Arts and Humanities Commons^™

Biological Teleology In The Modern World, Kathryn Siena

Honors Theses

In humans, the heart moves blood through the body. Does the heart therefore have a teleological explanation? Aristotelian teleology (described in Aristotle’s Physics) is the cause-for-the-sake-of-which, or the end towards which something moves. It is evident from current scientific knowledge that there is some sort of orientation of organisms toward an end. This orientation, following Aristotle’s definition of teleology, is conceptually distinct from efficient causation. This orientation is also metaphysically distinct from efficient causation because efficient causal explanations do not properly describe the orientation. However, two common ways of describing teleological explanations imply efficient causation as a metaphysical element. …

Śākya Mchog Ldan (1428–1507), Yaroslav Komarovski

Department of Classics and Religious Studies: Faculty Publications

gSer mdog Paṇ chen Śākya mchog ldan was an influential Tibetan scholar who developed a novel approach to the key systems of Buddhist thought and practice. While he is renowned as one of the most famous Sa skya thinkers, his approach has never become accepted as the mainstream within the Sa skya due to his espousal of the views of other-emptiness, as well as critical inquiry into the views of Sa skya paṇḍita Kun dga’ rgyal mtshan, the supreme authority of the Sa skya tradition. Besides involvement in his own Sa skya tradition, Śākya mchog ldan also maintained connection with …

Emotional Perspectives On Existential Threat: Evaluating The Rationality Of Climate Anxiety, Rachael Lange

Honors Theses

This thesis seeks to answer the following question: Is climate anxiety a rational emotion? In order to arrive at an answer, several queries embedded in the main question must be addressed. This paper will outline a theory of emotion in order to define anxiety, assess climate change as a specific emotional object, and compare the rationality of anxiety using two evaluative standards. Climate anxiety is an emerging emotional phenomenon experienced in response to the perceived detrimental effects of a warming climate. Due to the novel identification of this contemporary emotional phenomenon with the established emotion of anxiety, there has thus …

Practical Reasons, Theoretical Reasons, And Permissive And Prohibitive Balancing, John Brunero

Department of Philosophy: Faculty Publications

Philosophers have often noted a contrast between practical and theoretical reasons when it comes to cases involving equally balanced reasons. When there are strong practical reasons for A-ing, and equally strong practical reasons for some incompatible option, B-ing, the agent is permitted to make an arbitrary choice between them, having sufficient reason to A and sufficient reason to B. But when there is strong evidence for P and equally strong evidence for ~P, one isn’t permitted to simply believe one or the other. Instead, one must withhold belief, neither believing that P nor believing that ~P. This paper examines what …

Impossible Worlds And The Safety Of Philosophical Beliefs, Zack Garrett, Zachariah Wrublewski

Department of Philosophy: Faculty Publications

Epistemological accounts that make use of a safety condition on knowledge, historically, face serious problems regarding beliefs that are necessarily true. This is because necessary truths are true in all possible worlds, and so such beliefs can be safe even when the bases for the beliefs are epistemically problematic. The existence of such problematically safe beliefs would undermine a major motivation for the condition itself: the ability to evaluate how well a belief tracks the truth. This paper argues that incorporating impossible worlds into the evaluation of beliefs solves this problem, but only if the relevant account of impossible worlds …

Regenerating Agroecosystems By Overcoming Human Exceptionalism In Designing For Increased Equity Of Benefits From Ecoservices, Ali Loker, Charles A. Francis

Department of Agronomy and Horticulture: Faculty Publications

Our commentary explores three critical issues related to ecosystem services. First is how ecoservices are currently designed and implemented primarily for human benefit without concern for how these impact other species. We conclude that awareness of this imbalance is the first step toward meaningful change. Second we observe that human exceptionalism guides most decisions, and ask whether we can overcome this mind-set to embrace ecoregeneration and design of resilient and mutually beneficial agroecosystems. Our attitude toward the challenge and moving toward greater humility about human roles that guide management decisions in the ecosystem is a requisite for change. Third we …

The Use Of Personal Digital Archiving For Effective Learning During Pandemic Covid-19, Naufal Ahmad Rijalul Alam

Library Philosophy and Practice (e-journal)

The Covid 19 pandemic that ravaged the world, particularly Indonesia, had a negative impact on aspects of learning, particularly for children aged three to six years in early childhood education. The implementation of distance learning disrupted the face-to-face learning model, which was supposed to be the primary medium for increasing children's knowledge and interest. In this regard, the role of parents is critical in ensuring that learning at home is effective and enjoyable. This study explores the using personal digital archiving (PDA) conducted by parents for effective learning during pandemic covid-19. By using a case study, this qualitative research took …

