Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2022, Political Science

Liberalism has traditionally been suspicious of considering the concept of care as a political principle fit for the public realm. Against this current, I propose a Liberalism with Care (LWC) where liberalism and care ethics lie in a complementary relationship. A liberalism that ignores the place of care in political life falls victim to two immanent critiques, of liberal subjectivity and liberal understanding. I argue that liberalism can best respond to these critiques by incorporating a principle of care which is a synthesis of care ethics and Dewey's affective epistemology. To locate a latent commitment to care in the liberal canon, I present a novel reading of John Stuart Mill's Utilitarianism and his collected works where I argue that a commitment to the cultivation of caring characters is a linchpin of his liberal utilitarianism. Mill's caring liberal utilitarianism also reveals the dangers of scaling up care to the public realm, and I consider reasons for why contemporary liberalism would rather prefer the concept of civic friendship than care as a political principle. I conclude that LWC dispels these concerns and better addresses the problems of liberalism than liberal skeptics often assume. Finally, I consider how our understanding of intersubjective boundaries can be reimagined into a caring view of boundaries. Considering two political events, one in South Korea and one in Nevada, I argue that the caring view of boundaries helps us avoid the unsatisfying features of existing accounts.

Committee: Eric MacGilvray (Advisor); Benjamin McKean (Committee Member); Michael Neblo (Committee Member) Subjects: Epistemology; Ethics; Philosophy; Political Science; Sociology; Theology

Bachelor of Film and Media Production, Capital University, 2022, Media

The 1960s in the United States was a time period where great hope led to great despair. The Philosophical Implications of Alternate History is a historical analysis of an alternate outcome of some of the tumultuous events of the decade, such as the assassinations of John F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King, Jr. This hypothetical timeline engages with three questions: (1) what might have happened, had these tragedies not occurred; (2) how these events contributed to our present political and cultural landscape; and (3) what we can learn by imagining alternate scenarios. My findings from analyzing these three questions resulted in Vigilant Conservation Theory (VCT), which argues that solving societal problems quickly ultimately leads to less consequences. In both historical and present-day examples, I conclude that when tangible issues aren't dealt with, culture and society come into question as well. With VCT in mind, I posit that if we solve the tangible problems of today, we will diffuse cultural flashpoints and, in doing so, build consensus instead of division. I also observe and emphasize the importance of having a unifying national myth when envisioning our future and discuss whether an alternate history can serve this function.

Committee: Andrew Carlson (Advisor) Subjects: American History; American Studies; Political Science

Master of Arts (MA), Ohio University, 2020, Political Science (Arts and Sciences)

The following reflects on the 2016 election victory of Donald Trump. Most mainstream media accounts and a number of qualitative, Americanist studies propose a working-class “resentment” narrative to explain Trump's popularity. In contrast, I suggest that political theology and understanding western notions of “sovereignty” are more important for making sense of Trump's popularity. In what follows, I first provide a theoretical critique of genealogies of sovereignty in order to claim that identifying and intervening in situations of suffering are acts endemic to western sovereignty. My theoretical account expands notions of political theology to encompass the affective and the corporeal in order to claim that masculinity and sovereignty are co-constitutive forces in western cultural history. Have illustrated this claim in our canonical sources of political theory, I then return to the theological context of political `theology' in order to locate the importance of suffering. Generally speaking, identifying situations of suffering, intervening within these situations, and causing situations of suffering are all sovereign acts. The popularity of Donald Trump and the unwavering support of his base comes not from a place of political ignorance or a need to irrationally resent others, but from the embodied notions of western politics that conceives of political order anchored on a masculine, sovereign individual who bears and distributes suffering

Committee: Julie White Ph.D. (Committee Chair); Judith Grant Ph.D. (Committee Member); Jonathan Agensky Ph.D. (Committee Member); Andrew Ross Ph.D. (Committee Member) Subjects: American Studies; Ancient Civilizations; Biblical Studies; Classical Studies; European Studies; Gender Studies; Philosophy; Political Science; Religion; Religious History; Theology

Bachelor of Arts, Ashland University, 2020, History/Political Science

Arguments about what makes a republic last have existed since the Ancient Greeks. While moderns often deride presidential systems as being short-lived, the largest republic with the longest-lasting written constitution is still the United States. How the American Founders answered the question, and the debates they had amongst themselves, should be understood by anyone who wants to create a successful and long-lasting republican government. Meanwhile, a modern thinker without any political science credentials, George Lucas, created the world of Star Wars in part to display his own theories of government – including a long-lived republic which falls in the course of his films. Since Star Wars is one of the most expansive franchises in history, well-known to a large portion of the population, I contend that the Galactic Republic in Star Wars serves as an example of the same questions asked and answered by the American Founding. I argue that the proper structure of government as laid out by the American Founders is a key part of ensuring the longevity of republics, but must be joined by the people's dedication to making that form of government last.

