Philosophy Commons^™

Cat Metamorfosis: Becoming Animal And The Freedom Of Non-Identity, Hannah Becker

Bachelor of Fine Arts Senior Papers

A large number of modern and contemporary female artists have employed the state of becoming to either free themselves of or challenge the social norms that come with being a woman. Kara Walker frees the Mammy of her expectation by combining her with a sphinx in her monumental sugar sculpture, A Subtlety. The Guerilla Girls have an impenetrable and unidentifiable voice when they speak from behind gorilla masks. Lucy Gunning’s The Horse Impressionists depicts women mimicking the behavior of horses to lose their human consciousness, and more specifically, female identity. Looking beyond the art world and into recent consumerist …

Phenomenal Marks, Ruptured Spaces, Relearning Language, Crossing Cultures, Meelee Ahn

Graduate School of Art Theses

The form of my thesis is one of interruptions, or “Ruptures,” as I call them. These are events of my personal history, or stories from the lives of artists, that intervene against my narrative through graphic and language devices meant to be understood as equivalent to the material affects in my painting. Important artists and movements mentioned are Gerhard Richter, Franz Kline, Helen Frankenhauler, Lee Ufan, Doho Suh, and Abstract Expressionism. Writers and philosophers Maurice Merlou-Ponty, Gaston Bachelard, Joan Banach, Sigmund Freud, John Gage, Brian Massumi, Allen Weiss, Clement Greenburg, Shin-Chulgyu, and Yoon-Dongju are also discussed. The idea discussed include …

Creatures Of Play, Melissa Shelton

Graduate School of Art Theses

This thesis explores my practice as an artist and my work’s cultural, theoretical and social contexts, such carnival theory, feminist studies and film studies, as well as references to mythology and my own biography. I discuss forms of representation of gendered identities through my work in drawing, performance, animation, video and installation.

The masks we wear become as real as our bare face. Through the act of doubling the representation, my thesis work BECOMING/a fine line situates the mask as the mediator between reflections, mirroring the identity and the notion of performativity. Embracing a certain incompleteness and embodying the theoretical …

Revolution In Ideology: Crafting A Holistic Scientific Dialectic, Nathan Neill

Dialogue & Nexus

Ideology drives scientific research far more than is acknowledged. Since science itself is conducted by individuals, each scientist has a biased conception of themselves and their surroundings relative to the rest of the universe, even if it is never explicated. This sense of relation to the greater universe is what defines the ideology of the individual. It is this sense of relation and self that creates the individual, who goes on to investigate the natural world by the scientific method. In this paper I will examine extant scientific ideology, particularly in Western science, and propose changes that could be helpful.

False Pretexts Of Altruism And The Truth About Cooperation, Selvin Villeda

Dialogue & Nexus

Without deeper analysis, altruism seems to be alive and present in our world today. However, most of what is called altruism is really mere cooperation. True altruism cannot be achieved unless you directly give up your life without receiving any benefit. Only by analyzing such acts and exploring the true motives of these acts, can we see that 1) biological influences (such as genetic relatedness) and 2) social components stemming from reciprocity are what determine these cooperative actions. We cooperate together for greater overall fitness of society. Through cooperation we can have a striving community that can grow together. Ultimately, …

Down Syndrome, The Image Of God, And Personhood, Paris Webb

Dialogue & Nexus

People with Down syndrome help Christians understand what being made in the image of God truly means. After describing Down syndrome, we will examine the different views of the image of God and how these relate to people with Down syndrome. Another approach will be to define personhood in light of God’s image and relate it to Down syndrome. We will use the principles held by the L’Arche community as an exemplar in this discussion to demonstrate that those with Down syndrome encourage us to expand our understanding of the image of God. Consequently, Down’s persons allow us to apply …

Human Evolution And Divine Agency, Alexandra Rakestraw

Dialogue & Nexus

Modern Christians often find themselves at a crossroads when confronted with the two predominant understandings of human and universal origins. Plain sense readings of Genesis lead many to believe in a historical six-day creation that occurred in the past ten thousand years while proponents on the other side of the spectrum use current scientific understanding to support a creation that occurs through evolutionary means. How one views human origins has a profound impact on one’s concept of how God works in the cosmos. In this paper, I will lay out a background to better understand the characters of Adam and …

Deism Revisited: A Modern Approach, Tina Johnson

Dialogue & Nexus

An evaluation of the history of Deism and its modern counterpart, Moralistic Therapeutic Deism, in light of Theistic Naturalism is done in order to place the several forms of deism into a proper context in modern society. My hoped for outcome is that perhaps we can view Deism as a progressive rather than an archaic belief system that still has a purpose in American religious culture.

Mollifying Neuroscience And Christian Faith: An Emergent Monistic Claim For Free Will And The Soul, Paul Figel

Dialogue & Nexus

Modern neuroscience makes it difficult for one to support a case for substance dualism regarding the existence of a soul and free will. The neuroscientific evidence stems from several experiments in which test subjects were instructed to perform a simple voluntary movement. Scientists consistently observed neurological antecedents preceding the subject’s conscious decision to perform the action. An examination of these experiments and the conclusions drawn will show several key inconsistencies that weaken the extreme anti-conscious will claim. However, it is important to not reject the neurological evidence against substance dualism, but instead discover a new perspective (e.g. emergent monism) that …

Feminism In Biology And Belief, Rachel Hurst

Dialogue & Nexus

As feminism has become more hotly-contested in today’s society, the need to analyze the movement’s claims from a scientific and theological perspective has developed. Labor statistics and sociological research reveal that income inequality persists between the sexes. Neuroscience and evolutionary psychology show that subtle differences exist between male and female brains, and these slight variations can potentially be traced to the differing selective pressures between the genders. Ultimately, the biological differences that favor power differentials must be overcome to remedy inequality and injustice. Although Christians have historically upheld these differences and viewed women as inferior, a more modern theological understanding …

Volume 3 Editorial, Daniel Brannan

Dialogue & Nexus

No abstract provided.

