Although torture is considered universally reprehensible by law, including international law and human convention, it occurs routinely as an acceptable and efficient method for interrogation and intimidation. The questions that follow are: What kind of person engages in/commits acts of torture? If legalized, how would torture affect morality when an individual can be instrumentally utilized as a mere means-to-an-end? How does torture affect the victim, the torturer, and society as a whole? In order to answer these questions, I will use events at the Guantanamo Bay Detention Center to argue in favor of the plausibility for the concept of a non fallacious slippery slope against torture by means of theoretical and real world evidence. I will argue that each act of torture that is deemed acceptable in the eyes of any society not only corrupts the societal morality of that nation, but it also produces an increase in direct and indirect participation in such acts.

The inspiration behind this philosophical endeavor is an ethical one: interested in what it means to flourish as a human being – how to live well and authentically. Similar to medicine and how the ability to prescribe the appropriate treatment depends on first making a diagnosis, the focus of this work will to be understand the human condition and the ways in which subjectivity, one’s sense of self, is constituted. Given the general dissatisfaction with the modern metaphysical picture of the world, which analyzes the world in terms of the mutually exclusive and completely separate categories of nature/objects and society/subjects, I proceed from an alternative conceptual perspective, that of non-modernity, offered by Bruno Latour. By focusing on the actual practice of the sciences Latour develops one of his central concepts: mediation. From this understanding of the practices of mediation the world is revealed as an ontological continuum of hybrids – mixtures of human and nonhuman elements – that ranges from quasi-object to quasi-subject. Rather than being separate, nature and society are intimately interwoven and co-constituted, forming a nature-culture collective that is connected and defined by the network of relations between existing hybrids. Given this philosophical landscape of mediation, hybrids and networks, the question that I seek to address is how does this effect what it means to be human? What does it mean to human living in a hybrid world? I answer this question by articulating and developing Latour’s concept of quasi-subject. This will ultimately amount to saying that as humans, our sense of self and agency is co-constituted through our networks of relations with both humans and nonhumans. I conclude the paper by exploring some of the ethical implications that naturally emerge from such an understanding.

This thesis examines some of the different kinds of metaphors employed in our pedagogical practices. By using the Four Pillars of Philosophy for Children, an alternative metaphor for teaching philosophy is put forth as a viable alternative to the traditional options. This is what we can reasonably call the Rhapsode Metaphor.

<p>I denna uppsats presenterar och diskuterar författaren tre invändningar som riktats mot dygdetikern Rosalind Hursthouses förslag om vad som är en moraliskt riktig handling. Hursthouse menar att en handling är moraliskt riktig om den är vad en dygdig agent karaktärsenligt skulle göra i omständigheterna. Den form av invändningar som författaren presenterar och diskuterar i uppsatsen försöker visa på att Hursthouses förslag exkluderar handlingar som vanligen anses är rätt.</p><p>Författaren argumenterar för att en dygdetik lik den Neo-Aristoteliska dygdetik Hursthouse försvarar kan formuleras så att den undgår invändningar som presenteras i uppsatsen. Författaren föreslår att vi istället för att förstå Hursthouses förslag som om det gällde de faktiska handlingar som en dygdig agent gör, istället bör uppmärksamma att en dygdig agent följer handlingsmaximer vilka hon prövat under sin moraliska utveckling till att bli dygdig. Författaren föreslår vidare att det är huruvida en handling utgår från en maxim som karaktärsenligt kan ingå i ett dygdigt liv som är avgörande om den är moraliskt riktig eller inte.</p> / <p>In this paper the author presents and discusses three charges that have been raised against Rosalind Hursthouses virtue ethical account on what it takes for an action to be morally right. Hursthouse proposes that an action is right, if and only if, it is what a virtuous agent characteristically would to in the circumstances. All of the charges discussed and presented in the paper try to show that Hursthouses account excludes actions which we would like to say are morally right.</p><p>The author argues that a Neo-Aristotelian form of virtue ethics, like the one Hursthouse defends, can be formulated so that the charges can be avoided. The author proposes that, instead of understanding Hursthouses account as if it is only the very actions that virtuous agents perform that are morally right, we should observe that the virtuous agents are acting from maxims that they have tested during their development towards becoming virtuous agents. The author then proposes that an action is right if it can be traced from a maxim that can be a characteristic part of a virtuous life.</p>

