Other Philosophy Commons^™

The Evolutionary Global Vision Of Chinese Political Philosophy; China's Socio-Economic Transformation In The 21st Century, Meryem Gurel

Master's Projects and Capstones

Evolving relations of East Asia due to trade liberalization raised the search for financial stability for institutional development. It also increased the importance of China integrating the global economy into renewing its political philosophy in the new century. This capstone project aims to examine why China has transformed its socio-economic structure by generating outward investments and how it has affected international political relations in terms of the role of the economic institution Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB). Quantitative methodology aims to examine the impact of China’s export trade on income distribution and economic growth through linear regression analysis for ...

Mapping The Modern History Of The Philosophy Of Religion With Machine Learning, Jackson C. Foster

The Macksey Journal

A current debate in the philosophy of religion (PoR) is about future routes for scholarship. While many scholars have assessed where the subfield could expand, few have consulted the discipline’s modern history in their evaluations. Thus the aim of “Mapping the Modern History of the Philosophy of Religion” is to propose a computationally-based history of PoR as a foundation for future growth. To that end, this research processes over three-thousand articles from three journals in PoR with latent Dirichlet allocation (LDA), a machine-learning algorithm. LDA creates groups of related terms, exhibiting the most historically significant topics in the philosophy ...

‘I Have Regained Memory’ (Smṛtir Labdhā): The Bhagavad Gītā As A Parrhesiastic Journey Against Forgetfulness, Raquel Ferrández-Formoso

Comparative Philosophy

This paper proposes an interdisciplinary reading of the Bhagavad Gītā, presenting it as a parrhesiastic dialogue between Kṛṣṇa and Arjuna, and focusing on the importance attached to memory. Foucault’s studies on the exercise of parrhesia (“true speech”) in the Greco-Roman context, but also Heidegger's views on the original memory, and Abhinavagupta’s commentary to the Bhagavad Gītā have been used as important tools of interpretation. Devotion is described as the constant memory of Kṛṣṇa, through which the practitioner succeeds in substituting some subconscious dispositions (saṃskāras) for others, building a psychic memory that allows for liberation at the time ...

The People Who “Burn”: “Communication,” Unity, And Change In Belarusian Discourse On Public Creativity, Anton Dinerstein

Doctoral Dissertations

The main intellectual problem I address in this study is how everyday communication activates the relationship between creativity, conflict, and change. More specifically, I look at how the communication of creativity becomes a process of transformation, innovation, and change and how people are propelled to create through everyday communication practices in the face of conflict and opposition. To approach this problem, I use the case of communication in modern-day Belarus to show how creativity becomes a vehicle for and a source of new social and cultural routines among the independent grassroots communities and initiatives in Minsk.

On one level, I ...

Human Supremacy As Posthuman Risk, Daniel Estrada

The Journal of Sociotechnical Critique

Human supremacy is the widely held view that human interests ought to be privileged over other interests as a matter of ethics and public policy. Posthumanism is the historical situation characterized by a critical reevaluation of anthropocentrist theory and practice. This paper draws on animal studies, critical posthumanism, and the critique of ideal theory in Charles Mills and Serene Khader to address the appeal to human supremacist rhetoric in AI ethics and policy discussions, particularly in the work of Joanna Bryson. This analysis identifies a specific risk posed by human supremacist policy in a posthuman context, namely the classification of ...

Short Circuits In The Information Cycle: Addressing Information Breakdowns Using The Information Literacy Framework, Lucinda Rush Wittkower, D.E. Wittkower

The Journal of Sociotechnical Critique

We argue that information literacy instruction that aims at developing students’ critical thinking habits should address how safeguards in the information cycle fail. We argue that such “short circuits” in the information cycle can be best engaged with at a “middle distance”—not so distant from students’ lived experience that they seem irrelevant, but not so close that students can’t gain a critical distance—and illustrate this framework with three such cases that concern moral panics about new technologies. We hold that instruction using this framework will help learners critically assess sources while retaining a strong but realistic appreciation ...

