Arts and Humanities Commons^™

Review Of 'The Work Of Politics: Making A Democratic Welfare State', Thimo Heisenberg

Philosophy Faculty Research and Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Goethe’S Faust And The Philosophy Of Money, Thimo Heisenberg

Philosophy Faculty Research and Scholarship

Philosophers today do not think of Goethe’s Faust as an important contribution to the philosophy of money. But to discount the work in this way is a mistake, I argue. Underneath Faust’s lyrical form, Goethe develops a comprehensive view of money that came to be an important influence on left-wing (Karl Marx) and right-wing (Oswald Spengler) discussions of money. Centrally, Goethe argues that modern economic practices have transformed money obsession (long conceived of primarily as an individual vice) into a structural problem: social structures are now set up to systematically require individuals to engage in quasi-obsessive behaviors towards …

Le Secret D’Une Pyramide : Diderot, La Double Doctrine Et L’Encyclopédie, Rudy Le Menthéour

French and Francophone Studies Faculty Research and Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Understanding Realism, Collin Rice

Philosophy Faculty Research and Scholarship

Catherine Elgin has recently argued that a nonfactive conception of understanding is required to accommodate the epistemic successes of science that make essential use of idealizations and models. In this paper, I argue that the fact that our best scientific models and theories are pervasively inaccurate representations can be made compatible with a more nuanced form of scientific realism that I call Understanding Realism. According to this view, science aims at (and often achieves) factive scientific understanding of natural phenomena. I contend that this factive scientific understanding is provided by grasping a set of true modal information about the …

Hegel And The Problem Of Affluence, Thimo Heisenberg

Philosophy Faculty Research and Scholarship

It is widely known that Hegel’s Philosophy of Right recognizes poverty as one of the central problems of modern Civil Society. What is much less well-known, however, is that Hegel sees yet another structural problem at the opposite side of the economic spectrum: a problem of affluence. Indeed, as I show in this paper, Hegel’s text contains a detailed – yet sometimes overlooked – discussion of the detrimental psychological and sociological effects of great wealth, as well as of how to counter them. By bringing this discussion to the fore, we get a more complete picture of Hegel’s theory …

Universality And Modeling Limiting Behaviors, Collin Rice

Philosophy Faculty Research and Scholarship

Most attempts to justify the use of idealized models to explain

appeal to the accuracy of the model with respect to difference-making causes.

In this paper, I argue for an alternative way to justify using idealized models

to explain that appeals to universality classes. In support of this view, I show

that scientific modelers seeking to explain stable limiting behaviors often

explicitly appeal to universality classes in order to justify their use of idealized

models to explain.

How To Reconcile A Unified Account Of Explanation With Explanatory Diversity, Collin Rice, Yasha Rohwer

Philosophy Faculty Research and Scholarship

The concept of explanation is central to scientific practice. However, scientists explain phenomena in very different ways. That is, there are many different kinds of explanation; e.g. causal, mechanistic, statistical, or equilibrium explanations. In light of the myriad kinds of explanation identified in the literature, most philosophers of science have adopted some kind of explanatory pluralism. While pluralism about explanation seems plausible, it faces a dilemma (Pincock in: Reutlinger A, Saatsi J (eds) Explanation beyond causation, Oxford University Press, Oxford, pp 39–56, 2018). Either there is nothing that unifies all instances of scientific explanation that makes them count as explanations, …

Death In Berlin: Hegel On Mortality And The Social Order, Thimo Heisenberg

Philosophy Faculty Research and Scholarship

It is widely acknowledged that Hegel holds the view that a rational social order needs to reconcile us to our status as natural beings, with bodily needs and desires. But while this general view is well-known, one of its most surprising implications is rarely explored: namely the implication that, for Hegel, a rational social order also has to reconcile us to the inevitable fate of everything natural and organic – it needs to reconcile ourselves to our own mortality. This paper explains this largely unknown dimension of Hegel’s view, as well as its implications for contemporary social philosophy. The …

Models Dont Decompose That Way: A Holistic View Of Idealized Models, Collin Rice

Philosophy Faculty Research and Scholarship

Many (if not most) accounts of scientific modelling assume that models can be decomposed into the contributions made by their accurate and inaccurate parts. These accounts then argue that the inaccurate parts of the model can be justified by distorting only what is irrelevant. In this article, I argue that this decompositional strategy requires three assumptions that are not typically met by our best scientific models. In response, I propose an alternative view in which idealized models are characterized as holistically distorted representations that are justified by allowing for the application of various (mathematical) modelling techniques.

