As the cognitive sciences reveal more and more to us about the ways in which ours brains function, legal scholars, philosophers, and bioethicists are but a few of the academics that will have accommodate this increasing knowledge into theory and practice. Herein, I argue that several problematic areas in the United States legal system might be ameliorated in coming years by augmenting our conception of mental capacity. While the term is broad and carries many possible applications, I focus on two particular applications, patient decision making capacity in hospitals, and the capacity of mentally ill defendants to form a guilty mindset, or mens rea. Through these two examinations, I show that other closely related terms, such as diminished capacity, mental competency, and legal insanity, already in use in our legal system are insufficient to capture the exact nature of some cases better examined through the lens of actual capacities for thoughts, mental states, or cognitive processes. Additionally, I attempt to indicate a trajectory through which advances in cognitive legal theory might take, guided by an interdisciplinary union between theorists, scientists, and legal scholars.

Our culture is becoming increasingly detached from nature. We spend more of our time indoors than ever. While the indoors may offer certain benefits, itâs becoming increasingly clear that our alienation from nature has serious downsides. We depend upon nature for our physical, mental, and spiritual well-being and without it. The opposite of detachment is engagement. Engagement involves direct experience of nature, whether in national parks, wilderness, backyard woods, or unkempt vacant lots. If we want to reverse the problems associated with detachment, we need to encourage engaged alternatives. Only through a culture of engagement, one that recognizes and values natural places and one that sees that human and natural flourishing are intertwined, can we ensure a brighter future. In this paper I argue from an environmental pragmatist position. With a commitment to focusing on urgent practical problems first and theory later, a preference for value pluralism over value monism, and an invitation for multidisciplinary cooperation, this orientation of environmental philosophy offers a promising approach for philosophers to help usher in a culture of engagement, one that the dominant intrinsic value approach of environmental philosophy cannot so easily foster. Iâll show that scholars today must engage with the public, professionals and ordinary citizens alike, if we want to combat the effects of detachment. In making the case, I illustrate how detachment shapes our way of life through two areas: scholarship and general culture. Chapter 2 focuses on scholarship. I build my case by focusing on the work of scientific ecologists. Because ecology is the study of natural systems, we might assume this discipline more than others encourages direct experience of nature. However, in an era of laboratory experiments and computer modeling, this is not so. Many ecologists are no more engaged with nature than ordinary citizens. This is a problem because in an era of great environmental change, we need to be able to recognize changes in real natural places. That requires careful on-site observation. Luckily, there is a resurgence of observational methods in ecology. More and more, ecologists are beginning to break free from the dominant orientation of the discipline and experimenting with observational methods, those that require on-site exploration. Lab work and computer modeling are important, but they canât deliver all of what we want from the discipline. Observational methods help the discipline engage with the public so that it can help inform public policy as we fight to address the urgent environmental problems of today. Chapter 3 focuses on culture. I illustrate the problems associated with detachment by looking at children. Todayâs generation of children, more than any other in history, have grown up in a culture radically alienated from nature. As a consequence of this cultural alienation, many children suffer what psychologist Richard Louv terms ânature-deficit disorder,â a set of health problems common to those with minimal exposure to the outdoors. These include increased anxiety, depression, lack of curiosity, etc. The problem here is that many children, because they are not exposed to nature at an early age, are unable to understand its importance for human flourishing, both for the individual and for the culture at large. The indoors seems to be more clean, more safe, more interesting, and more comfortable. Because of this, we might assume nature can be replaced. This, however, is shortsightedness. If this were so, weâd expect children today to be healthier and happier than their predecessors, which is not the case. In order to help our children develop in a healthy way and ensure a new generation of eager preservationists and restorationists, we need to work together as a community to bring nature back into the center of our lives.

<p> One of the main goals of John Locke's Second Treatise Of Government, is to explain when it is morally permissible for someone to resist their government with force. I call this "John Locke's Theory of Justified Resistance." How Locke derived this theory was be weaving together his thoughts about the nature of God, the law of nature, human nature, human understanding, natural rights, human history, and government. The result is what I think to be and what I hope to prove is a comprehensive and internally coherent moral theory. The theory provides for us the conditions and circumstances in which someone is morally justified to resist their government. Although Locke's theory has been very influential it has not been without its critics. Some of the criticisms have been answered and some have not. In my dissertation I provide answers to the critics. How I answer the critics is by either explaining the theory or by explaining the relevant aspects of Locke's thought that come into play in a given situation. The best way to do those two things is to appeal most often to Locke's own words. Locke is his best defender. Besides explaining the theory and providing answers to the critics, I also examine hypothetical and historical cases studies and apply Locke's theory to them. These case studies test Locke's theory and they allow us to see both the strength and the relevance of the theory, while also helping us gain a deeper understanding of the theory. In the end I offer my own disagreement and criticism of the theory, but I think without undermining Locke's great achievement of giving us an invaluable theory of justified resistance.</p>