Public Deliberation And Epistemic Parity In Direct Democracies, Léa Farine

OSSA Conference Archive

In a context of public-policy making, I propose to consider a fundamental norm of epistemic parity as contributing to the justification, the acceptability and the legitimacy of decisions taken through deliberative processes. I also suggest that models of semi-direct democracy, whose constitutional foundations include the possibility of deliberations among all citizens sanctioned by popular votes, promote epistemic parity.

A Theory Of Philosophical Arguments, Christoph Lumer

OSSA Conference Archive

In the main part of the article, a new, idealizing-hermeneutic methodological approach to developing a theory of philosophical arguments is presented and carried out. The basis for this is a theory of ideal philosophical theory types developed from the analysis of historical examples (Lumer 2011b; 2020). According to this theory, the following ideal types of theory exist in philosophy: 1. descriptive-nomological, 2. idealizing-hermeneutic, 3. technical-constructive, 4. ontic-practical. These types of theories are characterized in particular by what their basic types of theses are. The main task of this article is then to determine the types of arguments that are suitable ...

Empty Time As Traumatic Duration: Towards A Cinematic Aevum, Kelli Fuery

Film and Media Arts Faculty Articles and Research

Frank Kermode uses the term aevum to question the links between origin, order, and time, associating experience with spatial form. Without end or beginning, aevum identifies an intersubjective order of time where we participate in the “relation between the fictions by which we order our world and the increasing complexity of what we take to be the ‘real’ history of that world”; being “in-between” time is a primary quality of the aevum. Regarding cinema, aevum identifies this third duration as emotional experience, occuring as traumatic time. It facilitates thinking beyond lived temporal experience of everyday life to a philosophy of ...

Death Positivity: A New Genre Of Death And The Genre Function Of Memento Mori, Melony Elsie Del Real

Electronic Theses, Projects, and Dissertations

This article explores Caitlin Doughty’s “death positivity” as an evolved form of the medieval memento mori, and how this medieval genre serves as a genre function for current day thanatophobic audiences. This is specifically done by analyzing Doughty’s book titled Smoke Gets in Your Eyes, as well as some of her other death positivity mediums. By modeling her rhetoric of death positivity after memento mori, Doughty can effectively deliver her anti-death fearing message to the very audiences that fear death.

Furthermore, analyzing Doughty’s rhetoric as operating within the genre function, a concept put forth by Anis Bawarshi ...

Backing Up Into Advocacy: The Case Of Smartphone Driver Distraction, Robert Rosenberger

The Journal of Sociotechnical Critique

For the last decade, I’ve been studying the topic of the driving impairment of smartphones. While this began as an exclusively academic project, it has increasingly compelled public engagement. One example of this came in an opinion piece I wrote in 2018 in response to a new traffic law. I take the opportunity here to fill out the academic backstory of this particular op-ed, reflect on how this larger project has evolved to include an unanticipated public-facing edge, and abstract some lessons about public writing.

From Protecting To Performing Privacy, Garfield Benjamin

The Journal of Sociotechnical Critique

Privacy is increasingly important in an age of facial recognition technologies, mass data collection, and algorithmic decision-making. Yet it persists as a contested term, a behavioural paradox, and often fails users in practice. This article critiques current methods of thinking privacy in protectionist terms, building on Deleuze's conception of the society of control, through its problematic relation to freedom, property and power. Instead, a new mode of understanding privacy in terms of performativity is provided, drawing on Butler and Sedgwick as well as Cohen and Nissenbaum. This new form of privacy is based on identity, consent and collective action ...

Mental Associations And Music Therapy: Including The History Of Associationism And The Neurology Of Associations, Dianna Rose

Expressive Therapies Capstone Theses

Associations are formed in our minds based upon three elements: sensory experience, emotions, and memories. These associations, unique to each individual, dictate thoughts, beliefs, behaviors, and actions. Some are necessary and supportive, while others can be maladaptive. Established associations can be changed, and new associations can be formed, to align with a client’s goals. The literature presents a strong history of associationism, as well as a body of research that demonstrates the neurological processes of how mental associations are formed. There are also studies showing how music activates the brain. However, there is a lack of research which draws ...

