Philosophy Commons^™

"I Don't Want To Have A Weird Relationship With You, So I'M Trying": Relational Turning Points And Trajectories Of Ex-Lds Children And Their Active Lds Parents, Jared Worwood

Undergraduate Honors Capstone Projects

Ex-LDS individuals face a unique and often turbulent time in their relationship with their parent if the individual decides to leave the LDS Church. To explore this phenomena, we investigated the turning points and relational trajectories of ex-LDS children and their interactions with their active LDS parent. Thirty emerging adult children were interviewed using the retrospective interviewing technique (RIT). Through turning point analysis, we identified 14 turning points: (1) Discussions of values and beliefs, (2) decrease in church participation, (3) moving out, (4) physical proximity, (5) critical family events, (6) parent realizations, (7) sibling events, (8) romantic life events, (9) …

A Dane's Philosophical Attack And A Monk's Ladder: Comparing Kierkegaard's Philosophical Fragment And St. John Climacus' Ladder Of Divine Ascent, Chasen David Robbins

Undergraduate Honors Capstone Projects

Soren Kierkegaard's Philosophical Fragments and Concluding Unscientific Postscript have been extremely impactful in 20th century Western theological and philosophical thought. In a similar manner, St. John Klimakos, from whom Kierkegaard derives the pseudonym Johannes Climacus, who wrote The Ladder of Divine Ascent, is one of the most "studied, copied, and translated" books in Eastern Christendom. Johannes Climacus, the pseudonym for the two Kierkegaard works above, is a theological/philosophical opponent to Hegelian thought. St. John Klimakos, a real person, is a 6th century monk who hopes to assist monks on their journey to God with a manual about the thirty …

Ethical Problems With Plastic In The Ocean, Brennan Cotter

Senior Theses

In the year 2018 this paper argues that plastic use and waste is destroying our oceans and that we should address the problem by fully adopting the principle and practices of sustainability. The first section outlines the advent of our plastic disposable culture. The second section gives evidence of how plastic waste is negatively affecting marine life. The third section draws from literature in environmental philosophy to develop the concept of sustainability, and the concluding section outlines several steps we can take as individuals and nations to practice sustainability.

A Consideration Of Deontological Approaches To Theodicy, Gregory Zaloom

Philosophy

Responses to the problem of evil have traditionally been formulated in terms of a consequentialist moral system: the basic strategy has been to claim that evils in the world (like human suffering) are justified by greater goods that they bring about (or greater goods to which they are concomitant). Recently several philosophers have challenged the effectiveness of this strategy, arguing that theodicy would be better served by a strategy that appeals primarily to deontological considerations: perhaps, for example, God has obligations or duties whose fulfillment requires him to permit the human suffering that we observe. This paper explores two distinct …

The Need For Autonomy Promoting Sex Education, Mackenzie R. Darling

Philosophy

This thesis examines the current state of sex education in the United States and

how our society is failing students by not providing them with the knowledge and tools needed to be fully autonomous and healthy sexual beings. By exploring what it means to be a holistically healthy sexual being, and what is meant by ‘sexual health’ in general, a criterion for a good sex education can be established. This criterion enables a critique of America’s two primary sex education programs in use: Abstinence-Only Sex Education and Comprehensive Sex Education. After fully examining what comprises each, as well as their …

Perceiving Live Improvisation In The Performing Arts, Aili W. Bresnahan

Books and Book Chapters by University of Dayton Faculty

This chapter will explore the ways that live improvisational performances by professional-level actors, musicians, and dancers, take place at both cognitive and sub-cognitive levels in ways that are relevant for understanding perception and appreciation of the performing arts. First, evidence from cognitive science will be used to show that improvising, as in a dance or a music jam session or a scene in theatre, may involve physical responses that occur before we are conscious of the event to which we are responding. Second, this chapter will demonstrate how understanding these cognitive processes can help us to pinpoint why live improvisational …

Villains, Morality, And Redemption: A Content Analysis Of Children’S Movies, Iqra Ishaq

Senior Honors Projects

Research on children’s movies has yielded important findings on messaging about gender, race, ethnicity, sexuality, (dis)ability, mental illness, aging, and even death. All of this research has recognized the important role children’s movies play in children’s upbringing and informal education. Not only do children’s movies reflect the commonly-held values of the time, but they impart these values to their audience. Children, as the target audience of these movies, are extremely susceptible to absorbing these values and messages.

