Philosophy Commons^™

Care Ethics, Disability, And Public Policy, Piper Gibson

Honors Theses and Capstones

No abstract provided.

Religious Naturalisms, Carol W. White

Other Faculty Research and Publications

This article focuses on recent developments in religious naturalism in the twenty-first century, building on Jerome Stone’s 2008 study of its resurgence in the mid-twentieth century. I introduce religious naturalism as a synthesis of naturalistic ideas that often depart from traditional forms of religious thinking, defining it as a capacious, ecological religious worldview grounded in the observational conviction that nature is ultimate. I also describe different models of religious naturalism, focusing on the key ideas found in the influential publications of contemporary religious naturalists (e.g., Ursula Goodenough, Donald Crosby, Loyal Rue, among others). While acknowledging specific points of emphasis, I …

Narrative Value And Well-Being, Franchesca Fu

Scripps Senior Theses

Some philosophers think that one’s well-being increases when one obtains more objective goods, and one of those objective goods under debate is one’s narrative. In this thesis, I examine how one’s narrative can increase one’s well-being by itself by drawing from David Velleman’s argument for narrative value. After finding Velleman’s argument compelling, I clarify what a narrative is, including how it has an objective and subjective component. I then explore what criteria are necessary for one’s narrative to make a positive contribution to one’s well-being by presenting Connie Rosati’s argument that one’s narrative needs to be chosen or internalized, affirming, …

America’S Presidential Crisis Of Legitimacy: How The Electoral College Became Obsolete And How We Can Fix It, Julia Rose Foodman

Scripps Senior Theses

The goal of this thesis is to critique the current American Presidential electoral system, the Electoral College, and to show what an alternative could potentially mean for the American people. This paper seeks to answer the following questions: What are the main arguments for the Electoral College, why are they troubling, and how can we mend American Presidential elections for the greater purposes of political equality, democracy, and freedom? To do so, core arguments made by conservative pundits in favor of the Electoral College are outlined in order to bring attention to their logical, political, and moral inconsistencies. The inequalities …

Diagrams In Intra-Configurational Analysis, Marco Panza, Gianluca Longa

MPP Published Research

In this paper we would like to attempt to shed some light on the way in which diagrams enter into the practice of ancient Greek geometrical analysis. To this end, we will first distinguish two main forms of this practice, i.e., trans-configurational and intra-configurational. We will then argue that, while in the former diagrams enter in the proof essentially in the same way (mutatis mutandis) they enter in canonical synthetic demonstrations, in the latter, they take part in the analytic argument in a specific way, which has no correlation in other aspects of classical geometry. In intra-configurational analysis, diagrams represent …

Analysis, Constructions And Diagrams In Classical Geometry, Marco Panza

MPP Published Research

Greek ancient and early modern geometry necessarily uses diagrams. Among other things, these enter geometrical analysis. The paper distinguishes two sorts of geometrical analysis and shows that in one of them, dubbed “intra-confgurational” analysis, some diagrams necessarily enter as outcomes of a purely material gesture, namely not as result of a codifed constructive procedure, but as result of a free-hand drawing.

Ten Moons: Consciousness And Intentionality In The Alambanapariksa And Its Commentaries, Jay L. Garfield

Philosophy: Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Retributive Justice: A Review Of The Ethical Considerations Surrounding Capital Punishment And Solitary Confinement As Used In United States Correctional Facilities, Adelaide Marie Laros

Honors Papers

The purpose of this paper is to argue the use of capital punishment and segregated housing throughout United States correctional facilities constitute human rights violations through torture. Regardless of the reason for their application, these penalties are physically and psychologically damaging, inconsistently assigned, costly, and, in their most potent form, fatal. As such, I advocate for the national abolishment of these practices. In their place, I support enacting policies that promote education and reformation over punishment. My aim in making this argument is to encourage a transition away from the popular American judicial ideology grounded in retribution toward a framework …

Extending Animal Welfare Science To Include Wild Animals, Walter Veit, Heather Browning

Animal Sentience

Ng’s (2016) target article built on his earlier work advocating a science of welfare biology (Ng 1995). Although there were problems with the models proposed in Ng’s original paper regarding the balance of pleasure and suffering for wild animals, his call for a science of wild animal welfare was a sound one. This does not require a new discipline but just an extension of the existing frameworks and methods of animal welfare science to include wild animals.

(2021) The Story Circle As A Practice Of Democratic, Critical Inquiry, Natalie M. Fletcher, Maughn Rollins Gregory, Peter Shea, Ariel Sykes

Collected Papers of Maughn Rollins Gregory

The authors of this essay have been committed practitioners and teachers of Philosophy for Children in a variety of educational settings, from pre-schools through university doctoral programs and in adult community and religious education programs. The promotion of critical thinking has always been a primary goal of this movement. But communal practices of critical thinking need to include other kinds of democratic conversation that prompt us to see others as full-fledged persons and to be curious about howour being in community with them makes growth and self-correction possible. As we continue to experiment and innovate in new contexts we see …

“Emotion, Executive Dysfunction, And Agency: Can Emotional Disability Impair An Agent’S Likelihood Of Virtue?” In Faith & Virtue Formation: Christian Philosophy In Aid Of Becoming Good, Edited By Adam C. Pelser And W. Scott Cleveland, Kevin Timpe

University Faculty Publications and Creative Works

No abstract provided.

