Philosophy Commons^™

Competition And Community In Marx’S Alienation Theory: Addressing 21st Century Social Isolation Through A Laclauian Lens, Brett J. Zimmerman

Theses

Capitalism reorients human priorities by necessitating socio-economic competition and tying the preeminent priority of survival to the rate at which one accumulates material resources. The orientation of wage as the only means to survival has replaced the need for the working class to form tribes, build inter-group solidarity, and engage in their communities, resulting in a less fulfilling society. Marx is traditionally conceptualized as a political or economic thinker, and while much of his political and economic thought will be useful supplementary material, in Section I, I will be viewing Marx through a more interpersonal lens. The section will take …

Pengantar Dari Editor Vol. 16 No. 1 (April) 2026, Rahayu Surtiati

Paradigma: Jurnal Kajian Budaya

This edition of Paradigma: Jurnal Kajian Budaya Vol. 16 No. 1 (2026) presents a range of studies that affirm culture as a dynamic domain continuously shaped by processes of negotiation, transformation, and reinterpretation across diverse social, historical, and political contexts. The articles explore the creation and innovation of artistic practices as representations of collective identity, the dialectics between preservation and renewal of tradition, and the strategic role of culture in national development. In addition, issues of historiography and colonial legacy are examined through postcolonial perspectives that offer new readings of Indonesian art, while discussions on values and social structures address …

Reading The Room: A Structural Account Of Constraint-Based Processing And Its Limits In Artificial Systems, Griselda Poe

Publications and Research

This paper does not introduce a new structure.

It makes explicit a structural relation implied but not directly stated in prior work.

Human interpersonal processing is grounded in the co-presence of internal constraint and dependency.

These do not exist as separable components.

They form a single structural condition.

This paper shows that what is commonly described as “reading the room” is not a unitary function.

It differs across configurations in how this condition is processed.

In EF configurations, the effect of this condition is expressed through translation into self-return: outputs are evaluated in terms of how they return to the …

Extreme Cf: A Structural Account Of Processing Absence And Category Absence In Cf-Foregrounded Configurations, Griselda Poe

Publications and Research

Existing frameworks of cognition and intervention assume that processing occurs, meaning is available, and evaluation can be applied.

This paper describes a configuration in which this assumption does not hold.

In CF-foregrounded processing where modulation is absent, processing occurs only when coherence is satisfied. When coherence is not satisfied, processing does not occur. Under this condition, no representation is generated, no evaluation applies, and no action selection is produced.

Within single-layer cognitive models, EF and CF are not distinguished. Within such models, CF does not exist as a condition.

This configuration has not been represented as a category within existing …

The Story Game: Dissuading The Abolition Of Man With Narrative Intellectual Virtue & The Hunger Games, Camille Bewley

Harding Undergraduate Research Conference

Relativism in modern America is leading society toward the fruition of C.S. Lewis’ warning of the abolition of man. This nation once founded on freedom inches closer to the dystopia which Suzanne Collins depicts in her Hunger Games series. This paper recognizes the growing need for humanity to realign with truth and universal values, first by reorienting itself to narratives. Through intellectual virtues of understanding and prudence as defined by Aristotle, society can translate stories into their inherent purpose; seeing truth and reality within the bottle of imagination. Stories contain the answers, narratives are the way humanity subscribes to reality. …

In The Shadow Of Justice: How The Mythos Of The Batman Balances Major Ethical Theories In His Pursuit Of Ideal Justice, Camille Bewley

Ex Sapientia Loqui

For more than eighty years, the Batman character has exhibited a unique synthesis of major theories of Justice, and through his experiences as a vigilante, exemplified the pursuit of the ideal virtue of Justice. Because virtue requires a lived example to be understood, Batman is one of the foundational stories fulfilling this need for one of collective society’s prominent pillars. Within the horror of Gotham City–a hyperbolic, fictional representation of urban corruption–Batman’s actions as a vigilante, walking a tightrope to maintain morality even above the law might not only be justified, but necessary. The Batman’s nature, balancing ethical theories and …

