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Browsing by Author "McShane, Katie, advisor"

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    Are subjectivists and objectivists about well-being theorizing about the same concept?
    (Colorado State University. Libraries, 2023) Harris, Blake, author; McShane, Katie, advisor; Tropman, Elizabeth, committee member; Steger, Michael, committee member
    There are two main camps that theories of well-being fall under: "subjectivism" and "objectivism". Subjectivists hold that something can only positively affect one's well-being if one has a positive attitude toward it. Objectivists deny this and hold that some things can positively affect one's well-being irrespective of whether one has a positive attitude towards them and can even do so if one has a negative attitude towards them. Both views seem appealing and many theorists in the well-being debate attempt to capture the appeal of both views in the theories they posit. Despite this, only one can be correct; they contradict each other. Yet, neither seems satisfactory on its own since, as I argue, they fail to account for the motivations of the other. Hence, we are left with an impasse between the two that is difficult to resolve. In this thesis, I summarize the main theories of well-being and their objections in chapter one and introduce the distinction between subjectivism and objectivism and the motivations behind each. In chapter two, I summarize several theories that try to account for the motivations of both subjectivism and objectivism, with particular emphasis on "hybrid" theories, and show that they fail at their task. I finish in chapter three by motivating the impasse between subjectivism and objectivism and outlining four possible ways of resolving the impasse. I argue that three of these fail, but that the remaining way is promising. This way holds that subjectivists and objectivists are actually theorizing about two different, but similar concepts.
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    Evaluating the food system with a Noddings-style care ethic
    (Colorado State University. Libraries, 2016) Moerland, Hanna Leigh, author; McShane, Katie, advisor; Tropman, Beth, committee member; Raynolds, Laura, committee member
    To view the abstract, please see the full text of the document.
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    How does death harm the person who dies?
    (Colorado State University. Libraries, 2012) Bzdok, Andrew John, author; McShane, Katie, advisor; Cafaro, Philip, committee member; Canetto, Silvia, committee member
    The objective of this thesis is to identify the most persuasive justification for the common intuition that death is a harm for the person who dies. This goal is achieved by examining the Deprivation Theory and the Desire Thwarting Theory, which are the two most popular theories that explain how and why death harms the person who dies, and identifying what one must theoretically accept to make each theory tenable. The Desire Thwarting Theory claims that death harms the person who dies when it frustrates certain forward-looking desires, and the Deprivation Theory states that death harms the person who dies when death deprives an individual of certain goods she would have received had she not died. I argue that although the Deprivation Theory provides the most persuasive justification for the intuition that death harms the person who dies, it still requires a number of contestable theoretical commitments to make it defensible. I conclude that the Deprivation Theory provides a convincing justification for the common intuition that death is a harm for the person who dies only if one accepts the following claims: (a) that death can result in a genuine loss of future goods for the person who dies, (b) that the fact that the theory cannot provide a single evaluation of whether death is a harm for the person who dies isn't a problem for the theory, and (c) that we can either identify the time when the person who dies is worse off as a result of her death or defend the claim that the harm of death is a timeless harm.
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    Nin gii nisaa a'aw waawaashkeshii: engaging animal rights theory with Ojibwe and Cree theories of hunting ethics
    (Colorado State University. Libraries, 2023) Persinger, Corinne, author; McShane, Katie, advisor; Shockley, Kenneth, advisor; Schneider, Lindsey, committee member
    In this thesis, I call on animal ethicists working in Western traditions to reflect on deeply held assumptions, prejudices, and colonial histories that continue to marginalize not only Indigenous hunting practices, but the very theories that defend their ethical justification. Such reflection is necessary for genuine engagement to take place between Western theories and Indigenous theories of hunting ethics. This thesis can be understood as part of a larger project to clear the way for critical conversation between these different traditions. However, the scope of the thesis is limited to a particular Western theory, that is animal rights theory, and a particular version of Indigenous hunting ethics, based in reciprocity and contextualized by the hunting practices of Ojibwe and Cree cultural groups. I argue that animal rights theorists must engage with Indigenous theories of hunting ethics as a matter of moral and epistemic responsibility. This thesis contains three chapters. In the first chapter, I will motivate the claim that the persistent ignorance to Indigenous ethical theories by Western theorists—and animal rights theorists in particular–is a form of epistemic injustice. I argue that engagement with Indigenous theories by animal rights theorists is a necessary step for overcoming this injustice. In the following chapters, I attempt to motivate the theoretical importance of overcoming the injustice. In the second chapter, I offer an account of animal rights theory that emphasizes possible points of overlap with Indigenous theories. In this account, I argue that animal rights theory requires the addition of relational accounts of animal ethics to be tenable. Relational accounts leave open two substantive theoretical questions that I will take up in chapter three: first, whether relational context matters for our negative obligations; and second, the extent to which animals possess agency and power in their relationships with humans. Ojibwe and Cree hunting ethics, based in a theory of reciprocity, also center relational context for determining our obligations to animals. However, these theories respond to these open questions differently than their Western counterparts. I argue that the difference in how these theories respond to these questions illustrates why they come out so differently in their evaluation of the moral character of hunting. Western and Indigenous ethical theories appeal to quite different conceptual frameworks to assess ethical behavior within hunting relationships. Integral ethical concepts like those of taking life, harm, intentionality, and power can be understood differently when a theory of reciprocity is used to define human-animal relations, instead of the relational theories of their Western counterparts. As a result, the kinds of obligations associated with the act of taking life are different on Indigenous theories. I take these different understandings of ethically significant concepts to be at the heart of the disagreement between animal rights theory and Ojibwe and Cree theories of hunting ethics regarding the moral character of hunting. The ignorance of Western theorists to Indigenous conceptual frameworks allows them to downplay the theoretical significance of this disagreement. These theorists have an ethical and epistemic responsibility to address this ignorance.
