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2020

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Articles 1 - 30 of 272

Full-Text Articles in Philosophy

Data: The Good, The Bad And The Ethical, John D. Kelleher, Filipe Cabral Pinto, Luis M. Cortesao Dec 2020

Data: The Good, The Bad And The Ethical, John D. Kelleher, Filipe Cabral Pinto, Luis M. Cortesao

Articles

It is often the case with new technologies that it is very hard to predict their long-term impacts and as a result, although new technology may be beneficial in the short term, it can still cause problems in the longer term. This is what happened with oil by-products in different areas: the use of plastic as a disposable material did not take into account the hundreds of years necessary for its decomposition and its related long-term environmental damage. Data is said to be the new oil. The message to be conveyed is associated with its intrinsic value. But as in …

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The Long-Haul: Buddhist Educational Strategies To Strengthen Students’ Resilience For Lifelong Personal Transformation And Positive Community Change, Namdrol Miranda Adams, Kevin Kecskes Dec 2020

The Long-Haul: Buddhist Educational Strategies To Strengthen Students’ Resilience For Lifelong Personal Transformation And Positive Community Change, Namdrol Miranda Adams, Kevin Kecskes

Public Administration Faculty Publications and Presentations

For decades, community engagement scholars have built a robust body of knowledge that explores multiple facets of the higher education community engagement domain. More recently, scholars and practitioners from mainly Christian affiliated faith-based institutions have begun to investigate the complex inner world of community-engaged students’ meaning-making and spiritual development. While most of this fascinating cross-domain effort has been primarily based on “Western” influenced Judeo-Christian traditions, this study explores service-learning/community engagement themes, approaches, rationale, and strategies from an “Eastern” perspective based on the rich tradition of Tibetan Buddhism. This case study research focuses on curricular approaches, influences, and impacts of Buddhist …

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The Evil God Challenge: Two Significant Asymmetries, Carlo Alvaro Dec 2020

The Evil God Challenge: Two Significant Asymmetries, Carlo Alvaro

Publications and Research

Several authors have maintained that every argument in support of God, indeed everything that a theist claims about God, can be reversed and used in support of an evil god. The most salient example is the alleged symmetry between theodicies and reverse theodicies: God gave us free will to promote good, evil god gave us free will to promote evil; God allows evil for soul making, evil god allows good for soul destruction; our suffering is compensated for by the eternal bliss in the afterlife, our happiness is compensated for by the eternal damnation in the afterlife. Considering such symmetries, …

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Cosmogenesis, Complexity, And Neo-Natural Faith In The Context Of Astrobiology, Kelly C. Smith Dec 2020

Cosmogenesis, Complexity, And Neo-Natural Faith In The Context Of Astrobiology, Kelly C. Smith

Publications

It is fair to say that religion, and in particular the ways in which some Christian and Islamic thinkers have again begun to encroach on the domain of science (e.g., global warming, the teaching of evolution), has caused a great deal of consternation within the scientific and philosophical communities. An understandable reaction to these developments is to reject out of hand even the slightest taint of religion in these fields—a position that has now attained the status of orthodoxy, at least in the western world. This is curious on its face, given the fact that religion has clearly provided a …

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Shibboleth: Judges, Derrida, Celan [Toc], Marc Redfield Dec 2020

Shibboleth: Judges, Derrida, Celan [Toc], Marc Redfield

Philosophy & Theory

In the Book of Judges, the Gileadites use the word shibboleth to target and kill members of a closely related tribe, the Ephraimites, who cannot pronunce the initial shin phoneme. In modern European languages, shibboleth has come to mean a hard-to-falsify sign that winnows identities, and establishes and confirms borders; it has also acquired the ancillary meanings of slogan or cliché. The semantic field of shibboleth thus seems keyed to the waning of the logos in an era of technical reproducibility—to the proliferation of technologies and practices of encryption, decryption, exclusion and inclusion that saturate modern life. In the context …

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Infrapolitical Passages: Global Turmoil, Narco-Accumulation, And The Post-Sovereign State [Toc], Gareth Williams Dec 2020

Infrapolitical Passages: Global Turmoil, Narco-Accumulation, And The Post-Sovereign State [Toc], Gareth Williams

Literature

This book proposes to clear a way through some of the dominant political determinations and violent symptoms of contemporary globalization. It does this in in order to make a case for “infrapolitics” as an enactment of intellectual responsibility in the face of a tumultuous world of war and of technological value extraction on a planetary scale. In Infrapolitical Passages the politics of contemporary global capital is a race to the bottom of reason itself, extended in the wake of the subordination of all forms of living to the economized relation between means and ends. It is this relation which, thanks …

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Space, Andrew Kania Dec 2020

