<p>Intensively industrialized animal agriculture, or factory farming, poses many challenges for our notions of “life” and how it should be treated. Factory farming’s mass instrumentalization and exploitation of animals potentially unsettles both our most basic notions regarding the justice of sacrificing certain lives in order to improve other lives, and our decisions about which lives belong to each category. This thesis examines the factory farm as a site that relies upon and produces particular lessons about life. The first chapter explores factory farming’s insistence that economically useful features of animals can be endlessly manipulated and optimized, summarily rendering disposable all other aspects of their lives. Recent work on “neoliberal” economic ideology identifies the emergence of similar conclusions about <em>human</em> life under neoliberalism, yet animal life remains largely un-theorized in this context. Meanwhile, the field of critical animal studies is generating a rich body of work theorizing our exclusion of animals from full ethical and political consideration, but has yet to grapple with how the factory farm brings to bear its own economizing logic that intensifies the “othering” of animal life. The resulting pedagogy of life reverberates throughout the range of cultural responses to factory farming. Chapter Two discusses factory farm designer Temple Grandin’s work in order to illustrate how attempts to situate the site within ostensibly non-economic narratives of life such as ecology, comparative epistemology, and spirituality reveal ways that those narratives can become complicit with the factory farm’s neoliberal pedagogy. Chapter Three examines current representations of vegetarian identity, demonstrating that even resistant responses can reinscribe the factory farm’s sacrificial economy. The thesis concludes that alternative futures for critical resistance to the factory farm depend upon a more thorough apprehension of its conceptual reach, and concerted pedagogical and ethical work through and beyond its framing of both human and animal life.</p> / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

<p>When environmental philosophy began as a political movement, one of its original goals was to transform people's lifestyles. This required appeals to everyday intuitions and emotional writing evoking the intrinsic value of nature. This style exists in institutional environmental philosophy today, but sits uneasy with academic pressure toward rigor and careful analysis. The first half of my thesis criticizes various problems in environmental philosophy regarding these issues and arguments for other moral principles that displace intrinsic value. I attempt to return the concept of intrinsic value to a prominent place in environmental philosophy, not as a popular intuition, but as an answer to one central philosophical question: the point of human existence. Engaging with particular topics in ecology, biology, phenomenology, ethology, complexity theory, and the assemblage theory of Deleuze and Guattari, the second half of my thesis builds a concept of selfhood that I hope is adequate to answer that question of why humanity should bother ensuring its survival.</p> / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Despite an abundance of research on the problem of insider threats, only limited success has been achieved in preventing trusted insiders from committing security violations. Virtue ethics may be an approach that can be utilized to address this issue. Human factors such as moral considerations impact Information System (IS) design, use, and security; consequently they affect the security posture and culture of an organization. Virtue ethics based concepts have the potential to influence and align the moral values and behavior of information systems workers with those of an organization in order to provide increased protection of IS assets. An individual’s character strengths have been linked to positive personal development, but there has been very little research into how the positive characteristics of virtue ethics, exhibited through the character development of information systems workers, can contribute to improving system security. This research aimed to address this gap by examining factors that affect and shape the ethical perspectives of individuals entrusted with privileged access to information. This study builds upon prior research and theoretical frameworks on institutionalizing ethics into organizations and Information Ethics to propose a new theoretical model which demonstrates the influences on Information Systems Security (ISS) trusted worker ethical behavior within an organization. Components of the research model include ISS virtue ethics based constructs, organizational based internal influences, societal based external influences, and trusted worker ethical behavior. This study used data collected from 395 professionals in an ISS organization to empirically assess the model. Partial Least Squares Structural Equation Modeling was employed to analyze the indicators, constructs, and path relationships. Various statistical tests determined validity and reliability, with mixed but adequate results. All of the relationships between constructs were positive, although some were stronger and more significant. The expectation of the researcher in this study was to better understand the character of individuals who pose an insider threat by validating the proposed model, thereby providing a conceptual analysis of the character traits which influence the ethical behavior of trusted workers and ultimately information system security.

