, as an index of the development of the problem of being in Levinas's work, this thesis argues that Levinas's philosophy does not respond to a consistently articulated problem. He eventually transforms ontological evil into social evil, a shift that is visible in his handling of il y a.

A Modus Vivendi? Sex, Marriage & The Church, William L. Portier, Nancy Dallavalle, Christopher C. Roberts, Tina Beattie, R. R. Reno, Patricia Hampl, Luke Timothy Johnson, Leslie Woodcock Tentler, Paul Baumann

Theology and Religious Studies Faculty Publications

During the 1960s, nearly 80 percent of adult Americans were married. A recent analysis of U.S. census data reported that only 52 percent of adult Americans were married in 2009. That is the lowest percentage reported in the 100 years the Census Bureau has collected such information. The reasons for this dramatic cultural shift are well known: high rates of divorce; changing attitudes toward premarital sex; social acceptability of cohabitation; the weakening of the stigma surrounding out-of-wedlock births and single parenting; the postponement of marriage and children for academic or professional reasons.

Among those with only a high-school education or …

Barack Obama As Just War Theorist: The Libyan Intervention, Harry Van Der Linden

Scholarship and Professional Work - LAS

President Barack Obama has clearly placed himself in the just war tradition, and so we may ask how successful has President Obama in fact been as just war theorist? His justification of the recent NATO intervention in Libya shows that the record is at best mixed. More broadly, Obama’s failure as just war theorist is at least partly a failure of the theory itself: as long as this theory does not address issues of “just military preparedness,” it will fail to place real constraints on American resort to military force.

Two Concepts Of Community, Erica L. Neely

Philosophy and Religion Faculty Scholarship

Communities play an important role in many areas of philosophy, ranging from epistemology through social and political philosophy. However, two notions of community are often conflated. The descriptive concept of community takes a community to be a collection of individuals satisfying a particular description. The relational concept of community takes a community to consist of more than a set of members satisfying a particular trait; there must also be a relation of recognition among the members or between the members and the community as a whole. The descriptive concept is simpler, however, it does not provide a sufficiently robust concept …

Punishment And Reform, Steven Sverdlik

Philosophy Research

Reformist ideas in the philosophy of punishment can be traced back to Plato. However, it is only in the late 19^th century that explicitly reformist ‘theories’ are discussed by philosophers, and in the 20^th century that they are worked out at length. The conception of reform has recently undergone important changes. Contemporary writers who are apparently reformist utilize use an enriched moral conception of reform, which conceives of it in terms of repentance for wrongdoing and a commitment to obey the law for moral reasons. This departs from an earlier conception that places less emphasis on repentance and …

Moral Courage And Facing Others, Matthew Pianalto

Philosophy and Religion Faculty and Staff Research

Moral courage involves acting in the service of one’s convictions, in spite of the risk of retaliation or punishment. I suggest that moral courage also involves a capacity to face others as moral agents, and thus in a manner that does not objectify them. A moral stand can only be taken toward another moral agent. Often, we find ourselves unable to face others in this way, because to do so is frightening, or because we are consumed by blinding anger. But without facing others as moral subjects, we risk moral cowardice on the one hand and moral fanaticism on the …

On The Violence Of Systemic Violence: A Critique Of Slavoj Žižek, Harry Van Der Linden

Scholarship and Professional Work - LAS

This paper questions the extension of the common notion of violence, i.e., “subjective violence,” involving the intentional use of force to inflict injury or damage, towards social injustice as “systemic violence.” Systemic violence is altogether unlike subjective violence and the work of Slavoj Žižek illustrates that conceptual obfuscation in this regard may lead to an overly broad and facile justification of revolutionary violence as counter-violence to systemic violence, appealing to the ethics of self-defense. I argue that revolutionary violence is only justified to counter subjective violence inflicted or organized by the state. Thus I reject in conclusion Žižek’s further defense …

Martin Heidegger On Günther Anders And Technology: On Ray Kurzweil, Fritz Lang, And Transhumanism, Babette Babich

Articles and Chapters in Academic Book Collections

No abstract provided.

Values And Beliefs: A Pragmatist Critique Of Moral Nihilism, J.P. Weismuller

Philosophy Honors Projects

Moral nihilism maintains that value judgments cannot be justified. In this paper I argue against two prominent nihilistic theories: error theory and expressivism. First I present a meta-valuation thesis, which holds that it would be more valuable if at least some value judgments were justified. Second I argue for a value-justification thesis, which holds that the greater value of value-justifying theories warrants a rejection of nihilistic theories. This latter thesis requires a pragmatist premise: justified beliefs are the most valuable of possible beliefs. With this premise and a critique of meta-ethical theory choice, I argue that meta-ethical justification proceeds …

Taking The “Pest” Out Of Pest Control: Humaneness And Wildlife Damage Management, John Hadidian

Attitudes Towards Animals Collection

Humans have been in the pest control business for a long time. At least 3 major foci of pest control activity currently can be found in governmental and private sectors, with private services focused on both traditional commensal rodent work as well as the more recent control of “nuisance” wildlife in cities and towns. Beyond the traditional approaches and techniques historically employed, animal damage managers are increasingly faced with the challenge of addressing the social context within which their work occurs. An ever-increasing variety of stakeholders have brought new concerns, new thinking, and new approaches to the table in a …

Libertas Philosophandi And Freedom Of Mind In Spinoza’S Tractatus Theologico-Politicus, J. Thomas Cook

Faculty Publications

Isaiah Berlin famously distinguished between “negative” and “positive” liberty, arguing that in practice the two are often in tension with each other. This paper uses Berlin’s distinction to analyze Spinoza’s discussion of freedom in the Tractatus Theologico-Politicus. Libertas philosophandi is Spinoza’s shorthand for freedom of thought and expression – an important element in traditional liberal (“negative”) freedom. The TTP (as its subtitle announces) is devoted in great part to defending the value and importance of permitting such freedom in the state. But as commentators have often noted, Spinoza is reluctant to extend this liberty to the clerics of his …