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Date of Graduation

5-2027

Description

I will be writing a thesis paper with the guidance of Dr. Purdy so I can graduate from the honors program with a bachelor's within philosophy. This paper is still very much in the planning stages, but we have a rough idea of what it will look like. The broad topic is moral duties one could have to themselves and potentially how that relates to duties you might have to others as well. We are interested in this project because I believe our common idea of morality excludes the self from being regarded as a person. I believe morality focuses too much on how we should treat other people and not enough on how we should treat ourselves. This was the broad topic at the very start. There have been discussions all around this trying to polish what we would actually write about. My issue with what I said previously are the normative claims it makes. Saying this is how people “ought” to live presupposes that they want to live a good life or what I as well as many others regard as a good life. From this my stepfather suggested to write on a moral theory being brought up from the base that all humans want to preserve their lives. This comes from the fact that humans want to preserve their life, which seems to be a fact (at least for the very large majority) coming straight from our nature. From this we could start to derive a moral theory from the presupposition that you want to preserve your life. For example, I could say it is immoral for you to overindulge in junk food, not getting an adequate amount of physical activity to best promote your own physical health, and overindulging in activities that “rot” your brain/not promoting your mental health. All of these things would have to be fleshed out in much more detail. Taking it back to the start this could relate to duties you have to other people because if you fail these duties to yourself, it could lead to you potentially mistreating or not being in good enough shape to help when needed. My favorite example of this is if you see a drowning baby and you are the only one around for miles. The baby is in a position that any average conditioned person would be able to retrieve the baby, but since you failed your duty to maintain your own physical health you cannot save the baby. There are some counter examples and questions about this that I cannot get into right now. The money provided would be very beneficial to me because I struggle to pay for college, but specifically for the research I have needed to buy a lot of books outside of my classes to be able to compile relevant information to use in the paper. The books are not cheap, and any money would be greatly appreciated.

Publication Date

2026

Document Type

Book

Degree Name

Bachelor of Arts in Philosophy

Degree Level

Undergraduate

Department

Philosophy

Advisor/Mentor

Purdy, Ashley

Disciplines

Arts and Humanities | Philosophy

Keywords

Humanities

Duties to yourself

Included in

Philosophy Commons

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