Space, Andrew Kania

Philosophy Faculty Research

This chapter investigates a variety of ways in which music might be thought to be essentially spatial in relatively literal ways. It begins by considering whether certain spaces or spatial features are essential to musical works or performances. These include the space of a work’s composition, performance spaces for which a work is composed or within which it is performed, and the spatial disposition of performers (e.g., off-stage instruments). It then considers spaces “within” music, paying special attention to the notion of “pitch space”—the space in which we experience musical tones as higher or lower than one another and melodic …

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Roland Breeur, Lies – Imposture – Stupidity. Vilinius: Jonas Ir Jokūbas 2019, Andrew D. Spear Dec 2020

Roland Breeur, Lies – Imposture – Stupidity. Vilinius: Jonas Ir Jokūbas 2019, Andrew D. Spear

Articles, Book Chapters, Essays

As the title suggests, Breeur’s project is to discuss three key ideas: lies, stupidity, and imposture. The book is organized into two parts (I. Lies and Stupidity; II. Imposture) of two chapters each, followed by an appendix. The individual chapters and sub-sections are well-written and philosophically sophisticated. However, the reader will be disappointed if they expect a sustained analysis of the relations among the book’s titular ideas or a unified account of their role in the breakdown of respect for truth more broadly. Breeur’s approach is more episodic, laying out valuable considerations and enticing formulations, but often breaking off before …

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Resisting Hyper-Partisan Silencing: Arendt On Political Persuasion Through Exemplification And Truth-Telling As Action, Andrew D. Spear Dec 2020

Resisting Hyper-Partisan Silencing: Arendt On Political Persuasion Through Exemplification And Truth-Telling As Action, Andrew D. Spear

Articles, Book Chapters, Essays

A central frustration of recent political discourse is the consistent reduction of politically relevant factual and critical speech to mere expression of partisan commitment. Partisans of “the other side”—members of the other tribe—are viewed as de facto wrong, because partisans, even when their speech invokes mere facts or purportedly shared political principles. Ideally, democratic political discourse operates along at least two central dimensions: a dimension of shared factual, historical, and political assumptions, and a more contested dimension of interpretation, prioritization, and evaluation that results in diverse and often competing understandings of what is good, and so of what is best …

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Divine Command Theory And Psychopathy, Erik J. Wielenberg Dec 2020

Divine Command Theory And Psychopathy, Erik J. Wielenberg

Philosophy Faculty publications

I advance a novel challenge for Divine Command Theory based on the existence of psychopaths. The challenge, in a nutshell, is that Divine Command Theory has the implausible implication that psychopaths have no moral obligations and hence their evil acts, no matter how evil, are morally permissible. After explaining this argument, I respond to three objections to it and then critically examine the prospect that Divine Command Theorists might bite the bullet and accept that psychopaths can do no wrong. I conclude that the Psychopathy Objection constitutes a serious and novel challenge for Divine Command Theory.

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Structure, Neutrostructure, And Antistructure In Science, Florentin Smarandache Dec 2020

Structure, Neutrostructure, And Antistructure In Science, Florentin Smarandache

Branch Mathematics and Statistics Faculty and Staff Publications

In any science, a classical Theorem, defined on a given space, is a statement that is 100% true (i.e. true for all elements of the space). To prove that a classical theorem is false, it is sufficient to get a single counter-example where the statement is false. Therefore, the classical sciences do not leave room for partial truth of a theorem (or a statement). But, in our world and in our everyday life, we have many more examples of statements that are only partially true, than statements that are totally true. The NeutroTheorem and AntiTheorem are generalizations and alternatives of …

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Country Report: The Teaching Of Philosophy In Singapore Schools, Steven Burik, Matthew Hammerton, Sovan Patra Dec 2020

Country Report: The Teaching Of Philosophy In Singapore Schools, Steven Burik, Matthew Hammerton, Sovan Patra

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

Singapore’s education system is widely regarded as one of the best in the world. In this report, we will focus on education at the primary, secondary, and junior college levels, and will not discuss the education offered in polytechnics (vocational colleges) and universities. We will also focus exclusively on Singapore’s public school system, which Singapore citizens are required to attend unless they are granted a special exemption. In addition to public schools, there are also international schools, which cater to the relatively large expatriate population in Singapore and typically offer a curriculum leading to the IB diploma. All public schools …

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Deontic Constraints Are Maximizing Rules, Matthew Hammerton Dec 2020

Deontic Constraints Are Maximizing Rules, Matthew Hammerton

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

Deontic constraints prohibit an agent performing acts of a certain type even when doing so will prevent more instances of that act being performed by others. In this article I show how deontic constraints can be interpreted as either maximizing or non-maximizing rules. I then argue that they should be interpreted as maximizing rules because interpreting them as non-maximizing rules results in a problem with moral advice. Given this conclusion, a strong case can be made that consequentialism provides the best account of deontic constraints.

