Using a Millian framework, this thesis examines whether or not children are victims of child abuse when they are inculcated with racist belief systems. The conclusion is that children are not harmed and so not the victims of child abuse, but instead are badly parented.

Theories of perception can broadly be divided into two groups: orthodox and heterodox theories (Noë & Thompson, 2002). Orthodox theories of perception consider perception as a neurological process, i.e. as a phenomenon which can be explained solely in terms of intracranial facts. Heterodox views expand this scope, maintaining that an understanding of perception must include extracranial facts, or facts about the environment in which a perceiver is situated (ibid.). This thesis will attempt to defend a particular exemplar of this heterodox approach, namely the enactive theory of perception proposed by Alva Noë. The thesis has two primary goals. First, I will attempt to offer an exegesis of Noë's theory, attempting to clarify the scope and strength of Noë's view. Secondly, I will consider the particular objections leveled against Noë, and heterodox theories more generally, by Ken Aizawa. I conclude that Noë's theory can better account for the nature of perception.

The permissible use of defensive force is a central tenet of the traditional legal and philosophical justification for war and its practice. Just War Theory holds a nation’s right to resist aggressive attack with defensive force as the clearest example of a just cause for war. Just War Theory also stipulates norms for warfare derived from a conception of defensive force asserted to be consistent with the moral reality of war. Recently, these aspects of Just War Theory have been criticized. David Rodin has challenged the status of national defense as an uncontroversial just cause. Jeff McMahan has charged that Just War Theory’s norms that govern warfare are inconsistent with the norms of permissive defensive force. In this thesis I defend the status of national defense as a clear case of a just cause. However, my defense may require revision of Just War Theory’s norms that govern warfare.

Although the Epicurean ethical system is fundamentally egoistic and hedonistic, it attributes a surprisingly significant role to friendship. Even so, I argue that traditional discussions of Epicurean friendship fail to adequately account for the value (or pleasure) of individual friends. In this thesis I present an amended notion of Epicurean friendship that better accounts for all of the pleasure friends afford. However, the success of my project requires rejecting an Epicurean ethical principle. Because of this, I explore textual evidence both in favor and against the amended notion I propose and the problematic ethical principle. After arguing against the problematic ethical principle and dispelling additional objections to my project, I conclude that Epicureans should endorse the amended notion of friendship I have developed.

Autism is a neurodevelopmental disorder featuring severe social and communicative deficits. Cognitive impenetrability is the inability of systems to be affected by an individual’s beliefs and desires. Individuals with autism have delayed performance on "mindreading" tasks. Mindreading is the interpretation of others which enables successful social interactions. This task performance is not correlated with "everyday" social function in autism. These deficits are in contrast with general intelligence and reasoning abilities within the normal range, resistant to cognitive behavioral training, and partially attributable to atypical social predispositions. This suggests individuals with autism perform social tasks differently than typicals. I argue that this mindreading deficit is cognitively impenetrable, then position this deficit within a theoretical framework, enactivism, emphasizing cognitive embodiment and inseparability of social comprehension and action. This framework helps explain the cognitive impenetrability of these social deficits by "locating" failure to penetrate in individuals' failure to properly interact with the environment.

My purpose in this work is to argue that the resolution of capitalism’s contradictions, as they are understood by Marx, fits the criteria of an economic movement towards sustainability. The Marxist analysis of capitalism, while accurate in many respects (especially with the explanation of contradictions generated in the capitalist free market), requires more explanation of the manner in which the economic process of valuation is to continue in the stages succeeding late capitalism. This work will provide an explanation of this economic transition that remains faithful to Marx’s understanding of history and the historical development of the productive forces and the relations of production. I will propose the inclusion of ideal capital (the valuation of non-material goods) as an economic component to help explain a sustainable economic arrangement under a Marxian framework. I will additionally address critiques arising from Bohm-Bawerk in my endorsement of a Marxian economic analysis.

Recent scholarship on Hegel has employed the Wittgensteinian concept of a "form of life" in order to explain how sociality shapes and determines the reflective practices of self-conscious individuals. However, few of these scholars have considered how the non-reflective aspects of inhabiting a form of life- especially the abilities to form habits and to have feelings- contribute to the reflective aspects. In this thesis I argue that this oversight leads to serious exegetical and philosophical problems for making sense of Hegel's theory of ethical life. Not only does Hegel regard habit and feeling as playing a necessary role in the justification of our reflective practices, but he is right to do so, since, were he not to consider these factors, he could not account for how any of our moral claims could be justified.

Posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is a debilitating condition that results from the experience of a traumatic event. Natural kinds are mind-independent entities found in nature and are the objects of scientific inquiry. It is common to deny that PTSD is a natural kind, but extant denials assume a thesis of natural kinds that can be called “essentialism”. According to essentialism, many entities are not natural kinds that one would expect should be natural kinds. The homeostatic cluster view of natural kinds offers an alternative that accommodates these cases, including, superficially, the claim that PTSD is a natural kind. I introduce two novel objections to this claim and recommend a distinction aimed to resolve the newly introduced problems.

Decisions are performatives - or at least, they share important features with performative utterances that can elucidate our theory of what type of thought they are, and what they do. Namely, decisions have an analogous force to that of performatives, where the force of a propositional attitude or utterance is constituted by (i) its point, or purpose, which is mainly a matter of its direction-of-fit, and (ii) its felicity conditions. The force of both decisions and performatives is to bring into being the states of affairs represented in their intentional contents, merely in virtue of the decision or performative’s occurrence and the satisfaction of the felicity conditions they presuppose. The first chapter of the thesis explicates this general framework, and the second and third attempt to show some of the work it can do for a theory of decisions.

Humans have now amassed a sizable knowledge of widespread, nonconscious cognitive biases which affect our behavior, especially in social and economic contexts. I contend that a democratic government is uniquely justified in using knowledge of cognitive biases to promote pro-democratic behavior, conditionally justified in using it to accomplish ends traditionally within the scope of government authority, and unjustified in using it for any other purpose. I also contend that the government ought to redesign institutional infrastructure to avoid triggering cognitive biases where it is not permitted intentionally to manipulate such biases and to optimize the effects of such biases where permissible. I shall use the United States of America as an example throughout, but my conclusions apply equally to any democracy which values the political autonomy of its populace.