Philosophy Commons^™

A Phenomenological Inquiry Into Sacred Time In Hinduism, Netty Provost

Open Access Dissertations

In this work, I examine the nature of sacred time in religious experience. Applying the methodology of phenomenology of religion, I inspect the ways in which human beings experience sacred time in Hinduism and present an argument against Mircea Eliade’s understanding of the nature of sacred time in Hinduism. Eliade asserted that all sacred time in Hinduism is fundamentally circular in nature and that the experience of sacred time is an experience of the original act of creation being made consciously present to the individual.

I will scrutinize Eliade’s arguments on two fronts. Firstly, I argue against Eliade’s claim that …

Book Review: Just Remembering: Rhetorics Of Genocide Remembrance And Sociopolitical Judgment, Jeffrey Blustein

Genocide Studies and Prevention: An International Journal

Review of Just Remembering by Michael Warren Tumolo. A critical appraisal of the main ideas and arguments of the book and an assessment of whether the book accomplished its aims.

Grounding Deliberative Contractualism, Michael Hogan

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Contractualism is often seen as a kind of self-interested bargaining in which individuals engage to preserve their own desired outcome. If individuals are only out for themselves, then no one achieves his or her desired end. Yet, if individuals constrain some of their desires and are assured that others will do the same, then, the contractors can avoid mutual destruction. It is not hard to see why Contractualism is often viewed as a way to explain the origins of morality within civil society. In this paper, I take up a version of Contractualism espoused by Nicholas Southwood called Deliberative Contractualism. …

An Investigation Into Hybrid Models Of Mindreading: A Dual Type Theory Account, Alexandra Jewell

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Mindreading, or attributing mental states to others, involves instances of simulation and theory; but there is controversy over which one of these methods is the primary, or default, mechanism. I propose that mindreading is a theory-based process, such that we utilize theory over simulation when both are available and reliable. To argue my position, I suggest that theory has been inaccurately portrayed in past discussion and that we possess two types: a connectionist network (tt1) and a traditional, conceptual folk-psychology (tt2). By dividing theory in this way, we can explain common phenomena of mindreading that other theory-based accounts do not …

A Dollar A Day: Child Sponsorship And The Marketization Of Human Development, Taylor Hallett

Capstone Collection

Child sponsorship as a method of international development offers child sponsors a personal connection to the process of alleviating poverty in the global South. As a form of human development, child sponsorship is constituted by neoliberal principles of marketization and social entrepreneurship. How does child sponsorship, in this context, require us to rethink the ethics of international development in light of ongoing debates about neoliberalism? In this research, I argue that child sponsorship reifies the binary of the “developed” and “undeveloped” worlds. Through undertaking a content analysis of three organizations (Compassion International, World Vision, and UNICEF) and applying post-structural critique …

Insect Consciousness: Commitments, Conflicts And Consequences, Colin Klein, Andrew B. Barron

Animal Sentience

Our target article, “Insects have the capacity for subjective experience,” has provoked a diverse range of commentaries. In this response we have collated what we see as the major themes of the discussion. It is clear that we differ from some commentators in our commitments to what subjective experience is and what the midbrain is capable of. Here we clarify where we stand on those points and how our view differs from some other influential perspectives. The commentaries have highlighted the most lively areas of disagreement. We revisit here the debates surrounding whether the cortex is essential for any form …

Husserl’S Concept Of Position-Taking And Second Nature, Alejandro Arango

Philosophy Faculty Scholarship

I argue that Husserl’s concept of position-taking, Stellungnahme, is adequate to understand the idea of second nature as an issue of philosophical anthropology. I claim that the methodological focus must be the living subject that acts and lives among others, and that the notion of second nature must respond to precisely this fundamental active character of subjectivity. The appropriate concept should satisfy two additional desiderata. First, it should be able to develop alongside the biological, psychological, and social individual development. Second, it should be able to underlie the vast diversity of human beings within and across communities. As possible candidates, …

