Arts and Humanities Commons^™

Wittgenstein's Liberating Word: A Meditation On Philosophy And God, Joshua Timothy Kenyon Daniel

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This project is an attempt to understand the nature of religious belief through the lens of Ludwig Wittgenstein’s philosophical perspective. Chapter One outlines Wittgenstein’s approach to language and meaning and explores the tension that many contemporary analytic philosophers of religion find in Wittgensteinian approaches to religious belief. Chapter Two addresses concerns Wittgenstein had with Frege’s understanding of logic and the limits of thought and ties it to criticism from Wittgensteinian philosophers about the possibility of making any sense of religious belief. Chapter Three pulls together the concerns of the previous two chapters and attempts to reconcile them. A schematic outline …

Intertribal Communication, Literacy, And The Spread Of The Ghost Dance, Justin Randolph Gage

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

During the 1880s, western Native Americans created networks of communication threaded together through postal correspondence and intertribal visitation among reservations. Through this network native groups cultivated intertribal relationships and exchanged ideas despite attempts by the United States government to separate, contain, and Americanize them. Frequent visits to other reservations, often over long distances, gave men and women a chance to share news and information, exchange religious and cultural traditions, and forge new intertribal bonds. Many Indians also used letter-writing to communicate with the world outside of their reserves in ways unanticipated by government policy makers. Thousands of Native Americans learned …

The Way Of The Gods: The Development Of Shinto Nationalism In Early Modern Japan, Chadwick Mackenzie Totty

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This research looks at the development of Shinto nationalism in Edo Period Japan (1603-1868). It focuses on the development of intellectual thought and the relationship between the kogaku school in Japanese Confucianism and the kokugaku school in Shintoism. The primary goal is to demonstrate that there was a trend wherein members of these two schools looked back to the past in order to rediscover a lost utopia and Way. This study examines the works of Yamaga Soko, Itō Jinsai, Ogyū Sorai, Kamo no Mabuchi, and Motoori Norinaga to demonstrate how this line of thought helped contribute to the development of …

The Decolonization Of Christianity In Colonial Kenya, Amanda Ruth Ford

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Kenya was an unusual case within the larger narrative of decolonization in the British Empire. The presence of white settlers, the relative newness of the colony, and the particular way in which the British pursued the civilizing mission all combined to make the end of empire particularly violent for all parties involved. Independence in Kenya was precipitated by a bloody civil war, known as Mau Mau, and the imposition of martial law by the government for almost a decade. In the midst of this chaos, the Church of England’s missionary body, the Church Missionary Society worked to protect their converts …

Impartialist Ethics And Psychic Disintegration: A Talking Cure, Roman Nakia Briggs

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation deals with integrity understood as a state of the psyche. Its primary interlocutor is Professor Bernard Williams, and its point of departure is my interpretation of his Objection from Integrity to impartialist moral theories. Against Williams, I hope to show that the active adherent of impartialist ethical systems (e.g., act utilitarianism) may retain both moral integrity and integrity. In demonstrating this, I make use of a variant of Roy Schafer’s action language approach to psychoanalysis, and what I call practical aestheticism.

On The Evolutionary Origins Of Religious Belief, Robert Duane Howard

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Religious belief is a byproduct of evolutionarily designed cognitive mechanisms. The ubiquity of religious belief and experience across human cultures is explained by our common human psychology; our domain-specific cognitive mechanisms give rise, collectively, to the phenomenon of byproduct religious belief/experience. In this thesis, I will examine what I call religion-generating cognitive mechanisms, and I will argue that byproduct raw god-beliefs are developed by cultures into refined god-beliefs. These refined god-beliefs are co-opted by evolutionary processes and are cultural adaptations. My conception of “religious belief” in terms of raw and refined god-beliefs allows a disambiguation of the term “religion,” and …

Disentangling Embodied Cognition: An Examination Of The State, Problems, And Possibilities Of Embodied Cognition, Cody Cash

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Embodied cognition has received a fair amount of attention in philosophical, neuroscientific, and robotic research during the past several decades, yet the precise nature of its goals, methods, and claims are unclear. This dissertation will ascertain and examine the primary themes in the field of embodied cognition as well as why, and if, they offer significant challenges to traditional cognitive science models. Though many theories believe they are providing accounts that should replace traditional models, to do so they will have to overcome the very difficult challenge of arguing that mental content and capabilities derived from sensorimotor activity can continue …

The Technological Singularity: An Ideological Critique, Phillip Stephens

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The Technological Singularity represents a confluence of techno-cultural narratives of progress in which the projected exponential growth of artificial intelligence and nanotechnology will usher in a moment of irrevocable change for the human race – a change that many claim is scant decades away. Although the concept saw its modern clarification by science fiction author Vernor Vinge, the Singularity sits astride both fictional and nonfictional narratives of the future. It is the aim of this study to explore the ideological discourses that emerge from texts on the Singularity and the unfathomable posthuman future it ushers in. Doing so reveals how …

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 …

The Problem Of Epistemically Irrelevant Causal Factors, Derek L. Mcallister

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The problem of epistemically irrelevant causal factors is an epistemological phenomenon that occurs when a person becomes aware of some non-epistemic, causal factor that threatens to adversely influence her present belief, yet this factor is irrelevant to her deliberation concerning that belief. While the problem itself is apparently relatively widespread, very few have given it a detailed analysis. This thesis is one attempt to improve that. The first part, and the bulk, of this thesis is an analysis and explanation of what exactly the problem is and how it differs from nearby, related epistemological phenomena. The second part is my …

Becoming All Things To All Men: The Role Of Jesuit Missions In Early Modern Globalization, Ann Louise Cole

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

From its founding, the Society of Jesus was globally minded, and Iberian imperial and mercantile expansion during the early modern period granted Jesuit missionaries unprecedented access to the globe through navigation. With its unique emphasis on both global missions and pedagogy, the Society of Jesus was in an ideal position to both generate and disseminate knowledge about the world. As missionaries scattered across the globe constructed the identity of the ethnic and cultural Other encountered on mission in the East and in Latin America, Jesuit missionaries and scholars, both at home and abroad, likewise attempted to construct a global Catholic …

The Sorcerer, William Carlisle Goehring

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

A collection of poems from 2011-2015.

Breaking Wind, Todd William Pentico

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Breaking Wind is a research project and thesis exhibition composed of a series of ceramic objects in conjunction with paintings that explore the systems that dictate belief, the motives that drive curiosity, and biological connection to our surroundings. The work uses the context of the gallery and devices used in museums such as plinths, shelves, and wall text to reinforce the idealized and fictive into something believable.

In the work, Breaking Wind refers to a clumsy breakdown and rethinking of the seemingly simple natural phenomenon, wind. Wind is understood as a natural occurrence that has no origin or any innate …