One Of Wittgenstein’S Methods: A Defense And Elaboration Of Baker’S Analogy, Griffin Pion

2020 JHU Richard Macksey National Undergraduate Humanities Research Symposium

In his later writings, Wittgenstein uses the term “picture” in a variety of ways. One such way is to mean a “conception” of or “way of looking” at a given philosophical problem (PI §144). Gordon Baker and David Egan offer two detailed accounts of this use (Baker 2004, 266-278; Egan 2011); for convenience, I will call such pictures “conceptual pictures”. Baker finds a helpful analogy between conceptual pictures and the phenomenon of aspect-seeing: in the same way that we can shift the aspect under which we view an image, Wittgenstein shifts the conceptual picture by means of which we view ...

The Political Animal: Aristotle's Man And The Natural Political Life, Joseph Rodriguez

2020 JHU Richard Macksey National Undergraduate Humanities Research Symposium

Aristotle's Politics offers what may be called a "political anthropology". I argue that Aristotle's conception of the polis as natural derives from the specifically human kind of partnership that is tied to the exercise of the specifically human capacity for logos. I assert that Aristotle's political naturalism is rooted in two claims: (a) the claim that humans are the most political animal and (b) the claim that the polis is naturally prior to the individual. Together these two claims constitute Aristotle's argument that the polis alone has the potential to fully satisfy our unique human capacity ...

Real Possibility: Modality And Responsibility, Julia Gaul

Honors Scholar Theses

Imagine: someone is backing out of a parking space and does not look in their rear view mirror. They subsequently hit a car that was passing by. One could argue that they simply could have avoided the accident had they looked in their mirror. This non-actual possibility, that they could have looked in the mirror, seems legally and morally relevant. One could also argue that they could have avoided the accident had they stuck their feet out of their window and sung La Marseillaise.

My leading questions is: how do we distinguish possibilities that are legally and morally relevant from ...

Trust, Political Participation, And Poverty: The Effects Of Poverty On Political Behavior, Melanie Cain

Honors Projects

With the upcoming 2020 election, the right to vote and otherwise participate in politics is as important as ever. In this research, I have examine the relationship between trust in government, political efficacy, participation in politics, and poverty to study why those in low-income households have lower rates of political participation and offer solutions to raise the rate of participation.

Relations And Folds In Leibniz: Monadological Intimacy, Jeff Lambert

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

My goal is to provide a clear explanation of Leibniz’s notoriously difficult system of relations. Relations among ‘windowless’ substances that exert no causal power over one another seems like a pipe dream that should be abandoned. However, I demonstrate that each substance expresses its relations only through the unique representation of all other substances. That is, any relation a substance expresses is due to this unique, perspectival, non-causal, representation of others. Because this is the case for all substances, this means that this relation of representation is an ongoing process of interconnection for all substances. This representation is not ...

The Psychology Of Dystopian And Post-Apocalyptic Stories: The Proverbial Question Of Whether Life Will Imitate Art, Donna Roberts

International Bulletin of Political Psychology

Dystopian and Post-Apocalyptic genres challenge our notions of Aristotelian mimesis vs Anti-mimesis – i.e., In the study of the human condition, does life imitate art or art imitate life? Popular culture, then and now, provides us with examples to depict the circularity of these notions and the psychological importance of exploring this aspect of human nature, particularly the contemplation of our own collective demise. While we recoil in horror at the images these genres portray, we are also morbidly fascinated by them, and we can’t help but ask ourselves . . . Could that really happen? Will that happen?

Comment. Two intellectual ...

Up Close And Personal: Ritual, Social Criticism, And The Russell Tribunal, Henry Blackburn

Undergraduate Honors Theses

This thesis attempts to provide a conception of the Russell Tribunal as an organization deeply rooted in ritual practice and social criticism. Contrary to prevailing views that describe the Tribunal as nothing more than a (failed) legal court or an organization that sought to engage with international law, this thesis argues that the Tribunal, far from an organization rooted in judging the legality of the Vietnam War, can actually be understood as an organization that sought to enhance the social criticism of its members.