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
There is ample evidence from psychology and cognitive science that a person's beliefs, memories, expectations, concepts, and desires can influence how that person perceives the world. In other words, the way an object looks (the color, size, shape, etc.) to a person can vary according to his or her beliefs, memories, desires, and so on. But a person is principally justified in his or her beliefs about the world by how things look to that person. So, if how things look to a person justifies that person's beliefs about the world, and that person's prior beliefs, memories, and desires influence how things look, then his or her prior beliefs, memories, and desires influence the justification for his or her beliefs about the world. This influence creates several significant philosophical problems. In this dissertation, I introduce and attempt to solve these problems by constructing a theory of justification in which a person's beliefs about the world are justified if and only if his or her prior beliefs, memories, and desires constitute a coherent worldview.
ContributorsCrutchfield, Parker (Author) / Reynolds, Steven (Thesis advisor) / Cohen, Stewart (Committee member) / Kobes, Bernard (Committee member) / Kriegel, Uriah (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2011
Description
One activity for which philosophers are perhaps best known is having disputes with one another. Some non-philosophers, and increasingly many philosophers, believe that a number of these disputes are silly or misguided in some way. Call such silly or misguided disputes defective disputes. When is a dispute defective? What kinds of defective disputes are there? How are these different kinds of defective disputes different from one another? What does it mean to call a dispute 'merely verbal'? These questions come up for consideration in Part One of this manuscript. In Part Two I examine whether certain disputes in ontology and over the nature of possible worlds are defective in any of the ways described in Part One. I focus mainly on the question of whether these disputes are merely verbal disputes, though I examine whether they are defective in any other ways. I conclude that neither dispute is defective in any of the senses that I make clear in Part One. Moreover, I conclude that even some defective philosophical disputes can be worth consideration under certain circumstances.
ContributorsMarsh, Gerald (Author) / French, Peter (Thesis advisor) / Creath, Richard (Committee member) / Blackson, Thomas (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2011
Description
The American Psychiatric Association's Diagnostic and Statistical Manual, the official guidebook to psychiatric diagnosis in America, currently exempts the recently bereaved from being diagnosed with depression unless their experiences are marked by feelings of extreme worthlessness, significant functional impairment, psychotic symptoms, psychomotor retardation, or suicidal ideation. Ordinary symptoms of depression, such as sleeplessness or loss of appetite, are considered healthy, functional emotional responses to the loss of a loved one. The bereavement exemption is slated for removal in the upcoming fifth edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual, functionally redefining the emotional distress of bereavement as a psychiatric disorder. This study employs genealogical analysis to expose the multiplicity of forces that shape modern psychiatry and the ways that the redefinition of depression functions strategically in the social negotiation of truth and power. Under the guise of etiological and prescriptive neutrality, the redefinition of depression promotes a deeply biological model of psychiatric disorder, a medicalized understanding of human emotion, and a pharmacological approach to the treatment of emotional distress. Through genealogical analysis, this project seeks to enable informed, meaningful ethico-political responses to these developments.
ContributorsMeeth, John (Author) / Edson, Belle (Thesis advisor) / Palazzolo, Kellie (Thesis advisor) / Quinlivan, Raena (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2011
Description
ABSTRACT Forgiveness is a response to moral wrongdoing motivated by moral reasons. Long thought to be the overcoming of resentment, I will present T.M. Scanlon's view that it is best understood as the decision to blame no longer, i.e. to give up the judgment that one's relationship with another is impaired. Forgiveness has been traditionally thought of as having its locus in the forgiver. However, this has led to a number of accounts in which forgiveness has been presented as a one-sided undertaking, compromising the interpersonal character of the act. I propose a different way of viewing forgiveness, namely as the combination of two actions: the decision of the victim to forgive and of the acceptance of forgiveness by the offender. In this way, forgiveness maintains its character as an interpersonal action aimed at repairing the moral bonds damaged in the wake of wrongdoing. Forgiveness is not dependent solely on a victim's willingness to forgive, but also upon an offender's willingness to be forgiven. While a victim may choose to forgive an offender before he has repented, this alone cannot bring about this act of moral repair. An offender must accept to be forgiven, which I will argue is only possible once he has recognized his wrongdoing, its harmful effects, and regrets his offense. Unconditional forgiveness is not possible, therefore, though a victim might wish it. It is always dependent upon the reciprocated actions of the forgiver and the offender in an undertaking that is dyadic from beginning to end.
