Thesis--København. / Summary in English. Bibliography: p. 237-[247].

Thesis--København. / Summary in English. Bibliography: p. 237-[247].

This thesis is an examination of the foundations of practical reason. Building on the later work of Wittgenstein, I argue for a subjectivist view of moral judgment and of judgments about reasons for action. On this view, moral judgments and judgments about reasons for action can be true or false, but they are not objective. The argument for this view has the form of an inference to the best explanation. Using a distinction between primary and secondary qualities, I suggest that moral judgments and judgments about reasons for action should not be construed as referring to an ethical or normative reality that exists independently of us. There are ethical facts and facts about our reasons, but these facts arise as the result of our involvement in a linguistic practice. This provides a new way of accounting for these judgments that differs both from moral realism and expressivism. The view of reasons that emerges is closely related to, but not identical with, reasons internalism as described by Bernard Williams. I reject his argument in favour of internalism and provide a new and independent argument to support this view of our reasons. In the course of spelling out that argument, I show why internalism as described by Williams should be modified, and why this does not commit us to externalism. In the final chapters, I show that there is an important parallel between our practical predicament and the account of our epistemic condition as portrayed by Wittgenstein. The inference to the best explanation is completed by considering a number of objections to subjectivism that are based on the idea that a subjectivist account of moral judgment and of reasons fails to do justice to the ethical phenomena. I reject these objections, and suggest that a subjectivist can both be reflectively aware of his subjectivism and continue to live well.

This thesis explores the relation between the normative structures brought to bear on the evaluation of life and the way in which the coming-into-being of living organisms is fundamentally understood. It provides a new analysis and critique of the standard concept of ‘flourishing’ in neo-Aristotelian meta-ethics, by uncovering the underlying interpretation of organismic becoming on which it relies, and showing how the turn to a ‘constructivist’ conception of development in contemporary biological theory both disrupts this underlying metaphysics, and provides resources for re-thinking flourishing on a fundamentally different basis. The central claim is that we should turn from a view in which life is given a form to fulfil, and becoming is the process of its fulfilment, to one in which living is the process of creating a way in the world, as life goes along.

The dissertation offers a dispositional theory of causation. When a stone is thrown at a vase causing it to shatter, the stone acts as stimulus to the vase’s fragility. The analysis developed from this basic identity of cause and stimulus is defended against counterexamples and problem cases from the causation literature. Grounding causation in what is immanent in interacting objects is shown to yield a more satisfactory theory of causation than prevalent deflationary accounts that appeal to possible worlds, pattern-conformation, or statistical regularities. Most recent work on causation focuses exclusively on physics and metaphysics; the dissertation explores the ramifications for ethics following from a dispositional theory of causation. Consider so-called “causation by omission”: the vase, teetering on a shelf, falls to the ground and shatters; you could have caught it, but you didn’t. Was it your failure to catch the vase that caused it to shatter? The dispositional theory identifies the impact, and not your omission to catch it, as the cause or stimulus. Regardless of whether one’s act is the cause of the breakage, one may still be held responsible for failing to act in a given away. Why is this so and what does it tell us about causation?

<p> The Doctrine of Doing and Allowing (DDA) is the ethical principle that doing harm is morally worse than allowing harm. The objective of this thesis is to show that the DDA is not a viable principle without supplementation. Deontological and consequentialist approaches to the DDA are explored in this thesis. Both approaches are rejected due to the limitations of the binary approach to harms&mdash;the binary approach to harms is the assumption that the badness of harms is best captured by two strict categories of doing and allowing. This thesis develops a sliding-scale approach to harms. This approach is developed by using axiology&ndash;value theory. Value theory is used by consequentialism to determine what goods should be maximized by action and how those goods are ranked. This thesis uses the axiological methodology of Fred Feldman to create a more complex account of the badness of harms. The final chapter of this thesis applies the sliding-scale approach to harms to three end-of-life, medical cases.</p>

<p> This thesis considers the prospects for including respect for patient autonomy as a value in veterinary medical ethics. Chapter One considers why philosophers have traditionally denied autonomy to animals and why this is problematic; I also present contemporary accounts of animal ethics that recognize animals&rsquo; capacity for and exercise of autonomy (or something similar, such as agency) as morally important. In Chapter Two, I review veterinary medical ethics today, finding that respect for patient autonomy is undiscussed or rejected outright as irrelevant. Extrapolating mainstream medical ethics&rsquo; account of autonomy to veterinary medicine upholds this conclusion, as it would count all patients as &ldquo;never-competent&rdquo; and consider determining their autonomous choices impossible; thus welfare alone would be relevant. Chapter Three begins, in Part I, by describing the ways we routinely override patient autonomy in veterinary practice, both in terms of <i>which</i> interventions are selected and <i>how</i> care is delivered. I also show that some trends in the field suggest a nascent, implicit respect for patient autonomy. Part II of Chapter Three presents feminist criticisms of the mainstream approach to patient autonomy. I argue that the relational approach to autonomy advocated by such critics can be meaningfully applied in the veterinary realm. I advance an approach that conceives respect for patient autonomy in diachronic and dialogic terms, taking the patient as the foremost locus of respect. In Chapter Four, I turn to issues of practical implementation, such as interpreting what constitutes an animal&rsquo;s values and concerns, and assessing the effect of positive reinforcement training on autonomy. The Conclusion offers areas for future research while refuting the objection that a simpler, expanded welfare-based approach would yield the same substantive recommendations as my account.</p><p>

The question as to where ethical philosophy ought to end and oratory begin was an abiding interest for the rhetorician-philosophers of Antiquity. This study considers the relationship between the two now distinct disciplines in the theory and practice of Ancient Greece, Ancient Rome, and the United States, through the lens of transformative education. A “classical,” primarily Roman model of rhetoric that centered the teaching of ethics predominated in American higher education until the late 19th century; as evidenced through both qualitative and quantitative data, when the classics fell it took the ethical model of rhetoric along with it. Discourse around rhetorical ethics has not ceased, however, and there is indication that interest might be on the rise. Relevant scholarship among compositionists gives a glimpse as to the direction of that still nascent discipline. Given their complex influence on later theory, the focus of this study remains on the treatment of ethics and rhetoric among ancient sources, namely Aristotle, Cicero, and Quintilian. By examining both their theories and the complex socio-political circumstances in which they wrote them, we can develop a richer understanding of the role ethics play in the teaching of rhetoric, past, present, and future.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Hawaii at Manoa, 2002. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 238-249).

Thesis (Ph. L.)--Catholic University of America, 1995. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 67-69).