This work has two major goals. The first is to reframe the problem of political authority from its Conservative framing to a Reformist framing. This change creates a new benchmark for the success of a theory. Rather than justifying a pre-existing intuition, a theory can be successful if it could establish political authority whenever the state itself or an individual’s relationship to it changes. This change also shifts the focus from the state’s right to rule to moral housekeeping. In other words, the main goal is not to see when the state can use coercion against its citizens but rather to determine what political obligations citizens could have under different scenarios so that citizens can more accurately keep track of their moral reasons for action. The second major goal is to call into question epistemic theories of democratic authority through a critical examination of David Estlund’s theory of normative consent. Normative consent cannot establish political authority. Even granting that it could, normative consent would bind individuals to epistemic procedures rather than democratic procedures given that epistemic procedures better solve the moral problems that generate normative consent. However, this then raises worries from the public reason perspective that epistemic procedures would impose a procedure on some citizens which they could reject from a qualified position. To overcome this worry, it is shown that epistemic procedures based on reducing the power of the ignorant rather than raising the power of the experts are not open to such qualified rejection, and democratic procedures in the real world will do no better than a coin flip at selecting correct policies. In the end, one branch of epistemic conceptions of democratic authority are proven untenable.

It is my position that Kendrick Lamar takes a journey over the course of his album “To Pimp a Butterfly” (TPAB) that is similar to the journey taken by the prisoner up and out of the cave described by Socrates in the Republic. Using the structure and ideas of the Republic, I will provide a novel interpretation of the album that highlights Lamar’s transformation and development. The general lesson that I have learned by connecting these two works is that becoming a better person is a difficult and continuous process but also a fulfilling one. First, I will provide some points of context from the Republic and TPAB that are relevant to my argument. Second, I will identify the three stages of the cave prisoner’s ascent out of the cave and Lamar’s escape from Compton together. Third, I will split up the three stages into their own three chapters and show how Lamar’s three-staged journey is similar to the cave prisoner’s. To do this, I will propose shadows, statues, and forms present in TPAB. In each chapter, I will demonstrate using Plato’s tripartite model of the soul how each stage corresponds to one of the three stages of Lamar’s metaphorical metamorphosis on TPAB: caterpillar, cocoon, and butterfly. In the third chapter, I will bring everything together to show how a Platonic understanding of TPAB allows us to better understand the process of Lamar’s self-realization. In my conclusion, I will end with summary of what I have accomplished and the personal thoughts and lessons I have learned from assembling all of this.

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.

Studies suggest that graduate students experience higher rates of anxiety and depression than their peers outside of academia. Studies also show exercise is correlated with lower levels of anxiety and depression among graduate students. However, despite this evidence, nearly half of graduate students do not exercise regularly. Accordingly, I suggest universities consider adding an exercise requirement to promote graduate student well-being. One potential objection to this recommendation is that an exercise requirement is objectionably paternalistic. I answer this objection with two possible replies. First, there are reasons why the exercise requirement might not be paternalistic, and there may be sufficient non-paternalistic reasons to justify the policy. Second, there are reasons why even if the policy is paternalistic, it is not objectionably paternalistic, and may still be justified. I will offer reasons to consider paternalism in a positive light and why the exercise requirement may be an example of a good paternalistic policy. Because the exercise requirement might be justified on paternalistic grounds, there are reasons to consider other paternalistic policies to promote graduate student well-being.

The current landscape of political speech is ripe for deep philosophical analysis yet has not been thoroughly investigated through the lens of speech-act theory. In this space, I believe I contribute something novel to the area, namely a notion of campaign promises that differs from standard promises that enables a new way of interpreting this kind of speech. Over the course of this paper, it is argued that Campaign Promises (CP) are non-trivially and philosophically distinct from the notion of Standard Promises (SP). There are many philosophical distinctions to draw, including moral, political and logical, but my focus is largely in philosophy of language. I engage the work of Searle, Austin and Wittgenstein among others to investigate what I take to be the following important differences from CP and SP: First, that CP and SP differ in the “best interest” condition, of the condition that a promise must be in the best interest of the promisee in order for that promise to obtain, which in turn, produces the effect of threatening those who do not want the promise to come about. Secondly, that CP serve to reinforce world views in a way that is non-trivially different from SP. To do this, I employ Wittgensteinian language game theory to bridge the gap between traditional Searlian speech act theory to more modern McGowan-style oppressive language models. Through this process I develop and defend this alternative way of understanding and evaluating CP and political speech.