The marks I make in clay have different characteristics, and the physical mark of one’s fingertips or visual record of the hand is personal and intimate. This visible activity is the evidence of my constant presence and control within each object. Its repetitive meditation produces a private relief from my persistent anxieties. This exploration for me is not only visual, but also physical. This is the start of my infatuation with the idea of pattern. It has its own discrete visual language and modes of communication; and through my research I am developing a method of intercommunication.

The purpose of this thesis is to examine the history behind and the use of militarized drones in modern day conflicts, and to conclude whether the use of these machines, with special attention to the United States, is legal, ethical, and morally defensible. In achieving the aforementioned goals, shortcomings of current policy surrounding drone warfare will be highlighted, acting as the catalyst for a proposal for changes to be made to better suit legal, ethical, and moral considerations. The proposal of a policy to help us work with armed drones is due to the fact that this thesis acknowledges that armed drones, like guns, nuclear weapons, or any type of military technology, is here to stay and that once we acknowledge that fact, the most important step is to make sure we have the right tools to judge the conduct of conflict carried out using armed drones or other weapons that raise similar issues and questions.

The goal of this thesis is to influence a re-evaluation of self conceptions in America in order to influence an alternative relational understanding of one’s self and others. This thesis begins based on the premise that individualism is a prominent aspect of American societies meaning its member’s understandings of their selves are self-centered, often non-empathetic, and in general more concerned with their own lives than that of others. The first half of this thesis is dedicated analyzing the American situation through an analysis of the sources of individualism and proving that individualism is actually an illusion that individuals falsely believe in. American Pragmatists John Dewey and George Herbert Mead are primarily discussed to offer a more socially oriented understanding of the self that begins the process of this thesis in defending a relational model of selfhood. The second half of this thesis introduces Ancient Chinese philosophy where the relationally constituted model of self is thoroughly fleshed out. An analysis of Confucian and Daoist philosophy is given to explain those traditions unique vocabulary and drastic differences from traditional Western theories of morality and self-understanding. The third half of this thesis uses an hybrid self conception derived from a combination of Pragmatist and Chinese thought to argue the Philosophy For Children (P4C) pedagogical model is the medium in which Americans can learn to re-evaluate their selves starting with educating their children. P4C is shown to be itself a model of relationality where children begin from younger ages to be more other-focused, empathetic, and communally involved.

This thesis attempts to provide a coherent view of the idea of ‘justice as fairness’ and, in particular, the ‘difference principle’ expressed by John Rawls in A Theory of Justice. The main focus of the thesis is the difference principle and its limits. Rawls’s conception of ‘justice as fairness’ is based on the thought experiment of the ‘original position’ in which people, considered as free and equal, deliberate under an imagined ‘veil of ignorance,’ i.e. not knowing which social roles or status they would occupy in their society. Rawls then argues that in the original position people come up with two major principles of justice, understood as principles that would be acceptable to people treated as free and equal. The second principle entails the so-called ‘difference principle,’ according to which the inequalities of, say, wealth and authority are just and fair only if they lead to compensating benefits for everybody and particularly the least advantaged. The thesis proceeds, then, by probing whether compared with other theories, , including a discussion of Dahl’s theory of democracy, Rawls’s difference principle could be a proper answer to one of the main questions of social justice. The questions is: how the economic fortune in a society should be distributed among citizens. However, despite Rawls’s aim to develop the difference principle as a practical normative theory, it fails to give us a pragmatic answer. The reason is: the statement of the difference principle fails to take into account one crucial point: to wit, the matter of time. The thesis develops two empirical economic scenarios to illustrate that there is a trade-off between the interests of the poor in short and long period of time. However, this important issue is not considered and discussed by Rawls which makes the theory inapplicable.