Committee: John Moser Dr. (Advisor); Jason Stevens Dr. (Committee Member); Cara Rogers Dr. (Committee Member) Subjects: History; Philosophy; Political Science

Doctor of Philosophy, University of Akron, 2008, Urban Studies and Public Affairs

Are social science definitions of community adequate? Or do community members have anything to say about that? Mary Parker Follett (the relevant work is her The new state, 1918) suggests that understanding community is a key to resolving the problem of political participation. Taking the reader through a conscious protocol of asking people about their idea of community, the author seeks to show that the so called "subjects" do have something to say to experts in concept formulation. The case of the community concept is used to challenge a basic assumption of social science, the fallacy that all social experience can be reduced by a methodological individualism. The Public Administration literature at large looks at community from the outside in, in a static way as if it were an object, an immutable entity. My interest lies in the lived process of participating in community as a foundation for democratic politics. This seems to require searching out the meanings that people attach to community when they use it to describe their experiences of living with one another in a way that shapes their civic engagement experiences. The research question guiding this study is: What does community mean to the people who live in one? It presents a seldom visited epistemological approach, that of phenomenology (Husserl 1970, Heidegger 1962, Schutz 1962), which finds its roots in people's experiences. My motivation leads my investigation; that is, my own experience of political unfreedom in Argentina is the trigger that has led me to inquire into the nature of the relationship between community and democracy. This dissertation seeks to make a case for practice illuminating theory (Hummel 1998) along with the plausibility of broadening the dialogue about community from the ground up. A substantive contribution of this dissertation to the understanding of community is the discovery that community as a process, far from being an abstraction, constitutes an everyday practic (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Ralph P. Hummel (Advisor); Camilla Stivers (Advisor); Sonia Alemagno (Other); Greg Plagens (Other); Kathy Feltey (Other) Subjects: Organization Theory; Organizational Behavior; Philosophy; Political Science; Public Administration; Social Psychology; Social Work; Sociology; Urban Planning

Doctor of Philosophy, University of Akron, 2006, Urban Studies and Public Affairs

Can the political philosophy of Thomas Hobbes be applied to public administration theory development? Insecurity and unease follow the events of 9/11, and scholars in the field respond by searching for an acceptable relationship between security and liberty. Locked into a historical horizon that barely dips into the landscape of thought before the Founders, before the Declaration, before the Constitution, scholars rarely make their way back to the one political philosopher who has produced the most complete system of civil society born of war. Could responses benefit from such a coherent system? Renascent issues are of security and liberty, of civil society born out of abhorrence of war, and of the rights of individuals who chose to abandon the war of all against all. The comforts of commodious living gain new salience when contrasted against increased integration of the individual into the artificial muscles and sinews of what Hobbes called the Artificial Man, the monster, the Leviathan that civil society has become. What are the rights of survival of a political system who prime purpose is the keeping of the peace in a world where wars, like thunderstorms, are always impending as soon as the last has gone? What are the rights and powers of a sovereign whose sword would keep them all in awe? The present study surveys a recent spate of response by a special issue of the field's leading journal. Using the history of ideas approach, the study asks whether reference to Hobbes's understanding of civil science in civil society would not produce additional insights into the nature of post-9/11 security and the freedom of ourselves, both from premature and violent death, and the awesome power of the Leviathan.

Committee: Ralph Hummel (Advisor) Subjects:

MA, Kent State University, 2023, College of Arts and Sciences / Department of Philosophy

What is law, and how do judges apply laws? What factors affect how judges interpret laws and reach decisions? I will defend Dworkin's conception of law as integrity, in terms of how judges' decisions and application of laws create a coherent and predictable system of laws. I will use the Dobbs decision, which overturned Roe v. Wade and stripped women of their long-standing abortion rights, to illustrate the importance of the principles of stare decisis and integrity in a legal system. I will examine the HartDworkin debate regarding the nature of law and adjudication. I will then examine the views of Hart and Dworkin and the nature of their disagreement. I will move to evaluate their views in the context of the argument and the need for stability, predictability, and coherence in a legal system. I will argue that Dworkin's conception of law as integrity, which is grounded in the principle of stare decisis, is preferable to Hart's positivist conception of law and adjudication. I will use the decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization, which overturned Roe v. Wade, to substantiate my argument by indicating that the Dobbs decision violates law as integrity and the principle of stare decisis.

