Arts and Humanities Commons^™

Toward A Radical Integral Humanism: Macintyre’S Continuing Marxism, Jeffery Nicholas

Jeffery Nicholas

I argue that we must read Alasdair MacIntyre’s mature work through a Marxist lens. I begin by discussing his argument that we must choose which God to worship on principles of justice, which, it turns out, are ones given to us by God. I contend that this argument entails that we must see Mac- Intyre’s early Marxist commitments as given to him by God, and, therefore, that he has never abandoned them in his turn to Thomistic-Aristotelianism. I examine his reading of Marx, with its emphasis on the concept of alienation as a Christian concept, and explain how this reading …

The New Bureaucracies Of Virtue: Introduction, Marie-Andree Jacob, Annelise Riles

Annelise Riles

No abstract provided.

Heuristics, Biases, And Philosophy, Jeffrey J. Rachlinski

Jeffrey J. Rachlinski

Commenting on Professor Cass Sunstein's work is a daunting task. There is simply so much of it. Professor Sunstein produces scholarship at a rate that is faster than I can consume it. Scarcely an area of law has failed to feel his impact. One cannot today write an article on administrative law, free speech, punitive damages, Internet law, law and economics, separation of powers, or animal rights law without addressing one or more of Sunstein's papers. And his work is typically not a mere footnote. Sunstein has changed how scholars think about each of these areas of law. More broadly, …

The Moral Emotions Of The Criminal Law, Stephen P. Garvey

Stephen P. Garvey

Imagine you have committed a crime. You might experience any number of emotional responses to what you've done, ranging from self-satisfaction to self-disgust. But however you do feel, how should you feel? The question seems especially appropriate for a conference honoring Professor Herbert Morris and celebrating his work, for no one has shed light more on the moral emotions of the criminal law. The line of thought that follows owes Professor Morris a large and obvious debt. So, once again, how should you feel when you have committed a criminal wrong? "Guilty" comes immediately to mind. But guilt is not …

Foiling The Black Knight, Kelly C. Smith

Kelly C Smith

Why is the academy in general, and philosophy in particular, not more involved in the fight against the creationist threat? And why, when a response is offered, is it so curiously ineffective? I argue, by using an analogy with the battle against the Black Knight from the movie Monty Python and the Holy Grail, that the difficulty lies largely in a failure to see the nature of the problem clearly. By modifying the analogy, it is possible to see both why large sections of the academy have remained unmoved and also why many of the reactions to the threat have …

The Effects Of Temperature And Daylength On The Rosa Polyphenism In The Buckeye Butterfly, Precis Coenia (Lepidoptera: Nymphalidae), Kelly C. Smith

Kelly C Smith

In North Carolina, Precis coenia that emerge during the Summer months exhibit a ventral hindwing (VHW) with well-defined reddish-brown and brown pattern elements on a light tan background. During late Summer and early Fall, however, individuals begin to appear with poorly defined or obscured pattern elements on a dark reddish-brown background. The present study shows that the Fall (rosa) color morph can be induced by either low rearing temperatures or short daylengths. The effect of such conditions seems to be cumulative throughout the larval life, although animals are much more sensitive during the last 24 hours of larval life and …

Equivocal Notions Of Accuracy And Genetic Screening Of The General Population, Kelly C. Smith

Kelly C Smith

The explosive growth in genetic technology will quickly make possible an unprecedented number of tests for genetically based conditions. A necessary condition for the use of such tests without risk of harm to the patient is that they are “accurate”. However, most discussions of test accuracy in the literature have equivocated between two importantly different meanings of the word. In particular, it must be kept in mind that a high analytical accuracy does not imply a high diagnostic accuracy. Questions about the diagnostic accuracy of genetic tests loom large at present given our limited knowledge of the complex etiology of …

Can Intelligent Design Become Respectable, Kelly Smith

Kelly C Smith

What I want to try to do is give you a basic blueprint for respectability. If we make the assumption (and there are lots of people who would question this assumption, but I will make it for the purposes of this talk) that ID theory seriously wishes to become a respectable scientific theory, then I will tell you how to do it. If you follow my 4 simple steps to scientific respectability, you will get what you want: scientific respect, research funds, access to science classrooms, and so on, and so forth. It is actually fairly simple — all you …

Manifest Complexity: A Foundational Ethic For Astrobiology?, Kelly C. Smith

Kelly C Smith

This paper examines the age old question of the basis of moral value in the new context of astrobiology, which offers a fresh perspective. The goal is to offer the broad outline of a general theory of moral value that can accommodate the diversity of living entities we are likely to encounter beyond the confines of Earth. It begins with ratiocentrism, the view that the possession of reason is the primary means by which we differentiate entities having moral value in and of themselves from those having moral value merely by virtue of the uses to which they can be …