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Agent-Relative Consequentialism And Collective Self-Defeat, Matthew Hammerton Dec 2020

Agent-Relative Consequentialism And Collective Self-Defeat, Matthew Hammerton

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

Andrew Forcehimes and Luke Semrau argue that agent-relative consequentialism is implausible because in some circumstances it classes an act as impermissible yet holds that the outcome of all agents performing that impermissible act is preferable. I argue that their problem is closely related to Derek Parfit's problem of ‘direct collective self-defeat’ and show how Parfit's plausible solution to his problem can be adapted to solve their problem.

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Relativized Rankings, Matthew Hammerton Dec 2020

Relativized Rankings, Matthew Hammerton

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

In traditional consequentialism the good is position-neutral. A single evaluative ranking of states of affairs is correct for everyone, everywhere regardless of their positions. Recently, position-relative forms of consequentialism have been developed. These allow for the correct rankings of states to depend on connections that hold between the state being evaluated and the position of the evaluator. For example, perhaps being an agent who acts in a certain state requires me to rank that state differently from someone else who lacks this connection. In this chapter several different kinds of position-relative rankings related to agents, times, physical locations, and possible …

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Concerning Mostly Nonacademic Aspects Of My July 2006 Visit To Salzburg, Austria For The 6th International Whitehead Conference At Salzburg University, Theodore Walker Nov 2020

Concerning Mostly Nonacademic Aspects Of My July 2006 Visit To Salzburg, Austria For The 6th International Whitehead Conference At Salzburg University, Theodore Walker

Perkins Faculty Research and Special Events

Here are travel notes concerning mostly nonacademic aspects of my July 2006 visit to Salzburg, Austria for the 6th International Whitehead Conference at Salzburg University. These travel notes supplement the book Whiteheadian Ethics: Abstracts and Papers from the Ethics Section of the Philosophy Group at the 6th International Whitehead Conference at the University of Salzburg, July 2006 (Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2008) edited by Theodore Walker Jr. and Mihály Toth.

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Owen Barfield Collection Finding Aid, Taylor University Nov 2020

Owen Barfield Collection Finding Aid, Taylor University

Finding Aids

The Owen Barfield Collection features a variety of books and articles by and about Barfield. It also includes letters and manuscripts written by Barfield, as well as rare and first editions of his books.
Last Updated: August 29, 2022

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Dorothy L. Sayers Collection Finding Aid, Taylor University Nov 2020

Dorothy L. Sayers Collection Finding Aid, Taylor University

Finding Aids

The Dorothy L. Sayers Collection features a variety of rare books, pamphlets, and articles written by and about Sayers. These include multiple first editions of her poetry books, crime novels, and reflection on theology.
Last Updated: August 29, 2022

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Charles Williams Collection Finding Aid, Taylor University Nov 2020

Charles Williams Collection Finding Aid, Taylor University

Finding Aids

The Charles Williams Collection features a variety of books and articles by and about Williams. It also includes letters and typescripts written by Williams, in addition to rare and first editions of his books.
Last Updated: August 29, 2022

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The Ehrenfests’ Use Of Toy Models To Explore Irreversibility In Statistical Mechanics, Joshua Luczak, Lena Zuchowski Nov 2020

The Ehrenfests’ Use Of Toy Models To Explore Irreversibility In Statistical Mechanics, Joshua Luczak, Lena Zuchowski

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

This article highlights and discusses the Ehrenfests’ use of toy models to explore irreversibility in statistical mechanics. In particular, we explore their urn and P–Q models and highlight that, while the former was primarily used to provide a simple counter-example to Zermelo’s objection to Boltzmann’s statistical mechanical underpinning of the Second Law of Thermodynamics, the latter was intended to highlight the role and importance of the Stoßzahlansatz as a cause of the tendency of systems to exhibit entropy increase. We also explain the sense in which these models are toy models and why agents can use them, as the Ehrenfests’ …

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How Inclusive And Accessible Is Your Statement On Inclusion And Accessibility?, Freya M. Mobus Oct 2020

How Inclusive And Accessible Is Your Statement On Inclusion And Accessibility?, Freya M. Mobus

Philosophy: Faculty Publications and Other Works

No abstract provided.

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Human Rights And Social, Economic, & Environmental Justice: Ethics Of Samfundssind & Agape, Claire L. Dente Oct 2020

Human Rights And Social, Economic, & Environmental Justice: Ethics Of Samfundssind & Agape, Claire L. Dente

Sustainability Research & Practice Seminar Presentations

No abstract provided.

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Contempt In The Public Sphere, Joan Woolfrey Oct 2020

Contempt In The Public Sphere, Joan Woolfrey

Sustainability Research & Practice Seminar Presentations

No abstract provided.