Committee: Polycarp Ikuenobe (Advisor); Felix Kumah-Abiwu (Committee Member); Deborah Barnbaum (Committee Member); Andreea Smaranda Aldea (Committee Member) Subjects: Philosophy

MA, Kent State University, 2021, College of Arts and Sciences / Department of Philosophy

Benevolent government is the central theme of Jeong Do-jeon's political philosophy, which in turn is primarily inspired by the Mencian view of human morality. Mengzi believed that all humans equally possess the capacity to become virtuous, and the role of the state will resemble that of a benevolent father, in that its primary function is to nurture and educate the people so they can adequately develop their moral capacities. Jeong's idea of benevolent government and the politics of peace of Sara Ruddick share certain similarities. In this thesis, I will argue that maternal thinking – as proposed by Sara Ruddick – is the underlying mode of thought behind Jeong's political theory. Such a connection can be established through a close reading of Mengzi and identifying the theme of maternal thinking apparent in the classical Confucian text, as interpreted by the contemporary scholar Joanne Birdwhistell. Some common aspects of both Jeong and Ruddick's philosophy is their stern opposition to blind obedience to hierarchy, and defense of respectful communications. I will reveal these common aspects by mainly focusing on the idea of remonstrance promoted by Jeong, and its resemblance to the emphasis on Ruddick's view of maternal thinking and politics.

Committee: Jung-Yeup Kim (Advisor); Michael Byron (Committee Member); Andreea Smaranda Aldea (Committee Member) Subjects: Philosophy

Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.), Bowling Green State University, 2020, Philosophy, Applied

If liberal democratic theory requires that policy conform with citizens' beliefs, then democracy seems to require bad policy when citizens hold false beliefs. To escape this problem, public reason liberals advocate epistemic idealization: Citizens' false beliefs, bad inferences, and informational deficits are corrected in order to uncover the genuine reasons citizens hold. Politically legitimate policy must conform with citizens' idealized reasons rather than their messy unreflective reasons. But advocates of idealization disagree over how much idealization is permissible. I focus on moderate idealizers like Gaus (2011) and Vallier (2014, 2018). They hold that the upward bound of idealization is set by the beliefs a real-world citizen could arrive at by sound deliberative route from their existing belief-value sets with a “reasonable” amount of effort. Vallier and Gaus created their models before widespread social media use, echo chambers, high social and political polarization, and all the epistemic problems these create. For this reason, I argue, their models are understandably inadequate for addressing the vicious epistemic environments many citizens currently inhabit and the empirical beliefs they acquire from them. Contemporary moderate idealizers should adopt the exclusion principle whereby we permissibly exclude from policy considerations deeply held empirical beliefs when they contradict a consensus of relevant experts in a mature science—even if they survive moderate idealization. Incorporating this principle generates better policy outcomes and better supports pre-theoretical intuitions about political legitimacy. Chapter 1, argues that, under these conditions, Vallier's moderate idealization leads to normatively and epistemically bad policy, and that the exclusion principle solves this problem from within the commitments of political liberalism. Chapter 2 argues that Gausian moderate idealization also leads to normatively and epistemically bad pol (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Kevin Vallier PhD (Advisor); Christian Coons PhD (Committee Member); Molly Gardner PhD (Committee Member); Daniel Piccolo PhD (Committee Member) Subjects: Epistemology; Ethics; Philosophy; Public Policy

Master of Humanities, Tiffin University, 2010, Humanities

The use of technology drives the evolution of society and society drives the evolution of technology in a symbiotic system. Underlying fundamental motives, including expressing, confirming, and augmenting a sense of self, strikingly adapt to these rapid evolutionary changes in culture. Seemingly continuous communication between large masses of individuals has become of increasingly high importance, and the enormous amount of mobile social networking technology certainly keeps the plethora of communication fluid and dynamic. A closer look at the potential social and political power of flash mobs in today's fast paced technological society is warranted because the mob mentality component of flash mobs has the feasibility to become highly dangerous very quickly. This research will explore the idea of whether or not flash mobs have any true constructive or destructive social or political power, in particular in terms of altering the outcome of social and or political protest, or if a flash mob is merely an entertaining form of performance art. In either case, flash mobs have become a widespread sociological factor that seems to permeate every facet of society and therefore should perhaps be examined as an essential part of popular culture.