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    The othering of pets: Palmer, Plumwood, and pet technology ethics
    (Colorado State University. Libraries, 2019) Forrest, Marielle, author; McShane, Katie, advisor; Shockley, Kenneth, committee member; Grandin, Temple, committee member
    In Chapter 1, I explore some of the central theories in the field of animal ethics, those by: Peter Singer, Tom Regan, Martha Nussbaum, and Clare Palmer. I also examine the views of Stephen Budiansky and Gary Francione in conversation with one another to consider the wrongfulness of domestication. In Chapter 2, I provide a brief historical account of pet-keeping. I then look at our current practices of keeping pets and in what ways these practices are or can be harmful. Finally, I argue that there are more subtle ways that we indirectly harm our pets, that is, through 'othering attitudes' (of polarization, homogenization, backgrounding, assimilation, and instrumentalism). These attitudes can invite harm to our pets, particularly in light of their social needs. In Chapter 3, I consider seven animal-computer interactions (ACI) and see in what ways our pets can benefit from or be harmed by them. I argue that these technologies reinforce, rather than eliminate, attitudes of othering and can, in this way, be harmful. Still, with moderation, a loving eye, and a spirit of "critical anthropomorphism," we can use ACI responsibly.
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    Unconscionability in contracts: a new test
    (Colorado State University. Libraries, 2013) Aaronson, Michael Louis, author; McShane, Katie, advisor; Kneller, Jane, committee member; Gill, Ann, committee member
    The goal of this thesis is to answer a number of unresolved, fundamental legal and moral questions about contracts. Answering these important questions will require a broad legal, applied ethical, and normative ethical analysis of historical and contemporary case law, statutory law, and legal literature. The end result will be a unified theory of unconscionability: it will capture the intent of contemporary statutory law, provide a test that consistently yields judgments of unconscionability where it ought to do so, and include plausible, well-developed normative ethical justification for the judgments yielded by the test. In Chapter 1 there will be a brief presentation of the legal historical context. We will have a look at unconscionability in statutory law, case law, and the legal literature of the previous era of unconscionability law and find that there has for a long time been broad, fundamental disagreement about the nature of unconscionability itself, and more recently, equally serious disagreement about how contemporary statutory legal attempts to define unconscionability should be interpreted and applied. In Chapter 2, we will examine and critique two contemporary attempts at legal and moral analysis of extant case and statutory law. In Chapter 3, I will take a stand on the issues discussed throughout the first two chapters, proposing a general theory of unconscionability and a two-pronged test for identifying unconscionability in contracts. The theory will capture the intent of contemporary statutory unconscionability law, explain and solve the difficulties that led to broad inconsistency in the case law we saw in Chapter 2, and lead us to a plausible test. Chapter 4 will present the normative theory that undergirds and unites both prongs of the test proposed in Chapter 3. The goal is to show how my theory of unconscionability is explained and justified within moral theory more broadly.
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    Value theory in environmental ethics and economics
    (Colorado State University. Libraries, 2020) Williams, Allison, author; McShane, Katie, advisor; Shockley, Kenneth, committee member; Fremstad, Anders, committee member
    The need for an environmental ethic is clear. Many in environmental ethics claim that an environmental ethic ought to be based on the intrinsic and/or non-anthropocentric value of nature, without consensus on a clear definition of those terms and without a clear analysis of the implications of adopting such an ethic. The purpose of this thesis is to first make sense of those different definitions and claims. Then, I describe Aldo Leopold's Land Ethic, a community-based environmental ethic outlined by Aldo Leopold, in order to contrast the different ways in which we ought to value the natural world with how we value things in economics. I argue that theories of value in economics, specifically existence value, are not compatible with nor can they capture the intrinsic, non-anthropocentric value of nature, and I propose an alternative ethic in opposition to the commodification of nature, and the relationship to the natural world formed by economics.