Digital Commons Network^™

Toward A Radical Integral Humanism: Macintyre’S Continuing Marxism, Jeffery Nicholas

Jeffery Nicholas

I argue that we must read Alasdair MacIntyre’s mature work through a Marxist lens. I begin by discussing his argument that we must choose which God to worship on principles of justice, which, it turns out, are ones given to us by God. I contend that this argument entails that we must see Mac- Intyre’s early Marxist commitments as given to him by God, and, therefore, that he has never abandoned them in his turn to Thomistic-Aristotelianism. I examine his reading of Marx, with its emphasis on the concept of alienation as a Christian concept, and explain how this reading …

The New Bureaucracies Of Virtue: Introduction, Marie-Andree Jacob, Annelise Riles

Annelise Riles

No abstract provided.

Heuristics, Biases, And Philosophy, Jeffrey J. Rachlinski

Jeffrey J. Rachlinski

Commenting on Professor Cass Sunstein's work is a daunting task. There is simply so much of it. Professor Sunstein produces scholarship at a rate that is faster than I can consume it. Scarcely an area of law has failed to feel his impact. One cannot today write an article on administrative law, free speech, punitive damages, Internet law, law and economics, separation of powers, or animal rights law without addressing one or more of Sunstein's papers. And his work is typically not a mere footnote. Sunstein has changed how scholars think about each of these areas of law. More broadly, …

The Moral Emotions Of The Criminal Law, Stephen P. Garvey

Stephen P. Garvey

Imagine you have committed a crime. You might experience any number of emotional responses to what you've done, ranging from self-satisfaction to self-disgust. But however you do feel, how should you feel? The question seems especially appropriate for a conference honoring Professor Herbert Morris and celebrating his work, for no one has shed light more on the moral emotions of the criminal law. The line of thought that follows owes Professor Morris a large and obvious debt. So, once again, how should you feel when you have committed a criminal wrong? "Guilty" comes immediately to mind. But guilt is not …

Foiling The Black Knight, Kelly C. Smith

Kelly C Smith

Why is the academy in general, and philosophy in particular, not more involved in the fight against the creationist threat? And why, when a response is offered, is it so curiously ineffective? I argue, by using an analogy with the battle against the Black Knight from the movie Monty Python and the Holy Grail, that the difficulty lies largely in a failure to see the nature of the problem clearly. By modifying the analogy, it is possible to see both why large sections of the academy have remained unmoved and also why many of the reactions to the threat have …

The Effects Of Temperature And Daylength On The Rosa Polyphenism In The Buckeye Butterfly, Precis Coenia (Lepidoptera: Nymphalidae), Kelly C. Smith

Kelly C Smith

In North Carolina, Precis coenia that emerge during the Summer months exhibit a ventral hindwing (VHW) with well-defined reddish-brown and brown pattern elements on a light tan background. During late Summer and early Fall, however, individuals begin to appear with poorly defined or obscured pattern elements on a dark reddish-brown background. The present study shows that the Fall (rosa) color morph can be induced by either low rearing temperatures or short daylengths. The effect of such conditions seems to be cumulative throughout the larval life, although animals are much more sensitive during the last 24 hours of larval life and …

Equivocal Notions Of Accuracy And Genetic Screening Of The General Population, Kelly C. Smith

Kelly C Smith

The explosive growth in genetic technology will quickly make possible an unprecedented number of tests for genetically based conditions. A necessary condition for the use of such tests without risk of harm to the patient is that they are “accurate”. However, most discussions of test accuracy in the literature have equivocated between two importantly different meanings of the word. In particular, it must be kept in mind that a high analytical accuracy does not imply a high diagnostic accuracy. Questions about the diagnostic accuracy of genetic tests loom large at present given our limited knowledge of the complex etiology of …

Manifest Complexity: A Foundational Ethic For Astrobiology?, Kelly C. Smith

Kelly C Smith

This paper examines the age old question of the basis of moral value in the new context of astrobiology, which offers a fresh perspective. The goal is to offer the broad outline of a general theory of moral value that can accommodate the diversity of living entities we are likely to encounter beyond the confines of Earth. It begins with ratiocentrism, the view that the possession of reason is the primary means by which we differentiate entities having moral value in and of themselves from those having moral value merely by virtue of the uses to which they can be …

