Philosophy Commons^™

Western Science And Eastern Zen To Seek The Origin Of Truth: Philosophical Background Of Scale Modeling, Kozo Saito

Progress in Scale Modeling, an International Journal

This article was written to introduce philosophical background of scale modeling, where Zen philosophy was applied to overcome the limitation of logical thinking and hypotheses-driven deductive science. Three specific reasons are as follows. The first is related to the law approach in scale modeling; it uses the kufu principle, originated in Zen Buddhism, together with the other three scientific methods: experimental, theoretical, and computational. The second reason is because scale modeling seeks relativistic understanding by attempting to realize similarity; the concept is closer to Eastern philosophy rather than absolute understanding cultivated by deductive science. The third is in the educational …

Sauron: Weirdly Sexy, Robert T. Tally Jr.

Journal of Tolkien Research

A popular meme depict Galadriel and Frodo admitting that Sauron is "weirdly sexy," a humorous allusion to The Rings of Power’s Halbrand. The show's controversial revelation of Halbrand as Sauron highlights the differences between Tolkien’s construction of Second and Third Age Sauron as an attractive or admirable leader compared to Peter Jackson’s portrayal of him as a monster or disembodied fiery eyeball. This, in turn, has implications for the geopolitical order of Middle-earth in which many people legitimately might wish to be on Sauron’s side. Acknowledging Sauron's "sexiness" may allow us to see Tolkien's world system in a new …

How Can Generative Ai (Genai) Enhance Or Hinder Qualitative Studies? A Critical Appraisal From South Asia, Nepal, Niroj Dahal

The Qualitative Report

Qualitative researchers can benefit from using generative artificial intelligence (GenAI), such as different versions of ChatGPT—GPT-3.5 or GPT-4, Google Bard—now renamed as a Gemini, and Bing Chat—now renamed as a Copilot, in their studies. The scientific community has used artificial intelligence (AI) tools in various ways. However, using GenAI has generated concerns regarding potential research unreliability, bias, and unethical outcomes in GenAI-generated research results. Considering these concerns, the purpose of this commentary is to review the current use of GenAI in qualitative research, including its strengths, limitations, and ethical dilemmas from the perspective of critical appraisal from South Asia, Nepal. …

Young Scientists And Philosophers On The Border, Deepanwita Dasgupta, Jules Simon

Young Scientists and Philosophers on the Border

No abstract provided.

Ethical Implications Of Space Colonization, Anna K. Orta, Jose Lopez, Carlos Ontiveros

Young Scientists and Philosophers on the Border

No abstract provided.

The Future Of Robotics: An Advanced Ethical View Of Robotics Contributing To Elderly Care, Medicine, And Workforce Participation, Maximus A. Buckingham, Jerrica M. Foster, Ruta Grinceviciute

Young Scientists and Philosophers on the Border

No abstract provided.

Smart Cities And The Ethical Dilemma, Bruce Lomeli, Maria Grajeda, Stephanie Gutierrez

Young Scientists and Philosophers on the Border

No abstract provided.

Origami In The Mathematics, Education And Medical Fields, At-Ziry Torres

Young Scientists and Philosophers on the Border

No abstract provided.

On The Manifold Wisdom Of Origami: Reconsidering Origami As A Natural Philosophy, Joseph De Leon Flores

Young Scientists and Philosophers on the Border

No abstract provided.

The Shared Values Society: On The Inability To Validate Beliefs And Its Effect On Pluralistic Governance, Tanner L. Smith

Masters Theses

The nature of truth affects beliefs in such a way that all worldviews are left on a level playing field, each with no more of an objective claim to truth than any other. As a result, no one worldview has an intrinsic right to dominate the government or, through it, other worldviews. Furthermore, philosophical secularism’s noble notion of protecting individual freedoms by limiting the influence of moral values in the government has led to a loss of intergroup bonding and a value vacuum in public life. At the same time, because beliefs constitute some of the most profound aspects of …

Teaching Philosophy Classes In Spanish Or Bilingually In The South Texas Borderlands, Alex Stehn, Cynthia Paccacerqua, Danny Marrero, Christopher Gomez, Dania López García, Katherine Christoffersen