The Role Of Organizational Socialization On The Ethical Orientation Of Male Police Officers, Megan Marie Bessey

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

A gap in literature exists surrounding years of service, training, and ethical attitudes within the law enforcement industry. The proposed hypothesis was that years of service in law enforcement and hours of in-service training were interactively related to an officer's ethical attitudes as related to ethical orientation. The purpose of this study was to examine organizational socialization within the law enforcement profession, specifically as demonstrated through the interaction effects of factors relating to ethical orientation and scores measured by the Ethics Position Questionnaire of male Northern Kentucky and Southern Oregon police officers. The major theoretical propositions for this study came …

Crisis Mitigation And Ethical Decision-Making In A Nonurban Community A Social Work Perspective, Lisa Marie Woolston

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

While social workers respond to human and natural disasters daily, they also respond to other crises equally important. The 2019-2020 global health pandemic has required social workers to prepare for the unknown. Social workers must prepare for those events by planning, training, and knowing agency policies, and procedures (formal rules). This capstone study's objective was explored through a qualitative action research methodology discovering ways social workers use ethics for decision-making during crisis mitigation in a nonurban community. A biomedical ethical decision-making model, along with the National Association of Social Workers Code of Ethics was utilized to understand what guides social …

Existential Reactions To Modernity: An Analysis Of Lovecraft's Nihilistic Cosmicism & Dostoevsky's Christian Existentialism, Olivia Maikisch

Master’s Theses

Literary representations of existentialism demonstrate the movement’s efficacy as a tool for ideological and personal exploration, particularly as it pertains to issues of identity-formation, the Other, and rising concerns about modernized life. Despite their differences in genre, location, and time period, both H.P. Lovecraft and Fyodor Dostoevsky in their fiction greatly emphasize facets of existentialism as a response to their cultural concerns about modernity. They highlight complex relationships between socio-political concerns, philosophy, and literature in their different uses of existentialist themes. This study places both Dostoevsky’s Christian existentialism and Lovecraft’s nihilistic cosmicism within the existing spectrum of existential thought. The …

Non-Indian Reservations, Joshua Matthew Rosenau

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

This thesis is a skeptical treatment of the logical distinctions presumed to exist between “Indian” and “non-Indian” people. Despite representing 99 percent of the U.S. population, “non-Indians” represent a legal identity which has no explicit definition. The basis for the U.S. Supreme Court’s decisions regarding non-Indians and Indians rests not on any objective, empirical or logical criterion or proof, but rather on the “assumption of a ‘guardian-ward’ status. This thesis investigates this assumption, and recommends that we suspend judgment on whether the difference between “Indians” and “non-Indians” can be determined either by logical argument or by legal assumption.

With Language In Mind, Jill De Villiers

Philosophy: Faculty Publications

Does language have a role to play in conceptual development, and if so, what is that role? Understanding the contents of another person’s mind parallels the development in early childhood of mental state language. Does the conceptual understanding get reflected in and drive the language development, or does the language allow the representation of propositional attitudes like belief? The paper reviews the evidence and sets up the terms of the debate, focusing on the syntax for mental states. It also asks whether syntax development could serve as a scaffold for other concepts that are described by propositions rather than labels. …

Assessing Dual Language Learners Of Spanish And English: Development Of The Quils: Es, Jill De Villiers, Aquiles Iglesias, Roberta Golinkoff, Kathy Hirsh-Pasek, Mary Sweig Wilson, Ratna Nandakumar

Philosophy: Faculty Publications

Introduction and objectives

Developing a language screener for Dual Language Learners presents numerous challenges. We discuss possible solutions for theoretical and methodological problems often encountered in the development of such a test and illustrate possible solutions using a newly developed language screener for Dual Language Learners.

Materials and methods

The process for developing, validating and norming the screener is also offered as a potential model for the development of other assessments for Dual Language Learners throughout the world. The twelve types of subtests are in three categories: Vocabulary, Syntax, and Process.

Results and conclusions

Results from the Tryout and Norming …

Political Justificationism: A More Realistic Epistemology Of Political Disagreement, Randolph Jay Carlson

Dissertations

Disagreement is probably the most salient feature of our contemporary political environment. This project aims to examine political disagreements from the perspective of the recent discussions of the epistemology of disagreement more generally. Some, known as conciliationists, argue that when confronted with a disagreement with someone who is equally knowledgeable and well-informed as you are on the issue (known as an "epistemic peer"), one should become substantially less confident in that antecedently held belief. While some have tried to straightforwardly apply the conciliationist approach to political disagreements, I argue that such an approach makes us vulnerable to significant cognitive biases …

On The Manifold Meaning Of Letting-Be In Reiner Schürmann, Ian Alexander Moore

Philosophy Faculty Works

No abstract provided.

Heidegger, Our Monstrous Site: On Reiner Schürmann’S Reading Of The Beiträge, Ian Alexander Moore, Francesco Guercio

Philosophy Faculty Works

No abstract provided.