Arts and Humanities Commons^™

On The Signpost Principle Of Alternate Possibilities: Why Contemporary Frankfurt-Style Cases Are Irrelevant To The Free Will Debate, William Simkulet

Philosophy and Religious Studies Department Faculty Publications

This article contends that recent attempts to construct Frankfurt-style cases (FSCs) are irrelevant to the debate over free will. The principle of alternate possibilities (PAP) states that moral responsibility requires indeterminism, or multiple possible futures. Frankfurt's original case purported to demonstrate PAP false by showing an agent can be blameworthy despite not having the ability to choose otherwise; however he admits the agent can come to that choice freely or by force, and thus has alternate possibilities. Neo-FSCs attempt to show that alternate possibilities are irrelevant to explaining an agent's moral responsibility, but a successful Neo-FSC would be consistent with …

On Epistemic Egalitarianism For My P-Zombie Twin: In Defense Of The Phenomenal Concept Strategy, Diane Smedberg

Honors Program Theses and Projects

One current debate in philosophy of mind concerns the ontological and epistemological nature of phenomenal consciousness. Two major camps dominate this debate: property dualists and physicalists. For property dualists, the existence of an epistemic gap between the physical and the phenomenal—that our knowledge of the physical does not secure our knowledge of the phenomenal—entails an ontological gap, so that the physical and the phenomenal exist as fundamentally distinct domains. For physicalists, the ontological gap does not exist because there is only one ontological type of phenomenal property. In this paper, I will criticize the property dualists’ position. I concentrate on …

A Necessity Of Morals, Austin Mcelrath

Featured Research

John Martin Fischer has stated that his initial motivation for his work The Metaphysics of Free Will was “to defend moral culpability from the threats of causal determinism and divine omniscience” while also asserting semi-compatibilism. Taking that a step further, the goal for my own work is to defend our need for moral culpability from a metaphysical standpoint. In this essay I will argue that ultimately there are only two possibilities when it comes to a moral-metaphysical framework, only one of which involves human culpability: either human existence has intrinsic meaning and worth, therefore giving weight to our moral decision …

The World In Singing Made: David Markson's "Wittgenstein's Mistress", Tiffany L. Fajardo

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

In line with Wittgenstein's axiom that "what the solipsist means is quite correct; only it cannot be said, but makes itself manifest," this thesis aims to demonstrate how the gulf between analytic and continental philosophy can best be bridged through the mediation of art. The present thesis brings attention to Markson's work, lauded in the tradition of Faulkner, Joyce, and Lowry, as exemplary of the shift from modernity to postmodernity, wherein the human heart is not only in conflict with itself, but with the language out of which it is necessarily constituted. Markson limns the paradoxical condition of the subject …

The Smallest Leap Of Faith: A New Worldview For A Postmodern World?, Kelly C. Smith

Publications

It is undeniable that religion provides a sense of purpose, ethical direction, and social belonging that most human beings for most of recorded history have found to be profoundly important. But it is equally undeniable that its supernatural metaphysics and dogmatic conservatism have retarded society’s progress in many ways and caused untold human suffering. An obvious question is thus: Is it possible to preserve the beneficial aspects of religion but excise the problematic ones?

Immanuel Kant fathered the postmodern age with his devastating critique of the possibility of human knowledge of the Ultimate. However, Kant himself was far from skeptical …

Diseases, Patients And The Epistemology Of Practice: Mapping The Borders Of Health, Medicine And Care, Michael Loughlin, Robyn Bluhm, Jonathan Fuller, Stephen Buetow, Kirstin Borgerson, Benjamin R. Lewis, Brent M. Kious

Philosophy Faculty Publications

Last year saw the 20th anniversary edition of JECP, and in the introduction to the philosophy section of that landmark edition, we posed the question: apart from ethics, what is the role of philosophy at the bedside'? The purpose of this question was not to downplay the significance of ethics to clinical practice. Rather, we raised it as part of a broader argument to the effect that ethical questions - about what we should do in any given situation - are embedded within whole understandings of the situation, inseparable from our beliefs about what is the case (metaphysics), what it …

How To Trace An Erased De Kooning, Ian Gonsher

Scholarly Research

This essay describes a series of paintings made in the early 2000s that investigate art history as a process of sous-rature (under erasure); signified by what is both present and absent in the work.

Nietzsche On Objects, Justin Remhof

Philosophy Faculty Publications

Nietzsche was persistently concerned with what an object is and how different views of objects lead to different views of facts, causality, personhood, substance, truth, mathematics and logic, and even nihilism. Yet his treatment of objects is incredibly puzzling. In many passages, he assumes that objects such as trees and leaves, tables and chairs, and dogs and cats are just ordinary entities of experience. In other places, he reports that objects do not exist. Elsewhere he claims that objects exist, but as mere bundles of forces. And sometimes he proposes that we bring all objects into existence. Nietzsche’s writings, then, …