Arts and Humanities Commons^™

Out In Thin Air, Daiqing Zhang

Masters Theses

My work often takes form in experience-charged installations underscored by phenomenology. The whys and hows behind the work mostly remain unspoken, since I would rather my work speak for itself. This writing project offered me the opportunity to comb through and tell the stories and thoughts that informed the work.

I have built a collection of documentation about the experience of having a sensitivity to moments of wonder in everyday life. These archives recorded sensuous imprints in life composed of mundane phenomena. In the collection there are images/footage of a glimpse of light leaking through cloud crevices; a brush of …

Creating Project Contrast: A Video Game Exploring Consciousness And Qualia, Pierce Papke

Honors Projects

Project Contrast is a video game that explores how the unique traits inherent to video games might engage reflective player responses to qualitative experience. Project Contrast does this through suspension of disbelief, avatar projection, presence, player agency in storytelling, visual perception, functional gameplay, and art. Considering the difficulty in researching qualitative experience due to its subjectivity and circular explanations, I created Project Contrast not to analyze qualia, though that was my original hope. I instead created Project Contrast as an avenue for player self-reflection and learning about qualitative experience. While video games might be just code and art on a …

Ambiguity Of Vision: Reimagining The Hypervisible Void, Kiwha Lee Blocman

Theses and Dissertations

Asking questions about what Painting is in the 21st century and the dominant narratives it can challenge, my paintings complicate the viewer’s reading of pictorial hierarchy and the projection of human relations in the world. I de-hierarchize and decentralize the compositional components that make up a painting by using patterns to create spatial depth, not European perspectival conventions. In dialogue with modernists such as Matisse who drew from the visual vocabulary of “The Orient”, my central forms derived from architecture and ornamental fragments possess a body-like presence. Further, I reinvent ancient Asian printmaking processes with oil paint. Observing the tenets …

Perceiving The Good: An Agent Relative Account Of Desire, Paul R. Pistone

CGU Theses & Dissertations

In this project I investigate and develop a theory of desire primarily focused on the metaphysics of desire. Since my theory of desire is an evaluative theory, I address discussions concerning value and goodness, and its relation to the ethics and metaphysics of desire. Defining a desire is a complex endeavor and so is determining how desires fit within our mental economy. To locate my position, I begin with an investigation of various, often opposing, theories of desire. I examine motivational theories, pleasure-based theories, reward/learning accounts, and evaluative models. Ultimately, I argue that none of these theories provides adequate explanation …

Thomas Reid On Language And Mind, Alastair L.V. Crosby

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

The dissertation concerns Thomas Reid’s philosophy of language. In the first three chapters, I discuss his philosophy of language in relation to his developmental psychology. More specifically, I discuss his answers to two questions: (i) what does the ability to understand artificial linguistic signs make possible? and (ii) what makes the ability to understand artificial linguistic signs possible? The focus is on Reid’s claim that the mind’s ability to understand artificial linguistic signs makes it possible for it to acquire a number of distinct mental abilities, such as to conceive universals, to judge, and to reason. I argue this claim …

A Critique Of John Mcdowell's Theory Of Moral Perception, Edward Ray Falls

Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation examines an argument that John McDowell’s view is structurally analogous to Protagoreanism, and that arguments structurally analogous to Plato’s arguments against Protagoreanism apply to McDowell’s view. Through philosophical investigation, the dissertation shows that Plato’s arguments do not perfectly apply to McDowell’s view, but that the view nevertheless is unable to address the metastasized problem of constraint. The metastasized problem of constraint arises in at least two kinds of circumstances: situations where cultural relativism is a concern, and situations where there is pressure to adapt to unforeseeable natural developments.

Searching: Waves, Spencer Molnar

Theses and Dissertations

This supportive statement examines a philosophical conception of the self and how it can be identified through experience, consciousness, and perception by focusing on a human inclination to rationalize, or concretize, that which is everchanging. The methods of exploring this concept were achieved by examining the formal structure of composition and materials through the process of visual art. By pushing against historical traditions of creating spatial illusions in visual art, we can conclude that the legibility of an artwork is equally dependent on the experiential world as it is the social construction of image making. The question that is left …

Dimentia: Footnotes Of Time, Zachary Hait

Senior Projects Spring 2021

Time from the physicist's perspective is not inclusive of our lived experience of time; time from the philosopher's perspective is not mathematically engaged, in fact Henri Bergson asserted explicitly that time could not be mathematically engaged whatsoever. What follows is a mathematical engagement of time that is inclusive of our lived experiences, requiring the tools of storytelling.

