Other Philosophy Commons^™

Do Government Shut Downs Shut Down Aviation Security?, Editor

International Bulletin of Political Psychology

There have been reports of a growing number of Transportation Security Administration (TSA) agents calling in sick and refusing to work for no pay (1). The immediate question becomes, what’s the impact on aviation security? The answer is a negative one, but not as negative as one might think, and one only adding to festering, pre-shutdown problems.

An Application Of Risk Analysis To The Doctrine Of Self-Defense, Kirsten Welch

The Hilltop Review

Although it is an unavoidable aspect of any self-defense situation, risk is an underdeveloped concept in the self-defense literature. In this paper, I argue that the existence of objective risk can justify the use of self-defense, even in cases in which defensive action is not clearly necessary. To accomplish this, I first introduce the concept of risk, seeking a definition that incorporates both objective and subjective elements in a manner appropriate to a discussion of self-defense. In section two, I make a case for the appropriate way to carry out and apply risk analysis in self-defense situations, addressing questions of ...

Beyond Enlightenment: The Evolution Of Agency And The Modularity Of The Mind In A Post-Darwinian World, Derek Elliott

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Working out of the social and philosophical revolutions from the Enlightenment, contemporary action theory has unwittingly inherited several Cartesian ideas regarding the human mind: that it is unified, rational, and transparent. As a result, we have for too long conceived of action as intimately bound up with reason such that to act at all is to act for a reason, leaving us with theoretical difficulties in accounting for the behavior of non-human animals as well as irrational behavior in human beings.

But rather than propose that such difficulties can be resolved by retreating to a pre-Enlightenment view of human nature ...

True North Strong Canada 150: Canadian Identity And Its Contribution To Doping Free Sport, Helena A. Hlas

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

This thesis, a reflective piece inspired by “Canada 150” events, explores the psychosocial and sociocultural factors surrounding the ongoing evolution of the clean sport movement in Canada. A literature review recounts the critical events in the history of doping, viz. the Ben Johnson scandal, which resulted in a call to overhaul sport culture and realign it with fair play values. Theories in sports philosophy and psychology provide a further understanding of the meaning of sport, and psychosocial factors that are inextricably linked to doping behavior, respectively. The autoethnographic method provides insight into current Canadian values to compare with those in ...

Evaluating Bad Norms, John Thrasher

Philosophy Faculty Articles and Research

Some norms are bad. Norms of revenge, female genital mutilation, honor killings, and other norms strike us as destructive, cruel, and wasteful. The puzzle is why so many people see these norms as authoritative and why these norms often resist change. To answer these questions, we need to look at what “bad” norms are and how we can evaluate them. Here I develop an integrative analysis of norms that aims to avoid parochialism in norm evaluation. After examining and rejecting several evaluative standards, I propose what I call a comparative-functional analysis of norms that is both operationalizable/testable and nonparochial ...

The Impact Of The Concepts Of 'Common Good', 'Justice' And 'Diversity' In The Natural Law Of Our Time, Gines Marco

Journal of Vincentian Social Action

In this article we have projected three central objectives: first, to delimit the scope and limits of the recognition granted by the Aristotelian-Thomist tradition to the centrality of the common political good in life and in the fullness of the human being; Secondly, to specify the nature of the present difficulties that has the same possibility of the common reaches, by virtue of the valuation of the diversity projected by the liberal tradition inherited from Modernity; Thirdly, to analyze the impact that the dichotomy common good/diversity has had and continues to have on the way in which intra-organizational conflicts ...

Artificial Intelligence, Personal Identity, And Self-Awareness., Caryn Vandergriff

Georgia Undergraduate Research Conference (GURC)

In my paper, I will discuss how modern artificial intelligence (AI) may be able to gain self-awareness through a developmental phase. The developmental phase starts at the AI’s creation. The phase is developed and refined the more it interacts with humans. The first section will consist of the history of AI. The history section will include Alan Turing, a computer scientist that introduces the Turing Test, also known as the Imitation Test, which is a test that was created to determine if computer systems could gain intelligence I will also provide a definition of self-awareness, consciousness, and intelligence in ...