Wrench Yourself, Luca W. Cintolo

Luca W Cintolo

Wrench Yourself Luca Cintolo Faculty Sponsor: Cheryl Foster, Philosophy Wrench Yourself was originally conceived as a three part project. Part one, learning about the writing life, came to fruition through reading books on the craft. Part two involved producing a body of original, creative, non-fiction. Part three culminated in binding the polished pieces of writing in limited production, hand made, leather bound books. At the completion of this project I have created a hand-made book containing two essays. The first essay, Driven to Distraction, focuses on inattention behind the wheel and the pervasiveness of multi-tasking as a societal norm. The …

Hypothesis Generation And Testing: A Template For Biomedical Research, Michael Hoffmann

Michael H.G. Hoffmann

This argument map provides a template for the testing of hypotheses in biomedical research. It can be used in science education to direct students' attention to all components that need to be clarified to justify a scientific hypothesis in a specific experimental setting, including the justification of appropriate sample sizes in experiments, determination of background theories, description of experimental design, data collection methods, significance level, etc. To use this template, go to http://agora.gatech.edu/, search for argument map 3363, and copy the map.

Brevity, By Laurence Goldstein, Monica Mcmillan, Robert J. Stainton

Robert J. Stainton

No abstract provided.

Reconciliation And Harmony: The Philosophical Art Of Tragic Drama, Lawrence Kimmel

Lawrence Kimmel

In the performance of art one can begin at the beginning, but in a discussion of art one must begin somewhere in the middle. Here, it is with the conviction that art, in whatever form, though it may surprise the sense and quicken the spirit, disturb our thinking or revoke a thoughtless ease, still, its full expression restores a sense of presence and wholeness to our being. That is, every art form has a point of closure in a harmony of the spirit. Even tragic drama, which brings the darkness of human character into a glare of recognition and acceptance, …

Culture And The Philosophy Of Moral Life: The True, The Good, The Beautiful, And The Sacred, Lawrence Kimmel

Lawrence Kimmel

Philosophy as a profession is blessed with leisure and exempt from an obligation to be socially useful or productive, and so has a special obligation to address fundamental questions about the meaning of the human project not otherwise on the contemporary agenda. This is not an undertaking that requires technical language or special skills. William James described the deceptively simple task of philosophy as saying something true about things that matter. That said, it is hardly the prerogative of philosophy to adjudicate which are matters of crucial importance to a given culture. Moreover, philosophical investigations are of a kind that …

Technology: The Future Of Our History, Lawrence Kimmel

Lawrence Kimmel

No abstract provided.

Death, And The Elemental Passion Of The Soul: An Ancient Philosophical Thesis, With Poetic Counterpoint, Lawrence Kimmel

Lawrence Kimmel

In his famous “Letter”, Epicurus writes to his young friend Menoeceus that “Death is nothing” — either to fear or to hope for.1 This counsel further suggests that death is not something one can claim as his/her own, and that even its contemplation brings “a craving for immortality”, and so, loosens the fragile hold we have on the life of the soul.

The Poetics Of Place, Lawrence Kimmel

Lawrence Kimmel

Paul Ricoeur, at a Hannah Arendt retrospective some 15 years ago, spoke of the controlling metaphor of Arendt's work as that of Place, and said that he offered in his own work, instead, an enabling metaphor of Time. To bring together the work of these two exceptional thinkers, to bridge the divide and to map out the complementarity of engaging metaphors would be a worthy task of scholarship, however I will not try to do so even in outline here. Still, the contrast and convergence of the two metaphors of time and place is one I want to at least …

Journeys Home: The Pathos Of Place, Lawrence Kimmel

Lawrence Kimmel

The pathos of place is elemental in grounding the risk of life, the source of confidence requisite to the human quest whether it is conceived as arche or telos, whether it is where one begins, or the end toward which one’s journey is directed. The project of living is such that one’s journey is always toward a homeland, however it be conceived: dreams of homecoming the recovery of innocence, the joyful receiving of the retrieved prodigal, the triumphal march of the heroic legions, the quiet return of the native — all hopeful to appear once again in the light of …

Poetry, Life, Literature, Lawrence Kimmel

Lawrence Kimmel

The question and theme of the poetry of life reaches deep into the essential questions of human existence. In the sense that poetry is the central core of literature, it is essential to the meaning of our lives. This question does not necessarily place human life, nor indeed biological life at the center of inquiry. We will examine the sense in which life itself is poetry, and great literature--in this essay we will refer only to that--is recognized by its capacity to capture and express that poetry. When it does this it penetrates to the heart of human accord and …

Notes On The Art Of Memory, Lawrence Kimmel

Lawrence Kimmel

A few years ago I was asked to write a piece for a memorial Festschrift for a friend and colleague who had just died. It occurred to me then that remembrance was a very special faculty of mind; this essay takes up the threads of that remembrance. The task of understanding memory is daunting: it is ubiquitous in every aspect of life and thought. I will try to distinguish important features of memory as it functions in our individual and collective lives, but my primary concern is with a particular aspect of remembrance that is a creative resource vital to …

