Epistemology Commons^™

Translation In And Of Philosophy, Hussein Barrada

Theses and Dissertations

Paul Ricoeur in his essay The Paradigm of Translation, presents an understanding of translation that is found between two positions that are irreconcilable. These two positions represent on the one hand, the difference that exists between languages and on the other hand, the common ground that languages must have for them to be translatable into one another. Following Ricoeur’s paradigm, the thesis will aim to unpack an understanding of translation as a tension that occurs between its theoretical impossibility and the reality of its everyday practice. The theoretical impossibility of translation lies in the fact that for one language …

Language As The Medium: A Literature Review. Harnessing The Prolific Power Of Dramatic Language As A Therapeutic Tool In Drama Therapy, Edward Freeman

Expressive Therapies Capstone Theses

Language in and of the theatre, with its palate of variegated writing styles and playwrights from throughout time, has the potential to be harnessed, focused, and systematized for use as a therapeutic tool within drama therapy – the field’s artistic medium. Drama therapy could benefit from having a specific medium germane to its artform which has the potential to provide practitioners with a common resource and means of communication, assessment, diagnosis, and treatment planning, as well as align the field with other creative arts therapies. Language encompasses all forms of human communication – speaking, writing, signing, gesturing, expressing facially – …

Placing God: Defining “Post-Christianity” For Contemporary Japanese Christians, Leryan Anthony Burrey

Master's Projects and Capstones

This work suggests that we consider a new, working definition of post-Christianity. This new paradigm is in response to Western Christian thought being too dominant a force that fails to take into enough account other global experiences— like those of Japanese Christians. These reflections are based on scholarly opinions claiming that Christianity is a “global culture,” and ultimately argues for more international inclusivity in Western Christian thought and institutions, especially regarding the Asia-Pacific. Moreover, this paper illuminates how iitoko dori allows Christian thought to peacefully coexist in Japan’s greater society. The research also explores specific Japanese cultural practices that make …

The Feeling Of Foam & Other Essays, Ryan Erickson

Graduate School of Art Theses

I create conceptual drawings, collages, sculptures, and installations to humorously destabilize and ultimately question how human language, formal methodologies, and social institutions function. While seemingly embracing an aesthetic of rationality, I undermine it with absurdity. In my work, I take a fundamentally dialectical position by skewering the rational to the illogical as neither can exist without the other.

How To Have Impossible Conversations: A Practical Review, J. T. Byrd, Brant Wenger

Liberty Theological Review

Boghossian, Peter & James Lindsay. How to Have Impossible Conversations: A Very Practical Guide. NY: Lifelong Books, 2019. Kindle. 234 pp. $16.99

Mutual Aid As Spiritual Tacit Knowledge Within Doukhobor Epistemology, Rachel L. Neubuhr Torres

University Honors Theses

The relationship between Michael Polanyi’s concept of tacit knowledge and religion is a topic that is rarely explored. Applying tacit knowledge to the study of religion and spirituality allows us to think about how we connect with the world and how we address the concern of what one feels to be true of their existence, or existential intuition. In the latter half of the 1800s the Russian prince turned anarchist, Peter Kropotkin, wrote extensively on the theory of mutually beneficial cooperation, or mutual aid, as being one of the most important factors of evolution. As Kropotkin began writing his series …

Approaches To Narrative Instruction For Second Language Learners, Mathew Peters

MA TESOL Collection

Narratives have reemerged as a dominant form of rhetoric over the last fifty years. This dominant use of narrative discourse has only increased with the rise of social media. Walther Fisher (1987) proposed the narrative paradigm as a unifying theory of human communication. His major claim is that people are inherently storytellers and that people use a narrative rationality and a logic of good reasons to inform their beliefs, values, and actions. This paper utilizes his theories, along with recent findings in neuroscience, to establish an argument for greater inclusion of narratives into second language teaching. Narratives can have a …

Review Of Lorraine Daston's Against Nature, Kyle Johannsen

Between the Species

Lorraine Daston's Against Nature seeks to explain why, in spite of compelling objections to the contrary, human beings continue to invest nature with moral authority. More specifically, she claims that our propensity to moralize nature is traceable in part to human nature. Though I criticize Daston for not paying adequate attention to John Stuart Mill's narrow sense of 'nature', I also highly recommend her book.

Circle Of Circles: Rethinking Idealism Through Hegel's Epistemology, Sila Ozkara

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation’s central thesis is that Hegel’s approach to knowledge and philosophy is “circular”. A “circle of circles”, Kreis von Kreisen, an image Hegel regularly uses throughout his corpus, has sustained a steady wonder in his commentators. Nevertheless, it has not been studied with rigor adequate to its extensive importance, which spans his philosophical career and frames his engagement with the history of philosophy and the philosophy of his time. Due attention to Hegel’s concept of circles provides a robust frame for grasping his philosophical project, idealism, and account of knowledge. The content of each of Hegel’s works is the …

Nietzsche, Foucault, Power: A Study Of Paradox And Ontology In Nietzsche, Nicholas R. Ray

Honors Thesis

This thesis investigates a paradox at the heart of Nietzsche and utilizes Foucault as an instrument to understand this dilemma. The paradox is the synthesis of Nietzsche's doctrine of perspectivism and his ontological doctrine of the will to power. Put simply his doctrine of perspectivism says there can be no ontological facts yet Nietzsche articulates the will to power as an ontological matter of fact. This thesis explores the "First Essay" of Nietzsche's Genealogy of Morals to demonstrate the existence of this paradox. Further, I will conduct a Foucauldian cross-examination to further flesh out this paradox, where and why it …