Committee: Vincent Moore (Advisor); Jan Samoriski (Other) Subjects: Behavioral Psychology; Marketing; Mass Communications; Performing Arts; Philosophy; Social Psychology; Sociology; Technology

Master of Arts (MA), Ohio University, 2020, Philosophy (Arts and Sciences)

This paper attempts to answer a theoretical question: How can ordinary people reliably gain knowledge from an epistemic system—a social system designed to have knowledge—whose interests may not align with theirs? I begin by constructing a model in which ordinary people attempt to gain knowledge from an epistemic system. I argue that people can gain knowledge from an epistemic system, but this possibility depends on the level of trust people have in the epistemic system. I then modify the model to represent the epistemic relationship between ordinary people and epistemic systems in a minimally-democratic society. I argue that a democratic society requires that its citizens be able to access knowledge within public epistemic systems, insofar as that knowledge is necessary for informed, critical thinking about important public matters. I conclude by pointing out how distrust between epistemic systems can prevent the required distribution of knowledge to ordinary people.

Committee: Yoichi Ishida (Advisor); Christoph Hanisch (Committee Member); Jeremy Morris (Committee Member) Subjects: Epistemology; Philosophy

Doctor of Philosophy, Case Western Reserve University, 2020, English

This dissertation describes an alternative to an especially influential understanding of how literature promotes social justice. According to this dominant paradigm, literature heightens our empathy through vivid depictions of suffering. Where this mode emphasizes stylistic vividness, I turn to works of fiction and autobiography from the years just before the Civil War to identify a wholly different didactic tradition—one that advances by means of what eighteenth-century critics derisively called vacuity or imaginative vacancy. Vacancy, I argue, is a tool for revealing networks of solidarity, distributed in time and space, and inaccessible by means of vivid description. Harriet Jacobs's offers an example of this dynamic in her treatment of violence in Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl. Many other famous ex-slave narrators, such as Frederick Douglass and Solomon Northrup, foreground scenes in which a master beats a slave until his whip drips with blood. Such scenes heighten the reader's empathy through their excruciating level of detail, particularizing the narrated violence until it seems almost present. When Jacobs incorporates the trope, though, she transforms it through generalization, describing how in the aftermath of Nat Turner's Rebellion “everywhere men, women, and children were whipped till the blood stood in puddles at their feet” and “the consternation was universal” (58). This scene is typical of Jacobs's treatment of violence elsewhere in her narrative where punishments are not meted out to particular slaves but to groups. Because her writing frustrates visualization and the free play of empathy, Jacobs is able to prevent identification at the individual level and to depict slavery instead at the level of systems and groups. Like Jacobs, the other writers I examine in this dissertation—Rebecca Harding Davis, Herman Melville, and Nathaniel Hawthorne—use vacancy to create alternative didactic forms capable of imagining and promoting solidarity.

Committee: Michael Clune (Committee Chair); Gary Stonum (Committee Member); Athena Vrettos (Committee Member); Timothy Beal (Committee Member) Subjects: American Literature; Political Science

PHD, Kent State University, 2018, College of Education, Health and Human Services / School of Foundations, Leadership and Administration

The United States Supreme Court's decision in the case Wisconsin v. Yoder et al. (1972) created a special provision for Amish and Old Order Mennonite families by allowing their children to end formal schooling at age 14. The assumption was that these Anabaptist families were preparing children adequately to live “full lives” in their communities without a high school education. Most of these children attend small private Amish schools, but some public school districts, like those at the center of this study, have successfully attracted a significant number of Amish students to their schools. Through philosophically-oriented qualitative research, this study explores how educators in these public schools view their aims and influence in educating young people who are not destined for formal education beyond the 8th grade, or work that requires a high school diploma. The author identifies a peculiar agreement between families and educators in which Amish families extend a measure of trust and flexibility within their own values, and the educators deliver substantial accommodations in school access and curriculum to keep the schools open with a sizeable number of Amish students. The study examines the actions and agreements that maintain this settlement and the ways educators make peace with compromise in an effort to serve all students.

