ASU Electronic Theses and Dissertations
This collection includes most of the ASU Theses and Dissertations from 2011 to present. ASU Theses and Dissertations are available in downloadable PDF format; however, a small percentage of items are under embargo. Information about the dissertations/theses includes degree information, committee members, an abstract, supporting data or media.
In addition to the electronic theses found in the ASU Digital Repository, ASU Theses and Dissertations can be found in the ASU Library Catalog.
Dissertations and Theses granted by Arizona State University are archived and made available through a joint effort of the ASU Graduate College and the ASU Libraries. For more information or questions about this collection contact or visit the Digital Repository ETD Library Guide or contact the ASU Graduate College at gradformat@asu.edu.
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Description
This Thesis contends that if the designer of a non-biological machine (android) can establish that the machine exhibits certain specified behaviors or characteristics, then there is no principled reason to deny that the machine can be considered a legal person. The thesis also states that given a related but not necessarily identical set of characteristics, there is no principled reason to deny that the non-biological machine can make a claim to a level of moral personhood. It is the purpose of my analysis to delineate some of the specified behaviors required for each of these conditions so as to provide guidance and understanding to designers seeking to establish criteria for creation of such machines. Implicit in the stated thesis are assumptions concerning what is meant by a non-biological machine. I use analytic functionalism as a mechanism to establish a framework within which to operate. In order to develop this framework it is necessary to provide an analysis of what currently constitutes the attributes of a legal person, and to likewise examine what are the roots of the claim to moral personhood. This analysis consists of a treatment of the concept of legal personhood starting with the Greek and Roman views and tracing the line of development through the modern era. This examination then explores at a more abstract level what it means to be a person. Next, I examine law's role as a normative system, placing it within the context of the previous discussions. Then, criteria such as autonomy and intentionality are discussed in detail and are related to the over all analysis of the thesis. Following this, moral personhood is examined using the animal rights movement of the last thirty years as an argument by analogy to the question posed by the thesis. Finally, all of the above concepts are combined in a way that will provide a basis for analyzing and testing future assertions that a non-biological entity has a plausible claim for legal or moral personhood. If such an entity exhibits the type of intentionality and autonomy which humans view as the foundation of practical reason, in combination with other indicia of sentience described by "folk psychology", analytic functionalism suggests that there is no principled reason to deny the android's claim to rights.
ContributorsCalverley, David J (Author) / Armendt, Brad (Thesis advisor) / McGregor, Joan (Committee member) / Askland, Andrew (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2011
Description
Situated within seminal debates on the questions of liberation and justice viewed from the postcolonial context, this dissertation evaluates freedom narratives from both sides of the colonial divide during the period of high imperialism. Creating a transnational grouping of three diverse historical figures, E. M. Forster, M. K. Gandhi, and James Joyce, I argue for similarities in these writers’ narrative construction of “freedom” against colonial modernity. I argue that despite these writers’ widely disparate historical and cultural determinations, which uniquely particularize each of their freedom formulas as well as freedom “ideals” – the ideal of culture for Forster, renunciation for Gandhi and aesthetic apprehension for Joyce, these writers conceive of a commensurate/globally related form of “freedom” as postcoloniality and demonstrate cosmopolitan ambition. I also argue that the global form of postcoloniality they each practice can only be articulated through a close attention to each of their specific and local difference.
The key contribution of the dissertation is to establish a new significance of the notion of fetishism for postcolonial studies, from both historical and theoretical perspectives. From a background that emphasizes the primacy of the concept of fetishism in its historical evolution within colonizing narratives of various Western discourses, especially fetish’s constitutive role in Enlightenment philosophy’s othering narrative of “primitive” natives, the work foregrounds a novel theoretical and narrative insight that the fetish demonstrates a unique potential to articulate/embody freedom as post-coloniality. Through a detailed critical analysis of each freedom narrative, I demonstrate how the clashes of particular contradictory cultural ideologies, in fact, determine each freedom narrative and how these contradictions are projected onto and galvanized by a fetish object(s). The work extends the ideas of Sigmund Freud, William Pietz, Homi Bhabha, Anne McClintock and Jacques Derrida on fetishism. Employing the framework of fetishism it brings into view similarities among the said three writers’ definition and practice of freedom. The work weighs in on critical debates between Marxist and Post-structural camps in postcolonial studies and proposes a new form of cosmopolitanism.
The key contribution of the dissertation is to establish a new significance of the notion of fetishism for postcolonial studies, from both historical and theoretical perspectives. From a background that emphasizes the primacy of the concept of fetishism in its historical evolution within colonizing narratives of various Western discourses, especially fetish’s constitutive role in Enlightenment philosophy’s othering narrative of “primitive” natives, the work foregrounds a novel theoretical and narrative insight that the fetish demonstrates a unique potential to articulate/embody freedom as post-coloniality. Through a detailed critical analysis of each freedom narrative, I demonstrate how the clashes of particular contradictory cultural ideologies, in fact, determine each freedom narrative and how these contradictions are projected onto and galvanized by a fetish object(s). The work extends the ideas of Sigmund Freud, William Pietz, Homi Bhabha, Anne McClintock and Jacques Derrida on fetishism. Employing the framework of fetishism it brings into view similarities among the said three writers’ definition and practice of freedom. The work weighs in on critical debates between Marxist and Post-structural camps in postcolonial studies and proposes a new form of cosmopolitanism.
ContributorsMehta, Bina P (Author) / Bivona, Daniel (Thesis advisor) / Codell, Julie (Committee member) / Lussier, Mark (Committee member) / Mallot, Jr., Jack (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2017