Addressing The Harms Of Pornography, Gillian Allison

Honors Theses

Within this paper I look at the existing philosophical work on pornography, from scholars like Catherine MacKinnon, Ronald Dworkin, and Rae Langton to show the current state of the pornography debate that I intend to enter by presenting my own argument about the morality of pornography. I argue that while pornography is harmful, these harms are best resolved through increased sexual education and the popularization and production of more inclusive pornography. The harms pornography causes are so great because pornography is where a lot of people learn about sex. Pornography was never designed to depict an average sexual experience. If …

The Green Library Initiative In Indian Perspective: A Study, Sk Abdul Gaffar, Sindhu P. N Mrs, S. Kishore Kumar Mr

Library Philosophy and Practice (e-journal)

Abstract

Purpose - The present study was to research instances of green library construction and recognition to raise awareness of green libraries for users. The researcher has explored, this paper highlights the role of a librarian, features of the green library, and initiatives of a green library in India.

Take Your Time, Terry A. Ratzlaff

School of Art, Art History, and Design: Theses and Student Creative Work

I see the world not as one seamless world but as a world composed of other worlds, built on top and within one another. They exist harmoniously, bound not by space but by time. In an instant I can move from one world into another where I can exist in two worlds simultaneously—in space, I am here. In time, I am there.

Worldmaking is a conceptual process of seeing connections and making distinctions within our lived reality.1 It is a process of dividing and organizing parts into collections that represent different narratives. Only through suitable arrangements can we handle vast …

Avoiding The Basilisk: An Evaluation Of Top-Down, Bottom-Up, And Hybrid Ethical Approaches To Artificial Intelligence, Cole Shardelow

Honors Theses

This thesis focuses on three specific approaches to implementing morality into artificial superintelligence (ASI) systems: top-down, bottom-up, and hybrid approaches. Each approach defines both the mechanical and moral functions an AI would attain if implemented. While research on machine ethics is already scarce, even less attention has been directed to which of these three prominent approaches would be most optimal in producing a moral ASI and avoiding a malevolent AI. Thus, this paper argues of the three machine ethics approaches, a hybrid model would best avoid the problems of superintelligent AI because it minimizes the problems of bottom-up and top-down …

Disappearing Chairs And Related Matters: A Visual Essay For Wittgenstein’S Philosophical Investigations (Section 80), Michael R. Hill

Department of Sociology: Faculty Publications

Are there rules capturing the meaning of all possible uses (now, past, and future) of the word “chair”? Ludwig Wittgenstein raised this issue in Section 80 of the Philosophical Investigations where he stated: “I say, ‘There is a chair over there’”. Does “chair” in his utterance mean anything? For myself, this question can be approached autobiographically and chronologically. As a youngster, my earliest understanding of “chair” is reflected in the graphic illustration from a Dick and Jane reader (Figure 1) with re-imagined dialog: “This is a chair”. I understood a chair to be a human-made object — usually constructed from …

Research Productivity And Performance Of Journals Of Informetrics, Kunwar Singh Dr., Akhilesh Kumar Varma Dr., Madan Singh

Library Philosophy and Practice (e-journal)

This study explores the research productivity and performance of journals of informetrics (JOI) for selected 13 years between 2007-2019. The research productivity was evaluated based on a methodology followed and used in this study: Annual growth rate (AGR), relative growth rate (RGR) and doubling time (Dt); authorship pattern and Authors productivity, degree of collaboration (DC), collaborative index (CI), most productive Institutes, and countries, year-wise distribution of the publications. The Scopus database was consulted for collecting of required data for this study. A total of 978 publications were found during the study period. The study shows that the highest numbers of …

Plurality Of Traditions And Metatheories In Information Science, Taufik Asmiyanto, Muhamad Prabu Wibowo

Library Philosophy and Practice (e-journal)

Information science presupposes multi traditions because of its close relationship to the convergence of several fields of science that saw epistemic and practical needs and demands due to the phenomenon of the information revolution and information and communication technology (ICT). The multi traditions in information science are relevant to explain limitless study objects in information science in understanding reality and ways of gaining knowledge throughout the development of science. A previous study on ontology and epistemology shows that there is a limitation on human reasoning on the understanding reality that affects further development of science. The plurality of traditions enables …

Ethical Tensions Of Library And Information Science Profession: Theoretical Perspective, Navneet Kaur Deol, Amandeep Kaur

Library Philosophy and Practice (e-journal)

The present paper focuses on the issue of professional ethics and related problems in the field of Library and Information Science. The study, to begin with, reveals the dichotomy of professional ethics from the general social ethics through visible boundaries and jurisdictions. Further, some most general and universally found issues and reasons of ethical tensions are discussed. The study argues that unawareness about professional ethics, lack of universal patterns of ethics as well as universal mechanism for the implementation and the dilemma of social ethics versus professional ethics are the issues, which result in ethical tensions. Besides these, in certain …

Desire Satisfaction Theories And The Problem Of Depression, Andrew Spaid

Department of Philosophy: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

This dissertation argues that the desire satisfaction theory, arguably the dominant theory of well-being at present, fails to explain why depression is bad for a person. People with clinical depression desire almost nothing, but the few desires they do have are almost all satisfied. So it appears the theory must say these people are relatively well-off. A number of possible responses on behalf of the theory are considered, and I argue that each response either fails outright, or requires modifications to the desire satisfaction theory which make the theory unattractive for other reasons.

