Philosophy Commons^™

An Outsider's Perspective: Walter Benjamin's Vision Of Philosophy, Bethany Alden Zulick

Senior Projects Spring 2016

Senior Project submitted to The Division of Social Studies of Bard College.

Intention In The World Of The Apparatus, João Otávio Rosa

Senior Projects Spring 2016

My aim is to describe how the technical image, which is at the very core of our culture today, is in fact a technologically aided method of thinking (or imagining) which has outstripped our powers to control it and as a result come to absolutely dominate our lives. Further, through this domination, the technical image has created a type of visual culture that has ensnared us silently. Not only are we, in essence, “non-existing” if we refuse to participate in this global image network but the network and computational visual culture has evolved and become complex to the point we …

Beginning In Heidegger, Nietzsche, And Mallarmé, Austen H. Hinkley

Senior Projects Spring 2016

This project is focused on the theme of beginning. The first chapter is a reading of Martin Heidegger’s Being and Time as an attempt at beginning a new ontology that understands itself as a construct that must be, to quote Heidegger, “critical against itself.” The second chapter is a reading of three of Nietzsche's metaphors as a way of both examining and enacting a beginning. The third chapter is concerned with Mallarmé’s revolution of poetic form in Un coup de Dés, which enacts a new beginning on which the poem reflects through its images and form. Through an understanding of …

Inferno: Lust, Gluttony, Greed, Salome Gwendolyn Dewell-Amiranashvili

Senior Projects Spring 2016

A reflection on the process of a collaborative senior project in theater and performance and an exploration of self-validation and pain.

Political Modernization In Atatürk’S Turkey And The Shah’S Iran And The Struggle For Meaning, Ethan Jacob Hornk Evans

Senior Projects Spring 2016

Humans desire meaning in life, and achieve it by satiating their thymos. This is the part of the mind which desires pride, whereas the rational part of the soul desires reasoned thoughts, while the survival part of the soul desires food, water, and necessities. Furthermore, humans desire to show their lives have meaning in front of others, or seek recognition. They do this by risking their lives or livelihoods for the sake of satisfying their thymos.

The shah of Iran and Mustafa Kemal Ataturk tried to modernize their countries during the 19th Century. The shah was deposed in …

Stanza My Stone: On The Death Of God And The Nature Of Poetry, Ariella Joann Kust

Senior Projects Spring 2016

Senior Project submitted to The Division of Languages and Literature of Bard College.

You Are Who You Choose To Be: Neuroscience And Freedom, Silas Edward Busch

Senior Projects Spring 2016

Senior Project submitted to The Division of Social Studies of Bard College

You have just decided to sit down and read this abstract; perhaps, at the end of it, you’ll decide to continue and read this whole thesis. Your ability to freely make that choice is simple enough, right? Or is the feeling of free willed choice an illusion? Metaphysicians, moral philosophers, psychologists, and neuroscientists are among the many who have weighed in on this question, offering a complicated variety of answers. Little work has been done to synthesize these approaches. My thesis is an attempt at a synthesis, showing …

Yearning For The Unhistorical: Nietzsche On Triumph And Coronation, Travis Brock Kennedy

Senior Projects Spring 2016

Senior Project submitted to The Division of Social Studies of Bard College.

Heidegger's Attentiveness To Language: A Question Of Translation And "Original Contents", Alexander M. Moore

Senior Projects Spring 2016

Senior Project submitted to The Division of Social Studies of Bard College.

Branching Boogaloo: Botanical Adventures In Multi-Mediated Morphologies, Diana Marie Ruggiero

Senior Projects Spring 2016

FormaLeaf is a software interface for exploring leaf morphology using parallel string rewriting grammars called L-systems. Scanned images of dicotyledonous angiosperm leaves removed from plants around Bard’s campus are displayed on the left and analyzed using the computer vision library OpenCV. Morphometrical information and terminological labels are reported in a side-panel. “Slider mode” allows the user to control the structural template and growth parameters of the generated L-system leaf displayed on the right. “Vision mode” shows the input and generated leaves as the computer ‘sees’ them. “Search mode” attempts to automatically produce a formally defined graphical representation of the input …

08j3c71v17y, Margot Kalach Hanono

Senior Projects Spring 2016

Human consciousness seems uniquely constituted. We add, subtract, divide, link, memorize, imitate, transform, reform, measure, categorize, analyze, predict, deconstruct, and rebuild the world around us as a way of understanding. These structures are ingrained in our everyday life. What does it mean that we know through these illuminating boundaries? And how does knowledge build up on itself on the basis of their entwined systems?

The making of this work consists of a questioning of our constant desire to make sense of things, and the criteria that we build in order to satisfy this desire; in other words, the thought-spheres that …

No One Man Should Have All That Power: Rhetoric And Its Reception In Thus Spoke Zarathustra, Philip Adam Torphy

Senior Projects Spring 2016

Senior Project submitted to The Division of Social Studies of Bard College.