Philosophy of Science 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 …

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 …

Recognition And Domination: A Hegelian Approach To Evolving Gender And Technology Paradigms, Zachary Davis

CMC Senior Theses

This paper aims to develop a strong account of recognition. It begins with a Hegel-inspired account of recognition as a fundamental desire that drives humanity. This account establishes recognition as fundamental to the initial subject formation of independent self-consciousnesses as agents. I offer the lord-bondsman dualism to provide a critique of domination as oppositional to securing the means for recognition. This entails that, as history progresses the world ought to move towards universally adopting mutual recognition relationships without domination. I adopt this goal as an ideal form of recognition. In Chapter 2, I apply this recognitional framework to gender. Through …

Calendar Reforms In Ukrainian Orthodoxy, Nataliia Ishchuk

Occasional Papers on Religion in Eastern Europe

The study provides a brief retrospective and the current state of the calendar issue in Ukrainian Orthodoxy. To achieve this, the attitude towards the calendar issue of those Orthodox Ukrainians who, in certain historical periods, lived in Ukrainian territories as part of European states and the Russian Empire, is examined. The ideological discourse of the calendar reform during the existence of the Soviet Union is outlined. Special attention is given to the calendar issue in Independent Ukraine. The reasons, main stages, features, and difficulties of the current transition of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church to the new Julian calendar are systematized. …

A Demonstration Of Enactivist Personality Assessment Using The Five-Factor Model, Garri Hovhannisyan

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation seeks to extend the intellectual and existential horizon of the enactive approach by bringing forth an enactivist understanding of human cognitive life as it is lived from the perspective of personality traits. The theoretical task of this dissertation is to review existing evidence in support of the Enactivist Big-5 Theory (EB5T) of personality and its potential for bridging the phenomenological gap between minimal and human cognition. As a phenomenologically grounded theory of personality, EB5T conceptualizes individual differences not merely as differences in trait measures within a person but as differences in styles of how individuals bring forth, experience, …

The Basic Dualism In The World, Martin Zwick

Systems Science Faculty Publications and Presentations

Graham Harman writes that the “basic dualism in the world lies…between things in their intimate reality and things as confronted by other things.” This paper supports Harman’s assertion from a systems theoretic perspective and illustrates it with some examples, including conceptions about truth, ethics, value, and intelligence. But dualism implies irreconcilable difference; what Harman points to is better expressed as a dyad, where the two components not only imply one another but are related, and where this spatial dyad is usefully augmented with a temporal dimension, expressed in a third component or an additional orthogonal dyad.

Japanese-English Translation: Miki Kiyoshi —Thinking With Master Nishida (First Published In Fujin Kōron, August 1941) Complete Draft; Translated, Edited, And Revised By Christopher Southward, October 2022-September 2023 「西田先生のことども」、三木清著（初発 婦人公論、昭和十六年八月）, Christopher Southward

Comparative Literature Faculty Scholarship

Japanese-English Translation: Miki Kiyoshi —Thinking with Master Nishida (First Published in Fujin Kōron, August 1941) Complete Draft; Translated, Edited, and Revised by Christopher Southward, October 2022-September 2023「西田先生のことども」、三木清著（初発 婦人公論、昭和十六年八月）

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The Forgetting Of Fire: An Archaeology Of Technics, Thomas A. Doerksen

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

This dissertation applies the methods of Bachelard and Foucault to key moments in the development of science. By analyzing the attitudes of four figures from four different centuries, it shows how epistemic attitudes have shifted from a participation in non-human, natural realities to a construction of human-centred technologies. The idea of an epistemic attitude is situated in reference to Foucault’s concept of the episteme and his method of archaeology; an attitude is the institutionally-situated and personally-enacted comportment of an epistemic agent toward an object of knowledge. This line of thought is pursued under the theme of elemental fire, which begins …

A Critical Phenomenological Inquiry Into Disabled Embodiment And Identity, Heather Twele

