▼ In 1862, President Lincoln proposed a joint resolution to congress on compensated emancipation. Lincoln preferred a gradual rather than an immediate emancipation so that the process would be less taxing to the slave holding states. Lincoln indicated that compensation should be paid to the states for the problems that such emancipation might cause. From localities to where slaves were owned to localities where property might be lost due to actions on the part of the United States government in freeing the slaves, Lincoln expected the government to compensate the slaveholders, not the slaves. There was no mention of recompense for the slaves themselves. This paper argues for compensatory relief for the former slaves and their descendants. The methodology explored several dimensions of the arguments for and against the payment of reparations for slavery by defining what reparations is and using different concepts of justice to determine which theory was applicable to arguments for compensation. The following arguments were posited: (1) blacks in the United States are owed reparations based on moral and legal grounds; (2) that the concept of collective responsibility was applicable to this issue; (3) that the descendants of slaves should be paid reparations for the unjustified forced and uncompensated labor and loss of freedom of their ancestors. An analysis of the problem included an exploration of the development of racial slavery, the slave system established to perpetuate it as the basis for the moral argument that reparations should be paid to the descendents of former slaves. Defining different concepts of justice indicated that compensatory and rectificatory justice is applicable in reference to the forced and free labor that slaves in the United States provided. The forced service of those slaves to the economic, social, and political development of a supposedly liberal democratic state under the most adverse conditions can only be corrected through the payment of reparations for slavery. An analysis of American history will show that the United States, when it became a nation, set about the deliberate task of instituting a racial system of slavery and justifying its practice legitimately through its constitution. The historical assessment shows how the United States as an established legal and political entity existing over time and as a core-institution defining entity is a collective and can be held legally responsible for paying reparations. Advisors/Committee Members: Katzner, Louis I.

▼ Broadly and somewhat roughly speaking, metanormative theorists who maintain that there is normative truth fall into one of three camps: non-naturalist, naturalist and expressivist. I am interested in the prospects for normative truth, and thus in which, if any, of these positions offers hope for the discovery of such truth. In each of three chapters, I address one of these views. I conclude that our best hope is a view most closely related to naturalism (though I reject this classification for one that I believe better captures what is at stake in the literature I focus on). In Chapter 1, I target expressivism, according to which normative thought and language express non-cognitive attitudes. I explain why it will be difficult, if not impossible, for expressivists to account for a kind of commonplace nihilistic doubt that, I argue, is a symptom of the widely accepted “objective” nature of normativity. I conclude that an inability to account for such doubt should be considered a serious problem for expressivism. In Chapter 2, I address a prominent form of non-naturalism, according to which the normative is “metaphysically autonomous”—neither identical with, nor constituted by, nor constitutive of anything non-normative. I examine several important explanatory challenges non-naturalists face in normative epistemology, metaphysics and semantics. I argue that it will be difficult, if not impossible, to develop their view such that it meets these challenges while remaining plausible. The Open Question Argument and its contemporary cousin, Normative Twin Earth, are the most prominent objections to naturalism. In Chapter 3, I argue that because these arguments rely on semantic rather than metaphysical intuitions, they should be understood as targeting semantic rather than metaphysical views (e.g., not naturalism). I propose that the appropriate targets are views committed to a particular class of reference-fixing relations for normative terms. I then examine the prospects for developing a view along these lines that does not fall prey to the objections mentioned. I conclude that there is hope for realism of this kind, and close with a rough sketch of how such a view might be developed more fully. Advisors/Committee Members: Shoemaker, David.

▼ Contemporary moral philosophers have used practical experience as a tool for gleaning important facts about the metaphysical status of value. In particular, recent debate has been ongoing over the status of regret as an indicator that we live in a world filled with a plurality of different types of value. The thrust of many of the arguments in favor of this view is that if I choose one good thing over another and I am convinced that I made the right choice but nevertheless still feel regret at having to forego the other good, then the forgone good must be good thanks to a different type of value. In other words, common experiences like regretting our forgone rock careers indicates that there is a plurality of different types of value.All of these arguments rest on an inferential claim about the practical effects of value, namely that under normal conditions if a value exists and we knowingly encounter it, then we will be affected in some way by our encounter with the value. Unfortunately, this inference inevitably causes these arguments to beg the question in favor of the conclusions about value that they set out to prove. This is particularly unfortunate since many of the intuitions that these arguments rest on are compelling. This dissertation argues for a new approach to thinking about practical effects of value, such that the seeming practical effects of value tell us more about our evaluative beliefs than the metaphysics of value. On that point, this dissertation distinguishes quantitative and qualitative ways of thinking about our evaluations. After arguing for the particular practical experience of loss, this dissertation concludes that we should ultimately adopt qualitative theories of evaluation. The ramification for value theory is that metaphysical claims about value that entail quantitative evaluative approaches should be abandoned. Advisors/Committee Members: Jacobson, Daniel.

