Philosophy Commons^™

Lost In Adaptation, Caitlin S. Manocchio

Student Scholar Symposium Abstracts and Posters

philosophical societies that send us here as their representatives- can no longer, in this case, allow itself [the philosophical idea] to be enclosed in a single idiom, at the risk of floating, neutral and disembodied, remote from every body of language

(Derrida 1994: 14)

Introduction

In Sending: on representation (1994), Jacques Derrida questions the function of representation that we can use to offer a challenge to the experience and structure of representation as a practice in visual culture and for contemporary spectatorship. When the function of representation is being questioned, rather than its subject, the practice of representation is seen …

Fish Pain: An Inconvenient Truth, Culum Brown

Culum Brown, PhD

Whether fish feel pain is a hot political topic. The consequences of our denial are huge given the billions of fish that are slaughtered annually for human consumption. The economic costs of changing our commercial fishery harvest practices are also likely to be great. Key outlines a structure-function analogy of pain in humans, tries to force that template on the rest of the vertebrate kingdom, and fails. His target article has so far elicited 34 commentaries from scientific experts from a broad range of disciplines; only three of these support his position. The broad consensus from the scientific community is …

A Dickensian Utilitarianism, Zachary Allentuck

Senior Honors Projects, 2010-2019

This paper argues that Charles Dickens' political and world views were in sympathy with Utilitarianism, as defined by Jeremy Bentham. The Utilitarianism Dickens attacked in A Christmas Carol, Hard Times, and Little Dorrit was not real utilitarianism; it was utilitarianism appropriated by England's middle-class.

Warming Which Olds To Know Whose New 溫何故，知誰新？ 回應李明輝之《儒家與康德》, Max Fong

Max Fong

The Sensorimotor Approach To Color Perception And The Necessity Of Socio-Cultural Considerations For Color Naming, Matthew Watts

Student Research Symposium

In this paper I argue against Kevin O’Regan’s claim that the “biological reflectance function” and its notion of “simple” colors naturally lead to a biologically consistent standard for species wide color naming. Although the simplicity of these colors may allow for easier apprehension, the notion that color simplicity will naturally lead to a consistent standard for the naming of basic color hues across a species is inconsistent with the idea of objective colors in the way that he portrays it. While it fixes many of the traditional explanatory issues surrounding color perception, it opens up new explanatory issues surrounding color. …

Stop Factory Farming For The Sake Of Humanity!, Alexander V. Dimauro

ENV 434 Environmental Justice

Abstract: The world is being destroyed. We do not care about the mistreatment of animals in factory farms because of our consumeristic taste buds, but this gluttony is even more problematic than we think. It is blinding us from an even larger factor at stake. Our factory farming methods are a leading contributor in the causes of global warming. What this means for us is that our consumption has a direct impact on our destruction. We need to think big, and act. The only way to combat this issue is through taking courses of action that will force people to …

Epistemic Problems In Contemporary History, Michael Hollien

Honors Program Theses and Projects

A recent trend in contemporary written history is towards what I term “narrative” history, where the significant events of the past are framed within traditional dramatic structure and told through the personal vignettes of the common people who experienced them. This makes for immersive reading, but the complication in this approach is that history, at least in part, purports to be a true telling of the past. Therein lies the problem. I shall argue that narrative history’s pervasive use of literary technique and witness testimony in order to make truth claims about the past is epistemically unjustified. That does not …

Stimulacra: The Accident And The Identity Crisis, Grant C. Gallo

The Downtown Review

An in-depth analysis and criticism of J.G. Ballards’s 1971 novel, Crash, is conducted. The qualities of the novel that place it within the genre of science fiction are presented and contested. Ballard’s own commentary on his novel is taken into account, as well as that of the French hyperrealist Jean Baudrillard. Both of their positions are then updated and reworked into theory of symbolic exchange for the digital age. Ultimately, the worth of J.G. Ballard’s Crash is weighed against the words of his critics and determined to defy the definitions of the science fiction genre itself.

Scatter 1: The Politics Of Politics In Foucault, Heidegger, And Derrida [Table Of Contents], Geoffrey Bennington

Philosophy & Theory

“Bennington’s Scatter 1 is a sophisticated, detailed, and strikingly original demonstration of the political efficacy of deconstruction. As always with Bennington, to read him is to undergo an education in reading.” —Robert Bernasconi, Pennsylvania State University

The Matter Of Voice: Sensual Soundings [Table Of Contents], Karmen Mackendrick

Philosophy & Theory

“The Matter of Voice is a work of philosophical theology in a multidisciplinary and poetic key. Its central organizing insight is that voice and voicing are productive of corporeality and rhythm in language. As MacKendrick shows, at the heart of the voice is ‘an irreducible and carnal strangeness’ that refuses closure and invites passion back into thinking. The book is a sterling exemplar of the richness that results from attending to the somatic quality of words, yielding a layering of ideas that forms a virtual chorus of multiperspectival thinking.” —Patricia Cox Miller, Syracuse University

I Want To Believe: Kant, The X Files, And Cosmopolitical Unity, Jeremy Knickerbocker

Cinesthesia

Kant’s final chapter of Anthropology from a Pragmatic Point of View, puts forth certain observations concerning the characteristics of human beings. In order for these observations to have rational validity as a proposed ‘human nature,’ however, Kant admits that it is necessary to compare between humans and another species of rational animal. Thus in an effort not to succumb to a naively anthropocentric thesis of nature, Kant still falls victim to his own anthropocentric privileging of rationality as a strictly human capacity—at least terrestrially speaking. While Kant fails to recognize any other earthly species as a rational animal, he nevertheless …