11th National Symposium on Spanish as a Heritage Language

Situated in the deep south Texas borderlands, over 90% of our students are Hispanic or Latino/a/x and the majority are bilingual. That is, most students enrolled across every course at our university are heritage speakers of Spanish. As professional philosophers, we believe that teaching these students should involve engaging them as the bilingual and bicultural students they are while helping them develop philosophical biliteracy. Our panelists are from different linguistic and cultural backgrounds (native speaker, heritage speaker, L2 speaker) but all of us are bilingual, bicultural, and biliterate faculty who have been working together as a team to design and …

Anchoring The Aaa Model, Luca James Barba

Philosophy: Student Scholarship & Creative Works

My goal in this paper is to expose two—but resolve one—major issues facing one of the foremost endeavors in the theory of knowledge: Virtue Epistemology. In Part 1 of this paper, I propose the epistemic criterion of "anchoring” as an addition to Ernest Sosa's AAA model of knowledge. It is a solution to an internal inconsistency that arises from Sosa's response to Duncan Pritchard's (2009) environmentalist luck critique of the AAA model that allows performances to spatiotemporally extend beyond their performers. By modifying the AAA model to the A4 (AAA + Anchoring) model, I can address Pritchard’s critique without disturbing …

Living Well With Ai: Virtue, Education, And Artificial Intelligence, Nicholas Smith, Darby Vickers

Philosophy: Faculty Scholarship

Artificial intelligence technologies have become a ubiquitous part of human life. This prompts us to ask, ‘how should we live well with artificial intelligence?’ Currently, the most prominent candidate answers to this question are principlist. According to these approaches, if you teach people some finite set of principles or convince them to adopt the right rules, people will be able to live and act well with artificial intelligence, even in an evolving and opaque moral world. We find the dominant principlist approaches to be ill-suited to providing forward-looking moral guidance regarding living well with artificial intelligence. We analyze some of …

Libraries And Changing Humanities Fields, Peter Hesseldenz

2024 R&I Day

A description of a project which explores how Humanities fields are changing as they grapple with diversity and inclusion issues, focusing particularly on curricula and teaching methods. The project also seeks to understand how well libraries are working with and supporting these changes with particular emphasis on the role of Academic Liaisons.

Cultural Evolution: A Review Of Theoretical Challenges, Ryan Nichols, Mathieu Charbonneau, Azita Chellappoo, Taylor Davis, Miriam Haidle, Erik O. Kimbrough, Henrike Moll, Richard Moore, Thom Scott-Phillips, Benjamin Grant Purzycki, Jose Segovia-Martin

Economics Faculty Articles and Research

The rapid growth of cultural evolutionary science, its expansion into numerous fields, its use of diverse methods, and several conceptual problems have outpaced corollary developments in theory and philosophy of science. This has led to concern, exemplified in results from a recent survey conducted with members of the Cultural Evolution Society, that the field lacks ‘knowledge synthesis’, is poorly supported by ‘theory’, has an ambiguous relation to biological evolution and uses key terms (e.g. ‘culture’, ‘social learning’, ‘cumulative culture’) in ways that hamper operationalization in models, experiments and field studies. Although numerous review papers in the field represent and categorize …

Is Ignorance Bliss?, Eliana R. Mandelberg

CAFE Symposium 2024

This project explores the ethics of telling someone factual information, even if it could hurt them. Specifically, the main question is: If a person were to learn that our world was just The Matrix, would they be obligated to tell people to be truthful or keep it to themselves to spare the feelings of others?

Confucian Family Ideal And Same-Sex Marriage: A Feminist Confucian Perspective, Sor-Hoon Tan

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

This article engages the views of PRC Confucian scholars who responded to the United States Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy's citing of Confucius in his majority opinion on same-sex marriage in 2015. It questions their separation of tolerance for homosexuality from legalization of same-sex marriage and argue that tolerance is not enough. The arguments in the mainland Confucian discourse about same-sex marriage highlights the historical and persistent entanglement of Confucianism with patriarchy. Instead of reviving traditional patriarchal society, further entrenching and increasing gender inequality, contemporary Confucianism could shape its own unique modern society that aspires to (and hopefully one day …