Gadamer, Kant, And The Enlightenment, Robert J. Dostal

Philosophy Faculty Research and Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Factive Scientific Understanding Without Accurate Representation, Collin Rice

Philosophy Faculty Research and Scholarship

This paper analyzes two ways idealized biological models produce factive scientific

understanding. I then argue that models can provide factive scientific understanding of a

phenomenon without providing an accurate representation of the (difference-making) features of

their real-world target system(s). My analysis of these cases also suggests that the debate over

scientific realism needs to investigate the factive scientific understanding produced by scientists’

use of idealized models rather than the accuracy of scientific models themselves.

Concepts As Pluralistic Hybrids, Collin Rice

Philosophy Faculty Research and Scholarship

In contrast to earlier views that argued for a particular kind of concept (e.g. prototypes), several recent accounts have proposed that there are multiple distinct kinds of concepts, or that there is a plurality of concepts for each category. In this paper, I argue for a novel account of concepts as pluralistic hybrids. According to this view, concepts are pluralistic because there are several concepts for the same category whose use is heavily determined by context. In addition, concepts are hybrids because they typically link together several different kinds of information that are used in the same cognitive processes. This …

The Polis Artist: Don Delillo’S Cosmopolis And The Politics Of Literature, Joel Alden Schlosser

Political Science Faculty Research and Scholarship

Recent work on literature and political theory has focused on reading literature as a reflection of the damaged conditions of contemporary political life. Examining Don DeLillo’s Cosmopolis, this essay develops an alternative approach to the politics of literature that attends to the style and form of the novel. The form and style of Cosmopolis emphasize the novel’s own dissonance with the world it criticizes; they moreover suggest a politics of poetic world-making intent on eliciting collective agency over the commonness of language. As a “polis artist,” DeLillo does not determine a particular politics but shapes the conditions and spaces …

Autonomous Statistical Explanations And Natural Selection, André Ariew, Collin Rice, Yasha Rohwer

Philosophy Faculty Research and Scholarship

Shapiro and Sober ([2007]) claim that Walsh, Ariew, Lewens, and Matthen (henceforth WALM) give a mistaken, a priori defense of natural selection and drift as epiphenomenal. Contrary to Shapiro and Sober’s claims, we first argue that WALM’s explanatory doctrine does not require a defense of epiphenomenalism. We then defend WALM’s explanatory doctrine by arguing that the explanations provided by the modern genetical theory of natural selection are ‘autonomous-statistical explanations’ analogous to Galton’s explanation of reversion to mediocrity and an explanation of the diffusion ofgases. We then argue that whereas Sober’s theory of forces is an adequate description of Darwin’s theory, …

Moving Beyond Causes: Optimality Models And Scientific Explanation, Collin Rice

Philosophy Faculty Research and Scholarship

A prominent approach to scientific explanation and modeling claims that for a model to provide an explanation it must accurately represent at least some of the actual causes in the event's causal history. In this paper, I argue that many optimality explanations present a serious challenge to this causal approach. I contend that many optimality models provide highly idealized equilibrium explanations that do not accurately represent the causes of their target system(s). Furthermore, in many contexts, it is in virtue of their independence of causes that optimality models are able to provide a better explanation than competing causal models. Consequently, …

Review: Mcmullin, Irene. Time And The Shared World: Heidegger On Social Relations, Robert J. Dostal

Philosophy Faculty Research and Scholarship

According to McMullin, injustice is, for Heidegger, the insistence on "my time ... my now." Because the "social" and "justice" are themes of the book, a reader might expect some discussion of the political dimension of human life; but there is no reference to the political, no discussion of the significance of the hero, and no reference to the distinction of the social and the communal (at the cost of the "social") that Heidegger makes toward the end of Being and Time.

Minimal Model Explanations, Robert W. Batterman, Collin Rice

Philosophy Faculty Research and Scholarship

This article discusses minimal model explanations, which we argue are distinct from various causal, mechanical, difference-making, and so on, strategies prominent in the philosophical literature. We contend that what accounts for the explanatory power of these models is not that they have certain features in common with real systems. Rather, the models are explanatory because of a story about why a class of systems will all display the same large-scale behavior because the details that distinguish them are irrelevant. This story explains patterns across extremely diverse systems and shows how minimal models can be used to understand real systems.

