Other Philosophy Commons^™

Comedy Is Manipulative And I Can Prove It: Laugh, Now!, Eleanor Henderson

Scripps Senior Theses

This paper examines whether comedy is a manipulative form of interaction. Through defining manipulation and establishing a practical definition of how jokes function, it applies the definition of manipulation to the performance and experience of comedy by assessing a joke's deliberate and powerful verbal structure. It closes with a brief discussion of the ethics of comedy, within context of it being a manipulative influence.

The Ethics Of Involuntary Intervention, Landyn Tipton

Williams Honors College, Honors Research Projects

This is a deep ethical analysis of the act of non-consensual intervention that discusses the distinction between voluntary and involuntary intervention and explains when it would be considered appropriate and inappropriate to intervene in someone else's life. This paper presents an argument for the right to autonomy, including specific scenarios like consensual types of intervention (psychological therapy), religious intervention (specifically involving LGBTQ conversion therapy), and situations where the person is potentially harming themselves or others. There will also be an interpretation of autonomy and the claim to authority through the lens of Utilitarianism and Kantian ethics.

A Holistic Approach To Animal Farming: Integrating Bioregionalism And Socialist Ecofeminism Within The Context Of Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations, Sarah R. Spears

Honors Undergraduate Theses

This paper addresses the harmful effects of concentrated animal feeding operations (CAFOs) within animal farming systems, including poor animal welfare, environmental damage, and environmental injustice. I argue that bioregionalism and socialist ecofeminism can help inform a holistic approach to mitigating these harms and evoke ethical and sustainable animal farming systems. Bioregionalism emphasizes local resource use, community engagement, and ecological knowledge within a specific region, while socialist ecofeminism critiques oppressive systems and seeks to uplift the viewpoints of all beings, including animals, nature, and humans of various identities. Through a scaffolded hypothetical case study informed by the CAFOs-practicing hog farms in …

An Organic Inquiry Into Teacher Experiences Of Self-Healing, Alison Davis

Antioch University Dissertations & Theses

This dissertation engages the spiritually-inspired methodology of organic inquiry to investigate how teachers practice self-healing in order to become available to students. Self-healing is a vital part of freeing up the teacher’s perceptive capacities to more deeply and fully attend to the needs of students. Self-healing work includes a variety of practices and modalities, including spiritual ones, in order to work through trauma, adversity, dis-ease, stress, and one-sidedness. Research shows that self-healing, especially in regards to mindfulness and meditation, equips teachers to confront compassion fatigue, secondary trauma, burnout, illness, and more. There is also ample evidence that training one’s attention …

Death And Grief In 21st Century America: A Literature Review On Bereavement & Attitudes Toward Death, Jordan Whitney

Honors Program Theses

In modern Western society, death has been dissected and neatly packaged like meat at the grocery store. The unsavory aspects are hidden and our discomfort around dying has turned death into a commodity. In typical consumerist fashion, we are sold the “proper way” to die and grieve as a result. Funeral homes guide us through this new experience with the goal of assisting us through our grief. While most report positive experiences with funeral directors’ services, there remains evidence of overcharging and pressuring into the purchases of unnecessary additional services. This thesis explores modern attitudes and practices towards death, grief, …

Clausewitzian Theory Of War In The Age Of Cognitive Warfare, Amber Brittain-Hale, Amber Brittain-Hale

Education Division Scholarship

We can reconceptualise warfare by contrasting Clausewitz with the modern practice of cognitive warfare, as evidenced by Ukraine’s defence methodologies. The strategic orchestration of ‘infopolitik’ and the sophisticated use of social media can shape narratives and public perception. This article revisits Clausewitz’s tenet of war as a political instrument and juxtaposes it with contemporary conflict’s multidimensional tactics. By scrutinising Ukraine’s digital and psychological warfare tactics, one may question the applicability of Clausewitz’s framework, seeking to understand if these novel dimensions of warfare compel a redefinition or an expansion of his thesis to navigate the complexities of contemporary geopolitical confrontations.