Merit And Inequality: Confucian And Communitarian Perspectives On Singapore's Meritocracy, Sor-Hoon Tan

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

This paper compares criticisms of Singapore’s meritocracy, especially against its impact on income disparities and class divisions, with Michael Sandel’s critique of the meritocratic ethic in the United States. Despite significant differences in their history and politics, meritocracy has similar dysfunctions in both societies, allowing us to draw theoretical conclusions about meritocracy as an ideal of governance. It then contrasts Sandel’s communitarian critique of meritocracy with recent Confucian promotion of political meritocracy and meritocratic justice and argues that the Confucian principle of “promoting the virtuous and talented” is different from the contemporary conception of meritocracy. Textual evidence indicates that a …

Safety And Academic Outcomes Of College Campus-Based Advocacy Services, Rachel J. Voth Schrag, Elizabeth Baumler, Dixie Hairston, Cynthia Jones, Leila Wood

Philosophy Faculty Publications and Presentations

Intimate partner violence (IPV), sexual assault, and stalking are consequential public health and safety issues with wide reaching impacts on emerging adults, including those on college campuses in the United States. In response to high rates of violence among college student populations, universities are developing campus-based advocacy (CBA) programs, which aim to support survivors of interpersonal violence through supportive connections, resource acquisition, and safety planning. However, little data exists related to their impact on key student-survivor outcomes. Thus, this study aims to understand (a) the approach CBA programs use to address safety and academic concerns of student-survivors, and (b) the …

Ciis Dissertation Abstracts, 2022-2023, California Institute Of Integral Studies

CIIS Dissertation Abstracts

This compilation of dissertation abstracts reflects the exciting research completed by the 2022-2023 graduates from PhD programs in the School of Consciousness and Transformation and the Clinical Psychology Doctorate (PsyD) in the School of Professional Psychology and Health at the California Institute of Integral Studies (CIIS).

The original and impactful doctoral research presented here spans diverse areas of scholarship from anthropology and social change to human sexuality, philosophy and religion, and whole person approaches to psychology, demonstrating the breadth and depth of transformative and integral inquiry happening at CIIS. The transdisciplinary nature of these dissertations reflects the richness and complexity …

Of Method: A Propaedeutic To Coleridge's Prose Works, Michael A. Granger

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Coleridge’s prose works, published and unpublished, demonstrate a thorough and critical testing and understanding of British and German philosophical responses to skepticism and the ability of philosophy to progress by maintaining a double-minded and conflicted suture of both the practical or imaginative eclipse of knowledge and theorizing the hypothetical epistemological absolute that explains the relativity of facticity. Any inadequate method of inquiry stagnates within attempting a purely figurative or purely demonstrative solution to skepticism. Thus, the appropriate way to approach Coleridge’s understanding of philosophy is the struggle to make inquiry adequate though progression. Coleridge’s methodological impulse originates explicitly in a …

Equality, Solidarity, And Exploitation: An Essay On The Philosophical Foundations Of Socialism, Callum Zavos Macrae

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

In popular consciousness and culture, equality is often considered to be the preeminent socialist value. Equality, on this view, sits at the heart of the socialist ideal, and those who ascribe great value to equality will, other things being equal, find themselves more predisposed towards socialism than those who do not. However, in recent years egalitarian accounts of the socialist ideal have increasingly come under criticism from defenders of an alternative, freedom-based approach to understanding the values that underpin socialist commitment. This dissertation proposes to defend the egalitarian account of the socialist ideal. By reconceptualizing equality, we can reconstruct a …

The True And Only Technic: Technological Ubiquity And Its Critics, Heretics, And Zealots, Hampton A. Dodd

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Against technological ubiquity, the philosopher, the ecologist, the theologian, the psychologist, the radical, the reactionary, and the poet have each responded. This analysis seeks to explicate the nature of such responses, as well as to explore their contemporary form and elucidate what those presently publishing might offer as programs toward the future. In order to do this, what follows is broken up into a series of sections, each focused on what I have perceived to be the foremost themes present throughout technological critique: becoming, freedom, identity, faith, space, time, and progress. Prior to such thematic excavations, this analysis offers a …

