Matching Items (37)
Description
Gays identity is usually cast in generics--statements about an indeterminate number of members in a given category. Sometimes these generic statements often get built up into folk definitions, vague and imprecise ways to talk about objects. Other times generics get co-opted into authentic definitions, definitions that pick out a few traits and assert that real members of the class have these traits and members that do not are simply members by a technicality. I assess how we adopt these generic traits into our language and what are the ramifications of using generic traits as a social identity. I analyze the use of authentic definitions in Queer Theory, particularly Michael Warner's use of authentic traits to define a normative Queer identity. I do not just simply focus on what are the effects, but how these folk or authentic definitions gain currency and, furthermore, how can they be changed. I conclude with an analytic account of what it means to be gay and argue that such an account will undercut many of the problems associated with folk or authentic definitions about being gay.
ContributorsBlankschaen, Kurt (Author) / Calhoun, Cheshire (Thesis advisor) / Pinillos, Angel (Committee member) / Creath, Richard (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2012
Description
In the past century, a number of technological projects have been undertaken as grand solutions to social problems. In the so called century of biology, this technological world view focuses on biomedical advances. The President of the United States, who once called for nuclear weapons and space exploration, now calls for new biotechnologies, such as genomics, individualized medicine, and nanotechnology, which will improve the world by improving our biological lives. Portrayed as the Manhattan Project of the late 20th Century, the Human Genome Project (HGP) not only undertook the science of sequencing the human genome but also the ethics of it. For this thesis I ask how the HGP did this; what was the range of possibilities of goods and evils imagined by the HGP; and what, if anything, was left out. I show that the Ethical, Legal, and Social Implications (ELSI) research program of the HGP was inscribed with the competencies of the professional field of bioethics, which had lent itself useful for governing biomedical science and technology earlier in the 20th century. Drawing on a sociological framework for understanding the development of professional bioethics, I describe the development of ELSI, and I note how the given-in-advance boundaries between authorized/unauthorized questions shaped its formation and biased technologically based conceptualizations of social problems and potential solutions. In this sense, the HGP and ELSI served both as the ends of policy and as instruments of self-legitimation, thus re-inscribing and enacting the structures for these powerful sociotechnical imaginaries. I engage the HGP and ELSI through historical, sociological, and political philosophical analysis, by examining their immediate context of the NIH, the meso level of professional/disciplinary bioethics, and the larger context of American democracy and modernity. My argument is simultaneously a claim about how questions are asked and how knowledge and expertise are made, exposing the relationship between the HGP and ELSI as a mutually constitutive and reciprocally related form of coproduction of knowledge and social structures. I finish by arguing that ELSI is in a better position than bioethics to carry out the original project of that field, i.e., to provide a space to elucidate certain institutionally authorized questions about science and technology. Finally, I venture into making a prophecy about the future of ELSI and bioethics: that the former will replace the latter as a locus for only formally rational and thin ethical debates.
ContributorsCarvalho, Tito (Author) / Robert, Jason S (Thesis advisor) / Ellison, Karin D (Committee member) / Hurlbut, James B (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2012
Description
Corporations in biomedicine hold significant power and influence, in both political and personal spheres. The decisions these companies make about ethics are critically important, as they help determine what products are developed, how they are developed, how they are promoted, and potentially even how they are regulated. In the last fifteen years, for-profit private companies have been assembling bioethics committees to help resolve dilemmas that require informed deliberation about ethical, legal, scientific, and economic considerations. Private sector bioethics committees represent an important innovation in the governance of emerging technologies, with corporations taking a lead role in deciding what is ethically appropriate or problematic. And yet, we know very little about these committees, including their structures, memberships, mandates, authority, and impact. Drawing on an extensive literature review and qualitative analysis of semi-structured interviews with executives, scientists and board members, this dissertation provides an in-depth analysis of the Ethics and Public Policy Board at SmithKline Beecham, the Ethics Advisory Board at Advanced Cell Technology, and the Bioethics Committee at Eli Lilly and offers insights about how ideas of bioethics and governance are currently imagined and enacted within corporations. The SmithKline Beecham board was the first private sector bioethics committee; its mandate was to explore, in a comprehensive and balanced analysis, the ethics of macro trends in science and technology. The Advanced Cell Technology board was created to be like a watchdog for the company, to prevent them from making major errors. The Eli Lilly board is different than the others in that it is made up mostly of internal employees and does research ethics consultations within the company. These private sector bioethics committees evaluate and construct new boundaries between their private interests and the public values they claim to promote. Findings from this dissertation show that criticisms of private sector bioethics that focus narrowly on financial conflicts of interest and a lack of transparency obscure analysis of the ideas about governance (about expertise, credibility and authority) that emerge from these structures and hamper serious debate about the possible impacts of moving ethical deliberation from the public to the private sector.