Education And The Epistemological Crisis In The Age Of Chatgpt, Casandra Silva Sibilin

Publications and Research

The emergence of ChatGPT and its ability to imitate student work has precipitated a crisis in education. Responses range from practical efforts to detect or prevent ChatGPT use to existential reflection about learning and assessment. However, the crisis is also epistemological, with educators struggling to determine what students know and fearing that student knowledge is diminishing. The educational philosophies of Socrates, Dewey, and Freire suggest that recognition of ignorance of different kinds (inquisitive, predictive, and practical)on the part of educators is uncomfortable but essential for improving the aims and methods of education. In this way, ChatGPT and the philosophy of …

Self-Inflicted Frankfurt-Style Cases And Flickers Of Freedom, Michael Robinson

Philosophy Faculty Articles and Research

According to the most popular versions of the flicker defense, Frankfurt-style cases fail to undermine the Principle of Alternative Possibilities (PAP) because agents in these cases are (directly) morally responsible not for making the decisions they make but for making these decisions on their own, which is something they could have avoided doing. Frankfurt defenders have primarily focused on trying to show that the alternative possibility of refraining from making the relevant decisions on their own is not a robust alternative, while generally granting that this alternative cannot easily be eliminated from successful cases of this sort. In a …

Encounter-Oriented Subjectivity In Levinas And Barth: Conditioned Freedom In Resistance To Ethnonationalism, Michael Laminack

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation examines philosophical and political subjectivity, or how an individual knows the world and relates to society, through a comparative analysis of the phenomenologist Emmanuel Levinas and the Christian theologian Karl Barth. Levinas and Barth share a deep structure of “encounter-oriented subjectivity,” meaning subjectivity oriented by encounter with the Other that calls into question the subject’s freedom and, in this same moment, calls the subject to concrete response. Encounter-oriented subjectivity is critical of the “unconditioned freedom” that orients liberal subjectivity and offers an alternative sense of a “passively conditioned” freedom, or a freedom always already called into question by …

Japanese-English Translation: Nishida Kitarō––“Self-Determination Of The Eternal Now” 「永遠の今の自己限定」、西田幾多郎著（昭和六年七月） (July 1931) §1 Of 4; Complete Draft (Supersedes Draft Of 2 Jan 19); Translated By Christopher Southward; Revision And Expansion Underway, Christopher Southward

Comparative Literature Faculty and Student Scholarship

Japanese-English Translation: Nishida Kitarō––“Self-Determination of the Eternal Now” (July 1931) 「永遠の今の自己限定」、西田幾多郎著（昭和六年七月）

§1 of 4; Complete Draft (Supersedes Draft of 2 Jan 2019)

Translated from the Japanese by Christopher Southward; Revision and Expansion Underway, October 2023

Śākya Mchog Ldan (1428–1507), Yaroslav Komarovski

Department of Classics and Religious Studies: Faculty Publications

gSer mdog Paṇ chen Śākya mchog ldan was an influential Tibetan scholar who developed a novel approach to the key systems of Buddhist thought and practice. While he is renowned as one of the most famous Sa skya thinkers, his approach has never become accepted as the mainstream within the Sa skya due to his espousal of the views of other-emptiness, as well as critical inquiry into the views of Sa skya paṇḍita Kun dga’ rgyal mtshan, the supreme authority of the Sa skya tradition. Besides involvement in his own Sa skya tradition, Śākya mchog ldan also maintained connection with …

Feminist Pragmatism In The Nonprofit Sector, Elise Lael Kieffer

Faculty & Staff Research and Creative Activity

Many nonprofit organizations are founded with passion and energy, rather than with expertise. Meanwhile, theorists and researchers write about that sector with distance from the day-to-day practice. This article relies on the analogy of a bicycle wheel to understand the inter-workings of the nonprofit sector, as a whole. The analogy is understood and interpreted through the philosophical lens of Feminist Pragmatism and aims to begin a conversation among and between nonprofit researchers, practitioners, educators, and recipients of services. When all are in communion, the wheel functions perfectly.

Unveiling The Tapestry Of Human Experience And Diversity: A Journey Through The Eight Domains Of Phenomenology And Research Methods, Tito Dimas Atmawijaya

The Qualitative Report

In this comprehensive book review, the author explores Eight Domains of Phenomenology and Research Methods by Henrik Gert Larsen, delving into the intricate world of phenomenology and its applications in research. The review critically examines Larsen's insightful exploration of the eight domains, providing an analysis of each domain's significance and the research methodologies associated with them. The review also highlights Larsen's expertise in phenomenology, as he skillfully guides readers through the complexities of understanding lived experiences and the intricate interplay between researcher and participant. By exploring the strengths and limitations of Larsen's work, the review offers valuable insights into the …

