Metaphysics Commons^™

The Yogācāra Theory Of Three Natures: Internalist And Non-Dualist Interpretations, Matthew Mackenzie

Comparative Philosophy

According to Vasubandhu’s Trisvabhāvanirdeśa or Treatise on the Three Natures, experiential phenomena can be understood in terms of three natures: the constructed (parikalpita), the dependent (paratantra), and the consummate (pariniṣpanna). This paper will examine internalist and anti-internalist or non-dualist interpretations of the Yogācāra theory of the three natures of experience. The internalist interpretation is based on representationalist theory of experience wherein the contents of experience are logically independent of their cause and various interconnected cognitive processes continually create an integrated internal world-model that is transparent to the cognitive system that creates and uses it. …

The Concept Of Matter In Kant's Transcendental Idealism, Kyoungnam Park

Dissertations

I argue that in addition to having a constitutive conception of matter which can be determinately represented in terms of our spatiotemporal intuitions, Kant has a regulative conception of matter which cannot be perceived as having a spatiotemporal magnitude. Although Kant restricts the scope of our knowledge to empirical objects which can be determinately represented in terms of spatiotemporal magnitudes, he also implicitly introduces a regulative conception of matter as a metaphysical principle which grounds the material features of the empirical world. I investigate this metaphysical conception of matter which is operating in Kant's transcendental idealism in terms of how …

What's The Problem With Noumenal Affection?, Leonardo Mugi Santoso

Senior Projects Spring 2018

According to transcendental idealism, our experience of the empirical world is the result of our minds being causally affected by supersensible things in themselves; however, transcendental idealism also holds that things in themselves are unknowable by us. The seeming incompatibility of these two claims is known as legendary 'problem of noumenal affection.' This problem has led many scholars to conclude that Kant's theory is inconsistent. In this project I offer a new diagnosis of the problem by reexamining the supposedly incompatible components: The doctrines of noumenal affection and noumenal ignorance. I argue that there are philosophical and textual worries surrounding …

Locke On Empirical Knowledge, Nathan Rockwood

Philosophy Faculty Publications

This paper explores two related issues concerning LockeÕs account of epistemic justification for empirical knowledge. One issue concerns the degree of justification needed for empirical knowledge. Commentators almost universally take Locke to hold a fallibilist account of justification, whereas I argue that Locke accepts infallibilism. A second issue concerns the nature of justification. Many (though not all) commentators take Locke to have a thoroughly internalist conception of justification for empirical knowledge, whereas I argue that he has a (partly) externalist conception of justification: it is the fact that sensation is caused by an external object that justifies our belief in …

Enact In Disappearance, Stephanie Demer

Theses and Dissertations

Enact in Disappearance excavates the unseen through the medium of photography in order to chart a new strategy for knowing and communing with a complicated world.

The Logic Of Internal Relations, Jake S. Cardillo

Senior Projects Spring 2018

Senior Project submitted to The Division of Social Studies of Bard College.

Understanding Mental Illness: A Philosophical Perspective, Isha Aggarwal

Senior Projects Spring 2018

Senior Project submitted to The Division of Social Studies of Bard College.

Nietzsche And The Death Of God, Justin Remhof

Philosophy Faculty Publications

Nietzsche is perhaps most famous for making the striking claim that God is dead. He writes, "God is dead! God remains dead! And we have killed him!" (GS 125).

What does this mean? Straightforwardly, it seems nonsensical. God is supposed to be eternal, and thus cannot die. Nietzsche’s claim, however, is that "God" is a fiction created by human beings. Thus, God "dies" when there is no good reason to believe that God exists.

This essay will help us understand this claim, his arguments for it, and its potential implications for contemporary religious and ethical thought.

Review Of Tsarnia Doyle, Nietzsche's Metaphysics Of The Will To Power: The Possibility Of Value, Justin Remhof

Philosophy Faculty Publications

[First paragraph]

Tsarina Doyle's new book is required reading for those interested in Nietzsche's metaphysics, ethics, and metaethics. Doyle argues that for Nietzsche nihilism arises upon the recognition that our values are not objectively valid because they are not instantiated by a mind-independent world. Nietzsche responds to the threat of nihilism, according to Doyle, by developing will to power as a metaphysical view of reality. On this view, the world is constituted by mind-independent causal powers. For Doyle, Nietzsche believes values are metaphysically continuous with will to power because they are causal-dispositional properties of human drives. Will to power provides …

Fictionalism, Semantics, And Ontology, Gordon Purves

Philosophy, Theology and Religious Studies Faculty Publications

This article expands upon the argument of a previous work which defended a variational account of scientific fictions. Specifically, I show that this understanding of scientific fictions can provide guidance for realist interpretations of scientific theories and models. Depending on a model's variational properties, different ontological commitments are appropriate, providing a principled way for a realist to moderate her views according to the structural properties of a given model. This reasoning is then applied the Lee-Yang theory and Kubo-Martin-Schwinger statistics, two foundational models in quantum statistical mechanics. The Lee-Yang theory is analyzed in a way that permits a robust realist …

