Arts and Humanities Commons^™

Leo Strauss On Machiavelli: Athens Vs. Jerusalem Or Ontological Assumptions About Human Nature And Power, Dickson Tiphaine, Jokić Aleksandar

Philosophy Faculty Publications and Presentations

In this article we focus on the true nature of a disparity asserted in Leo Strauss's discussion of Machiavelli to amount to a virtue battle of sorts between Athens and Jerusalem. To convey this conflict Strauss is drawing both on his once Talmudic scholarship and his expertise in the history of political philosophy. We explore the stunning distortions, both theological and philosophical, in Strauss's discussion that appears aimed to support a conservative position on leadership, which calls for the magnanimous few to exercise power over the many (the lowborn, the poor and the vulgar). Not only does Strauss distort the …

A Phenomenological Approach To Legal Epistemic Injustice, Christopher Thomas Phillippe-Rodriguez

Philosophy Faculty Publications and Presentations

Injustices in legal contexts are widespread, yet we usually tend to think of them through a social lens. The study of epistemic injustices increases the resolution of this lens; it identifies how we wrong others as "knowers." In this paper, I propose that the tradition of phenomenology may be invoked to describe and identify instances of epistemic injustice in legal contexts. In order to justify this claim, I establish a phenomenological methodology predicated on the synthesis of two ideas: (1) the phenomenological recognition of the Other, and (2) society's duty to endow its members with an epistemic sphere of action.

Safety And Academic Outcomes Of College Campus-Based Advocacy Services, Rachel J. Voth Schrag, Elizabeth Baumler, Dixie Hairston, Cynthia Jones, Leila Wood

Philosophy Faculty Publications and Presentations

Intimate partner violence (IPV), sexual assault, and stalking are consequential public health and safety issues with wide reaching impacts on emerging adults, including those on college campuses in the United States. In response to high rates of violence among college student populations, universities are developing campus-based advocacy (CBA) programs, which aim to support survivors of interpersonal violence through supportive connections, resource acquisition, and safety planning. However, little data exists related to their impact on key student-survivor outcomes. Thus, this study aims to understand (a) the approach CBA programs use to address safety and academic concerns of student-survivors, and (b) the …

How To Save Pascal (And Ourselves) From The Mugger, Avram Hiller, Ali Hasan

Philosophy Faculty Publications and Presentations

In this article, we re-examine Pascal's Mugging, and argue that it is a deeper problem than the St. Petersburg paradox. We offer a way out that is consistent with classical decision theory. Specifically, we propose a “many muggers” response analogous to the “many gods” objection to Pascal's Wager. When a very tiny probability of a great reward becomes a salient outcome of a choice, such as in the offer of the mugger, it can be discounted on the condition that there are many other symmetric, non-salient rewards that one may receive if one chooses otherwise.

A Framework For Transparency In Precision Livestock Farming, Kevin C. Elliott, Ian Werkheiser

Philosophy Faculty Publications and Presentations

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Abstract

Lógica, Lenguajes Formales Y Modalidad [Logic, Formal Languages And Modality], Otávio Bueno, Melisa Vivanco

Philosophy Faculty Publications and Presentations

Este artículo examina dos supuestas limitaciones en el uso de lenguajes formales: por un lado, las compensaciones entre el poder expresivo e inferencial y, por el otro, el fenómeno del encarcelamiento del sistema. Después de reconceptualizar el tema, consideramos el papel que desempeña la modalidad en la comprensión de ciertos aspectos de las estructuras matemáticas y defendemos su centralidad.

