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Impact of professional women athletes\u27 media representations on collegiate women athletes
Get PDFThere is a lack of representation of women athletes from professional to collegiate sports in U.S. media. For example, Fink (2015) studied the inequities between male and women athletes to understand the harmful nature of the implication of these inequities. Other social constructs arise with the objectification of women athletes. Harrison and Fredrickson (2013) found a connection between aging of adolescent girls to women and an increase of self-objectification. They explained their results using Objectification Theory, which teaches young women to “regard themselves in an objectified gaze” from adolescence. The purpose of this study was to examine women collegiate athletes’ thoughts and feelings about the ways their elite representatives are presented within sports media. Women collegiate athletes viewed images displaying four different types of identity portrayals, and were then interviewed about their perceptions of the images. Each participant asked to answer five questions, and that data was analyzed using open coding methods
Aesthetic Bliss: How Vladimir Nabokov Uses Unreliable Narration in Lolita to Create Better Readers
Get PDFIn his most famous novel, Lolita, Vladimir Nabokov created one of the most intricate, memorable, and maddening narrators in literature. By firmly positioning Humbert Humbert as a mis-handler of fact and purveyor of his own skewed perspective, Nabokov encourages the perceptive reader to reject the narrator and actively seek out the truth of the story for themselves. Subtle yet undeniable clues (such as holes in the narrative arguments, clear exaggerations, and logical fallacies) saturate this story, undermining the credibility of the first-person perspective and pointing toward its deception. Once we as the audience recognize that Nabokov is guiding us away from his grasp, we are free to wander through the world the author has created and interpret its meaning for ourselves, and as such, evolve into more attentive and thoughtful readers of fiction
The Strength of a Smile: Duchenne Smiles Improve Advertisement and Product Evaluations
Get PDFConsumer research recognizes the well-established effect of positive emotions on consumers, i.e. consumers in positive moods tend to give positive evaluations of products and advertisements. Recently, researchers have investigated the use of Duchenne smiles (genuine smiles) in advertisements to evoke positive emotions and lead to positive evaluations. Duchenne smiles are identified by the activation of both the zygomaticus major muscle (which pulls up the corners of the mouth) and the orbicularis oculi muscles (which surround the eye and result in the crow’s feet wrinkles). Peace, Miles, and Johnston (2006) demonstrated that including Duchenne smiles in mock print advertisements affects viewers’ perceptions of the ad and featured product, resulting in more positive evaluations as compared to neutral and non-Duchenne advertisements. The current research expands on Peace et al. and examines the effects of type of smile displayed in mock print advertisements that feature inexpensive and expensive products alike. Participants rated pairs of advertisements created by the researchers. Participants significantly preferred Duchenne smiling advertisements over non Duchenne and also showed significant preference in their likelihood to purchase products in Duchenne advertisements. A potential mimicry association mechanism is discussed, as well as practical implications for advertisers
Higher and Lower Pleasures and our Moral Psychology
Get PDF[From the introduction]John Stuart Mill’s treatise, Utilitarianism, takes the standard concept of utilitarianism, and tries to disentangle itself from the problems that plagued earlier utilitarian theories. One of the essential moves in order to do so is to distinguish between high and low pleasures. This distinction, for example, would not categorize an intellectual pleasure, such as reading poetry, to be similar in pleasure to a sensory pleasure, like eating a really good cupcake. By creating the divide between higher and lower pleasures, Mill assures us that the intellectual pursuit gives to a subject, not a higher quantity of pleasure, but a higher quality. These levels are not reducible to each other: eating a cupcake, no matter how intensely delicious it is, or how many you eat, will never be able to achieve the quality of reading poetry.In breaking down Mill’s reasons for this move, we may look at two sets of motivations for distinguishing higher and lower pleasures: one negative and one positive. The negative account shows what Mill was trying to resist: both to distinguish his utilitarianism from earlier utilitarian theories and so to avoid categorization in such a way which makes his theory susceptible to the general criticisms of utilitarian theories. The positive account shows what he gains from this distinction: in full, it turns out to be a quite advanced moral psychology, placed from the perspective of the individual. [...