Allow The Waves To Do Their Work, Carolyn Massiah

UCF Forum

I have found that the beach is one of the most relaxing places to visit.

Western Philosophy: A New Story For A New Generation, Stephanie Harrison, Dr. Dennis Packard

Journal of Undergraduate Research

In the fall semester of 2015, Dr. Packard approached me after class one day when he noticed from the class roll that I had a minor in visual arts. He came to me with an offer to help him do graphic design for a textbook he was making, an offer which I gratefully accepted. After securing funding for the project through the generosity of the ORCA grant I received, we set to work creating a textbook that would tell the story of Western philosophy in a way it had never before been told.

Better Off Dead: Suicide In Plato's Philosophy, Anna Christensen

Arts & Sciences Graduate Student Theses and Dissertations

In Better Off Dead: Suicide in Plato's Philosophy, I argue that Plato thinks Socrates committed suicide, and show how this thesis coheres a rich set of Platonic views about the permissibility of suicide, about living a good life, and about responsible and intentional action. An ancient philosophical tradition portrays Socrates' death as a virtuous suicide, but contemporary scholars tend to focus on the fact that Socrates' death occurred as a result of execution. They think that Plato does not portray Socrates as committing suicide, largely because some textual evidence suggests that Plato considers suicide to be ethically wrong (Phd. 61c; …

Model And World: Generalizing The Ontic Conception Of Scientific Explanation, Mark Povich

Arts & Sciences Graduate Student Theses and Dissertations

Model and World defends a theory of scientific explanation that I call the “Generalized Ontic Conception” (GOC), according to which a model explains when and only when it provides (approximately) veridical information about the ontic structures on which the explanandum phenomenon depends. Causal and mechanistic explanations are species of GOC in which the ontic structures on which the explanandum phenomenon depends are causes and mechanisms, respectively, and the kinds of dependence involved are causal and constitutive/mechanistic, respectively. The kind of dependence relation about which information is provided determines the species of the explanation. This provides an intuitive typology of explanations …

Initiating Research On Igniting Fires In The Blue Ridge Mountains During The Autumn 2016 Conflagration, Cynthia Twyford Fowler, Cynthia Fowler

Faculty Scholarship

An unprecedented moment in the fire ecology of the Blue Ridge Mountains occurred in Autumn 2016 when severe drought, frequent anthropogenic ignitions, and seasonality in disturbed deciduous forests fueled widespread burning. As the wildfires burned, wildland firefighters from around the U.S. temporarily moved into the region to assist local land managers. As wildfire risks increased and air quality decreased, local residents became increasingly interested in fire ecology. The community shifted continuously as wildfires were extinguished, wildland firefighters returned home, and local residents disengaged. In conducting research during the conflagration, obtaining consent from community members varied depending on whether or not …

The Sounds Of Silence; Or, Isabella’S Counter Discourse In Measure For Measure, Gina Vivona

Theses and Dissertations

This argument reshapes the thinking about masculine dominance in Measure for Measure, and considers the patriarchy as a series of socially constructed, hence artificial, rules and regulations. It also explores how Isabella’s discourse and celibacy empower her to defy the constraints of early modern paradigms and achieve individual freedom.

The Feminization Of Violence, Caitlin Logan

Theses and Dissertations

Grounded in the necessity of upending the economic base as it is defined by Louis Althusser, this paper seeks to express a possibility for the creation of a feminine voice, that when expressed as itself, independent of the pervasive nature of patriarchal power and significance, could be the very event that engenders the first real “violent” attack on the base. Using Zora Neale Hurston’s, Their Eyes Were Watching God, as an example of a uniquely feminine voice, this paper also seeks to empower the experience of the Black female aesthetic as a perspective capable of tapping the multiplicity of human …

Adopting A Third Gender In The United States, Anna K. Self

The Downtown Review: An Interdisciplinary Journal Written and Peer-Reviewed by Mandel Honors College Students at Cleveland State University

The United States should consider adopting a third gender in order accommodate all of its citizens comfortably. The concept of a third gender has existed in past societies such as the Inuit and the Yoruba, but has not been accepted in Western societal structures. By examining how the third gender was integrated into other societies, the United States will be able to learn how to properly adapt the idea for modern times including deciding which aspects are important for modern use. The United States must also consider how to classify its intersexed individuals, as they do not fit within either …

Teufel Thinks That We Need Philosophers More Than Ever., Aldemaro Romero Jr.

Publications and Research

Most people don’t know what a philosopher does, but philosophers take their profession seriously, no matter what first drew them into it. “I tried to decide what to do, and I figured one way to know how to become an artist would be to find out what philosophy is and also what philosophy is not in order to then be able to paint,” says Dr. Thomas Teufel, who initially wanted to become an artist.

“The word philosophy comes from the Greek ‘filo-sofía.’ Sofía means ‘wisdom,’ filo means ‘lover of.’ Thus, a philosopher is a lover of wisdom—as the Greeks would …