Perceptual Characterization: On Perceptual Learning And Perspectival Sedimentation, Anthony Holdier

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

In her analysis of perspectival effects on perception, Susanna Siegel has argued that perceptual experience is directly rationally assessable and can thereby justify perceptual beliefs, save for in cases of epistemic downgrade or perceptual hijacking; I contend that the recalcitrance of known illusions poses an insurmountable problem for Siegel’s thesis. In its place, I argue that a model of perceptual learning informed by the dual-aspect framework of base-level cognitive architecture proposed by Elisabeth Camp successfully answers the questions motivating Siegel’s project in a manner that avoids such issues.

Mechanisms Of Value-Biased Prioritization In Fast Sensorimotor Decision Making, Kivilcim Afacan-Seref

Dissertations and Theses

In dynamic environments, split-second sensorimotor decisions must be prioritized according to potential payoffs to maximize overall rewards. The impact of relative value on deliberative perceptual judgments has been examined extensively, but relatively little is known about value-biasing mechanisms in the common situation where physical evidence is strong but the time to act is severely limited. This research examines the behavioral and electrophysiological indices of how value biases split-second perceptual decisions and the possible mechanisms underlying the process. In prominent decision models, a noisy but statistically stationary representation of sensory evidence is integrated over time to an action-triggering bound, and value-biases …

Aristotle On Practical Reasoning: Perception, Reason And Action In Aristotle’S Thought, Kyu-Been Chun

CGU Theses & Dissertations

This study aims to clarify Aristotle’s practical reason and how his flexible but, nonetheless nonarbitrary ethical teaching works. By doing so, I hope to provide an alternative way of understanding practical reason in contradistinction to a modern view of practical reason and its assumptions about thinking through moral and political issues. In this dissertation, I argue that Aristotle’s discussion of practical reason shows that any attempts to formalize morality in the abstract are limited by the complexity of each particular situation, the variability in perception/cognition of the agent as well as a human longing that is inextricably linked to practical …

Affect And Critique: Negative Dialectics And Massumi's Politics Of Affect, Heidi Ann Rhodes

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Brian Massumi's concept of affect offers a model of change that relies on sensory-affective modes of resistance to neoliberal power relations. Influenced by Bergson's concepts of time and space, Massumi develops an account of perception as the capacity to entrain with ontological, affective flows of becoming before they are captured and reduced to quantifiable forms. This requires a radical reconfiguration of the body as a zone of indetermination between the virtual field of unformed potentialities and the realm of determined existence. I argue that affect theory cannot fulfill its promise to open new political possibilities without the negativity of critique …

Epistemological Disjunctivism: An Analysis And A Critique, Krupa Patel

Philosophy ETDs

In this dissertation, I focus on the epistemological concerns regarding a disjunctivist theory of perception. More specifically, I focus on a critique of epistemological disjunctivism, a thesis about how our beliefs about the world are supported by perception. In order to explain the possibility of perceptual knowledge, an epistemological disjunctivist argues that one’s epistemic support in a good case, seeing that p (e.g., seeing that there is a lemon on the table), is different in kind from one’s epistemic support in a bad case, seeming to see that p (e.g., seeming to see that there is a lemon on the …

Thinking With Images, Ed Sarkis

Philosophy ETDs

This thesis argues that images are necessary for thinking. If this is true then the nature of images needs to be understood. The problem with many accounts of perception is assuming that representing what we see is a matter of accurate depiction. The problem is solved by attending to the skills of visual discernment rather than judgments about those perceptions. My approach is both historical and analytic. Aristotle, Hume, and Wittgenstein give accounts of perception which are critically discussed. The notion that an image is a copy is rejected by showing how complicated and indeterminate that relation is. Images have …

