Metaphysics Commons^™

What Must There Be To Account For Being?, Dillon T. Mccrea

Williams Honors College, Honors Research Projects

The purpose of this essay is to identify what I consider to be core philosophical arguments supporting the thesis that being subsists. The design of the thesis is as follows: First, I will attempt to identify arguments supporting the claim that we posit the universe and all of its content in relation to the question of being. Second, I will identify arguments supporting the claim that it is incoherent to claim that being is merely a function of the existence of individual entities, and that all entities share being in common. Third, I will identify arguments supporting the claim that …

Exploring Consciousness Through The Qualitative Content Of Equations, Ashok Narasimhan, Menas C. Kafatos

Mathematics, Physics, and Computer Science Faculty Articles and Research

The majority of the focus on equations in physics has been on the mathematical and computational aspects. Here we focus on the qualitative content of what the relationships expressed in equations imply. In some sense, we are asking foundational questions about the ontology of equations.

The Mechanics And Fixed Operations Of Human Experience, James Dominick Di Netta

UNF Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This paper will use the natural laws of the universe and amassed evidence to support a dynamic systems theory approach to explain the mechanics and fixed operations of the human experience taking place inside a causally determined universe without the possibility of free will. By reductionary methods, the universe and all its’ contents, including human agents, will be exemplified as complex dynamic systems. In so doing, the human experience is reduced to being comprised of information acting and reacting with other information existing in the universe, specifically ideas. Allowing ideas to take on a physical manifestation shows how the feedback …

“Images, Descriptions, And Pictures: Personhood And The Clash”, Willem A. Devries

Faculty Publications

It is central to PSIM that there is a clash between the manifest and the scientific images that is to be resolved, essentially, by the victory of the scientific. It is a dramatic story — the Bildungsroman of the truth itself. The longstanding conflict over teaching evolution versus “creation science” in the schools shows that Sellars has put a finger on an important tension in modern culture. But I’ve come to believe that Sellars has not accurately captured the structure of the tension nor how we should envision its ultimate resolution. Since the dramatic narrative of PSIM is so central …

Mathematical Frameworks For Consciousness, Menas C. Kafatos, Ashok Narasimhan

Mathematics, Physics, and Computer Science Faculty Articles and Research

If Awareness is fundamental in the universe, mathematical frameworks are better suited to reveal its fundamental aspects than physical models. Awareness operates through three fundamental laws which apply at all levels of reality and is characterized by three universal powers. We explore and summarize in general terms mathematical formalisms that may take us as close as possible to conscious awareness, beginning with the primary relationships between the observer with the observed, using a Hilbert space approach. We also examine insights from category theory, and the calculus of indications or laws of forms. Mathematical frameworks as fundamental languages of our interaction …

Sunyata In The West, David Grandy

Comparative Philosophy

I argue that sunyata, or something like it, manifested itself in early Western thought. While Plato and Aristotle resisted emptiness or nothingness, they nevertheless felt themselves obliged to venture close to its edge in order to ground their explanations of changing reality to unchanging principles. These principles (Plato’s receptacle and Aristotle’s prime matter) embody much of the indeterminancy long associated with the Mahayana understanding of sunyata. Although their function was to enable lasting (static) explanations of reality by putting change out of play, they themselves shade off toward a featureless being evocative of non-being. Moving along a somewhat …

The Social Nature Of Individual Self-Identity: Akan And Narrative Conceptions Of Personhood, Corey L. Barnes

Comparative Philosophy

Marya Schechtman has given us reasons to think that there are different questions that compose personal identity. On the one hand, there is the question of reidentification, which concerns what makes a person the same person through different time-slices. On the other hand, there is the question of characterization, which concerns the actions, experiences, beliefs, values, desires, character traits, etc. that we take to be attributable to a person over time. While leaving the former question for another work, Schechtman answers the latter question by proposing what she terms the narrative self-constitution view, whereby Schechtman claims that we account for …

Vol 7 No 1 Contents Page

Comparative Philosophy

No abstract provided.

Vol 7 No 1 Information Page

Comparative Philosophy

No abstract provided.

Vol 7 No 1 Cover Page

Comparative Philosophy

No abstract provided.

On The Signpost Principle Of Alternate Possibilities: Why Contemporary Frankfurt-Style Cases Are Irrelevant To The Free Will Debate, William Simkulet

Philosophy and Religious Studies Department Faculty Publications

This article contends that recent attempts to construct Frankfurt-style cases (FSCs) are irrelevant to the debate over free will. The principle of alternate possibilities (PAP) states that moral responsibility requires indeterminism, or multiple possible futures. Frankfurt's original case purported to demonstrate PAP false by showing an agent can be blameworthy despite not having the ability to choose otherwise; however he admits the agent can come to that choice freely or by force, and thus has alternate possibilities. Neo-FSCs attempt to show that alternate possibilities are irrelevant to explaining an agent's moral responsibility, but a successful Neo-FSC would be consistent with …

