Arts and Humanities Commons^™

A Philosophy Primer, Anthony Cunningham

Philosophy Faculty Publications

This philosophy primer serves as an introduction to the general pursuit of philosophy and the practice of sound reasoning. The primer identifies and explains seven important guiding ideals for conducting any intellectual inquiry, along with highlighting eight “good moves” to cultivate and eighteen “bad moves” to avoid.

Earth Art In The Great Acceleration: Times/Counter-Times, Monuments/Counter-Monuments, Gary Shapiro

Philosophy Faculty Publications

This article attempts to situate land art in the deserts of the US Southwest in terms of the works’ relation to and rupture with more traditional genres (seventeenth to twentieth centuries) of parks, gardens, and landscape architecture. It argues that the earlier works provide implicit answers to questions concerning Earth’s meaning and offer models of flourishing habitation. In contrast, the more recent works, all constructed in the era of the great acceleration (the Anthropocene), pose questions having to do with new challenges posed by climate change and the devastation of the Earth.

Class And Class Consciousness According To E. P. Thompson, Daniel Cunningham

Philosophy Faculty Publications

In this article, I extract a theory of class from E. P. Thompson’s historical works of the 1960s and 1970s, focusing especially on his 1963 magnum opus The Making of the English Working Class, the articles later collected in the 1991 volume Customs in Common: Studies in Traditional Popular Culture, and the essays “The Peculiarities of the English” and “Eighteenth-Century English Society: Class Struggle without Class?” In the first section, I argue, following Ellen Meiksins Wood, that Thompson developed a genuinely historical materialist theory of class formation as a “structured process” that moves from class struggle to class …

Minority Reports: Registering Dissent In Science, Haixin Dang

Philosophy Faculty Publications

Consensus reporting is valuable for presenting unified scientific evidence to the public. When a consensus does not exist, I argue that scientists ought not to default to majority reporting in its place. Majority reporting has several epistemic drawbacks because it can obscure underlying justifications and lines of evidence, which may be in conflict or contested. I argue that minority reporting, in conjunction with majority reporting, is an epistemically superior mechanism for scientists to report on the full range of reasons and evidence available within a group. This paper addresses several objections, including worries over group cohesion, fringe reporting, and elite …

Something Called The ‘False Dilemma Fallacy’ (Fdf): A Return To Formalization Just This Time, Rory Conces, Matthias Walters

Philosophy Faculty Publications

This work is a revision of the False Dilemma Fallacy (FDF). The formalized model (FM)of this fallacy has as its centerpiece a valid disjunctive syllogism, but the disjunctive premise is presumed to be false, thus making the argument unsound. Our revised model (FM2.0) focuses on the formal structure by comparing the given vs. the real argument, which is unsound because of its invalidity. This approach we believe is more pedagogically useful and a better explanation of the fallacious nature of the FDF. It extends the identity of “formal fallacy” to the FDF. The abstract is formatted in two columns. The …

[Review Of The Joyful Science / Idylls From Messina / Unpublished Fragments From The Period Of The Joyful Science (Spring 1881– Summer 1882): Volume 6 (The Complete Works Of Friedrich Nietzsche), By F. Nietzsche, Trans. By A. Del Caro], Justin Remhof

Philosophy Faculty Publications

[First Paragraph] Stanford University Press has undertaken the project of providing the first English translation of all of Nietzsche’s writings, including his unpublished fragments, with annotation, afterwords concerning the individual texts, and indexes, in nineteen volumes. The book under review here is volume 6. It covers The Joyful Science, Idylls from Messina, and unpublished fragments written from spring 1881 to summer 1882. Giorio Colli provides a short afterword, Adrian del Caro offers a significant afterword, and del Caro supplies extensive, significantly substantive translator notes. As I see things, this volume is essential for understanding Nietzsche’s thought.

