Under what is arguably the single most dominant approach in modern economic theory, to act rationally is to act in accordance with one’s self-interest, and it is only “rationality as self-interest” that explains behavior in the market sphere. Many economists attribute this idea to Adam Smith, often referred to as the “father of economics.” Yet, in his The Theory of Moral Sentiments, Smith expands the notion of rationality to reasonableness, or the standards one has reason to value and act on, and includes in this concept both self-interested virtues, such as prudence, and other regarding virtues, such as beneficence. Other academics, such as Elizabeth Anderson, have followed Smith’s lead in expanding the notion of rationality to include values outside of self-interest, but have failed to integrate fully Smith’s moral framework as they accept the problematic tenet of reasonableness as self interest in the market sphere. In this thesis, I propose and explore in four chapters the Smith-inspired interpenetrating spheres of association model as a framework for decision-making that is superior both to the economist’s rationality as self-interest model and to Anderson’s sphere differentiation model. Importantly, the model I propose transcends these former models by concurrently assuaging collective action problems, revealing the immorality of women’s double bind situations in the workplace, and sustaining efficient market transactions.

Epistemic injustice is a relatively new philosophical term for a rather old phenomenon. A situation is said to be epistemically unjust when someone is wronged in his capacity to possess or convey knowledge. While anyone can be the victim of a testimonial injustice, the epistemic injustice that occurs in an exchange of testimony, people with marginalized identities systematically suffer from this kind of injustice. By relying on negative identity prejudices, a person in a position of power consciously or subconsciously undermines a marginalized individual’s capacity for knowledge. In this paper, I argue that persistent testimonial injustice can inhibit the formation of one’s identity. Then I explore the role that communities may play in ameliorating this harm. I suggest that communities are conceptualized differently depending on their purpose (e.g. psychological melioration or political resistance). In the final part of this paper, I examine two conceptions of communities put forth by María Lugones and Iris Marion Young and determine whether they can provide both psychological and political resources for resistance.

In Corey Brettschneider’s book, Democratic Rights: The Substance of Self- Government, he builds the value theory of democracy wherein procedural and substantive rights are both grounded in the core values of democracy. In his second book, When the State Speaks, What Should It Say? How Democracies Can Protect Expression and Promote Equality, Brettschneider elaborates on his theory to provide an account of how a liberal democracy can address hateful and discriminatory views. In response to both theories, critics have charged that the ideal value democracy does not sufficiently account for systemic inequalities that women and black citizens face. In this paper, I will elaborate on his theory of democratic education and argue that this necessary development can address these critics’ concerns.

This thesis assesses the centrality of care relationships in George Eliot’s Middlemarch and, by doing so, seeks to provide a nuanced understanding of individual and collective morality. Using the ethics of care as a methodological framework to acknowledge the importance of care acts and successful care relations – especially those complicated by the presence of dichotomized socioeconomic hierarchies – will allow readers to engage more fully with this text, its author, her relations, her characters, and the community of readers; reading Eliot’s work from this lens will allow us to validate every interaction, every thread of connectedness, and every act of care to better understand Eliot’s webs of relation. This thesis argues that it is the atypical or unexpected social figure that arises as the most effective care practitioner, regardless of social class. In order to arrive at this point, it will provide a foundational understanding of both care ethics – from the work of Nel Noddings to that of more contemporary theorists like Talia Schaffer and Sandra Laugier – and the economic theories circulating during Eliot’s time – Smithian, Ruskinian, and Socialist. Through an assessment of Dorothea Brooke, Fred Vincy, Mary Garth, and others within the Middlemarch community, this thesis integrates varying notions of political economy, reciprocity, engrossment, and genuine care for both compensated or uncompensated care acts. By doing so, it strives to privilege the success of authentic care, thereby triumphing the value of relationships over personal gain or ambition.

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While many Simone de Beauvoir scholars have discussed the importance of the category of the erotic in Beauvoir's philosophical works, none explored the importance of Beauvoir's early autobiographical works to our understanding of the development of Beauvoir's ethical philosophy nor have they suggested how Beauvoir's ethical engagement with the erotic might be pertinent to black feminist philosophy. As such, this dissertation is a two-fold project. First, it presents an account of the lived experience of Beauvoir as illustrated through her early autobiographical works. This account focuses primarily on Beauvoir's romantic relationships and traces the development of her conversions leading to her most important philosophical contribution, that of existential ethics, through her accounts of these romantic relationships. Using Beauvoir's Diary of a Philosophy Student, Memoirs of a Dutiful Daughter, Wartime Diary, The Prime of Life, and Letters to Sartre, I maintain that it is only through our close engagement with these early autobiographical writings about her philosophical understanding of her romantic relationships that we are able to understand how Beauvoir comes into the ethical views that will inform the rest of her writing career. Beauvoir's focus on embodiment, facticity, conversion, and lived experience illustrate the extent to which these matters are inextricable from her existential ethics. Beauvoir claims in her philosophical ethical writings that the erotic moment serves a privileged moment when we encounter the other. Both Beauvoir's autobiographical writings and her ethical writings provide us with what is termed a "disposition toward the erotic," which is an attitude that stems from reflection upon and lived experience with the other in love or an erotic encounter, where we choose to encounter non-beloved others in a manner similar to that which we encounter the beloved other. In this way, a disposition toward the erotic is the foundation of Beauvoir's ethical assertions, with regard to what obligations we have toward the freedoms of others and how and why it is our ethical duty to fight against oppressive circumstances. The second part of this project draws a bridge between Beauvoir's ethical writings concerning the topic of the erotic and black feminism. As such, I begin my discussion of black feminism by talking about Black women's lived experience as recounted through black feminism itself. After this, I focus on Audre Lorde's "Uses of the Erotic: The Erotic as Power," bell hooks' series of books on love and Patricia Hill-Collins' Black Sexual Politics, since these serve as sources of direct black feminist engagement with the question of the erotic. I maintain that, in very important ways, black women's lived experience with the erotic has also informed the aims of the project of black feminism. As such, I illustrate how black women's lived experience has been colored by oppressive views of black women's embodiment and sexuality. I argue, as opposed to oppressive understandings of black women and their relationships toward their bodies, that this disposition toward the erotic is a stance that black feminism fundamentally shares with Beauvoir's existential ethics. / Philosophy