Wrench Yourself, Luca W. Cintolo

Luca W Cintolo

Wrench Yourself Luca Cintolo Faculty Sponsor: Cheryl Foster, Philosophy Wrench Yourself was originally conceived as a three part project. Part one, learning about the writing life, came to fruition through reading books on the craft. Part two involved producing a body of original, creative, non-fiction. Part three culminated in binding the polished pieces of writing in limited production, hand made, leather bound books. At the completion of this project I have created a hand-made book containing two essays. The first essay, Driven to Distraction, focuses on inattention behind the wheel and the pervasiveness of multi-tasking as a societal norm. The …

Hypothesis Generation And Testing: A Template For Biomedical Research, Michael Hoffmann

Michael H.G. Hoffmann

This argument map provides a template for the testing of hypotheses in biomedical research. It can be used in science education to direct students' attention to all components that need to be clarified to justify a scientific hypothesis in a specific experimental setting, including the justification of appropriate sample sizes in experiments, determination of background theories, description of experimental design, data collection methods, significance level, etc. To use this template, go to http://agora.gatech.edu/, search for argument map 3363, and copy the map.

Brevity, By Laurence Goldstein, Monica Mcmillan, Robert J. Stainton

Robert J. Stainton

No abstract provided.

Albertsons Library’S Socratic Club Collection, Jim Stockton

Jim Stockton

Stockton’s presentation announces recent additions to Boise State’s Socratic Club collection, making Albertsons Library one of the few repositories in the world to house original copies of all five volumes of Socratic Digest — the publication featuring writings by prominent scholars of the Oxford University Socratic Club (1942-1972). Additionally Stockton will discuss “The Abolition of Man,” by the Club’s first president, C.S. Lewis.

“Escándalo Público”: La Destitución De Miguel Ángel Beltrán, Las Últimas Investigaciones De Michel Foucault Y La Autonomía Universitaria ("Public Scandal": The Dismissal Of Miguel Angel Beltrán, Michel Foucault's Final Lectures And The Principle Of Autonomous University), Andrés Henao Castro

Andrés Fabián Henao-Castro

En este artículo he querido repensar la destitución del profesor Miguel Ángel Beltrán como constituyente de un evento en el que se reconfiguran las relaciones entre el poder y el saber en Colombia; un evento que manifiesta una doble transformación: de un lado, un cambio en el riesgo que supone el conflicto entre el discurso de la verdad y el ejercicio del poder y, de otro lado, una reconfiguración del actor social que produce la partición ya no solo ética sino también política de este mundo en dos.

Aristotle's Correspondence Theory Of Truth And What Does Not Exist, Charlene Elsby

Charlene Elsby

No abstract provided.

Review: Worlds Without End: The Many Lives Of The Multiverse, Patrick Blanchfield

Mary-Jane Rubenstein

No abstract provided.

Paradox And Metaphor: An Integrity Of The Arts, Lawrence Kimmel

Lawrence Kimmel

Art is movement, movement is life. Surprisingly, the spareness of paradox in art promotes a fullness of life. We must first speak as simply as possible about art as a fundamental human activity. Only then can we hope to say something of consequence about the so-called “fine arts” — which may be misleading as a description. In substance, the reference “fine art” simply means useless art: “fine” as being free from utility. Art is imaginatively productive, it makes something, whether painting, poem, or partita. But this making has no independent utility, and its character as a work of art is …

Notes On A Poetics Of Time, Lawrence Kimmel

Lawrence Kimmel

The idea of a poetics in contrast with an aesthetics of time is intended to focus on the creative possibilities of imagination in configurations of time. An aesthetics of time focusing on sensuous experience is a certainly a basic resource of creative imagination in literature. But the concept of a poetics of time, taken from the root meaning of poiesis in classical Greek thought—to make, or to bring forth—enables an inquiry into conceptions of human life and thought brought forth in various creative configurations of time in literature. This essay will analyze some of the ways in which poetic imagination …

Reconciliation And Harmony: The Philosophical Art Of Tragic Drama, Lawrence Kimmel

Lawrence Kimmel

In the performance of art one can begin at the beginning, but in a discussion of art one must begin somewhere in the middle. Here, it is with the conviction that art, in whatever form, though it may surprise the sense and quicken the spirit, disturb our thinking or revoke a thoughtless ease, still, its full expression restores a sense of presence and wholeness to our being. That is, every art form has a point of closure in a harmony of the spirit. Even tragic drama, which brings the darkness of human character into a glare of recognition and acceptance, …

The Mythic Journey Of A Changeling, Lawrence Kimmel

Lawrence Kimmel

There are many such tales in the archaic moorings of our collective memory, but one in particular that seems inclusive if indeterminate: Once upon a time there was a creature that came out of the darkness with a only a faint memory of water, and sand, and cold, and fear to discover that its very life depended on telling a story about its origins—of which it had no clear memory, and its destiny—of which it had no certain knowledge. What more fabulous to conceive than this creature which, having lost its tail, dreams of growing wings? It is a being …

Crossblood: Literature And The Drama Of Survival, Lawrence Kimmel

Lawrence Kimmel

Native Americans have witnessed the disappropriation of their lands and suffered the destruction of their way of life, yet have found strength to endure, to preserve their identities as a people through the communal character and power of their language and stories.