▼ In simplest terms, I intend to argue in this dissertation that at least some types of terrorism are permissible within a Just War framework. There are two forms that this argument can take. There is the weak form that concludes that at least some types of terrorism are permissible within a Just War framework but leaves open the question of the justifiability of any formulation of Just War Theory. There is also the strong form of the argument that at least some types of terrorism are permissible within a Just War framework and that the Just War Tradition is the correct moral theory to govern martial actions, and therefore concludes that at least some types of terrorism are permissible. In my dissertation, I am arguing for the weaker claim and leaving open the question of the correctness of any formulation of Just War Theory. If Just War Tradition is correct and I am successful in demonstrating that at least some types of terrorism are permissible within a Just War framework, then I will have shown that at least some types of terrorism are permissible. As I have said, though, my project is not to argue to defend any version of Just War Theory that Just War Tradition is correct but rather to merely to demonstrate that at least some types of terrorism are permissible within a Just War framework. When evaluating any use of force within the scope of a Just War framework, two questions need to be addressed: (1) was it appropriate to engage in the use of force (jus ad bellum considerations), and (2) was the force used appropriately (jus in bello considerations). It is within the scope of these two questions that most of the objections to terrorism arise. In my dissertation, I argue that a terrorist campaign or action can meet key standards of jus ad bellum and jus in bello implicit in Just War Theory. I show how these standards can be met in response to two central objections to terrorism, that terrorists lack the authority to make war, and that the random targeting of civilians renders terrorism unjustifiable. iii I approach the question whether it is appropriate for terrorists to engage in the use of violent force from the perspective of a Lockean theory of individual sovereignty. I show that the authority to engage in martial activities rests with governments because that authority has been granted them by those individuals who have come together to form the community over which the government has been given authority. Individuals who have delegated authority to the government, however, have not alienated their right to engage in martial activities. Instead, they have suspended exercising their right to engage in martial activities contingent upon the governments’ using that authority appropriately. When governments fail to use their delegated authority appropriately, then individuals can once again exercise their rights. This includes coming together to form new communities—non-governmental organizations—through which to exercise their power, including their right of self-defense. I deal with the second question, the appropriateness of terrorist tactics, e.g. intentionally targeting members of civilian populations, by arguing that many more members of the civilian population are combatants than most people realize. I argue that anyone who is dangerous in the martial sense, where the martial sense of dangerousness is understood as having one’s behavior purposely directed in support or military or other martial activities makes one a combatant. Advisors/Committee Members: Scherer, Donald.

▼ This dissertation is an attempt to defend the following thesis: The scope of legitimate ownership claims is much more narrow than what Lockean liberals have traditionally thought. Firstly, it is more narrow with respect to the particular claims that are justified by Locke’s labour-mixing argument. It is more difficult to come to own things in the first place. Secondly, it is more narrow with respect to the kinds of things that are open to the ownership relation. Some things, like persons and, maybe, cultural artifacts, are not open to the ownership relation but are, rather, fit objects for the guardianship, in the case of the former, and stewardship, in the case of the latter, relationship. To own, rather than merely have a property in, some object requires the liberty to smash, sell, or let spoil the object owned. Finally, the scope of ownership claims appear to be restricted over time. We can lose our claims in virtue of a change in us, a change that makes it the case that we are no longer responsible for some past action, like the morally interesting action required for justifying ownership claims. Advisors/Committee Members: Miller, Fred.