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

This thesis uses critical phenomenology to investigate disabled embodiment and identity. I argue that (in)accessible subjective accounts of disability experience reveal disability to be a unique form of ever-changing embodiment: disability is the lived experience of a critical phenomenology. I turn to eclectic art, film, and poetry case studies involving a medical, surgical gaze to explore how ableist, sexist, and racist systems structure daily experience, forcing disabled people who “misfit” to analyze and confront systems of oppression, exclusion, and stigmatization. Disability experience challenges and resists ableist binaries of ability/disability, well/unwell, subject/object, mind/body, and inside/outside. The interdependence of these fluid, intertwining …

Bioethics And Vaccines: Scientific Facts, Values, And Conflict, Amanda Roth

Myth and Science, 2023-24

This lesson plan and slide deck focuses on Bioethics and Vaccinations in relation to the theme of Myths and Science. Topics include: moral questions around vaccine mandates, intergenerational justice and the varicella vaccine, and justice in vaccine distribution.

Proposing A Measure Of Ethicality For Humans And Ai, Alejandro Jorge Napolitano Jawerbaum

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Smarter people or intelligent machines are able to make more accurate inferences about their environment and other agents more efficiently than less intelligent agents. Formally: ‘Intelligence measures an agent’s ability to achieve goals in a wide range of environments.’ (Legg, 2008)

In this dissertation we extend this definition to include ethical behaviour and we will offer a mathematical formalism and a way to estimate how ethical an action is or will be, both for a human and for a computer, by calculating the expected values of random variables. Formally, we propose the following measure of ethicality, which is computable, or …

The Multiverse Argument For The Existence Of God, Michael Dover

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The Fine-Tuning Argument for the Existence of God is one of the most powerful arguments in favor of God’s existence. Perhaps the most common objection to this argument involves the Multiverse Theory, which posits an infinite or very large multiverse, adequately explaining the fine-tuning of the universe without positing an intelligent designer. Thus, the Multiverse Theory is often posited as a way of maintaining Atheism. In this paper, I argue that the Atheistic Multiverse View is untenable: if the multiverse exists, God or gods are highly likely to exist as well. Additionally, this paper explores topics like: the conceivability of …

Bruno Latour's Constructivism And Its Implications For The New Agency Of Sociology, Robertus Robet, U. Abdul Rozak R

Masyarakat, Jurnal Sosiologi

Abstract

Latour removes the boundaries between natural sciences and humanities. Science for Latour is cultural practise, at the same time in every cultural practice, nature and objects are also actively involved. In that sense, Latour's constructivism encourages the emergence of non-human actors as drivers of the societal changes. By that, he provoked sociology to expand its subject matter. The Social in sociology must be seen as an association involving human and non-human actors.

Key words: Constructivism, Expansion of agency, actant, actor network theory.

Causal Variable Choice, Interventions, And Pragmatism, Zili Dong

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

The past century has witnessed numerous methodological innovations in probabilistic and statistical methods of causal inference (e.g., the graphical modelling and the potential outcomes frameworks, as introduced in Chapter 1). These innovations have not only enhanced the methodologies by which scientists across diverse domains make causal inference, but they have also made a profound impact on the way philosophers think about causation. The philosophical issues discussed in this thesis are stimulated and inspired by these methodological innovations.

Chapter 2 addresses the question of how the holding of screening-off conditions for a causal model depends on the choice of variables. As …

The Fall And Natural Suffering, Andrew Banacos

Obsculta

Evolutionary theory poses several questions for Christian notions of origins: 1) common ancestry of all creatures rather than monogenesis; 2) the violent history of evolution as a challenge to the notion of a fall from paradise into sin, death, and suffering; and 3) the relationship between suffering and evil in light of evolutionary process. This paper seeks to address the concept of the fall in the context of dialogue between evolution and the Christian faith.

Meta-Method Analysis On Therapists’ Experiences: An Inquiry Into Qualitative Psychotherapy Research Methodology, Javier L. Rizo

Graduate Masters Theses

I conducted a meta-method study to explore the methodological and reporting characteristics of qualitative studies on therapists’ experiences conducting psychotherapy. Articles were identified through a PsycINFO search, and through a review of article text their methodological and reporting features were coded and quantitatively analyzed. Consideration was given to standards of qualitative research in psychology, especially methodological integrity. Results showed increases in the number of these qualitative studies from the 2000s onwards. This rise seems to be above that in psychology, but comparable to other psychotherapy literature. Publication characteristics of this body of literature, namely journal discipline and impact score, showed …

