Philosophy Commons^™

Powers And The Metaphysics Of Fundamentality, Benjamin Cook

Dissertations - ALL

In this dissertation, I address the question of whether ground, the relation that obtains between entities e1...en and a further entity e when e ontologically depends on, and is metaphysically explained by, e1...en, should be understood causally and, if so, whether this has any substantive implications. I answer both in the affirmative. I argue that ground and causation are similar enough to motivate characterizing ground as a special kind of causation, and that this can be done if we adopt a powers-theoretic account of causation. Moreover, I argue that the resultant view of ground, what I call “powerful, existential causation,” …

Metaphysical Coherentism, Jan Swiderski

Dissertations - ALL

I defend metaphysical coherentism, according to which reality is an interdependent network, system, or web, held together by a relation philosophers call "metaphysical explanation" or "grounding". If coherentism is true, nothing is ungrounded, things ground each other, and understanding what it is to be any given thing – a tree, a house, or a person – is grasping how it fits in: how it grounds and is grounded by its environment.

Coherentism is inconsistent with a widely-accepted, orthodox view of grounding, according to which certain fundamental facts about reality asymmetrically determine everything else. In Chapter 1, I argue that this …

American Transcendentalism Contra Contemporary Political Philosophy: Applications Of Thomas Carlyle And Ralph Waldo Emerson To Liberal Democratic Capitalism, Platonism, Islamism, Technology, And The "End Of History", Brian Wolfel

Dissertations - ALL

I construct Thomas Carlyle's political philosophy in the contexts of twentieth-century and contemporary political philosophy by dialoging and contrasting Carlyle with the work of John Rawls, Alasdair MacIntyre, Jacques Ellul, and Sayyid Qutb, among others. I also focus my attention on Carlyle as a philosopher who is an intermediary between ancient Platonism and nineteenth-century American Transcendentalism. Carlyle's Sartor Resartus is a Platonic text that provided a foundational inspiration for Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, and American Transcendentalism writ-large. Despite Carlyle being a chief source of inspiration for American Transcendentalism, his political theory did not inspire the development of a …

The Problem Of The "Virtual": Virtual Reality, Digital Dualism, And Religious Experience, Jordan Brady Loewen

Dissertations - ALL

This dissertation uses resources from religious studies to critique the problem of digital dualism haunting notions of the "virtual" in the discourse of contemporary virtual reality technologies (VR). Digital dualism is the idea that digital or "virtual" worlds are fundamentally distinct from the "real" or physical world. Digital dualism is a problem because it mischaracterizes how we experience the spatial and temporal connections to our body in digital-virtual worlds and contributes to a false sense of subjective singularity rather than multiplicity that destabilizes how we relate to ourselves and others. Using the study of religion, philosophy, and aesthetics, we can …

Exploring The Metaphysics Of Grief, Carolyn Garland

Dissertations - ALL

The goal of this dissertation is to develop an understanding of grief utterances: expressions of grief that in losing a loved one, the bereaved lost a part of herself. Grief utterances are commonplace, and their accompanying phenomenology suggests they are true. That gives us reason to think they are true. But if they are, what makes them true? I establish two potential answers to this question, ultimately favoring one according to which when a loved one dies we lose parts of our practical identities.

Chapter One introduces and sets up this topic it. It then focuses on the extent to …

Exploring The Metaphysics Of Grief, Carolyn Garland

Dissertations - ALL

The goal of this dissertation is to develop an understanding of grief utterances: expressions of grief that in losing a loved one, the bereaved lost a part of herself. Grief utterances are commonplace, and their accompanying phenomenology suggests they are true. That gives us reason to think they are true. But if they are, what makes them true? I establish two potential answers to this question, ultimately favoring one according to which when a loved one dies we lose parts of our practical identities.

Chapter One introduces and sets up this topic it. It then focuses on the extent to …

Questions And Inquiry: Some Epistemological Applications, Jason Rourke

Dissertations - ALL

Abstract: A recent and innovative research program in epistemology aims to connect the related phenomena of questions and inquiry with epistemological concerns. This dissertation project contributes to that program, taking as its inspiration the contrastive theory of knowledge developed by Jonathan Schaffer in a series of recent papers. The dissertation is comprised of three main parts. I begin by articulating a positive account of the evaluation of knowledge attributions, an account that aims to respect the basic insights of Schaffer's contrastivism while situating them in a modal framework that makes manifest the utility of questions for epistemological theorizing. Then I …

Feeling In Character: Towards An Ethics Of Emotion, John Monteleone

Dissertations - ALL

This dissertation contends that emotions are subject to ethical assessment, not simply as motives or overt expressions, but in their own right. Emotions, I argue, are subject to assessment because they are aspects of a person's character. Specifically, emotions involve voluntary acts of attention, which are due to habituation. These acts show character by manifesting certain stable, deeply-held desires called 'concerns.' This view, dubbed 'Attentional Voluntarism,' is opposed to the prevalent view, dubbed 'Rationalism,' that emotions are subject to assessment because of their propositional content. Rationalism is unable to account for certain kinds of irrational emotion, where one forms an …

Centralizing Ambiguity: Simone De Beauvoir And A Twenty-First Century Ethics, Kristen Oganowski

Dissertations - ALL

In this dissertation, I examine the relevance of Simone de Beauvoir's Ethics of Ambiguity to contemporary feminist thought on the self, autonomy, and ethics. More specifically, I argue that this text has the potential to make unique contributions to these areas of contemporary feminist philosophy.

Putting The Ghost Back In The Machine: A Defense Of Common Sense Dualism, Matthew Andrew Skene

Dissertations - ALL

Gilbert Ryle once ridiculed substance dualism, describing it as the view that we are a "ghost in the machine." Since that time, substance dualism has found few defenders, and a presumption toward naturalism has dominated philosophical inquiry. Here, I offer an unapologetic defense this unfashionable view of the self. To do so, I first explain why philosophy should endorse a shift in method away from naturalism and toward common sense philosophy. I then show how, from within that approach, substance dualism is far better supported than its competitors. My defense of the common sense method rests heavily on an account …