Philosophy Commons^™

Identifying The Limits Of Sexual Liberation As A Feminist Value, Nichole Hungerford

Legacy Theses & Dissertations (2009 - 2024)

This thesis explores feminist responses to the sexual revolution and the extent to which sexual liberation, from the perspective of heterosexual relations, has served women’s interests as an oppressed social group under patriarchy. In particular, this thesis examines the divide between libertarian and radical feminists’ interpretation of sexual liberation, considering both the radical feminist criticisms of the sexist nature of heterosexual sex and the libertarian feminist view of free sexuality as a revolutionary act that ameliorates the condition of women. This thesis offers a middle ground approach to sexual liberation as a feminist value by suggesting two conditions on heterosexual …

Dynamic Politics : Necessity, Founding, And (Re)Founding In Machiavelli's Discourses On Livy, Vincent John Commisso

Legacy Theses & Dissertations (2009 - 2024)

This dissertation is an attempt to recast the political thought of Niccolò Machiavelli in his Discourses on Livy in a far more radical light than it has been previously understood. Rather than trying to overcome fortune, I argue that Machiavelli was encouraging political actors to embrace it by embracing the force which fortune generates: necessity. Along with this orientation towards fortune and necessity, Machiavelli also was engaging in an additional subversive project: the systematic undermining of the conventional republican wisdom of his predecessors and his contemporaries. On a practical level, the necessity central to Machiavelli’s thought is that of “founding,” …

The Enlightenment And The Origins Of Racism, Peter Andrew Schrom

Legacy Theses & Dissertations (2009 - 2024)

The Enlightenment has been thought of as the Age of Reason: the birth of the individual, the rise of print culture, the beginning of the middle class, and an exponential growth in the sciences. The Enlightenment shaped the world into the form that it is today, but it also marks the start of colonization and the slave trade. The following thesis seeks to demonstrate the importance of the Enlightenment to both colonization and the slave trade; that without it neither of these practices would have had the reach that they achieved over time. Using the works of Adam Smith, Jean-Jacques …

What Monsters May They Be : The Moral Status Of Macabre Fascination And The Paradox Of Horror, Marius Abraham Pascale

Legacy Theses & Dissertations (2009 - 2024)

The paradox of horror poses the question, how is it possible for us to find fear pleasurable? Emotions of fear are traditionally seen as unpleasant, and viewed as that which ought to be avoided when possible. Yet individuals seek out and derive pleasure from works of horror, a genre with the explicit goal of producing fear. How is this possible, and ought we to find such works a source of pleasure? The goals of the project are twofold. First, to present a unique solution to the horror paradox. Second, to address the moral status of macabre fascination. The first section …

Excluding The Problem: Does Supervenience Resolve The Exclusion Problem?, Katelyn S. Hallman

UNF Undergraduate Capstone Projects and Honors Theses

The exclusion problem challenges views that hold that the mental is distinct from and irreducible to the physical. I follow Karen Bennett’s formulation of the exclusion problem, which is unique in that it sets up the problem as a set of five inconsistent claims, where at least one of which must be denied: DISTINCTNESS, COMPLETENESS, EFFICACY, EXCLUSION, NON-OVERDETERMINATION. In brief, the issue is that if the mental and physical are distinct, and each is causally sufficient to bring about their effects, then our actions would frequently be overdetermined. However, since mental overdetermination isn’t something that happens frequently, the five claims …

Scientific Fictionalism And The Problem Of Inconsistency In Nietzsche, Justin Remhof

Philosophy Faculty Publications

In this article, I begin to develop Nietzsche’s scientific fictionalism in order to make headway toward resolving a central interpretive issue in his epistemology. For Nietzsche knowledge claims are falsifications. Presumably, this is a result of his puzzling view that truths are somehow false. I argue that Nietzsche thinks knowledge claims are falsifications because he embraces a scientific fictionalist view according to which inexact representations, which are false, can also be accurate, or true, and that this position is not inconsistent.

Farmville, Eternal Recurrence, And The Will-To-Power-Ups, D. E. Wittkower

Philosophy Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Ante Rem Structuralism And The No-Naming Constraint, Teresa Kouri

Philosophy Faculty Publications

Tim Räz has presented what he takes to be a new objection to Stewart Shapiro's ante rem structuralism (ARS). Räz claims that ARS conflicts with mathematical practice. I will explain why this is similar to an old problem, posed originally by John Burgess in 1999 and Jukka Keränen in 2001, and show that Shapiro can use the solution to the original problem in Räz's case. Additionally, I will suggest that Räz's proposed treatment of the situation does not provide an argument for the in re over the ante rem approach.

A New Interpretation Of Carnap's Logical Pluralism, Teresa Kouri

Philosophy Faculty Publications

Rudolf Carnap’s logical pluralism is often held to be one in which corresponding connectives in different logics have different meanings. This paper presents an alternative view of Carnap’s position, in which connectives can and do share their meaning in some (though not all) contexts. This re-interpretation depends crucially on extending Carnap’s linguistic framework system to include meta-linguistic frameworks, those frameworks which we use to talk about linguistic frameworks. I provide an example that shows how this is possible, and give some textual evidence that Carnap would agree with this interpretation. Additionally, I show how this interpretation puts the Carnapian position …

Environmental Ethics And The Electric Power Grid: A Case For Technological Momentum, Paul A. Povlock

Ph.D. Dissertations (Open Access)

This qualitative analysis examines the effects of a growing environmental ethic on the electric power grid in southeastern New England from the late nineteenth century to the start of the new millennia. The increased awareness of the environment evolved into a new belief system of the population and altered the methods of construction, operation and maintenance of the advanced technology system of the electric power grid. The manner in which this occurred suggests that technological momentum is a better concept than technological determinism with which to examine the development of technological systems in the modern world.