As the discipline of economics professionalized during the interwar period, two schools of thought emerged: institutionalism and neoclassical economics. By 1954, after the publication of Arrow and Debreu’s landmark article on general equilibrium theory, consensus formed around neoclassical economics. This outcome was significantly influenced by trends in the philosophy of science, notably the transformation from the logical empiricism of the Vienna Circle to an ‘Americanized’ version of logical empiricism that was dominant through the 1950s. This version of logical empiricism provided a powerful ally to neoclassical economics by affirming its philosophical and methodological commitments as examples of “good science”. This dissertation explores this process of consensus formation by considering whether consensus would be judged normatively appropriate from the perspective of three distinct approaches to the philosophy of science; Carl Hempel’s logical empiricism, Thomas Kuhn’s account of theory change and Helen Longino’s critical contextual empiricism. The conclusion is that there is no ‘consensus on consensus’. Longino’s approach reveals the ways in which alignments between mid-century philosophy of science and neoclassical economics mask the normative commitments implicit in both disciplines. Moreover, Longino’s alternative set of theoretical virtues reveal how questioning the standards of “good science” yields very different conclusions about both the scientific credentials and viability of institutional economics. My conclusion is that a pluralistic approach to the philosophy of science is essential to fully understanding the case study of mid-century economics. / Philosophy

This thesis is built on the knowledge and experience I learned working with CURB and as a member of L.A. No More Jail, particularly in the ongoing fight against the Mira Loma gender responsive “Women’s Village” Jail expansion, which is part of a larger jail building boom on going in California right now. I write this thesis to engage in the reimagining of justice that abolitionist community organizers, formerly and currently incarcerated people and others who work to challenge the prison industrial complex have been envisioning for California.

This dissertation proposes to examine the work of scholars Christine de Pizan and Luce Irigaray in order to develop the possibilities of fiction in philosophy for the purposes of social transformation. Using four of her major narrative texts (The Mutacion of Fortune, the City of Ladies, the Path of Long Study and the Vision) I show how Christine employs the complex array of hermeneutical tools available to her in fictionalized ways as a means of training her readers into re-writing their understanding of themselves and their contexts. Alongside such re-writings, I show that she understands herself to have a particular vocation for educating the powers of France towards ethical action in their governance, and that she does so in these works in the form of philosophically oriented fictionalizations. I use the work of Luce Irigaray to explore a philosopher from the twentieth and twenty-first century who uses narrative and hermeneutical tools that bear a family resemblance to Christine's. Tracing Irigaray's formulations on the necessity of sexual difference I show how she re-tells stories from myth and history in such a way as to develop the sexual difference she desires. Finally, having engaged with these two philosophers, I use the hermeneutical work of Hans-Georg Gadamer to present my own work on how well-crafted fiction can be used to build philosophical concepts and understandings that are not yet available in our world, but which become available to us through our participation in the new fictionalized contexts and fictional worlds we create. I show how it is through understanding the possibilities this kind of philosophical and fictionalized utopic thinking holds that social transformation rooted in the world-building capabilities of individual persons can occur.

This thesis explores what to have distorted scientific knowledge claims due to socially constructed conceptions of gender. Using the paradigm example of the explanation of human fertilization misrepresenting knowledge as it maps on stereotypes about the passive female and the active male onto the scientific participation of the egg and the sperm. Exploring arguments presented by feminist epistemologists, I argue that in order to produce knowledge free of distortions due to problematic social conceptions we must engage in a specific epistemological framework with three main components: 1) critically and systematically examine the subject of knowledge in relation to the object of knowledge, 2) make efforts to diversify inquirers as the perspectives of marginalized identities are important to informing where dominant narratives are failing to be objective and 3) actively acknowledge the role that values play in inquiry and promote feminist values. The framework presented is specifically applicable to knowledge distortions present in scientific inquiry but, importantly, can also inform individual epistemic relationship.