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 …

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 …

Embodied Literate Practices Of Freshman Women Students: A Phenomenology Of Students In First-Year Composition, Carmen Lynn Christopher

English Theses & Dissertations

This project examines the experiences of freshman women students as they compose their first papers for first-year college composition. This study uses an interpretative phenomenological method to explore the lived experiences freshmen women undergo before they arrive at college and how those experiences inform these women’s practices in first-year composition. This dissertation has three main goals: to recover and clarify Heidegger’s interpretative phenomenology, to use that clarified method to explore freshman women’s experiences in first-year composition, and to suggest ways in which phenomenology might be used in the daily practices of writing instructors and administrators in higher education.

To address …

Pressing: Where The Objective Meets The Subjective, Mariana Parisca

Undergraduate Theses—Unrestricted

Through this essay I describe the theoretical and anthropological ideas that led to the creation of the Cushing Series. An interest in the obsession with photography in popular culture leads to an understanding of the permeation of structured reasoning beyond scientific research and into everyday life. Taking evidence from photography, and philosophy of science I establish the limitations of structured reasoning, both as a way of perceiving the world and as an understanding of identity, and define surface and frame as its physical representation. Using Sartre’s existential theory and phenomenological anthropology I then describe the infinite subjective existence of …

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 …

A Phenomenological Inquiry Into The Low Rates Of Influenza Vaccination Among Older African Americans, Delia Roxanne Howson-Santana

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

Influenza vaccination is recommended for persons with high-risk health conditions such as chronic diseases to prevent flu-related complications and death. African Americans 65 years and older have consistently been reported to have the lowest influenza vaccination rates compared to all other racial groups, despite having higher rates of chronic diseases. A review of the literature indicated that there is a dearth of qualitative studies examining the grounds for these low rates. In this study, 15 African Americans 65 years and older were interviewed to explore the factors that contribute to low rates of flu vaccination among this racial group. Research …

Serious Fun: The Perceived Influences Of Improvisational Acting On Community College Students, Ruth H. Yamamoto

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

Research in extracurricular activities and arts education demonstrate how experiences in those areas contribute to the well-being and ongoing development of students in higher education. Although practiced and performed across the United States, theatrical improvisation, as an art form or extracurricular activity, lacks investigation within the context of higher education. Without an understanding from the student perspective, higher educational stakeholders miss an opportunity to incorporate experiences that address the institutions' mission and learning goals or worse, inadvertently produce student disenfranchisement. The purpose of this phenomenological study was to explore and describe the experience of improvisational acting training, practice, and performance …

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” …

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

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

No abstract provided.

Maps For The Lost: A Collection Of Short Fiction And Human / Nature Ecotones: Climate Change And The Ecological Imagination: A Critical Essay, Susan Heather Greenhill

Theses: Doctorates and Masters

The thesis comprises a collection of short fiction, Maps for the Lost, and a critical essay, “Human / Nature Ecotones: Climate Change and the Ecological Imagination.” In ecological terms, areas of interaction between adjacent ecosystems are known as ecotones. Sites of relationship between biotic communities, they are charged with fertility and evolutionary possibility. While postcolonial scholarship is concerned with borders as points of cross-cultural contact, ecocritical thought focuses upon the ecotone that occurs at the interface between human and non-human nature.

In their occupation of the liminal zones between human and natural realms, the characters and narratives of Maps …

The Lived Body In Heidegger, Merleau-Ponty And Derrida, Manhua Li

LSU Master's Theses

In my thesis, I discuss the accounts of the lived body in Heidegger, Merleau-Ponty and Derrida in terms of the extent to which they succeed as counter-accounts to the Cartesian metaphysical view of the body-object, as well as the limits of each account. I first introduce Descartes’ account of the body as substantiality (res extensa), which isolates the body as the object from its subject, the mind, the “I think” (res cogitans). After contextualizing the body as non-living objectivity in Cartesian metaphysics, I discuss the later Heidegger’s appropriation of the Husserlian notion of the lived body (Leib)—as separate from the …

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, …