On Narrative Approaches To Conspiracy Theory, John Hydrisko

Honors Theses

This thesis handles narrative approaches to conspiracy theory. It provides an overview of conspiracy theory and narrative before affirming a relationship between the two. It then introduces Fenster’s work on conspiracy narrative before engaging with the considerations therein. After discussing the tradition of visualizing narrative structure, it applies these practices to conspiracy narrative. This application allows for a discussion of recent innovations within conspiracy narrative. By using the QAnon as a case study, the paper investigates the emergence of protagonism and non-narrativism within the genre. Ultimately, this investigation suggests that contemporary conspiracy narrative is both better suited to the modern …

The Seen And The Known, The Visible And The Invisible, Jeff Wasch

Philosophy Student Work

In this project I make the argument that we never really see what we know. What I have found is that there are two fundamentally different kinds of content which make up experience. The first kind of content is the phenomenological content of experience. This content is purely passive and is constructed by our sensory organs. In short, phenomenological content constructs a perceptual field which is what is seen. The second kind of content is the semantic content of experience. This content is deployed by our conceptual and linguistic capabilities which stems from the fact that humans are fundamentally social, …

Warrant And Non-Function: A Critique Of The Sensus Divinitatis In Plantinga's Reformed Epistemology, Lukas Merrell

Theses

In recent years, there has been a surge in attempting to demonstrate how a theistic belief can be held rationality apart from classical proofs. Championed by philosophers such as Alvin Plantinga and Nicholas Wolterstorff. Reformed Epistemology attempts to defend a God-belief as properly basic, which is therefore justified and warranted apart from traditional argumentation. With this in view, he put forward a position of religious epistemology that attempts to show how a GB can be on par with other beliefs we have on a daily basis that are considered rational, even if devoid of argumentation. In this paper I focus …

American Absurdity: Reconciling Conceptions Of The Absurd In European And American Literature, Benjamin Spencer

Senior Theses

This thesis aims to examine the development of the concept of the absurd in literature across different time periods and cultural contexts. The absurd, as defined by Camus, is the gap between humanity’s desire to understand the world and the impossibility of doing so.

However, the ways in which the absurd is recognized as an aspect of existence depends heavily on the sociological contexts in which an individual lives. By analyzing the works of absurdist authors, filmmakers, and artists across time, we can track the development of these absurdist conceptions in both Europe and American literary movements.

Looking at these …

Walking As A Way Of Knowing: An Autoethnography Of Embodied Inquiry, Lauriel-Arwen Amoroso

Dissertations and Theses

The purpose of this study was to understand and describe the role of walking in my own ways of knowing and to explore how walking itself is an epistemological process by using personal narrative to examine and story my experience. I used an embodied narrative research method, known as evocative autoethnography, in which I explored my own innate ways of knowing, including intellectual, embodied, emotional, and spiritual knowledge. I collected data using field notes, reflective journaling, reviewing past writing, and artistic interpretations of experiences such as photography and poetry. I compiled my data into a series of short essays, stories, …

What Documents Cannot Do: Revisiting Michael Polanyi And The Tacit Knowledge Dilemma, C. Sean Burns

Information Science Faculty Publications

Our culture is dominated by digital documents in ways that are easy to overlook. These documents have changed our worldviews about science and have raised our expectations of them as tools for knowledge justification. This article explores the complexities surrounding the digital document by revisiting Michael Polanyi’s theory of tacit knowledge—the idea that “we can know more than we can tell.” The theory presents to us a dilemma: if we can know more than we can tell, then this means that the communication of science via the document as a primary form of telling will always be incomplete. This dilemma …

A Glitch In The Matrix, John C. Lyden

Journal of Religion & Film

This is a film review of A Glitch in the Matrix (2021), directed by Rodney Ascher.

Motivation And The Primacy Of Perception : Merleau-Ponty's Phenomenology Of Knowledge, Peter Antich

Ohio University Press Open Access Books

Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenological notion of motivation advances a compelling alternative to the empiricist and rationalist assumptions that underpin modern epistemology.

Arguing that knowledge is ultimately founded in perceptual experience, Peter Antich interprets and defends Merleau-Ponty’s thinking on motivation as the key to establishing a new form of epistemic grounding. Upending the classical dichotomy between reason and natural causality, justification and explanation, Antich shows how this epistemic ground enables Merleau-Ponty to offer a radically new account of knowledge and its relation to perception. In so doing, Antich demonstrates how and why Merleau-Ponty remains a vital resource for today’s epistemologists.

A Defense Of Locke’S Moral Epistemology, Jamie J. Hardy

Philosophy Faculty Publications and Presentations

In An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, John Locke provides an empirical account of all of our ideas, including our moral ideas. However, Locke’s account of moral epistemology is difficult to understand leading to mistaken objections to his moral epistemological theory. In this paper, I offer what I believe to be the correct account of Locke’s moral epistemology. This account of his moral epistemology resolves the objections that morality is not demonstrable, that Locke’s account fails to demonstrate the normativity of statements, and that Locke has not provided us with the means to determine the correctness of the moral rules.

It's Funny 'Cause It's True: The Lighthearted Philosophers’ Society’S Introduction To Philosophy Through Humor, Jennifer Marra Henrigillis, Steven Gimbel

Open Educational Resources

It's Funny 'Cause It's True is an introductory text in philosophy exploring logic, metaphysics, epistemology, ethics, and aesthetics through questions in the philosophy of humor. Subfields receive a substantive introduction with interactive essays written to be accessible to undergraduates.