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This paper examines two alleged limitations in the use of formal languages: on the one hand, the trade-offs between expressive and inferential power, and on the other, the phenomenon of system imprisonment. After reconceptualizing the issue, we consider the role …

Propaganda: More Than Flawed Messaging, Cory Wimberly

Philosophy Faculty Publications and Presentations

Most of the recent work on propaganda in philosophy has come from a narrowly epistemological standpoint that sees it as flawed messaging that negatively impacts public reasonableness and deliberation. This article posits two problems with this approach: first, it obscures the full range of propaganda's activities; and second, it prevents effective ameliorative measures by offering an overly truncated assessment of the problems to be addressed. Following Ellul and Hyska, I argue that propaganda aims at shaping actions and not just beliefs, and that the propaganda activities that shape action include modifying beliefs but also much more. Examining this larger set …

Comment On Gignac And Zajenkowski, “The Dunning-Kruger Effect Is (Mostly) A Statistical Artefact: Valid Approaches To Testing The Hypothesis With Individual Differences Data”, Avram Hiller

Philosophy Faculty Publications and Presentations

Gignac and Zajenkowski (2020) find that “the degree to which people mispredicted their objectively measured intelligence was equal across the whole spectrum of objectively measured intelligence”. This Comment shows that Gignac and Zajenkowski’s (2020) finding of homoscedasticity is likely the result of a recoding choice by the experimenters and does not in fact indicate that the Dunning-Kruger Effect is a mere statistical artifact. Specifically, Gignac and Zajenkowski (2020) recoded test subjects’ responses to a question regarding self-assessed comparative IQ onto a linear IQ scale when a normal IQ scale would likely have been more appropriate. More generally, researchers studying self-assessed …

Review Essay: Recent Works In The Political Theory Of Migration, Alexander Sager

Philosophy Faculty Publications and Presentations

Thirty-five years ago, Joseph Carens published “Aliens and Citizens: The Case for Open Borders” in the Review of Politics. It is only a slight overstatement to say that this article created the subfield of political theory of migration. Today, the field is flourishing. Migration continues to be one of today's most politically fraught and morally urgent issues. An estimated hundred million people have fled violence and persecution. Hundreds of millions more cross international borders every year. States have responded with highly restrictive policies, in which people need to resort to perilous routes, often in the hands of smugglers, to …

Book Review Of: The Concealed Influence Of Custom: Hume's Treatise From The Inside Out, Angela M. Coventry

Philosophy Faculty Publications and Presentations

Review of the book, Jay L. Garfield, The Concealed Influence of Custom: Hume's Treatise from the Inside Out, Oxford University Press, 2019.

Building Community Capacity With Philosophy: Toolbox Dialogue And Climate Resilience, Bryan Cwik, Chad Gonnerman, Michael O'Rourke, Brian Robinson, Daniel Schoonmaker

Philosophy Faculty Publications and Presentations

In this article, we describe a project in which philosophy, in combination with methods drawn from mental modeling, was used to structure dialogue among stakeholders in a region-scale climate adaptation process. The case study we discuss synthesizes the Toolbox dialogue method, a philosophically grounded approach to enhancing communication and collaboration in complex research and practice, with a mental modeling approach rooted in risk analysis, assessment, and communication to structure conversations among non-academic stakeholders who have a common interest in planning for a sustainable future. We begin by describing the background of this project, including details about climate resiliency efforts in …

Feminist Care Ethics Confronts Mainstream Philosophy, Maurice Hamington, Maggie Fitzgerald

Philosophy Faculty Publications and Presentations

Editorial for the Special Issue "Feminist Care Ethics Confronts Mainstream Philosophy"

This Special Issue of Philosophies is devoted to dialogue between feminist care ethics and mainstream philosophical figures and concepts. As care ethics has evolved from its origins in the 1980s, it is clear that it does not always fit neatly within traditional philosophical categories. Yet, the philosophical implications of the ethics of care are robust and extend beyond ethics as such, with care theorists positing ontological, epistemological, and political significance to its approach. Despite these implications, and the growing acceptance of care ethics in a variety of academic literatures, …

Care Ethics, Bruno Latour, And The Anthropocene, Michael Flower, Maurice Hamington