My research examines what messages children’s movies impart about villains. It includes a content-analysis of 80 full-length animated movies released by Disney, DreamWorks, …

Justice According To Reinhold Niebuhr And Gustavo Gutiérrez, Rebecca L. Miller

Honors Theses

Reinhold Niebuhr and Gustavo Gutiérrez were two influential theologians. Niebuhr was a Protestant neo-orthodox theologian and Gutiérrez was a Catholic liberation theologian. Both tackled the theological topics of justice and reformation. Niebuhr and Gutiérrez came to similar conclusions on these topics although they shared no explicit connections. Despite this, these two thinkers are not widely compared in scholarship. There is an academic tradition of treating Catholicism and Protestantism separately. This tradition could explain why the similarities between the two are overlooked. This essay explores the beliefs of Niebuhr and Gutiérrez on justice and reformation to demonstrate the similarities and argue …

Virtual Existence And Its Ambiguities: How Postphenomenology Of Technology Clarifies Our Situation In A Digital World., David Karlo King Ii

Honors Theses

For many contemporary western societies, digital technology has become a pervasive aspect of the day-to-day lives of many individuals, and a large philosophical conversation has resulted around how the use of such technologies changes our lives. Postphenomenology, a relatively recent philosophical development, offers a distinct approach to discussing technology from a practical, situated orientation. While this approach has roots in phenomenologists like Martin Heidegger and Maurice Merleau-Ponty, it attempts a more contingent and empirical project that more thoroughly discusses the existential implications of human/technology relationships. In this paper, I trace the roots of postphenomenology in the works of Heidegger and …

An Evaluation Of A Biometric Enabled Credit Card For Providing High Authenticity Identity Proofing During The Transaction Authentication Process, Laura F. Poe

All-Inclusive List of Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Credit card fraud has continued to grow despite efforts to protect financial data from data breaches of financial institutions. Data breaches of financial transactional records over the past decade have impacted millions of U.S. consumers, resulting in decreased consumer confidence in security. Banking institutions losing money due to fraud are forced to raise interest rates and increase fees to their cardholders. The costs of fraud are passed to the banking institution’s customers to offset the losses. The requisite to detect and eliminate fraud before it occurs is mutually beneficial to both the banking institution and cardholders. Credit card companies continue …

A Defense Of The Resonating Role Account Of Meaning In Life, Gabriel Bruguier

Department of Philosophy: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

The primary contribution of this dissertation is the development and defense of a novel subjectivist account of meaning in life—the Resonating Role Account (RRA). I argue that ‘meaning in life’ is an evaluative phrase applied when a subject’s pursues a unique social and/or natural role well, when the role(s) resonate with her, and when they maintain a minimum balance of her attention.

A defense of subjectivism over its competitors—objectivism and hybrid theory— is the second main contribution of the dissertation. These two theories are rejected on the grounds that they are not responsive to a subject’s central concerns. The arguments …

Trace., Kcj Szwedzinski

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Trace utilizes autoethnography to investigate aspects of Judaism to discover how one decides what to embrace, embody, or deny from inherited legacies. Autoethnography attempts to combine quantitative and qualitative data in order to systematically analyze and describe personal experience. The artist acting as Ba’alei Kushiah, or question bearer, uses Talmudic philosophy as a methodology and approach to art making. This research is self-referential; using Jewish thought to ask questions about Judaism. Judaism, often existing in an in between place with outward characteristics that reflect regional influences, facilitates a dialogue about whether there are relative or absolute delineations within and between …

"On The Contrary, Love", Bronson Roseboro

A Midwestern Review: A Magazine of the Arts and Issues at DePauw University

No abstract provided.

