Philosophy Commons^™

Moral Clumsiness, Alejandro Arango

Philosophy Faculty Scholarship

What would happen if one morning you wake up clumsy, as if your sense of touch were unreliable, arbitrarily on and off? And what would this clumsiness look like if we could transfer it to the moral sense? The article expounds an interesting analogy between the sense of touch, loosely construed, and the moral sense: just as a sort of consistency is necessary for the sense of touch to do its job, so it is for the moral sense to play its part. Touch enables us to navigate the everyday world of coffee pots and staircases; our moral sensibility comes …

The Effect Of God On The Cogito: An Examination Of Descartes' Meditations On First Philosophy, Alex Valin

Oglethorpe Journal of Undergraduate Research

In Descartes’ Meditations on First Philosophy, he claims on of his most enduring arguments, the Cogito: I think, I am. Following his argument for the Cogito, however, Descartes argues for the existence of an infinite, all powerful, all knowing God. Critiques of this argument fall into several different camps. First, that God remains a fundamental principle for Descartes’ epistemology and metaphysics. Secondly, that the inclusion of the argument for God was put in to please Church officials. Finally, that what Descartes’ terms God actually represents his own mind. In this essay, I examine Descartes’ argument for God as a fundamental …

Personal Identity And Angelic Touch In Wim Wenders' Wings Of Desire, Chris Venner

Journal of Religion & Film

Wenders' Wings of Desire offers a rich tapestry for theorists of personal identity and its relationship to the Other. Set in a Berlin where angels walk among humans, it depicts those angels reorienting humans' lives with but a touch. Martin Heidegger and Gilles Deleuze also theorize the Other's touch as central to any change in the self. Bringing Wenders' film into dialogue with their theories offers new insights into the film's central question, “Why am I me and not you?”

The Binding Of Abraham: Inverting The Akedah In Fail-Safe And Wargames, Hunter B. Dukes

Journal of Religion & Film

This article draws upon Søren Kierkegaard's Fear and Trembling and Jacques Derrida's The Gift of Death to trace how two exemplars of atomic bomb cinema reinterpret the Binding of Isaac (Akedah). Released during the twin peaks of Cold War tension, Fail-Safe (1964) and WarGames (1983) invert the Akedah of Genesis 22. In both films, an act of sacrificial patricide accompanies or replaces the sacrifice of an Isaac-like son. When viewed in the context of Cold War cultural politics—events such as Norman Morrison’s Abrahamic self-immolation and Kent State’s rejection of George Segal’s sacrificial memorial— the inverted Akedah emerges as …

Prudence And Executive Control: An Analysis Of The Decision-Making Processes Of The Christian And The Modern Man, Ryan Frazier

Spring 2015, Faith and Science

Scientific research and Christian philosophy often appear to be at odds. These different perspectives sometimes offer different answers to the same question. In the light of these perspectives, however, we can gain a greater understanding of the human experience. Executive control, or how a person decides to do something, is unable to account for the greater question of why. St. Thomas Aquinas¹ explanation of prudence provides reasonable evidence in favor of this perspective. In order to understand the Christian intellectual virtue of prudence, a mastery of the classical, Thomistic account is required. Despite the gaps between science and religious thought, …

“In Pursuit Of Purified Persuasions”: Making (Some) Sense Of The Modern Mind, John Emmet Clarke

Spring 2015, Faith and Science

What is more essential to the philosophical act, what we study or how we study? Taking its cue from a line by Thomas Aquinas on the corruptibility of the natural law, this essay seeks to make some sense of the ways in which our way of knowing and, consequently, of being, is affected by the sins of our philosophical forefathers. The essay advises against putting faith in any particular school of thought, be it the pensee d'jour or philosophia perennis, since our ability to comprehend and converse in their varying tenets is compromised by the very state of the post-modern …

The Algorithmic Self, Frank A. Pasquale

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

A Formalization Of Topical Logic, Aharon Grenadir

School for Lifelong Education Publications

The author discusses the history of topical logic.

Facilitating An Ethical Disposition (Hexis) As “Care Of The Soul” In A Unique Ontological Vision Of Socratic Education, James M. Magrini

Philosophy Scholarship

This essay adopts a Continental philosophical approach to reading Plato’s Socrates in terms of a “third way” that cuts a middle path between doctrinal and esoteric readings of the dialogues. It presents a portrait of Socratic education that is at odds with contemporary views in education and curriculum that view Plato’s Socrates as either the teacher of a truth-finding method or proto-fascist authoritarian. It argues that the crucial issue of attempting to foster an ethical disposition (hexis) is a unique form of education, in terms of “care of the soul,” that unfolds only within the context of sustained dialectic interrogation. …

What Fanon Said: A Philosophical Introduction To His Life And Thought, Lewis R. Gordon, Sonia Dayan-Herzbrun, Drucilla Cornell

Philosophy & Theory

Challenging the notion of theory as white and experience as black, Lewis Gordon here offers a philosophical portrait of the thought and life of the Martinican-turned-Algerian revolutionary psychiatrist and philosopher Frantz Fanon as an example of “living thought” against the legacies of colonialism and racism, and thereby shows the continued relevance and importance of his ideas.

