Metaphysics Commons^™

Apophatic Community: Yannaras On Relational Being, Fred Dallmayr

Comparative Philosophy

For Martin Heidegger the story of Western philosophy ended basically in egocentrism or the metaphysics of “subjectivity”; however, he acknowledged the possibility of another path in Greece: that of pre-Socratic thinking. Yet, there is a further path he did not acknowledge: the tradition of Orthodox philosophy and theology. The paper focuses on some key works of the prominent contemporary Greek philosopher Christos Yannaras, for a long time professor in Athens. Taking over the notions of “Being” and ontology, Yannaras construes them (with Heidegger) not as ontic “substances” amenable to epistemic knowledge, but as guideposts to “relational” or participatory experience. His …

Mackie's Arguement For The Infinite Man, Abigail J. Basile

Quaerens Deum: The Liberty Undergraduate Journal for Philosophy of Religion

Theists and non-theists alike have toiled with the characteristics of the Judeo-Christian God and how they may or may not be contradictory with the existence of evil. Some philosophers, such as J. L. Mackie, have decided that God and evil cannot coexist, mainly because the existence of evil means that any God is unable to keep evil and suffering away from His beloved creation, and such a limited God is no God at all. But Mackie’s argument rests on flawed foundation. Mankind is necessarily finite because even the infinite God cannot do the logically impossible and create the infinite—nothing infinite …

The Early Flew To The Later Flew, George Beals

West Chester University Master’s Theses

This project examines the thinking of British philosopher Antony Flew (1923-2010), who is considered a leading atheist during the last half of the twentieth century and a leading scholar on David Hume. But early in the twenty-first century (2004), he announced that his thinking had led him to deny atheism and affirm theism. After the Introduction, this project focuses on his writings and debates on the existence of God, doing so in four chapters: Laying the Groundwork; Atheist Antony Flew; Theist Antony Flew; and Assessment. In Laying the Groundwork I identify four guiding principles that …

The Denial Of Transcendental Freedom Is Self-Refuting, Theodore Kahn

CMC Senior Theses

The questions of what kind of freedom morality requires and how to reconcile the capacity for free agency within a determined temporal sequence represent the crux of the free will debate. Traditional compatibilists claim that determinism does not preclude our capacity for moral agency. Nuanced determinists, such as Derk Pereboom, deny the existence of moral agency and argue that free will is not required to save the basic modes of our practical lives, such as our capacity to affect each other and to lead practically morallives. I will argue in favor of Kant’s view, which holds that since freedom and …

The Refutation Of Existing Proofs For The Existence Of God And The Continued Search For A Valid Proof Of The Existence Of God: A Defense And Interpretation Of Kant, Emma Houston

CMC Senior Theses

In this thesis, I use Kant's Transcendental Ideal and Fourth Antinomy in the Critique of Pure Reason as a bedrock to understand mistakes in popular spatio-temporal and transcendental proofs for the existence of God and develop a discussion of the necessity of the continued search for, and potential foundation of, an alternative proof of the existence of God. I will first attempt to instill the thought of the necessity of a commitment to the idea of the existence of God. I will then explain and clarify a) the three transcendental proofs for the existence of God and b) what I …

Pursuing Natural Unity, Consciousness Included, Rowen Cox-Rubien

Scripps Senior Theses

An ontological exploration of consciousness and how it is related to the body and other aspects of physical reality. Framed by David Chalmers' conception of "The Hard Problem", we begin from a physicalist perspective to discuss the problem of mental causation, which is the inquiry of how the mind communicates and interacts with the body. From here we examine the employment of identity reduction to functionalize and therefore physically explain mentality. We find that reductionist methods, the backbone of scientific investigation, do not work to explain conscious experience, because conscious experience is not quantifiable--it is qualitative. Thus we are left …

(And I Can't Stress This Enough) In My Mouth: Extradiegetic Affect As Material, C. Klockner

Theses and Dissertations

(and i can’t stress this enough) in my mouth: Extradiegetic Affect as Material is a non-linear exploration into the structures of feeling that exist in relation to cinema in its role as a technology for generating subjectivity. In the development of this research, a proposal of cinema’s likeness to the ecological circulation of microplastics is drawn in order to illustrate cinema’s materiality and nearly invisible ubiquity. The notion of extradiegetic affect is outlined as a post-cinematic condition in which lived experience becomes secondary to cinematic representation and which, simultaneously, becomes directly shaped by engaging with these representations.