The Well-Tempered Android: Philosophical Posthumanism In Science Fiction Cinema., Cody Gault

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation examines philosophical posthumanism as a means for critical analysis of the interaction between humans and nonhuman androids in select science fiction cinematic universes. The interaction is analyzed through several facets, notably the interactions between humans and nonhuman androids, particularly as interactions between the human and nonhuman are often sites of violence. Chapter one is an introduction. Chapter two describes the development of philosophical posthumanism from humanism, also including an analysis of philosophical posthumanism, and how it can be used as a critical lens. Chapter three begins an analysis of science fiction cinema by examining the Blade Runner films …

Remembering The Future: Wild Time And The Cosmic Imagination, Arabella Thaïs

Journal of Conscious Evolution

Entropy – the Second Law of Thermodynamics – is generally held to prove “time’s arrow”: that time is linear and unidirectional, and that the universe is following this trajectory. This paper presents a preliminary exposition into a new, integral ontology of time in which time is hyper-dimensional, non-linear and flows in both directions. This is supported through trans-disciplinary praxis at the intersection of aesthetics, cosmology, quantum mechanics, and chaos theory. The metaphysical implications of reverse causality are investigated, and confer a teleological universe that is coherent with the paradigm of an intelligent, self-realising cosmos in which beauty is a fundamental …

The Temporal Asymmetry Of Influence Is Not Statistical, Emily Adlam

Mathematics, Physics, and Computer Science Faculty Articles and Research

We argue that the temporal asymmetry of influence is not merely the result of thermodynamics: it is a consequence of the fact that modal structure of the universe must admit only processes which cannot give rise to contradictions. We appeal to the process matrix formalism developed in the field of quantum foundations to characterise processes which are compatible with local free will whilst ruling out contradictions, and argue that this gives rise to ‘consistent chaining’ requirements that explain the temporal asymmetry of influence. We compare this view to the perspectival account of causation advocated by Price and Ramsey.

‘A Vitious Way Of Observing’: A New History Of The Personal Equation, Matthew D. Lund

College of Humanities and Social Sciences Faculty Scholarship

David Kinnebrook is only known today as the assistant to the Astronomer Royal dismissed for marking stellar transits too slowly. Kinnebrook’s firing is commonly listed as the impetus for the personal equation as well as empirical psychology. Historians drawing their accounts from Nevil Maskelyne’s remarks on the dismissal, view Kinnebrook as a slightly misused, though mute, party in the affair. Kinnebrook’s letters, which resurfaced in 1985, present his side of the story. While scholars have discussed some aspects of the letters, they have not addressed Kinnebrook’s account of a months-long dispute with Maskelyne concerning observational disagreements. Kinnebrook’s letters provide an …

Is Biological Death Final? Recomputing The Drake-S Equation For Postmortem Survival Of Consciousness, Adam J. Rock, James Houran, Patrizio E. Tressoldi, Brian Laythe

International Journal of Transpersonal Studies Advance Publication Archive

This participatory team science project extended Laythe and Houran’s (2022) prior application of a famous probabilistic argument known as the ‘Drake equation’ to the question of postmortem survival. Specifically, we evaluated effect sizes from peer-reviewed, empirical studies to determine the maximum average percentage effect that ostensibly supports (i.e., "anomalous effects") or refutes (i.e., "known confounds") the survival hypothesis. But unlike the earlier application, this research included a study-specific estimate of the hypothesized variable of ‘living agent psi’ via a new meta-analysis of empirical studies (N = 17) with exceptional subjects vs participants from the general population. Our updated analysis found …

The Primacy Of Openness In Ecological Complexity Theory, Colby Clark

Theses and Dissertations--Philosophy

Five principles are at the foundation of complex systems theory: emergence, openness, contingency, historicity, and indeterminacy. Of those five, the principle of emergence is easily the most prevalent. Simply put, emergence refers to the idea that some wholes cannot be properly accounted for by appealing to individual explanations of the parts that compose it. In ecological complexity theory, the principle of emergence is strongly associated with the self-organizing feedbacks that often identify the structural framework of ecosystems.