Committee: Natasha Levinson (Advisor); Tricia Niesz (Committee Member); Pytash Kristine (Committee Member) Subjects: Cultural Anthropology; Early Childhood Education; Education; Education Philosophy; Education Policy; Educational Sociology; Educational Theory; Middle School Education; Multicultural Education; Philosophy; Religious Congregations; Secondary Education; Social Research; Sociology; Teacher Education; Teaching; Vocational Education

Bachelor of Fine Arts (BFA), Ohio University, 2015, Studio Art

In three movements, this paper analyzes the way in which apparatuses of capture and control govern our lives. In the first movement, environmental injustice is used to illustrate how apparatuses create, maintain, and destroy spaces and bodies, and allow or prevent certain bodies to speak. In the second movement, anecdotal theory is presented as a way in which bodies typically barred from modes of discourse can find a temporary platform from which to speak. In the third movement, the paper dissolves into poetics upon realization of its own containment within the apparatus of academia, and points towards a way in which all apparatuses could be overcome. Includes documentation from the art exhibition: Wastelands, Revolutions, Failures.

Committee: Katarzyna Marciniak Dr. (Advisor) Subjects: Environmental Justice; Linguistics; Philosophy; Political Science

Master of Arts (MA), Ohio University, 2014, Philosophy (Arts and Sciences)

The focus of this thesis is to identify the differences and incompatibilities that exist between John Locke's and Thomas Hobbes' particular conceptions of liberty. When the incompatibilities are assessed, it becomes clear that they offer converse logical directions for their arguments. I contend that the Lockean position holds that the existence of law precedes the justification for liberties; while the Hobbesian position holds that liberties are justified antecedent to the existence of law. Once the logical directions of the arguments from Locke and Hobbes are clear, I apply this distinction to a contemporary case. The contemporary case is John Tomasi on one hand and Liam Murphy and Thomas Nagel on the other. I claim that these contemporary philosophers have fallen into an irresolvable dispute due to a lack of consideration for the logical direction and conception of liberty they each employ. In conclusion, I attempt to offer a remedy that each side of this contemporary debate could, perhaps, accept.

Committee: John Bender PHD (Advisor); Alyssa Bernstein PHD (Committee Member); Alfred Lent PHD (Committee Member) Subjects: Philosophy

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2014, Arts Administration, Education and Policy

This dissertation is a philosophical inquiry on the possibilities and limitations for radical political theorization in art education. By conducting an analytical reading of passages of the existing art education research that concerns the social and political role of art education in the United States, I construct a critique of the current strategies of politicization and propose an ontological shift in a political imagination; a shift that denotes a radicalization of political theory. My theoretical framework is rooted in Jacques Ranciere's and Giorgio Agamben's political philosophies, especially in their critiques of the constitution of a political subjectivity qua subjectification. I conceptualize the theoretical difference between these two thinkers in terms of a radical politics of actualization (Ranciere) and a radical politics of potentiality (Agamben); two strategies of radicalization that point to the intricacies of the relationship between potentiality and actuality in the process of subjectification. The central thesis of this study is that seeing subjectification through art education merely as a process of an actualization of identities and subject positions, art educators construct a linear passage between a human potentiality and its politicized actuality, which makes political theorization highly predetermined, reduces art education itself into an empty threshold between a past and a future, and makes the humanness of human life dependent on art educators' pedagogical control. Ranciere and Agamben offer tools to disrupt such linearity by rejecting all forms of predetermination, thus opening learning and political action to their potentialities beyond teleological thought.

Committee: Sydney Walker Dr. (Advisor); Jack Richardson Dr. (Committee Member); Joni Boyd Acuff Dr. (Committee Member); Kevin Tavin Dr. (Committee Member); Arthur Efland Dr. (Committee Member) Subjects: Art Education

Master of Arts, The Ohio State University, 2013, Political Science

Theories and models of political behavior, while sometimes predicated on methodological individualism, routinely fail to consider the possibility and potential impacts of human free will—or the implications if humans lack free will. I argue that all models of social behavior, whether individualistic or holistic, must take at least an implicit position on whether individuals can make free (i.e., autonomous) cognitive and behavioral choices. However, social scientists' everyday agnosticism on the question of free will threatens theoretical falsehood and practical irrelevance. I discuss the consequences for political science—focusing on international relations—of the existence or absence of free will. I use metapreferences as a modeling technique to help us conceptualize how free will and causation interrelate, and from this develop the argument that free will elevates the importance that natural science and technology play in creating preferred social outcomes. I close by applying the preceding arguments to the study of war.