An Argument for a Reasons-Based Doxastic Voluntarism
Get PDFIntentional action is usually taken to be something that is paradigmatically under the direct control of our will. Belief-formation, on the other hand, is usually taken to be involuntary and not under our control. I, however, wish to argue that we have the same kind of control over what we beliefs we form as we do under what actions we intend, or more specifically, what intentions we form. In order to argue for this, I give what is sometimes called an “analogy argument” for doxastic voluntarism. I do this by first assuming and spelling out an account of intention-formation according to which action is a reasons-based activity, an activity we engage in by responding to reasons. According to this model of action, the will is the capacity to respond to the reasons we believe we have. I then assume that belief-formation is also a reasons-based activity and thus that it allows for the will to play the same role as it does in intention-formation. I end by spelling out how the way I construct the analogy escapes some of the usual objections analogy arguments and doxastic voluntarism faces
Defending a Dialetheist Response to the Liar\u27s Paradox
Get PDFThe Liar’s paradox stands as one of the longest standing and most discussed problems in philosophical history. In this paper, I first briefly set up the requirements on a language needed for that language to have the expressive power to construct a Liar sentence and show how the Liar sentence leads to the inconsistency and triviality of said language (if it is a logically classical language). I will then quickly set up and reject responses to the Liar that keep a classical logic as the model logic for natural language (which I will take to be English here), and argue for a dialetheist response to the Liar which endorses a three-valued, para-consistent logic. A dialetheist view claims that some pairs of sentences and the negation of that very same sentence are true, and a para-consistent logic is any logic in which ex contradictione quodlibet (The inference from P and ~P to anything) fails. Such a solution, I think, provides a viable route to defusing the Liar and keeping the expressive power of natural language
The Possibility of Group Ethics: A Defense and New Approach
Get PDFThe first part of this paper discusses the two primary theories that have attempted to provide groups with moral status. By examining their respective methods for assigning moral rights to a group, I elucidate problems in both accounts, showing them insufficient in their attempt to defend group ethics. The corporate account establishes a group identity entirely separable from the identities of its individuals. However, this allows the rights of the individuals to clash with those of the group. The collective account asserts that the group identity, and the only source of a group’s moral status, lies in the sum of the rights of its members, creating a group-as-a-whole. This, however, poses the practical problem of changing numbers within a group, and shifts in membership. I introduce my own group identity theory, the extension account, which provides the possibility of a group that can hold rights by virtue of its being made of autonomous individuals who all bear moral standing and are subject to the moral responsibilities relevant to their membership within the group. The extension account establishes an identity of the group-itself, separate from its members, but the origin of its moral status is extended directly from the individuals who comprise it
Safe Sex for Sale: Is Legalizing Sex Work the Answer to Sex Trafficking in the Netherlands?
Get PDFThis analysis of Dutch prostitution and trafficking policies looks at the historical background of the current policies and at what effect they have on sex trafficking in the Netherlands. For many years the Dutch have maintained a position of tolerance (gedogen) in regards to prostitution, as long as it did not cause a large public disturbance or health issue. However in response to the globalization of a growing sex industry, and the increasing amount of sex trafficking, the Netherlands has adopted a unique harm-reduction approach by way of legalizing and regulating voluntary sex work. This follows from the idea that one cannot regulate what is forbidden. The author argues that, although the policies of legalization and regulation create safer work environments and provide rights to voluntary sex workers, the illegal underground sex industry continues to thrive. Efforts to prevent sex trafficking and prosecute traffickers are impeded by insufficient funding and law enforcement personnel, as well as inconsistent standards of regulation across municipalities. The author suggests a combination of policies that would place the responsibility on sex workers’ clients to ensure the sexual services they are receiving are legal and from a voluntary sex worker. This, along with increased funding and uniform standards, will help better regulate the Dutch sex industry.Faculty Sponsor: Dr. Christopher Care
Value Theory for Virtue Ethics: Rational, Objective, and Human Criteria
Get PDFThis paper is an attempt at framing Virtue Ethics in a manner that it is not derivative of either deontological or utilitarian ethics. The purpose in doing this is to avoid certain pitfalls in the other two approaches, and the argument hinges on a holistic treatment of values in a social community, as well as the role of practical rationality as the means to edify such a system. There follows an examination of John Dancy and John McDowell’s work on this, with a critical perspective on where these clarifications have currency, and where these fall short