Syntax And Semantics Of Perceptual Representation, James K. Quilty-Dunn

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation is a defense of perceptual pluralism, the thesis that perceptual systems deliver multiple types of representations including those used in thought. In particular, it argues that perceptual systems output iconic (i.e., image-like, analog) representations as well as discursive (i.e., language-like, digital) states. A central thesis is that perceptual representations of objects are propositional and composed of concepts. It also develops a compositional syntax of iconic representation called the coordination model, according to which icons are sets of primitive parts, each of which determines values along multiple analog feature dimensions simultaneously. The dissertation supports the conclusion that perceptual …

Portal: Systems For Perception, Elizabeth Graehling

MFA in Visual Arts Theses

Perception as a set of sensory faculties affects our ability to relate to one another. Conversely, that mutual understanding affects our intuitive recognition and awareness of other variables in the physical world. This paper discusses the ways in which beauty and systematization can be cooperative in developing a visual language which encourages an audience to identify with conventionally difficult or uncomfortable subject matter; explicitly, that of disease or handicap. Furthermore, an argument is proposed for the creation and maximization of opportunities for empathetic awareness through specific conditions (or systems) of viewing, particularly those influenced by our direct—yet largely unconscious—interaction with …

Motivation And The Primacy Of Perception, Peter A. Antich

Theses and Dissertations--Philosophy

In this dissertation, I provide an interpretation and defense of Merleau-Ponty's thesis of the primacy of perception, namely, the thesis that all knowledge is founded on perceptual experience. I take as an interpretative and argumentative key Merleau-Ponty's phenomenological conception of motivation. Whereas epistemology has traditionally accepted a dichotomy between reason and natural causality, I show that this dichotomy is not exhaustive of the forms of epistemic grounding. There is a third type of grounding, the one characteristic of the grounding relations found in perception: motivation. I argue that introducing motivation as a form of epistemic grounding allows us to see …

Consciousness, Perception, And Short-Term Memory, Henry F. Shevlin

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Dissertation Abstract: Consciousness, Perception, and Short-Term Memory

When we engage in almost any perceptual activity – recognizing a face, listening out for a phone-call, or simply taking in a sunset – information must be briefly stored and processed in some form of short-term memory. For philosophers attempting to develop an empirically grounded account of perception and conscious experience, it is therefore crucial to engage with scientific theories of the kinds of short-term memory mechanisms that underlie our moment-to-moment retention of information about the world. To that end, in this dissertation I review recent scientific evidence for a new form of …

Living Perception In Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Mary Mclevey

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

This thesis examines the philosophical underpinnings of the possibility to perceive in different ways, with a particular attention to Merleau-Ponty's account of perception as inseparable from the wider arc of a person's embodied existence. Chapter 1 reflects on the relationship between Merleau-Ponty's description of the co-existence of the senses, and concrete ways that individual perceivers co-exist. Chapter 2 brings Merleau-Ponty's account of perception as a field of lived relationships, into conversation with the contingency of perceptual limits. Chapter 3 examines the significance of Merleau-Ponty's attention to experiences of synaesthesia and proposes concrete ways that a perceiver might move to shift …

Ptsd And Emotionally Augmented Perception: An Argument For Direct Realism, Patrick Travis Woodruff

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) causes behavioral and emotional problems. The emotions associated with the disorder, research has shown, literally change and individual’s perception. Those who study the effects of emotion on perception generally accept an indirect theory of perception like representationalism. Yet, an indirect theory does not seem to be adequate to account for the immediacy and phenomenology of PTSD. Therefore, a theory that can better account for these is needed. I suggest a form of direct realism – the combined scientific-philosophical theory that combines John Campbell’s 3-place relation and James J. Gibson’s direct perception of information through ambient …

Representationalism About Sensory Phenomenology, Matthew Ivanowich

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

This dissertation examines representationalism about sensory phenomenology—the claim that for a sensory experience to have a particular phenomenal character is a matter of it having a particular representational content. I focus on a particular issue that is central to representationalism: whether reductive versions of the theory should be internalist or externalist. My primary goals are (i) to demonstrate that externalist representationalism fails to provide a reductive explanation for phenomenal qualities, and (ii) to present a reductive internalist version of representationalism that utilizes the empirical framework of psychophysics and neuroscience to develop a philosophical theory of content. The bulk …