Philosophy Faculty Publications and Presentations

Bruno Latour is one of the founding figures in social network theory and a broadly influential systems thinker. Although his work has always been relational, little scholarship has engaged the relational morality, ontology, and epistemology of feminist care ethics with Latour’s actor–network theory. This article is intended as a translation and a prompt to spur further interactions. Latour’s recent publications, in particular, have focused on the new climate regime of the Anthropocene. Care theorists are just beginning to address posthuman approaches to care. The argument here is that Latourian analysis is helpful for such explorations, given that caring for the …

Care Ethics, Religion, And Spiritual Traditions, Inge Van Nistelrooij, Maureen Sander-Staudt, Maurice Hamington

Philosophy Faculty Publications and Presentations

Care Ethics, Religion, and Spiritual Traditions is a collection of original essays that address the intersection between contemporary feminist care ethics and religious morality. Feminist care ethics is one of the most dynamic areas in modern theory. This relational approach to morality emphasizes context, emotion, and imagination over consequences, rules, and rights has only been around for about four decades, with its definition still being negotiated. Still, the respect for this approach is demonstrated by its widespread inclusion in moral discourse. Historically, care has been an overlooked concept in philosophy, but religion's ambivalence toward care ethics is even more pronounced. …

The Birth Of The Post-Truth Era: A Genealogy Of Corporate Public Relations, Propaganda, And Trump, Cory Wimberly

Philosophy Faculty Publications and Presentations

In the early 20th century, the most numerous and well-funded institutions in the United States—corporations—used public relations to make a widespread and fundamental change in the way they constitute and regulate their relations of knowledge with the public. Today, we can see this change reflected in a variety of areas such as journalism, political outreach, social media, and in the ‘fake news’ and ‘post-truth’ administration of Donald J. Trump. This article traces practices of corporate truth-telling and knowledge production across three periods I will call the personal, the legal, and public relations, which are roughly coincident with the antebellum period, …

Improving Philosophical Dialogue Interventions To Better Resolve Problematic Value Pluralism In Collaborative Environmental Science, Bethany K. Laursen, Chad Gonnerman, Stephen J. Crowley

Philosophy Faculty Publications and Presentations

Environmental problems often outstrip the abilities of any single scientist to understand, much less address them. As a result, collaborations within, across, and beyond the environmental sciences are an increasingly important part of the environmental science landscape. Here, we explore an insufficiently recognized and particularly challenging barrier to collaborative environmental science: value pluralism, the presence of non-trivial differences in the values that collaborators bring to bear on project decisions. We argue that resolving the obstacles posed by value pluralism to collaborative environmental science requires detecting and coordinating the underlying problematic value differences. We identify five ways that a team might …

Place-Based Philosophical Activism On The Us–Mexico Border, Mariana Alessandri

Philosophy Faculty Publications and Presentations

Before the Department of Homeland Security instituted the Migrant Protection Protocols in January 2019, as many as 1,000 Central American refugees passed each day through Catholic Charities’ Humanitarian Respite Center, where they received food, clothing, a shower, toiletries, and sandwiches for the road. Sister Norma Pimentel founded the Humanitarian Respite Center in 2014 to “restore human dignity” to refugees who had been degraded and vilified during their dangerous journeys north, not least by way of their processing by the US government. Sister Norma has inspired countless people, including me, to engage with the community as a form of place-based philosophical …

Book Review Of, Emotions And Care: Interdisciplinary Perspectives, Maurice Hamington

Philosophy Faculty Publications and Presentations

Book Review: Emotions and Care: Interdisciplinary Perspectives Sophie Bourgault and Elena Pulcini (editors). Leuven: Peeters, 2018 (ISBN 978-90-429-3711-6)