Explanation In Information Systems, Dirk S. Hovorka, Matt Germonprez, Kai R.T. Larsen

Kai R.T. Larsen

Developing explanations of observed phenomenon is one of the major functions of research in Information Systems (IS). But what is an explanation? What types of explanation can IS research provide and what do they mean? The objectives of this research are to develop a shared language, to increase understanding of the meaning of research results and to stimulate discussion of explanation in Information Systems research. Four years of articles published in two top-ranked IS journals over a period of ten years were sampled based on four explanation types defined in modern philosophy: covering-law, statistical-relevance, pragmatic and functional. Explanation types, sub …

From Mirror To Mirage: The Idea Of Logical Space In Kant, Wittgenstein, And Van Fraassen, Lucien R. Lamoureux

Lucien Lamoureux

This dissertation investigates the origin, intellectual development and use of a semantic variant of the idea of logical space found implicitly in Kant and explicitly in early Wittgenstein and van Fraassen. It elucidates the idea of logical space as the idea of images or pictures representative of reality organized into a logico-mathematical structure circumscribing a form of all possible worlds. Its main claim is that application of these images or pictures to reality is through a certain conception of self. The first chapter presents a novel interpretation of Kant’s semantic theory of schemata in the Critique of Pure Reason, showing …

Antigone And Democratic Theory, Andrés Fabián Henao Castro

Andrés Fabián Henao-Castro

No abstract provided.

Quantifiers, Domains, And (Meta-) Ontology, Lajos L. Brons

Lajos Brons

In metaphysics, quantifiers are assumed to be either binary or unary. Binary quantifiers take the concept(s) "all of" and/or "some of" as primitive(s); unary quantifiers take the concept(s) "everything" and/or "something" as primitive(s). Binary quantifiers (explicitly) range over domains. However, "everything" and "something" are reducible to the binary quantifiers "all of" and "some of": "everything" is all of some implied domain, and there is no natural, default, or inherent domain U such that everything is all of U. Therefore, any quantifier ranges over a domain, and is thus binary, and there are no unary quantifiers.

This implies that if two …

Truth And Non-Existence In Aristotle, Charlene Elsby

Charlene Elsby

This work critically examines Aristotle’s statements regarding truth in relation to what does not exist, and defends a cohesive interpretation of Aristotle on truth and non-existence against contemporary commentators. Aristotle speaks of what does not exist in various contexts within his works, and questions about things that don’t exist arise at every level of the structure of reality Aristotle lays down in Chapter One of De Interpretatione. Aristotle refers to things, affections of the soul, and statements as truth-bearing. However, the ways in which each is said to be true or false suggests that Aristotle applied the notion of “truth” …

Iris Young, Radical Responsibility, And War, Harry Van Der Linden

Harry van der Linden

In this paper I argue that a merit of Iris Young’s social connection model of responsibility for structural injustices is that it directs the American people’s responsibility for unjust wars, such as the recent war against Iraq, toward their responsibility to abolish the “war machine,” including the “empire of bases,” that is a contributing factor of unjust U.S. wars. I also raise two objections to her model. First, her model leads us to downplay the culpability of the American people as a political collective in voting to continue the Iraq war with the re-election of George W. Bush. Second, Young …

Wie Vernünftig Ist Gewalt? (Interview), Stephen D'Arcy

Stephen D'Arcy

Hsisp Annotated Bibliography: Attitudes Toward Animals (1998-2013), Erich Yahner

Erich Yahner, MSLIS

No abstract provided.

Hsisp Annotated Bibliography: Moral & Character Education (1998-2013), Erich Yahner

Erich Yahner

No abstract provided.

The Next American Revolution?, David Schweickart

David Schweickart

Contesting Faith, Truth, And Religious Language At The Creation Museum: A Historical-Theological Reflection, Brent A. R. Hege

Brent A. R. Hege

The Creation Museum in Petersburg, Kentucky, attempts to demonstrate the flaws in contemporary science and to offer an alternative explanation of human origins and biological complexity rooted in a specific reading of the biblical narrative. This effort, however, is paradoxically rooted in the worldview of modern science and the Enlightenment. This article will examine the Creation Museum’s definitions of faith, truth, and religious language and will compare these definitions to those of mainline Protestant Christianity to uncover the historical and theological presuppositions of Creationist and mainline Protestant engagements with contemporary science.