Hypothetical Pattern Idealization And Explanatory Models, Yasha Rohwer, Collin Rice

Philosophy Faculty Research and Scholarship

Highly idealized models, such as the Hawk-Dove game, are pervasive in biological theorizing. We argue that the process and motivation that leads to the introduction of various idealizations into these models is not adequately captured by Michael Weisberg’s taxonomy of three kinds of idealization. Consequently, a fourth kind of idealization is required, which we call hypothetical pattern idealization. This kind of idealization is used to construct models that aim to be explanatory but do not aim to be explanations.

Massive Modularity, Content Integration, And Language, Collin Rice

Philosophy Faculty Research and Scholarship

One of the obstacles facing massive modularity is how a pervasively modular mind might generate non-domain-specific thoughts by integrating the content produced by various domain-specific modules. Peter Carruthers has recently argued that the operations of the language faculty are constitutive of the process by which the human mind is able to integrate content from heterogeneous conceptual domains. In this article, I first argue that Carruthers’s data do not provide support for either of two possible interpretations of his thesis. In addition, I provide empirical and theoretical reasons for thinking content integration is performed external to the language faculty.

The Science Of Philology And The Discipline Of Hermeneutics: Gadamer's Understanding, Robert J. Dostal

Philosophy Faculty Research and Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Review: Sticks And Stones: The Philosophy Of Insults, Macalester Bell

Philosophy Faculty Research and Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Review Of Edmund Husserl: Founder Of Phenomenology, By Dermot Moran, Robert J. Dostal

Philosophy Faculty Research and Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Gadamerian Hermeneutics And Irony: Between Strauss And Derrida, Robert J. Dostal

Philosophy Faculty Research and Scholarship

Against the background of Gadamer's hermeneutics of trust, for which the primary concern of the hermeneutical enterprise is the matter under discussion, the Sache, this essay raises the question of Gadamer's treatment of irony. Gadamer and Gadamerians have criticized the hermeneutics of suspicion—a hermeneutics that always looks under the surface of what is said to see what is hidden. This would seem to make irony a problematic aspect of texts and discourse for a Gadamerian hermeneutics. Nowhere in Gadamer's corpus can we find an extensive discussion of irony, but Gadamer does raise the question of irony in a provocative way …

Review Of The Paradoxes Of Art: A Phenomenological Investigation, By Alan Paskow, Robert J. Dostal

Philosophy Faculty Research and Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Review: Burdened Virtue: Virtue Ethics For Liberatory Struggles, Macalester Bell

Philosophy Faculty Research and Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Review Of Tradition(S) Ii: Hermeneutics, Ethics And The Dispensation Of The Good, By Stephen H. Watson, Robert J. Dostal

Philosophy Faculty Research and Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Ethnicity, Class And Caste: Categories Of Group Relations And Personal Identities In Sunauli, A Village In Southern Nepal, Premalata Ghimire

Bryn Mawr College Dissertations and Theses

The Satar of Sunauli are divided into three categories: the Sapha Hod, the Bidin Hod and the Christian Satar. This dissertation, based on two periods of field work in southern Nepal, focuses on the Sapha Hod category of the Satar ethnic group and examines the ethnicity of the Sapha Hod in a complex ethnic, caste and class system. The Sapha Hod incorporate certain culturally valued caste rituals in their daily behavior but deny the caste influence and view the borrowed elements as belonging to their own traditional socio-cultural system. Such practice of rituals, belonging to two different cultures, has affected …

Anne De Bretagne (1477-1514) And Music An Archival Study, Stephen Bonime

Bryn Mawr College Dissertations and Theses

No abstract provided.

Aristotle's Theory Of Principles: A Rationalistic-Empirical Bipolarity, Joseph J. Romano

Bryn Mawr College Dissertations and Theses

Primarily, this paper attempts to analyze Aristotle's notion of "principle" as it is uniquely applied throughout his works. "Principle" is a basic notion; and it is, moreover, the basic notion in Aristotle's philosophy. The purpose here is to establish as precisely as possible the meaning of 'principle' and the role that it plays in Aristotelian thought. It is shown that the meaning of "principle" involves a certain bipolar tension which strains between a logico-epistemic pole and an on tic pole. This tension grounds a philosophy which constantly vacillates between a rationalistic idealism and an empirically oriented naturalism.

The Greek term …