Arts and Humanities Commons^™

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 …

Meaning, Being And Expression: A Phenomenological Justification For Interdisciplinary Scholarship, Neal Deroo

Faculty Work Comprehensive List

The purpose of this talk is two-fold: first, to lay out a phenomenological justification for why scientific or theoretical investigation must be carried out both within particular disciplines and across various disciplines; and second, to show that such a justification--alluded to with varying levels of explicitness in various works by various figures--itself opens new paths of exploration for phenomenology.

What The Fuck Is This?: Aesthetic Nature Of Being Or Ontology In The Poetry Of Gerard Manley Hopkins, Alexis Stephenson

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

“What the Fuck is This?” examines the intersection of phenomenology and poetry arguing for an aesthetic nature of Being and focuses on how we know or experience the world instead of Cartesian absolutes. This subjective knowledge does not compete against objective knowledge but simply recognizes the use that poetic language has for communicating the subjective knowledge from experience of being as it unfolds for us. The major movements of the thesis focus on aesthetic objects, aesthetic intersubjectivity, and the aesthetic self. These are labeled “aesthetic” because a phenomenological methodology reveals a dialectic between that which is unfolding and that which …

Why Ontologize?, Melvin Woody

Philosophy Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Facilitating An Ethical Disposition (Hexis) As “Care Of The Soul” In A Unique Ontological Vision Of Socratic Education, James M. Magrini

Philosophy Scholarship

This essay adopts a Continental philosophical approach to reading Plato’s Socrates in terms of a “third way” that cuts a middle path between doctrinal and esoteric readings of the dialogues. It presents a portrait of Socratic education that is at odds with contemporary views in education and curriculum that view Plato’s Socrates as either the teacher of a truth-finding method or proto-fascist authoritarian. It argues that the crucial issue of attempting to foster an ethical disposition (hexis) is a unique form of education, in terms of “care of the soul,” that unfolds only within the context of sustained dialectic interrogation. …

How Marion Helps Us To Understand Kierkegaard’S Fear And Trembling, Mark Tazelaar

Faculty Work Comprehensive List

In the past decade, many interpretations of Fear and Trembling highlight the significance of the “eschatological”—the marvel of Abraham’s expectation that he will get Isaac back. For these interpretations, the central issue is the contrast between the knight of faith and the knight of resignation. Merold Westphal, however, contends that these interpretations lead us away from the main contrast between the hero of faith and the tragic hero. Kierkegaard scholarship is at an impasse. I argue that Marion’s phenomenology of sacrifice, together with the important idea of veritas redarguens that he appropriates from Augustine, offer insights that can resolve the …

What Is It To Be An Ethical Engineer? A Phenomenological Approach To Engineering Ethics Pedagogy, Valorie Troesch

Dissertations, Master's Theses and Master's Reports - Open

Two concerns are prominent in engineering ethics pedagogy and, together, pose a conundrum for ethics educators: 21st century technologies raise daunting ethical questions that require a strong engagement with and understanding of ethics by engineers; at the same time, however, engineering students don’t care much about studying ethics. Ethics instruction, however, seems nonresponsive to these issues. It continues to rely on Western ethical theories using case studies to analyze professional engineering conduct. And, although instructors want better student learning outcomes, assessment continues to use quantitative measures of ethical knowledge and ethical reasoning skills which disregard students’ emotional engagement with ethics …

Philosophy's Rarified Air: On Peden's Spinoza Contra Phenomenology, Steven Swarbrick

Publications and Research

No abstract provided.

Cultivating Perception: Phenomenological Encounters With Artworks, Helen A. Fielding

Helen A Fielding

Phenomenally strong artworks have the potential to anchor us in the world and to cultivate our perception. For the most part, we barely notice the world around us, as we are too often elsewhere, texting, coordinating schedules, planning ahead, navigating what needs to be done. This is the level of our age that shapes the ways we encounter the world and others. In such a world it is no wonder we no longer trust our senses. But as feminists have long argued, grounding our thinking in embodied experience opens it up to difference and helps us to resist the colonization …

Epistemic Function And Ontology Of Analog And Digital Images, Aleksandra Lukaszewicz Alcarez

Contemporary Aesthetics (Journal Archive)

The important epistemic function of photographic images is their active role in construction and reconstruction of our beliefs concerning the world and human identity, since we often consider photographs as presenting reality or even the Real itself. Because photography can convince people of how different social and ethnic groups and even they themselves look, documentary projects and the dissemination of photographic practices supported the transition from disciplinary society to the present-day society of control. While both analog and digital images are formed from the same basic materia, the ways in which this matter appears are distinctive. In the case of …

Miffy And Me: Developing An Auto-Ethnographic Approach To The Study Of Companion Animals And Human Loneliness, Adrian Franklin

Animal Studies Journal

Despite the consistent claim that companion animals can and do alleviate human loneliness, a recent systematic review of quantitative studies of human loneliness and companion animals (Gilbey and Tani 2015) found no evidence to support this ‘belief’ (as they put it), except in animal-assisted therapy (and even there the authors were not entirely convinced that they do). Taking their article as a starting point this paper develops a critical examination of quantitative methodologies that have been used to date and suggests that they have not taken into account the extent and complexity of contemporary human loneliness or how companion animals …

Extending The Explanandum: A Commentary On Andy Clark, Michael Madary, Thomas K. Metzinger, Jennifer M. Windt

College of the Pacific Faculty Articles

In this commentary, I suggest that the predictive processing framework (PP) might be applicable to areas beyond those identified by Clark. In particular, PP may be relevant for our understanding of perceptual content, consciousness, and for applied cognitive neuroscience. My main claim for each area is as follows:

1. PP urges an organism-relative conception of perceptual content.
2. Historical a priori accounts of the structure of perceptual experience converge with results from PP.
3. There are a number of areas in which PP can find important practical applications, including education, public policy, and social interaction.

A 'Paradox Of Expression': Bertolt Brecht's Verfremdungseffekt In Performance, Cohen L. Ambrose Mr.

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

No abstract provided.

For The Good Of The Thing, Sarah Louise Kristine Warren

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

What is to be done about the thing? There is a growing interest in contemporary philosophy in re-considering the ontological status of the object – traditionally considered the passive substrate of human experience. This paper argues that, if we treat the object qua object seriously as an area of inquiry and attempt to accord it – à la Jane Bennett’s Vibrant Matter – a certain amount of agency, we can come to see it as both unique in its capacities and more than superficially enabling of subjective cognition. By using Jane Bennett’s aforementioned text, Clark and Chalmers’ extended mind theory, …

Critical-Reflective Thinking: A Phenomenology, Margot D. Wielgus

Theses and Dissertations--Philosophy

This dissertation formulates and describes a type of thinking called critical-reflective thinking. Examples of critical-reflective thinking appear in the works of many major Western philosophical figures, including the main thinkers considered here, Plato, Martin Heidegger, Hannah Arendt, and Henry David Thoreau. Although this list of thinkers is eclectic, these philosophers come together in describing a common phenomenon, although they do not thematically designate or explain it. Their works illustrate a type of thinking in which people are invited by prompting events to consider their presuppositions—notions they have taken as true without prior consideration. I have deemed this phenomenon “critical-reflective thinking” …