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.

In Bottlenecks (Fishkin, 2014), Joseph Fishkin offers a new way of thinking about equality of opportunity which he calls opportunity pluralism. Rather than aim to equalize opportunities, opportunity pluralism strives to shift society towards a pluralistic model in which individuals are able to pursue a variety of different goods, roles, and paths in the pursuit of diverse competing conceptions of the good life. In such a society, individuals are in the best position to decide for themselves what constitutes a good life, and they are able to pursue paths to human flourishing with minimal bottlenecks constraining their unique life paths. A bottleneck is any "narrow place in the opportunity structure through which one must pass in order to successfully pursue a wide range of valued goals" (Fishkin, 13). Fishkin notes that opportunity pluralism differs from traditional egalitarian conceptions of equal opportunity. Nonetheless, Fishkin argues that opportunity pluralism provides powerful arguments in support of many of the most acclaimed egalitarian changes throughout history. In short, Fishkin presents opportunity pluralism as a new theory of equal opportunity which, although not egalitarian in the orthodox sense, is nonetheless within the mainstream of egalitarian political theory. In this thesis, I will argue that opportunity pluralism is not as friendly to egalitarianism as Fishkin suggests by showing that the theory is fully consistent with social outcomes typically viewed as antithetical to egalitarianism. Focusing on Sweden's gender segregated workforce and the college degree bottleneck in the US \u2014 which are discussed in the final part of his book \u2014 I argue that Fishkin's applications of opportunity pluralism only follow on the basis of certain questionable assumptions. On the basis of different assumptions, however, opportunity pluralism is consistent with Sweden's de facto gender segregated workforce and a society in which higher education is much less affordable and accessible than it is currently \u2014 outcomes that most mainstream egalitarians would oppose. In my analysis of the college degree bottleneck I use economist Bryan Caplan's book The Case Against Education: Why the Education System is a Waste of Time and Money (Caplan, 2018), to argue that under certain empirical assumptions in the economics of education, certain inegalitarian policy prescriptions are consistent with opportunity pluralism. In the final part of my thesis I argue that opportunity pluralism is consistent with inegalitarian outcomes because it is built on different foundations compared to other egalitarian theories of equal opportunity. Because opportunity pluralism recognizes that deep and lasting inequalities persist so long as the state allows families to remain intact, and that achieving equality of opportunity is not the best approach to help individuals pursue their own good in their own way, certain inegalitarian outcomes are not problematic from the point of view of opportunity pluralism.

Abstract. The term "sex trafficking" can mean many different things, depending on who uses it. To some, it may be synonymous with prostitution. To others, it may equate to slavery. And some may find that sex trafficking differs from both slavery and prostitution. But I find that the term "sex trafficking" is used improperly when referring to phenomena that may not entail the violation of rights of any individual involved. For this reason, various definitions of "sex trafficking" may inappropriately conflate sex trafficking with prostitution. In this essay, I argue against such a conflation through supporting a rights-based approach of defining "sex trafficking," in which every instance of true sex trafficking necessitates a violation of someone's rights. First, I begin by laying the foundation of my discussion with definitions and various government and non-government uses of the term "sex trafficking." Then, I argue for the rights-based approach. I proceed to explore how the rights-based approach relates to consent, force, coercion, deception, and competence. Then, I compile my findings, synthesize a definition, and elaborate on a few questions regarding my definition. Using the term "sex trafficking" correctly, as I argue, means that we necessarily use the term in a context of a violation of rights.