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How Do You Know Which Assumptions In Life To Question?, Philosophical Discussion Group Oct 2020

How Do You Know Which Assumptions In Life To Question?, Philosophical Discussion Group

The Philosopher's Stone

How Do You Know Which Assumptions In Life To Question?

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S3e5: How Can Philosophy Help Deliver The Best Medical Care?, Ron Lisnet, Jessica Miller Oct 2020

S3e5: How Can Philosophy Help Deliver The Best Medical Care?, Ron Lisnet, Jessica Miller

The Maine Question

Some may imagine that people who major in and pursue careers in philosophy are relegated to poring through old dusty books about Plato and Socrates. In reality, philosophy majors work in all kinds of fields, including the legal profession and entertainment. One place you might not expect to find a philosopher is in the hospital helping to make decisions about medical care, but that is what bioethicists do. Jessica Miller, a professor of philosophy at UMaine, also is a bioethicist. She uses her expertise to help medical professionals make decisions about care. We speak with Miller about bioethics and how …

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Business Ethics As A Form Of Practical Reasoning: What Philosophers Can Learn From Patagonia, Mark Ryan Oct 2020

Business Ethics As A Form Of Practical Reasoning: What Philosophers Can Learn From Patagonia, Mark Ryan

Religious Studies Faculty Publications

As with other fields of applied ethics, philosophers engaged in business ethics struggle to carry out substantive philosophical reflection in a way that mirrors the practical reasoning that goes on within business management itself. One manifestation of the philosopher’s struggle is the field’s division into approaches that emphasize moral philosophy and those grounded in the methods of social science. I claim here that the task, at least for those with philosophical training, is to avoid unintentionally widening the gap between philosophical theory and those engaged in business management by emphasizing the centrality of practical wisdom (phronesis) to the moral life. …

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From Aesthetics To Ethics: The Place Of Delight In Confucian Ethics, Andrew Lambert Oct 2020

From Aesthetics To Ethics: The Place Of Delight In Confucian Ethics, Andrew Lambert

Publications and Research

An exploration of the role of pleasure or delight (le 樂) in classical Confucian ethics. Building on Michael Nylan’s account of the role of pleasure in public spectacle and social order, I explore how the meaning of delight (le 樂) derives from the features and effects of music (yue 樂). Drawing on Dewey’ s aesthetics and accounts of music in Confucian texts, I explore a conception of Confucian ethics, in which delight— like states generated through everyday social interaction are foundational.

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Against Eating Humanely-Raised Meat: Revisiting Fred’S Basement, Jonathan Spelman Oct 2020

Against Eating Humanely-Raised Meat: Revisiting Fred’S Basement, Jonathan Spelman

Philosophy and Religion Faculty Scholarship

In “Puppies, Pigs, and People: Eating Meat and Marginal Cases,” Alastair Norcross uses a thought experiment he calls “Fred’s Basement” to argue that consuming factory-farmed meat is morally equivalent to torturing and killing puppies to enjoy the taste of chocolate. Thus, he concludes that consuming factory-farmed meat is morally wrong. Although Norcross leaves open the possibility that consuming humanely-raised meat is permissible, I contend that his basic argumentative approach rules it out. In this paper, then, I extend Norcross’ thought experiment in hopes of convincing readers that consuming humanely-raised meat is morally wrong.

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The Politics Of Dissent: How Living Within The Truth Threatens Autocracy And Catalyzes Democratic Progress, Carter A. Hanson Oct 2020

The Politics Of Dissent: How Living Within The Truth Threatens Autocracy And Catalyzes Democratic Progress, Carter A. Hanson

Student Publications

This article examines Václav Havel’s The Power of the Powerless in the context of a broader ideation of dissent, primarily using Hannah Arendt’s The Origins of Totalitarianism and William Connolly’s The Fragility of Things as supplements. Havel’s argument remains relevant over thirty years after its initial publication, and his ideas regarding dissent as a fundamental challenge to authoritarian untruth are valuable and deserve further exploration. From this conceptualization, a “politics of dissent” is proposed as a means to express dissatisfaction with authoritarian government and to reevaluate democratic social and political discourse.

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The Ecological Avant-Garde: Arkady Fiedler’S The River Of Singing Fish, Ida Day Oct 2020

The Ecological Avant-Garde: Arkady Fiedler’S The River Of Singing Fish, Ida Day

Modern Languages Faculty Research

Even among his extraordinary generation of Polish avant-garde literary and artistic figures, Arkady Fiedler (1894–1985) stands out as one of the most original and creative authors. His travel reportage from the experimental inter-war period of the 1920s and 1930 is an example of an avant-garde production—ahead of its time, eclectic, and exploring new ideas. As avantgarde is a very broad term referring to a variety of experimental literary and artistic techniques, I focus on Fiedler’s innovative and ethical approach to the natural world. This essay explores how the historical changes of the early twentieth century, affecting literature, theater, and art, …

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