The Lens Of Language, Eli Ridley Segal

Senior Projects Fall 2015

This project seeks to contextualize the iconic philosophical questions regarding skepticism, object existence, perception, and emotion, within the discourse of ordinary language philosophy. Aided by Wittgenstein, Austin, and Cavell, I argue for the non existence of objects-in-themselves. This provides the scaffolding for an examination of perception and emotion unhindered by a reliance on, or appeal to, the so-called 'objective world.' Recognizing the influence exerted by language over our conscious experience, I argue for an ordinary-language formulation of embodied cognition. With this in mind, I demonstrate the philosophical implications of such a picture through the canonical problem of 'other minds.' Ultimately …

Perception And Judgment In Plato's Theaetetus, Paul Dirado

Theses and Dissertations--Philosophy

I will argue that Plato’s dialogue Theaetetus demonstrates that knowledge is never caused by sense perception. While various kinds of qualities appear to the soul or mind as a result of sense perception—as a result of external bodies impacting with the sense organs—the being (einai or ousia) of these qualities is something different from the mere appearance of the qualities that occurs through the senses. While white colors appear to the soul through vision, perception itself does not reveal that these many appearances are all instances of one white quality. However, I will demonstrate that it is impossible to …

Epistemology Of The Cartesian Image, Mikhail Pozdniakov

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

This study is an examination of the epistemological history of the image. Its first strands are to be found in the Christian concept of profanity, in the difference of the world to the divine. The highest form of intelligibility profanity could have, second only to theology, was mathematics. Derived from the problems surrounding this concept are the techniques of inquiry that eventually resulted in the development of analytic geometry by Descartes. The latter marked a new sensibility regarding the physical universe and its constitution, one that is coterminous with the development of exact procedures in science. Being that exactitude regards …

"Just Perceiv'd & Next Door To Nothing:" An Investigation Of Minima In The Work Of George Berkeley, Nicholas Bryant Nash

Theses and Dissertations

For George Berkeley the minimum visibile and the minimum tangibile are the minimum points that can be perceived by the senses of sight and touch (NTV 54). His account of minima is considered by some to be central to his account of perception and his assault on skepticism, while others view the account as simply a digression from his main theme in the New Theory of Vision. One issue in particular that commentators disagree on is whether or not Berkeley understands minima to be extended or not extended. I argue that minima can only be understood as not extended. In …

Aristotle’S Naïve Somatism, Alain E. Ducharme

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Aristotle’s Naïve Somatism is a re-interpretation of Aristotle’s cognitive psychology in light of certain presuppositions he holds about the living animal body. The living animal body is presumed to be sensitive, and Aristotle grounds his account of cognition in a rudimentary proprioceptive awareness one has of her body. With that presupposed metaphysics under our belts, we are in a position to see that Aristotle in de Anima (cognition chapters at least) has a di erent explanatory aim in view than that which the literature generally imputes to him. He is not explicating what we would call the “mental”—the private, inner …

Defending Noe's Enactive Theory Of Perception, Lucas Allen Keefer

Philosophy Theses

Theories of perception can broadly be divided into two groups: orthodox and heterodox theories (Noë & Thompson, 2002). Orthodox theories of perception consider perception as a neurological process, i.e. as a phenomenon which can be explained solely in terms of intracranial facts. Heterodox views expand this scope, maintaining that an understanding of perception must include extracranial facts, or facts about the environment in which a perceiver is situated (ibid.). This thesis will attempt to defend a particular exemplar of this heterodox approach, namely the enactive theory of perception proposed by Alva Noë. The thesis has two primary goals. First, I …

"Inspired Industry.", Amanda M. Dock

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This thesis supports the Master of Fine Arts exhibition entitled "Inspired Industry" at Johnson City Area Arts Council, Johnson City, Tennessee, from November 14 - December 22, 2005. It is the culmination of studies and research affected by the artist's own industry vis-à-vis personal inspirations, including: discussion of aesthetics and personal utilization of the techniques learned in relation to both functional and non-functional ceramic forms. This is a self-evaluation of personal preferences and how this body of ceramic work evolved.