Over thirty years after the passage of the landmark Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), the meaning of disability accessibility and justification for accessibility measures remains unclear. Connecting work in social and political philosophy to scholarship in disability studies and disability law, this project offers an account of what access is and why access is often owed to disabled people. This project argues that disability access is necessary both for the same reasons access is considered necessary for the non-disabled, and for counteracting harmful narratives about disability and disabled people. These narratives and stereotypes originate from a particular ideology, termed “the ideology of abledness.” This ideology informs the way policies are formed and the ways they are received; it also explains why considerations of disability are often absent in general policies, and why unique provisions for disability accessibility are necessary. In its effort to clarify disability access, the project tackles difficult questions such as the nature of accessibility, issues of cost and who is obligated to pay for accessibility measures, how all people with disabilities can be included in a social contract theory, and how disability accessibility relates to and can even expand the way non-discrimination is understood.

Technology has a representation problem. While, in recent years, much more attention has been given to how developing technologies exacerbate social injustices and the marginalization of historically oppressed groups, discussions surrounding the representation of marginalized voices are still in a somewhat nascent state. In pursuing a future where underrepresented groups are no longer underrepresented (or misrepresented) in technological developments, I use this thesis project to draw attention to how gendered technologies are said to represent women as a class. To frame the sort of representation problem I have in mind here, I explore the dynamics of representing others as being a certain way, how individuals can be justified in their practice of representing others as being a certain way, and how such representations might produce harm. I draw special attention to particularly controversial technologies such as Sophia the Robot and sexbots in order to address issues of accountability and dehumanization. I end with some, perhaps, encouraging notes about how the sort of responsible design practices outlined in my project might open the door for some compelling liberatory developments.

The American government does not come without its fair share of problems, though it will often utilize different forms of propaganda in order to distract from those problems. This thesis sought to expose the Peace Corps as one of the most overlooked, but successful, forms of America’s propaganda. Research questions created for this study are as follows: What were the driving forces behind the Peace Corps’ creation? What are the qualifications necessary for a host country to partner with the Peace Corps, and what relevant assistance did the Peace Corps provide for these host countries? Using sources that retold the Peace Corps’ history, spoke on hegemony, and imperialism, as well as statements from Peace Corps volunteers, the study conducted over months answered the questions above. Results revealed that the Peace Corps ultimately provided more benefit for the United States than the host countries and is a modern-day example of America’s soft-power imperialism.

Moral philosophy should create concepts and formulate arguments to articulate and assess the statements and behaviors of the morally devoted and the traditions (such as religious and ethical systems) founded by the morally devoted. Many moral devotees and their traditions advocate love as the ideal to live by. Therefore, moral philosophy needs an account of love as an ideal. I define an ideal as an instrument for organizing a life and show that this definition is more adequate than previous definitions. Ideals can be founded on virtues, and I show that love is a virtue.

I define love as a composite attitude whose elements are benevolence, consideration, perception of moment (importance or significance), and receptivity. I define receptivity as the ability to be with someone without imposing careless or compulsive expectations. I argue that receptivity curbs the excesses and supplements the defects of the other elements. Love as an ideal is often understood as universal love.

However, there are three problems with universal love: it could be too demanding, it could prevent intimacy and special relationships, and it could require a person to love their abuser. I argue that love can be extended to all human beings without posing unacceptable risks, once love is correctly defined and the ideal correctly understood.

Because of the revelations of ecology and the ongoing transformation of sensibilities about the value of the nonhuman, love should be extended to the nonhuman. I argue that love can be given to the nonhuman in the same way it is to the human, with appropriate variations. But how much of the nonhuman would an ideal direct one to love? I argue for two limits to universal love: it does not make sense to extend it to nonliving things, and it can be extended to all living things. I show that loving all living things does not depend on whether they can reciprocate, and I argue that it would not prevent one from living a recognizably human life.

According to hedonism about happiness, all and only enjoyable experiences are the basic constituents of one’s happiness, and these experiences contribute to one’s happiness just to the extent that they have a greater intensity or duration. After defending this view, I show that it must be amended to count as an equally plausible theory of what constitutes one’s well-being. I then present two such amended versions of hedonism about well-being. The first, which I call objective hedonism, adds the claim that the objective worth of the things one enjoys also makes a difference to the extent to which an enjoyable experience contributes to one’s well-being. The second, which I call reliabilist hedonism, adds the claim that one’s evaluative intuitions about which things are good for one track which things have proven themselves to one to reliably lead to enjoyable experience. I conclude that reliabilist hedonism constitutes a revival of hedonism about well-being.

