UMD Theses and Dissertations
Permanent URI for this collectionhttp://hdl.handle.net/1903/3
New submissions to the thesis/dissertation collections are added automatically as they are received from the Graduate School. Currently, the Graduate School deposits all theses and dissertations from a given semester after the official graduation date. This means that there may be up to a 4 month delay in the appearance of a given thesis/dissertation in DRUM.
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Item The Defeasibility of Rights(2024) Gomez, Cody; Horty, John; Philosophy; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Consider the following puzzle. Presumably, you and I both have an equal right to life. But what happens if I try to kill you, and you kill me in self-defense? By most accounts, you did something morally permissible by killing me in this scenario. But, if killing me is permissible, then what happened to the initially granted right to life we both started out with? There is currently significant debate over how to explain this situation. Some have argued that my violent transgressions altogether forfeit my initial right. Due to my actions, I no longer have the right to life at all. Others have claimed that while I still generally have the right to life, this scenario satisfies criteria for a built-in exception to that standing right: I have the right in other cases, but not this one. Finally, others have suggested that I maintain my right to life in this scenario, but that it takes a lower priority in comparison to the right of the defendant, i.e., it is overridden. While the differences between these understandings of rights may appear subtle, they have drastically different implications. How we solve this puzzle affects how we adjudicate apparent conflicts of rights, how we make sense of what is owed when rights are intruded upon, and how rights function within our broader ethical and legal theories.In this dissertation, I develop a model of the last of these positions. To substantiate my view, I offer a precise model of the defeasibility of rights—situated in non-monotonic/default logic, a kind of non-classical logic—and highlight its strengths against competing views. Specifically, I show that this new schema not only salvages intuitions about infringement, but also prevents the unwieldy proliferation of rights. This is an especially desirable outcome, as it avoids blurring the line between rights and other important normative considerations. The first paper, Hohfeldian Conceptions of Rights and Rights Proliferation, argues that competing theories allow for wild proliferation of rights by adopting some form of the “correlativity doctrine,” wherein myriad duties and permissions are equivalent to rights, e.g., an act of charity no longer seems charitable if the recipient has “a right” to aid. The second paper, Rights as Defaults remedies this by rejecting the correlativity doctrine in favor of my Rights-as-Defaults Model. Using US free speech case law and work in default logic, I argue that fundamental rights are best understood as modifiable collections of defeasible generalizations. This model allows the right to free speech and its protections to accommodate new cases without building long lists of exceptions into the rights themselves while avoiding proliferation. Finally, the third paper, Revising the Right to do Wrong, applies this model to the question: do we have a moral right to do wrong? Do I have a moral right to offend a stranger even if I am required not to? I claim that there is no need for a standalone “right to do wrong” because understanding rights as defeasible means that any right can be overridden (or override competing considerations). I show how it is not paradoxical to say I have the right to offend you even though I, all-things-considered, should not, and even if we think interference would be justified.Item Moral Transformation in Theory, Practice, and Application(2024) Good, Michael David; Singppurwalla, Rachel; Philosophy; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)This three-paper dissertation explores challenges to moral transformation and moral development. The first two papers explore puzzles that challenge whether moral transformation is possible in the way it is usually conceived. In the first paper, I address the issue of whether it is possible to rationally choose to morally transform. Recently, Laurie Paul has argued that it is impossible to rationally choose to have what she calls a transformative experience. I argue that moral transformation is a species of transformative experience and also, against Paul, that it is possible to rationally choose to morally transform. In the second paper, I address a challenge to the process of moral development. According to Aristotle and others, one becomes virtuous by acting as the virtuous person acts. But how is this possible if one is not already virtuous? I argue that it is, but one must first practice habituating the practical attitudes (i.e. the beliefs and desire) of the virtuous person. In this way the self-controlled person and the weak-willed (or akratic) person can grow in virtue. Additionally, I provide practical exercises—types of spiritual disciplines and moral drills—to