Tag: Oral Session 3 SW

American, Societal Structures Inhibiting Empathy for Criminals

Presenter(s): Zoe Wassman

Faculty Mentor(s): Caoimhin OFearghail

Oral Session 3 SW

When American incarceration rates were at their peak in 2008, 1 out of every 100 adults were in prison or jail1. If prisons were successful at keeping criminals off the street, punishing offenders cost-effectively, preparing them for re-entry, and deterring future offenders, that figure would not be so troubling. Research, however, indicates that incarceration fails to fulfill any of its promised results; the current system is both unsustainable and arguably increases crime rates. In this study, I use an interdisciplinary approach to explore how elements of American culture such as the “American Dream” ideal, capitalism, chronic individualism, founding morals, and even our use of language inhibit our ability to feel empathy for criminals, and thus support the existing structures of institutional corrections. The tentative results suggest that the roots of the current failure of U.S. corrections are cultural, and that solving them will require a reassessment of our fundamental values and the courage to make bold decisions before they reach crisis levels. For my research, I used text from “Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Survive” by Jarod Diamond, anthropologist, ecologist, and Professor of Geography at UCLA; “From the Native’s Point of View,” a paper by Clifford Geertz, world-renowned anthropologist and philosopher; research presented by Lena Boroditsky on “How Language Shapes Thought”; and reputable online resources for various facts and figures, including the Civil Rights Journal and The National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America.

Alexander, Elizabeth (Fall 1998). “A Troubling Response To Overcrowded Prisons”, Civil Rights Journal.

A Critique of Hume’s Compatibilist Philosophy: The Challenge of Reconciling Free Will and Causality

Presenter(s): Simon Narode

Oral Session 3 SW

David Hume was an 18th century philosopher who sought to reconcile the notion of free will with causal necessity. The conflict is that if the world unfolds in a causal order, and all of our actions and decisions are predetermined, how can we call ourselves free? In answering this question, Hume tried to redefine freedom such that it was compatible with causality. My paper argues that Hume failed in this endeavor. He redefined freedom as “a power of acting or not acting according to the determinations of the will,” but did not specify the temporal relationship of the will to its corresponding action. For instance, can we know ourselves to be free if the action we are willing is located in the future instead of the past? I challenge Hume’s thesis by reading it in relation to time. Through this lens, I highlight the epistemic problems of uncertainty concerning events of the past, present, and future, and demonstrate how Hume is unsuccessful at accounting for free will in a deterministic world.

The Economics of Corruption vs. Economic Justice

Presenter(s): Michael Monetery

Faculty Mentor(s): James Kiser & Lee Imonen

Oral Session 3 SW

This work introduces a proactive alternative to economic injustice involving a redefinition of value, reassessment of the real scope of cultural exchange and personal interactions affecting the quality of life (QOL), not just the ethically valueless GDP. The thesis critiques the corrupting influence of inherently destabilizing, destructive national monetary policy and unrealistic economic theory. The sociolinguistic conceptual framework of modern civilization, its paradigm, its symptoms, causal factors and governing principles were holistically analyzed and critiqued. The research showed that pervasive disinformation, commercially sponsored propaganda and political corruption subverted the nature and purpose of human culture, education and governance. Developing bio-ethical, ecocentric ecometrics to supplement quantitative econometrics is proposed for initiating realistic, qualitative analytics, essential for enhancing QOL and conservation of our only habitat. New definitions and unrecognized or under-appreciated principles are presented—essential for understanding the realities of economic injustice and political corruption—to support the proposed solution. The information and stratagems are presented to help parents, teachers, students, voters, leaders, corporate executives & directors, scientists, architects, engineers, planners and policy advisors successfully accomplish their missions. The presentation also serves as a prologue to a more extensive work on axiology and meta-economics metatheory in-progress.

Success in Neoliberal Capitalist Societies

Presenter(s): Frankie Leonard

Faculty Mentor(s): Avinnash Tiwari

Oral Session 3 SW

Success, particularly in our society in the US, is a complex social construct that often determines the life an individual will lead. I have analyzed the ideas of power and wealth, and the effect that these elements have in determining the success of a person. These elements are key to understanding success in the US because they determine a person’s advantage and privilege. Often in neoliberal capitalist societies, many systems that give access to success, such as education, and inheritance, are predisposed toward people of a certain class, gender, and race. Essentially, success is a societal norm set in place by those who define people by the power and wealth they possess, a self replicating system that enforces keeping the privileged in power. Fallacies, such as the exercise fallacy and the vehicle fallacy prove how people can use their privilege to express power over others. I chose to analyze businessmen who supposedly portray the hallmark of the American success story because they fit the model of the neoliberal, capitalistic “American Dream.” In addition, I will discuss what lead to their wealth, and how their wealth morphed into power. Success can be defined as construct based on a measure of worth in a social context, imposed by a system dominated by whiteness, patriarchy, and class.

A Social and Psychological Analysis of Fatal Police Violence

Presenter(s): Adriane Hershey

Faculty Mentor(s): David Markowitz

Oral Session 3 SW

Police brutality has been a consistent problem in the United States since inception, but has become more salient due to its intrinsic connections to political and social movements, including the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s and the Black Lives Matter beginning in 2013. Today, police violence against armed and unarmed citizens is pervasive: between 2015 and 2018, almost 4,000 people were killed by the police. Only 58 of the officers involved in shootings since 2005 were charged according to the Washington Post and 24 were convicted of wrongdoing. While prior work has largely evaluated how often police shootings occur and where shootings are most prevalent, less work has determined if there are signals identifying the type of officer who is convicted or not convicted of brutality. Drawing on research compiled by the Washington Post, we created a database of 75 police officers who killed a civilian and developed demographic and psychological profiles of each officer in search of characteristics that predict if they will be convicted or unconvicted of a crime. The data suggest that officers with over 10 years of experience on the force are less likely to be convicted (p = .032). Officers were marginally more likely to be convicted if there was a suspected cover-up (p = .07) and less likely to be convicted if the officer was in plain clothes at the time of the incident (p = .076). These patterns emphasize the importance of understanding police brutality from institutional, social, and psychological perspectives.