<p>The subject of this thesis is <i>formal axiology</i>, i.e., the discipline that deals with structural and conceptual questions about value. The main focus is on <i>intrinsic</i> or <i>final</i> value. The thesis consists of an introduction and six free-standing essays. The purpose of the introduction is to give a general background to the discussions in the essays. The introduction is divided into five sections. Section 1 outlines the subject matter and sketches the methodological framework. Section 2 discusses the supervenience of value, and how my use of that notion squares with the broader methodological framework. Section 3 defends the concept of intrinsic or final value. Section 4 discusses issues in value typology; particularly how intrinsic value relates to final value. Section 5 summarises the essays and provides some specific backgrounds to their respective themes.</p><p>The six essays are thematically divided into four categories: The first two deal with specific issues concerning analyses of value. Essay 1 is a comparative discussion of competing approaches in this area. Essay 2 discusses, and proposes a solution to, a significant problem for the so called ‘buck-passing’ analysis of value. Essay 3 discusses the ontological nature of the bearers of final value, and defends the view that they are particularised properties, or <i>tropes</i>. Essay 4 defends <i>conditionalism</i> about final value, i.e., the idea that final value may vary according to context. The last two essays focus on some implications of the formal axiological discussion for normative theory: Essay 5 discusses the charge that the buck-passing analysis prematurely resolves the debate between consequentialism and deontology; essay 6 suggests that conditionalism makes possible a reconciliation between consequentialism and moral particularism. </p>

The subject of this thesis is formal axiology, i.e., the discipline that deals with structural and conceptual questions about value. The main focus is on intrinsic or final value. The thesis consists of an introduction and six free-standing essays. The purpose of the introduction is to give a general background to the discussions in the essays. The introduction is divided into five sections. Section 1 outlines the subject matter and sketches the methodological framework. Section 2 discusses the supervenience of value, and how my use of that notion squares with the broader methodological framework. Section 3 defends the concept of intrinsic or final value. Section 4 discusses issues in value typology; particularly how intrinsic value relates to final value. Section 5 summarises the essays and provides some specific backgrounds to their respective themes. The six essays are thematically divided into four categories: The first two deal with specific issues concerning analyses of value. Essay 1 is a comparative discussion of competing approaches in this area. Essay 2 discusses, and proposes a solution to, a significant problem for the so called ‘buck-passing’ analysis of value. Essay 3 discusses the ontological nature of the bearers of final value, and defends the view that they are particularised properties, or tropes. Essay 4 defends conditionalism about final value, i.e., the idea that final value may vary according to context. The last two essays focus on some implications of the formal axiological discussion for normative theory: Essay 5 discusses the charge that the buck-passing analysis prematurely resolves the debate between consequentialism and deontology; essay 6 suggests that conditionalism makes possible a reconciliation between consequentialism and moral particularism.

Some scholars argue that the principle of voluntary informed consent is rooted in the Western ethos of liberal individualism; that it would be difficult to implement this requirement in societies where the norms of decision-making emphasize collective rather than individual decision-making (for example, Sub-Saharan Africa); that it would amount to “cultural imperialism” to seek to implement the principle of voluntary informed consent in non-Western societies. This thesis rejects this skepticism about the possibility of implementing the informed consent requirement in non-Western environments and argues that applying the principle of voluntary informed consent in human subjects’ research in Sub-Saharan African communal culture could serve as an effective measure to protect vulnerable subjects from possible abuses or exploitations. The thesis proposes the “multi-step” approach to informed consent as the best approach to the implementation of the principle in the African communal setting. The thesis argues that the importance of the “multi-step” approach lies in the fact that it is one that is sensitive to local culture and customs. On the question of whether the principle of voluntary informed consent should be made compulsory in research, the thesis answers that we have no choice in the matter.