A Dispositional Account Of Gender, Jennifer Mckitrick

Department of Philosophy: Faculty Publications

This paper argues that one’s gender is partially constituted by extrinsic factors. In Sect. 2, I very briefly explain my understanding of sex, gender, and transgender. In Sect. 3, a survey recent accounts of gender as a socially constructed or conferred property, ending with Judith Butler’s idea that gender is a pattern of behavior in a social context. In Sect. 4, I suggest a modification of Butler’s idea, according to which gender is a behavioral disposition. In Sect. 5, I develop my dispositional account by responding to a worry that it is too essentialist. In Sect. 6, I defend my …

Persons As Self-Consciously Concerned Beings, Benjamin Abelson

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation is an analysis of the concept of a person. According to this analysis, persons are beings capable of being responsible for their actions, which requires possession of the capacities for self-consciousness, in the sense of critical awareness of one's first-order desires and beliefs and concern, meaning emotional investment in the satisfaction of one's desires and truth of one's beliefs. The persistence of a person over time requires uninterrupted maintenance of those capacities. This view is in conflict with the more popular account of persistence in terms of the continuity of distinctive psychological states. Furthermore, this account of personhood …

Ghosts In The Garden: Cultural Critique Through The Lens Of The Absurd, Andrew T. Catanese

Undergraduate Theses—Unrestricted

The primary lens by which I deconstruct my work is the absurd and “lucidity” of the absurd as developed by Camus in The Myth of Sisyphus. Camus’ absurd grows out of the tension between human desire for establishing order with the impossibility of doing so in a universe that continually resists our abstractions. The absurd then becomes a means to understanding the criticisms in my work of consumerism, behavior, and spaces which attempt to control or constrict people. I approach my art as an “other” or “outsider” from the system of Protestant moral dichotomy in which I grew up. …

Das Gestell And Human Autonomy: On Andrew Feenberg's Interpretation Of Martin Heidegger, Zachary Peck

Undergraduate Honors Theses

In my thesis, I examine the relationship between modern technology and human autonomy from the philosophical perspective of Martin Heidegger. He argues that the essence of modern technology is the Gestell. Often translated as ‘enframing,’ the Gestell is a mode of revealing, or understanding, being, in which all beings are revealed as, or understood as, raw materials. By revealing all beings as raw materials, we eventually understand ourselves as raw materials. I argue that this undermines human autonomy, but, unlike Andrew Feenberg, I do not believe this process is irreversible from Heidegger’s perspective. I articulate the meaning of the …

Presence-At-Hand, Eric Lyle Schultz

Graduate School of Art Theses

Abstract

The writing that follows is intended to provide a theoretical framework for the motives behind my practice. The primary concerns addressed are the reception, transmission, and physical shape of knowledge. I will discuss a human condition that exists as a byproduct of both the legacy of representation as well as the innate biology of the brain. I will argue that as a society we are governed by the residue of an extreme logic, and that this condition places severe margins on our potential for creative solutions. I will propose that our ability to create meaning is stifled by the …

The Effect Of God On The Cogito: An Examination Of Descartes' Meditations On First Philosophy, Alex Valin

Oglethorpe Journal of Undergraduate Research

In Descartes’ Meditations on First Philosophy, he claims on of his most enduring arguments, the Cogito: I think, I am. Following his argument for the Cogito, however, Descartes argues for the existence of an infinite, all powerful, all knowing God. Critiques of this argument fall into several different camps. First, that God remains a fundamental principle for Descartes’ epistemology and metaphysics. Secondly, that the inclusion of the argument for God was put in to please Church officials. Finally, that what Descartes’ terms God actually represents his own mind. In this essay, I examine Descartes’ argument for God as a fundamental …

A Necessity Of Morals, Austin Mcelrath

Featured Research

John Martin Fischer has stated that his initial motivation for his work The Metaphysics of Free Will was “to defend moral culpability from the threats of causal determinism and divine omniscience” while also asserting semi-compatibilism. Taking that a step further, the goal for my own work is to defend our need for moral culpability from a metaphysical standpoint. In this essay I will argue that ultimately there are only two possibilities when it comes to a moral-metaphysical framework, only one of which involves human culpability: either human existence has intrinsic meaning and worth, therefore giving weight to our moral decision …

Auctor In Fabula: Umberto Eco And The Intentio Of Foucault's Pendulum, Douglas Stephens Iv

Senior Honors Theses

Umberto Eco’s 1988 novel Foucault’s Pendulum weaves together a wide range of philosophical and literary threads. Many of these threads find their other ends in Eco’s nonfiction works, which focus primarily on the question of interpretation and the source of meaning. The novel, which follows three distinctly overinterpretive characters as they descend into ruin, has been read by some as a retraction or parody of Eco’s own position. However, if Foucault’s Pendulum is indeed polemical, it must be taken as an argument against the mindset which Eco has termed the “hermetic”. Through an examination of his larger theoretical body, including …

Why William Rowe’S Argument From Natural Evil Fails, Douglas Taylor

Other Graduate Scholarship

Atheists in the vein of William Rowe have put forth arguments suggesting that the presence of evil counts against the existence of God. In particular, Rowe has advanced two lines of reasoning for his position, one being taken from an actual historical case of moral evil, and one case being a hypothetical natural evil. This paper seeks to interact with the proffered fictitious case whereby Rowe contends that even nature argues against the existence of God. If it is possible to demonstrate that Rowe’s argumentation fails, namely that if a greater good can be identified in relation to his submitted …