Understanding The Alternative Normative Concepts, Dewitt W. Spiller

Theses

Matti Eklund's challenge to normative realism in Choosing Normative Concepts (2017) turns on the possibility of "alternative normative concepts"—concepts that play the same normative role as ours but have different extensions. Eklund argues that the ardent realist cannot express what he calls “the further question” about which concepts to use without either trivializing the answer or changing the subject. I argue that this challenge rests on an unstated assumption about how normative concepts are differentiated. I call this the Fragility Assumption. What I seek to show is that this assumption is not obligatory; there are live views of normative concepts …

Inequality And Well-Being, Sarah E. Boslaugh

Theses

Human well-being has been a topic of interest to philosophers at least since the time of Aristotle, and well-being has also been a core concern of social scientists since the birth of the discipline in the late 18^th century. Some theories of well-being include economic inequality as a factor, and multiple ways to measure this factor have been developed; as with well-being, there is no single best measure of economic inequality and the choice of which measure to use may be based on both theoretical and practical reasons. I argue that income inequality should always be included as a …

Pre-Experiential Constraint Reconstruction: A Structural Account Of The Prior Layer In Dialogue With Jung, Griselda Poe

Publications and Research

Experiences commonly described as pre-experiential memory—such as immediate recognition, familiarity without prior exposure, and the sense of "already knowing"—are typically interpreted as the retrieval of stored content. However, this storage-based account does not provide a structurally consistent explanation of how such content is preserved prior to experience or reactivated in a form that aligns with present input.

This paper extends the three-layer cognitive architecture developed in prior work in this series (Poe, 2026n), in which cognition operates across Core processing, Modulation, and an operationally inaccessible Prior layer that supplies constraints to all processing.

This paper proposes an alternative account in …

Patriotism, Philia, And Stereotyping During World War Ii: Correspondence Between Black Composers, Selise Phillips, Joi Carr

Seaver College Research And Scholarly Achievement Symposium

The 20th century was a monumental time for Black composers, especially for those in the UK. Rudolph Dunbar was the first black musician to perform at Royal Albert Hall in London, England. During this time, correspondence between him and William Grant Still, a famous black composer based in America, exists. Still’s rhetorical choices in these letters demonstrate the attitudes of these composers, specifically Still, and how these choices reflect the success of Dunbar’s career. Still, whose compositions started gaining traction in the 1930s, often praised Dunbar for his achievements. These letters all take place during World War II and during …

Statistical Inference Is Not Moral Reasoning: The Case Against Ai On Hospital Ethics Boards, Elan J. Haronian

Seaver College Research And Scholarly Achievement Symposium

As generative AI becomes more integrated in healthcare, it seems inevitable that AI will eventually be used on hospital ethics committees. However, before implementation, their roles need careful consideration. Although AI promises to reduce costs, increase efficiency, and reduce human workloads, there are important ways in which it is limited, especially when human emotion and connection are crucial, as in clinical ethics boards.

In this paper, I highlight several problems preventing AI from being useful on hospital ethics boards. These include issues of opaque reasoning (the “black box” problem), liability, transparency, privacy, and consent. While there are proposed frameworks for …

The Core-Modulation Architecture (Cma): A Structural Overview Of Hallucination As Structural Mismatch, Griselda Poe

Publications and Research

Hallucination is defined not as factual error but as a structural failure of alignment across target, layer, and constraint.

Within the Core-Modulation Architecture (CMA), cognition proceeds through layered processing and requires layer-specific termination conditions. Hallucination arises when Modulation-level termination is registered as completion while Core-level resolution has not occurred, producing structurally ungrounded but locally coherent outputs.

Detection is therefore structural rather than content-based, focusing on layer mismatch and termination failure.

This document presents a minimal structural account of hallucination within the CMA framework.