Advisors: Joseph Mendola and John Brunero

Vagueness And The Logic Of The World, Zack Garrett

Department of Philosophy: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

In this dissertation, I argue that vagueness is a metaphysical phenomenon---that properties and objects can be vague---and propose a trivalent theory of vagueness meant to account for the vagueness in the world. In the first half, I argue against the theories that preserve classical logic. These theories include epistemicism, contextualism, and semantic nihilism. My objections to these theories are independent of considerations of the possibility that vagueness is a metaphysical phenomenon. However, I also argue that these theories are not capable of accommodating metaphysical vagueness.

As I move into my positive theory, I first argue for the possibility of metaphysical …

Mapping The Literature Using The Systematic Mapping Study Method For Customer Frustration Research, Taharuddin Taharuddin, Ria Arifianti, Tetty Herawaty, Arianis Chan, Erna Maulina, Margo Purnomo

Library Philosophy and Practice (e-journal)

Abstract

The primary purpose of this article is to do classification and thematic analysis of previous research on customer frustration using a systematic mapping study (SMS). The main research was carried out by combining automatic and manual search. The automatic search was through electronic journal database references: ProQuest Research Library, EBSCOhost: Academic Search Complete, Google Scholar, Emerald Insight and Scopus, while the manual one was performed on Google search with the snowball sampling method. A total of 28 studies on costumer frustration in the form of journal articles and proceedings were included in the inclusion criteria. The results of the …

Essence And Explanation, Albert Casullo

Department of Philosophy: Faculty Publications

In Necessary Beings, Bob Hale addresses two questions: What is the source of necessity? What is the source of our knowledge of it? He offers novel responses to them in terms of the meta- physical notion of nature or, more familiarly, essence. In this paper, I address Hale’s response to the first question. My assessment is negative. I argue that his essentialist explanation of the source of necessity suffers from three significant shortcomings. First, Hale’s leading example of an essentialist explanation merely asserts that the nature of an entity explains some necessity, but leaves unexplained how it does so. Second, …

On The Transcendental Freedom Of The Intellect, Colin Mclear

Department of Philosophy: Faculty Publications

One well-known point of emphasis in the critical philosophy is that only transcendental idealism can safeguard the possibility of the spontaneity and agent-causal freedom of rational beings. If such freedom were not possible, then in Kant’s estimation there would be no hope for conceiving of rational agents as morally responsible; for if rational agents were totally in the grip of the deterministic causal nexus of the Spatio-temporal world then moral requirements could not apply.

However, as the epigraph above makes clear, Kant also considers the causal nexus of phenomenal nature to threaten the status of human beings not just as …

Where “Philosophy” And “Literature” Converge: Exploring Tibetan Buddhist Writings About Reality, Yaroslav Komarovski

Department of Classics and Religious Studies: Faculty Publications

It is well known that the Buddha presented his teachings not just as a philosophical system, but as a raft to cross the ocean of saṃsāra and reach the other shore of nirvāṇa; that he did not answer certain philosophical questions because they were not essential for achieving that goal; and that he likened musings about some philosophical issues to inquiries about the origins and nature of the poison by a person shot with a poisonous arrow. On the other hand, we also know that all such statements about what the Buddha said or said not and why are liable …

Global Technology Economic Analysis Paradigm, Iwasan D. Kejawa Ed.D

School of Computing: Faculty Publications

Abstract

Is true that it is not only the consumers that make the economy prospers? Business and government also play a role in the economy of a country and corporation. “The GLOBAL technology economy is driven perhaps by the example of a consumer-based society and capital driven citizenry," according to the article in the investor guide of 2013. The role of the government is very important in businesses, organizations and consumers alike depending on the decisions made by the government officials spending of the government. Research have indicated that dependencies of government, organizations, businesses and consumers are intertwine or intermediary. …

Idealization And The Wrong Kind Of Reasons*, John Brunero

Department of Philosophy: Faculty Publications

According to a simplistic fitting attitude analysis of admirable, what it is for someone to be admirable just is for admiration to be an appropriate attitude to have toward that person. But this analysis faces the “wrong kind of reasons” or “conflation” problem: it may sometimes be appropriate to admire someone without that person being admirable. For instance, if my admiring an evil dictator would somehow save 100 lives, it would be appropriate for me to admire him. But that doesn’t make him admirable.

