Given the opportunity, would I allow myself to be hooked up to a machine that makes me feel as though I am authentically living out my wildest dreams? If this were the case given the choice, considering that I would be basing my decision on personal and psychological factors, I would not go into the machine. I am too attached to this life to follow through with this decision, even if I were to reason out that it was in my best interest, even with the knowledge that my decision would be irrelevant once in the machine. However, while my philosophical reasoning would be largely irrelevant in my actual decision-making process, I will argue that, philosophically, based on my conception of the ‘good life’, I would still not enter.

by LEAH TRUEBLOOD

Why Impartialists Make Good Friends:
A Defense of The Motivational Structure of Consequentalism.
Utilitarians are often thought to make bad friends and lousy lovers. Philosophical heavyweights such as John Rawls and Bernard Williams argue, respectively, that Utilitarianism destroys the distinction between persons and is an attack on our integrity. Even though, as Rawls and Williams show us, the objections to Utilitarianism vary, a common worry does emerge. This worry is something like: without family and friends our lives would be miserable. Meaningful friendships are impossible for utilitarians because their motivation …

By Andy Yu
Kant argues that we can and must admit free will in order for morality to be meaningful at all. The aim of this paper is to reconstruct his arguments found in the Grounding for the Metaphysics of Morals and the Critique of Practical Reason. I explore his main argument for free will, which relies on the thesis that morality reciprocally implies free will and break this argument into two steps: by discussing how Kant shows that morality implies rationality and how Kant shows that rationality implies free will. Finally, I review Kant’s position on the apparent incompatibility between free will and determinism.

by FAHD HUSAIN
Ethical Subjects, Empowered Subjectivities:
Individuality, Agency and Interpersonality in the late Foucault

ABSTRACT
This essay will focus on the Foucauldian notion of the ‘care of the self’, wherein care is defined as the process undertaken by the self to perpetually regenerate its own unique ‘aesthetics’ that best informs and enriches its everyday life. Foucault’s insistence on a perpetual self-regeneration hinges upon a problematization of the pre-established criteria of normality structuring the context: it involves a mode of thinking that scrutinizes the relation of the self to such yardsticks and resists the …

By Daniel Arango
In Religion Within the Limits of Pure Reason Alone, Immanuel Kant considers the claim that God “arises out of mortality” without being the basis for moral obligation. “Morality thus leads ineluctably to religion, through which extends itself to the idea of a powerful moral Lawgiver, outside of mankind, for Whose will that is the final end (of creation) which at the same time can and ought to be man’s final end.” Kant develops what he calls the “pure religion of reason” and explains this true moral religion in relation …

By JOSHUA M. MITCHELL
I. Introduction
As we see from Cicero’s account of Epicureanism, its ethical system (i.e. Hedonism) revolves around the entities of pleasure and pain. As in all ethical theories, there is a “greatest good” that is the aim of life . For the hedonist, this is the absence of all pain, and they hold that this is the highest pleasure (and pleasure is equated with good for the Epicurean). There are many reasons the Epicureans give (via Cicero’s testimony) for this, which involve our senses and instinctual responses to …

By Shane Steinert-Threlkeld
One part of Obama’s victory speech that stood out was his comparison of the USA to an evolving being. Through exercising our democratic ability to change our government, we are helping render our union more perfect. When one analyzes the philosophical foundations upon which his belief system rest, it appears that Obama believes in the same brand of minimalism for which most natural rights philosophers argue. We explore this implication and ask questions about our nation and moral relativism.

By GARRETT LASNIER
When evaluating the soundness of a philosophical argument, one must test the argument against the most extreme cases to find a possible counterexample. An evaluation of Divine Command Theory (DCT) is no exception to this critical process. One extreme case is where in DCT, under certain circumstances, could it be morally permissible, indeed, even morally required, to torture an innocent three year old via DCT. After a brief exegesis of DCT, the paper will develop a response to this objection that defends the DCT argument. Ultimately, however, …

By CUONG NGUYEN
In Friedrich Nietzsche’s Genealogy of Morals, he states the “the slave revolt in morality begins when ressentiment itself becomes creative and gives birth to values” (GM Essay 1; 10). This idea of ressentiment is prevalent in Nietzsche’s philosophy because it corresponds to the idea of master and slave morality and, most importantly, explains how the lower slaves are able to overcome the higher masters and change the dominant morality to the slave morality. Ressentiment is the driving force that causes the anger and hatred of the slaves …