At the start of NE IX.8 Aristotle says that the virtuous man acts for his friend’s sake and neglect his own interests (1168a), but only a few paragraphs later says that the virtuous self-lover will also sacrifice money, honors, and even his life, for the sake of his friend, all while he obtains what is most noble—virtuous acts (1169 a, 176). This leads us to the question: Is this really a sacrifice if the virtuous self-lover is profiting in some way? Is it possible for the virtuous friend to sacrifice her life for her friend’s sake while knowing he is ‘procuring the most noble good’ for himself at the same time? Or more generally, can the virtuous self-loving friend do things for his friend without his own interests in mind? Aristotle’s conception of self-love either a) prohibits the virtuous man for acting for his friends sake (during a moral competition), b) does not prohibit the virtuous man from acting for his friend’s sake, or c) enables him to act for his friends sake. I will discuss the following claims in Section III, where I will consider Julia Annas and Richard Krauts’ discussion on the matter.

<p> Situating Foucault as a philosopher of actuality, I interpret and extend Foucault's critique of police as part of a broader philosophical reflection on subjectivity, and the practices of freedom (<i>parrhesia</i>) and revolt that constitute our actuality as free beings. In the first chapter, I situate Foucault as a philosopher of actuality, understood as the thinking of the continuity of ourselves ("we") as free beings involved in struggles against authority. In the second chapter, I draw out the fundamental antagonism in Foucault's later work between pastoral modes of subjectivity and Cynic modes of subjectivity, setting up an oppositon in Foucault's account between police and the practices of <i>parrhesia.</i> In the third chapter, tracing the critique of police power to Hegel's analysis of <i>polizei, </i> I uncover the ancient roots of police in the notion of <i> politeia.</i> Through an analysis of <i>politeia</i> as origin of police, I uncover a military-pastoral technology of power, one which produces certain forms of authority and subjectivity. In the fourth chapter, I show how this political technology, developed most famously in ancient Sparta, can be traced to the formation of the American <i>politeia</i> in the early republic. By tracing this political technology to the early Republic, I seek to show how the warlike or military relations of a military-pastoral technologies are redeployed in the early American <i>politeia.</i> In the fifth chapter, I spell out how these various forms of police power converge in neoliberal governmentality in the context of policing the conduct of urban life. In conclusion, I argue that the apparatus of police in American government should be understood as a set of military-pastoral technologies that seek to establish hierarchical relations of authority-obedience. These military-pastoral technologies, I argue, should be understood in their current context as preserving the neoliberal "rule" of an American <i>politeia. </i></p>

This dissertation engages the question of the relation between nature and rationality, and the conditions of our freedom, through the lens of the concept of Life. It begins by analyzing biological life in Kants Critique of Judgment as a form of judgment bridging theoretical and practical reason. Kants argument is limited, however, because it returns us to ourselves with new insight only about our judgment, but not about natural life. Hegel, by contrast, begins his treatment of self-consciousness in the Phenomenology of Spirit in Life, showing how rationality develops out of a mutually constitutive relation with objects in their independence. Hegels dialectical relation of subject and object develops into a world increasingly worked over as social structures, norms and institutions that provide the conditions for our situated freedom. Contra the reading that positive liberty entails that we are fully determined by our social conditions, my contention is that Hegel provides a robust theory of our freedom as socially and historically situated. Through a dialectical process of alienation from and interaction with norms and institutions, both we and these external conditions are changed, giving meaning to our agency as the ability to interact with, rather than merely react to, our lifeworld. In the Phenomenology, this interaction first appears as work, through which we create the social structures that come to stand against us in culture. By recognizing the role that work plays in the creation and reinforcement of these institutions, we also realize our own activity as a tool for reforming these social conditions towards an increasingly free and just society.

Hannah Arendt theorizes that public spaces for thought and private spaces of reflection are constitutive components necessary for the production of a robust political world of thinkers, story-tellers and meaning-makers. Arendts conception of the transformative potential of public and private spaces can be particularly illuminating when applied to the context of the modern American prison, where prisoners are often subjected to both severe forms of social deprivation on the one hand, and lack of privacy on the other. That prison spaces exist as such is not a coincidenceor, as the rhetoric often goes, necessary or practicalbut rather stands as the literal, spatial verification of the prisoners status as one in exile. The prisoner, as a subject that has violated the social contract, and has as a consequence lost her right to flourish in a community. Prison spaces are designed to limit the ability of insiders to reflect, privately, and to act and communicate, publically. Analyzing prison spaces through an Arendtian lens, I argue, can be helpful for understanding the very real stakes of subjecting prisoners to such conditions.