Consciousness And Evolutionary Biology, Yew-Kwang Ng

Animal Sentience

Reber’s axiom: “Any organism with flexible cell walls, a sensitivity to its surrounds and the capacity for locomotion will possess the biological foundations of mind and consciousness” does not seem to be supported by things we know and the logic of evolutionary biology. The latter leads to the conclusion that conscious species are flexible in their behavior (rather than in their cell walls), as argued in Ng (1995, 2016). Locomotion may be completely hard-wired and need not involve consciousness. It is hard enough to explain how consciousness could emerge in a sophisticated brain: Isn’t it a harder problem to show …

The Difference Between Conscious And Unconscious Brain Circuits, Ezequiel Morsella, Zaviera Reyes

Animal Sentience

Theoretical frameworks in which consciousness is an inherent property of the neuron must account for the contrast between conscious and unconscious processes in the brain and address how neural events can ever be unconscious if consciousness is a property of all neurons. Other approaches have sought answers regarding consciousness by contrasting conscious and unconscious processes and through investigating the complex interactions between the two kinds of processes, as occurs most notably in human voluntary action. In voluntary action, consciousness is associated most, not with motor control or low-level perceptual processing, but with the stage of processing known as action selection.

Art's Disclosive Dimensions: Reflections On The Work Of Peter London, Aaron Darrisaw

Artizein: Arts and Teaching Journal

When I initially came to this project, I vaguely remembered hearing of Peter London once before – in passing perhaps. Yet I knew nothing really of his art or his work as an educator. Each day I came into work, however, I was met with a series of very interesting correspondences, articles, conference presentations, lecture notes, and more that offered a thoroughgoing vision of art as a personally, socially, and spiritually transformative and enriching enterprise. The collection contained document after document of valuable contributions to the instrumental role that art can and does play in opening up individuals to their …

Resolving The Hard Problem And Calling For A Small Miracle, Arthur S. Reber

Animal Sentience

With the exception of the commentary by Key, the commentaries on Reber have a common feature: the commenters feel, with varying levels of enthusiasm, that there is at least some virtue in the core assumption of the Cellular Basis of Consciousness (CBC) theory that consciousness (or subjectivity or sentience) accompanies the earliest forms of life. The model has two important entailments: (a) it resolves the (in)famous Hard Problem by redirecting the search for the biochemical foundations of sentience away from human consciousness; and (b) it reduces the need for an emergentist miracle to a far simpler scale than is currently …

No Help On The Hard Problem, Derek Ball

Animal Sentience

The hard problem of consciousness is to explain why certain physical states are conscious: why do they feel the way they do, rather than some other way or no way at all? Arthur Reber (2016) claims to solve the hard problem. But he does not: even if we grant that amoebae are conscious, we can ask why such organisms feel the way they do, and Reber’s theory provides no answer. Still, Reber’s theory may be methodologically useful: we do not yet have a satisfactory theory of consciousness, but perhaps the study of simple minds is a way to go about …

Violence And Disagreement: From The Commonsense View To Political Kinds Of Violence And Violent Nonviolence, Gregory Richard Mccreery

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation argues that there is an agreed upon commonsense view of violence, but beyond this view, definitions for kinds of violence are essentially contested and non-neutrally, politically ideological, given that the political itself is an essentially contested concept defined in relation to ideologies that oppose one another. The first chapter outlines definitions for a commonsense view of violence produced by Greene and Brennan. This chapter argues that there are incontestable instances of violence that are almost universally agreed upon, such as when an adult intentionally smashes a child’s head against a table, purposefully causing harm. It is also claimed …

Unconscious Higher-Order Thoughts (Hots) As Pre-Reflective Self-Awareness?, Rocco J. Gennaro

Animal Sentience

Rowlands argues that many nonhuman animals are “persons,” contrary to the prevailing orthodoxy which rests on a mistaken conception of the kind of self-awareness relevant to personhood. He argues that self-awareness bifurcates into two importantly different forms — reflective self-awareness and pre-reflective self-awareness — and that many animals can have the latter, which is sufficient for personhood. I agree that there is good reason to think that many animals can have pre-reflective self-awareness, but I think Rowlands is mistaken about its nature. His account runs the risk of leading to an infinite regress objection, and his notion of pre-reflective self-awareness …

Celebrating 20 Years Of Asu’S The Philosopher's Stone, Philosophical Discussion Group, Armstrong State University

The Philosopher's Stone

No abstract provided.