The fact that it would somehow save 100 lives is the “wrong kind of reason” for …

Women Representation In Lyric Of Minang Song “Laki Den Hobi Baburu”, Tantri Puspita Yazid, Asep Suryana, Dadang Sugiana, Neni Yulianita

Library Philosophy and Practice (e-journal)

This research focuses on women representation in lyric of Minang song titled “laki den hobi baburu” popularized by Elly Kasim. The assumption of this research is that the song’s lyric reconstructing Minang women based on patriarchy ideology, where women are marginalized because of having husband whose willing to hunt boars. Moreover, to analyze the phenomenon above this research used Sara Mills critical discourse analysis method which covers macro, micro and representation in the text. However, researcher only focus on micro level analysis. This is a qualitative research which data were acquired by focus group discussion and library research. This song …

Transhumanism (Dot) Mil: A Bibliometric Analysis Of Technoprogressive Terms In Military Publications, K. Durwood Evans

Library Philosophy and Practice (e-journal)

Has transhumanism influenced military thinking? Previous work found that transhumanist terms did not appear widely in military publications. The present work analyzes and improves on previous content analysis of transhumanist terms in military literature using the tools of library and information studies.

Post–Modern Epidemiology: When Methods Meet Matter, George Davey Smith

Public Health Resources

In the last third of the 20th century, etiological epidemiology within academia in high-income countries shifted its primary concern from attempting to tackle the apparent epidemic of noncommunicable diseases to an increasing focus on developing statistical and causal inference methodologies. This move was mutually constitutive with the failure of applied epidemiology to make major progress, with many of the advances in understanding the causes of noncommunicable diseases coming from outside the discipline, while ironically revealing the infectious origins of several major conditions. Conversely, there were many examples of epidemiologic studies promoting ineffective interventions and little evident attempt to account for …

Millennial Moms : Social Media As The Preferred Source Of Information About Parenting In Indonesia, Yuanita Setyastuti, Jenny Ratna Suminar, Purwanti Hadisiwi, Feliza Zubair

Library Philosophy and Practice (e-journal)

This study aims to know about how social media is the preferred source of information about parenting on millennial moms or young mothers in Indonesia. This research was conducted using a quantitative approach through survey. The survey was conducted by using a questionnaire distributed online to the respondents via Facebook. The measuring is clarified by six dimensions: rejection, punishment, support, responsiveness, autonomy, and warmth. The sampling technique is done by accidental sampling techniques with strict criteria. The sample size were 443 social media users that meet the research criteria. Research criteria are a mother that born in 1980-2000s and actively …

Vedic Education: The Only Means To Realise Sarvam Khalu Idam Brahman, Vandana Sharma

Library Philosophy and Practice (e-journal)

___________________________

[1] Hindustan Times, By Leena Dhankhar, 13^th November 2018

² Hindustan Times, 3^rd November 2018

³ The Deccan Chronicles, by Sonali Telang, 20^th November 2018

⁴ Times of India, 21^st October 2018

⁵ Hindustan Times, 30^th August 2017

Today we live in constant fear of being victims or witnessing someone being a victim. Such is the condition of our society. Leave alone the world and let’s merely concentrate upon what India is facing in today’s time. On November 13, 2018 a 3 year old girl was raped in Gurugram and was later put to …

Designing Epistemic Concepts, Luke E. Elwonger

Department of Philosophy: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

The analysis and theorizing about concepts like “knowledge” and “justification” has played a central role in much of epistemology in the past half century. This dissertation argues for the claim that we should understand this conceptual concern as one of design. Concepts are tools and the concepts of interest to epistemologists must be those that we can best use in service of our epistemic interests. On this understanding of the conceptual project, we determine the content of epistemic concepts, not by consulting our naïve linguistic intuitions, but by determining what concepts will best help us express and enforce the epistemic …

Review Of Potentiality: From Dispositions To Modality By Barbara Vetter, Jennifer Mckitrick

Department of Philosophy: Faculty Publications

In recent years, there have been several books written about dispositions. Barbara Vetter’s Potentiality: From Dispositions to Modality is another, but it is not just another. Vetter’s book stands out as an ambitious, original, and systematic attempt to develop a new account of metaphysical modality in terms of dispositional properties she calls ‘potentialities.’ According to Vetter, saying that something has a disposition, like fragility or flammability, is to say something about what it can do, such as break or burn. Dispositional concepts are members of a broader class of modal concepts, which also includes necessity, possibility, causation, laws, and essence. …