Living As A Dying Child: A Gadamerian Analysis Of The Poetry Of Mattie J. T. Stepanek, Corinne Ann Settecase-Wu

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Yearly, approximately 500,000 children live with life-limiting conditions in the United States; 50,000 die. Yet, details regarding children’s days of living as dying are unknown. The aim of this qualitative hermeneutic study is to gain understanding of the phenomenon of living as a dying child. A Gadamerian-inspired approach was implemented to underpin the study, and to analyze poetic text to address the research question: What is it to be living as a dying child? The text sample included 499 poems written by Mattie J. T. Stepanek, a dying child. The Settecase-Wu Conceptual Guide was developed and implemented to ensure accuracy …

Imagined Futures: Feminist Science Studies In An Era Of Climate Change Denial, Emily K. Crandall

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

What space is there for critical approaches to science in a context where the authority of science to say anything meaningful, or to prescribe, appears to be somewhat tenuous—in other words, in a moment of rampant climate change denial? To answer this question against the backdrop of the common refrain that the problem is one of capitalism vs. the climate (e.g. Naomi Klein 2014), I examine cases where debates about science, economistic organizational arrangements, and political clashes between neoliberals and environmentalists come together, while insisting on the view, following critical engagements with the sciences, that the sciences and their societies …

Queerness, Witchcraft, And Embodied Presence: Aesthetic Knowings Of What A Body Can Do, Megan Bigelow

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Taking as a point of entry the critique of representation and affirming the limitations of the cuts that language makes, this capstone project explores the imbrications and assemblages between Foucault’s concept of subjugated knowledges, witchcraft and other body-based ways of knowing and being, and the consciousness of non-human forms such as plants and through the framework of non-representational theory, process philosophies, aesthetics, queerness, and the concept of difference itself.

Since such theories themselves are living, breathing entities, this capstone project explores the ideological split that has occurred between sacred and secular beliefs, moving through different figures such as nuns and …

Sexual Violation, Feminism, And Foucault: Against A Confessional Politics Of Truth, Amber M. Chiacchieri

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

After many decades of feminist struggle, victims of sexual violation finally have the (relative) freedom to speak about their experiences in different venues to diverse audiences; however, they continue to be silenced, spoken over, and spoken for. While scholars and activists maintain close attention to the content of what survivors say and the means by which their speech is suppressed, there is less interrogation into the power relationships that structure the conditions through which this speech is made possible. This approach, sometimes referred to as “Foucauldian discourse analysis,” is associated with the French post-structuralist philosopher Michel Foucault. Foucault argued that …

Basic-Acceptance Teleosemantics, Esteban Withrington

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

I propose an approach to naturalize semantics that combines the use-theory of meaning with teleosemantics. More specifically, I combine Horwich’s claim that the meanings of words are engendered by the acceptance of basic sentences that govern their deployment with the teleosemantic model, developed by Millikan, Papineau and Neander, according to which the meanings of symbols are related to functions determined by the history of their use and of the underlying biological mechanisms responsible for it.

Horwich’s account is general enough to offer plausible explanations of the meanings of all kinds of words and provides a plausible explanation of how meanings …

Nonstate Actors And International Law: Just War Theory Or The Universal Declaration Of Human Rights?, Jason Lee Mitchell

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

There is a debate taking place within the global war on terror (GWT), and its legal and moral parameters are established by two basic arguments. The first is that “Citizens who associate themselves with the military arm of the enemy government, and with its aid, guidance and direction enter this country bent on hostile acts are enemy belligerents within the meaning of the Hague Convention and the law of war” (Ex parte Quirin, 37). The second is that an “Enemy combatant” is a general category that subsumes two sub-categories: lawful and unlawful combatants. The conclusion as it currently stands is …

Neo-Daoism In Stanford Encyclopedia Of Philosophy, Alan Kam Leung Chan

Research Collection College of Integrative Studies

The term “Neo-Daoism” (or “Neo-Taoism”) seeks to capture the focal development in early medieval Chinese philosophy, roughly from the third to the sixth century C.E. Chinese sources generally identify this development as Xuanxue, or “Learning (xue) in the Profound (xuan).”