Pacifism And The Science Of War: Jane Addams And Bertrand Russell On World War I, Marilyn Fischer

Philosophy Faculty Publications

In July 1915, after hearing Jane Addams speak in London on her efforts for peace during wartime, Bertrand Russell wrote to an American friend, “You can gather what I think and feel by talking to Miss Addams. She seemed to me to have exactly the same outlook as I have.” In this paper I compare how Russell and Addams used the era’s scientific theories in formulating their pacifism. After recounting Addams’s and Russell’s experiences during the war, I show how Addams and Russell accounted for civilization’s “descent into barbarism” in parallel ways. I then contrast their conceptions of what counts …

[Review Of The Book Reading Plato's Dialogues To Enhance Learning And Inquiry: Exploring Socrates' Use Of Protreptic For Student Engagement, By M. Marshall], Chad Wiener

Philosophy Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Murder On The Vr Express: Studying The Impact Of Thought Experiments At A Distance In Virtual Reality, Andrew Kissel, Krzysztof J. Rechowicz, John B. Shull

Philosophy Faculty Publications

Hypothetical thought experiments allow researchers to gain insights into widespread moral intuitions and provide opportunities for individuals to explore their moral commitments. Previous thought experiment studies in virtual reality (VR) required participants to come to an on-site laboratory, which possibly restricted the study population, introduced an observer effect, and made internal reflection on the participants’ part more difficult. These shortcomings are particularly crucial today, as results from such studies are increasingly impacting the development of artificial intelligence systems, self-driving cars, and other technologies. This paper explores the viability of deploying thought experiments in commercially available in-home VR headsets. We conducted …

Philosophers Of Catastrophe: Early 20th Century Jewish Proponents And Opponents Of Objectivity In Science, Steven Gimbel, Stephen J. Stern

Philosophy Faculty Publications

The Second World War ended with the exposure of the Nazi death camps and the threat of global nuclear annihilation. The former disclosed the depths of human depravity and the latter warned us about the severity of the consequences that could await us as a result. The grimness of each, much less both, had the effect of shielding from our collective consciousness the equally dire warnings from the First World War that had occurred only a couple of decades earlier. [excerpt]

Recovering Duty, Melvin Woody

Philosophy Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

The Future Is Not What It Used To Be: Longevity And The Curmudgeonly Attitude To Change, Kathy Behrendt

Philosophy Faculty Publications

Boredom has dominated discussions about longevity thanks to Bernard Williams’s influential “The Makropulos Case.” I reveal the presence in that paper of a neglected, additional problem for the long-lived person, namely alienation in the face of unwanted change. Williams gestures towards this problem but does not pursue it. I flesh it out on his behalf, connecting it to what I call the ‘curmudgeonly attitude to change.’ This attitude manifests itself in the tendency, amongst those getting on in years, to observe that things are getting worse. Curmudgeonliness is typically met with dismissal because it often concerns changes that don’t radically …

Harmony & Cancellation Culture, Erica Stonestreet

Philosophy Faculty Publications

“Cancelling” people cuts off relationships in the name of taking back power from those who abuse it. But using the ancient—but still current—concept of harmony, I ask whether this is the best way to go about fixing our problems.

Normative Ambiguity Facing Those Who Flee Death During Times Of War And Pandemic And Who Eventually Return Home, Rory Conces

Philosophy Faculty Publications

We dwell in a world of physical things. When it comes to the environments that we live in, we usually become oriented to the place, and eventually feel at home in it. Facing death during war and pandemic are times of extreme disorientation, and we sometimes exhibit an impulse to flee. It is no wonder that in those desperate times, some with means and ability consider fleeing to a safer place. But are we morally obliged to act in ways that would ask us to sacrifice our deepest personal commitments and projects for others to meet their commitments and projects? …

Wittgenstein On Miscalculation And The Foundations Of Mathematics, Samuel J. Wheeler

Philosophy Faculty Publications

In Remarks on the Foundations of Mathematics, Wittgenstein notes that he has 'not yet made the role of miscalculating clear' and that 'the role of the proposition: "I must have miscalculated"...is really the key to an understanding of the "foundations" of mathematics.' In this paper, I hope to get clear on how this is the case. First, I will explain Wittgenstein's understanding of a 'foundation' for mathematics. Then, by showing how the proposition 'I must have miscalculated' differentiates mathematics from the physical sciences, we will see how this proposition is the key to understanding the foundations of mathematics.