In The Mind Of The Machine, Marcia Yang

CMC Senior Theses

As technology becomes more sophisticated, it becomes increasingly important to understand how we should ethically use technology. One question within this area of study is whether we should treat certain types of technology, like artificial intelligence, with more respect. If we do owe these machines some sort of moral status, another question is what level of moral status they have. In order to answer these questions, I argue that machines can be considered as minds under the view of machine functionalism. A significant problem for machine functionalism is whether it can account for emotions within the system it suggests. First, …

Dissecting The Grandfather Paradox, Ishan Jawa

CMC Senior Theses

In his paper, The Paradoxes of Time Travel, David Lewis posits a defense for the possibility of time travel by arguing that the grandfather 'paradox' is not, in fact, paradoxical at all. Two alternative solutions to the grandfather paradox are discussed in this paper. The first is a result of Paul Horwich’s reply to Lewis and aims to pit the Lewisian conception of compatibility against Horwich’s improbability defense. Proposed by Nicholas Smith and C.G. Goddu, this theory explains that any attempt at backward time travel will lead to the creation of long strings of improbable coincidences. An alternative thesis …

Nietzsche And James On The Value Of Constructing Objects, Justin Remhof

Philosophy Faculty Publications

In this paper, I first suggest that Nietzsche and James, two otherwise very different thinkers, both endorse the controversial constructivist view that human representational practices bring all material objects into existence. I then explore their views concerning why and how constructivism can play a vital role in helping us find reality and our lives valuable.

The Participating Mind In The Quantum Universe, Menas Kafatos, Keun-Hang Susan Yang

Mathematics, Physics, and Computer Science Faculty Articles and Research

The Orthodox interpretation of quantum mechanics, which followed the Copenhagen Interpretation but was enhanced by primarily Werner Heisenberg and John von Neumann into a fully developed theory, brought in, among others, the role of measurement, available choices and response of the quantum system. It is, more consistent and clear than other interpretations of quantum mechanics as it provides account of the interactions of observers with the external world. As such, the Orthodox interpretation does a lot more than just account for physical interactions in the atomic world, which was the original goal of quantum mechanics in the early part of …

Logos And Dao Revisited: A Non-Metaphysical Interpretation, Steven Burik

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

Why another article on logos and dao ? Is it not the case that enough scholars have looked into the similarities between the term logos and the notion of dao? Although it may seem so, I will argue that when another perspective is employed, logos and dao might fruitfully be compared on a different level from the one used by most of these comparisons. In this essay I will argue first that in many instances the approach of some of the scholars who have compared logos and dao has been one-sided and has mostly consisted in a comparison of these …

“Oh, Phaedrus, If I Don’T Know My Phaedrus I Must Be Forgetting Who I Am Myself”: Glimpses Of Self In Divine Erotic Madness, Jared De Uriarte

Senior Projects Spring 2018

Senior Project submitted to The Division of Social Studies of Bard College.

Laminated Paint, Travis R. Austin

Theses and Dissertations

Though we may not perceive it, we are surrounded by material-in-flux. Inert materials degrade and the events that comprise our natural and social environments causally thread into a duration that unifies us in our incomprehension. Sounds reveal ever-present vibrations of the landscape: expressions of the flexuous ground on which we stand.

Ordinary Disorder, Jonathan S. Tracy

Theses and Dissertations

The pictorial spaces in my paintings are found through many drawings, based on memories. In these drawings I use the architectural technique of paraline drawing, in pointed contrast to one or two point perspective. With a fixed point of view unavailable, the viewer or reader becomes the writer too. This is what I intend. The paraline method also engages specific corners of art history to which I relate, including woodblock prints of Japanese interiors, Chinese brush painting landscapes with houses, and the shifting, rotating perspectives found in Baroque painting. My intensely personal memories/drawings are transfused into highly material finished paintings. …

Espaces Topologique Et Phénoménologique Dans Le Mal De Peau Et Le Retour Au Village, Mahamadou Lamine Ouédraogo

Présence Francophone: Revue internationale de langue et de littérature

Le mal de peau by Monique Ilboudo and Le retour au village by Kollin Noaga are two Burkinabè novels featuring Sibila and Catherine (for the first) and Tinga (for the second). The study questions the part of spatiality in the semantics of indexed texts: how does space mean in these novels? This problem is attacked from two angles. First, it is a matter of identifying the modes of meaning of the topos. Secondly, it is about seeing how the body, as a phenomenological space, can articulate meaning.

Socratic Metaethics Imagined, Steve Ross, Lisa Warenski

Sophia and Philosophia

A time machine mysteriously appeared one day in ancient Athens. Curious about the future of philosophical dialogue, Socrates entered the device and traveled to the 21st Century. He spent several months in the United Kingdom and United States discussing metaethics before returning to Athens, now a devoted and formidable quasi-realist moral expressivist.