The Curse Of Fortune; Responding To Luck Objections In An Uncooperative World, Kyle Morgan

Featured Research

The consensus scientific view holds that our world is indeterministic at the micro level, but practically deterministic at all other levels. In an indeterministic world, live alternative possibilities at the moment of decision render it impossible for agents to guarantee what they will choose; regardless of their personality and deliberative processes. Critics of indeterminist free will argue that this lack of a necessary connection between mental state and choice makes the ultimate decision fundamentally a matter of luck. As such, indeterminism opens free will up to potential problems of present luck. Additionally, large-scale determinism opens up free will to a …

A Morally Consistent Character Or Absolute Free Will: Which Should We Choose?, Sarah Woods

Featured Research

“We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.” This Aristotelian notion of how to lead a virtuous life is one that philosophers and scholars alike have respected and praised for centuries. Consistency in choosing the right path is the key to leading a fulfilling life, which is a notion many agree upon. While one person may hold Aristotelian notions of consistent excellence in character on a pedestal, this same person may also believe that in order for one to have free will and moral responsibility, one must have the ability at all times …

A Necessity Of Morals, Austin Mcelrath

Featured Research

John Martin Fischer has stated that his initial motivation for his work The Metaphysics of Free Will was “to defend moral culpability from the threats of causal determinism and divine omniscience” while also asserting semi-compatibilism. Taking that a step further, the goal for my own work is to defend our need for moral culpability from a metaphysical standpoint. In this essay I will argue that ultimately there are only two possibilities when it comes to a moral-metaphysical framework, only one of which involves human culpability: either human existence has intrinsic meaning and worth, therefore giving weight to our moral decision …

Just Desert, Onur Sahin

Featured Research

In this paper I examine the relevance of moral desert with regards to compatibilist accounts of moral responsibility. I look at two types of moral desert: (1) desert with relation to an agent and a moral community and (2) desert with relation to the moral worth of an agent or action. I begin by discussing Pereboom’s four cases and the problem that might arise for compatibilists given which view of moral desert they affirm. From there I explicate these two opposing conceptions of desert relevant to moral responsibility. I look at one example of the latter kind of desert: desert-as-merit. …

A Framework Of Responsibility And Absolution, Tobin Wilson

Featured Research

Suppose we have a choice between A and B, and that both options are morally reprehensible. If we were forced or tricked into making a decision, would we still be responsible? The answer is usually quite easy to find, but the question of why we are responsible seems much harder to discern. In any discussion about moral responsibility, is seems there needs to be a system of necessary and sufficient conditions. However such requirements tend to exist in a hazy philosophical space, so it is not surprising that we often confuse them. Thus, my paper will attempt to create …

April Fools’ Day, A Celebration Of All Things Creative, Steven Gimbel

Philosophy Faculty Publications

April Fools' Day is unique among our holidays because it is the only one for which ingenuity is required. Other festivals are celebrated with expectations of prepackaged icons. Try serving something other than turkey for Thanksgiving and you are likely to face a revolt. Holidays are bastions of repetition, but April Fools' Day is a commemoration of creativity. [excerpt]

Using Neuroscience To Create A Paradigm Shift In Addiction Treatment And Theory, Tabitha E.H. Moses

Student Works

Drug abuse has long fascinated philosophers and scientists. Many different models have attempted to elucidate the mechanism behind drug addiction and analyze whether an addict has a choice in his behavior. The problem with these models is that they seem to suggest only two ways of viewing addiction. These models suggest either that a person cannot control his addiction and is therefore deserving of treatment, or that suggest a person can control their addictions and is not deserving of treatment, and instead needs threats of punishment to stop their behavior. I believe these approaches are too simplistic and do not …

Einstein: His Space And Times, Steven Gimbel

Gettysburg College Faculty Books

The commonly held view of Albert Einstein is of an eccentric genius for whom the pursuit of science was everything. But in actuality, the brilliant innovator whose Theory of Relativity forever reshaped our understanding of time was a man of his times, always politically engaged and driven by strong moral principles. An avowed pacifist, Einstein’s mistrust of authority and outspoken social and scientific views earned him death threats from Nazi sympathizers in the years preceding World War II. To him, science provided not only a means for understanding the behavior of the universe, but a foundation for considering the deeper …

Course Syllabus (Sp15) Coli 214 Literature & Society: "Societies Of Discipline And Control", Christopher Southward

Comparative Literature Faculty and Student Scholarship

Course description:

Optics is central to the arts of producing human subjects and governing our spatiotemporal deployment of vital forces. Yet, in the transition of societies from industrial to post-industrial modes of production, there seems to have occurred a parallel shift in governmental focus from merely producing and disciplining subjects at the material level to controlling them at the ideological. In this discussion-driven course, we will turn to works of theory and fiction in order to examine the basic tenets of discipline and control and consider the extent to which these social practices diverge and converge in our present era.

God In Pre- And Post- Genocide Rwanda: Understanding People’S Perspectives, Ben Weinberg

Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection

After the slaughter of over a million Tutsi and moderate Hutu in Rwanda in 1994, God remains an important part in the life of many Rwandans. In this study, 11 Rwandans including survivors, perpetrators, and refugees, were interviewed to provide their perceptions of God before and after the genocide. Through the use of these interviews and various studies on evil, coping, and trauma, this research intends to understand both the shift in belief before to after the genocide and the factors that caused the shift to occur. Informant testimony provides evidence of the way that God and Christian theology has …