Kelsen In American Political Theory, Stephen Park Turner

Philosophy Faculty Publications

Hans Kelsen’s lack of impact on political theory in the United States has been a puzzle. Kelsen arrived at a time in which several influential political ideas competed, none of which were congenial to Kelsen’s approach, and some actively opposed to it. The narrative that relativism led to Nazism; the pragmatist rejection of the fact-value distinction; the return of natural law thinking at the University of Chicago; and a very specific conflict of perspectives at Harvard, are identified as key obstacles to the acceptance of Kelsen’s view of democracy. The most important of these was associated with Carl J. Friedrich, …

Review: 'Pragmatist Philosophy And Dance: Interdisciplinary Dance Research In The American South', Aili W. Bresnahan

Philosophy Faculty Publications

Eric Mullis’ Pragmatist Philosophy and Dance is a thoroughly multi-disciplinary and transdisciplinary book that is centered on and deeply engaged in the experimental and lived experience of Pentecostal dance in the American and Appalachian South. The focal point for Mullis’ research is not observation and critique of dance as embodied religious practice from a critical distance (although he does engage it critically and analytically) but from the inside, embedding his own person and body into the environment with all the resources of the unifying self that he has at his disposal to not just understand the form but feel it …

Are Philosophers Failing First-Generation Students?, Bailie Peterson, David Agboola

Philosophy Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

The Function Of Boundary Conditions In The Physical Sciences, Julia R. S. Bursten

Philosophy Faculty Publications

Early philosophical accounts of explanation mistook the function of boundary conditions for that of contingent facts. I diagnose where this misunderstanding arose and establish that it persists. I disambiguate between two uses of the term “boundary conditions” and argue that boundary conditions are explanatory via their roles as components of models. Using case studies from fluid mechanics and the physics of waves, I articulate four explanatory functions for boundary conditions in physics: specifying the scope of a model, enabling stable descriptions of phenomena in a model, generating descriptions of novel phenomena, and connecting models from differing theoretical backgrounds.

Engaging In Feminist Intercultural Dialogue As Spiritual Transformation: A Reply To R. Aída Hernández Castillo, Marilyn Fischer

Philosophy Faculty Publications

The author responds to criticism of her book Jane Addams's Evolutionary Theorizing.

Why Online Personalized Pricing Is Unfair, Jeffrey Moriarty

Philosophy Faculty Publications

Online retailers are using advances in data collection and computing technologies to “personalize” prices, i.e., offer goods for sale to shoppers at their reservation prices, or the highest price they are willing to pay. In this paper, I offer a criticism of this practice. I begin by putting online personalized pricing in context. It is not something entirely new, but rather a kind of price discrimination, a familiar pricing practice. I then offer a fairness-based argument against it. When an online retailer personalizes prices, it competes unfairly for the social surplus created by a transaction. I defend this argument against …

Nietzsche: Metaphysician, Justin Remhof

Philosophy Faculty Publications

Perhaps the most fundamental disagreement concerning Nietzsche’s view of metaphysics is that some commentators believe Nietzsche has a positive, systematic metaphysical project, and others deny this. Those who deny it hold that Nietzsche believes metaphysics has a special problem, that is, a distinctively problematic feature which distinguishes metaphysics from other areas of philosophy. In this paper, I investigate important features of Nietzsche’s metametaphysics in order to argue that Nietzsche does not, in fact, think metaphysics has a special problem. The result is that, against a longstanding view held in the literature, we should be reading Nietzsche as a metaphysician.