The Event Of Blues Music And The Effects Of Technology On The Artistic Event, Adam Rejak

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

The goal of this dissertation is to find out whether or not blues music is an event. I explore what constitutes a musical or artistic event in modern times and to see how this has changed in relation to earlier periods. I also identify its essential formal elements. I divide blues music into two categories, namely, its technical playing qualities (the micro) and its historical changes (the macro). This division frames the entire project and illustrates that in order to discuss an artistic event, we must account for both its technical and historical aspects. I examine several theories of the ...

"I Have A Seat In The Abandoned Theater": Post-Foundational Subjects, Inoperative Teleologies, And The Aesthetics Of Dispossession, Averil L. Novak

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

What is the nature of political ‘reality,’ and in what ways are we capable of affecting it? Who (or what? and where?) is the subject of democratic politics? Of revolutionary politics? Are they opposed to one another? The grand narratives that ‘ground’ this project and the resistances that unground them form the basis for a post-foundational analytic of the subject of politics, of identity, and of community, which constitutes a mobilization of democratic resistance as a commitment to persistent (and in some cases, relentless) contestation, interruption, and disruption. These questions are explored through the argument that modern politics is ...

Returning The Radiant Gaze: Visual Art And Embodiment In A World Of Subjects, Beth Carruthers

The Goose

Drawing on the latter thinking of Maurice Merleau-Ponty, as well as on the ideas of other contemporary philosophers and theorists, this essay considers the denigration of vision from Plato to twentieth-century anti-ocularism, and argues for the reclamation of vision and visual perception as sensuous, embodied interplay between humans and world, self and other—an opening to wonder and more sensitive human-world relations. It does so through a phenomenological exploration of the process of art-making, and consideration of the role and value of artworks and images in the world. This essay is first and foremost an enquiry. As such it promises ...

London (Ontario) Area Treaties: An Introductory Guide, Stephen D'Arcy

Stephen D'Arcy

Experimental Philosophy And Feminist Epistemology: Conflicts And Complements, Amanda Huminski

All Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The recent turn toward experimental philosophy, particularly in ethics and epistemology, might appear to be supported by feminist epistemology, insofar as experimental philosophy signifies a break from the tradition of primarily white, middle-class men attempting to draw universal claims from within the limits of their own experience and research. However, the relationship between the two is not so straightforward, and an analysis of their connection bears on broader questions concerning intuitions, philosophical methodology, and epistemic standards more generally. This dissertation project aims to 1) examine the conception of intuitions that appears to underpin many projects in experimental philosophy, 2) levy ...

The Syndrome Of Romantic Love, Arina Pismenny

All Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

What kind of phenomenon is romantic love? Many philosophers, psychologists, and ordinary folk think it is an emotion. I challenge this assumption and argue instead that romantic love is best characterized as a syndrome ⎼ a pattern comprised of different kinds of mental states and behaviors that tend to co-occur. An examination of major emotion theories in philosophy and psychology demonstrates that romantic love does not fit into any of them. Likewise, the commonly endorsed but increasingly controversial categories of basic and nonbasic emotions do not account for romantic love. While both culture and evolution have shaped the phenomenon of romantic ...

Self-Actualization And The Need To Create As A Limit On Copyright, Christopher S. Yoo

Faculty Scholarship at Penn Law

Personhood theory is almost invariably cited as one of the primary theoretical bases for copyright. The conventional wisdom views creative works as the embodiment of their creator’s personality. This unique connection between authors and their works justifies giving authors property interests in the results of their creative efforts.

This Chapter argues that the conventional wisdom is too limited. It offers too narrow a vision of the ways that creativity can develop personality by focusing exclusively on the results of the creative process and ignoring the self-actualizing benefits of the creative process itself. German aesthetic theory broadens the understanding of ...