Propaganda And The Nihilism Of The Alt-Right, Cory Wimberly

Philosophy Faculty Publications and Presentations

The alt-right is an online subculture marked by its devotion to the execution of a racist, misogynistic, and xenophobic politics through trolling, pranking, meme-making, and mass murder. It is this devotion to far-right politics through the discordant conjunction of humor and suicidal violence this article seeks to explain by situating the movement for the first time within its constitutive online relationships. This article adds to the existing literature by viewing the online relationships of the alt-right through the genealogy of propaganda. Through situating the alt-right alongside the genealogy of propaganda, the article offers new insights into the social isolation, increasingly …

A Defense Of Locke’S Moral Epistemology, Jamie J. Hardy

Philosophy Faculty Publications and Presentations

In An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, John Locke provides an empirical account of all of our ideas, including our moral ideas. However, Locke’s account of moral epistemology is difficult to understand leading to mistaken objections to his moral epistemological theory. In this paper, I offer what I believe to be the correct account of Locke’s moral epistemology. This account of his moral epistemology resolves the objections that morality is not demonstrable, that Locke’s account fails to demonstrate the normativity of statements, and that Locke has not provided us with the means to determine the correctness of the moral rules.

Philosophizing In Tongues: Cultivating Bilingualism, Biculturalism, And Biliteracy In An Introduction To Latin American Philosophy Course, Alexander V. Stehn

Philosophy Faculty Publications and Presentations

This article describes my ongoing attempts to more successfully engage the full linguistic repertoires and cultural identities of undergraduate students at a “Hispanic Serving Institution” (HSI) in South Texas by teaching a bilingual Introduction to Latin American Philosophy course in the “Language, Philosophy, and Culture” area of Texas’ General Education Core Curriculum. By uncovering the diverse identities, worldviews, and languages of those who were historically excluded from the Eurocentric discipline of philosophy through the conquest and colonization of the Americas, Latin American philosophers offer us new ways of thinking and living by challenging Anglocentric language, philosophy, and culture. As part …

Disciplining Skepticism Through Kant’S Critique, Fichte’S Idealism, And Hegel’S Negations, Meghant Sudan

Philosophy Faculty Publications and Presentations

This chapter considers the encounter of skepticism with the Kantian and post-Kantian philosophical enterprise and focuses on the intriguing feature whereby it is assimilated into this enterprise. In this period, skepticism becomes interchangeable with its other, which helps understand the proliferation of many kinds of views under its name and which forms the background for transforming skepticism into an anonymous, routine practice of raising objections and counter-objections to one’s own view. German philosophers of this era counterpose skepticism to dogmatism and criticism, ancient to modern skepticism, and, importantly, conceptualize the transitions from one form to another, which forms the conceptual …

Diagnostic Justice: Testing For Covid-19, Ashley Graham Kennedy, Bryan Cwik

Philosophy Faculty Publications and Presentations

Diagnostic testing can be used for many purposes, including testing to facilitate the clinical care of individual patients, testing as an inclusion criterion for clinical trial participation, and both passive and active surveillance testing of the general population in order to facilitate public health outcomes, such as the containment or mitigation of an infectious disease. As such, diagnostic testing presents us with ethical questions that are, in part, already addressed in the literature on clinical care as well as clinical research (such as the rights of patients to refuse testing or treatment in the clinical setting or the rights of …

Preserving Destruction: Philosophical Issues Of Urban Geosites, Remei Capdevila-Werning

Philosophy Faculty Publications and Presentations

This article examines the philosophical issues that arise when preserving urban geological sites or urban geosites. These are preserved not only because of their geological value but also because of aesthetic, cultural, and economic reasons. To do so, it examines the geosite constituted by Olot and its surroundings, a city in Spain that extends amid four dormant volcanoes. It explores the metaphysical paradox that these geosites have become what they are due to the preservation of destruction: humancaused interventions, mostly extraction of materials and exploitation of the land, are precisely what made these geosites visible as sites worth preserving and …

Gloria Anzaldúa’S Mexican Genealogy: From Pelados And Pachucos To New Mestizas, Mariana Alessandri, Alexander Stehn