The term disability inherently suggests a lack of ability that, if corrected or mitigated, can—and should—be turned from a negative into a positive. People with disabilities have embraced the term out of a sense of unity and pride, but we are not willing to embrace the underlying social attitudes that go along with it. Activists in the Disability Rights Movement continue fighting for equal rights, while academics in the field of disability studies produce work that examines and elucidates disability as a complex socio-political category. Still, unlike other social categories, disability remains outside the scope of mainstream consideration beyond cures, accommodations, and inspiration. This paper presents disability from different angles with the goal of expanding the reader’s conception of the topic and encouraging further discussion in mainstream circles. I start with a personal narrative of my life as a disabled person and discuss how I began to see abstract connections between my experiences and those of people in other marginalized social groups. In subsequent sections, I examine the following: theoretical models of disability and their practical implications; some ways in which stigma surrounding disability prevents progress; how the concept of disability has been used against social groups throughout history, causing them to work towards distancing themselves from the danger and unconsciously legitimizing some underlying causes of marginalization, and whether disability should be a part of the future. I close by explaining how general support in the realm of higher education offers people with disabilities the best hope for a path forward. Although this paper is constructed using philosophical insights, the writing style and structure are not representative of the discipline.

PTD Abuse Abstract
In this project I hope to educate people in the area of pre-trial detainee abuse. I define the terms, explain the problems, give information on how the issue has evolved in recent decades. I explain my interest in the issue and give background of my involvement. There is special focus on New York City, specifically Rikers Island and the Stop and Frisk program engaged in by police there. There is also focus on Maricopa County and Joe Arpaio due to the incredible amount of abuse suffered by people at the hands of Maricopa County Sheriff’s jail personnel over twenty four years of Arpaio’s tenure. There is a section on mental illness and disabilities whose sufferers are especially susceptible to abuse. I report on law enforcement abuses and the evolution of court decisions that allow officers more opportunity for abuse and the ability to deceive people they are investigating. There is an Innocence Project report that details law enforcement expanding the ability to deceive people they are investigating, to lying to the courts and during testimony. My hope is to educate more people to the problems I describe. I also report on changes being made to alleviate the problems.

In their criticism of various approaches to upbringing and related American family law jurisprudence, liberal theorists tend to underweight the interests of parents in directing the development of children’s values. Considered through the lens of T.M. Scanlon’s contractualism, providing a good upbringing is not a matter of identifying children’s “best interests” or acting in accordance with overriding end-state principles. Rather, children should be raised in accordance with principles for the general regulation of behavior that no one could reasonably reject as a basis for informed, unforced general agreement. The process of ascertaining such principles requires an understanding of relevant values; a good upbringing is what children receive when parents properly value their children, enabling them to appropriately recognize what it is that they have reason to do given the roles that they play. By developing the account of upbringing hinted at in Scanlon’s contractualist monograph, What We Owe to Each Other, this project identifies and responds to some common mistakes in contemporary liberal theorizing on childhood, suggests that contractualism yields a more plausible account of upbringing than alternative approaches, and along the way identifies some implications of contractualism for public policy where individuals properly value the children of others in their community.

This paper examines the strength of a recent argument made against democracy. The notion of epistocracy, a system of government where the wise or the knowers rule, has garnered some attention of late. These theories of epistocracy have traditionally struggled with questions of political legitimacy and authority. In Against Democracy, Jason Brennan articulates an alternative theory for epistocracy which may prove more promising. Brennan argues instead that democracy faces objections of political legitimacy which epistocracy avoids because democracy either harms or violates rights as a result of granting political power to the incompetent. This negative argument against democracy hopes to make epistocracy the preferable option in comparison. I will argue, however, that if we take this comparative approach then we ought to prefer democracy---or, rather, democratic reform---over epistocracy as the best solution in addressing the concerns which Brennan raises. It is not enough to merely point to flaws in democracy. For this argument to be successful, it must also be shown that epistocracy avoids those flaws at an acceptable cost. I claim that, upon examination, epistocratic theories fail to make this case. Rather, it is evident from this examination that there are various institutional mechanisms available with which democracy may manage the risks and harms which might arise from imbuing the incompetent with political power. This in turn suggests ways by which we might reform democracy to achieve similar results hoped for by epistocrats without the effort, risk, and cost of tearing down and rebuilding our fundamental political institutions.