Metaphysics Commons^™

The Platonic Hero, Danielle A. Layne

Philosophy Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Introduction, John Dillon, David D. Butorac, Danielle A. Layne

Philosophy Faculty Scholarship

The introduction to Proclus and His Legacy, a volume which investigates Proclus' own thought and his wide-ranging influence within late Neoplatonic, Alexandrine and Byzantinian philosophy and theology. It further explores how Procline metaphysics and doctrines of causality influence and transition into Arabic and Islamic thought, up until Richard Hooker in England, Spinoza in Holland and Pico in Italy. John Dillon provides a helpful overview of Proclus' thought, Harold Tarrant discusses Proclus' influence within Alexandrian philosophy and Tzvi Langermann presents ground breaking work on the Jewish reception of Proclus, focusing on the work of Joseph Solomon Delmedigo (1591-1655), while Stephen …

Is Bodily Resurrection Compatible With Materialism?, Lucienne Altman-Newell

Scripps Senior Theses

It is widely known that at least three of the major world religions—Christianity, Islam, and (more controversially) Judaism—embrace the theory of bodily resurrection, or an event in which a person or people are brought back to embodied life after death. But is this theory compatible with materialism, or the philosophical doctrine that nothing exists except matter and its movements and modifications? In other words, if my “self” is identical with and nothing more than my body, could my unique and particular “self” come to exist again on Earth after my death? This thesis examines theories of compatibility from ancient times …

Real Intentions And Virtual Wrongs, Elaine Sohng

CMC Senior Theses

In this thesis, I answer the gamer's dilemma or the inability to find a moral distinction between virtual pedophilia and virtual murder. I expand virtual pedophilia to virtual rape to address increasing rates of sexual harassment and assault in virtual reality. In this thesis, I 1) explain what occurs when one engages in virtual rape; 2) identify relevant moral differences between physical rape and virtual rape; 3) challenge the existing relationship between committing harm and wrong in the case of rape; and 4) argue that virtual rape is morally reprehensible due to the agent’s intention to utilize a person as …

Saving The Physics Ii: Who Needs To Be Saved? It Depends On Your Metaphysics, Menas Kafatos

Mathematics, Physics, and Computer Science Faculty Articles and Research

Physics does not need to be saved. If anything, physics was rescued in the early twentieth century with the advancement of both the theories of relativity and quantum mechanics. What needs to be saved is our world outlook or metaphysics because how a society acts and develops depends on what its belief systems are. Here we explore how a new metaphysics where consciousness is fundamental might just be what modern societies need.

Rationality, Parapsychology, And Artificial Intelligence In Military And Intelligence Research By The United States Government In The Cold War, Guy M. Lomeo

Theses and Dissertations

A study analyzing the roles of rationality, parapsychology, and artificial intelligence in military and intelligence research by the United States Government in the Cold War. An examination of the methodology behind the decisions to pursue research in two fields that were initially considered irrational.

Different Names For Bullying, Marco Poggio

Capstones

“There's all different forms of bullying,” says Steven Gray, a Lakota rancher and former law enforcement officer living in South Dakota. In this look into Gray’s life, we learn about two instances of bullying: the psychological and physical harassment that pushed his son, Tanner Thomas Gray, to commit suicide at age 12; And the controversial construction of an oil pipeline in an ancient tribal land that belongs to the Lakota people by rights of a treaty signed in 1851, which Gray sees as an institutional abuse infringing on the sovereignty of his people. Gray is involved in the movement that …

"A Return To Reality": Mark Hansen's Metaphysics: Towards A New Relationality Of Twenty-First-Century Media, Sandra Moyano Ariza

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This project is framed in the recent turn to speculation in philosophy which aims to develop new ontologies that deprivilege the human and human cognition, in turn claiming the capacity of all entities to hold agency in experiential processes. New philosophical scholarship is seeing the resurgence of an old problematic within this turn: the ontological debate of substances vs. relations. The study is structured around these two positions, represented by Graham Harman's object-oriented ontology which claims the essence of all entities and Steven Shaviro's understanding of relationality through Whitehead's structure of experience and becoming, respectively. These two positions will help …

Mental Disease And Criminal Responsibility, Joseph T. Tinnelly, C.M.

The Catholic Lawyer

No abstract provided.

Keats, Truth, And Empathy, Peter Shum

Sophia and Philosophia

At one level, Keats’s sonnet entitled On Peace (1814) is full of philosophical certainties. The speaker believes, for example, that a nation’s people have a right to live in freedom under the rule of law, and that the rule of law should be applicable to everybody. Political and philosophical commitments of this kind do not seem to be called into question in this poem, or made the subject of an enquiry. On the contrary, it is as though we are confronted with somebody who, in certain central thematic respects at least, appears to know his own mind.