Philosophy Faculty Publications and Presentations

This essay examines Gloria Anzaldúa’s critical appropriation of two Mexican philosophers in the writing of Borderlands/La Frontera: Samuel Ramos and Octavio Paz. We argue that although neither of these authors is cited in her seminal work, Anzaldúa had them both in mind through the writing process and that their ideas are present in the text itself. Through a genealogical reading of Borderlands/La Frontera, and aided by archival research, we demonstrate how Anzaldúa’s philosophical vision of the “new mestiza” is a critical continuation of the broader tradition known as la filosofía de lo mexicano, which flourished during a golden age of …

Technology And Responsibility: A Discussion Of Underexamined Risks And Concerns In Precision Livestock Farming, Ian Werkheiser

Philosophy Faculty Publications and Presentations

Implications

Precision Livestock Farming (PLF) promises to replicate at scale, the care usually provided by farmers who know their animals.

This suite of current and developing technologies has the potential to address many problems facing modern farms.

Many underexamined concerns still exist around PLF, some of which are common to many new technologies, and others of which are more specific to these technologies being implemented on farms with humans and nonhuman animals.

Though these concerns are not a sufficient reason to abandon PLF, they ought to be considered more carefully by everyone working on developing, implementing, or legislating these technologies.

Three Existentialist Readings Of Gloria Anzaldua's Borderlands/La Frontera, Mariana Alessandri

Philosophy Faculty Publications and Presentations

This essay provides three new and related philosophical readings of Gloria Anzaldúa’s Borderlands/la Frontera: 1) in the lineage of canonical European Existentialists like Jean Paul Sartre, who provides an analysis of shame; 2) in the lineage of Mexican Existentialists like Samuel Ramos and Octavio Paz, who attribute a relative of shame to Mexicans; and 3) in dialogue with Africana Existentialists like Franz Fanon, who describe the bodily shame of nonwhites in racist societies. Anzaldúa’s concept of “linguistic terrorism,” which existentially translates into la vergüenza linguística, extends the scope of European, Africana, and Mexican Existentialisms while putting all three in dialogue …

How Propaganda Became Public Relations: Foucault And The Corporate Government Of The Public, Cory Wimberly

Philosophy Faculty Publications and Presentations

How Propaganda Became Public Relations pulls back the curtain on propaganda: how it was born, how it works, and how it has masked the bulk of its operations by rebranding itself as public relations. Cory Wimberly uses archival materials and wide variety of sources — Foucault’s work on governmentality, political economy, liberalism, mass psychology, and history — to mount a genealogical challenge to two commonplaces about propaganda. First, modern propaganda did not originate in the state and was never primarily located in the state; instead, it began and flourished as a for-profit service for businesses. Further, propaganda is not focused …

Moving Beyond ‘Therapy’ And ‘Enhancement’ In The Ethics Of Gene Editing, Bryan Cwik

Philosophy Faculty Publications and Presentations

Since the advent of recombinant DNA technology, expectations (and trepidations) about the potential for altering genes and controlling our biology at the fundamental level have been sky high. These expectations have gone largely unfulfilled. But though the dream (or nightmare) of being able to control our biology is still far off, gene editing research has made enormous strides toward potential clinical use. This paper argues that when it comes to determining permissible uses of gene editing in one important medical context—germline intervention in reproductive medicine—issues about enhancement and eugenics are, for the foreseeable future, a red herring. Current translational goals …

How To Solve Hume's Problem Of Induction, Alexander Jackson

Philosophy Faculty Publications and Presentations

This paper explains what’s wrong with a Hume-inspired argument for skepticism about induction. Hume’s argument takes as a premise that inductive reasoning presupposes that the future will resemble the past. I explain why that claim is not plausible. The most plausible premise in the vicinity is that inductive reasoning from E to H presupposes that if E then H. I formulate and then refute a skeptical argument based on that premise. Central to my response is a psychological explanation for how people judge that if E then H without realizing that they thereby settled the matter rationally.