This thesis addresses primary concepts in the humanitarian intervention debates. I argue that humanitarian intervention is a perfect duty. The global community has a moral obligation to act decisively in the face of extreme human rights abuses. There are two contrasting theoretical perspectives regarding international relations and humanitarian intervention: statism and cosmopolitanism. These contrasting perspectives contest the relative value of state sovereignty and human rights. Some of the most prominent ethicists in the debate have determined states have a “right” to intervene militarily in the internal affairs of other states to halt severe human rights abuses but there is no “duty”to intervene. These conclusions are largely based upon consequentialist considerations. This thesis argues a deontological perspective is essential. References to events Rwanda, Darfur, and Kosovo are made. There is a critical role for preemptive actions to play in addressing humanitarian crises and calls for global justice.

There is a tendency in education theory to place the focus on the consequences of racial hegemony (racism, Eurocentric education, low performance by racial minorities) and ignore that race is antecedent to these consequences. This dissertation explores the treatment of race within critical theory in education. I conduct a metaphysical analysis to examine the race concept as it emerges from the works of various critical theorists in education. This examination shows how some scholars affirm the scientifically discredited race concept by offering racial essentialist approaches for emancipatory education. I argue that one of consequences of these approaches is the further tightening of racial constraints on the student’s personal autonomy. This mandates that critical theorists gain a deeper understanding of race as a problem, conceptually, epistemically, ideologically, and existentially. I argue that critical theorists of education draw from work conducted in the philosophy of race by theorists such as K. Anthony Appiah, Jorge Gracia, Charles Mills, and Naomi Zack to gain insights on the metaphysics of race to better inform theory and praxis. I further recommend the creation of a critical philosophy of race in education to address and combat race as a problem and its consequences. I contend that the groundwork for philosophy of race in education must entail strategies that encourage and assist theorists and teachers to move toward the elimination of the race in society, while utilizing race only as heuristic tool to address its consequences. Additionally, I argue that a philosophy of race in education must advocate for an education for autonomy as a means to racial liberation for students.

This dissertation argues that the major theories of global justice (specifically within the cosmopolitan tradition) have missed an important aspect of capitalism in their attempts to deal with the most pernicious effects of the global economic system. This is not merely a left critique of cosmopolitanism (though it is certainly that as well), but its fundamental contribution is that it applies the insights of Frankfurt School Critical Theorist Theodor Adorno’s negative dialectics to offer an internal critique of cosmopolitanism. As it stands, much of the global justice and cosmopolitanism literature takes global capitalism as an unsurpassable and a foundationally unproblematic system, often ignoring completely the relationship between the psycho-socially conditioned ideological aspects of capitalism and the horizon of achievable politics and social development. Using the philosophies and social theories of Adorno and Erich Fromm, I argue that there is a crucial psycho-social dimension to capitalism, or capitalistic mentality—represented in and functionally reproduced by transnational capitalism—that undermines the political aspirations of normative theories of cosmopolitanism, on their own terms. The project concludes with an exploration of Marxist, neo-Marxist, and post-Marxist theories as a potential source of alternatives to address the flaws within cosmopolitanism with respect to its general acceptance and under-theorizing of capitalism. The conclusion reached here is that even these radical approaches fail to take into account the near-pervasive influence of capitalism on the minds of radicals and activists working for progressive change or simply reject the potentials contained in existing avenues for global political and economic change (something which the cosmopolitan theories explored in earlier chapters do not do). Based again on the work of Adorno and Fromm, this dissertation argues that the best path forward, practically and theoretically, is by engaging cosmopolitanism and neo-/post-Marxism productively around this concept of the capitalistic mentality, building towards a praxeological theory of postcapitalist cosmopolitanism framed by a negative dialectical resuscitation of the concepts of class struggle and unlimited democracy. This postcapitalist cosmopolitanism emphasizes non-exploitative economic and political relations, cooperation, compassion, sustainability, and a participatory-democratic civic culture.