ContributorsBrian, Jennifer (Author) / Robert, Jason S (Thesis advisor) / Maienschein, Jane (Committee member) / Hurlbut, James B (Committee member) / Sarewitz, Daniel (Committee member) / Brown, Mark B. (Committee member) / Moreno, Jonathan D. (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2012
Description
With new trends in drug development and testing, it must be determined whether the current state of balance of ethos (the moral norm) and regula (the legal framework) can successfully protect patients while keeping the door to scientific innovation open. The rise of the Clinician Investigator (CI) in both academic and private research introduces a challenge to the protection of subjects in the conflicting dual role of physician and scientist. Despite the constant evolution of regulation and ethical standards, questions about the roles' combined effectiveness in relation to this challenge persist. Carl Elliot describes the suicide of a patient-subject enrolled in an industry-funded physician-run anti-psychotic pharmaceutical drug trial in a 2010 Mother Jones article. Elliot provides a personal account of discrepancies seen in the ethical principles of beneficence, respect for subjects and justice. Through analysis of the problems presented in the case as a model for potential dangers in clinical research, the effectiveness of ethics and law in protecting human subjects is examined. While the lag between ethical standard and regulation has historically shown to cause similar issues, the misconception of current regulation and ethical standards may be contributing to the decrease in subject protections. After IRB approval of subject protections in the research protocol, CIs have been shown to downgrade their responsibility to maintaining ethos through the course of the trial. And, despite their experience in patient-centered ethos as a physician, CIs may be inclined to substitute these values for the ethos of a researcher, with the goal to avoid therapeutic misconception. Maintaining personal responsibility for subjects beyond regulatory structure, and promoting the welfare of the subjects in regards to the ethical standard of research investigators, will provide added security for subjects and decrease opportunity for exploitation in future research.
ContributorsWaddell, Amanda (Author) / Robert, Jason S (Thesis advisor) / Ellison, Karin (Committee member) / Fuse Brown, Erin C. (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2012
Description
Influenza has shown its potential to affect and even kill millions of people within an extremely short time frame, yet studies and surveys show that the general public is not well educated about the facts about influenza, including prevention and treatment. For this reason, public perception of influenza is extremely skewed, with people generally not taking the disease as seriously as they should given its severity. To investigate the inconsistencies between action and awareness of best available knowledge regarding influenza, this study conducted literature review and a survey of university students about their knowledge, perceptions, and action taken in relationship to influenza. Due to their dense living quarters, constant daily interactions, and mindset that they are "immune" to fairly common diseases like influenza, university students are a representative sample of urban populations. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), 54% of the world's population lived in cities as of 2014 (Urban population growth). Between 2015 and 2020, the global urban population is expected to grow 1.84% per year, 1.63% between 2020 and 2025, and 1.44% between 2025 and 2030 (Urban population growth). Similar projections estimate that by 2017, an overwhelming majority of the world's population, even in less developed countries, will be living in cities (Urban population growth). Results of this study suggest possible reasons for the large gap between best available knowledge and the perceptions and actions of individuals on the other hand. This may lead to better-oriented influenza education initiatives, more effective prevention and treatment plans, and generally raise excitement and awareness surrounding public health and scientific communication.
ContributorsGur-Arie, Rachel Ellen Haviva (Author) / Maienschein, Jane (Thesis director) / Laubichler, Manfred (Committee member) / Creath, Richard (Committee member) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor) / School of Life Sciences (Contributor)
Created2014-12
Description
Influenza is a viral infection with the potential to infect millions worldwide. In the case of such a pandemic outbreak, direct patient interaction is handled by the medical community, composed of hospitals, medical professionals, and the policies that regulate them. The medical community is responsible not only for treating infected individuals, but preventing the spread of influenza to healthy individuals. Given this responsibility, the medical community has drafted preparedness plans laying down guidelines for action in the case of an influenza pandemic. This project reviewed these preparedness plans for hospitals in Arizona as well as reviewing the literature produced by the Department of Health and Human Services to guide these plans. The review revealed that the medical community is woefully unprepared to handle the number of infected individuals, projected to be close to 90 million. Plans are disorganized, outdated, and nonexistent. The conclusions of this thesis offer suggestions for pandemic policy improvement.