Remixing Labor: The Lockean Proviso In The Age Of Ai, Xavier Schultze

Midwest Ethics Symposium

No abstract provided.

Disconnection Capital: The Privilege To Unplug, Wishy Kane

Midwest Ethics Symposium

No abstract provided.

Sticky Agencies: How Gamification And Enshittification Trap And Exploit Us, Frankie Knuckles

Midwest Ethics Symposium

No abstract provided.

The Hypocrisy Of The Wizards—A Proposal To Correct Incentives In Higher Education Loan Financing, Caden Benedict

School of Public Policy Capstones

This paper explores the origins of the student loan debt crisis and proposes tying university incentives to graduates' repayment plans and disclosing median earnings for degrees before students apply. Specifically, while there are numerous factors explaining why the price of education has increased dramatically since the 1970s, this paper proposes solutions that will specifically target university moral hazards by requiring universities fund: (1) the current subsidies to federal student loan repayments under income-driven plans as the House of Representatives intended before the Senate removed "risk-sharing," and (2) bankruptcy law discharge amounts. Moreover, requiring universities to disclose the median earnings of …

A Transcendental Phenomenological Study Of The Lived Experiences Of Christians Who Have Experienced Divine Healing And The Role Of Relational Spirituality, Dora Hicks

Doctoral Dissertations and Projects

Divine healing has been described as miraculous and supernatural, attributed to a divine entity, and other methods. Pathways have varied from fasting, praying, worshiping, the Holy Spirit, Scripture, faith, hope, trusting, surrendering, and having a relationship with God. Perceptions and understandings of God, as influenced by religious and spiritual beliefs, are referred to as relational spirituality grounded in attachment theory, which may lead to viewing God as an attachment figure, influencing perceptions of self and others. This qualitative transcendental phenomenological study explores the lived experiences of Christians who have experienced divine healing and the role of relational spirituality. Delimitations are …

Cultivating Empathy Through Exhibit Design To Engage Students In The Ai And Handheld Tech Era - Three Case Studies, Angela R. Whitlock

The Primary Source

This article examines how exhibition environments can foster empathy, participation, and meaningful connection among student visitors within an increasingly digital and technologically mediated cultural landscape. Through a comparative multi-site case study, it analyzes three exhibition environments that engage students through immersive design, participatory technology, and interpretive framing: the African American Military History Museum in Hattiesburg, Mississippi; the Ulysses S. Grant exhibit space within Mitchell Memorial Library at Mississippi State University in Starkville, Mississippi; and the in-progress redesign of the Southern Literary Trail exhibit, also located within Mitchell Memorial Library and scheduled for completion within the next year. While each site …

Get Busy Living: Leaping Out Of Confinement With Kierkegaard In The Shawshank Redemption, Christian Wilken

Journal of Religion & Film

This article offers a Kierkegaardian reading of The Shawshank Redemption (1994), arguing that the film functions not as a miracle narrative but as a cinematic enactment of existential theology. While existing scholarship frequently interprets Shawshank through biblical typology or Foucauldian notions of incarceration, few consider how the film dramatizes Kierkegaard’s categories of anxiety, despair, and the leap of faith. Shawshank presents prison as more than a space of punishment—it becomes a refuge from the “dizziness of freedom,” a structured escape from the terrifying burden of possibility. Brooks’s suicide tragically embodies what Kierkegaard calls the “despair of weakness,” the inability to …

Sapientia Ex Machina: Engaging Ai As A Meaning-Making Tool For Philosophical Practice, Austin M. Pritchett

SPARK Symposium Presentations

This paper sets out to examine whether a Large Language Model can serve as a genuine interlocutor in philosophical inquiry. With a grounding in the phenomenology of Maurice Merleau-Ponty, and in conversation with other works in philosophy on AI, language, and the mind, the author determines the extent to which an AI's contributions to conversation can be said to participate in understanding and meaning-making rather than merely simulate it, thereby making evident the extent to which it is useful in philosophical practice.