PHILOSOPHY Echoing Demystified Aspirations: Human Flourishing and the Dialectic of Happiness Patrick Joseph Ahern Dissertation under the direction of Idit Dobbs-Weinstein The question of the possibility or even the concern for human happiness has proven to be a point of contention for political thinkers confronting the ideological injunction to be happy in the face of material conditions that stifle the capacity for human flourishing. It can be argued that the appeal to human happiness as a political norm occludes as much as it may reveal, and that the cult of happiness is the domain of the internalized oppressor, severing the avenues of self-reflection, social critique, or political praxis. In the writings of Theodor Adorno and Walter Benjamin, a dialectical notion of happiness emerges that critiques naïve conceptions of happiness that depend upon redemptive flight or accommodation. A historical approach to political theorizing, through the lens of the concern for human flourishing is enacted through a careful critical engagement with three political theorists (Hobbes, Spinoza, and Marx) that attempt to construct a politics dedicated to human flourishing while informed by human beings in their practical social activity. The notions of happiness for each of these thinkers is addressed and critiqued in the context of the broader aspirations of their respective political theories. Hobbess reversion to the idolatry of the Leviathan, Spinozas attempt to form a theory of the organization of social institutions informed by a defense of radical democracy, and Marxs attempt to perform a critique of ideology and the modern state while constructing a revolutionary politics illuminate the challenges that confront the development of a praxis that is resistant to accommodation while not relinquishing the constructive capacity to transform and organize a world in which the promise of happiness could be realized. In this dissertation, I argue that the dialectic of happiness as presented by Adorno and Benjamin, in its affinity with embodied and historical experience, forms the negative relief upon which the demand for human happiness can find expression. In providing an accounting of the manner in which attempts to realize happiness have failed, this dissertation elucidates what is left for the critical idea of happiness.

ABSTRACT Because of low donation rates in their own country, many Israeli citizens have recently turned to purchasing organs from abroad, risking their lives in highly unsanitary hospital conditions. The trafficking of organs also poses an ethical dilemma for those who sell their organs. Often, these vendors are under-compensated for their body parts, while follow-up medical treatment is minimal. The Jewish faith has always placed the sanctity of human life at its core, and it appears that Judaism allows for the donation of organs, and in some instances, payment for organs. Many Israeli medical professionals have called for a regulated market for organs that is consistent with Jewish ethical values and that compensates the donor for his sacrifice, and ensures that proper medical attention is paid to the recipient. Keywords : Organ-Trafficking, Organ Donation, Jewish Medical Ethics, Regulated Markets, Israel / RÉSUMÉEn raison du faible taux de dons dans leur propre pays, de nombreux citoyens Israéliens ont récemment tourné à l'achat d'organes à partir de l'étranger, au péril de leur vie dans des conditions d'hygiène hospitalière. Le trafic d'organes pose également un dilemme éthique pour ceux qui vendent leurs organes. Souvent, ces fournisseurs sont sous-rémunérés pour leurs parties du corps, tandis que le suivi des traitements médicaux est minime. La religion juive a toujours placé le caractère sacré de la vie humaine, à sa base, et il semble que le judaïsme autorise le don d'organes et, dans certains cas, le paiement pour les organes. Beaucoup de professionnels de la santé israéliens ont appelé à un marché réglementé d'organes qui est compatible avec les valeurs juifs et qui compense le donateur pour son sacrifice, et assure que les soins médicaux est versé au bénéficiaire.Mots-Clés: Trafic D'Organes, Le Don D'Organes, Éthique Médicale Juive, Les Marchés Réglementés, Israël

The “new sociology of childhood” replaces the historical notion of children as inherently vulnerable, helpless and in need of protection, with a perception of children as capable of competent, autonomous, social participation. Although this new sociological perception underlies current children's rights literature, Canadian common law, and important Canadian pediatric health care guidelines, children's autonomy in health care contexts remains easily denied or subverted in favour of adult conceptions of their best interests. In order to try to understand why, I use a feminist, relational approach to autonomy to analyze how oppressive social forces might hinder children from developing and exercising their autonomy in health care, and uncover a tendency to silence the voice of the child within bioethical discourse. These results suggest that greater levels of pediatric autonomy could be fostered by overcoming oppressive social forces and by fostering the skills necessary for the development and exercise of autonomy. / L'ancienne notion prévalant des enfants vulnérables, délaissés et nécessitant de la protection est aujourd'hui remplacée par une perception d'enfants capables de compétence, d`autonomie, et de participation sociale. Il s'agit de la « nouvelle sociologie de l'enfance. » Bien que cette nouvelle perception sociologique soit à la base des droits courants des enfants, du droit coutumier canadien et de directives canadiennes importantes sur la santé pédiatrique, l'autonomie des enfants dans le contexte de la santé demeure facilement niée ou renversée par des perceptions d'adultes qui prétendent agir pour les meilleurs intérêts des enfants. Afin d'essayer d'en comprendre le pourquoi, j'utilise une approche féministe « relationnelle » à l'autonomie qui me permet d'analyser comment les forces sociales oppressives peuvent gêner le développement et l'exercice de l'autonomie pédiatrique dans le domaine de la santé, pour alors découvrir une tendance à amortir la voix de l'enfant dans le discours bioéthique. Ces résultats suggèrent que de plus hauts niveaux d'autonomie pédiatrique pourraient être stimulés en surmontant ces forces sociales oppressives et en donnant la priorité au développement des compétences nécessaires pour l'exercice de cette autonomie.