Medieval Sensibilities: A History Of Emotions In The Middle Ages, Chad Wiener

Philosophy Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Thinking Reasonably About Indeterministic Choice Beliefs, Andrew Kissel

Philosophy Faculty Publications

Recent research suggests that, regardless of the truth of libertarianism about free will, there appears to be a widespread belief among nonphilosopher laypersons that the choices of free agents are not causally necessitated by prior states of affairs. In this paper, I propose a new class of debunking explanation for this belief which I call ‘reasons-based accounts’ (RBAs). I start the paper by briefly recounting the failures of extant approaches to debunking explanations, and then use this as a jumping off point to articulate several alternatives, highlighting the strengths and weaknesses of each.

Racial Justice And The Image Of Public Health, Marilyn Fischer

Philosophy Faculty Publications

The City Commission in my hometown of Dayton, Ohio recently adopted a resolution declaring racism a public health crisis. In doing so, Dayton joins municipalities around the country, as the global pandemic of coronavirus COVID-19 swirls around us. The Commission gave compelling reasons for their action, citing the disparate rates of poor health outcomes in African American communities, as well as disproportionately high rates of poverty, unemployment, economic distress, homelessness, incarceration, and inadequate education.

The Commission’s commitment to remedy these inequities is welcome. Others have laid out this evidence in much detail; I want to focus here on public health …

Racial Justice And The Image Of Public Health, Marilyn Fischer

Philosophy Faculty Publications

The City Commission in my hometown of Dayton, Ohio recently adopted a resolution declaring racism a public health crisis. In doing so, Dayton joins municipalities around the country, as the global pandemic of coronavirus COVID19 swirls around us. The Commission gave compelling reasons for their action, citing the disparate rates of poor health outcomes in African American communities, as well as disproportionately high rates of poverty, unemployment, economic distress, homelessness, incarceration, and inadequate education.1 The Commission’s commitment to remedy these inequities is welcome. Others have laid out this evidence in much detail; I want to focus here on public health …

A Philosopher Explains Why Dance Can Help Pandemic-Proof Your Kids, Aili W. Bresnahan

Philosophy Faculty Publications

Dance is good because it expresses human nature – it’s not just fun, although it is certainly fun. It’s not just exercise, either.

At its best, dance is an extension and expression of who we are as human beings in ways that can allow us to share emotions that increase our sense of community and connection. This is why, in good times and bad, in times of war, slavery, fleeing homelands and during pandemics, kids still bounce, leap and spin.

Can Summer Philosophy Programs Help Close The Achievement Gap?, Bailie Peterson

Philosophy Faculty Publications

While summer break presents educational and recreational opportunities for some students, students from depressed socioeconomic groups may face significant obstacles in the summer, including learning loss. In general, these students also lack access to a wide range of intrinsic and instrumental benefits attached to the study of philosophy. While there are currently existing philosophy programs, this contribution highlights the connections between summer experiences and the overall achievement gap, while identifying specific practices shown to yield successful summer programs. Philosophy provides an impressive set of benefits, including academic skills and opportunities for personal growth and development. Incorporating best practices while focusing …

The Essences Of Objects: Explicating A Theory Of Essence In Object-Oriented Ontology, Stanford Howdyshell

Philosophy Faculty Publications

In this paper, I will discuss the need for a theory of essences within Object-Oriented Ontology (OOO) and then formulate one. I will do so by drawing on Graham Harman’s work on OOO and Martin Heidegger’s thought on the essence of being, presented in his Introduction to Metaphysics. Harman touches on essences, describing them as the tension between a withdrawn object and its withdrawn qualities, but fails to distinguish between essential and inessential qualities within this framework. To fill in the gaps, I will turn to Heidegger’s explication of phusis in order to show that an essential aspect of …

What's In A Wage? A New Approach To The Justification Of Pay, Jeffrey Moriarty

Philosophy Faculty Publications

In this address, I distinguish and explore three conceptions of wages. A wage is a reward, given in recognition of the performance of a valued task. It is also an incentive: a way to entice workers to take and keep jobs, and to motivate them to work hard. Finally, a wage is a price of labor, and like all prices, conveys valuable information about relative scarcity. I show that each conception of wages has its own normative logic, or appropriate justification, and these logics can come apart. This explains some of the debate about wages and makes the project of …