▼ Tragic dilemmas are cases in which an agent must choose between two horrific or repugnant options. Such choices are painful and accompanied by emotional suffering on the part of the tragic-agent. Specifically, I argue that the tragic-agent feels torn, guilty, and tainted. I further argue that these responses are appropriate-they are ones we would expect of a good moral agent. Precepts commonly employed by standard versions of consequentialism and deontology, however, make feeling torn, guilty, and tainted unfitting-the feelings are at odds with the moral reality generally espoused by these theories. I argue that these emotions can be straightforwardly accounted for by employing a neo-Aristotelian theory. This framework recognizes multiple areas of human concern and defines virtue as responding appropriately to these concerns. Tragic dilemmas can be understood as situations where all choices available to an agent require the agent to choose in a way that undermines the very ends of virtue that she is disposed to, and committed to, realizing. This explains why agents feel torn. I go on to provide a virtue ethical account of right and wrong action whereby an act is right (or wrong) if and only if it is what a virtuous (or vicious) agent would characteristically do. Since the action in a tragic dilemma is one that is characteristic of the vicious agent, the action is a genuinely wrong action. This then explains why agents feel guilty. If wrongdoing diminishes goodness, then this also explains why agents feel tainted. One concern with such an approach is that wrongdoing diminishes goodness and so one's goodness is subject to luck. I address this objection and argue that there is reason to embrace rather than resist this conclusion. I further show how embracing this conclusion gives insight into the tragic hero and can explain why the tragic hero is regarded as admirable precisely because she is guilty. Advisors/Committee Members: Miller, Fred D.

▼ This dissertation is about ‘mental disorder.’ More specifically, the focus of this work will be a particular approach to understanding ‘mental disorder’ which I label “biological functionalism.” What the defenders of biological functionalism claim is that any successful account of disorder must take seriously the idea of natural dysfunction. Because ‘natural dysfunction’ is thought to be drawn directly from the facts of natural function, the biological functionalist goes on to assert that ‘natural dysfunction’ is free of evaluative content. The relevance of this approach to ‘mental disorder’ lies in its implications for the American Psychiatric Association's Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM). The DSM offers a definition of mental disorder which is intended to address certain concerns over the legitimacy of psychiatry. In particular, it is meant to answer anti-psychiatry critics who question the way the psychiatric establishment distinguishes between disorder and psychiatric normality. I argue that the DSM's efforts are not successful because a key component of its definition — ‘dysfunction’ — is left ambiguous. To address this weakness, biological functionalism offers a naturalistic understanding of ‘dysfunction’ which supposedly honors the DSM's scientific focus. My main contention is that the biological functionalist project fails on two counts. The first flaw is in its execution. I argue that leading biological functionalist accounts do not pay proper respect to the practical commitments of psychiatry. But a second, more critical flaw occurs at the conceptual level. Biological functionalism fails to recognize that ‘dysfunction’ is an inherently evaluative concept. Consequently, the biological functionalist paradigm is left in a dilemma. It either commits the naturalistic fallacy; that is, it attempts to derive an evaluative sense of ‘dysfunction’ from a strictly explanatory sense of ‘natural function.’ Or it cannot account for the evaluative elements entailed by ‘dysfunction.’ In light of biological functionalism's failure, I go on to propose a different approach based on Martha Nussbaum's work on human development. My view seeks to answer psychiatry's critics while accounting for the evaluative nature of ‘dysfunction’ in a non-relativistic manner. Advisors/Committee Members: Worley, Sara.

▼ Natural rights liberalism configures individuals’ areas of moral freedom in terms of both ownership and enforcement rights. These rights are taken to entail not only liberties or permissions to act in particular ways, but also obligations on the part of others not to interfere with such liberties. The state, however, threatens its subjects with the infliction of harm should they decide to exercise the full range of their enforcement rights. The state also taxes its subjects in order to fund the costs involved in the collective provision of enforcement services. Thus, within natural rights liberalism, the problem of political legitimacy amounts to the problem of explaining why the state’s characteristic infringements upon individuals’ rights could be morally permissible. The theoretical challenge lies in the fact that, according to natural rights liberalism, the areas of moral freedom defined by individuals’ natural rights are taken to have especially stringent borders. Those borders are immune, in particular, to consequentialist and paternalistic rationales of infringement. This dissertation argues that this challenge is best met by an appeal to individuals’ “samaritan” rights. The holders of these particular rights are individuals who, by no fault of their own, face a perilous situation, and they hold their rights against those who have the capacity to place them out of peril at a reasonable cost. Christopher Wellman has already noted the implications of individuals’ samaritan rights for the problem of political legitimacy. The purpose of this dissertation is to further develop Wellman’s insights, and argue that the resulting moral framework is a promising approach for dealing with the problem of political legitimacy, particularly within the tradition of natural rights liberalism. Advisors/Committee Members: Miller, Fred D.