Within the last half century, the intense focus on the principle of emergence has engendered the development of many conceptual distinctions that have …

Scurvy And The Ontology Of Natural Kinds, P.D. Magnus

Philosophy Faculty Scholarship

Some philosophers understand natural kinds to be the categories which are constraints on enquiry. In order to elaborate the metaphysics appropriate to such an account, I consider the complicated history of scurvy, citrus, and vitamin C. It may be tempting to understand these categories in a shallow way (as mere property clusters) or in a deep way (as fundamental properties). Neither approach is adequate, and the case instead calls for middle-range ontology: starting from categories which we identify in the world and elaborating their structure, but not pretending to jump ahead to a complete story about fundamental being.

Cutting The Puppet Strings: Confronting The Singularity, Gabriel Joesph Weiss

Senior Projects Spring 2023

Modern technology has excelled at an unprecedented rate. The rise of artificial intelligence raises many ethical questions and concerns for humanity, as it has incited many pressing debates between philosophers, computer scientists, and social critics who share concerns for the future of humanity but conflict with one another regarding whether or not we should rely on technology to govern human affairs and control society's infrastructures. Drawing from Martin Heidegger, Jacques Ellul, Hubert Dreyfus, and others, this project weighs out the probabilities and problems of the technological singularity posited by Ray Kurzweil, confronting our habits of addressing technology and the way …

Philosophy Of Agency In Studies Of Alcoholism: A Generalizable Paradigm For Overcoming Spiraling Habits, Paul Patrick De Tournemire

Senior Projects Fall 2023

This study considers several of the most successful attempts to understand alcoholism and some of the more successful rehabilitation strategies from the perspective of the philosophy of agency. Puzzling behaviors of the alcoholic are clarified by considering how an individual’s associations between behavior and reward are impacted by the delay of the particular reward, and how this relation is situated by the sober life that serves as a motivation for the alcoholic to drink. Far from being niche interventions, George Ainslie and Hanna Pickard present notable rehabilitation strategies that could have broad applications, particularly in relation to behaviors that involve …

Plato's Critique Of Scientific Management In Charmides, Kenneth Knies

Philosophy, Theology and Religious Studies Faculty Publications

I discover resources in Plato’s Charmides for a critique of management as a form of knowledge. After interpreting in a practical register Critias’ idea of a science that would comprehend all sciences without understanding any of their objects (166c – 175a), I argue that the paradoxes with which Socrates confronts this idea can be overcome. With reference to F.W. Taylor’s Principles of Scientific Management, I show how this overcoming depends upon transforming productive activity so that it no longer requires the knowledge of products that characterizes techne. As Socrates foresaw, a science that has all ways of working as …

Appraising Evidence For Valence, Víctor Carranza-Pinedo

Animal Sentience

I make some remarks about whether evidence of valenced responses constitutes evidence of valenced states, and therefore of sentience, in organisms.

More On The Demons Of Thermodynamics, Daniel P. Sheehan, Garret Moddel, James W. Lee

Chemistry & Biochemistry Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Heightened Technology In The Care Of Type 1 Diabetes: An Ethical Symbiosis?, Susanna Larsen

OUR Journal: ODU Undergraduate Research Journal

This paper explores the common negative consequences and ethical issues associated with the evolving medical technology used in the care of Type 1 diabetes. In this paper, I will discuss the ethical impacts of technology on diabetic youth: their view of self, their mechanical requirements, and their health priorities. In order to define the scope of the issues, I will use the following intellectual tools: feminist theory, care ethics, and philosophical discussions of control. This paper will also outline some possible solutions to these ethical issues.

Two Dimensions Of A Bodhisattva, Douglas Duckworth

International Journal of Transpersonal Studies Advance Publication Archive

This paper presents two dimensions of a bodhisattva, the ideal of Maha- ya- na Buddhism. One dimension involves contemplative practices that disclose a pure nature that is always already present; this reality is unveiled after the obscurations that cloud it are removed. I refer to this as a “top-down” approach because it is based on qualities of awakening that are already there, yet lie beyond an ordinary being’s comprehension. The second dimension, which I refer to as a “bottom-up” approach, involves directed training and discipline. Unlike the top-down approach, this is not about “going with the flow” or simply letting …