Lifetime, Emily E. Kuchenbecker

Theses and Dissertations

Time is my bully. Time marks the start of something, as well as the end. We are all carrying out the inexorable passing of time as it relates to our impending mortalities.

I do not fear death.

The awareness of my body’s impermanence employs me to feel that much more connected to the vessel containing that of which I am.

But what am I? Am I my body- or is it much deeper?

Through the work executed during my graduate research, I have attempted to quantify my existence through the archiving my time and body. This document ushers you through …

The Quest Of Vision: Visual Culture, Sacred Space, Ritual, And The Documentation Of Lived Experience Through Rock Imagery, Aaron Robert Atencio

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

This document will approach the multifaceted concepts that arise through the study of rock art and the cultivation of culture and belief through vision. Through this document the audience will encounter conceptual ideas regarding belief systems, ritual, experience, cognition, sacredness, and space/landscape — and how these are all essential dynamics that take place in the processes that cultivate the Shoshone visual culture. This document will employ an anthropological lens on the mentioned subject matters, while also approaching these concepts with an interdisciplinary curiosity of how they intermingle; creating a cohesive experience that focuses on these processes which empowered these people[s] …

Foucault And The Recommencement Of Philosophy, Javier De La Higuera

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

Javier de la Higuera discusses in his “Foucault and the Recommencement of Philosophy” the idea of a recommencement of philosophy that Michel Foucault has posited on several occasions, although with different meaning and intentions. This article reconstructs how he approached this in the 1960s and shows the fundamental changes that this idea of recommencement underwent in the later Foucault. In his last three years at the Collège de France, Foucault appeared to reinterpret the very idea of philosophy based on his analysis of ancient spirituality and of parrhesiastic philosophical practice. The interpretation that Gilles Deleuze gave of late Foucault, devoted …

How To Be A Realist About Natural Kinds, P.D. Magnus

Philosophy Faculty Scholarship

Although some authors hold that natural kinds are necessarily relative to disciplinary domains, many authors presume that natural kinds must be absolute, categorical features of the reality— often assuming that without even mentioning the alternative. Recognizing both possibilities, one may ask whether the difference especially matters. I argue that it does. Looking at recent arguments about natural kind realism, I argue that we can best make sense of the realism question by thinking of natural kindness as a relation that holds between a category and a domain.

Did Hollywood Take Theatre "By Hook Or By Crook?", Catherine S. Wright

Graduate Theses/Dissertations

Hollywood and Theatre have been partners in producing entertainment for over 100 years. The relationship was fruitful for both parties, but Hollywood moguls and playwrights battled over ownership of the work and crafting of its creative nucleus, story and character. Theatre was the dominant entertainment right before the rise of motion pictures. Once Hollywood’s talkies closed the curtain on silent films, playwrights had a high creative worth to movie makers. In the cinema, story and dialogue were essential for its survival and growth. Playwrights were courted by the Hollywood studio heads but were not offered equal partnership as they were …

On Affect: Function And Phenomenology, Andreas Elpidorou

Faculty and Staff Scholarship

This paper explores the nature of emotions by considering what appear to be two differing, perhaps even conflicting, approaches to affectivity—an evolutionary functional account, on the one hand, and a phenomenological view, on the other. The paper argues for the centrality of the notion of function in both approaches, articulates key differences between them, and attempts to understand how such differences can be overcome.

Assessing Elizabeth Anscombe’S Theory Of Causality, Bill Bolin

Faculty Publications

The concept of causality has been investigated for millennia. Different approaches in assessing causality, such as determining purpose or determining sensible proof, make it difficult to compare the major theories and to rank them as best or most credible. This paper addresses the theories of Aristotle, Hume, and Mill before offering Anscombe’s theory of causation as the most effective one for those who believe a theory of causation should show some purpose. Anscombe’s theory tracks well with Aristotle’s teleological structure of causes, and her views on intention play a role in emphasizing motivation and purpose.