▼ This dissertation defends a particular account of forgiveness called the “quasi-unconditional” view. There are two main reasons for preferring this account over the ordinary philosophical one which, for the sake of convenience, I have called the “transactional” account. First, the transactional account depends upon the belief that wronging others is inherently tied to how we choose to act as moral agents, meaning that wronging others can be avoided as long as we do what is right. Hence, under this assumption, forgiveness is called for only in the case of actions where the doer is both responsible and blamable. This implies that the transactional account has nothing to say on forgiveness in the case where right action can be wrongful (i.e., where inevitable wrongdoing happens), a feature of what I have called an actual moral world. In an actual moral world, human experience is a theatre of practical and ethical incoherence in virtue of the difficulties we face in carrying out the multiple and yet specific roles that are simultaneously imposed on us as members of society. Thus some form of unconditional forgiveness is necessary simply as a way of grappling with the problematic nature of the moral life. Quasi-unconditionality is a form of unconditional forgiveness but one that is different from the ordinary philosophical account of unconditional forgiveness. For instance, unlike its rival, it addresses a whole range of circumstances or wrongs for which we may not know who is responsible, or where the issue of responsibility and/or blame is genuinely in dispute. The second reason for preferring quasi-unconditionality is that even if we live in an ideal moral world where it is impossible to wrong others as long as we do what is right, the transactional account cannot address the worries that arise in cases of extreme wrongdoing. Cataclysmic evils generate contentious concerns over the appropriateness of forgiveness. For instance, forgiveness has no “meaning,” and there is nothing that can be done to rectify the moral scales in these kinds of offenses. Under such cases, an approach to forgiveness is called for that depends neither on remorse, recognition of guilt or other conditions as a basis for forgiveness, but which still sees these things as necessary for the forgiving process to be realized. This eliminates the ordinary philosophical account of forgiveness, implying a commitment to a form of unconditional forgiveness of a different kind. Extreme, massive and horrific evils are like an epidemic, and hence they pose a serious threat to the very fabric of society. In such extreme cases, the moral situation might demand that unconditionality as a practice be treated both as an obligation and as a “gift”. The gift introduces a new dimension into the moral life: grace. Grace renews the moral life in the face of tragedy, extreme wronging, and injustices, but it does not erase these evils. Like a double-edged sword, grace serves the course of justice but also makes it possible to live in a way that transcends the walled-in moral world that we would otherwise face. Advisors/Committee Members: Callen, Donald.

▼ Over the last twenty-five years, there has been an increased interest in bringing together pragmatism and feminism. The dissertation advances this movement. It specifically examines the theory of growth offered by John Dewey and the feminist theory of power outlined by Amy Allen. The dissertation then examines the two theories in relation to the theory and practice of domestic violence emergency shelters. Dewey's theory of growth, which may apply to individual growth, and the work done with individual women in shelters provides a nice point of convergence from which to examine pragmatism and feminism. Before bringing representatives of pragmatism and feminism together, the dissertation addresses a criticism of Dewey's work that presents a potential obstacle to a productive merger. The dissertation alleviates the criticism that Dewey's theory of growth is cryptic and allusive by presenting the theory in light of his central pragmatic commitments. This presentation contextualizes his statements about growth and frames them within a comprehensive theory. In addition, the criticism that Dewey does not significantly address issues of power within his work is potentially problematic for application to the work of domestic violence shelters. To address this issue, the dissertation evaluates Dewey's work for whether it adequately theorizes the modes of power that Allen argues are necessary for a feminist theory of power, specifically, domination, resistance, and solidarity. The conclusion is made that while Dewey's theory embraces, or at least accommodates, each mode of power, his emphasis on problem-solving and cooperative inquiry masks the fact that problems may result from oppressive relations of power, making their resolution that much more difficult. To supplement Dewey's ability to diagnose relations of power, the dissertation explores the possibility of a joint theory between Dewey and Allen in application to the theory and practice of domestic violence emergency shelters. The dissertation concludes that the fruitfulness of this examination illustrates the potential benefits for the continued pursuit of collaboration between pragmatism and feminism. Advisors/Committee Members: Bradie, Michael.