help learners shape their practical attitudes. In the final paper, I explore an instance where moral development is disrupted. More specifically I show how moral injury interrupts and causes dysfunction within one’s character, making further transformation towards virtue impossible. I then identify strategies and tactics to inoculate people, especially soldiers, from moral injury—what I call developing the virtue of moral resilience—thereby safeguarding their path to moral development.Item A Multifaceted Quantification of Bias in Large Language Models(2023) Sotnikova, Anna; Daumé III, Hal; Applied Mathematics and Scientific Computation; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Language models are rapidly developing, demonstrating impressive capabilities in comprehending, generating, and manipulating text. As they advance, they unlock diverse applications across various domains and become increasingly integrated into our daily lives. Nevertheless, these models, trained on vast and unfiltered datasets, come with a range of potential drawbacks and ethical issues. One significant concern is the potential amplification of biases present in the training data, generating stereotypes and reinforcing societal injustices when language models are deployed. In this work, we propose methods to quantify biases in large language models. We examine stereotypical associations for a wide variety of social groups characterized by both single and intersectional identities. Additionally, we propose a framework for measuring stereotype leakage across different languages within multilingual large language models. Finally, we introduce an algorithm that allows us to optimize human data collection in conditions of high levels of human disagreement.Item CONSTRUCTING OUR MORAL WORLD: AGENCY, TELEOLOGY, AND KORSGAARD(2023) Fyfe, Andrew Thomas; Kerstein, Samuel; Philosophy; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Kantian ethicists maintain that morality applies to all agents irrespective of an agent’s particular circumstances, interests, or concerns. That is, morality applies to an agent categorically rather than hypothetically. Kantian ethics attempts to prove this categoricity by deriving morality from the constitutive conditions of action. If such an argument could be made to work, then morality would follow from the constitutive preconditions or “logic” of agency and thereby apply categorically to all agents regardless of unique eccentricities concerning an agent’s particular circumstances or interests. As a result, an argument for Kantian ethics typically adheres to the following formula: (1) providing a theory of agency that (2) entails that all agents are committed to a Kantian ethical outlook. My focus in this dissertation is one of these arguments for Kantian ethics. Specifically, the argument of Christine Korsgaard. I cannot fully defend her argument here in its entirety, but with this dissertation I hope to provide the background work developing the necessary theory of agency in order for Korsgaard’s argument for Kantian ethics to succeed. Specifically, I aim to put forward, develop, and defend the sort of non-standard, teleological theory of agency upon which Korsgaard’s argument for Kantian ethics crucially depends. Moreover, with this dissertation I aim to attack the more widely accepted Davidsonian, causalist theory of agency which Korsgaard’s Aristotelian-Wittegenstienian-Anscombian teleological theory of agency opposes and I argue we should adopt instead.Item CODE ME A GOOD REASON: JOSEPH WEIZENBAUM AND A RHETORIC OF ETHICAL AI(2021) Yang, Misti Hewatt; Pfister, Damien S; Communication; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Joseph Weizenbaum was a Massachusetts Institute of Technology professor often credited with creating the first chatbot, or automated computer conversationalist, in 1966. He named it ELIZA. Ten years later, however, he wrote Computer Power and Human Reason: From Judgment to Calculation, a book questioning the ethics of natural language processing, AI, and instrumental reason. This dissertation presents Weizenbaum as an early 20th century rhetorical theorist of computation. With an understanding of rhetoric as the material means for generating good reasons for living together, I articulate how Weizenbaum’s rhetorical interventions around the early development of computational culture can inform the ethics of engineering broadly and the development of AI specifically. The first chapter provides an overview of my historical and theoretical framework. The second chapter starts with Weizenbaum’s childhood and ends with the release of ELIZA. The third chapter chronicles his growing disillusionment with computers in society in the context of the Vietnam War. The final two chapters are dedicated to the book and reactions from a prominent figure in the history of AI, John McCarthy. Informed by Weizenbaum, I recuperate rhetoric as a practice of reason composed of technē that requires phronêsis in order to be realized in its full ethical potential. I argue that recognizing the practice of rhetoric inherent in engineering and ethics can better equip engineers and the public to manage scientific and technological uncertainty with the care necessary for a humane