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The Is-Ought Gap and Policy Failure: An Examination of Tom Regan’s “The Case for Animal Rights”
Get PDFRegan’s essay makes an impassioned and reasonable argument that the problem with our use of non-human animals is not how cruelly or kindly we treat them, but that we use them at all. He examines various ethical positions on the treatment of animals and concludes that as living beings, animals have as much right to life as humans. His conclusion, however, is untenable as policy on two fronts. First, it is drastically counter to existing attitudes. Second, his argument rests on a particular notion of rights. David Hume’s “Is-Ought Gap” is relevant because, just as observable fact cannot by itself support normative principles, normative principles alone cannot translate into action. Attitudes toward – and obfuscating practices by – animal-using industries must change, but gradually or else risk rejection. Regan dismisses what he calls “contractarianism” in favour of egalitarian rights for animals, but evidence suggests otherwise. Policies and rights are effective only so long as they are acknowledged. Whatever rights animals deserve, they only receive the ones humans grant them. Changes in the treatment of animals will only come about only when and if enough people want them to – the goal is to somehow make them want to
Physiological, psychological, and performance differences between Wii fitness gaming and traditional gym exercises
Get PDFVideo gaming systems market themselves as tools for promoting physical activity or physical therapy. In this investigation, we wanted to compare the Wii console system game EA Sports Active to traditional gym exercises using five activities: basketball passing, basketball shooting, biceps curls, body squats, and jogging. Our hypotheses were that: (1) physiological demand would be greater in the gym than on the Wii, (2) psychological measures of exertion would be greater in the gym than on the Wii, and (3) performance would be poorer in the gym than on the Wii. Ten young adults participated in the study, completing all five exercises in both settings. Heart rate recordings were higher for four of the five exercises when performed in the gym versus on the Wii, though estimations of caloric expenditure in the jogging exercise did not differ between the two settings. Ratings of perceived exertion and difficulty were higher in the gym versus on the Wii for half of the exercises but not different for the remaining ones. For the basketball exercises, accuracy was consistently lower in the gym versus on the Wii. These results support use of active video gaming to ameliorate inactivity or to help in physical therapy and rehabilitation, but point out important differences between the gym versus Wii exercise that are important in determining which may be better for general exercise, skill-building, promoting recovery.Faculty Sponsor: Dr. David S. Senchin
Where is the Limit to Abduction’s Explanatory Power?
Get PDFAbduction, also known as, inference to the best explanation, is employed in factual and normative inquiry. In this paper, I answer the question: where is the limit to abduction’s explanatory power? To answer this question, I examine Hobbes’s Leviathan and Descartes’s Discourse on Method. I compare Hobbes’s empirical beliefs about human psychology and Descartes’s micro mechanical explanations with Hobbes’s discussion of religion. As a result of this analysis, I argue that there is at least one case where religion is the limit to abduction’s explanatory power, and that case is Hobbes’s discussion of religion
A Critique of Modern Agriculture and its Effect on Personhood
Get PDFThis paper outlines ways in which the alienated labor conditions of capitalism and certain technological applications in industrial agriculture contribute to the diminishing of one’s personhood through the production and consumption of industrial food. Personhood is defined as a person’s capacity to produce and consume food. The works of Karl Marx and Albert Borgmann are instrumental to the conclusions of this essay. Ultimately, the combination of Marx’s and Borgmann’s theories allow me to argue that a diminished form of personhood is the consequence of a food practice which encompasses the production and consumption of food using industrial agriculture
Embodied Art: A Merleau-Pontian Improvisation of Being in Theater
Get PDFMaurice Merleau-Ponty, in Eye & Mind, lyrically links vision and painting as modes of embodying Being. He powerfully argues that humans are bodies (rather than minds in bodies, or minds and bodies) and that vision is the primary mode of our embodied engagement with the world. He suggests that in painting, the artist re-embodies in paint on canvas that which has been first embodied in the artist’s body though his or her sight. This paper suggests that an alternate art form, theater, provides a richer physical arena for the re-embodiment of Being. In live performance, actors, singers, and dancers offer their bodies as canvases, re-creating in voice, movement, time, and space the Being of the performed piece. These living re-creations are then embodied in the audience as they watch, in reciprocal emotion and physical sensation.Editor\u27s Note: Honorable Mention Paper, 17th Annual Pacific University Undergraduate Philosophy Conference (2013
The Role of Religious Reasons in a Liberal Democracy
Get PDFThere is a long tradition of political thought that takes the use of religious reasons for supporting public policy to be a violation of one’s duties as a citizen. I refer to this as the ‘liberal position.’ But is this line of thought correct? In this paper, I examine three philosophers’ views on the matter, before staking out my own. First, I examine the position of John Rawls, the most influential contemporary heir of the liberal tradition. Then, I look towards Nicholas Wolterstorff for his charges against Rawls and this tradition, as well as his own view of the duties of citizens. Thirdly, I use Richard Rorty to examine how an antifoundationalist (like Wolterstorff) might respond to Wolterstorff in defense of the liberal position. Finally, I offer my own position, which uses the virtue of agreeableness to strike a balance between Wolterstorff and Rorty. The thrust of my argument is that this debate should transfer from one concerned with “religious” versus “secular” reasons to one concerned with fundamentalist versus pragmatist attitudes
Concrete Individuals and the Failure of the Trope Bundle Solution
Get PDFWhat account can we give of the nature of the individuality of concrete particulars that allows many properties to inhere in them? Campbell argues that concrete particulars are bundles of tropes, or of instances of qualities. It is argued that we should individuate tropes spatiotemporally, as Schaffer suggests we should, and that such a spatiotemporal individuation principle makes Campbell’s model require that the Identity of Indiscernibles be a necessary truth, which he rejects
The Epistemological Significance and Implications of Belief Polarization
Get PDFA principal assumption in the epistemology of disagreement is that we, as rational subjects, assess evidence neutrally in order to justify our beliefs. However, the existence of the phenomenon of Belief Polarization threatens the validity of this basis. Since its introduction into philosophical discussion in Thomas Kelly’s paper titled, Disagreement, Dogmatism, and Belief Polarization, the phenomenon of Belief Polarization has been thoughtlessly overlooked. Given serious consideration, there seem to be widespread epistemological implications due to the existence of Belief Polarization. Specifically, Belief Polarization brings to light significant claims about the nature of justification and belief forming processes, specifically concerning evidence gathering. As this paper will argue, given awareness of Belief Polarization, rational subjects should be less confident in their justification of belief forming processes. In other words, rational subjects should not be fully confident in the objectively based truth-value of their beliefs
Dismantling the Race Label
Get PDFIn racial identification, certain known characteristics about a person, usually visible, morphological ones, are picked out and taken to signify the presence of other characteristics which are unknown or not visible and which mark a person as similar to or different from a particular set of people. Race, used in this way, often produces negative, discriminatory behavior where group identities are placed in relation to each other in the form of a hierarchy. This paper aims to synthesize Linda Alcoff’s descriptive accounts of race as an extant ontological category and of social identity as a location within a complex network of identifications with Anthony Appiah’s criticism of racialism and Sally Haslanger’s ameliorative definition of racialized identities to show that race, as it stands, is a reductively misrepresentative way of ascribing identity. By dismantling race as a concept in use we will better understand the actual complexity of social identity, and we will cultivate more justice in social relations
