Philosophy of Science Commons^™

Personality Profiling And Narratology: Implications For Why People Go Bad, Editor

International Bulletin of Political Psychology

This article suggests the utility of narratology in the post-dictive profiling of political leaders.

Post-Pastoral And The Nonmodern: Jean Giono’S Engagement With Nature, Gina Stamm

Studies in 20th & 21st Century Literature

Dismissal of the pastoral as naïve and hostile to progress echoes the critiques which Bruno Latour, in We Have Never Been Modern, makes of what he calls the “antimodern” sensibility. Rather than advocating for an abandonment of the past, however, Latour puts forth a position he calls “nonmodern,” one that allows for recognition of the value of the past and of the natural without idolizing it, that does not demand the forward motion of the modern impulse. While eschewing the “modern” label, he seeks a way to resolve contemporary dichotomies of man vs. nature, human vs. technological, etc., which find ...

Psycho-Political Assessment And Making People: What Can We Know?, Editor

International Bulletin of Political Psychology

This article describes foundational problems in even experts’ knowing people from formal psychological assessment to musings on human nature.

Psychological Profiling Of Political Leaders: Searching For Three White Whales, Editor

International Bulletin of Political Psychology

This article describes three types of information crucial to psychological profiling of political leaders.

The Psychology Of Time: When The Political Future Is In The Past Not The Present, Editor

International Bulletin of Political Psychology

This article illustrates one of political psychology’s challenges-- to change the hold of the past on the present and future of various human collectives in support of security and intelligence objectives.

When Doing What’S Right Is Wrong: The Psychology Of Personnel Security, Editor

International Bulletin of Political Psychology

This article describes the psychology behind failed attempts to improve security, regardless of whether the service and product of industry and organization is one of education, health, commodity, process, or security itself.

Reason In Motion, Luke Francis

Student Works

This essay will explain the historical models of the solar system, which was the known universe for most of human history. There is far more to each model than simply positioning different celestial bodies at the center of the system, and the stories of the astronomers who derived the controversial theories are not discussed often enough. The creation of these theories is part of a much broader revolution in scientific thought and marked the start of a series of observational discoveries that would change the the philosophy of science for centuries to come.

The Politics Of Intelligence, Editor

International Bulletin of Political Psychology

This article describes the politics of the construct and applications of intelligence in the context of adaptation.

When Terror Is Not Terrorism: A Political Psychological Analysis, Editor

International Bulletin of Political Psychology

This article differentiates violence and its threat through terrorism and through other psychological means and ends.

Jamal Khashoggi: Assassination, Abattoir, And The Law Of Small Numbers, Editor

International Bulletin of Political Psychology

This article describes psychological research on why tragedies of individuals and small numbers of people elicit more global emotional arousal than tragedies of large numbers of people.

North Korea And The Nucleus Of Denuclearization, Editor

International Bulletin of Political Psychology

This article describes common operant conditioning principles contributing to the seeming intractability of ‘denuclearizing’ the Democratic People’s Republic of North Korea.

Praxites And Mal-Praxites In Psychological Research: Hoaxes, Editor

International Bulletin of Political Psychology

This article describes intrinsic problems with the pursuit of psychological knowledge in a socio-political world.

Ludwig Büchner: Nineteenth Century Atheist, Edward Jayne

English Faculty Publications

Mostly forgotten today, the German physician and philosopher, Ludwig Büchner (1824-99), made a significant contribution to the theory of materialism in the mid- nineteenth century from an atheistic perspective. Described by Engels and others as a “vulgar” materialist, he was nevertheless unsurpassed in having linked science and atheism unfettered by irrelevant considerations. The son of a doctor who served as president of the local medical college, Büchner studied at four universities culminating with the University of Vienna. In 1852 he became a lecturer in medicine at the University of Tübingen with every expectation of pursuing an academic career. However, he ...

Personality, Psychological Profiling, And Philosophy Of Science: The Insider Threat And Betrayers Of Trust, Editor

International Bulletin of Political Psychology

This article describes philosophical challenges to the utility of profiling personality, especially with security and intelligence implications.

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 Philosophical Foundations Of Plen: A Protocol-Theoretic Logic Of Epistemic Norms, Ralph E. Jenkins

All Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

In this dissertation, I defend the protocol-theoretic account of epistemic norms. The protocol-theoretic account amounts to three theses: (i) There are norms of epistemic rationality that are procedural; epistemic rationality is at least partially defined by rules that restrict the possible ways in which epistemic actions and processes can be sequenced, combined, or chosen among under varying conditions. (ii) Epistemic rationality is ineliminably defined by procedural norms; procedural restrictions provide an irreducible unifying structure for even apparently non-procedural prescriptions and normative expressions, and they are practically indispensable in our cognitive lives. (iii) These procedural epistemic norms are best analyzed in ...

Computing, Modelling, And Scientific Practice: Foundational Analyses And Limitations, Filippos A. Papagiannopoulos

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

This dissertation examines aspects of the interplay between computing and scientific practice. The appropriate foundational framework for such an endeavour is rather real computability than the classical computability theory. This is so because physical sciences, engineering, and applied mathematics mostly employ functions defined in continuous domains. But, contrary to the case of computation over natural numbers, there is no universally accepted framework for real computation; rather, there are two incompatible approaches --computable analysis and BSS model--, both claiming to formalise algorithmic computation and to offer foundations for scientific computing.

The dissertation consists of three parts. In the first part, we ...

The Zombie Apocalypse Has Already Happened: Queering Subjectivity In Zombie Film, Jessica Dunn

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation traces the encounter between psychology as a human science and the viral zombie film genre using the collaborative works of Deleuze and Guattari in conjunction with the queer anti-humanist theories of Colebrook and Halberstam. I interwove thematic (i.e. plot, dialogue, character development) and cinematographic (i.e. shot composition, editing, lighting, musical score) analyses of fourteen viral zombie films with theoretical arguments regarding the deterritorialization of the human subject and its relevance to psychology as a human science. The films were selected from the plethora of viral zombie films released after the turn of the 21st century. The ...

A Practical And Practice-Sensitive Account Of Science As Problem-Solving, Frédéric-Ismaël Banville

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Philosophers of science have recently begun to pay more attention to scientific practice, moving away from the discipline’s focus on theories. The creation of the Society for Philosophy of Science in Practice in 2006, as well as the emergence of scholarship on experimental practice (e.g. Sullivan 2009; 2010; 2016) as well as on the tools scientists use to construct explanations and theories (e.g. Feest 2011) all point to a disciplinary shift towards a more practice-conscious philosophy of science. In addition, scholars are realizing the potential social relevance of philosophy of science and identifying the obstacles that stand ...

A Pluralism Worth Having: Feyerabend's Well-Ordered Science, Jamie Shaw

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

The goal of this dissertation is to reconstruct, critically evaluate, and apply the pluralism of Paul Feyerabend. I conclude by suggesting future points of contact between Feyerabend’s pluralism and topics of interest in contemporary philosophy of science. I begin, in Chapter 1, by reconstructing Feyerabend’s critical philosophy. I show how his published works from 1948 until 1970 show a remarkably consistent argumentative strategy which becomes more refined and general as Feyerabend’s thought matures. Specifically, I argue that Feyerabend develops a persuasive case against rationalism, or the thesis that there exist normative and exclusive rules of scientific rationality ...