future.Item Flip-Flops, Double Standards, and Other Political Sins: A Citizen's Guide to Hypocrisy in Politics(2020) Stonerook, Jason Port; Soltan, Karol; Government and Politics; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)People detest hypocrisy, and one of the reasons people hold politics in such low regard is that politics appears rife with hypocrisy. The proliferation of hypocrisy in politics can leave many feeling disenchanted and cynical about political affairs. Yet even those with a strong aversion to political hypocrisy are likely to admit there are occasions when an act that has been characterized as hypocritical is actually acceptable in politics. In some cases, the offense of hypocrisy may not be very serious, or conditioned by circumstances; in other cases, the accusation may not even be valid. This study examines the question of when hypocrisy is more or less acceptable in politics. This issue is explored through a series of case studies drawn from events that occurred in American politics between 2014-2016, an era characterized by high political polarization, high-stakes showdowns between congressional Republicans and the Democratic administration of President Barack Obama, the 2016 presidential primaries, and 2016 presidential election between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump. The study is organized by type, with a focus on basic violations of principle; logical inconsistencies; double standards involving partisan competition; discrepancies between the public affairs of public officials and their private lives; and flip-flops. The study finds that the most useful and powerful accusations of hypocrisy are those that effectively assert that a political figure has inappropriately prioritized narrow partisan concerns over a broader commitment to principles related to democratic norms, the exercise of civic virtue, and public-spiritedness.Item “WHAT ARE YOU GOING TO TAKE FROM ME?” CONSIDERATIONS FOR DEVELOPING A TAILORED COMMUNITY CENTERED HUMAN SUBJECTS AND RESEARCH PROTECTIONS AND RESEARCH ETHICS WORKSHOP(2020) Jordan, Margaret; Franzini, Luisa; Public and Community Health; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Research exploitation is a topic often relegated to history books and introductory ethics courses with the implication that these insidious practices could never thrive in today’s enlightened and humanistic world. While much progress has been made in the standards and oversight of research projects, participation in research is not a risk-free endeavor, and every protection available to participants should be made readily accessible. While many ethical consideration trainings exist for investigators and their teams, trainings that focus on the experience and rights of the participant are lacking. In this literature review and lesson plan development, the author outlines important considerations around research participation and best practices for building a workshop and provides a suggested lesson plan based on collected literature.Item American Hospitality: The Politics of Conditionality in Twentieth-Century U.S. Fiction(2020) Gleich, Lewis S; Mallios, Peter L; English Language and Literature; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)American Hospitality rereads the canon of American literature by focusing attention on the centrality of hospitality to the twentieth-century American literary imagination. It argues that twentieth-century U.S. authors employ scenes of hospitality (scenes of welcoming and withholding, of invitation and rejection, of accommodation and imposition) and figures of hospitality (hosts and guests, strangers and trespassers, homes and thresholds, gifts and reciprocations) for three specific purposes: first, to reproduce dominant American discourses of hospitality; second, to critique these same discourses; and third, to model an alternative ethics of hospitality. Faced with the closing of the western frontier, rapid increases in immigration, the growing need to provide assistance to large segments of the population, an escalating call to secure and police the national borders, and the widespread demand to make public accommodations in all parts of the country more hospitable to racialized others, U.S. authors during the twentieth century utilized discourses of hospitality to reflect on the effects that sweeping historical changes were having on the nation’s ability to remain hospitable to peoples both inside and outside its borders. In examining discourses of hospitality in twentieth-century U.S. fiction, American Hospitality makes three principal contributions to scholarship. First, it opens the canon of American literature to reconstruction by tracing the central importance of scenes of hospitality across a wide range of twentieth-century American texts and genres, from highly canonical texts like Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath and Faulkner’s Absalom, Absalom! to less canonical texts like Zitkala-Ša’s Old Indian Legends and Louise Erdrich and Michael Dorris’s The Crown of Columbus. Second, it expands on existing work on the subject of American exceptionalism by showing how American exceptionalist narratives rely heavily on scenes and figures of hospitality to