Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®

Arts and Humanities Commons™

Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®

Philosophy

PDF

Series

2015

Institution
Keyword
Publication

Articles 361 - 372 of 372

Full-Text Articles in Arts and Humanities

The Common Sense Of Contract Formation, Tess Wilkinson-Ryan, David A. Hoffman Jan 2015

The Common Sense Of Contract Formation, Tess Wilkinson-Ryan, David A. Hoffman

All Faculty Scholarship

What parties know and think they know about contract law affects their obligations under the law and their intuitive obligations toward one another. Drawing on a series of new experimental questionnaire studies, this Article makes two contributions.First, it lays out what information and beliefs ordinary individuals have about how to form contracts with one another. We find that the colloquial understanding of contract law is almost entirely focused on formalization rather than actual assent, though the modern doctrine of contract formation takes the opposite stance. The second Part of the Article tries to get at whether this misunderstanding matters. Is …

Go to article

The Moral Vigilante And Her Cousins In The Shadows, Paul H. Robinson Jan 2015

The Moral Vigilante And Her Cousins In The Shadows, Paul H. Robinson

All Faculty Scholarship

By definition, vigilantes cannot be legally justified – if they satisfied a justification defense, for example, they would not be law-breakers – but they may well be morally justified, if their aim is to provide the order and justice that the criminal justice system has failed to provide in a breach of the social contract. Yet, even moral vigilantism is detrimental to society and ought to be avoided, ideally not by prosecuting moral vigilantism but by avoiding the creation of situations that would call for it. Unfortunately, the U.S. criminal justice system has adopted a wide range of criminal law …

Go to article

The Creation Of Daoism, Paul Fischer Jan 2015

The Creation Of Daoism, Paul Fischer

Philosophy & Religion Faculty Publications

This paper examines the creation of Daoism in its earliest, pre-Eastern Han period. After an examination of the critical terms "scholar/master" and "author/ school", I argue that, given the paucity of evidence, Sima Tan and Liu Xin should be credited with creating this tradition. The body of this article considers the definitions of Daoism given by these two scholars and all of the extant texts that Liu Xin classified as "Daoist." Based on these texts, I then suggest an amended definition of Daoism. In the conclusion, I address the recent claim that the daojia /daijiao dichotomy is false, speculating that …

Go to article

Aristotle's Categories-Notes, Audrey Anton Jan 2015

Aristotle's Categories-Notes, Audrey Anton

Philosophy & Religion Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Go to article

Specters Of Kurdish Nationalism: Governmentality And Counterinsurgent Translation In Turkey, Nicholas S. Glastonbury Jan 2015

Specters Of Kurdish Nationalism: Governmentality And Counterinsurgent Translation In Turkey, Nicholas S. Glastonbury

Publications and Research

This essay examines translations of the Kurdish epic poem Mem û Zîn into Turkish, tracing the logics behind these state-sponsored translations and examining how acts of translation are also efforts to regulate, translate, and erase Kurdish subjectivities. I argue that the state instrumentalizes Mem û Zîn’s potent nationalist currency in order to disarm present and future claims of Kurdish national autonomy. Using translation as a counterinsurgent governmental tool, the state attempts to domesticate Kurdish nationalist discourses even as it reproduces them, thereby transforming Kurdish nationalism into a specter of itself. Attending to this specter, however, allows us to see how …

Go to article

Moore's Paradox In Thought: A Critical Survey, John N. Williams Jan 2015

Moore's Paradox In Thought: A Critical Survey, John N. Williams

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

It is raining but you don't believe that it is raining. Imagine silently accepting this claim. Then you believe both that it is raining and that you don't believe that it is raining. This would be an ‘absurd’ thing to believe, yet what you believe might be true. It might be raining, while at the same time, you are completely ignorant of the state of the weather. But how can it be absurd of you to believe something about yourself that might be true of you? This is Moore's paradox as it occurs in thought. Solving the paradox consists in …

Go to article

Freedom As A Natural Phenomenon, Martin Zwick Jan 2015

Freedom As A Natural Phenomenon, Martin Zwick

Systems Science Faculty Publications and Presentations

"Freedom" is a phenomenon in the natural world. This phenomenon - and indirectly the question of free will - is explored using a variety of systems-theoretic ideas. It is argued that freedom can emerge only in systems that are partially detennined and partially random, and that freedom is a matter of degree. The paper considers types of freedom and their conditions of possibility in simple living systems and in complex living systems that have modeling (cognitive) subsystems. In simple living systems, types of freedom include independence from fixed materiality, internal rather than external detennination, activeness that is unblocked and holistic, …

Go to article

Mind And Life: Is The Materialist Neo-Darwinian Conception Of Nature False?, Martin Zwick Jan 2015

Mind And Life: Is The Materialist Neo-Darwinian Conception Of Nature False?, Martin Zwick

Systems Science Faculty Publications and Presentations

A partial review of Thomas Nagel's book, Mind and Cosmos: Why the Materialist NeoDarwinian Conception of Nature Is Almost Certainly False is used to articulate some systems-theoretic ideas about the challenge of understanding subjective experience. The article accepts Nagel' s view that reductionist materialism fails as an approach to this challenge, but argues that seeking an explanation of mind based on emergence is more plausible than one based on panpsychism, which Nagel favors. However, the article proposes something similar to Nagel's neutral monism by positing a hierarchy of information processes that span the domains of matter, life, and mind. As …

Go to article

Character Virtues, Epistemic Agency, And Reflective Knowledge, Jason Baehr Jan 2015

Character Virtues, Epistemic Agency, And Reflective Knowledge, Jason Baehr

Philosophy Faculty Works

No abstract provided.

Go to article

Intellectual Humility: Owning Our Limitations, Dennis Whitcomb, Heather Battaly, Jason Baehr, Daniel Howard-Snyder Jan 2015

Intellectual Humility: Owning Our Limitations, Dennis Whitcomb, Heather Battaly, Jason Baehr, Daniel Howard-Snyder

Philosophy Faculty Works

What is intellectual humility? In this essay, we aim to answer this question by assessing several contemporary accounts of intellectual humility, developing our own account, offering two reasons for our account, and meeting two objections and solving one puzzle

Go to article

In Defense Of Moral Evidentialism, Sharon Ryan Jan 2015

In Defense Of Moral Evidentialism, Sharon Ryan

Faculty & Staff Scholarship

This paper is a defense of moral evidentialism, the view that we have a moral obligation to form the doxastic attitude that is best supported by our evidence. I will argue that two popular arguments against moral evidentialism are weak. I will also argue that our commitments to the moral evaluation of actions require us to take doxastic obligations seriously.

Go to article

Fundamental Mathematics Of Consciousness, Menas Kafatos Jan 2015

Fundamental Mathematics Of Consciousness, Menas Kafatos

Mathematics, Physics, and Computer Science Faculty Articles and Research

We explore a mathematical formalism that ties together the observer with the observed in the view that Consciousness is primary, operating through three principles which apply at all levels, the essence of qualia of experience. The formalism is a simplified version of Hilbert space mathematics encountered in quantum mechanics. It does, however, go beyond specific interpretations of quantum mechanics and has strong philosophical foundations in Western philosophy as well as monistic systems of the East. The implications are explored and steps for the full development of this axiomatic mathematical approach to Consciousness are discussed.

Go to article

First Prev