For the last thirty years or so, there has been a search underway for a theory that canaccommodate our intuitions in regard to moral duties to future generations. The object ofthis search has proved surprisingly elusive. The classical moral theories in the literature allhave perplexing implications in this area. Classical Utilitarianism, for instance, implies thatit could be better to expand a population even if everyone in the resulting populationwould be much worse off than in the original. The main problem has been to find an adequate population theory, that is, a theoryabout the moral value of states of affairs where the number of people, the quality of theirlives, and their identities may vary. Since, arguably, any reasonable moral theory has totake these aspects of possible states of affairs into account when determining the normativestatus of actions, the study of population theory is of general import for moral theory. A number of theories have been proposed in the literature that purport to avoidcounter-intuitive implications such as the one mentioned above. The suggestions arediverse: introducing novel ways of aggregating welfare into a measure of value, revising thenotion of a, life worth living, questioning the way we can compare and measure welfare,counting people's welfare differently depending on the temporal location or the modalfeatures of their lives, and challenging the logic of axiological and normative concepts. Weinvestigate the concepts and assumptions involved in these theories as well as theirimplications for population theory. In our discussion, we propose a number of intuitively appealing and logically weakadequacy conditions for an acceptable population theory. Finally, we consider whether it ispossible to find a theory that satisfies all of these conditions. We prove that no such theory exists.

In this thesis, the main focus is on deontic logic as a tool for formal representation of moral reasoning in natural language. The simple standard system of deontic logic (SDL), i.e. the minimal Kripkean modal logic extended with the deontic axiom, stating that necessity (interpreted as obligation) implies possibility (interpreted as permission), has often been considered inadequate for this aim, due to different problems, e.g. the so-called deontic paradoxes. A general survey of deontic logic and the problems with SDL is made in chapter 1. In chapter 2, a system denoted Classical Deontic-Modal logic (CDM1) is defined. In this system, there is a primary obligation operator indexed to sets of possible worlds, and a secondary requirement operator, defined in terms of strictly necessary conditions for fulfilling an obligation. This secondary operator has most of the properties of the necessity operator in SDL. In chapters 3 and 4, it is argued that CDM1 is able to handle the SDL problems presented in chapter 1 in an adequate way, and the treatment of these problems in CDM1 is also compared with their treatment in some other well-known deontic systems. In chapter 5, it is argued that even though the problems related to quantification in modal contexts are relevant to deontic logic, these issues are not specific to deontic logic. In chapter 6, the relations between some controversial features of moral reasoning, such as moral dilemmas and “non-standard” deontic categories like supererogation, and deontic logic are discussed. It is shown how CDM1 can be modified in order to accommodate these features.

Research by design refers to the design of architectural research as an integral part of architectural design processes. In 1980s, it emerged as a third way in design research that was dominated until then by the methods of natural sciences and humanities. With this new formulation of design research, a methodological and epistemological transformation occurs, leading to the integration of practical knowledge into architectural research. The primary epistemological question transforms from knowing what design is and knowing how to design to knowing what through the act of design. The integration of the act of design in research transforms the status of design in design research from being an object of inquiry to being a research approach. In the literature on research by design, this transformation is often related with Donald Sch&ouml / n&rsquo / s conceptualization of &ldquo / reflective practice.&rdquo / The main discussion of reflective practice is primarily methodological rather than epistemological. Although it provides methodological insights, it is not sufficient to constitute an epistemological basis for research by design. Thus, the epistemological basis of research by design has not yet been adequately defined. In this study, the notion of &ldquo / reflective practice&rdquo / is investigated in a broader context relating it to its sources in the concepts of &ldquo / tacit knowledge&rdquo / and &ldquo / action research.&rdquo / A conceptual framework for research by design is constructed by relating these concepts with the discussions on research by design and with practical philosophy, the implications of which has remained rather uninvestigated in this context. Aristotle&rsquo / s elaboration of knowledge generation in action and the concept of phron&amp / #275 / sis (practical knowledge, prudence, or practical wisdom) constitute the underpinning of this conceptual framework. The conceptual framework that is constructed on the basis of the key concepts in practical philosophy is discussed in the context of architectural design education. When architectural design education is formulated as a process of research by design within this framework, knowledge generated in the educational design processes promises not only to improve the particular educational context and architectural education but eventually to contribute to architectural knowledge.