ContributorsD'Angelo, Cindy (Author) / De Marneffe, Peter L. (Thesis advisor) / Murphy, Jeffrie G. (Committee member) / Walker, Margaret Urban (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2010
Description
The geologic epoch of the Anthropocene, or the age of human domination, is a metacondition animated by unprecedented planetary change. Global warming, regular mass extinction events, and ecological disaster wrought from human activity spell crisis for all planetary life while exacerbating dominative relations among the human species. Thus, the Anthropocene may be viewed as an age wherein spheres of precarity widen and (in)direct impacts of ecological disaster differentially harm populations predicated upon their predetermined social location under dominative governmental, economic, and social structures. This metacondition poses a challenge for activists, critical scholars, and critical pedagogues working toward social emancipation. To interpret and combat the complex and scalar logics of power in the Anthropocene, this critical/cultural, rhetoric, and performance project advances a turn toward what I term critical ecological rhetoric. Drawing inspiration from Félix Guattari’s The Three Ecologies and Raymie McKerrow’s critical rhetoric – two modes of theorizing which sought to articulate dominative relations under the metacondition of neoliberal hegemony –this critical ecosophical turn seeks to address power as dispersed across material, social, and psychological registers and as complexly entangled within the metacondition of the Anthropocene. An integral element of critical ecological rhetorical practice is demystifying the presence, construction, and defense of borders imposed within and between ecological registers, as such bordered constructs of difference serve to justify violent domination while concealing ecological logics of interconnectedness.Across three case studies which differently privilege one of three ecological registers, I demonstrate the dynamism of critical ecological rhetoric. In “Pyropolitical Phoenix,” materialist, elemental implications of governmentality in the urban ecology of Phoenix, Arizona are examined as a rhetorical circulation synecdochic of repressive relationships in urban ecologies under worsening conditions of climate change. In “I’m Real When I Shop My Face,” the circulation of glitch feminism by pop artist Sophie across digital media ecologies is examined to demonstrate capacities for queer worldmaking within cisnormative algorithmic architectures. In “All My Happiness Is Gone,” I examine my ecology of depression as enmeshed in complex genetic, social, and material entanglement.
ContributorsRife, Tyler (Author) / LeMaster, Loretta (Thesis advisor) / Wise, John (Thesis advisor) / McHugh, Kevin (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2021
Description
Aristotle’s great work, Nicomachean Ethics, presents a complex and sometimes overwhelming account of ethical virtue and the perfected nature of man. However, if one looks at the conflict inherent in ordering oneself to a telos, such as the pursuit of happiness or eudaimonia in Aristotle’s terms, then the prospect of sharing in or attaining Aristotelian virtue becomes less overwhelming and perhaps even inspiring for modern readers.
ContributorsSmith, Meredith Mae (Author) / Zuckert, Catherine (Thesis advisor) / German, Zachary (Thesis advisor) / Doody, John (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2023
Description
Sound and space are intimately and intricately interconnected, but it remains unclear in what ways sound and music call forth in listeners—cognitively and emotionally— sensations of space. This thesis approaches sonic evocations of space from two perspectives that, despite their commonalities, are often considered separately. The first is lived space, the types of expanses we experience it in daily life, the second is outer or extraplanetary space. Existing scholarship on the relationships between sound and space, including that of Edward S. Casey and Steven Feld (1982), Steve Larson (2012), Georgina Born (2013), and Gascia Ouzonian (2020), reach beyond the physical conceptions of sound and into the metaphorical and the cultural, creating a rich discourse about place, orientation, and perception. Informed by the seminal theories of Victor Zuckerkandl (1973), George Lakoff (1980), and Mark Johnson (1980, 2007), among others, this thesis explores embodied musical metaphor using an empirical cognition study in which twenty-six voluntary participants were asked to respond to successions of pitches drawn from popular science fiction film scores and to note any kind of motion and spatiality they felt. The results of this experiment demonstrate that melodic figures are tied to ideas of physical motion and that sizes of intervallic relationships matter. In all, this thesis shows that listeners’ sense of space is greatly informed by specific cues from their sonic environment, and that sound can be used to challenge or manipulate spatial perception, especially in multimedia applications.
ContributorsJordan, Nicholas Gabriel (Author) / Schmelz, Peter J (Thesis advisor) / Knowles, Kristina L (Thesis advisor) / Fossum, Dave (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2023
Description
Scientific researchers have studied microorganisms since the emergence of the single lens microscope in the 17th century. Since then, researchers designed and published many thousands of images to record and share their observations, including hand-drawn diagrams, photomicrographs, and photographs. Images shaped how researchers conceived of microorganisms, their concepts of microorganisms shaped their images, and their images and concepts were shaped by the contexts in which they were working. Over time, the interplay of images and concepts in various research contexts participated in the development of new concepts related to microorganisms, like the “biofilm” concept, or the idea that bacteria exist in nature as complex aggregates attached to surfaces via extracellular polymeric matrices. Many histories of microbiology locate the origin of the biofilm concept in the 1970s, but that date obscures the rich history of research about attached microbial aggregates that occurred throughout the history of microbiology. I discovered how the interplay of images and concepts related to bacteria participated in the development of the biofilm concept by documenting when and why researchers used different visual features to represent changing concepts related to microorganisms. I specifically examined how and why scientists represented evolving concepts related to bacteria during the 17th century (Chapter 1), from the late 17th century to the early 20th century (Chapter 2), and during the first seventy-four years of the 20th century (Chapter 3). I discovered the biofilm concept developed in at least three unique research contexts during the 20th century, and how images reflected and shaped the concept’s development in each case. The narrative and collection of images generated from this work serve as a visual history of the development of scientists’ ideas about the nature of bacteria over 300 years.
ContributorsGuerrero, Anna Clemencia (Author) / Maienschein, Jane (Thesis advisor) / Laubichler, Manfred (Committee member) / Sterner, Beckett (Committee member) / Matlin, Karl (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2023
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