The Philosopher 廚房裡的哲學家, Tama Lung

AMBROSIA 客道 : The Magazine of The International Culinary Institute

André Chiang's unique approach to haute cuisine has taken him to number one in Singapore and quickly up the rankings of the world's most revered restaurants.

憑著獨具巧思的高級法式料理，使江振誠登上新加坡第一名廚竇座，在全球最佳餐廳的排名更迅速攀升。

Fresh Inspiration 「心」鮮有道

AMBROSIA 客道 : The Magazine of The International Culinary Institute

Hélène Darroze was recently named as Veuve Cliquot's World's Best Female Chef for 2015. She comes from four generations of chefs and despite a brief attempt to work outside the kitchen she is now a global culinary star. From her Michelin-starred restaurant in London she told Daniel Jeffreys how she manages two world-class kitchens, a family of two young girls and still finds time to mentor young culinary professionals.

Hélène Darroze最近被法國凱歌香檳(Veuve Cliquot)評選為2015世界最佳女廚師。Darroze來自烹飪世家，祖上三代均為廚師，雖然她曾短暫離開廚房以外環境工作，但回歸廚房後已搖身成為全球頂尖的廚藝明星。在她位於倫敦的米芝蓮星級餐廳，她告訴我如何管理兩間世界一流的餐廳，盡心教養一對女兒之餘，還能抽空向不少年輕廚師傳授經驗。

World Class Skills 尋味全球

AMBROSIA 客道 : The Magazine of The International Culinary Institute

Globalization is most frequently associated with technology or banking, but it has been an equally influential force in the culinary industry. Although some chefs resist cross-cultural integration, Mariana Sebess, Academic Director of the Prestigious Mausi Sebess Culinary Arts Institute, believes that chefs should embrace the concept of world food and draw upon regional cuisines in the dishes they make.

提起全球化，人們往往會聯想到科技或金融發展，事實上，餐飲業的全球化亦備受關注，並在人們的生活中擁有舉足輕重的地位。一些廚師對於跨文化的廚藝融合頗為反感，不過其支持者也不在少數。Mausi Sebess烹飪藝術學院的學術總監Mariana Sebess就是其中一位，她深信廚師應該順應美食全球化的趨勢，集各地美食之所長，從而創造出獨特的美味佳餚。

The Psychological Concept Of “Person”, Kristin Andrews

Animal Sentience

Reluctance to overextend personhood seems to drive many of the skeptical responses in the first round of commentaries on Rowlands's target article. Despite Rowlands’s straightforward Response that we already accept some nonhumans as persons, there is still hesitation to accept that other nonhuman animals are persons. Rowlands's argument is sound but the skeptics don’t accept the Lockean notion of person. The metaphysical sense of person is a psychological one, however, and psychological properties grant one moral status according to many ethical theories.

A Critique Of Henrik Friberg-Fernros's Defense Of The Substance View, William Simkulet

Philosophy and Religious Studies Department Faculty Publications

Proponents of the substance view contend that abortion is seriously morally wrong because it is killing something with the same inherent value and right to life as you or I. Rob Lovering offers two innovative criticisms of the anti-abortion position taken by the substance view - the rescue argument and the problem of spontaneous abortion. Henrik Friberg-Fernros offers an interesting response to Lovering, but one I argue would be inconsistent with the anti-abortion stance taken by most substance view theorists.