ContributorsAbboud, Alexis J (Author) / Maienschein, Jane (Thesis director) / Creath, Richard (Committee member) / O'Neil, Erica (Committee member) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor) / School of Life Sciences (Contributor)
Created2014-05
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
There is no doubt that inductive logic and inductive arguments are vital to the formation of scientific theories. This thesis questions the use of inductive inferences within the sciences. Specifically, it will examine various perspectives on David Hume's famed "problem of induction". Hume proposes that inductive inferences cannot be logically justified. Here we will explore several assessments of Hume's ideas and inductive logic in general. We will examine the views of philosophers and logicians: Karl Popper, Nelson Goodman, Larry Laudan, and Wesley Salmon. By comparing the radically different views of these philosophers it is possible to gain insight into the complex nature of making inductive inferences. First, Popper agrees with Hume that inductive inferences can never be logically justified. He maintains that the only way around the problem of induction is to rid science of inductive logic altogether. Goodman, on the other hand, believes induction can be justified in much the same way as deduction is justified. Goodman sets up a logical schema in which the rules of induction justify the particular inductive inferences. These general rules are then in turn justified by correct inferences. In this way, Goodman sets up an explication of inductive logic. Laudan and Salmon go on to provide more specific details about how the particular rules of induction should be constructed. Though both Laudan and Salmon are completing the logic schema of Goodman, their approaches are quite different. Laudan takes a more qualitative approach while Salmon uses the quantitative rules of probability to explicate induction. In the end, it can be concluded that it seems quite possible to justify inductive inferences, though there may be more than one possible set of rules of induction.
ContributorsFeddern, James William Edward (Author) / Creath, Richard (Thesis director) / Armendt, Brad (Committee member) / Department of Physics (Contributor) / Department of Military Science (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2016-05
Description
The purpose of this research is to discuss and analyze the arguments found in animal-dependent research debates that are formed from the use of speciesism and liberationism. Speciesism is often used to draw distinctions between humans and nonhuman animals in an attempt to lessen or eliminate nonhuman animals from their inclusion in the human moral scope. On the other hand, liberationism is commonly used to argue that nonhuman animals should be included in the human moral scope by claiming that certain characteristics of nonhuman animals are morally important. Although it is not possible to include every viewpoint and style of argument created through the use of these two ideologies, I believe that the two chosen texts accurately represent the arguments made by the majority of those that endorse either one. With that said, both ideologies seek to either justify or condemn certain types of human action that affect nonhuman animals. Through the analysis of the speciesist and liberationist arguments, it has become evident that both speciesism and liberationism are ultimately lacking in their ability to justify or condemn human action that affects nonhuman animals. This discovery led to the creation of a speciesist/liberationist hybrid ideology that seeks to combine the most convincing features of each while avoiding most of the issues associated with either one. The result is a new theory that is able to produce more convincing justifications in regards to how humans ought to treat nonhuman animals.
ContributorsFuller, Stephen (Author) / Creath, Richard (Thesis director) / Minteer, Ben (Committee member) / Historical, Philosophical & Religious Studies (Contributor) / School of Life Sciences (Contributor) / Dean, W.P. Carey School of Business (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2018-12
Description
The first chapter of this essay will focus primarily on the history of graffiti from what is generally understood as its origin with the first writers who used spray paint as their tools of creation up until modern times. This chapter will look at how the history has formed the general perception of this art form and how it has changed over the years. The second chapter will discuss three archetypes of graffiti seen today. These archetypes are: city funded art murals, city or privately funded freewalls, and artistic mitigations of vandalism. Each of these archetypes will be explored via multiple real world examples and we will consider how each of these examples do or do not succeed in displaying graffiti as a well regarded public art form. The third chapter will propose another archetype for creating graffiti that has not been widely realized or put into practice. The third chapter will then speculate using the knowledge from the previous existing archetypes to discuss whether or not it could be utilized in the real world effectively and a conclusion will be drawn about the methods of graffiti that are practical and effective means to create well regarded art.
ContributorsMiller, Quinn David (Author) / Creath, Richard (Thesis director) / Chew, Matthew (Committee member) / Minteer, Ben (Committee member) / School of Life Sciences (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2016-12