Epistemology Commons^™

Evolution And The Second Law Of Thermodynamics: Effectively Communicating To Non-Technicians, Alexander Schreiber, Steven Gimbel

Philosophy Faculty Publications

Given the degree of disbelief in the theory of evolution by the wider public, scientists need to develop a collection of clear explanations and metaphors that demonstrate the working of the theory and the flaws in antievolutionist arguments. This paper presents tools of this sort for countering the anti-evolutionist claim that evolutionary mechanisms are inconsistent with the second law of thermodynamics. Images are provided to replace the traditional misunderstanding of the law, i.e., “everything always gets more disordered over time,” with a more clear sense of the way in which entropy tends to increase allowing a thermally isolated system access …

Mechanisms (Oxford), Stuart Glennan

Scholarship and Professional Work - LAS

Mechanism is undoubtedly a causal concept, in the sense that ordinary definitions and philosophical analyses explicate the concept in terms of other causal concepts such as production and interaction. Given this fact, many philosophers have supposed that analyses of the concept of mechanism, while they might appeal to philosophical theories about the nature of causation, could do little to inform such theories. On the other hand, methods of causal inference and explanation appeal to mechanisms. Discovering a mechanism is the gold standard for establishing and explaining causal connections. This fact suggests that it might be possible to provide an analysis …

Quantum Mechanics And Ethical Antirealism: A Counter-Analogy To Boyd, Justin Lawson

Philosophy

In his paper How to Be a Moral Realist Boyd attempts to show how cases of ethical indeterminacy can be accounted for from an ethical realist’s standpoint. Boyd describes cases of extensional vagueness in the life-sciences which arise from knowable and definite underlying structures and draws an analogy to ethics to argue his case. This paper argues that an equally compelling analogy can be drawn between another type of scientific indeterminacy – that in quantum mechanics – and the related ethical cases. Because quantum mechanical uncertainty (on the Copenhagen interpretation) is a real and not merely epistemic limitation on physical …

Review: God's Rivals: Why Has God Allowed Different Religions? Insights From The Bible And The Early Church, Michael S. Jones

SOR Faculty Publications and Presentations

No abstract provided.

Late Pragmatism, Logical Positivism, And Their Aftermath, David Ingram

Philosophy: Faculty Publications and Other Works

Developments in Anglo-American philosophy during the first half of the 20^th Century closely tracked developments that were occurring in continental philosophy during this period. This should not surprise us. Aside from the fertile communication between these ostensibly separate traditions, both were responding to problems associated with the rise of mass society. Rabid nationalism, corporate statism, and totalitarianism (Left and Right) posed a profound challenge to the idealistic rationalism of neo-Kantian and neo-Hegelian philosophies. The decline of the individual – classically conceived by the 18th-century Enlightenment as a self-determining agent – provoked strong reactions. While some philosophical tendencies sought to …

Knowledge And Skepticism In Descartes’ Meditations, Scott Campbell

Undergraduate Review

My research is centered on the arguments of Rene Descartes, a 17th Century philosopher, in his work The Meditations. The Meditations is composed of six entries, which are six meditations, written in form of narration. His narrative takes form in an intricately composed piece of writing, a clever argument presented through a precise and fascinating procedure. However, the artful fashion in which he conveys his method is far from an immaculately composed calculation which Descartes leads one to believe. In this paper I will present Descartes’ procedural destruction and following reassembly of the external world and his proposed discovery of …

Naturalism And Is Opponents, Joseph Spencer

Undergraduate Review

Ever since Descartes began his search for certainty in philosophy, many of the great philosophers have taken up this quest. One solution, proposed by W.V.O. Quine in his 1969 essay, Naturalized Epistemology, claims that we must refrain from studying epistemology in philosophy. Quine claims that our study of knowledge must only occur in the field of psychology and that we should refrain from talking about these issues in philosophy. As one can imagine, Quine’s essay was met with much criticism and anger among philosophers. Most notably, Hilary Putnam provides a devastating critique of naturalized epistemology in his essay, Why …

Affirmative Judgments: The Sabbath Of Deconstruction, Roland K. Végső

Department of English: Faculty Publications

For reasons that are equally strategic and philosophical, we need to understand that the correct answer to the question ‘What is deconstruction?’ is that deconstruction is the unconditional affirmation of the undeconstructible. Calling upon Derrida, Kant, and Hegel, Végső posits that the fact that we have almost completely lost sight of this dimension of deconstructive thought accounts for much of the confusion surrounding its ethical and political force. In order to clarify some of these points, an explanation of the nature of this unconditional affirmation is needed. Végső puts forth the proposition that the truth of deconstruction is aptly encapsulated …

Embodied Cognition As Refutation To Langer's "Illusory Powers": "I Move, Therefore, I Know", Ruby Amanda Montana

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

Thesis Objective: To refute Susanne Langer's notion within her philosophy of dance which holds that emotional forces in dance are solely "virtual" and thus illusory. I plan to do so by means of the growing research in the branch of cognitive science known as Embodied Cognition.

In Brief: Susanne Langer, one of the most prominent philosophers of Aesthetics, contends that dance is able to express emotions as an external force, while creating what she calls a "primary illusion". Langer attributes gesture as the basic abstraction whereby the dance illusion is made and organized. Furthermore, she contends that dance is not …

The Sources Of Knowledge In Islam : A Study On The Philosophical Ideas Of Syed Muhammad Naquib Al-Attas., Akhmad Rofii Damyati

Student Works (2010-2019)

The Sources of Knowledge in Islam: A Study on the Philosophical Ideas of Syed Muhammad Naquib Al-Attas explores and investigates the sources of knowledge in Islam as one of the important issues in knowledge or epistemology according to the perspective of Professor Syed Mohammad Naquib al-Attas. It is based on library research that involves two main processes, collecting data and analysing data. In analysing data it deals with three methods: deductive, inductive and comparative methods. It presents an analysis on many related issues, such as the possibility of knowledge, the definition of knowledge, the classification of knowledge, the tradition of …