<p> An act is usually thought of as wrong only if it harms someone and to harm someone is, roughly speaking, to make her worse off. However, the view that an act is wrong only if it harms some particular individual restricts us to a person-affecting view about wrongness. If an act is wrong that does not make any individual worse off, this wrongness cannot be explained in terms of person-affecting consequences. I want to propose that an action can be wrong even if no particular individual is harmed by that act. It is the goal of this paper to show that not only is this a plausible view about wrongness, but it is the correct view. On this view, there can be wrongness in the harm caused by diminishing the overall value in the world or by making the world a worse place than it otherwise would have been.</p>

<p> Kant and Fichte's respective accounts of evil share many similarities. This paper seeks to determine if and identify where the two accounts diverge. Due to the systematic nature of German Idealist writing, it is impossible to compare the relevant doctrines of Kant and Fichte and passages in a vacuum. Each explanation belongs to a broader account of evil which itself fits into an even more expansive moral philosophy. Thus, the paper has two goals, one belonging to history of philosophy, the other to moral philosophy. The former involves analyzing the differences that exist between the accounts of evil provided by Kant in Part One of Religion within the Boundaries of Mere Reason and Fichte in section 16 of his System of Ethics. The latter furthers our understanding of self-conceit by comparing Kant and Fichte's explanations of this evil disposition. Ultimately, Fichte's account helps to explain the Kantian doctrine taken from Rousseau of 'unsociable sociability.'</p>

<p> The frequency of use of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles for combat by the United States has increased dramatically in recent years. Since this technology has comprised a significant portion of American counter-terror operations abroad and there are virtually no signs of this practice slowing or ceasing in the foreseeable future, it is necessary to closely examine the ethical implications of remote-control warfare. At first glance, arguments supporting the use of "drones" seem robust and sensible: in theory, they save American military lives. But upon further investigation, the use of drones in practice actually creates morally murky, problematic situations that could lead to great transgression of the laws of a just war. I argue that for all its apparent benefits, drone use thrusts modern warfare at large into an ethically unprecedented arena of vast asymmetry between opposing forces and what this means for the authorized use of force in wartime.</p>

Whereas the literature on English as a Second Language (ESL) instruction has flourished over the last thirty years, very little in the literature addresses issues concerning research with participants who are non-native speakers of English (NNSE). For this qualitative study, six researchers affiliated with a western prairie university were interviewed and asked to reflect on what ethics means to them, which ethical issues are of greatest importance to them when working with NNSE participants, and the role of research ethics boards (REBs). Issues of language, culture and power were found to be key themes as was a deep respect on the part of the researchers towards their participants. In addition, REBs were found to be lacking and in need of reconsideration. These findings suggest that there exists a distinction between institutional ethics (ethics as it pertains to REBs) and individual ethics (ethics as envisioned by researchers).

<p> Oppression is easily recognized. That is, at least, when oppression results from overt, consciously professed racism, for example, in which violence, explicit exclusion from economic opportunities, denial of adequate legal access, and open discrimination perpetuate the subjugation of a group of people. There are relatively clear legal remedies to such oppression. But this is not the case with covert oppression where the psychological harms and resulting legal and economic exclusion are every bit as real, but caused by concealed mechanisms subtly and systematically employed. In many cases, those with power and privilege use cultural stereotypes in order to sustain an unjust status quo. This is so even if the biases are implicit, automatic, and contrary to the consciously professed beliefs of the stereotyper. Furthermore, since many of these biases are not consciously reasoned into one's system of beliefs, and since they are notoriously difficult to bring to consciousness and dislodge via direct, logical confrontation, some other creative means of resistance is needed. </p><p> I argue that an indirect and imaginative route through subversive humor offers a means to raise consciousness about covert oppression and the mechanisms underlying it, reveal the errors of those with power who complacently sustain systematic oppression, and even open those people up to changing their minds. Subversive humor confronts serious matters, but in a playful manner that fosters creative and critical thinking, and cultivates a desire and skill for recognizing incongruities between our professed ideals and a reality that does not meet those standards. Successful subversive wits create fictional scenarios that highlight such moral incongruities, but, like philosophical thought experiments, they reveal a moral truth that also holds in the real world. Such humor offers opportunities for "border crossing" where the audience is encouraged to see from the perspectives of marginalized people who, because they inhabit ambiguous spaces in between the dominant and subordinate spheres, are in an epistemically privileged position with respect to matters of oppression. Subversive humorists open their audiences to the lived experiences of others, uncover the absurdities of otherwise <i>covert</i> oppression, and appeal to our desire to be truthful and just.</p>

No description available.

The purpose of my dissertation research was to ascertain participants' perspectives regarding perceived risk in unstructured qualitative interviews. The impetus for my research was the current crisis in research ethics governance; namely, its lack of evidence with respect to research participants' perspectives and experiences and to the appropriateness of the current normative context of research ethic oversight to qualitative research. My hope was the actual experiences of participants would inform the moral conduct of interviews and their ethical review. Research Ethics Boards and some researchers regard emotional distress as a predominant risk to participants in interview research. My first paper, "Research Ethics Boards and the Ethics of Emotion", is a conceptual analysis of this phenomenon. Contemporarily, emotion has been conceptualized in terms of valence and polarity; that is, either negative or positive and one opposite to another. Thus, emotional distress is regarded as negative and harmful and the opposite of benefit. However, this conceptualization is too simplistic to capture the complexity of emotion. My paper contributes to the literature an explication of emotion as well as an elucidation of the factors of ethics oversight that perplex the proportionate review of emotional distress and confound the presumptions of emotional distress as harm. In my second paper,"The Diversification, Utilization and Construction of the Semi-structured Interview", I elucidate various types of semi-structured interviews that I discerned within the literature. The descriptive/corrective type of semi-structured interview is selected for my study because of its unique capacity to describe, compare and correct dominant conceptualizations of risk that reflect non-participants' perspectives with the actual experiences of participants themselves. In my final paper, "Participants' Perspectives of Risk Inherent in Unstructured Qualitative Interviews", I describe participants' paradoxical responses to interview participation. They experience distress but report benefit, not harm. Participants believe unstructured interviews provide a unique and profound opportunity to tell their stories. Most find interview experiences to be revelatory and transformative. Despite REB presumptions of risk to participants in unstructured interviews, participants report no experience of harm. I discuss the implications for ethical conduct and oversight of interview research.

ix, 226 leaves ; 30 cm. / Title page, contents and abstract only. The complete thesis in print form is available from the University Library. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Adelaide, Dept. of Philosophy, 1978?

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Texas at Austin, 2006. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (Ph.D.) --University of Adelaide, Dept. of Philosophy, 1978?