Physical Aggression And Mindfulness Among College Students: Evidence From China And The United States, Yu Gao, Lu Shi, Kelly C. Smith, Jeffrey B. Kingree, Martie Thompson

Publications

The link between trait mindfulness and several dimensions of aggression (verbal, anger and hostility) has been documented, while the link between physical aggression and trait mindfulness remains less clear. Method: We used two datasets: one United States sample from 300 freshmen males from Clemson University, South Carolina and a Chinese sample of 1516 freshmen students from Shanghai University of Finance and Economics. Multiple regressions were conducted to examine the association between mindfulness (measured by Mindful Attention and Awareness Scale (MAAS)) and each of the four subscales of aggression. Results: Among the Clemson sample (N = 286), the …

Deontological Ethical System For Google's Self-Driving Car, Edgard Alejandro Arroliga Jr.

Computer Science and Software Engineering

Google's Self-Driving Car is a revolutionary product that is riddled with ethical conundrums. It is able to accurately scan and drive through densely populated roads without much difficulty. However, there are some situations where the car will likely have to make decisions that affect, maybe even take, the lives of those on the road. Issues such as the Trolley Problem and the Rear-End Dilemma describe situations where there seems to be no single ethical answer as to how the car should act. In order to solve these issues, I propose that a Deontological Ethical System should be implemented because it …

Humanity’S Capability Of Transcendence Through Artificial Intelligence, Zena Mccartney

Capstone Projects and Master's Theses

In the 21st century artificial intelligence (AI) technologies such as robots, mind uploading and cyborgs have probed at these questions:

Who is in control the machine or human?

What is the purpose of autonomous robots to humanity?

If a machine can pass the Turing Test then is it appropriate to be in society acting on free will?

How would a robot understand how to make someone feel loved?

Do their deep expressions of understanding the human condition make them like us?

Once a human has a cyborg technology are they then human or machine?

How and why would we want …

Anthropocentrism And The Long-Term: Nietzsche As An Environmental Thinker, Andrew Nolan Hatley

Doctoral Dissertations

Nietzsche has been advanced as an authoritative support for nearly every political aim since his death in 1900. Recent work has focused on his potential to contribute to environmental ethics. I defend the view that Nietzsche can contribute to both environmental ethics and aesthetics, and moreover, that his philosophy cannot be fully understood without the conceptual resources of environmental philosophy. Nietzsche’s critique of morality and positive ethical views cannot be understood independent of conceptual distinctions of anthropocentrism and topics such as future generations and biocentric discussions of axiology. Nietzsche’s philosophy of nature emerges from his rejection of both metaphysical and …

Pascal And Fermat: Religion, Probability, And Other Mathematical Discoveries, Adrienne E. Lazes

MALS Final Projects, 1995-2019

This final project primarily discusses how Blaise Pascal and Pierre de Fermat, two French seventeenth century mathematicians, founded the field of mathematical Probability and how this area continued to evolve after their contributions. Also included in this project is an analysis of how Pascal and Fermat were affected, or not, in their mathematical work by the widespread impact that the Catholic Church had on life in France during this time period. I further discuss two other central discoveries by these theorists: Pascal’s Triangle and Fermat’s Last Theorem. Lastly, the project analyzes how all of these aspects: the influence of the …

Objectual Attitudes And Intentional Objects: A Theory Of Incomplete Objects, Le Quyen Vu Pham

Philosophy Honors Theses

Searches and desires are examples of intentional attitudes, i.e. acts or states about or directed toward something. While it seems that we can and do look for or desire nothing in particular or things that do not exist, it is not as uncontroversial what the metaphysical status of the objects of such seeking or desiring may be. On antirelationalist views, there is nothing that a person is in a relation to when they are searching for a horse, but none in particular, or for a one-horned horse. On relationalist views, the searcher by virtue of their search enters into a …

The Logic Of Concessive Statements, Aharon Grenadir

School for Lifelong Education Publications

Concessive statements appear frequently in everyday reasoning. They are one of the eleven types of statement mentioned in the Ramchal‟s Sefer Derech Tevunos. In addition, in Talmudic discussions, every statement has a presupposition (hava-amina) and a conclusion (ka mashma lan). This goal of this research is to organize the categorizations of concessive statements that are stated in the technical literature. Using the distintinction in lomdus between dechiyah (overriding a law) and hutrah (removal of a law), a novel categorization can be added, according to the type of denial of the expectation by the main clause. That is the subject of …

Veritas Fax Ardens – Truth Is A Flaming Torch, Meret A. Luthi

Senior Theses

Based on the vast amount of truth theories that have been suggested by a myriad of thinkers from various disciplines, it can be inferred that the question of truth has occupied humankind since the beginning of its existence. Even though some of these theories appear more promising than others, it also seems that every suggested answer poses yet further questions about what truth really is. This seemingly endless stream of debates and contradictory theories further indicates that the nature of truth remains an enigma and subject to interpretation. Reflecting on Dominican University’s Latin motto “Veritas Fax Ardens” (Truth Is a …

Detaching Democratic Representation From State And National Borders, Avery C. Shell

Undergraduate Honors Theses

Maintaining the essential features of local democracy, representation and contestation, my theory allows for the representation of the interest of subpopulations in the global community by actors such as nongovernmental organization and intergovernmental organizations. I will begin by outlining what features are necessary for a theory’s consideration as democratic in nature. Then, relying upon democracy in a broad sense, it will be my aim to demonstrate that the right to democracy is universal human right. The following stage will provide the backing, by way of the moral progress of human rights, that the right to democracy is expressible by “importantly …