This dissertation examines the …

Ptsd And Emotionally Augmented Perception: An Argument For Direct Realism, Patrick Travis Woodruff

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) causes behavioral and emotional problems. The emotions associated with the disorder, research has shown, literally change and individual’s perception. Those who study the effects of emotion on perception generally accept an indirect theory of perception like representationalism. Yet, an indirect theory does not seem to be adequate to account for the immediacy and phenomenology of PTSD. Therefore, a theory that can better account for these is needed. I suggest a form of direct realism – the combined scientific-philosophical theory that combines John Campbell’s 3-place relation and James J. Gibson’s direct perception of information through ambient …

The Logical Analysis Of Key Arguments In Leibniz And Kant, Richard Simpson Martin

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This paper addresses two related issues of logic in the philosophy of Gottfried Leibniz. The first problem revolves around Leibniz’s struggle, throughout the period of his mature philosophy, to reconcile his metaphysics and epistemology with his antecedent theological commitments. Leibniz believes that for everything that happens there is a reason, and that the reason God does things is because they are the best that can be done. But if God must, by nature, do what is best, and if what is best is predetermined, then it seems that there may be no room for divine freedom, much less the human …

Cortex Necessary For Pain — But Not In Sense That Matters, Adam J. Shriver

Animal Sentience

Certain cortical regions are necessary for pain in humans in the sense that, at particular times, they play a direct role in pain. However, it is not true that they are necessary in the more important sense that pain is never possible in humans without them. There are additional details from human lesion studies concerning functional plasticity that undermine Key’s (2016) interpretation. Moreover, no one has yet identified any specific behaviors that mammalian cortical pain regions make possible that are absent in fish.

Fish And Pain: The Politics Of Doubt, Dinesh Joseph Wadiwel

Animal Sentience

The commentaries on Key’s (2016) target article make it clear that there is a great deal of doubt about Key’s thesis that fish do not feel pain. The political question therefore is about how we should respond to doubt. If the thesis of Key and others (that fish do not feel pain) is wrong, then the negative impact for fish in terms of suffering caused by human utilisation would be extreme. In the face of this doubt, the very least we can do is to adopt basic welfare precautions to mitigate the potential impact if fish do suffer, with attention …

Is Sentience Only A Nonessential Component Of Animal Welfare?, Ian J.H. Duncan

Animal Sentience

According to Broom (2014), animal welfare is a concept that can be applied to all animals, including single-celled organisms that are obviously not sentient. Such a stance makes it difficult to draw a connection between welfare and sentience, and that is the book’s downfall. Some excellent points are made about sentience and there are very good discussions on animal welfare. However, unless sentience is considered the essential component of welfare, any attempt to link the two phenomena will be unsuccessful — and that, indeed, is the case with this book.

Sentience And Animal Welfare: New Thoughts And Controversies, Donald M. Broom

Animal Sentience

Sentience involves having some degree of awareness but awareness of self is not as complex as some people believe. Fully functioning vertebrate animals, and some invertebrates, are sentient but neither humans nor non-humans are sentient early in development or if brain-damaged. Feelings are valuable adaptive mechanisms and an important part of welfare but are not all of welfare so the term welfare refers to all animals, not just to sentient animals. We have much to learn about what non-human animals want from us, the functioning of the more complex aspects of their brains and of our brains and how we …

Hume’S Practical Conciliation Of Science And Skepticism, Nathan I. Sasser

Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation addresses the question of whether David Hume is an epistemic skeptic about core beliefs—beliefs that are practically indispensible for life and science. On the one hand, Hume claims to be a skeptic, but on the other hand, he carries on with ordinary life and with a constructive program of research. The relationship of his science and skepticism remains a central and contested question in the literature.

I offer a practical conciliation of Hume’s science and skepticism. On my reading, Hume really is an epistemic skeptic about core beliefs. However, he thinks that we are practically permitted—even required—to ignore …

Raj Rajaratnam: Cheater (Revised), Alicia Baker

Richard T. Schellhase Essay Prize in Ethics

No abstract provided.

Forty-First Annual Midwest Philosophy Colloquium, 2016-2017, University Of Minnesota - Morris. Philosophy Department

Midwest Philosophy Colloquium

Programs for the forty-first Midwest Philosophy Colloquium at the University of Minnesota Morris in 2016-2017.

A Preference For Freedom: Kantian Implications For An Incompatibilist Will And Practical Accountability, Maggie Miller

CMC Senior Theses

This thesis aims to provide a coherent account of free will and practical grounds to prefer it. Its goal is to develop a pragmatic understanding of agency by which to hold individuals morally accountable. The paper begins with a critique of P.F. Strawson, whose seminal paper “Freedom and Resentment” bypasses the question of free will altogether in its claims about morality. Subsequently, it proceeds to a defense of incompatibilism that traces an argument through the existing literature. From this position, it claims that neither Strawson nor traditional compatibilists can provide an account of morality that is reliable or well enough …