Malicious Moral Envy

Malicious moral envy is an aversive reaction to a rival’s moral properties or accomplishments, accompanied by a tendency to level-down the target by morally tarnishing or sabotaging them. In this essay I give an account of malicious moral envy, showing how it is a sub-type of envy more generally. I describe Donald Trump’s behaviors toward Barack Obama and Anthony Fauci as a case study of malicious moral envy. I argue that malicious moral envy is puzzling, first because it is self-defeating, and then—more interestingly—because it betrays an ambivalence about morality and moral requirements. I explore how malicious moral envy relates to other issues in the literature on moral ambivalence, including moral exemplars, moral saints, admirable immorality, and the pathologizing of moral outliers. Ultimately I suggest that mild forms of malicious moral envy may play an important role in helping agents navigate the socially complex and constantly changing landscape of moral requirements

Unveiling the Veil: Debunking the Stereotypes of Muslim Women

It is not unusual for people to express prejudices against others who look or act differently than the predominant culture. Regrettably, Muslim women are not excluded from this behavior. One of the outward observations of the Islamic religion is the hijab, a veil that covers the head, neck, and chest. Muslim women wear the hijab or similar covering by choice, as it reminds them of the modesty that Islam requires. Yet, this symbol of modesty is often attacked and tainted, leaving many outsiders to question the women who wear the veil and their Islamic culture. In this thesis, I explored the topic in hopes of understanding how the Western world can better accept Muslim women and the religion of Islam. This research included interviews with Muslim women in Central Florida, as they struggle to interpret the religion for themselves while simultaneously dealing with prejudices. By examining the history of the veil and the Western misconceptions surrounding it, I contend that women wear (or do not wear) the hijab for complex reasons, underscored by the oppressiveness of Western culture

Relational Morality

Contemporary work in moral psychology has focused on judgments concerning interactions between strangers. However, it increasingly is recognized that much of human moral judgment takes place in the context of -- and is shaped by -- multiple more familiar social relationships, such as parent-child, teacher-student, close friends, long-term romantic partners, neighbors, teammates, and so on. In this dissertation, I show how such relationships are associated with distinctive patterns of socially prescribed cooperative functions (such as care, hierarchy, or mating), which can be used to predict out-of-sample moral judgments of both blame and praise regarding various actions in relational context. I then proceed to focus on the long-term romantic partner relationship, showing how the ordinary concept of “true love” is likewise embedded with normative expectations. In the final part of the dissertation, I discuss how descriptive findings about people’s moral judgments in relational context may be used to inform substantive moral questions about relationships in philosophy and bioethics

Representations of human directed aggressive behaviour of dogs in Western countries versus Japan

Human-directed aggressive behaviour is considered to be the most serious behaviour prob-lem of dogs worldwide as people are seriously hurt and the dog is often euthanized or aban-doned. One important fundamental problem is that people may not perceive aggressive behaviour in dogs appropriately (based on scientific evidence). Therefore, it is argued that a motivation and emotion based consistent assessment for human-directed aggressive behaviour in dogs (HDAB) needs to be established. If there is no clear terminology for the description of ag-gressive behaviour in dogs, people may label a dog’s behaviour according to their own eval-uation, which may be affected by cultural difference such as belief, personality, and knowledge. No previous research has attempted to investigate which cultural differences influence peo-ple’s perception of HDAB. Therefore, the aim of this thesis explored the representation of people’s perception of HDAB in Western countries versus Japan in order to try to establish a consistent HDAB assessment frame work. In the initial review of the scientific literature and the popular media, there were inconsistent or limited descriptions for motivation and emotion of dogs, e.g., describing emotion as mostly fear and anxiety. In the study of the popular media, differences in the styles of presentation were found between English and Japanese language respondents. The UK me-dia presented information more as text rather than as photos or illustrations (low-context cul-ture), while the Japanese media used more photos or illustrations than text (high-context cul-ture). The style of presentation may affect people’s understanding and perception of HDAB differently. The Internet survey and video assessment study were developed to identify people’s percep-tion of HDAB and which cultural factors influence people’s perception of HDAB. Both studies showed the respondents (particularly Japanese respondents) were less likely to recog-nise mild or subtle signs of dog’s behaviour and recognised limited dog’s emotions. As cul-tural factors, “nationality” and “level of handling experience with dogs” predicted strong ef-fect on people’s perception of HDAB. In order to develop a consistent systematic framework to assess HDAB, power point inter-vention material which described the assessment based on dog’s motivation and emotion was presented to the respondents. However, it did not have a significant effect on the partici-pants’ assessment of the dog’s emotion, which may be affected by the way of presentation without adjusting the level of people’s understanding or cultural factors, e.g., the role and value of dogs, handling experience. This thesis demonstrates evidence that the lack of consensus for description of HDAB may influence people’s perception of HDAB and cultural differences affects people’s perception of HDAB. Therefore it is necessary to develop the consistent systematic framework for the assessment of HDAB based on dog’s motivation and emotion and convey to experts and dog owners through both scientific literature and popular media. It will enhance appropriate communication between owners and dogs