Flickering The W-Defense, Michael Robinson

Philosophy Faculty Articles and Research

One way to defend the Principle of Alternative Possibilities (PAP) against Frankfurt-style cases is to challenge the claim that agents in these scenarios are genuinely morally responsible for what they do. Alternatively, one can grant that agents are morally responsible for what they do in these cases but resist the idea that they could not have done otherwise. This latter strategy is known as the flicker defense of PAP. In an argument he calls the W-Defense, David Widerker adopts the former approach. I argue that, while Widerker's argument does a poor job showing that these agents are not morally responsible …

Being Curious With Secrecy, Clare Stevens, Elspeth Van Veeren, Brian Rappert, Owen D. Thomas

Secrecy and Society

This article contributes to ongoing attempts to broaden out theorizations of secrecy from an intentional and willful act of concealment to a cultural and structural process. We do so by fostering a conversation between secrecy and curiosity. This conversation is enabled through a review of central themes in secrecy studies and curiosity studies, but also through an examination of a collaboration between the science center “We the Curious” and a network of academic researchers. In doing so, this article makes a case for the benefits of paying more attention to curiosity as a means of facilitating a multifaceted understanding of …

A Calvinistic Divine Glory Defense, Stephen Thomas Irby

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Calvinists, because they embrace the view that God ordains whatsoever comes to pass, cannot appeal to libertarian free will while trying to defend theism against the problem of evil. However, they can appeal – and, in fact, some have appealed – to God’s desire to be glorified to account for why He has ordained the evils of our world. This is the divine glory defense, and my dissertation aims to develop a version of it. After spending some time framing my defense in the context of the rest of the literature on the problem of evil, an account is provided …

Queer Crises: Movements From Queerness And Feelings Of White Religion In The United States, Austin Williams Miller

Communication ETDs

Anchored by contemporary crises surrounding queer and trans people in the United States, I employ movements from queerness within an affective queer phenomenological framework to understand how arrangements of “white religion” (Schaefer, 2015, p. 63), a process whereby U.S. American Christian forms escape ideology into religious affective economies in the United States, relegate queer people “to the background… to sustain a certain direction” (Ahmed, 2006, p. 31). I assemble a queer rhetorical context analyzing white religious space in documentary film, secular sexual regulation through contemporary U.S. legal contexts around marriage, and settler colonial Christian nationalist political imaginations to critique how …

Daoist Freedom, Psychological Hygiene, And Social Criticism, Yun Tang

Comparative Philosophy

The article explores the inner logic and defining features of Daoist freedom. It argues that Daoist freedom can be meaningfully understood as psychological hygiene, and it suggests that Daoist xuan-jie (懸解) can be rendered possible only if one can rid oneself of intensional suffering—an idea ultimately inspired by Friedrich Nietzsche. This comparative approach enables the article contribute to the received way of understanding Daoist freedom by stressing its dialectics: by being at ease with one’s social and political environment, Daoist freedom demands social criticism, calling for room for people to be able to act spontaneously so that …

The Dangers Of Re-Colonization: Possible Boundaries Between Latin American Philosophy And Indigenous Philosophy From Latin America, Jorge Sanchez-Perez

Comparative Philosophy

The field of Latin American philosophy has established itself as a relevant subfield of philosophical inquiry. However, there might be good reasons to consider that our focus on the subfield could have distracted us from considering another subfield that, although it might share some geographical proximity, does not share the same historical basic elements. In this paper, I argue for a possible and meaningful conceptual difference between Latin American Philosophy and Indigenous philosophy produced in Latin America. First, I raise what I call Mariátegui’s Solidarity Challenge to show that there might be some neglectful treatment of the philosophical views of …

Desc(Art) Or The 21st Century Cartesian Meditator, Andreea Mihali

Comparative Philosophy

In this paper I argue that the continued relevance of Descartes' philosophy for present-day concerns can be demonstrated by bringing to bear on his Meditations state-of-the-art developments in Informal logic and Argumentation theory, specifically Leo Groarke’s approach to multimodal arguments. I show that the meditative exercises that Descartes viewed as preconditions of establishing the metaphysical tenets of his system can be recast in present-day form using technological tools and media that we are familiar with. We will see that, due to the different historical and cultural contexts, the 21st century Cartesian meditating process can be: 1) technology-enhanced (a customizable, multimodal …