The Rhetoric Of Tyranny: Callicles The Rhetor And Nietzsche's Zarathustra, Greg Whitlock

Sophia and Philosophia

Here I will work through the rhetoric of tyranny as practiced by Callicles and as reflected in Nietzsche’s Zarathustra, in particular. In Part 2 it will be shown that Nietzsche’s account of Plato as the complex figure with a Socratic exterior but a latent alternative ego of the tyrant, arrived at an image consistent with E.R. Dodds’ later thesis. Callicles the rhetor, featured as a student of Gorgias, embodies this alter-ego. In Part 3 we find Callicles and Zarathustra shared very similar beliefs once they overcame shame and gained honesty. Indeed, Callicles expounded a number of propositions foundational to …

The Problem Of Obviousness, Benjamin Goldberg

Sophia and Philosophia

1. The Problem of Obviousness
There’s no such thing as obviousness.

This isn’t, of course, itself obvious; nor is it clear why it should be a problem. So let me start elsewhere, with the anti-vaccine movement. A friend of mine laid out the ‘obvious’ position: there are facts and rationality on one side, unenlightened ignorance and bigotry on the other. Scientists versus fools, and the fools don’t even know what game is being played.

Poetic Justice: Apology Overdue, Stephen Faison

Sophia and Philosophia

Jurors of our republic, I do not know whether you were persuaded by the case made against me, but I certainly hope that you were not. Some of what the prosecutor told you is accurate, though much of it is untrue. To put it another way, some of his facts are correct, yet the conclusions he presented were usually misleading distortions and in some cases simply incorrect. If the indictment is clarified to its essentials, I am accused of corrupting the young and not believing in the gods in whom the city believes. I intend to show that these charges …

Cindy, Ken Clatterbaugh

Sophia and Philosophia

Cindy Norton sang loud in slightly accented Spanish. The song was “Perfidia” (“Wicked Woman”). She remembered the melody, and the Spanish language radio reminded her of the lyrics, although she could hardly hear the radio or herself above the grinding, popping, and rattling of her Volkswagen Rabbit. Her radio picked up only one station.

‘To Warm Our Hands’, Emmanuel O. Angulo

Sophia and Philosophia

Lovers often die shortly one after the other. Romeo and Juliet. June Carter and Johnny Cash. My grandfather and my grandmother. Leonard Cohen and Marianne Ihlen.

Marianne was the inspiration, most famously, of Cohen’s song “So long, Marianne”, but also of “Bird on the wire” and poems from the collection Flowers for Hitler. Cohen’s last words for her reached her just two days before her death—and a few months before his own. They said: ‘you know that I’ve always loved you for your beauty and your wisdom, but I don't need to say anything more about that because you know …

The Descent Of Winter: William Carlos Williams Under The Influence Of Paris, Phillip Barron

Sophia and Philosophia

The Descent of Winter, published in Ezra Pound’s magazine The Exile in 1928, is an uneven experiment in unclassifiable writing. Williams began writing the diaristic entries aboard the SS Pennland “in the fall of 1927. He was returning from Europe, where he had left Florence Williams with their two sons, who were to attend school in Geneva.” (Imaginations, 231) The slim book alternates between spare, image driven poems composed of short lines and diaristic prose. Most entries are titled only with the dates of their composition. In aesthetics, Williams always concerned himself with form. The variety of …

"Part Of That Force That Always Wills The Evil And Always Produces The Good" On A Devilish Incoherence, Peter Baumann

Sophia and Philosophia

When Mephisto was asked by Faust, "Well now, who are you then?" (“Nun gut, wer bist Du denn?”), he gave the well-known answer, "Part of that force that always wills the evil and always produces the good" (“Ein Teil von jener Kraft, die stets das Böse will und stets das Gute schafft”: Goethe, Faust, 1334-1336). This answer raises some important questions which in turn lead to interesting answers. Let us start by looking at the content of Mephisto's utterance.

Amazon Book Review Of David Ray Griffin's God Exists But Gawd Does Not (2016), Theodore Walker

Perkins Faculty Research and Special Events

David Ray Griffin employs the term “anatheism” (ana-theism) for describing a natural scientific return to theism, by moving logically from traditional theism to atheism to panentheism. Griffin shows how natural scientific reasoning leads from commitment to traditional theism (“Gawd” exists) to modern atheism (“Gawd” does not exist), then from modern atheism to [constructive postmodern] Whiteheadian panentheism (“God” does exist).

Contra Lewisian Naturalness, Dylan Abney

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Some ways of talking or thinking about the world are better than others. Most obviously, it is often better to say or believe true things rather than false things. Perhaps less obvious is the notion that our speech and thought ought to, or often in fact does, reflect the natural formation or structure of the world. This idea—that we ought to be carving the world at its natural joints—can be found at least as far back as Plato’s Phaedrus. More recently, we can see a related idea in the work of David Lewis. In “New Work for a Theory of …

Where Does The Cetanic Break Take Place? Weakness Of Will In Śāntideva’S Bodhicaryāvatāra, Stephen E. Harris

Comparative Philosophy

This article explores the role of weakness of will (akrasia) in the Indian Buddhist tradition, and in particular within Śāntideva’s Introduction to the Practice of Awakening (Bodhicaryāvatāra). In agreement with Jay Garfield, I argue that there are important differences between Aristotle’s account of akrasia and Buddhist moral psychology. Nevertheless, taking a more expanded conception of weakness of will, as is frequently done in contemporary work, allows us to draw significant connections with the pluralistic account of psychological conflict found in Buddhist texts. I demonstrate this by showing how Amélie Rorty’s expanded treatment of akrasia as including …