justify and disavow acts of exclusion, dispossession, exploitation, and violence. Third, it lays the foundation for theorizing an alternative ethics of American hospitality. Modeled by the texts featured in American Hospitality, this alternative ethics, which I term affirmative hospitality, has four core principles: recognition of the conditional nature of all hospitality exchanges, affirmation of the singularity of the individual, accommodation, and deliberation.Item EL LUGAR DEL LECTOR: UN RECORRIDO A PARTIR DE TEXTOS DE OSVALDO LAMBORGHINI, MANUEL PUIG Y WASHINGTON CUCURTO(2020) Bartis, Sebastian; Quintero-Herencia, Juan Carlos; Spanish Language and Literature; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)This dissertation stems from a challenge posed by Argentine writer and poet Osvaldo Lamborghini in a 1980 interview. He affirmed that instead of denouncing or lamenting oppressive practices and discourses, his job was to showcase the ways we are involved intrinsically in those practices, not as victims but as accomplices or tormentors. As readers we are accustomed to fictional representations of injustice and oppression; they scandalize or hurt while also comforting us with the idea that we’re fair and stand on the right side. What Lamborghini’s narrative cancels is the position of the reader as a witness who would learn about injustice to eventually amend it. With this in mind, this dissertation traces an arch spanning the 1920s and the five following decades, allowing us to read under a different light narratives on work, family, and state in Argentine writers Roberto Mariani, Leonidas Barletta, Horacio Quiroga and Roberto Arlt. Lamborghini’s texts are not alone in affirming that violence is not outside the law but rather at its core. The dissertation compares how the novels of Manuel Puig, one of Lamborghini’s contemporaries, also insist on the same ethical task. Both Lamborghini and Puig present the desolation that arises from realizing that the violence present in our laws and discourses is experienced at the same time as absurdities, confusion, and ineludible fatalities. In the final section, the dissertation examines writer Washington Cucurto’s strategy to subvert the mainstream narrative about marginalization in Buenos Aires during the 1990’s. Expanding on Lamborghini’s ethical task, Cucurto subverts the middle-class reader's expectations with his novels. His works operate as a productive deviation both from the pathologization of the marginals and their depiction as defenseless doomed beings. Furthermore, they contest the symbolic and spatial demarcation between the center and the margins to show the centrality of those groups and spaces labeled as marginal.Item OVERCOMING NON-COOPERATION: DESIGNING A PATENT SYSTEM FOR THE PUBLIC(2019) Leaderman, Arthur Isaac; Soltan, Karol E; Government and Politics; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Patents allocate power by assigning exclusive property rights to persons who claim to have discovered new scientific or technical art. Accordingly, infringers can be treated like trespassers. In a longstanding theoretical quarrel, some insist that these exclusive rights serve society as incentives to innovation and as just rewards for inventors. Others counter that learning is socially generated and that intangible ideas should not be privately rationed. Theory aside, the institutional facts are polycentric and modulated. While a dominant regime of codes and treaties indeed protects exclusionary property in ideas, several enduring exceptions (subregimes) counter patent exclusivity. Regulations in the technology domains of environment, energy, pesticides, plant genetic resources, and some pharmaceuticals, for example, sometimes set aside strict exclusionary norms and force a patent holder to include others in a semi-commons of cooperative sharing. This dissertation observes that the polycentricity and variability in the patent system expose resistance to exclusionary property rights in ideas. The resistance is stable and can inspire an institutional redesign that brings inclusive norms into dominance, without forfeit of reasonable social and material rewards for inventors. It further challenges the two prevailing modes of justification for the dominant exclusionary norms. Utilitarian or welfare-maximizing justifications for the exclusionary norms are shown to be both multifarious and conflicting. At the same time, non-consequentialist justifications, under the banner of natural rights for the inventor, stumble because patents can be assigned arbitrarily, waste the resources of non-patent holders, and constrain society’s collective liberties to expand knowledge. This study also supports a “proof of concept” for an alternative, inclusive patent system that 1) operates without prohibitory injunctions; 2) extends licenses-of-right that compensate inventions without deadweight losses; 3) opens application and examination procedures for better patent quality; and 4) expands private ordering of disputes to lower transaction costs. This inclusive alternative is hardly utopian: the aforementioned subregimes significantly validate the practicality of cooperative, non-exclusive norms.
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