Bibliographic record
Abstract
My project develops what I call a dignity oriented model of human agency, and a related approach to human rights; especially democratic rights. I also juxtapose my model of agency against those offered by the liberal and post-modern approaches, and the political positions which flow from these approaches. \n In the first Chapter, I characterize our dignity as flowing from an individuals agency to engage in self-authorship by defining themselves through redefining the socio-historical boundaries within which they exist. The socio-historical boundaries are those which can be changed through the applications of what I refer to as individuals expressive capabilities. These expressive capabilities can be amplified or constrained depending on the innate capacity of the individuals in question and the particular socio-historical boundaries which constrain them. My argument is that the more ones expressive capabilities are amplified the more individuals can be said to have lived a dignified life. \nIn the next Chapter, I argue that amplifying human dignity would involve realizing two human rights. The first is a right to participate in the democratic authorship of political and legal institutions, and the laws which flow from these. The second is a right for all individuals to enjoy an equality of expressive capabilities, except where inequalities flow from their morally significant choices. These rights would enable us to lead lives of dignified self-authorship. \nIn Chapter Three, I deepen my philosophical account of agency by trying to illustrate how the innate human capacity to develop novel statements in semantic communities is one of the most prominent expressive capabilities which enable us to redefine the boundaries which constrain us. \nIn Chapter Four and Chapter Five, I develop criticisms of the liberal and post-modern approaches to agency. I suggest that both of them offer unique and important insights that can help us understand what is required to amplify human dignity. None the less, I claim neither approach can satisfy our contemporary need for a model of agency and politics which is both philosophically generalizable, and yet sensitive to the actual constraints facing individuals. \nFinally, in Chapters Six through Eight, I critically analyze several major theoretical traditions and decisions in the Canadian, American, and European legal systems. I suggest that we should adopt my dignity oriented approach to agency as a normative guide for how to best reach a just outcome in cases involving democratic rights: including the Sauv, Williams, and Hirst decisions. In particular, I suggest we should adopt a two step test when determining how to decide a case involving democratic rights. The first is to ask how best to amplify the dignity of the individuals involved. The second is to ask how to ascribe equal value to the democratic rights of the individuals involved. \nFinally, I conclude by summarizing my argument and offering some suggestions for the future. In particular, I account for why I devote so little attention to realizing the second of the rights I argue for: the right to equality of expressive capabilities.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame distilled prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. Learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and 10,348 direct Gemma labels. Candidate is the union of thresholded teacher heads; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels or direct frontier model labels.
Codex and Gemma teacher scores by category
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.004 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one teacher head, not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".