Committee: Randall Schweller (Advisor); Alexander Wendt (Committee Member) Subjects: International Relations; Philosophy; Philosophy of Science; Political Science

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2013, Comparative Studies

This work reimagines autonomy in the age of spatial enclosure. Rather than proposing a new version of the escapist running to the hills, "Escape" aligns the desire for disappearance, invisibility, and evasion with the contemporary politics of refusal, which poses no demands, resists representation, and refuses participation in already-existing politics. Such escape promises to break life out of a stifling perpetual present. The argument brings together culture, crisis, and conflict to outline the political potential of escape. It begins by reintroducing culture to theories of state power by highlighting complementary mixtures of authoritarian and liberal rule. The result is a typology of states that embody various aspects of conquest and contract: the Archaic State, the Priestly State, the Modern State, and the Social State. The argument then looks to the present, a time when the state exists in a permanent crisis provoked by global capitalist forces. Politics today is controlled by the incorporeal power of Empire and its lived reality, the Metropolis, which emerged as embodiments of this crisis and continue to further deepen exploitation and alienation through the dual power of Biopower and the Spectacle. Completing the argument, two examples are presented as crucial sites of political conflict. Negative affects and the urban guerrilla dramatize the conflicts over life and strategy that characterize daily existence in the Metropolis. Following a transdisciplinary concern for intensity, the work draws from a variety of historical, literary, cinematic, and philosophical examples that emphasize the cultural dimension of politics. The wide breadth of sources, which range from historical documents on the origins of the police, feminist literature on the politics of emotion, experimental punk film, and Deleuze and Guattari's nomadology, thus emulates the importance of force over appearance found in contemporary radical politics. Departing from many of the accounts (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Eugene W. Holland (Advisor); Philip Armstrong (Committee Member); Mathew Coleman (Committee Member) Subjects: Literature; Philosophy; Political Science

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2012, EDU Policy and Leadership

Chief among the goals of American education is the cultivation of democratic citizens. Contrary to State catechism delivered through our schools, America was not born a democracy; rather it emerged as a republic with a distinct bias against democracy. Nonetheless we inherit a great demotic heritage. Abolition, the labor struggle, women's suffrage, and Civil Rights, for example, struck mighty blows against the established political and economic power of the State. State political economies, whether capitalist, socialist, or communist, each express characteristics of a slave society. All feature oppression, exploitation, starvation, and destitution as constitutive elements. In order to survive in our capitalist society, the average person must sell the contents of her life in exchange for a wage. Fundamentally, I challenge the equation of State schooling with public and/or democratic education. Our schools have not historically belonged to a democratic public. Rather, they have been created, funded, and managed by an elite class wielding local, state, and federal government as its executive arms. Schools are economic institutions, serving a division of labor in the reproduction of the larger economy. Rather than the school, our workplaces are the chief educational institutions of our lives. Here we spend the bulk of our time and efforts. Our jobs constitute our deepest point of political impact upon society. As Adam Smith and Karl Marx both recognized, people are formed by their ordinary employments; our daily habits and modes of association determine who we are. Thus the character of our workplaces, whether democratic, autocratic, or theocratic, serves as the best barometer for the character of our culture. Since the late-19th century, capitalist industry has sought to transform the worker into the beast of burden whose primary life function is to labor for the enlargement of capital. Hence the education of daily working life, subservience to those who control our ac (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Bryan Warnick PhD (Advisor); Phil Smith PhD (Committee Member); Ann Allen PhD (Committee Member) Subjects: Economics; Education Philosophy

Bachelor of Arts, Ashland University, 2011, History/Political Science

This study is an exploratory analysis of the belief in free will within the social sciences. While free will is a common topic in many fields, currently, very little research has investigated this topic. As such, this study was based on the assumption that no statistical difference would be found between the social sciences on belief in free will. To investigate this hypothesis, a historical case study was used to analyze belief in free will among professionals in the social science fields. Three general problems were addressed. First, this study examined the consistency of the belief in free will or determinism across the major divisions of the soft sciences. Second, this investigation highlighted the differences found within anthropology and political science. Lastly, consistency and inconsistency in the belief of free will and determinism within the social sciences was discussed. Significance was found in political science and anthropology. Two potential implications are addressed for these findings. Firstly, anthropology and political science may not accurately be classified as social sciences. Secondly, a mobius model was introduced to explain the natural flow of quantitative and qualitative methods that define the social sciences. These results provide an understanding of the social sciences beliefs concerning free-will. As no research has investigated belief in this way before, this research provides a basis for further research. Further research should be pursued addressing the role of religion, time, sub-fields, and work in multiple fields. The proposed mobius-model should also be further analyzed.

Committee: Oscar McKnight PhD (Committee Chair); Brent Mattingly PhD (Committee Member); Justin Lyons PhD (Committee Member) Subjects: Philosophy