The Politics Of Wounds, Jonathan Nash

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

What configuration of strategies and discourses enable the white male and settler body politic to render itself as simultaneously wounded and invulnerable? I contextualize this question by reading the discursive continuities between Euro-America’s War on Terror post-9/11 and Algeria’s War for Independence. By interrogating political-philosophical responses to September 11, 2001 beside American rhetoric of a wounded nation, I argue that white nationalism, as a mode of settler colonialism, appropriates the discourses of political wounding to imagine and legitimize a narrative of white hurt and white victimhood; in effect, reproducing and hardening the borders of the nation-state. Additionally ...

Dialetheism, Paradox, And Nāgārjuna’S Way Of Thinking, Richard H. Jones

Comparative Philosophy

Nāgārjuna’s doctrine of emptiness, his ideas on “two truths” and language, and his general method of arguing are presented clearly by him and can be stated without paradox. That the dialetheists today can restate his beliefs in paradoxical ways does not mean that Nāgārjuna argued that way; in fact, their restatements misrepresent and undercut his arguments.

Anthony Kennedy: A Most Principled Justice, Mitchell N. Berman, David Peters

Faculty Scholarship at Penn Law

After three decades on the Court, Justice Anthony Kennedy remains its most widely maligned member. Concentrating on his constitutional jurisprudence, critics from across the ideological spectrum have derided Justice Kennedy as “a self-aggrandizing turncoat,” “an unprincipled weathervane,” and, succinctly, “America’s worst Justice.” We believe that Kennedy is not as bereft of a constitutional theory as common wisdom maintains. To the contrary, this Article argues, his constitutional decisionmaking reflects a genuine grasp (less than perfect, more than rudimentary) of a coherent and, we think, compelling theory of constitutional law—the account, more or less, that one of has introduced in ...

Thematic Fields, Transgressive Religion: Disembodiment And The Will To Nothingness In “Safe Haven”, Adam Lovasz

Iowa Journal of Cultural Studies

In my article, I examine a segment of the 2013 horror anthology, V/H/S/ 2. Entitled „Safe Haven” and directed by young directors Timo Tjahjanto and Gareth Huw Evans, this segment stands out for its religious and metaphysical subject matter. Examining broader media theory concerns relating to the „found-footage horror” subgenre, I consider how, during the course of „Safe Haven”, the screen as frame is gradually supplanted by the increasingly unreal events portrayed in the segment. I seek to simultaneously engage with the question of realism in found footage films, while also utilizing Evan Calder-Williams’ notion of „horrible form ...

Radical Social Ecology As Deep Pragmatism: A Call To The Abolition Of Systemic Dissonance And The Minimization Of Entropic Chaos, Arielle Brender

Student Theses 2015-Present

This paper aims to shed light on the dissonance caused by the superimposition of Dominant Human Systems on Natural Systems. I highlight the synthetic nature of Dominant Human Systems as egoic and linguistic phenomenon manufactured by a mere portion of the human population, which renders them inherently oppressive unto peoples and landscapes whose wisdom were barred from the design process. In pursuing a radical pragmatic approach to mending the simultaneous oppression and destruction of the human being and the earth, I highlight the necessity of minimizing entropic chaos caused by excess energy expenditure, an essential feature of systems that aim ...

Plato's Parmenides: On Being And Non-Being, Syed Husain

Student Theses

In this paper I will discuss the Eight Hypotheses in Plato's Parmenides and draw out my own conclusion from them without any external help or secondary literature. I will then use this conclusion to address problems concerning the Parmenides in the Platonic Scholarship. The main conclusion I have drawn is that the Hypotheses are closing the gulf between Being and Non-Being via the concepts of Sameness, Difference, Becoming, Time and the Instant. In addition, the confluence of Being and Non-Being illuminates a subsidiary conclusion of this text possessing grounds for a new metaphysical presupposition of Being-Non-Being. I propose in ...