"Not A Simple Matter: Rejecting Materialism As A Solution To The Mind-Body Problem", Andrew Coyle, Steve Parchment Dr., Minh Nguyen Dr.

Posters-at-the-Capitol

"Not a Simple Matter: Rejecting Materialism as a Solution to the Mind-Body Problem"

By Andrew Coyle

Mentored by Dr. Steve Parchment and Dr. Minh Nguyen

Department of History, Philosophy, and Religious Studies Many scholars accept materialism as an adequate solution to the mind-body problem. However, acceptance of materialism creates more problems than it purports to solve. This poster provides a background to the mind-body problem. This poster explores materialism as a potential solution to the mind-body problem. After reviewing materialism, it is rejected as an adequate solution to the mind-body problem. The poster concludes by positing property dualism as an …

Cautious Realism And Middle Range Ontology, P.D. Magnus

Philosophy Faculty Scholarship

Anjan Chakravartty's book Scientific Ontology is centrally about how metaphysics is embrangled with epistemology. I begin by discussing the broader literature in science and values, where arguments akin to Chakravartty's have been much-discussed. Then I talk about my own preferred approach, middle range ontology, which does not fit neatly into any of the three stances Chakravartty discusses. Finally, I use these considerations to pose a dilemma.

Call Thee Ishmael, Mark Backus

Sophia and Philosophia

“Moby-Dick is a strangely compelling book.”[1] Scholarship and commentary help the reader understand why Ishmael’s tale is so compelling, but not always why it is strangely so. The perennial search for a master key to unlock the strangeness of Moby-Dick beneath its infinite layers has added more mesmerizing layers, but if many of the proposed keys fit into the lock of Moby-Dick, why is there yet a sense that none have completely opened “the great flood-gates?” (Moby-Dick 22, hereafter “MD”). Is it because none of them are right, or that they are only partly right, or that …

The Poststructuralist Broom Of Wallace’S System: A Conversation Between Wittgenstein And Derrida, Vernon W. Cisney

Philosophy Faculty Publications

David Foster Wallace famously characterized his first novel, The Broom of the System, as ‘a conversation between [Ludwig] Wittgenstein and [Jacques] Derrida.’ This comes as little surprise, given the ubiquity of the question of language in the works of these two thinkers, and given the novel’s constant reflections on the relation between language and world. Broom’s protagonist, Lenore Beadsmen – in search of her eponymous great-grandmother – is preoccupied with the dread that ‘all that really exists of [her] life is what can be said about it,’ that is to say, that reality is entirely coextensive with language. …

Returning The Radiant Gaze: Visual Art And Embodiment In A World Of Subjects, Beth Carruthers

The Goose

Drawing on the latter thinking of Maurice Merleau-Ponty, as well as on the ideas of other contemporary philosophers and theorists, this essay considers the denigration of vision from Plato to twentieth-century anti-ocularism, and argues for the reclamation of vision and visual perception as sensuous, embodied interplay between humans and world, self and other—an opening to wonder and more sensitive human-world relations. It does so through a phenomenological exploration of the process of art-making, and consideration of the role and value of artworks and images in the world. This essay is first and foremost an enquiry. As such it promises no …

Essence, Explanation, And Modal Knowledge, Antonella Mallozzi

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The primary aim of this project is to put forward a novel account of knowledge of metaphysical modality. I call this the “Essentialist Superexplanatory” account of modal knowledge, because it relies on the following two main theses: (a) knowledge of metaphysical necessity is grounded in knowledge of essence; and (b) essences are properties, sets of properties, or mechanisms, having distinctive explanatory powers for how things are. While thesis (a) is quite popular in the current debates, mostly thanks to Kit Fine’s recent work in modal metaphysics, thesis (b) introduces an original brand of essentialism. As I show by means of …