▼ The concept of well-being is relevant to a multitude of issues in the domains of ethics, law, medicine, mental health, and everyday decisionmaking. And yet while there seem to be some shared pre-theoretical intuitions about the nature of well-being, there is no widely accepted comprehensive account within the philosophical community. This essay takes up one strand of the discussion concerning well-being, namely what is the relationship between an individual's subjective stances, such as desiring, enjoying, or preferring, and his well-being. Subjectivism posits a dependency of well-being on the subjective stances of the individual, while objectivism denies this dependency. This essay takes Aristotle's eudaimonism as its point of departure. Aristotle's view is typically regarded as a paradigmatically objective account of well-being. Nonetheless, subjective stances do evidently play some role in well-being even according to Aristotle. This fact serves as impetus to consider accounts offered by current subjectivists as well as objections that are raised against them in the course of the debate. It is concluded that no existing objective account seems able to survive the counterexamples now standardly launched against them. Furthermore, subjectivism faces an additional problem that none of the considerations that are thought to motivate it in the first instance uniquely point to some version of subjectivism as the best available account. Thus, it is argued that subjectivism as a category of account is ill-founded. The account of well-being that satisfies the intuitions of both objective and subjective accounts while avoiding the major drawbacks of each is a hybrid view with elements of both the subjective and the objective. This view defines well-being as the development of our natural strengths as individuals and human beings plus endorsement in the form of autonomous choice to develop these strengths. Advisors/Committee Members: Miller, Fred D.

▼ Tragic dilemmas are commonly understood to be situations in which an agent has overriding moral reason to choose between two incompatible actions, each of which there is very strong moral reason against taking. As a result of choosing, tragic agents tend to feel guilty, tainted, and the need to make amends. We tend to suspect the virtue of agents who do not have these feelings, suggesting that they are in some way appropriate, but in order for them to be fitting, i.e. in order for them to track reality accurately, the tragic agent must be morally responsible for wrongdoing. Moreover, second-person responses of resentment toward and forgiveness of tragic agents also appear to be appropriate, suggesting that the tragic agent is culpable for wrongdoing. Yet third persons do not blame tragic agents as would be fitting if this were so, but rather tend to experience pity and fear. Classical Virtue Ethics and standard versions of Kantian and Utilitarian ethical theories do not have the resources to explain why this phenomenology is fitting because they deny that the tragic agent engages in wrongdoing. I argue that neo-Aristotelian ethical theory, grounded in personal flourishing, has the resources to do so. To this end I put forward an account of wrongdoing according to which an action is wrong if and only if it either counts against an agent’s virtue or seriously negatively affects an agent’s flourishing. An implication of this account is that tragic dilemmas are situations of inescapable wrongdoing, for whatever the agent does in them will significantly undermine her flourishing. I also employ Aristotle’s account of voluntariness to argue that the tragic agent is morally responsible for the specific wrongdoing that she chooses to do in a tragic dilemma. As such, we can make sense of the phenomenology as fitting. Additionally, I argue that whereas Classical Virtue Ethics has trouble accounting for the ways in which virtue is vulnerable to luck, by allowing that the tragic agent engages in wrongdoing and suffers significant harm, a neo-Aristotelian theory of the sort I develop is capable of recognizing this vulnerability. Advisors/Committee Members: Miller, Jr., Fred D.

▼ In this dissertation, my primary aim is to defend the idea that animals have a basic moral right to life, such that we have a strong duty to refrain from killing them. More specifically, I argue that animals’ right to life is equal in strength to humans’ right to life, such that our duty not to kill animals is just as strong as our duty not to kill humans. An implication of this right is that we are required to cease killing animals for food, material, and purposes of scientific experimentation. I approach my thesis by examining two main objections to the view that animals have an equal right to life. The first objection contends that animals do not have a right to life because they do not have an interest to live. According to this objection, animals have no interest to live either (1) because having interests requires having desires and animals cannot have desires, or (2) because even if animals can have desires and interests, they do not have specifically an interest to live. In response, I argue, first, that many animals are in fact capable of having desires. Second, I argue that many animals do have specifically an interest to live. The second objection contends that animals do not have an equal right to life because life has less value for animals than humans. According to this objection, life has greater value for humans than animals because human life is richer than animal life, and this is the case because only humans possess traits such as autonomy, personhood, or rational agency. In response to this objection, I concede that it is plausible to think that life typically has greater value for humans than animals. However, I argue that having an equal right to life does not require that life has equal value for a being but rather just that the value of life for a being meets a certain threshold. I aim to show that the value of life for many animals meets this threshold. Advisors/Committee Members: Frey, Raymond G.