Moral Intuitions and their Role in Justification

Moral intuitions play a vital role, not only in ordinary moral thought, but also in how philosophers choose between competing normative theories. The standard view about how intuitions ought to be used in moral theory is John Rawls' method of reflective equilibrium, according to which an agent ought to work back and forth between her intuitions, the principles that systematize them, and other background beliefs, revising each until all of her judgments are consistent. My dissertation addresses two problems with the standard view. First, the method makes use of moral intuitions but offers no account of why these judgments have the epistemic credibility to play a role in choosing between normative theories. Second, when we find an inconsistency between an intuition and a moral principle, the method tells us to revise either the principle or the theory. However, this leaves the interesting question unaddressed. Simple norms of consistency tell us that we ought to revise either the principle or the theory; the interesting question is which should we revise. I argue that both of these problems can be solved simultaneously by conjoining the method of reflective equilibrium with an account of belief revision. Accordingly, I formulate and defend what I call a contributionist account of belief revision, according to which, when faced with a conflict between beliefs, one revises so as to preserve the belief that makes the greatest overall contribution to the coherence one's set of beliefs. This account, I argue, not only solves the second challenge by making the method of reflective equilibrium more determinate. It also explains why those intuitions that survive the reflective equilibrium process have the requisite epistemic credibility. These intuitions have this credibility in virtue of the contribution they make to the coherence of one's overall set of beliefs

The Tiger Housing Guide 2008

https://tigerprints.clemson.edu/tiger_newspaper/2409/thumbnail.jp

Life, procreation, and transcendence : toward an ethic for the future of humanity

Abstract: Anti-natalism is the view that it is (almost) always wrong to bring people into existence. This view is most famously defended by David Benatar. I attempt to answer the following question in this thesis: If we are to take the badness of extinction seriously, are there conditions under which procreation may still be permissible, despite the fact that it (currently) involves the creation of beings who will suffer—conditions Benatar and other anti-natalists have either overlooked or under-explored? My approach is unique relative to other discussions of Benatar, in the sense that I grant that his arguments are strong, and that procreation is indeed morally problematic. But I deny that procreation is wrong all things considered, because, as I discuss in depth in this thesis, there are some morally relevant things he does not consider. Specifically, I introduce unexplored non-welfarist (dignity, meaning in life) and welfarist (transhumanism) considerations to the natal debate. The strategy I adopt undercuts many of the anti-natal prescriptions Benatar thinks necessarily follow from his arguments for the pro tanto moral wrongness of procreation, and also apply to other forms of anti-natalism.Ph.D. (Philosophy

Humour in native Canadian literature

Die Diplomarbeit befasst sich mit der Geschichte von Humor in der Kultur und Literatur kanadischer Ureinwohner. Im besonderen werden Texte von Thomas King, Drew Hayden Taylor und Tomson Highway analysiert.This diploma paper investigates the history of humour in culture and literature of the indigenous peoples of Canada. In particular, it analyzes texts written by the Native authors Thomas King, Drew Hayden Taylor and Tomson Highway