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
I present in this dissertation a theory of moral disillusion. In chapter 1 I explain moral innocence and its loss. I show that becoming morally responsible requires shattering the illusion that one is not an appropriate candidate for the reactive attitudes. The morally responsible individual must understand that she can be an agent of wrongdoing. In chapter 2 I explore the nature of the understanding that accompanies the different phases of disillusion. I show that moral disillusion is an ability, not to follow moral principles, but to question them. In chapter 3 I argue that another phase of disillusion involves an acquaintance with evil. One shatters the illusion that only malicious individuals can be evildoers. Morally good people can also bring about evil. I conclude that evil is the exploitation of the extremely vulnerable. In chapters 4 and 5, I analyze more complex phases of moral disillusion. These stages are characterized by an understanding that one can be an agent of unchosen evil, that one might bring about evil even when pursuing the morally best course of action, and that one can be morally responsible for doing so. In order to understand unchosen evil and the tragedy of inescapable moral wrongdoing, the individual sees that moral responsibility ought to track what we care about, rather than what we believe. In chapter 6 I show that Kierkegaard's conception of the self is a philosophy of moral disillusion. I argue that his prescription that we shatter moral illusions is congruent with Harry Frankfurt's prescription that we ought to care about some things and not others. From this discussion emerges the explicit distinction between moral disillusion and moral goodness. Moreover, I conclude that the morally disillusioned are morally accountable for more than those still harboring moral illusions. Although moral disillusion does not entail becoming morally good, by acquiring the ability to raise questions about moral principles and to affect the content of one's cares, one acquires the ability to take responsibility for, and potentially minimize, evil. To have and understand these abilities, but not to care about them, increases one's moral accountability.
ContributorsGoldberg, Zachary J. (Author) / French, Peter A. (Thesis advisor) / Calhoun, Cheshire (Committee member) / Matustik, Martin (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2012
Description
Over thirty years after the passage of the landmark Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), the meaning of disability accessibility and justification for accessibility measures remains unclear. Connecting work in social and political philosophy to scholarship in disability studies and disability law, this project offers an account of what access is and why access is often owed to disabled people. This project argues that disability access is necessary both for the same reasons access is considered necessary for the non-disabled, and for counteracting harmful narratives about disability and disabled people. These narratives and stereotypes originate from a particular ideology, termed “the ideology of abledness.” This ideology informs the way policies are formed and the ways they are received; it also explains why considerations of disability are often absent in general policies, and why unique provisions for disability accessibility are necessary. In its effort to clarify disability access, the project tackles difficult questions such as the nature of accessibility, issues of cost and who is obligated to pay for accessibility measures, how all people with disabilities can be included in a social contract theory, and how disability accessibility relates to and can even expand the way non-discrimination is understood.
ContributorsLevit Ades, Rachel (Author) / McGregor, Joan (Thesis advisor) / Calhoun, Cheshire (Committee member) / de Marneffe, Peter (Committee member) / Francis, Leslie (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2023
Description
Guantánamo: The Amen Temple of Empire connects the fetishization of the trauma of nine/eleven with the co-constitution of subjects at Guantánamo—that of the contained Muslim terrorist prisoner silhouetted against the ideal nationalistic military body—circulated as ‘afterimages’ that carry ideological narratives about U.S. Empire. These narratives in turn religiously and racially charge the new normative practices of the security state and its historically haunted symbolic order. As individuals with complex subjectivities, the prisoners and guards are, of course, not reducible to the standardizing imprimatur of the state or its narratives. Despite the circulation of these ‘afterimages’ as fixed currency, the prisoners and guards produce their own metanarratives, through their para-ethnographic accounts of containment and of self. From within the panopticon of the prison, they seek sight lines, and gaze back at the state. This dissertation is thus a meditation on US militarism, violence, torture, race, and carceral practices, revealed thematically through metaphors of hungry ghosts, nature, journey and death, liminality, time, space, community, and salvage. Based on a multi-sited, empirical and imaginary ethnography, as well as textual and discourse analysis, I draw on the writing and testimony of prisoners, and military and intelligence personnel, whom I consider insightful para-ethnographers of the haunting valence of this fetishized historical event.
ContributorsColeman, Diana (Diana Murtaugh) (Author) / Talebi, Shahla (Thesis advisor) / Matustik, Martin (Committee member) / Fessenden, Tracy (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2018
Description
The current landscape of political speech is ripe for deep philosophical analysis yet has not been thoroughly investigated through the lens of speech-act theory. In this space, I believe I contribute something novel to the area, namely a notion of campaign promises that differs from standard promises that enables a new way of interpreting this kind of speech. Over the course of this paper, it is argued that Campaign Promises (CP) are non-trivially and philosophically distinct from the notion of Standard Promises (SP). There are many philosophical distinctions to draw, including moral, political and logical, but my focus is largely in philosophy of language. I engage the work of Searle, Austin and Wittgenstein among others to investigate what I take to be the following important differences from CP and SP: First, that CP and SP differ in the “best interest” condition, of the condition that a promise must be in the best interest of the promisee in order for that promise to obtain, which in turn, produces the effect of threatening those who do not want the promise to come about. Secondly, that CP serve to reinforce world views in a way that is non-trivially different from SP. To do this, I employ Wittgensteinian language game theory to bridge the gap between traditional Searlian speech act theory to more modern McGowan-style oppressive language models. Through this process I develop and defend this alternative way of understanding and evaluating CP and political speech.
ContributorsHanford, Ryan (Author) / Reynolds, Steven (Thesis advisor) / Portmore, Douglas (Committee member) / de Marneffe, Peter (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2019
Description
Technology has a representation problem. While, in recent years, much more attention has been given to how developing technologies exacerbate social injustices and the marginalization of historically oppressed groups, discussions surrounding the representation of marginalized voices are still in a somewhat nascent state. In pursuing a future where underrepresented groups are no longer underrepresented (or misrepresented) in technological developments, I use this thesis project to draw attention to how gendered technologies are said to represent women as a class. To frame the sort of representation problem I have in mind here, I explore the dynamics of representing others as being a certain way, how individuals can be justified in their practice of representing others as being a certain way, and how such representations might produce harm. I draw special attention to particularly controversial technologies such as Sophia the Robot and sexbots in order to address issues of accountability and dehumanization. I end with some, perhaps, encouraging notes about how the sort of responsible design practices outlined in my project might open the door for some compelling liberatory developments.
ContributorsBradley, Nicole Dawn (Author) / Calhoun, Cheshire (Thesis advisor) / Phillips, Ben (Thesis advisor) / de Marneffe, Peter (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2021