Law's Legitimacy: Lon Fuller In A Consequentialist Frame, Daniel L. Feldman

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This thesis argues that Lon Fuller’s approach to jurisprudence offers more important support to the rule of law than has been generally recognized. It argues further that a consequentialist lens allows clearer views of Fuller’s strengths in this regard, despite Fuller’s own resistance to consequentialism and despite consequentialism’s blindness to some of Fuller’s depth and texture. This thesis supplies a formula, although one intended only as a guide to thinking, not for actual computation, to drive judicial decision-making. The inputs into this formula are six values widely shared in the United States, modified by case-by-case salience. Kantian deontology strongly influences …

The Divided Self: Internal Conflict In Literature, Philosophy, Psychology, And Neuroscience, Yulia Greyman

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This thematic project examines the notion of self-division, particularly in terms of the conflict between cognition and metacognition, across the fields of philosophy, psychology, and, most recently, the cognitive and neurosciences. The project offers a historic overview of models of self-division, as well as analyses of the various problems presented in theoretical models to date. This work explores how self-division has been depicted in the literary works of Edgar Allan Poe, Don DeLillo, and Mary Shelley. It examines the ways in which artistic renderings alternately assimilate, resist, and/or critique dominant philosophical, psychological, and scientific discourses about the self and its …

The Roaring Lion Of Berlin: The Life, Thought, And Influence Of Eugen Dühring, Arden Roy

Undergraduate Research Symposium

The life and influence of 19th-century German polymath Eugen Dühring remain but a mere footnote in the history of ideas, being primarily relegated to the status of little more than a theoretical rival to Marxism in the German socialist movement and the occasional object of Freidrich Nietzsche's rhetorical flogging. Despite the current consensus on the subject, Eugen Dühring was a scholar of vast, remarkable learnedness, contributing greatly to philosophy, economics, and the natural sciences. The aim of this talk will be to clear the fog surrounding the life and work of the controversial blind scholar and give an account of …

Eternal You, John C. Lyden

Journal of Religion & Film

This is a film review of Eternal You (2023), directed by Hans Block and Moritz Riesewieck.

Role Of Fat Talk On The Relationships In The Bruneian Chinese Society, Shee Ping Khoo, Brice Tseen Fu Lee

International Review of Humanities Studies

This research paper examines the role of “fat talk” in relationships in Bruneian Chinese society. “Fat talk” refers to negative comments about one's weight or body shape towards oneself or others. Using qualitative research methods, the study explores the perceptions and experiences of Bruneian Chinese individuals regarding “fat talk”, factors leading to the discussion of the topic, and its impact on their relationships with their peers. The findings suggest that while “fat talk” is prevalent in Bruneian Chinese society, it can have both positive and negative effects on relationships. The study aims to highlight the importance of addressing the “fat …

Prosumer Behavior Of The Army Fandom Of Bts In Indonesia As A Form Of New Consumerist Society, Larassatti Dharma Nanda, Joesana Tjahjani

International Review of Humanities Studies

One of the most influential K-pop groups in the world is Bangtan Sonyeondan, abbreviated as BTS. BTS' success can also be determined by their extensive community of fans who create a fandom culture worldwide, including in Indonesia. This paper investigates the BTS fandom consumerism behavior, which is called ARMY, and its relation to Indonesia's participatory fan culture. This research focuses on how BTS's managing company creates a fandom image and how Indonesian fans react. This article is qualitative research using a literature review as the method. Analysis of this paper uses the consumerist society theory by Jean Baudrillard (1986) to …

Comparison Of The Religious Meaning Of Water Festivals In Thailand And Laos, Tang Lin, Darmoko Darmoko

International Review of Humanities Studies

Both Thailand and Laos are predominantly Buddhist countries, following Theravada Buddhism. Influenced by Indian Buddhism, both countries celebrate several similar festivals, such as Songkran, Makha Bucha, Visakha Bucha, and Vixakha Souvana. Among all these celebrations, Songkran is considered the most lively, and this is the focus of this article. The article compares and analyzes the culture of Songkran in Laos and Thailand, including the festival's themes, cultural significance, and activities, to highlight the similarities and differences between the two. The cultural significance found in the Water Festival primarily stems from Indian cultural influences, while the differences in meaning are attributed …