Culture And The Philosophy Of Moral Life: The True, The Good, The Beautiful, And The Sacred, Lawrence Kimmel

Lawrence Kimmel

Philosophy as a profession is blessed with leisure and exempt from an obligation to be socially useful or productive, and so has a special obligation to address fundamental questions about the meaning of the human project not otherwise on the contemporary agenda. This is not an undertaking that requires technical language or special skills. William James described the deceptively simple task of philosophy as saying something true about things that matter. That said, it is hardly the prerogative of philosophy to adjudicate which are matters of crucial importance to a given culture. Moreover, philosophical investigations are of a kind that …

Technology: The Future Of Our History, Lawrence Kimmel

Lawrence Kimmel

No abstract provided.

Reality And Illusion In The Work Of Art, Lawrence Kimmel

Lawrence Kimmel

Two basic intuitions that frame the relation of art and illusion in this essay—a conviction that illusion is essential to art, but also that art is an essential resource of truth—present an apparent conflict that invites or requires resolution. Indeed, conflict and disagreement seem endemic to discussions of art. In philosophy, the question of the relation art and reality invariably begins with Plato's well-known critique of art as mimesis, as imitation, that makes the process of art a second order activity of copying, and thus an essential distraction from the more serious first order business of life and truth. It …

Death, And The Elemental Passion Of The Soul: An Ancient Philosophical Thesis, With Poetic Counterpoint, Lawrence Kimmel

Lawrence Kimmel

In his famous “Letter”, Epicurus writes to his young friend Menoeceus that “Death is nothing” — either to fear or to hope for.1 This counsel further suggests that death is not something one can claim as his/her own, and that even its contemplation brings “a craving for immortality”, and so, loosens the fragile hold we have on the life of the soul.

Advertising In Arcadia, Lawrence Kimmel

Lawrence Kimmel

There is not a long history of censorship in philosophy, but where it does occur it receives memorable note, as in the case of Plato‟s Republic. And there, as elsewhere, I often find I am in sympathy, if not agreement, concerning the problem, but utterly opposed to the offered solution. In the paper I wish to review, Paine takes the very strong position that “child advertising” is in its very conception an offense—and that its continuance is both economically exploitative and morally corruptive of children. Although she is careful to separate her concerns as moral rather than legal or political, …

"Everything Flows": The Poetics Of Transformation, Lawrence Kimmel

Lawrence Kimmel

Plato famously dismissed art as thrice removed from reality, holding that mimesis is a copy of a copy, a distraction from the more serious affairs of truth. Two millennia have done little to remove this stigma of dissembling deceit leveled at art. Metamorphosis provides an alternative view of reality, and of the access of art to that reality, that I will consider in the remarks that follow. On the opposite view of things from Plato, Heralclitus, addressing the question of reality — of what and how things are — declared “IIαvτα Pηεl ”, Everything Flows: the idea that reality …

Telling Stories, Lawrence Kimmel

Lawrence Kimmel

In what follows I will be using Native American culture and literature as the primary focus for a discussion of storytelling. For this culture, the life of speech and the presencing of meaning through the sharing of stories are vital to the very existence and identity of a people. Momaday's remarks about the nature of the relationship between language and experience surely are not limited to the lives of Native Americans. His accompanying claim that we cannot exist apart from the moral dimension of language is no less applicable to our own culture, but showing the importance of an awareness …

Boundaries: The Primal Force And Human Face Of Evil, Lawrence Kimmel

Lawrence Kimmel

Philosophy can be, rarely perhaps, a call to a sane place, a resolve to take time to consider the Other, to understand and overcome the space between. In quite ordinary and extraordinary ways, this begins over again the elemental process of healing, of becoming whole. This is not the only or even the primary task of philosophy; but in a secular age, one in which everything is negotiable and most things for sale, the convergence of the philosophical and poetic is a still point of access to such elemental passions of the soul.

Evil is a primal word, a sound …

The Aesthetics Of Enchantment, Lawrence Kimmel

Lawrence Kimmel

There are two preliminary things to be stated at the outset of any philosophical consideration of enchantment. First, traditional philosophy has been antagonistic toward the idea of enchantment: as a foundational discipline of reason, philosophy has defined itself in opposition to the non-rational. The main traditions of philosophy have regarded any form of discourse other than that centered in reason as alien, the other, as something which obscures or undermines those procedures which alone can determine knowledge and value. I presume here that enchantment would be considered “non-rational”, and also that such a designation is problematic in a number of …